By the way, in case I forgot to mention, my name is Paige Sanders. It might as well have been Nobody Extraordinaire - I couldn't have cared less. I probably would have forgotten it by now anyway, if I didn't have to write it on the top right corner of my school papers every week. People hardly ever called me by my name. In school I was usually "the girl in the left corner" for teachers and "hey, you" for classmates. Lilly referred to me as "sis", and it irritated me much, because it reminded me of how distant relatives knew me as "Lilly's sister", not even bothering to ask if I had a name or something. With my mother, I was used to responding whenever she started yelling.
I could think of only two people thanks to who I still heard my name said aloud once in a while. Our neighbour from the third floor, old Mrs. Emigh, when greeting me always used "Ms. Sanders" and I rather liked it. And there was my father, who called me just Paige.
I also hadn't really mentioned my father, had I? That's mostly because I didn't hear much of him, and I saw him very rarely too. He sent cards and presents for my birthdays, for Christmas and other important holidays; he also telephoned once or twice a month, and maybe appeared in town once in a couple of months, and that was that. But I always enjoyed the few days I got to spend with him. Now that I come to think about it, probably what I liked the most was that I was his only daughter. Yes, that makes me and Lilly half-sisters, but it's not like this matters much. It also makes my mother a very unlucky woman. She divorced my father when I was five, so I barely remembered them living together. Then, with Lilly's father it was even worse - he left her when she was pregnant with Lilly and she hadn't heard of him ever since. So, for the longest of times, it's been just her, Lilly and me, and I hardly remember it ever being different. And I thought I was fine with it, too.
Well, now I wasn't. And I especially wasn't fine with sitting on the floor in the empty apartment at five AM, staring at the ceiling, and evaluating my meaningless life. No, it didn't have anything to do with the fact that I had to handle a couple of days on my own. Of course, I was perfectly capable of doing that. No doubt at all.
Well, okay, maybe I wasn't. But, still, nothing to do with this, I wanted a change anyway, and I wanted it immediately.
I could have waited for a more reasonable hour to call my father, but I didn't. Even being so inconspicuous, I was never much of a reasonable person. I stood still, waiting for the signal and wondering what the hell I was planning to say.
Oh, voice mail. Well, what did I expect anyway? Apparently my father was not the type of person that would risk leaving his mobile phone switched on during nighttime, in case someone, say, his extremely sensible daughter, suddenly decided to give him a wake up buzz. And even if he'd picked up, how did I imagine it would go? That we were going to have a lovely early morning conversation? Yeah, right. Most probably something resembling: "Paige, darling, this is like the best possible time for phone calls. And thanks for interrupting my sleep, much appreciated!" Nevertheless, I couldn't help feeling disappointed. I really wished I could do something spontaneous that could at least give me the feeling of breaking the routine I was so used to. But hey, come to think of it as it was, I was almost certain that my sister and mother off to a hospital and my being wide awake at five AM kind of counted for breaking the routine.
Now, it would be nice if I could say that, regarding the circumstances, I didn't even think of sleep as an option - because I was worried, because I was overwhelmed with apprehension, and because I had suddenly made those great revelations about myself and I just had to think them over. After all, who on earth would calmly go to bed on a night like this? Okay, in my defence, I was hardly calm. But I did want to get some more sleep - because I was tired, because hour and a half amount of sleep was still better than none at all, and because there wasn't anything particularly helpful I could do at the moment. As the arguments sounded soothing enough for my guilty coscience, I headed for my room - then, instantly changing my mind, entered Lilly's.
In spite of my resentfulness towards Lilly, I always thought her room was charming – in the same way everyone said Lilly was. I only admitted it to myself, though, since I was so determined to prove that I’m better or at least worth it as much as she was, that I couldn’t afford throwing her compliments. It was an astonishingly colourful place, that room of hers, and this was by far the first impression one got when entering. It was chaotic too, but not messy – it was as if everything belonged where it was, and it would not look right if it were tidy. It suited Lilly, it really did.
That night there was something different about her room, and after switching on the lights I spent some time looking around, wondering what it was. Then, when I sat on her bed and shifted my gaze towards the reading lamp on her nightstand, I realized. The reading lamp was always on at night, ever since Lilly got it for her sixth birthday – she believed it chased her nightmares away. But now it wasn’t, and it hadn’t been when I found her crying in her sleep again, too. Funny, I thought there was no way she could forget it, like one does not forget to eat when hungry. Or maybe she didn’t bother with it on purpose, thinking that she’s over her past fears. Then, was she right to believe that as long as the lamp was on, the nightmares didn’t bother her? I used to tease her about this so much, I even threatened to throw the lamp away only to watch her face freeze in horror. Okay, I realize it sounds cruel and I shouldn’t have, but I comforted myself with the explanation that Lilly was so interesting to people because she had meaningless weird habits and whatnot, which she exaggerated and pretended were for real. It was a relief, it gave me just the perfect excuse to treat her as I did – well, a partial excuse anyway. I knew I acted mean, but I always felt better if I could say I had a reason. I sighed. It wasn’t easy, estimating my motives like this, it made me feel bad for myself and for the person who I was. That night, there was something different about me, and I had yet to discover what it was.
