Caroline

The memories Elizabeth Meridian has of her younger sister, Caroline. Elizabeth is part of a much larger storyline, but these memories define much of who she is later on. (...s without spaces = short periods of time. ...s with spaces = long periods of time

 

Black. I struggled for a moment. Gray. Dark, muffled gray.

…Black.

No. I forced my eyelids to open, despite my body’s incessant protests. The cold of the blizzard had kept me awake for a time, but the small shivers had turned into wracking tremors, only succeeding in exhausting my body more; then I’d gone numb. I could neither feel my legs as they trudged on through the high snow, nor my hands as they held me up when I stumbled – which was often. No, the only things I could feel now were the occasional hot tears that sprang from my eyes and burned my cheeks like fire and a dull, hollow ache in the pit of my stomach.

My mind was wandering, trying to convince me to dream of peacefulness and of dark and quiet. I fought back the haze, trying to recall the reason I needed to proceed forward. What was I going towards? No, that wasn’t it – I wasn’t going towards anything. I was going away from my home, from the fighting and the loneliness and the family that I could hardly call one. Because tonight had been worse than most times. Tonight I had decided that whatever was beyond that small house, empty enough to echo back every harsh word spoken, had to be more promising.

Now that I could hardly walk in my bleary state, I couldn’t feel the emotions that had driven me to this. There was just a hole inside me, empty as the rooms of my house, also echoing – echoing emotion that no longer sounded, but still reverberated deep within me.

My wandering thoughts drifted to Caroline. A memory sprung up; I saw her innocent, hurt face. I held her tiny hand in mine as we listened in shared fear at our parents’ fighting. I hadn’t seen her before I left. Not a single thought of her had crossed my mind since then.

Suddenly, a new feeling broke through the numbness that had kept me trudging uselessly onward. Regret. Caroline. I had to go back for her. I couldn’t leave her to deal with the fighting alone as I once had to. We didn’t speak often, but just being in each other’s presence was often enough to convey whatever we didn’t put into words. I couldn’t leave that behind, even if my parents paid no mind to me.

Instantly, I felt incredibly selfish for what I had done. Who was I to run off, concerned only about the fact that I was neglected, that I was ignored? Wasn’t Caroline in the same situation? I had to return, for her, if nothing else.

My body wasn’t as compliant. It had reached its breaking point, and refused to compromise. I had unknowingly allowed my eyes to close once more. By then it was already too late. The darkness enveloped me, soothed me into thinking that rest was the only thing in the world that mattered. I vaguely registered that the surface I was resting on was too cold to be healthy, but not even that mattered.

That is, until I started choking.

The snow that I had inhaled came up easy enough, but the violence made me aware enough to know that I would die if I didn’t find warmth. A small tugging that seemed to come from within me guided my feet, adrenaline kicking in with a weak, exhausted pulse.

To my amazement, I saw a blurred light through the blizzard and my tears. Somehow, I had circled around and found the house again. I ran now, my fatigue forgotten in a whirlwind of emotions. The house was dark except for the lit porch light. I brushed off the snow that had accumulated on me below the shelter of the porch roof, and then went inside.

I crept back into the room I shared with Caroline, not that I needed to. I knew that my parents wouldn’t care where I had been, no matter how badly I looked.

However, Caroline definitely cared – she was upright in bed the second I stepped into the doorway. “Why did you leave, Elizabeth? Where did you go?” she whispered with wide eyes.

More tears sprung up in my eyes. I blinked them back, sitting down on the foot of her bed. I tried to think of a suitable lie, but suddenly I wanted to tell her the truth, no matter how harsh. “I was going to run away. Mom and dad were fighting worse and worse – and it was just too much. I love them so much. I love them like hell, and they never even look my way. Tonight was no different. So I ran.” I placed my hand on her tiny back, trying to soothe her. “But I remembered you, and I had to come back. Because none of that matters when I have you with me.”

Caroline smiled a sad little smile. She seemed to understand more than she should at her age. “I wouldn’t want you to run away,” she said, obviously relieved that I had come back, but a hint of fear undertoned her voice.

She wrapped her little arms around me, and I hugged her small frame close, grateful beyond words that I had her with me.

 

…

 

I sat down warily at the lunch table. Adriana had a huge grin plastered on her face, and she seemed about to launch into some trivial tale about normal highschool occurrences, but the grin faded abruptly. She stared at me, and I looked down quickly, self-conscious.

“Elizabeth? You alright? You look kind of…well, terrible, actually.”

Sometimes I appreciated Adriana’s bluntness, but now wasn’t one of those times. “I tried to run away last night,” I blurted before I realized what I was saying.

Adriana’s eyes widened, and then softened in sad understanding. “Parents going at it again?”

