The Things That Matter

The 22nd of January, a Tuesday, exactly 2:30am. It was at this time that I was woken from a dreamless sleep by the loud chime that acted as our doorbell. As you can imagine, the other occupants of the house had been even less happy than I had, grumbling about the fucking drunks as they stumbled down the stairs to open the front door.

I’m not particularly certain what happened when the door was opened, as most sound became muffled behind my heavy bedroom door. There was plenty of crying, that was one sound that drifted through the cracks in the door, so I didn’t dare leave the room for fear that I would witness something horrific. What was happening? Had grandma died? Was someone in hospital? All of the ideas made me feel a tiny ache deep in my chest, but nothing strong enough to make me sob as heart brokenly as the adults downstairs. Barely anything made me feel like sobbing anymore.

I curled my knees up to my chest and found my eyes wandering over to the other side of my bedroom. The room was split in half; one half my side, the other my older sister’s. My side was painted plain grey. To match me on the inside, I’d told my parents when they’d asked what colour room I’d like. On my sister’s side the walls were plastered with film posters, flawless men and glossy women stared at me with fake glassy eyes showing barely any emotion. I would constantly question her love for these films, and the people in them, pointing out how fake they were. She would give me a condescending look, before repeating the same thing she always told me.

“I like them because they’re good and everyone else likes them. One day you’ll understand that, Anna.”

But I didn’t. Not one bit. The people were fake and the plots were fake, they were edited and covered in make up, the women starved into beauty. How could everyone like that? What was so appealing about a fake world? I was young, but I most certainly was not innocent. I knew the world was a horrible place, I knew nothing happened in real life like it did in the films she obsessed over. And there was no point pretending. Life didn’t work like that.

At that moment, the bed on that side of the room surrounded by a fake world was empty, the bed neatly made just to make her absence more noticeable. I knew where she was though. She was out with the others who had been fooled and who pretend also, drinking and having fun. I found it ridiculous that anyone could have fun when they were in a world that could very well exist without them. They were enjoying their lives when their lives have no meaning at all. If they didn’t exist, nobody would be affected whatsoever. The world would move on without them and more useless people would be born, and more would die. This cycle would continue until either us useless people destroyed our own planet with waste and pollution, or when a destructive event in space destroyed the planet altogether.

But what I did like about my sister was her ability to comfort. On those days when my thoughts really overwhelmed me and I wondered why I was even still here, she pulled me into her arms and just let me stay there. She didn’t whisper lies into my ears like our parents did, she wasn’t as insensitive as the therapist. She was just there. She didn’t understand how I thought-no one did-but that didn’t matter because I actually felt wanted when she held me. Of course I knew my parents wanted me, but if I didn’t exist, they would have another daughter to look after instead. If I didn’t exist it wouldn’t affect my parents in the slightest. But when my sister held me, I actually felt like she would be a different person, a person almost as depressed and lonely as I am if I were to leave, or die.

I sighed heavily as another loud sob reached my ears and I knew I couldn’t just sit around listening to my family crying. My door made a slight creak as I pushed it open, but if anyone heard over the voices and noise downstairs then it would’ve been a minor miracle. The noise coming from the lounge was much louder than I could’ve imagined from behind the door that muffled most sounds. Even my bare feet hitting the creaky wooden stairs was unheard over the slightly hysterical voice that I could only place as my mother’s.

When I reached the closed lounge door, I couldn’t help but feel slightly hesitant. I had no idea what I was about to walk in on, and even with my perspective of life I was slightly worried. My mother was choking on words, and I could barely understand what was coming out of her mouth other than the odd swear word which I had become accustomed to from living with such a mouthy family.

