POLAROIDS ✧ RICHIE TOZIER

I. DEAD SISTER WALKING

        WINTER AND SUMMER FINCH were just as different as the seasons they were named for. Despite being identical twins, they had nothing in common. Summer was a social butterfly, people just seemed to be magnetized to her. She spoke with grace and wit and could win over anyone. Winnie on the other hand, could hardly hold a conversation without embarrassing herself. Her only friend was her sister as she felt more comfortable hiding behind her camera than she did interacting with others. While Summer went and lived life, Winter, or Winnie, as she was better known, merely watched from the sidelines and documented it with photos.

        Summer had always been, to put it simply, the better twin. And Winnie knew that because of this, everyone had wished she'd been the twin to disappear instead.

       She could see it in her parents eyes. They hardly looked at her for longer than a few seconds anymore without either casting their glances aside or getting teary eyed. She could hear it in her teachers' disappointed voices when they called on her in class only to be let down. Winnie, after all, had never been quite as bright as Summer. She could see it on the faces of Summer's old friends whenever Winnie sat at their lunch table. More than once they'd even accidentally called her by her sister's name.

      It had all become so much for Winnie even she was beginning to wish she'd been the one to go missing. Which was why she was extremely grateful for the beginning of summer vacation. She couldn't wait to finally be away from the judgmental gazes of her peers.

      As the last bell rang, signaling school was finally out, Winnie gathered up her belongings and stuffed them into her back, stuffing it so full that she no room left for her camera or her folder of polaroids. She scooped the belongings into her arms and bolted out the door, eager to be out of the school. However, she made it no further than the first flight of stairs before crashing into another student. Her belongings tumbled out of her arms and though she managed to snag her camera before it hit the floor, she missed the folder and her mass amount of polaroids spilled out everywhere around her.

        Many of the polaroids were simply personal pictures, but to Winnie's horror, most of them were pictures of them were of the last places the missing children of Derry had been seen. In the months since her sister had passed, Winnie had begun to investigate the disappearances in town. It seemed as though the adults merely swept them under the rug, but Winnie refused to let her sister be forgotten.

       She had taken it upon herself to ask the locals anything they might know about the missing kids, and had scoured the locations they were last known to be, jotting down her notes on the back of the correlating polaroids. Although Winnie felt like she was doing a great thing, she imagined the pictures would make her look like a complete lunatic.

        "I'm so sorry. I'm such an idiot." Winnie said, hastily trying to stuff the pictures back into the pocket of her binder before anyone saw them.