Page 182
Silence.
“It’s your fault, Elara.” She sighs, already tired of me—of the shaking I can’t stop, of the strands of my hair slipping through her fingers where they’d been yanked loose. “They’re men. Stop provoking them.”
Silence.
Her hands pause for a moment before she exhales, impatient now. “Elara, how many more tests do you need before you understand? Nothing happened to you.”
Silence.
“Stop making stories, got it Mum.” I whisper and she purses her lips, a violent disapproval in her eyes.
“I don’t understand—”
“I’m sorry, Mum.”
She blinks as if caught off-guard.
“Good.” She says, her voice settling back into that same calm. “Then behave. Don’t put any more stress on your father. He’s already lost his job because of your stupid stories.”
A pause.
“We can’t show our faces in public anymore.” “I’m sorry. I won’t do it anymore.”
I didn’t do it again.
Mum and Dad left the house that night after a lot of arguing. Dad was so furious, he was driving recklessly that cost him their lives.
Amara and I inherited a lot of money but it still wasn’t enough to heal the wounds they left behind.
I didn’t mourn their deaths. I didn’t cry.
I didn’t visit their graves even.
The assault continued for years and I still couldn’t get used to it.
I just stopped telling people about it. I stopped fighting.
My sister and I were living in the same house like strangers, and the cuts became my only companion as they multiplied in numbers.
And I became the girl who ruined her family.
The girl who killed her parents.
The girl who deserves to kill herself too.
Age Seventeen
This place is weird.
This bridge.
It wasn’t weird before the accident.
Now it’s become another escape. There’s something about this place that clings to me, an odd feeling I can’t shake.
It gets louder whenever I’m here. A nagging certainty that something happened, paired with the maddening frustration of not knowing what.
Amara doesn’t let me go out at night. But the day is all mine.