I nodded. “You would’ve had to be there. I swear, the walls shook. I was in the living room, so I just ran out when it became too much. They didn’t even notice.”

Adriana sighed, taking my hand. “I’m always here for you, you know.”

“I know,” I mumbled. Though I wasn’t going to admit it, I didn’t think being there helped much. “I’m taking Caroline to babysitting after school today,” I scoffed suddenly. “Our parents can’t even be bothered aligning their schedules so they can be with their own child.” My anger faded. “I don’t know if I’m going to be alright, driving like this. I hardly got any sleep last night, got home around two in the morning.”

“What were you doing out there?” Adriana asked with a small smile, trying to lighten the conversation.

I smiled in reply – anything to make Adriana as happy as she sometimes made me. “Stumbling around in the blizzard like an idiot,” I confessed, laughing.

Adriana laughed with me. “Girl, sometimes, you’re absolutely crazy.”

“Yeah, I suppose I am,” I replied.

I went up to get some food – she’d given me back my appetite.

 

…

 

I left the house to pick up Caroline from babysitting as soon as mom got home from work. It wasn’t just because I didn’t want to see my mother, although that was definitely a part of it. I needed to be with Caroline again – she made me whole. We were connected in a peculiar way that perhaps only sisters can understand.

My mother didn’t even grant me a passing word. I slammed the car door with a bit more force than necessary.

…

“Elizabeth?” Caroline asked tentatively when we were both in the car.

I pulled out carefully, and then glanced at her. “Yes?”

She looked down, tracing circles in the carpeted floor with her sneaker. “You aren’t going to leave again, are you?”

I swear, my heart stopped. “Of course not. I’m never going to do that again, I promise you,” I responded fervently, eyes on the road.

She nodded, blond curls bouncing as she did. “It made me scared, being alone.”

It was sort of funny how we both thought of alone in the same way. Not completely alone, but simply without each other. Guilt welled up in me. “I’m so sorry, Caroline. I never meant to do that to you – I know how it feels, trust me.”

“I trust you, Elizabeth,” she said with sincerity.

Everything after that was a blur of color and sound. The screeching of wheels. The other car, coming at us from our right at the intersection. The utter, complete silence. And then the crash – the horribly loud crash. And then…nothing.

…

My head pounded furiously. I pried my eyes open, seeing the steering wheel in front of me. My head…my head throbbed…I had hit the steering wheel. A crash. There had been a crash. I had been in a crash.

No – we had been in a crash.

I frantically straightened up, looking for Caroline. She wasn’t hard to find. She was in the seat beside me, contorted into an awkward position that I knew meant several of her bones were broken. I took in a breath sharply. One of those bones was her spine.

Her green eyes, a perfect match of mine and our mother’s, stared openly at the air. They were starting to glaze over. There was blood seeping from her body in several places, dripping from the dashboard to the carpet.

She was dead. She was dead! Caroline was dead! My mind would not, could not process this information.

I had…I had killed her. I had killed my sister. I hadn’t been paying attention…the other car hit her head-on…

I had committed murder. I had destroyed my other half.

I gasped, but air was somewhere near the bottom of the bottomless pit of things that didn’t matter anymore. I continued staring at Caroline…I reached out to her…I was suddenly so overcome with grief that there was nothing, nothing else in the world except her and the fact that she was gone. Because of me. “No!” I screamed, trying to make that fact disappear. It refused. “No! No, no, no, no, no!” I pounded on whatever was in front of me. I sunk into myself, unable to cope. I heard the far-off sound of shattering glass and sirens. And then there was nothing, again. And I wished this time that I would never wake up.

 

…

 

The sound of continuous, annoying beeping woke me. I dismissed it as my alarm clock. I reached over, trying to shut it off, but I couldn’t feel it. As a matter of fact, this whole situation was wrong. Whatever I was lying on certainly didn’t feel as comfortable as my bed. I forced my eyes open, fully intending to discover what kind of situation I was actually in.

White. Ouch. Black. White. Struggling. Sight.

My eyes focused, seeing white everywhere. White lights, white sheets, white walls…the hospital? What was I doing in the hospital?

I looked over and saw my mother. She was here? She cared enough to be here? My heart thudded out an odd pattern, and the beeping became faster as well for some reason. Hospital…they had something monitoring my heart. I tried to sit up – bad idea. I felt sore all over. Whatever I was in the hospital for, it had to be serious. I looked over at my mother again. “Why are you…?” I quickly decided on a different question. “What happened?”

My mom looked back at me with sad eyes. My expression changed to mirror hers. “Are you okay?” This was strange – I almost never talked with either of my parents.

She shut her eyes and – and started crying?

