The Huntress [2018 Archived]

Chapter 11

SIERRA
DAY TWO

September 28, 2018
33rd Entry

When I first learned to drive, my parents both insisted on accompanying me. It was probably one of the last times I ever saw them together. Both were so happy for me, congratulating me on my big milestone.

The day that I started to practice, both of my parents were too keyed up to focus. Though they insisted that they weren't, I could tell that they were terrified to let their baby girl out onto the very open roads that had killed my brother. The entire time that I was driving, my father screamed in my ear, "Ten and two! Keep your hands at ten and two, Sierra!", as my mother kept pressing down on an imaginary break pedal.

I didn't bother correcting my father that ten and two was actually not the correct way to drive or to reassure my mother that I wasn't going to end up like my brother Aaron, twisted into a metal donut. I swore that they wouldn't have to gaze upon my white face like they had his. I told myself that my father would walk me down the aisle and not my casket. I swore that I would live.

I grew up with what you would call an intact family. Dad was a small business owner, and Mom was a writer, full of passion and fire. Both had a healthy respect for the law after Aaron got into a car accident. People in this town have had their fair share of grief, and he was a part of ours.

Sometimes I find myself blaming Aaron's death for my parents' separation, overcome with anger and rage for him and his stupid mistake. Other times I'm overwhelmed with sorrow and an aching feeling that leaves pain in my very bones.

Soon after I got my permit, the yelling grew angrier and more forceful. My father blamed my mother for being absentminded. My mother blamed him for just being absent.

"Don't you care how this looks?" my mother screamed from the kitchen. "Don't you care about our family? We swore we wouldn't be this couple after Aaron died, you promised me! Don't promises mean anything to you?"

No matter how awful Dad may have treated Mom, or vice versa, they were people of their word. Wedding vows meant something to them. They refused to divorce.

Work was an easy accessible remedy and both eagerly immersed themselves in it. Dinners grew quiet and silent, both running through their work schedules in their minds. They stopped asking me about my day and started thinking about deadlines and profits and meetings. And the worst thing was that they were so smug, so sure that they were keeping their family whole, that we were treading water even as we slowly drowned. Like we could float with a fourth of our family missing, like we could be the same as we were without Aaron.

Every time I interrogated Mom about it, she would wave me off in a cavalier dismissal, "We're fine, Sierra, don't you worry your pretty little head over it."

Fine became the worst word in the world. I wouldn't even let Alexis utter it, a new rule she gladly embraced. I knew things weren't fine in her world either.

Eventually, my grades started to slip. I failed my driver's test three times before I barely scraped by with a pass, and probably only because the instructor was tired of seeing me. Parties lured me in, guys flirted with me, and still, my parents did not turn their heads. I thought that a divorce was what we needed, but even after it was final, both mother and father returned to their piles and piles of work.

So I partied harder. I remembered the first time I ever tasted alcohol. It was at Cousin Emmie's sweet sixteen. Someone handed me a glass of bubbling pink champagne. I remembered looking down into the effervescent liquid, mesmerized by the little pods of air that came to the surface. I remembered tasting it, liking the crispness on my tongue. And I drank more and more, feeling lighter and lighter, until I found that I had drank away all my demons and the image of Aaron's face.