I pushed lightly on the door and let it swing open to reveal a very shocking scene. My mother and father had my older sister pulled into a tight embrace, all three of them crying hysterically, though I couldn’t help but notice that my sister seemed extra depressed, something I would never expect from her with her bubbly, overly-optimistic attitude. The next thing I noticed was Doctor Barnes, my therapist, sat on the sofa opposite my huddled up family, a clipboard balanced on his lap and a pen twirling between his fingers. He didn’t look remotely sad as he stared at the wrecks opposite him, he just stared and stared.

Eventually my presence became noted by the rest of the room, and four heads snapped towards me. None seemed particularly happy to see me there. They rarely did these days.

“Anna!” My mother cried out, a forced smile immediately clouding her face. The effect was somewhat ruined by the tears pouring down her pale cheeks and the way all her teeth were bared in more of a grimace than a smile. She opened out her arms in a welcoming hug, which I tactfully avoided and moved over towards my sister. I couldn’t understand the look on her face. Usually she looked like every spot of sunshine, every compliment, every good thing that happened to her was making her body weigh less and less until she was so light with happiness and having had all the burdens of life taken off her shoulders that she might just start flying. Not now. She looked physically and mentally broken, eyes sunk into her face, mouth turned down and head ducked so her hair shrouded the edges of her face. When I approached her, she didn’t even look up at me.

My parents suddenly became very animated, hopping off the sofa and gripping my arms slightly too tight. They roughly maneuvered me backwards, taking my feet clean off the ground. It was my dad who leaned down to falsely reassure me this time.

“Anna, it’s late and your sister... Isn’t feeling very well right now. Go up to your room and we’ll discuss this in the morning when we’ve all had a good night’s sleep.” I stared at him. The only person in this room who looked ready to have a good night’s sleep was Doctor Barnes, tapping his pen boredly against the clipboard, seeming to have run out of things to write. I looked again at my sister. Her head was still bowed, her back still hunched in exactly the same position as before. Isn’t feeling very well right now. Ha. They treated me like a naive baby just because I was the youngest in the house, disregarding the fact that I understood more than pretty much anybody how awful the world was. And trust me, I knew by looking at my sister that it was the cruel world that turned her into this mess.

Everyone else seemed adamant in the fact that I had a problem. They seemed to think seeing the world for what it really is-a cruel and awful place-meant I needed therapy and people trying to persuade me that I was wrong. Can you persuade a preacher that what they’re preaching is all lies? Exactly.

Maybe that’s the wrong analogy. The way I thought of things wasn’t in a religious way; I didn’t walk round telling people that the world doesn’t need them and that they’re just another speck of dust among millions of others. Because I knew that it was true. It was just common sense for me to see things the way they were, and if everyone else was fooled by the lies used to turn planet Earth into something much more than a round chunk of rock then more fool them. They would learn.

So when my sister refused to lift her head and meet my eyes, I turned to Doctor Barnes. He was the only person in the room I had any hope of getting to speak to me.

“What happened?” I asked, stepping up to where he sat, leaning into the plush fabric with a tired emotionless expression over his face. The moment I stepped into his line of sight he appeared to wake back up, adjusting his glasses on the end of his nose and grabbing his clipboard from where it had fallen beside him.

“Your sister-“ My parents sent him a warning glare, which was brushed off without reaction. “Your sister, as you may know, was out at a club last night with friends. She met a boy while she was out, a very charming young man from the information I’ve gathered from her. He offered to let her come back to his home and she agreed.” He sent the curled up wreck that was my sister a pointed look. “And I’m not going to beat around the bush, especially not with someone like you. When your sister arrived at the boy’s house, she refused to have sex with him. He wasn’t too happy about that, and raped her before kicking her out onto the street with no money and no phone.”

I stared at the girl on the sofa. Not my sister, just the girl. I was the one who was supposed to experience all the horrors of life, not her. She was supposed to be the bubbly actress with plenty of friends and a social life that could provide an entire school of people like me with a friend and still have left overs. Now the tables seemed to have turned, and I was left stood there feeling like my view of life was positive compared to that of my abused sister.

