Holding a Red, Red Rose

Hours pass before my family returns. They don't have Bruce and Mary with them. I am pacing my bedroom with hands clasped behind my back when my doorknob begins to turn. I instantly snap out of my thoughts, focusing on the knob. I glare at it, willing it to snap back into place. To my surprise, it does. The knob turns until it is once again still.
“What?” I hear my sister's annoyed voice echo out in the hall.
“Come here!” my father screams, presumably from his office. I wince at his tone, knowing that he and my sister have never gotten along.
Angry footsteps pound don the hall, unmistakeably Aurora's. I close my eyes and begin counting.
1. . .
“Why?!” my sister screams at my father.
2. . .
“Just get down here!” he screams back.
3. . .
Angry, deliberately loud footsteps on the stairs.
4. . .
“Come here!” my father, obviously not paying attention to the stomps.
5. . .
“I'm right here!” Aurora is at his door.
6. . .
“Finally!”
7. . .
“What do you want?”
8. . .
“Come in here.”
9. . .
“Fine.”
10. . .
The door closes.
I open my eyes slowly. Purple and black sparks dance in front of my eyes in the darkness. Funny how I've gotten their yelling fits of rage down to a 10-step routine over the years. They're always exactly the same, right down to Aurora's tone of voice. Yet it's sad that they do this so often that I've memorized the “10 steps” they take until she's yelling at him in his office, and him at her.
Yes. It is quite sad, I suppose.
As the yelling begins, I stand up to lock my bedroom door... and I'm struck with a sudden idea. What if I left? I mean... Before the alleged accident I used to walk all the time. When I felt like killing myself, or someone else, I would go for a walk to calm my nerves.
As I stand in front of my bedroom door, I wonder why I haven't left the house since it happened.
Because, nags a voice at the back of my mind. If you leave the house you'll have to walk by the place where you last saw him, where you saw him die.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the images that are flooding my mind. They recede momentarily, then come back at me, pounding the backs of my eyelids like a tidal wave. I lean a hand on the wall as the world begins to spin around me.
I can feel cold sweat dampen my forehead as my head begins to throb and my stomach churns. Bile builds up in my throat, but I push it back down, refusing to be sick.
Eventually I give in to the pressure of gravity and sink down to the floor, curling up into a ball. I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears. I whimper as my insides lurch as an image of Leo, lying in a pool of his own blood, flashes over the insides of my eyelids.
Memories surface, playing out the sounds of my long-lost laughter, Leo's bursts of joy. My brain seems to be going through all of my favorite memories of my step-brother, but all it does is force me into tears that run out the corners of my eyes and down into my hair, over the bridge of my nose.
The images suddenly slow, the flashes of memory shorter. Eventually the images cease all together, stopped on the beginning of a memory. Leo singing.
His cheeks are tear-stained, eyes red and puffy from crying. I begin to cry even harder as the memory of that day plays in my mind.....

“Hey Calley!” my mother calls from the kitchen of our apartment. “Come here for a sec!”
I groan and pause the music that had been blasting weakly from my computer speakers. I put my phone on silent and shove it down the side of my arm chair, just in case.
“What’s up?” I ask, walking into the kitchen. I’d just gotten home from school, so I’m really worried that she’d found something I never intended for her to find.
She sighs and holds out her hand. I hold mine out under it, not quite sure what she is going to drop into my palm.
“I found these in your room today while I was picking up the floor.” She says, and opens up her hand. Three tiny razor blades drop into the palm of my hand. The ones I’d dropped weeks ago and lost amongst the clutter of my large room.
I feel the blood drain from my face and close my palm tightly around them, not intending to give them back. “Thanks,” I say sarcastically, “I’ve been looking for these.”
“Don’t you give me that sass,” my mother just about shouts, “I’ve been looking out for you your whole life, and this is how you repay me? By destroying perfectly good pencil sharpeners and razors just so you can see your own blood fall?”
I glare up at her. I’m tall, but she’s only just taller.
“How, exactly, have you been looking out for me?” I spit viciously. “So far as I know, you’re only ever concerned about your next child-support check, or how your next painting is going to sell on the market. You completely disregard your only child just so you can get more money, or become some famous artist in the hipster community.”
She is about to come back with some sort of acidic retort, but I turn around and storm out of the apartment. Thankfully, we’re on the ground floor.
That’s when I begin to run.
I run and I run, with all of my energy. I know no one is chasing me--she thinks I’ll go to my father’s, or come back doing the walk of shame to give her my blades back.
She’s wrong.
This is my last straw.
I run until I reach my tree, the one that I used to climb all the time when I first moved to the U.S. It’s a few blocks away, but that doesn’t matter to me. I lean against it and roll up my sleeve.
There are already fresh cuts from the days prior, but I just feel the need for more.
I slash down at my wrist, glad that no one is around to see. I slash and slash, going deeper than I ever have before. It’s when the blood starts spurting that I begin to panic. I apply pressure for a little while, but then I realise something---I want to die anyway, why not have it be now?
And so I release pressure, and I let the blood flow.
Just as I am on the brink of passing out, I hear footsteps. Running footsteps.
I have just enough time to see the person who approaches before I pass on into darkness.

I stare down at my wrist, taking note of the scars that had healed from that day. I run my finger over them, saddened by even more memories threatening to break loose....

“And, somehow, I found...” Is that the voice of an angel? I ask myself, “a way to get lost, in you...” No... That’s sobbing that I hear.
I crack an eye open, slowly as there is much light shining down on me. I turn my head slightly and see a figure sitting beside me, head in hands, body shaking.
“Leo...?” I wonder aloud.
His head snaps up at the sound of my voice. Leo doesn’t bother wiping away his tears as he speaks to me.
“Calley...” he whispers, “why did you do it?”
I can’t help my quivering lip at this point. I know the tears will come, but I can’t tell when.
“I’m sorry...” I mutter. “I’m so sorry... I just... You know what it’s like, right? To want to die?”
Leo nods, takes my hand in his and squeezes gently.
That’s when my own tears begin to flow. I feel them run in an almost constant stream down my face as I tell him how sorry I am. “I won’t let it happen again,” I promise. “I swear, I will never make another attempt on my own life.”
Leo nods, but he doesn’t seem very assured. I squeeze his hands, trying to add a bit of sincerity to my words by using my eyes.
“What was that you were singing?” I ask him, trying to change the subject.
He smiles sadly. “‘Lost in You’ by Three Days Grace. It reminds me of you.”
“Will you sing it for me? It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to them....”
He smiles again and brings my hand to his lips, kissing it gently.
And then Leo sings for me.
And it is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.