Leaning back, I dropped my pencil and sighed. Night had risen and it was the blackest colors out, the moon a faint outline on my window sill.

The notebooks lay scattered on my desk, textbooks spread across the bed. Homework was done, and now, at last, I could relax. It was seven when I flopped onto the only open space on my bed.

I felt a sharp jab on my right side, and shifted to reveal a pencil. A cold shiver ran down my back when I recognized the black lines strewn across. Sissy’s pencil.

My hand clenched the pencil tightly. I wanted to remember what it had felt like when the rage took over. I wanted to see how I’d cry in the middle of the night, awakened by the screams and fear pounding and strumming the harshest chords in my chest. I wanted to open my eyes to the piercing knife that struck me down.

A wave of intense silence rolled over me. I couldn’t hear anything.

So this is what it feels like to be dead.

My mind suddenly widened to let in the doubled-over emotions, the hue blinding me. Night’s chill swept inward and everywhere I could feel a shivering, the vibrating sound striking the moment of the hour.

Death. For some unimaginable reason, I had let in the emptiness sweep over me. Dizzy memories of Sissy leaning over me, laughing; Sissy’s scowl when I’d missed a lesson. The winding passages that gave me a lift to the skies, the undermining beats that drowned me in their ever present tempo, even the curiously quiet din of the block, everything was so perfectly in sync, everything sliding away.

The chime counted eight rounds.

I sat up to read the clock’s hands: eight o’clock. The same as the chorus ringing in my mind. Tilting my head sideways, I saw the clock read: twelve o’clock.

A swirl mingled with a staccato and tenuto accent. The sound of mourning, the sound of passing. Curiously quiet, yet roaring like a wave and humming like the buzz of city life.

One two three, two two three…

The beats sounded in my mind. Thumping in, out, in out. Just like it used to.

My room suddenly felt brightened, the blue paint weaving a fragile yet firm color, inside and outside. I went to my desk and pushed the books off. Then I went to Sissy’s room to find the aged yellow paper with the black lines.