It was colder than usual in Washington, even though winter was near. The dark, gray clouds were covering the shining sun. I stepped into the cold water and felt it run through my toes. The water mixed into the sand that was under my feet and swooshed around my ankles. It tickled my legs as I started walking across the shore, all alone. I listened to the seagulls that were over my head and the waves that crashed near me. I was at my favorite place in the whole world, Seagulls’ Shore. I didn’t care if it was small. I still loved it. Not many people knew about this beach. We didn’t even know about it until we got lost while driving to a different area, and just wound up there. We’ve been going there ever since then. It was secluded. Peaceful. Everything my sister and I loved until… Until it was only me who loved this spot. Until she died.

My whole body started tingling as I thought about it for a rather long moment. I shook myself out of the trance and looked back at my mom at the top of the rocks. She was smiling at me even though she knew that I knew, that it wasn’t the regular smile she used to have before the accident. I still remember it vividly, as if it happened just a couple hours before. Daddy telling her not to drive. Ayesha insisting that she will drive since she had just gotten her license and was officially allowed to. The blue car with its icicles, almost dripping, stuck at the rims of the tires, swerving into ours as it passed through the red light. We were thisclose to the end of the intersection. She could’ve survived if we passed just a few feet back into our normal street. I remember all of our faces. Her face with her brown eyes wide and her mouth open, daddy trying to take the steering wheel from Ayesha’s hands to swerve away, and me watching them in shock as I realized that at least one of us were going to get a life-changing injury. My dad would’ve been paralyzed from the waist below if he didn’t swerve the car a few feet. Instead, he his muscle next to his lower spine, teared, and his arm fractured. Since I was in the back seat, I got a problem with my left kneecap and I was limping for a while. I also got stitches on the left side of my head. I just didn’t expect Ayesha to get the life-changing injury. Or that she was going to get hurt so bad, that she was going to die. I just hoped it was someone other than her, but I didn’t want it to be my dad either. I’d rather it be me.

As soon as I could tell that tears were welling up in my eyes and my lip was starting to quiver, I ran back to the water and mist sprayed my face. I was acting like a two year-old instead of an 11 year-old.The wind brushed my brown hair away and blew my tears away from my face. I felt better knowing that I still had one thing left of my sister. I looked into the deep blue, shining water and saw a shimmering white image of my family. Ayesha was there in the picture. Without her, we don’t really call ourselves a family. She was wearing a dark blue and white scarf, almost matching the colors that I saw in the waves. I don’t think she ever really realized that all the scarf did was make her look even better. I saw my me, my brother, my sister, Mama, and Daddy. I wondered how it would be like if I wasn’t here but my sister was. I wish I could say “is”, not “was”.

I heard my mom call my name. It was time to leave the place that reminded me of my sister. It was the only place that reminded me of my sister in a good way. The same intersection I have to cross was one of the bad ways. I would cross it Every. Single. Day. And that was just to get to my school or go grocery shopping with my mom. Everywhere else I went, it reminded me of her in a sad, depressing way which was how I felt at school. Everyone picked on me because I never had a smile on my face and was always quiet. No one wanted to be friends with “that girl with the dead sister”.

But when I am at Seagulls’ Shore, I can remember all of the fun and funny memories we had. It’s the only place I still truly smiled. I remember the time, my brother stuffed a whole sour grapefruit in his mouth, and we could tell it was sour because he made a face by squinting his eyes, shaking his head, and trying to pucker his mouth but he couldn’t since the grapefruit was too big. But we made him laugh so hard by mocking him on how his face looked like he was a pufferfish that he ended up actually biting the grapefruit really hard and squirting out juice. It was thisclose to our faces! Thisclose. Thisclose to saving her life. Thisclose.

