The day had been long and tiring, and to be honest you were just glad that you were finally able to go home. After she had been asking you to come with her for days you had given into your friend’s pleads and you had decided that now that the summer vacation was getting started that it was the timing for a night out. You had fun, had danced with some guys, had some drinks and some good laughs with Hana, your best friend. You had known her forever, though you two hadn’t been close at first and you had both had different friends, faith had put you together. It wasn’t like you two fitted together perfectly like you saw in the movies, you two fought too and sometimes it could even get quite nasty. But somehow the two of you always ended up back together, drinking and dancing the night away. Most of the times you two got into an argument that was how you solved things, by going out and having some fun, but tonight you hadn’t needed an argument as an excuse to dance. Your high heels were making low noises against the concrete underneath your feet as the sound of music slowly started to fade away. One more stop, and then you would go home. Normally you didn’t go there during this hour of the day, because that just seemed dangerous and irrational. But now that you had enough alcohol in your system to bock the logical part of your brain, you walked over there as if it was meant to be and you had never planned to go anywhere else.

Of course you knew you had to go home, you didn’t want to end up as a victim of a murder case, one of the so many girls who had had too much to drink on a Saturday night, who had wandered off without her friends and who had been killed by a stranger without mercy. You were a reader, so you knew how those kind of things worked in fiction, and you had never really been jumpy of being a character in a story. An owl turned its head over to you when you past the tree he was sleeping in and its yellow eyes stared at you as if it was trying to tell you that you were making a big mistake, that you should be running for your life instead of going any further. Though you passed it, leaving it behind you just like the rest of the town. It didn’t take long for the small field to appear in your view and it could have been your imagination but it seemed as if the air grew colder when you stepped away from the shadows of the trees and out in the open. Just like you had expected it to be, the place was abandoned, no one was stupid enough to come and fool around here at night, not even the drunk ones. You walked past the first rows of stones until you reached a small bench, making sure to look down on your feet so that you wouldn’t trip. It was dark and you were sure that no one would notice you sitting here in your black dress, the wood of the bench coldly pressing against your thighs. For the past five months this had been your usual spot, the place where you always came when you needed some time to think or some time to be by yourself.

You loved to believe that you weren’t alone, that you weren’t talking to yourself while sitting here, but you knew that your brother wouldn’t be able to hear you, not anymore. “Hey, It’s me, your sister. Did you miss me?” You asked, hugging your arms around your body as a soft breeze reached you. For a moment you just stayed silent while staring at the dark grave in front of you, knowing that no one would answer that question. Sometimes you wished the death could speak, so that at least you could hear his voice again for one more time. It had been five months, five months since you had been an only child, five months since that horrible accident. When your brother had still been alive there had been times that you had wondered what it had been like to be an only child, but now that you knew you wished you had never found out. Even though your older brother Ryan had been a pain in the sometimes, he had been the one and only person who had always had your back. Without him there was no one to take the blame for you when you had done something stupid, no one who would keep an eye on you when you were at a party, surrounded by drunk guys. Now that he was gone there was no one who would make sure you wouldn’t skip any classes and who would secretly buy you books because he knew you’d love to have them. You missed him so much that it hurt, and you thought about him every single day. 

Every morning and every evening you walked past his room to get to yours, seeing all the boxes piled up with his stuff in it, but you knew your parents couldn’t find the strength to throw them out. As long as his things were there it felt as if some part of him was still here, and you didn’t know if you would ever be ready to let that go. You hadn’t known how much you had needed him until he was no longer here, when he had already been gone. Anger filled your mind as you thought back of that night, when everything had changed and your hands turned white as you fingers curled around the edge of the bench. “Why? Why did you have to be so stupid Ryan? Why did you leave me all alone?” You hissed, your voice much too loud in this quiet place. If other people saw you sitting here they would probably think you were crazy, or they would pity you. Those were the kind of people you hated the most, the ones who would look at you with so much sympathy, as if you were a little child that had to be protected. They had no idea what it felt like to loose something so valuable and you hated it that they pretended that they did. It had been the 29th of March when your parents had gotten the phone call, when they had taken you inside of their arms and had told you that your brother was never going to come home again after he had drown. He had supposed to have a fun night with some friends, they had went to the lake with their girlfriends and a few others, just to hang out a little.

Apparently some of those guys had come to the idea to swim, while the water was still cold and the air had cooled off. Your brother had gone into shock because of the low temperatures of the water and had gotten stuck, because no one had noticed him in time, they had been too late to safe him. You remembered that night, you hadn’t cried, not one single tear had left you, because you had been convinced that it had all been one big joke. No, your brother would have walked back through that door any time, telling you that he was fine and that he wasn’t going anywhere. But days had turned into weeks, and weeks had turned into months, but your brother, had never come back. The first time you had seen the ones who had accompanied him during that night you had felt nothing but pure hate and disgust, knowing they were to blame for what had happened to your brother. Yet, you knew it was selfish to tell them it was their fault, because it was your brother who had stripped down to his boxer