Coney Island Queen

08 | vanilla

08: CONSCIENCE IS SO FIERCE SHE DESERVES TO BE PERSONIFIED

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A TENTATIVE KNOCK sounds at my door, and I slightly turn down Mariah Carey's Greatest Hits. I shut the lid of my laptop, putting it into sleep mode. The whirring slows to a stop, and I tug my hair out of its bun, causing it to loosely fall on my shoulders.

"It's open," I call, swiveling around in my desk chair. I'm amused to see which member of my family had enough guts to interrupt my very sacred scrolling-through-tumblr-and-listening-to-Mariah-Carey-time.

The doorknob twists slightly before the door is pushed open, revealing my younger sibling adorned with tear-stained cheeks and a quivering lip. Sofia's dark eyes are swollen, and she swallows hard, her fingers trembling.

"Shit," I curse, "What happened?"

"I. . . I can't do it," she says, her voice cracking and thick with tears. Her dark hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail with stray wisps of hair framing her strong jaw.

"What?" I ask, standing up and rushing to close the door. "Can't do what, Sof?" I pull her onto my bed, tugging her lean frame into my arms.

"I can't keep pretending, Gia," she chokes out, pushing away from me. She balls her fists and slams them on the bed, and for the first time, I see her loose it. Sofia has always been a relatively cool and collected person - never one to express her feelings. "I can't! I just fucking can't!" she screams, banging her head against the wall.

"Sofia - Sofia stop!" I grab her trembling body, preventing her from slamming her head against the wall.

Seeing my sister fall apart is something I could never prepare myself for, ever. Sofia never cries about anything, and the second worst thing to breaking down is watching someone else rip to shreds.

Sofia, brings her trembling hands to her dark locks, tugging furiously. And then she smiles, she fucking smiles, and that's how I know that something is very, very wrong. "I'm holding on, Gia. Or least I thought." Sofia laughs, choking on her tears and shaking her head. "It's like. . . it's like I'm cracked. I knew it all this time. . . I knew. But I never thought I'd break."

"Sofia. . ." My throat closes up, and I reach for her wrist. My fingers graze something wet, and I draw back, alarmed. "What. . .?" The sight of the red blossoming against my fingertips makes my blood go cold, and my heart stops.

"No. No," I say, and the metallic scent of blood lightly dances in the air, making a wave of nausea wash over me. "This isn't supposed to be you, Sofia. Not you, not my sister. It was. . . only something I. . ." My voice tapers off, and I swallow, hard.

"I'm sorry." Her voice is small. Tiny, insignificant. And then I see it, because in reality, what can we do? No one listens, because all we are is an unimportant fleck of dust, something to be brushed off without a second thought. All we can simply do is tug on the sleeve of the world like a child to his mother, hoping to be noticed.

"Don't be sorry, Sophia, stop." I struggle to find the words to say, but I can't pull them out. She wasn't supposed to be feeling like this, not Sofia. Not the who never does anything to intentionally hurt someone.

I tried, I really did. I never wanted Sofia to feel the way I used to, because she doesn't deserve that, at all. But really, you can't pretend to shield someone from the cruelty of today's atmosphere forever.

"Why?" That's all I can manage to say, and I look down and my hands, smeared with Sofia's blood. The blood that we share on my hands, all because I couldn't do a good enough job to hide the real world from her.