I tried again to sit up in concern. Again, I was too sore. “Mom?”

She took in a deep, shuddering breath before she opened her eyes again. “I…you…you were in a car crash, dear.”

I thought, trying to recall something to confirm what she had said. A barrier in my mind broke, and in a sudden, painful moment, it all came flooding back to me. I gasped for air, hearing the beeping increase drastically. “I – I – she…” I stuttered. I looked at my mom frantically. There was nothing she could do. I slammed my eyes shut, wishing that I once again didn’t know what had happened. It was useless. Guilt and grief nearly overwhelmed me, and for a moment I was hopeful that I would fall into myself once again. I wasn’t that lucky. The emotions weren’t easing, though. I had to do something, and quickly, or I would explode. “I – I killed her!” I yelled, the beeping increasing even more. “I killed Caroline! I wasn’t paying attention, and she was…and I was…!” I cried out wordlessly. The uncontrollable sobbing began immediately after.

My mom didn’t seem to know what to do. She placed a hand on my shoulder, but I was hardly aware of it. “I killed her!” I yelled my confession again and again between sobs, but it did no good. I could sense that I was making others panic. There was a shuffling of feet beneath the sound of my screaming, and then all of a sudden I felt like my life force was draining. The beeping slowed down to a steady pace, and darkness overtook me once again.

 

…

 

It was a closed-casket funeral, but that didn’t help much. The image of her, contorted and twisted unnaturally, stuck in my mind. And still, after I had killed her, I somehow found the capacity to be selfish yet again. ‘I’ll be alone again,’ was my self-sorrowful thought, and I was absolutely disgusted with myself for it.

She had anything and everything ahead of her in life – endless possibilities. And I had taken them all away from her in the blink of an eye.

A tear fell from my eye as I recalled, yet again, her last words. “I trust you, Elizabeth.” I knew she shouldn’t have trusted me, that I shouldn’t have told her to. Look what I had done with that trust – turned around and killed her.

I missed her so deeply that I often found it hard to move. I missed her there in the morning, waking me, cheering me up before I had a chance to become sad. I missed the little conversations we had about the simplest things. I missed her footsteps. I missed her beating heart and soft breathing that I often used to hear across the room from me when I slept. I missed her hand in mine, when we shared those indescribable moments of comfort.

I missed everything. I simply couldn’t let her go. I had seen my entire memory of her since the moment she was born until the moment she died at my hands shortly after I was able to leave the hospital. I had trouble sleeping at night, because I was vividly conscious of the empty space where she should have been. Life was absolutely nothing without her.

I watched her casket get lowered into the ground. I watched everybody slowly clear out besides myself and my parents. I watched as they, too, left, after telling me not to stay out here too long. I stared at her grave for a long time.

 

Caroline Alexandra Meridian

Monday, May 17^th, 1992 – Thursday, March 11^th, 1999

Beloved daughter, sister, and friend

Taken from us at six years old

 

The sun set. Clouds came over the sky, blocking out the stars as if trying to make the night dark as possible. Soft snow began falling, a lot gentler than the blizzard a couple of nights before. I stood as still as a statue before her grave as it fell. It was only when my body demanded that I breathe that I felt life inside me again. “I’ll never forget you,” I whispered. And then I left, because her grave was as empty of her presence as the rest of the world.

Author's Note

Ignore that there was a blizzard in March. It was a particularly cold March, symbolizing the state of Elizabeth's heart at the time.

Reviews

[Wolfwind Words]

A tear drops from my eye. My heart is held tight. This was one of the most powerfull works of a story, I have ever read. You brought me into this world of your words and i didn't come out of the heart felt revery till the last letter. What a remarkable yet tragic beginning to a young womens life. I felt for her, wanted to reach out and wrap my arms around her to give her warmth and say it will be ok.
My Bow to such a master of emotions and words that can twist my own emotions like this passage has.
Wonderfully crafted, with out error.
Great and noble work here my friend!

[Wildecat]

This a remarkable journey in a young womens life, I was captivated by this story so many emotions were on display. Well done.

[KEi]

In reference to the author's note, here were get blizzards in April, and well into May. Blame global warming, it's what I do.
xD

How I'm able to make lighthearted statements after that, I don't know.
I cried, when Caroline died. I'm not kidding. I still have tears on my face.
I'm like
T-T
Nuuuuuu.

It made me cry alot.
Not much makes me cry, but that did.
:(

(Not in a bad way, though. That means it was well written!)

[Amy Whetzell]

Wow, that was great. Made me feel like I was there too.

[Alexanne Dauntless]

wow. I really like this story. It's so full of emotion and vivid portrayal of character and image. I really like it. Great job. Keep it up. =]]