I switched off the lights, slipped under the warm blanket and wrapped myself in it. It crossed my mind whether I should leave the reading lamp on, but then I had to blame myself for being so pathetic. It wasn’t me having the nightmares issues, plus the light would only irritate me.
“Leave it on, please, it’s so dark in here!”
I frantically jumped to my feet. Lilly’s voice was so clear, and so, so scared. I shook my head. This wasn’t happening. I was tired and the situation was weird, it was normal that I freak out a little.
“Do leave it on, sis!” insisted Lilly’s voice in my head again.
“Then why didn’t you?” I snapped, completely aware that I was talking to the empty room. “Why should I, if you didn’t bother to?”
But it worked. The voice didn’t reappear. I lay down again, holding on to the blanket as if it was my only salvation. Was I going crazy, too? No… no, that couldn’t be. In fact, I was probably already dreaming. On the contrary, that meant that I was apparently wrong about the nightmare issues. But it was the better explanation, wasn’t it? The only sane one.
***
I woke up to the annoying ringtone of my alarm, coming from another room. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out that it was actually from my room, since I had slept in Lilly's. Then it took some more time before I gathered the strength to get up - or was it the fact that I'd had enough of the stupid polyphonic melody? It was still dark outside - a typical winter morning. I feebly tried to fight the exhaustion, as I was heading for my cell phone, lying on the mahogony desk next to my Chemistry notebook. I determinedly picked it up and stopped the alaram, then sat on my bed and gave myself a brief time to think over the events of that night, which, in the dim morning light, seemed distant and surreal.
So, the plan was, I was going to act as if it were a normal school day. Only, when I finished classes - or even in the lunch break, maybe - I was going to call mum and ask her how was Lilly. Right. Oh, and coffee probably would be useful for keeping me awake. Otherwise, I didn't think I could manage school, I felt like I could fall asleep any minute, and my eyelids desperately longed to closed. I was used to getting a good night sleep, so this was killing me. Not that I was going to let it, of course. Come on, I could deal with some lack of sleep, I would totally get by.
The apartment seemed insanely quiet and empty. Usually my mornings were filled with Lilly's screeching voice, asking if I had seen this or that of hers, because things in her room quite often seemed to disappear, mum urging us to hurry, and the odor of fine breakfast coming from the kitchen. And I resented it, well, except for the breakfast, but I usually wasn't hungry that early anyway. All the time, it felt pretty obvious that these frenetic mornings weren't really bringing out the best in me, and I wished I could, for once, have a peaceful and quiet one. Except that now the last words I would've used to describe the atmosphere were "peaceful" and "quiet". Try "spooky" and "deserted" - now that's more like it.
The stillness was just tensing me up, and I hated how the sounds of my footsteps echoed loudly as I walked toward the kitchen. It was almost unbearable, so I turned on the old radio beside the microwave to a random station. A soft song with catchy melody was playing and a moment later I found myself tapping with my feet to it. There, it was no longer freakishly quiet.
I cut a thin slice of bread, buttered it up and coated it with strawberry jam. Then I poured myself some orange juice. I somehow didn't feel like bringing my poor breakfast attempt to the table, so I sat on the floor cross-legged and ate it there, listening to the radio. It succeeded in helping me restore some energy - I even felt like washing the plate and the glass, but there was no time, since I had to go to school.
I was out and headed for the bus stop in no time. The morning was cold and foggy, but I somehow couldn't percieve it. I felt like the world around me and the ground on which I was stepping were just a background to my thoughts. My mind was floating and my thoughts were running through my head so fast I couldn't follow them all at one time. The misty air, strangers' unsynchronized steps on the pavement, the occasional cars passing by, yet unextinguished street lamps feebly glowing in the morning gloom - it was all a blur in my mind. My own unsynchronized steps on the pavement as I was pacing at the bus stop, I've never heard so clearly before. It was like my senses were automatically ignoring everything and everyone else but me and my own sense of space.
While I was still waiting for the bus, it started raining, and I didn't have an umbrella. I watched as the raindrops fell on me, but I didn't feel them. I knew I was all wet, but I couldn't feel that, too. Then the bus came and when I got in, I couldn't distinguish standing there among the crowd of nervous sleep-deprived people and standing outside in the rain. To my mind it made no difference. I felt detached from my body, I felt light as a feather, I felt dizzy as coke. And then I suddenly started noticing the world, but there was something insanely wrong with it.
No people on the bus - no bus either, no floor under my feet, no force of gravity. All around me there was only thick greenish mist which razed everything else off my sight. And then I heard the voices.
"See, another one of those."
"Silly ignorant girl."
"So plain. So ordinary."
"If she were to die now, she'd end up like us. Wouldn't that be lovely!"
"We'll show her then. Oh do we hate souls like her."
"Oh do we hate souls like us."
"Silly ignorant girl."
"She couldn't possibly take much more of us. It'll freak her to death."
"Let's then. Silly ignorant girl."
"Plain. Ignorant. Can you hear us, soul?"
I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. I tried to escape, but I couldn't move. The voices were getting louder now, I couldn't stand them. The mist was getting thicker, suffocating me.
"Now, how does it feel to watch your life slipping away?"
"Was there ever anything else to it, but yourself?"
I tried to inhale and I failed to breath. And the mist was getting thicker. And the voices were getting louder.
"Silly."
"Ignorant."
And I blacked out.
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