Eventually, after many minutes of uncomfortable silence as I stared at the curtain of hair obscuring her emotions, my sister got to her feet shakily. Her hair still shielded her face, her arms still crossed tightly over her chest, but she was moving. Straight past the three of us and out the door. The heavy clunk of her feet ascending the stairs echoed throughout the house. When silence had fallen once again, my mother leapt to her feet in a falsely cheerful and determined manner.

“Come on Anna, let’s get you to bed!” She smiled, an arm slipping around my shoulders, which I immediately shrugged away.

“I can go to bed myself,” I muttered, shooting her and my dad one last glance before exiting the room too.

It was quiet in our room; too quiet. If she were asleep, the room would be filled with slow breathing, not the deafening silence that met my ears when I walked in. Nevertheless, I slipped silently back under the covers and shut my eyes, trying desperately to ignore the lump on the bed opposite.

I did well with ignoring her, managing to slip off into a dozing state where my mind flickered through useless thoughts and the usual images of death, destruction and, a new one, rape. That was until a tiny voice sucked me back into the reality of our dark, stuffy room.

“Maybe you’re right,” She whispered in a tiny voice, the words nearly breaking around the tears that were quite audible in her voice. She’d rolled over to face me, hair no longer obscuring her face for the first time that night. The eyes that gazed over the small space between our two tiny beds were large and wet, showing a broken sadness that seemed to have obliterated all that earlier happiness she was known for. I knew she meant my views of everything, the truth that I so desperately tried to get her to believe, as no one else would listen, simply labelling me as having a problem. Right now I was wishing she’d never come to the conclusion that I had come to years ago, because this was not the sister I knew. This girl was broken, haunted and depressed. I wanted my sister, not the ghost of my sister.

“Maybe I am,” I whispered back. “But maybe you shouldn’t believe me.” She seemed puzzled by that, and no wonder, after I’d spent so long sat there expressing all my thoughts and feelings to her while she tried to counter my arguments with rather weak ones of her own. I slipped out from under the covers and walked across the small aisle that separated us, then climbed into her bed. She automatically jerked away from me, but shook herself and lifted the covers for me to climb under.

“Explain,” She replied, wrapping her arms around me in the only contact that I could ever feel comfortable with, much less lean into and allow her to hug me tighter. I leaned back slightly this time though, getting in a position where I could stare into her eyes.

“I want my sister back. The real her, not you. The real her knew that I was wrong, however much I knew I was right. She talked a lot, was confident. She loved the films and the people in them.” I glared pointedly at her, ignoring the slight guilt that rose up within me when she winced under my harsh gaze. The hands gripping my body began to shake slightly as a few sniffles rung out in the stuffy silence of our room.

“She’s gone. Tonight was enough to convince me of that. I was a fucking idiot with a naive hope to become something big and important in a world where no one is important, and I honestly envy you for having been able to see that for long enough that it doesn’t hurt like a punch in the gut whenever you realise it.” I felt strange, like I was having a sort of out-of-body experience when I heard her saying these things. It was the kind of thing I used to spend my days desperately trying to explain to her, my parents and a therapist that had not a single caring bone in his body. Now it was my sister’s turn to face the facts.

The facts? That was what I’d been calling them since I first turned on a news channel and saw nothing but destruction. Now I wasn’t too sure. If the ‘facts’ were making someone as positive and with such a strong personality as my sister turn into a zombie of pessimism, there must be something off about them. My views of the world around me may have been utterly dark and dismal, but I knew people were supposed to be happy. We weren’t supposed to live life feeling miserable and hated, and even if we couldn’t be truly happy, we should at least be content.

I was content. I was content because I’d accepted that the Earth was a horrible place and the people in it were living a lie. I was content because I knew I was not living a lie, and that I could get on with life without a care in the world.