My mom was now almost hollering at me, but she never actually did holler. At anyone. She would always have a gentle voice. I think that was how my sister had gotten her way of talking, slow but not too slow that you wouldn’t pay attention to what she was saying. One thing that I never liked was that she was way too nice. If someone shoved her, she wouldn’t even keep walking, she would say sorry. Ayesha was just like my mom. She even looked like her. Brown eyes, dark brown hair, and pale skin. I was almost the opposite. I had hazel eyes, cheeks all pink, and dark brown hair. My skin was almost a caramel color, but a little lighter. I looked more like my dad than my mom. But the only difference between me and my dad was that he had hair that was more closer to brunette than dark brown. My brother looked like my dad as well. There was no difference between them, except for their personalities. They weren’t really close. I was close to my mom and my dad, and so was my sister. My brother wasn’t close to anyone. And he kept himself and his feelings on the inside, like a book that could never be opened. Except when my sister died. That was the first time I saw his eyes get teary and get red. I was next to him when we saw my sister’s body. Lifeless. A tear dropped on my arm and I was sure it wasn’t mine since I had already gotten every tear out of me.

Ayesha looked so nice that I didn’t understand why she would always ask me questions like, “Does my scarf look okay?” or say comments like, “I look better without my scarf on...right?” But whenever she asked that question, she would say it as if she were sad. And I knew that she wrapped those scarves around her head with pride, but I think she wanted to feel different once in a while, go out of her comfort zone.

Then I realized that my mom was waiting, having a little bit of a tired look on her face. I feel like she stopped calling me since she knew that I was thinking about Ayesha. Instead, she started moving off of the rocks, taking each step carefully so she wouldn’t slip since the rocks were still wet from the night before, when the tides were higher. “You okay?” my mom asked me.

“Uh… Yeah, I’m fine. The sand was just blowing into my eyes… Why do you ask?”

“You know why I asked,” she replies, “And your dad and brother are waiting for you by the car.”

“Okay, you go up, I ‘ll come… You don’t have to wait for me. I ‘m coming.”

“All right,” she said doubtfully.

She walked up the rocks, looking back at me occasionally. We weren’t t always the typical family. Actually, we were never the typical family. We had many flaws.

Sometimes, we would miss prayers or me and my siblings yelling at each other because someone went to the bathroom to take a shower but someone else had already called “dibs”. But after her death, no one really argues anymore. No one even talks to each other anymore. It is always quiet in our house. And I can’t say “home” anymore since it doesn’t feel like it anymore. It feels too empty, now that she’s gone. I wiped the remaining tears off of my face, tried to stand more straight and tall, and walked up the rocks too.

I got to our silver van. We started driving back home which took a while. But in that hour and 46 minutes, it was completely silent. It wasn’t that we were angry at each other, it’s just that we had nothing to say.

We got home and since it was a Sunday night, me and my brother had school the next day. And me, being a procrastinator but a perfectionist, I stayed up for about 3 hours, doing my social studies poster about the Romans, and ended up sleeping at 1 AM. So, waking up at seven o’clock was pretty hard and tiring. I got ready by performing my normal routine: Do my cleansing routine for prayer, pray, go to the bathroom, take a shower, wash my face, brush my teeth, go downstairs and eat breakfast, get out the door, and get a bright pink late slip from the office. It was the same routine, but felt different from before. My 16 year-old brother, Zayd, still did the same things that I did and nothing changed for him either but it felt different for him too. We all knew why everything we did and said felt different from what we said and did before it happened. She was only 19. Even though I teased her on how old she was, she really was too young to die.

When I got to school and handed the pink slip to Mr. Holmes, he would smile out of sympathy because he knew what I had been through, and I would walk back to my seat with my head down and hands in front of me. I didn’t really understand how every day, there would always be a different type of stare on each and every face. But what was a little more helpful to me was that I always sat in the back so no one ever noticed me after I got to my seat. They would have innocent faces and you could even see a glowing yellow circle hovering on the top of their heads. Obviously part of it was in my head but it seemed so real. Too real.
My school, Willow Creek Junior High, wasn’t so bad. It was just that most people were bad. There was a gym even though it wasn’t that big, which was next to most of the 8th grade classes. There were basketball courts, six of them, four volleyball courts, a softball field close to the 7th grade classrooms, a soccer field next to the 400 meter track, and many different classes available, even in the summer. There were art, woodshop, band, orchestra, choir, spanish, french, chinese, hindi classes, and much more. But there were also jocks, goths, valley-girls, smart-alecs, class-clowns, and the outcasts. And I was part of the outcasts.

It was so unfair. I was never included in basketball, never had someone saving my spot in an assembly, never had a friend for a long time. And it was all because of a tragedy that I faced in my life. All because of a family death that was a big deal for me because I was so close to her, but not a big deal for a couple of students or teachers so I don’t understand how the whole school knew about it. When I found out that everyone in school knew about what happened, I expected sympathy, not the opposite. But the girl or as you can call it, the bully that treated me the worst was the blond-haired 11 year-old girl, named Christine.

