At Last, I'm Lost

On a plastic chair, squeaks let out as I shuffled to find comfort. I cleared the lump of stale doughnut from the back of my throat with a cough. And on my fingers, I inhaled the earlier cigarette fumes.

It was my turn.

They stared. Large globed eyes like fish. Their short attention spans in my hands. Perhaps not really, perhaps they were all reeling from nicotine rushes and the thought of their next fix.

“This isn’t my story,” I said, butting my dry lips together. “But—but I need to tell it. I need to get this off my chest.”

My chest deflating with a breath. I looked to my fingers, already picking at dead skin around my nails.

“Winter. Three years ago,” I let out in a hot breath. “My sister, Dana. She swore blind she saw a ghost.”

That was it. That was the story. No, it was the title.

“My parents didn’t entertain her. I didn’t see it. They wouldn’t believe me anyway. Probably think I was bullied into it.” I smirked. “She was older.”

We’re told it’s therapeutic to share. We’re told the weight leaves us when we burden someone else with it. There are no wrong answers. Their soft voices always affirmative, speaking with words that would float from their tongues like clouds.

My brain was a thunderstorm, heavy rain, and metallic crashing waves. The sticky saltwater spray clung with sand on my skin. Suffocating, but sharing always gave me room to breathe, even for a moment longer.

“She had a history of seeing things,” I continued in a shaken breath, heavy on my chest as I cocked a foot to tap impatiently. “It started out small, she would see drawings in the condensation of windows. Nothing too abstract; two dots and half-circle smile.”

I paused on a deep breath.

“They didn’t believe anything she said, after a while. My sister, the one with the imagination. She could string stories together from nothing more than a sentence overhead on the phone.”

They stayed silent. Listening. Watching. Fidgeting their fingers in laps.

“One time, she overheard our mother on the phone, she was talking about a young boy, crying. The boy had died. So, the following day, she claimed to have seen him, she said he was fine.” My mouth picked at the side with a smile. “She must’ve been twelve or so at the time, bless.”

I hated to speak with an audience, I wanted them to at least say something, smile, maybe laugh. Laughter was medicine, another fluffy pillow phrase they tried to lighten my thunder with.

“My sister was adamant, but it upset my parents to hear. They lit a candle in a window, one of those votive candles you see in churches. We were too young to understand. I was the quiet one, too afraid to speak out or be seen.”

I had come a long way since then. Speaking in front of an audience with all eyes on me. I pressed my feet flat and straightened my back out on the chair. Their bodies beginning to squirm, the sound of their chairs a cacophony; out of sync, and nuanced so each chair hit was distinguished by a different pitch.

“I was never addicted to cigarettes either, or caffeine. Boring, you might say. But this isn’t about me. My sister was the one who remained outspoken, anything on her mind and she’d spill. She couldn’t keep secrets.” I pressed a hand to my face, covering the smile. “No, no, I could keep secrets. I kept this one too.”

In saying that and in saying any of this, I wasn’t keeping the secret any longer.

“She would tell me things and show me things, and none of it made sense. I didn’t believe anything she said in the end, much like my parents. It took me longer though. What did it?” I looked out.

They didn’t care. They were just waiting for me to end.

“One summer, I was three years younger, so I must’ve been about nine or ten.” I let out a scoff as my brows raised. “Our parents took us on a cruise. The expensive kind. The Bahamas or whatever.”

I sat, wet with sweat, dragging my t-shirt across my thin body.

“At the time, I was a pale kid, skinny too.” I nodded to the deep blue veins up my arms, seemingly visible through my translucent skin.

I was losing their eyes, their attention.

“She told me something I knew was a lie. I used to believe everything she said. I was in her corner.” I let out through laboured breaths. “She told me—she told me—” I blinked wildly, my eyelids smacking together as if being splashed by a heavy spray. “She told—” my throat began to close.

I coughed into my fist, inhaling the lingering fumes as if they gave oxygen to my lungs and a respite from the scratching in my throat.

“And I didn’t believe her, because I was on that cruise.” A grunt came from the back of my throat. “She told me, and I’ll never forget.”

I couldn’t forget.

“You drowned.”

Her words echoed through me.

The matter-of-fact way she spoke.

“I pushed you!”

And every time, the words suspended me in liquid motion. Dark beneath my kicking feet and fleeting light above my scratching hands. My body, bloating, aching, being watched in secret as bubbles escaped and water made me heavy.

“I pushed you! You drowned.”

Their school of eyes continued watching.

The anxious shuffle as they approached then retreated.

A foreign body in their open water.