Useless Dresses

I didn’t stop running until I could jam my keys into the door and track mud across the foyer.

Rich hadn’t followed me. The sound of his shoes crunching the snow behind me dissipated before I reached my neighborhood. He couldn’t have kept up a sprint for the miles between school and my home, anyways.

I curled up against a wall in the living room, feeling numb besides a giant pressure in my head.

I ruined it.

We moved here to start over, and I ruined it for everyone. Nothing changed. Nothing got better. We still lived in the same filth we tried to escape. And it was my fault.

But the more time that passed, the deeper I sunk. The longer I let the letter rot in my closet, the less I thought I would ever bring myself to read it. I waited too long. What was the point now? What difference could it possibly make now?

I knew the letter would kill me, whether I read it or not.

If I chose to read it, the contents would be too much no matter what they were. Because no matter what the letter said, my mom had still killed herself. She left us. No amount of words could change that fact.

If I continued to avoid reading it, nothing would change. I might even continue sitting here glued to this wall until I died of hunger or exhaustion or the cold, since the chill barging into the living room told me I left the front door ajar.

This line of thought continued until the bus screeched to a stop down the street. At first the sound didn’t register. And then a quiet “hello?” slipped into the house.

Emily peeked around the corner. When she saw me, she sighed and dropped her backpack to the ground.

“You left the door open. I thought maybe someone had broken in.”

I closed my eyes for a few moments, trying to remember exactly who Emily was.

“Um, did you…skip the afternoon classes? I thought I saw you before lunch.”

Then I remembered her. And I remembered Bobby, and my sometimes hesitant adoptive father. I remembered I had a family.

“I’m sorry.” I thought it would come out a whisper, but I spoke loud and the confidence in my voice was obvious.

I realized all my thoughts until then hadn’t even included my family. I thought only of what would become of me. But why had I agreed to move here in the first place, to give school and life another go?
To make them happy. Because I needed to fix things. Not just for me, but for them.

My selfishness made mom kill herself in the first place. I was going down the same damn road that got us into this mess.

“Hey, I don’t care how many classes you skip. I just thought you were trying—How’d you get home?”

“Ran.”

“R—what?”

I stood up, wobbling slightly. My legs felt like jelly under me, and I realized I’d sprinted at least five miles to get here. Pretty good for someone who used to skip gym daily.

Once I regained control of my lower limbs, I ran upstairs and threw open my closet door. Em was on my heels the whole time.

“Kate, what’s up?” She sounded interested and confused, but not nearly as panicked as I felt.

“Why did Mom kill herself?” I asked.

“Kate,” Em said, a warning in her tone.

“I’m being serious. You asked me that same question, not even months ago. Don’t you want to know anymore?”

“Of course I want to know. But there’s no point in worrying about it; it’s not like we have any way of finding out.”

“What if we did? What if I did?”

“Kate, you’re acting crazy.”

I was shaking all over now, and my fingers slipped away from the box several times before I tore the paper from its hiding spot and held it over my face and stared at it.

“Wh-what is that?”

“Answers.”

“What?”

“Em,” I looked down at her. “This is what you wanted, right? A last goodbye.”

My sister continued to stare, her mouth agape and her feet ready to back out of my closet.

“Tell me what that is.” Her voice was calm, almost devoid of emotion.

“I found it under my pillow. That day.”

“But what is it?” Em asked again. Now she sounded panicked. As she should.

“Mom—”

Em jumped up and snatched the paper from my hand, then backed out into my bedroom and stood perfectly still.

“Don’t you want to read it?” I asked after several minutes of silence.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s addressed to you. You have to open it.”

“I don’t care what it says.”

Emily glared at me. Then she was in my closet again, standing on her tip-toes with her finger in my face.

“Then why haven’t you opened it? Why did you keep this a secret? Why didn’t you tell anyone? You let us wonder. You let us suffer.”

“Yea.”

Em’s eyes widened, her jar dropping slightly. She screamed, loud and piercing, in my face.

“You selfish bitch! You knew! You knew we needed answers, and you keep this hidden?”

“Yes. Yes, I know,” I said. “I know you hate me right now, and maybe you won’t ever stop hating me, and I don’t blame you, but right now I need to do something.”

I took the cardboard box in my arms and held out my hand for the letter.

“You expect me to give this back to you? I can’t trust you with it.”

“Are you going to read it?”

Emily glanced down at the folded sheet, wrinkled and yellowing. She smoothed it out enough to make out the hastily written name on the front.

“She didn’t write it for me to read.”

“So give it to me.”

She did, and I tucked it back into its hiding place before flying down the stairs and back into the chilled air.