Caged

2

There was one picture in the box I found in Sophia's room that hit the hardest out of them all because it was the last time the six of us were together.

The last time my family was whole.

It was taken two years before Sophia's death, and my parents were still here. I was eleven in the picture. I remembered it too vividly; it was summer, all of us were at home, even Elijah. Mom had forced us to take a picture together claiming we barely had any. I remembered the whining and complaining that had come from each and every one of us, except from Caleb, who always complied. Dad and Mom were standing behind the phone, and the six of us were cramped together on the couch, different expressions covering all of our faces.

Ethan was sitting on one arm of the couch, his usual smirk that went hand in hand with his ego, proudly on his lips. Even at that young age, he radiated self confidence and pride. It had just grown over the years, I guess, until it turned into something cold and cruel. Caleb sat next to him, his smile bright and his eyes shining with happiness like always. Even now, even after everything. He was the only one who tried his best not to change.

Elijah sat on the other side of Caleb, leaning calmly back against the couch, one arm thrown over the back of it. He'd begun getting some tattoos at that point, so they were visible in the picture. I sat in the middle, my dark waves surrounding my face and I had a simple smile on my face, nothing out of the ordinary. That was always me, always the one in the middle, even though I was the youngest.

My eyes lingered on the other two in the picture, and I didn't realize there were silent tears streaming down my face until they began landing on the paper. Sophia was leaning forward, almost falling off the couch with a beaming smile on her face. Any picture you'd find, it was usually like that. She was always laughing, or smiling. She was like Caleb in that way.

Lastly, on the other side of her was Kaiden. He played an annoyed expression but had a twinge of amusement dancing in his dark eyes as we took the picture, probably at the same thing Sophia was laughing at.

It was the last time the six of us had been together like that; happy. Now, everything had changed and the nostalgia I was overwhelmed with by seeing these pictures was almost physically painful. Too painful as I sat on the floor of Sophia's bedroom. The sensation was unbearable—it was as if invisible hands had taken ahold of my heart, squeezing the organ in their vice-like fingers.

Nothing was the same anymore. Every day that I woke up, there was always something that served as an agonizing reminder that I was living without my sister, and I would have to go on. Birthdays were the worst of all because growing a year older meant another year had passed without her.

I wanted to go back to childhood; I wanted my family to be whole again.

Elijah was twenty-four now, and always working or barely home. When he was, we barely had any fun together like we used to. It was always almost mechanical, what we talked about. Like he had to talk about whatever we did because he was my guardian. Sometimes, there were good, genuine moments between us like there used to be when I was younger, but those were rare, and I cherished them.

Sophia was gone, and I felt like I'd lost Kaiden with her too. The day she died; so had he. He had lost his twin; his other half from birth. She would have been twenty-one now. He lived with that every second and I knew the pain ripped him apart in every possible way. He lived away from home, in the city. I still saw him but it wasn't the same. I was terrified it never would be.

He was still a good brother, but he seemed distant now. I didn't know about what happened in his life as much anymore and he seemed more closed off. The times he did come home, mostly to see Caleb and me, since Ethan could not care less, it seemed like an obligation.