My sister was not content in this knowledge. She was an empty shell with tears pouring down her cheeks in waves. She was miserable, abused and broken. There was none of the contentedness that I presumed was supposed to come from the enlightenment of the truth, which meant either I was completely wrong, or my sister hadn’t quite understood everything yet.

Of course she fucking understood! She was clutching onto me like I was a piece of debris floating in the sea after a ship wreck, silently sobbing with such a force that a mini waterfall was leaving her now dull and lifeless sludgy green eyes. She understood, alright.

She understood, and she was broken.

She understood, and I was wrong.

It was really quite shocking, feeling that empty hole in my chest at the realisation. My sister was sobbing her heart out because she was useless and unwanted in the world, another nothing in a sea of billions of nothings. Which meant she wasn’t useless, wasn’t nothing, which meant that the 7 billion people on planet Earth actually meant something in some way, and if they died, someone, somewhere would care. A small feeling swooped inside my chest, making my heart constrict slightly and, in one long rush, I felt all the contentedness rush out of my body.

To be replaced by something which could only be happiness.

If I died, people would care, and that made me happy. And like I said, humans are supposed to be happy. Not content, happy.

“I was wrong,” I muttered against my sister’s dark curtain of hair. “People do care, people matter. Everyone matters in some way, you, me, the homeless man with no family and no one knows he exists because he hides under bridges and in forests.” She slowly lifted her head and levelled her gaze at me, blinking away tears. Her hands took hold my shoulders lightly and pushed me back so she could search my whole face. I wasn’t sure what she could see there, since all I could feel was confusion, and that tiny bubble of happiness that had surfaced when I thought about the possibility of being wrong.

“I’ve been trying to convince you of that since you were four years old. Why do you only think that now, when I’ve seen what you’ve been seeing all this time?” Her voice had evened out into pure confusion and her hands started to grip a little tighter. I avoided her strong stare by letting my eyes drift over the wall of posters and people who I’d once seen as fakers in a world of fakers. But they weren’t. Sure, the plots to their films were fake and they were airbrushed into oblivion, but inside the people were exactly the same as me; human.

“Everyone should be happy. You’re not. And I wasn’t either.” I said quietly as I reconnected our eyes. Her’s widened significantly.

“You weren’t happy? You acted like you were completely content with the world being a shitty place with far too many people doing nothing but destroying the planet,” She stared at me in shock, like the prospect of me not being happy with my life was the most horrific and shocking thing she’d heard that night. She’d been raped, why was she so obsessed with my wellbeing?

“I was content.” She stared at me for a few moments before nodding when she understood what I was telling her. You couldn’t be happy if you were only content, and I thankfully now understood that. But she didn’t seem at all convinced if the sadness etched deep into her expression was anything to go by.

“You’re not happy, you’re miserable, and I have to fix that because whoever that guy was he’s taken you away from me! I want you back!” I cried out, managing to keep my voice low enough for the conversation to still just be between the two of us. I watched in confusion as she lifted her hand towards my face, and I felt the coolness of her fingers swiping gently across my cheeks to catch tears which I’d been unaware of, and was thoroughly embarrassed of now that I knew they were there. But I couldn’t stop it now. I’d started crying and now I couldn’t stop. More and more silent tears cascaded down my face as I desperately clung on to her soaked shirt.

I never cried. Ever. Not even when I was a baby. I’d never felt the need to cry over things, since it wouldn’t make anything any better. But now, letting everything out like this suddenly felt much better than ignoring any need to let out emotions. It was a sort of free feeling to just let go and sob out everything I’d been thinking since I was old enough to think. It was never this way round in the past; it was always my sister crying over failed relationships, rejections from drama colleges and general teenage issues. Now I was the little kid crying into my older sister’s shirt while she held me (that, at least, was something I was familiar with). It was back to the way life was supposed to work.

Not quite though. She still wasn’t happy. Her shoulders were tense as she hugged me stiffly, her eyes seemed to be anywhere but the room. She was broken and overwhelmed with sadness, had lost her old perspective of life. It was like in the space of a few hours we’d switched brains.

