Amber

Chapter 19

Hailey

November 11, 2015

I remember what sunlight looked like. At least I think so. Sometimes I wondered if the sky was a sheet of blue pulled over us all and the sun was the hole we ripped open.

I remember what it felt like too. To have the sun kiss my skin on the hottest days as if the millions of miles between us were actually only a few feet. So comforting. So warm.

God, warmth. How long will I remember warmth? What would warmth feel like after leaving this place? What would cold feel like? Would I spiral into a deep depression every winter? Would I have to constantly remind myself that I'm not here? Would I ever be able to go into a dark room again? To be able to trust someone again?

Will I ever be normal again?

I wonder if Lauren has the same thoughts. What else is there to think about? I think I've only been here a week. Maybe longer. What kinds of thoughts will I have after a few weeks? After a few months?

I try not to think about it. But the alternative is thinking about nothing, and when I do that, I can actually feel myself dying—slowly and painfully like the knife dragging across my face. If I shut off my mind, I start to feel my stomach collapsing. I start to feel the nerves in my skin crawling with pain and numbness and itching from the dirt and blood. I start to feel all of the throbbing and burning everywhere and all over.

I can't help but wonder if this is what she felt: herself dying, with all of the same pain, only in her mind. I wonder how long she felt it and how long she tried to fight it before giving in. I could ask her, but I'm afraid. I don't want to upset her or for her to leave. But I feel like I have to know. I have to know what she was thinking. What she was feeling. I need to know if I could have helped her. I need to know if I let her down.

But she's been quiet ever since Lauren started talking more. So I try asking Hannah other questions to see what she's willing to answer.

I haven't decided if she's happier now. If she feels free or unburdened or whatever it is she wanted. I still can't tell if she's crying for me or crying for herself. I so want to ask her. I want it to be like normal again and for her to be the exception to the rule that says everyone who dies is gone forever. She isn't gone. But she's not exactly here.

Sort of like me.

I understand why Lauren sleeps so much. Little food. No sunlight. The cold. It saps all of the energy. I'm exhausted—except I still can't sleep. So I stay up talking to Hannah, telling her all of the same memories that I told Lauren and seeing if she remembers them too. Every once in a while, she'll smile, and I can see in her eyes that she's reliving the memory with me. Then she cries. I don't know what part of the memory is painful—the memory of me or the memory of living.

Lauren wakes after several hours asleep—or, at least I thought so. She sometimes seems to be resting peacefully, but other times she'll lie there as if she is asleep with open eyes, like she's watching me in her corner as quietly and as still as Hannah.

She walks over to me, stretching out across the floor near my feet, looking over in Hannah's corner as if she can actually see her there. Then she looks to me and smiles. "I sometimes hear you talking to her. Your sister," she says so softly I almost feel she's trying not to let Hannah hear. Now her smile fades. "She died ... didn't she?"

I feel like I'm dreaming. "How do you know that?"

She smiles again. "Because you sound happy and sad at the same time when you speak to her."

Even in this place with what we've been through, I still feel strange admitting that I'm talking to my dead sister. Even though I know Lauren would understand.

"It's okay," she says. Her voice is calm. "How long has it been?"

I let out a sigh, big enough to see my breath. "She died six months ago."

She says nothing at first, maybe because she doesn't know if she wants to say she's sorry like everyone else. But she isn't everyone else. "What do you talk about?"

"Everything," I answer, feeling a little less afraid of the topic. "But it's mostly me talking. She doesn't have much to say."

"Only what she needs you to hear," Lauren says, her hand resting on my knee.

She sounds so adult. Like she's grown up in here. Like Lauren the fourteen-year-old girl will always be left behind in this place—dead and buried and unrecoverable.

"How did she die?"

I'm sighing again as my eyes drift to Hannah, and I begin to notice how much she reminds me of the sun. A bright hole in the sky. "She was ... sick. Very sick. And we didn't know until it was too late." My eyes return to Lauren and see her focused on the area between Hannah and me.

"Do you sometimes feel like you are sick also?"

I swallow. "Yes."

"Do you think it will kill you?" Now her eyes are only on me.

"No."

"Why?"

I look into Lauren's eyes, illuminated by Hannah's sun, and for a split-second they almost appear to be the same greenish-gray. The color of nowhere.

"Because I'm going to fight it away."