What You Know Is True

I caught the bus to my dad’s house, which probably wasn’t the best move considering I looked like some homeless youth and there were old ladies who took the bus who acted motherly toward any sickly-looking kid, even if they didn’t know you. But no one bothered me.

By the time I got to Dad’s, my throat was burning and my vision was cloudy. I held the journal in my hands even though it was burning my skin off.

I took deep breaths before I knocked on the door, and a moment later Cynthia answered it. I played nice and asked how she was. She pulled me in and offered me a cup of tea before I told her I needed to talk to Louie. She told me he was in the backyard and I ran out.

The houses on this street lined up near the woods where there was a short hiking trail. I didn’t see Louie in the backyard, so I guessed he went into the woods. I followed the path and it only took me a few minutes to find him off to the side in a small clearing. He sat at the base of a tree with his eyes closed and earbuds in.

I stood over him and it took him a moment before he sensed my presence. He blinked confusingly and stumbled up. I threw the journal at his feet, hard enough that it bounced. He stared at it, and as realization slowly came, I swung my fist and hit him in his face. My knuckles came back with droplets of blood on them, and I thought blood had splattered on my face too. When I wiped my face the liquid on my hand was clear.

I was crying. I haven’t cried since I was 12. The hollowness in my chest was becoming painful, like someone was stabbing me. I told myself to pull it together, but I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried.

“You bastard,” I spat. Louie was hunched over, holding his nose. “Look at me.”

He did without saying a word. I wanted to hit him again. I wanted so badly to take him out.

“You had her journal and you never told anyone,” I said. “Why? What did you get out of keeping it? Why do you even have it?”

He muttered something but I couldn’t stop to listen. “I remember now, Louie. Everything. Every f---king little thing. I think I should get a prize for ignoring it for so long. How many people can say they’ve done that?”

The hysteria was killing me. I smiled as a laugh stammered out of me. “So? What do you have to say? We both know how much of a bitch Josee was. What happens now? Since I’m acknowledging the truth should I go kill myself now? I bet that would finally make you happy – to have both me and Josee dead.”

I backed up against a tree and dropped to the ground, my heart rattling. I stared at Louie, waiting for him to say something. Desperate, almost, like I was hoping his next words would magically bring comfort to me, make all this go away.

He dropped his hands and I saw they were stained with blood. The blood from his nose gathered on his upper lip, but it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. I could’ve done worse. I wanted to, but I felt so tired. I wanted to lie on the ground and rot there forever.

“Why didn’t you tell mom and dad when you first saw what Josee did?” I asked.

Louie breathed through his mouth loudly. He wouldn’t look at me when he began talking. I had to strain my ears to hear him clearly. His shoulders started to shake as he shook his head.

“I don’t know. I just thought . . . I--I didn’t know it was bad. You didn’t act like it. I didn’t know what would happen if I did, so I didn’t. I thought you and Josee would hate me even more if I told. I was afraid to.”

“And after all this time, you still didn’t tell.” I wondered if Josee would’ve been proud to know her secret never got out.

“I was waiting for you to do it but you never did!” he said. “And when she died, it was like you just forgot everything she did to you and you replaced her with some messed up image of a perfect sister. And you hated me even more than you ever had.”

“Because you’re one of the reasons why she’s dead! You were there. You watched her die.”

He looked straight at me as I slowly got up, holding onto the tree so I wouldn’t fall over. “You watched her die.”

x x x x

I was 12-year-old and had just stabbed Chasha’s back with the erasure side of my pencil because I was bored. She bopped me on the head and Mr. Carthage yelled us. We didn’t care; Chasha merely grinned at me.

We had early release that day and I was ready to get back home so I could go to sleep. I was exhausted. I was kept up most of the night because Josee stayed in my room half the time, talking. I thought she was going to do something, but she kept her distance and stayed on the edge of my bed. She talked about school, how she was proud of me, and other shit I didn’t think was relevant.

It was weird. I just listened. She wasn’t touching me, so I thought everything was okay.

We lived relatively close to the middle school – my house was merely two blocks down. Mama wasn’t so hot about us walking to school alone though, so she usually had Josee take me and Louie to school if she or Dad couldn’t. But Josee stayed home that day because Louie was sick with a fever.

When I got home it was quiet. I thought I could hear the TV going on in someone’s room upstairs – probably Louie’s. I dashed up there and looked inside. There were tissues and cough drop wrappers littered on the floor, but Louie’s bed was empty. I heard a creak down the hall and went toward it.

Josee’s door was cracked opened, and the sunlight streaming from the end of the hallway made the mint green of her door brighter. I stood outside it for what felt like a long time. Something felt off, something that made the back of my neck cold. If Louie wasn’t in his room or anywhere else in the house, he had to be in there.

And even though Josee never bothered Louie, I still panicked.

“Josee?” I went in and my first view was of Louie’s back as he stood in the middle of Josee’s room. My second view was of Josee hanging from her ceiling fan, with a bright colored scarf around her neck.

It took minutes before my brain could comprehend what I was seeing, and that’s when the panic rushed in and shook me.

I shoved Louie and he fell to the floor. My heart was beating too fast for me to think, but I grabbed Josee’s waist and stepped onto the foot stool she had placed underneath her. I tried to get the scarf off but it was knotted too tightly.

I screamed at Louie to call 911 and he only stood there with wide eyes and his mouth scrunched up like he was going to cry. I cursed at him, still holding onto Josee’s waist. I remember I gave up after awhile and called 911 myself.

Behind me I thought I heard Louie whisper, “She can’t hurt you anymore.”

x x x x

The police talked to Louie first. He told them he went in there just as she was tying the scarf around her neck. She’d told him to go away and he hadn’t.

“What happened next?” they asked.

“She stepped off the stool,” he answered, his voice small and far off. “She kicked a lot. She kept looking at me.”

And then she just stopped moving.