“You’ve got to snap out of this!” I choked out, voice wobbling and throat uncomfortably constricted. It was strange to speak the words people had been yelling at me for years, and to know how helpless they felt when I didn’t so much as look at them, because I believed that my views made me a better person than they ever would become. I couldn’t understand I was ever this stubborn and unable to actually find anything good in the world around me.

“You have caring parents, a huge group of friends! You’ve got the chance to get into a drama college still; you applied for hundreds! Heck, you’ve got me! So what if the rest of the world is falling apart, that’s not your problem. It’s us you should care about, not some idiot who didn’t see how much of a kind and funny person you can actually be. Someone took advantage of you, okay. That doesn’t mean you can act like nothing matters anymore!” I was really sobbing hard now. It was everything everyone around me had tried to tell me, and everything I’d ignored. It was the message that could have saved me a long time ago if I’d just listened and acknowledged that other people may not care about me, but my family care. She sniffled slightly and looked up at me with wide, glistening eyes that looked far too innocent and young for an eighteen year old trying to cope with being raped.

“I-I... I know you all care about me. But right now that isn’t enough.” She turned over on her side, facing the wall, as if she couldn’t bear to see the hurt on my face. She really wasn’t my sister anymore. My sister relied solely on the comfort from her family to get through tough times. I remember days when she would come crying to me and try to seek comfort, and all I’d do was look at her blankly. I didn’t see a reason for comfort. Comfort was just lies to make you feel better. And who felt better if their happiness was based on lies? I never used to. But now I did, because any kind of happiness should be enough for a person. Now I needed to convince her of this, even though she was almost as bad as I used to be at the
moment.

I needed to look back into my own thoughts to get through to her’s.

I thought I was smarter than everybody else. My sister didn’t seem to, she seemed to have just given up. She believed nothing mattered any more because of what happened. I had to convince her that something mattered, but what? Trying to think of things that mattered in life was much harder than it should’ve been.

But it was obvious. She didn’t think her family was enough to help her at the moment. But
that was just her being stubborn. I needed to show her that her parents, that I, mattered a hell of a lot.

So I just rolled out of bed and slipped on a pair of trainers that had been kicked off into the piles of stuff crowding most of our tiny room. They were a tight fit, so they must’ve been kicked under a long time ago, but I didn’t care right now. I heard the noise as my sister rolled over towards me.

“Where are you going?” She asked, a hint of panic creeping into her voice. She was sitting up now, hair messed up and eyes squinting at me in the dark. I decided to ignore the question and instead busied myself in pulling on a wooly jumper that I would’ve avoided at all costs on any other day, but again, today was different.

I had to walk through the house quietly so as not to wake our parents, but they were probably in such a deep sleep after the stress of the night that it wasn’t an issue anyway. The front door was, by some miracle that was probably Doctor Barnes forgetting to close the door properly, unlocked. I was completely silent as I slid out the door and into the dark street.

Our house was quite large, not the biggest on Great Elm Street, but far from being small. It was a street of money and power, the richest showing off with their swimming pools and large gardens. The poorer people had the small houses with barely any utilities, and only enough garden space to fit a few children’s toys and overgrown weeds. The rich looked down on the poor, the poor hated the rich. It was so superficial, and something which I used to not care about. Now, looking at the small houses stuck in between enormous white houses with glass balconies and those fancy electric gates with the speaker to talk to whoever was in the house, I felt a bit sick. I’d been living for years like nothing mattered. Lots of things mattered. The people with not enough money, people who were looked down on in society, people without homes.

I saw lights flicker on in my parent’s room inside my house, and remembered where I was headed for. I broke into a quick run, probably looking insane flying down the street in pajamas, a jacket and boots. I didn’t care though. I had to show my sister what mattered.
The old playground was a place my sister and I had visited numerous times when I was younger. I would sit on one swing, her on the other, and talk to her about everything I was thinking and feeling. She had been sure I was insane back then, and had told our parents to get someone to look at me and quickly. Doctor Barnes had hung around me like an annoying fly ever since.

