Page 11 of Lovefool

My pathetic admission scrapes up my throat, and my vision—now overrun with tears—resembles something of a warped pool mosaic, chlorine filling my lungs and subsequently burning my sinuses. “I⁠—”

“No, you haven’t thought about that, because I minimize all the blame for you. I lift the weight off your shoulders and carry your burdens. Your bail money comes out of my pocket.”

My mother and I rarely fight, especially not in front of Max. If she’s so angry that upholding her composure isn’t at the forefront of her very busy mind, then I’ve grossly underestimated the gravity of my fuckup.

How can she ask me to do nothing when the things I’m passionate about are under constant fire? Although these protests have plenty of support, I need to be out there on the frontlines to feel like I’m making a difference. It’s what my sister would’ve wanted.

Every other day of the week, I feel so helpless. Out of control. As if I’m riding in an elevator when the cables snap, and I’m left to freefall down an endless flight of stories with nothing to cushion my well-deserved descent from heaven.

My mom’s never going to understand because she’s never going to put herself in my shoes. She just thinks I’m some lost twenty-something with an identity crisis who steadily drains the money from her wallet. She doesn’t care about understanding the things that matter to me. She arrives at the scene, deploys her fix-it instincts, then rights my delinquency in ten minutes flat.

Indignation is a summit fever inside my head—blisteringly hot—but I choose the uncharacteristic decision and lean all my weight on an apology. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

She can barely even look at me. She just clicks the key fob to her car, opens the passenger door for my little brother, then waits until I get into my metaphorical holding cell.

I crawl into the back seat, blinking away an influx of tears that threaten to incriminate me more than my unbridled tongue has.

Max’s pity is cloying. It chokes my esophagus before tucking itself up beneath my ribs, near my heart, where some bitter, resentful creature bares its fangs in defense.

I’ve always been the architect of my own destruction. I self-sabotage my life when things are going well because secretly, deep down, I don’t think I deserve to be happy. And, like with every foolish decision I make in my life, it all spans back to the accident that took place on July fourth many years ago.

It wasn’t my fault.

Everyone was distracted by the fireworks show.

It wasn’t my fault.

Audie was running around the perimeter of the living room. We were playing tag.

It wasn’t my fault.

I looked away for one second and didn’t hear the crash of her body over the explosions outside.

I don’t know how long she was on the ground, bleeding out from the aperture in her skull from when I accidentally tripped her and she hit her head on the corner of the coffee table.

While the rest of my family was outside, drinking the night away, my only job was to keep my little sister safe.

And I fucking failed.

Something inside of me faltered in that moment when I saw her paling, lifeless body sprawled in a pool of ichor. Everything was a blur. I rushed over to her and tried to apply pressure on the wound, but she’d already lost so much blood. It was everywhere—my hands, the table, the hardwood.

I screamed for my mom to come. I screamed for anyone to hear me, but nobody did. It was like I had no voice. All while the sky was being polluted with stupid fucking light shows that nobody would even remember a week later.

I still remember how cold she was. How her big eyes used to revere me until that night, when her wobbly stare implored me in a different way entirely. I called an ambulance right away. Five minutes, they said. It would take five minutes to save my fucking sister.

I didn’t let go of her hand. I was spouting gibberish to keep her calm. The panic inside me was metastasizing into some descendant of cold-blooded fear, and they both worked in tandem to sour my throat with bile. As much as I tried focusing on my sister, there was an equal part of me that wanted to look away.

Deep down, I knew that she would die before the ambulance arrived. The adrenaline crash paired with the surrealness of flashing sirens made me numb to the whole ordeal. The party guests only started to file in when they saw the paramedics arrive.

And my mother, she—I’ll never forget the look on her face.

I was only a teenager.

“Funny how you’re always sorry after the fact,” my mother scoffs, craning her head back to properly look at me for the first time in minutes, pure rage smoldering in her eyes, along with a morsel of something less noticeable—fear, maybe. An emotion she’s had to water down again and again because it becomes more unruly in the shadows, waiting for its perfect lightning-strike moment to reach its zenith.

I guess the reason behind my outbursts is because I feel this astronomical need to do something to amend my past wrongs. I look for absolution in tear gas and handcuffs and don’t care what lengths I have to go to find it. I’m the one who should’ve died that night, not my innocent, seven-year-old sister.

Eight years later, and our broken family feels her absence every day. My dad is estranged; we haven’t talked since the accident. He’s not in any of our lives. And it’s not because he’s so overwrought with grief. No, it’s because he blames me. Fuck, I’m sure Max does too, but he’s just too nice of a kid to say anything.