Famous Last Words

Ray’s POV

She was mumbling the parts of our song, “Mama”, that seemed to apply to her childhood. Finally, as she continued to speak, she began to calm down and was finally able to go to sleep. I set her down on the couch carefully before I took her medicine and stored them in one of the kitchen cabinets.

“Carla? You said that she looked vaguely familiar, not that you knew her.” Gerard spoke as I turned around, heading back towards the living area. I sighed, looking at each one of my band mates before I spoke. “She’s my sister. My adopted sister. Her real family lived right down the street from us when we were little. I never knew her and I had never met her. I would see her at the grocery store every once in a while, but that would be it.

“Well, one night everybody in the neighborhood heard arguing. It sounded awful, almost violent if it hadn’t reached that point already. Our family, we didn’t think that we should get involved. It wasn’t our business. But, about an hour later, I had to see what was going on. I was nosy. I left the house and was looking around the neighborhood, trying to see which house was creating all of the chaos. I wasn’t really watching where I was going, and Carla ran into me. She was carrying a stuffed pig, of which she called Hammie.” I smiled at the thought, and then frowned; thinking of what happened next. “After we both collapsed to the ground, I realized that she was in pain. Not that she was crying, she never really expressed her pain that night or any night after that, but through her eyes. I brought her to my mom, and we immediately took her to the ER. I understood later that her father had killed her mother and also tried to kill Carla. He had trapped her in her room, and lit the entire house on fire.

“She jumped. My baby sister jumped out of her room. She was five years old! She hadn’t done anything wrong. Nobody deserves that kind of lifestyle. What was my family supposed to do? We couldn’t just give her to an orphanage. We adopted her. It was the best thing for her. We stayed with her the entire time she was in the hospital. She had third degree burns on her arm, so bad that they had to graft skin cells to repair it. And her ankle was seriously cracked in half. Another surgery.” I was beyond upset at this point. I didn’t want to tell them what happened next, but stopping now would be like pausing in the middle of a sentence.

“She was ten when she started hanging out with the wrong crowds. They were all older then her, way older, but all she wanted was to be accepted somewhere other then at home. They introduced her to drugs and alcohol. But mostly drugs. Mostly cocaine. We didn’t find out until it was too late. Obviously she didn’t want her family to know. My theory is that she didn’t want us to think any less of her; which is ridiculous but understandable. It didn’t take long for her to run away. My baby sister, who I cherished, wasn’t seen again by us. Until tonight. Seven years. Seven years of not knowing if she’s okay, if she made it through another day.” Tears were falling freely from my eyes, and I made my motion to catch them.

“Did you guys try to find her?” Frank asked, daring my to answer a question that everybody wanted to know. I sighed and looked down.

“Of course we did. We searched for a little over a year. But there isn’t much more you can do after the police tell us that she’s probably dead. We were never the same. Even though she wasn’t blood related to us, she was still part of our family. When she left, so did a piece of all of our hearts.”

“What about the medication she gave you?” This time it was Gerard who spoke up.

“You guys all saw what happened tonight when she woke up. She panicked. One of the bottles is her anxiety medication to help her with the panic attacks. The other bottle was sleeping pills. It would be so much easier to help her out with her attacks if it weren’t for the fact that when she wakes up, she doesn’t realize that she isn’t sleeping anymore. She gets caught in her nightmare.”

I stop and think about all of the times I had to wake her up because she was screaming; she would never be able to stop. “But then, in the morning; in the morning she wouldn’t remember anything. She wouldn’t remember all of her screaming, her terror, her nightmares. I still don’t understand. I don’t think I ever will.” I finished off my explanation and looked at everybody else.

We were all exhausted, and it showed. None of us had gone to sleep since earlier that afternoon before the concert. After a couple more minutes had past, we all agreed that we should head to sleep and just think everything out tomorrow morning. Maybe I can get some answers from my little sister.