I didn’t blame her too much for getting me diagnosed as having a problem; in a way I did have one. A big one. I just needed to be happy and see a better side of life than the one where I was just another speck of dust surrounded by billions of others. That was not the way I should’ve been thinking, and that was not the way anybody else should think.
Which was why I was now perched on the same swing I used to sit on when I spoke to my sister, except now it pitch black, my breath ghosting through the air in front of me, and I was alone. I lightly pushed my feet back and forth on the ground so I could get a small swing going while I waited. Would this be the first place she looked? Would she bring our parents? Would she even bother coming after me?

I certainly hoped this would be the first place she looked. I’d chosen it because it was perfectly obvious. She knew we needed to talk, and where better to talk than the park where we’d talked so much in the past? Except it was different talking now. She would be the one telling me everything in her head, and I would be the one proving her wrong. I’d proved myself wrong, now it was her turn.

Several minutes passed and still she didn’t show. I was beginning to get restless, not to mention extremely cold as I continued to swing with more vigor to try and keep my body heat up. My hands were freezing against the metal chains keeping me suspended, and my trainers were proving to be not enough against the fierce winter weather.

As the minutes grew and grew in number, my mind started drifting to the cozy and warm bedroom sat empty and waiting back at home. My bed covers were thick and soft, perfect for smothering my body with and sinking into the deep mattress on a night such as this. The thought of my bed took its toll on me, and my eyes were soon drooping drastically. It couldn’t have been any more than twenty minutes since I left the house, but that didn’t change the fact that it was three in the morning and I’d barely slept before the whirlwind of bad news and depression hit the doorbell. I usually suffered serious bouts of insomnia at times like these, when I was painfully tired and just needed sleep. Today was different though; My mind had nothing to work itself up over, no awful theories about life to mull over.

Everything was just dark and cold, and I needed sleep. Dark and cold... Sleep... Something else? A person...? Someone... Coming?

