Clara was selfish. Sure, she wanted everyone to see her as that beautiful, tragic, creature- what was is they said at her funeral? A bird with broken wings, yes that’s it. Total bullshit. She would have loved it, though.
    I knew Clara better than anyone; I was her twin, right? Not that we were ever anything alike. I was the practical one. She was the self-absorbed princess. You have to wonder why we were so different; we had the same parents, same friends, hell, we had the same DNA. We grew up with a childhood so average that it’s almost painful to list the facts: a nice house in the suburbs, real-estate-agent father, stay-at-home mom, soccer camp, ballet classes, piano lessons... the mediocrity could go on for pages. We were lucky, of course, but that sure as hell never stopped Clara from making self-pity a full-time job.
    I must sound harsh to you, right? My own sister dies, and all I have are complaints. But she really was selfish. She killed herself. And what disgusts me is that she knew damn well that everyone would notice her then. That’s all she ever wanted- an easy way out and lots of attention. .
    She screwed up her own life. That’s the other reason she wanted to escape. I didn’t find the needles until after she died, of course; they were hidden pretty well. She’d hollowed out books, like they do in the movies with guns. But instead of a beetle-black pistol inside the paper womb of The Chronicles of Narnia, I found needles. I stared at the glinting horror of those mosquitos for minutes, the silence of her room crumpling around me with a whole new realization. .
    Then, in a crashing ecstasy of grief, I ripped page after hollow page of Aslen and Edmund and Prince Caspian out of the binding. The needles clattered to the hardwood floor along with the paper remnants of fourth grade, but I hardly noticed as I pulled heavy volumes off the bookshelf onto me, and as they flew open, razors tumbled out, little bags of powder, and our childhood shattered there on my sister’s floor.
    That was the only time I cried about Clara. I felt genuine pity for her as I kneeled there that afternoon, with my head in my hands. The house was empty and quiet around me: an exoskeleton that, instead of growing out of, I was now far too small for, leaving me lost in the vast space within an empty shell.
    My head was pounding and my throat dry, but I picked myself up eventually and surveyed the mess. Dad would be home from work soon, Mom from her PA meeting. I drifted downstairs and fumbled in the kitchen drawer until I found a garbage bag in my hands. Then I watched myself climb the stairs again and pick up the crumpled pages, the hypodermic syringes, the razors, and little plastic bags of white dust. I shoved them all in the bag, twirling the bottom in a horrible plastic pirouette.
    I was searching every memory of Clara from the past few years for anything that would indicate a drug habit. I’d hardly ever gone in her room; it was an messy, dark cave of screaming music and leering posters. We rarely talked in the past year, but I had hardly to talked to anyone. She was usually with her pale, eyelinered friends. I was usually going through the motions, writing out math equations and lab reports. Our paths didn’t cross much.
I sank down on the windowseat in my room, the plastic bag still in my hands. I wanted to get rid of it, like some biochemical hazard. .
    No, that’s not right. This is just plastic and metal. She was the sick one.
    I heard the gentle crash of the garage door downstairs and panicked. My mother was home.
For lack of a better hiding space, I flung the garbage bag under my bed, as far back in the shadows as I could. I could hear my mother’s footfalls on the stairs, so I flung opened my history book and arranged myself in a relaxed, studious manner. .
    “Hey, honey.” My mom looked exhausted, leaning there against the door frame. Her gray and auburn hair was pulled back in a careless knot, loose, frizzy pieces falling out. Her face -normally pretty- looked gaunt and pale.
    I almost told her right then. Until I tried to think of how I’d say it.
Your daughter used to be addicted to drugs. It’s a pity none of us never noticed. Maybe she wouldn’t have died, then.
    “How’re you doing?” I asked instead, letting genuine concern force the panic from my voice. Her daughter had died a week ago. My mom shrugged and her mouth smiled an apology. Without a word, she retreated to her bedroom. A few minutes later, I heard the shower running.

    It was 4:26 in the morning, according to the steady neon numbers beside my bed. My room was utterly silent, but for the heating system switching on and off and a vague humming in my ears.
    It was strange: I knew everything in my room was laid out neatly and organized, but I every time I closed my eyes, I pictured a chaotic mess. My clothes were crumpled and strewn across the floor, the hangers littering the bottom of the closet. My books and papers were piled on my desk haphazardly, torn and wrinkled. Even the paint was peeling off the walls. .
    What is my head doing to me?
    I rolled over, rubbed by eyes with the heel of my hand. But then, another picture. A murderer was lying under my bed, a ruthless killer. He wasn’t after me; he was waiting to sneak away and kill my parents.
    The bag.
    I flipped the covers off me, my legs momentarily shocked by the chilly air, and slid off my bed. I reached my arm under the bed, the white plastic sack clutched in my fingers.     
I wasn’t sure what I was doing as I pulled on a pair of jeans, shoes, and my coat. But I couldn’t sleep, not with this thing in my house. I had to get it out, get myself out.
I found myself hurrying down my darkened driveway as though I had a destination, my breath trailing behind me in a fog: the screams that I couldn’t let out. There was a danger to this silent neighborhood, not of rapists and axe-murderers lurking in the bushes. This danger was isolation. The rest of my town was sleeping, and the only people who are awake right now are... .
    Doing the same things my sister did. An entire population of people who rip their familes to shreds because they can’t handle reality. All of them awake at once. In every lighted window there’s a cutter, a drug addict, a bulimic… a suicide.
    Not me. I walked purposefully down to the chain-linked playground and swung open the frigid metal gate. Only the slanted bar of the swing set was visible in the darkness, glinting a long line of steely moon back at the sky. I settled onto a swing, gliding forward and back again over the same patch of sand, enjoying the freedom from the ground.
I’ve always had a specific duty in my mind: be the child that my parents won’t have to worry about. God knows they used to spend enough time worrying about Clara. She had dealt for years with what she claimed was depression; I alone seemed to recognize as a pathetic ploy for attention. She screamed at us some days, refused to eat, cut herself, did anything she could do keep us worried about her.
    I accepted my fate as the good daughter. I didn’t speak much- who was there to speak to? My parents were both busy most of the time, and Clara was usually either sulking or slinking around with her strange, greasy friends. I didn’t have many friends, either. I spent most of my time on schoolwork, keeping up my grades so my parents wouldn’t need to worry.
I remembered my mother’s exhausted, grief-stricken face this afternoon. What if I told her that Clara’s death was... preventable? It could have just been the drugs that told her to hang herself from the shower rod. Maybe it wasn’t the depression. Maybe we weren’t doing all we could to save her. I tried to picture how my mother would take the news. This was our fault.

    Half-asleep, the sounds of a Saturday morning mingled feverishly in my liquid thoughts: the teapot’s scream, the heaving and hissing bacon, the repetitive smack of the refrigerator door. I could hear the quiet murmurs of my parents punctuated by the morning paper being shuffled back and forth across the broad kitchen table. I wanted to be there, in between them, a part of their private despair.
    But instead I remained, tangled in my sheets in a fitful half-slumber. I wasn’t part of their world. I would never tell either of my parents what I’d found in Clara’s bedroom, the bundle that was now hidden deep in the dumpster behind the playground. That secret could tear them apart. As it is, it’s already tearing me apart.