I could never talk back to her. Actually, I could never talk to anyone except for my family who I talked to occasionally, whenever it was needed. She would try to trip me all the time and sometimes, I actually would stumble, and she would say things like, “Bet her sister’s glad she’s dead. She doesn’t have to deal with that idiot.”. I would hear her whisper things like, “Ugh… She is such a disgrace to the human race. I can’t believe I have to breath the same air that she does.”

But what helped me get through this - who helped me get through this - was that same teacher, Mr. Holmes. He would always help me and encourage me after school ended, when I came to his class with books in my right hand and my PE bag twisting around in the other, and would always say something like, “It’s okay, this is just a big thing that’s going on right now. It’ll blow over. Don’t worry about it… Just ignore them.” And so I tried and it did help, but only for a little while because soon the anger and sadness just started building up inside of me, like a cauldron full of water that was put over a huge fire, that caused the water to start bubbling. And the temperature just kept shooting up. But what he said would always stick inside my mind in the end, and the cauldron would come to a simmer. And it was filled of sorrow, grief, sadness, depression, anger, and madness. They were the similar things but added little differences.

Everyday when I went to school, the depression would just get worse and worse. And it wasn’t like Christine Madrick was the only person who bullied me. There was Tom Trenson, Ella Fitzgerald, and a lot more. Most of them were people that I didn’t even know, but I guess they felt pleasure in putting someone else down and ruining their day, because they knew they could. Some of them were quite intimidating so I wouldn’t blame anyone who didn’t want to stand up to them, but there was this one girl who became the person who helped me through a lot of pain and a lot of ups and downs. She helped me withstand the pain. She had light-brown hair and almost black eyes. I never really expected Natalie Thickens to be my best friend. Natalie helped me start standing up and being happy of who I really am. And one day, I actually did stand up and become happy of who I really am...

“Hey!” I almost said yelling, at Christine who was supposedly “whispering” about me.

“What?” She replied in a voice that sounded like I was too unimportant to actually listen to.

“When you are whispering really loud and I can hear it, it’s not really whispering.” I said but I said the last part in a mocking how they whispered loudly.

“Oh you think you’re so cool and intimidating just ‘cus you have your buddy around to back you up.” she replied with a smirk.

“At least I don’t have like seven people who are scared of me, themselves, backing me up. I have one person who is an actual friend, and sticks with me if I am right.” I replied seeing her smirk fade.

“Ooooo….” Everyone around us said right after I finished that sentence. I didn’t realize the people surrounding us in an almost perfect circle.

“Well….” Christine says as she tries to think of something to say back at me. I think I could see her eyes glistening a bit. She must’ve been hurt from what I said. Part of me felt bad for hurting her and almost making her cry, but part of me felt good for showing her how I felt every day and standing up for myself.

I did feel a little mean after saying those rude and unnecessary comments and felt that I needed to apologize, “Sorry, it’s just that I was so angry at all the mean things you said about me that I just couldn’t handle it anymore and I just… I just burst.”

“It’s okay,” She replies, “and besides, I have been really mean to you. Haven’t I?” I smile at her, reassuring her that I accept the apology that I think she was trying to say. I felt happy that I got to stick up for myself and it was really because of the support that I had gotten from my friends, family, and one of my teachers. I then smiled at her and walked away with Natalie.

“See… I told you you could do it! See, I am always right. You should trust my advice more often.” Natalie says to me, smiling, clearly proud of herself.

We go to the beach again after a few weeks. It was fun going there and me and my family were laughing, playing, and making jokes. I felt relieved that we were back to being a fa-... Not a complete family, but a good enough one. We were happy, and trying to recover from the tragedy that happened. We would never be the same, but better than depressed. And for the first time after the Ayesha’s death, the sun was shining, the sky was clear and blue, and there wasn’t a gray cloud in sight. It felt good to be a not-complete family and just to be happy again.

There were other times, where I faced problems. Like the time I went to a “friend’s” house, and told her one of my biggest secrets that I’d possessed for a long time.

But that’s another story, for another time.


...THE END?