I slipped off the swing heavily and landed in an awkward heap on the floor. The new position was enough like lying in bed though, so my body reacted in the only way it knew how to; It sent me to sleep.

~~~

A beeping sound. A voice. Bright light lighting up behind my eyeballs. They were the first sensations that hit me when I regained the consciousness that I hadn’t been aware of losing. My senses were so sharp it hurt, every light burning my eyes, every sound pounding against the inside of my head. The only thing I couldn’t seem to feel was touch, as my whole body felt numb and faraway.

I was distinctly aware of a nagging feeling at the back of my mind, like there was something I was meant to remember but didn’t. Something to do with my sister. I was supposed to meet her somewhere...?

My eyes flew open to reveal a shockingly white ceiling, a room of machinery and more and more white. Endless white. I was in a hospital. Of course, a hospital. If I’d lost consciousness at the time I last remembered, then it was no wonder I was in a hospital.

“Anna?” The tentative voice spoke up. It was my sister. The sister who never arrived. I grudgingly turned towards her, aware of the pain and cold running through my bones as I did so, and fixed her with a weak look of anger. She looked... Different. Not broken like she had been earlier, but still upset. There was strength in those eyes though, a strength I had been terrified of losing.

“I was so worried!” She cried, throwing herself towards the bed and tightening her arms around my body. I had thought I was completely numb to any sensations, but the tight embrace she pulled me into drew a pained cry from my shaking lips. She shot back from me like a bullet.

“Y-you w-worried,” I repeated in stuttering gasps, the numbness now clearing the way for the freezing cold seeping through my bones and into my bloodstream. I still wasn’t sure what was wrong with me, but I could ask later. There were more important things to be said first.

She looked down at her hands which had begun to fidget around in her lap. A miniscule nod was my only answer.

“And y-you worried b-because...?” I asked. I knew the answer, I just needed to get her to admit it. She worried about me because I mattered enough to her to drag her out of bed and stumbling through the streets before the sun even began to show signs of peaking over the horizon. I mattered enough that she ignored all the awful things that had happened to her; Being raped and suddenly being thrown into the realisation that her life was useless. She’d come looking for me instead of worrying about herself.

“Because I love you. Because you matter a lot to me. Because my family matter even if nothing else does. Because you’re the only person in my life who could ever make me feel better after what happened. There. Happy?” She sighed. Her arms were folded across her chest in a defensive manner, like it pained her to admit she had been wrong, even if only for a few hours. I couldn’t help but smile in relief for her stubborn acceptance. I had to cope with those thoughts buffeting round my brain for years, she had only had to face a few hours. I did not want her to ever go through what I went through, especially when she was so much more good hearted and cheerful than myself.

“Thank God,” I muttered, and she let out a small laugh. We both regarded one another for a moment, unsure of what we were supposed to do now that we were both happy and sisters again. Thinking about it, we hadn’t been proper sisters for a very long time. More often than not, we just had disagreement after disagreement. The only times we ever became real siblings were those rare times when she would let me sleep with her while she hugged me tightly.

I took hold of the edge of my thick, you guessed it, white blanket, and pulled it away from the half of the bed I was not lay on; A clear indication for her to join me. She looked unsure.

“What if I hurt you again?” She asked warily. I shook my head at her.

“I need you t-to get under the c-covers and w-warm me u-up,” I gasped, the cold really affecting the way I was speaking. She still looked hesitant, but lay down on the empty spot nonetheless. When the covers were pulled tight over the two of us, I wriggled closer to the searing heat coming from her body.

“Just hug me,” I mumbled into her shirt. Arms automatically reached up and closed in on my shaking body, spreading warmth across my back and chest, wherever the boiling skin touched my own. I felt her wince slightly when she did so, and lifted my head slightly to looked questioningly into her eyes.

“You’re so cold,” She muttered in response to my silent question. “Freezing. The doctors said you’d have warmed up by now. God, Anna. I was so worried. When they told me you were getting pneumonia and that it was occasionally fatal I was convinced I was going to lose you,” Her voice came out all strangled and forced. On the last word her voice broke and the tears began to pour down her cheeks, cheeks which she buried into my stringy dark hair. Pneumonia. So that was what was wrong with me. It must’ve been colder on the playground floor than I’d anticipated when I lay down for a nap.

“I’m glad I didn’t die,” I mumbled back into her shirt. My stutter had left, courtesy of her warming body. “I spent my whole life thinking there was no use and then you come along all broken and messed up, and I knew there had to be something out there that mattered and there is. You. But I didn’t realise that when you did, and when I did you didn’t! It just hurt me so much to know that everything I’d managed to get over just came back full force in you. I love being your sister, and I just hope that now we’re both happy we can actually live life like we’re related.” By the time I’d finished, I was in tears, and so was she.

We cried against each other, wrapped up in blankets and heat, for an incredibly long time. Enough time for the sun, which I had completely missed in my time passed out, to sink back below the horizon and leave us lay together, doused in moonlight.

“You need to sleep,” I muttered after we’d both pulled ourselves together. “You’ve been through way more than I have in the past twenty-four hours, so stop treating me like a special case. I think it’s my turn to hug you.” Without letting her reply, I loosed her grip on me and tightened my own arms around her waist. She was already mostly asleep as I snuggled into her and pulled us together again.

“Anna?” She mumbled tiredly against my shoulder where her head rested.

“Yeah?”

“Love you.” A small smile crept to my lips. This was it. We could finally act like real sisters.
She loved me and was willing to sacrifice her sadness for my own, something which warmed and broke my heart at the same time.

“Love you too.”