Chapter 2
641 Words
Memories came flooding back, carrying with them the smell of old dust.
When I was much younger, around five or six, I had genuinely hated my sister.
If there was one piece of candy in the house, it was hers. The single apple got cut in two, the bigger half for Stella, the smaller half for me. New clothes always went to her first, and I wore what she'd outgrown, patches sewn over patches. Bedtime stories, too, were hers.
My mother had a soft voice. She would read The Little Prince, read Andersen's Fairy Tales, read all those stories about stars and the moon. But she only ever read them to Stella.
I would creep up to the door and press my ear to the gap, listening as my mother murmured, "Stella, what do you want to hear tonight?"
"The Little Mermaid," my sister said.
Then Mom started reading, her voice soft and soothing in the quiet room.
I crouched outside the door, arms wrapped around my knees, listening to those beautiful words, something squeezing tight inside my chest. Why couldn't she read to me too?
The summer I turned seven, a neighbor brought over a chicken. My mother made soup, and two golden, glistening drumsticks floated on top. At dinner, she carefully lifted both of them into Stella's bowl.
"Eat up, Stella. You need to keep your strength up."
I looked down at my own bowl of white rice and a few stalks of greens, and the tears came before I could stop them. "Why does she get both drumsticks?" I cried. "I want one too! I want a drumstick too!"
My father's chopsticks came down hard on the table. "Claire!" he snapped, rising to his feet, his face dark. "How can you be so selfish? Don't you know your sister isn't well? Don't you know she..."
He couldn't finish.
I didn't know. All I knew was that Stella was always pale, that she coughed sometimes, and that our parents always looked at her with that heavy, sorrowful gaze. But I didn't understand what it meant.
"Why does everything always go to her?" I screamed, jumping down from my chair and pointing across the table at my sister. "Why don't you just die already! Give me back all my things!"
Stella's tears fell instantly, fat drops splashing into her bowl. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
My mother shot to her feet and slapped me across the face. It was the hardest I had ever been hit. Stella lunged forward to shield me, but my mother held her back.
"Let her learn her lesson! Let her learn what she can and can't say!"
The next day, I overheard my parents talking in the kitchen. "Nine years left," my mother said, her voice breaking. "I know," my father replied, his voice rough. "Nine years... only nine years..."
That was when I finally understood. Stella was really going to die. Those numbers floating above her head that no one else could see were her death clock.
Back in the living room, my parents dried their eyes and gently walked Stella back to her room. I watched, and something ached in my chest.
"Maybe we should let Claire out," my father said quietly.
My mother was silent for a long time. "Let her wait a little longer," she finally said, her voice worn down to almost nothing. "Just let Stella have a happy birthday. One day. The last one."
I watched my mother lift a hand and wipe her eyes. "Claire will understand," she said, as if trying to convince herself. "After Stella is gone, we'll... we'll make it up to her. We really will."
My father said nothing more. He just walked to the kitchen, took a small bread roll from the cupboard, and came toward the storage closet.
- Writer
