I recall getting out of bed in the morning. It was the first morning without her. The first morning not being able to hear her feet stomping across the hall, as she raced inside my room to wake me. The first morning of not seeing her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she brushes her hair while I brush my teeth. The first morning not seeing her plate on the dining room table as we wait for mom's pancakes to finish cooking.

The house was desolate. Our happiness died along with her. All that remained were the memories captured inside the picture frames around the house and the things that reminded us of her in her bedroom. As time passed, her silence became more of a sense of solitude, as we all tried to find our own ways of coping without her. I still looked for her in the loneliness of all places, waiting to feel her warmth again.

It took four or five weeks for mom to start painting again. It took less than a week for my father to get out of bed so that he could cook for us; breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It didn't take me a week or three, not even a month or so, to embrace everything she left us with. It never took me how to be strong until I was left all alone months later.

I was caught in a circle, constantly trying to find a way out of the pain. The road to acceptance and letting go was a dark one that I was afraid to travel. I saw that the only option was to give up and that it was better that way. Instead of walking into the sunshine, I welcomed the darkness that had engulfed me and took refuge there.

And... I never imagined that one person was all I needed to get me to start moving, again.

"Margaret," I say, standing in front of her. Her mouth was half-open, and her body didn't move. It seemed as if the color drained from her face as she stared wide-eyed at the sight of me.

She whips her head back for a second before stepping outside of her house, closing the door behind her. She blinks her eyes, eyeing me from head to toe.

"Lauren," She manages to speak, "It's been a while."

"Two years, to be exact," I told her.

She nods her head and then says, "Wha-what brings you here?"

She scratches the back of her head as she stutters, ignoring eye contact with me. I look down at my fingers, fidgeting as I say, "I just wanted to really know what happened."

"What do you mean?" Her eyebrows were drawn together, confused at what I just said to her.

"About Elise. You and Elise. Elise and everyone else."

Margaret Johnson was the last person I saw with Elise before everyone started ignoring her. She attended Elise's funeral after she died. At the very back of the audience. Standing amongst the crowds, hidden, wearing a black, lace dress. She was wearing shades that covered her eyes, and she walked away when she saw me looking at her the moment I stood behind the podium.

"I don't really know—"

"Please," I grabbed both of her hands and squeezed them, "I saw you. I know you saw me, too. I just want to know the truth."

She yanks her arm, grabbed my hands, and dropped them. She looks at me. It was evident that there was sadness in her eyes. She sighs deeply, then starts to speak again, "There are so many things that had happened that didn't make sense. I don't know a lot, and I don't even know if the things that I know are the truth. Honestly, I don't know what to tell you or what you want to hear from me."

"I just want to know what you think is the truth because I know that you love Elise as much as I do, and you know her," I say, "You know her more than I do."

She opens her mouth to speak but was suddenly cut off when her mom starts shouting her name, calling for her attention back inside their house. Margaret shouts, "I'm coming," before she looks back at me.

"Okay," she says. "Meet me at the public library at around five-thirty."

I silently nodded as I watched her walk back into her house. I stood there as if waiting for something, as the silence echoed in my mind. When I find myself walking back to the bus stop, my heart begins to pound like a drum, strangely loud enough to drown out the thoughts in my mind.

I still have three hours before I have to go. At least three hours before, I discover the truth that would help me understand what is going on and what had happened before everything collapsed. Everything that came before things had ended up happening.

❀

"Elise loves this place so much that I somehow hated how she got me into reading books with no pictures," Margaret says, grabbing a random book on the nonfiction shelf and starts flipping through the pages. She placed them back on the shelf after.

"That's how Elise is to us, her friends," Margaret looks back at me, giving me a spare glance before whipping her head around. I continue to follow her as she continues, "She has the ability to make a great impact on people's lives, and I don't think she's aware of that."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

She continues walking until we reached another aisle of bookshelves, entirely on a different genre.

"When you hate something, Elise makes you love it," She says, "She makes something boring and makes it sound so exciting in her own words, making you want to feel the same. That's probably the reason why she got me hooked into reading books."

Margaret grabs a book relating to physics as she starts walking again. We walked back towards the reading area, where the nonfiction aisle was closed. She pulls a chair for me then pulls a chair for herself, sits down, and places the book on the table.

"She told me the summary of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. She was finishing her homework about it in English Literature class. They were tasked to draw a comic strip about the summary of the book, and her words were just different," Margaret looks at me; there was a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eyes.

"The way she described things that were somehow indescribable made me hooked in a way that I can't describe," Margaret looks at me, "Your sister—Elise—she's a very good person. I just don't understand why there are people who would destroy other people just because they hate seeing them happy."

"Elise loves to write. It's one of the three or four things she can't stop talking about," Margaret smiles, looking down at her fingers, playing with the loose thread on her ripped jeans.

"What's the other three?" I ask.

She tilts her head, her eyes staring into mine as she continues to smile, "Keith used to be that one person whom she can't stop talking about at first, but then she met this guy along meeting Keith's friends," She taps her index finger on the table then runs invisible circles, "And you."

"Me?" I say, "She talks about me?"

Margaret nods her head as she continues, "She says she admires how you are so passionate about art like your mom and says you're like a doppelgänger of Cora."

It felt weird hearing my mother's name being spoken by someone I haven't met for such a long time. It's like coming home after being gone for a while.

I smile at the thought of Elise. I imagine the face she makes whenever she mentions my name to her friends and the sound of her laughter. I look at Margaret, my eyebrows furrowed.

"Who's Keith?" I asked her.

Margaret's smile fades, she stares at me as if she was confused as I was, "Y-You don't know who Keith is? Keith Harper?" I stare at her blankly, making the silence speak for me instead.

"Keith Harper used to be Elise's Boyfriend. He goes to Carlsbad Academy. Maybe the reason why you don't know him is that he doesn't go to our school. Hasn't Elise told you anything about him?"

I shake my head, "We never really talk about boys," I told her as she nods her head slowly, looking at me. "What happened between them?"

She stares at the book for a second before turning to face me. She shifts her body to meet me, dragging the chair with her. She sits inches away, fingers intertwined, and leaned in towards me, "They dated for a year. After their first break up, they were on and off again until Keith finally decided to end things with your sister months before she died."

"So, what you are saying is that Keith was the reason behind my sister's death?" I ask. Margaret shakes her head. "Well then, who is the other guy?"

Margaret slouches, her hands swinging lazily to the side with her back already leaning on the back of the chair. "That's what I'm also curious about. Elise never told us anything about that guy except she likes him."

"Do you know where he goes?" I ask her.

"All I know is that she met him through Keith and they were also good friends, I believe."

Margaret and I spoke about various topics, including college, boys, and movies, which I never get to discuss with my sister. Margaret was one of those people whom my sister had trusted the most. And I saw a sister material in her, too.

But before Elise died, she expressed guilt for abandoning her and not doing everything she could to understand Elise and what she was actually going through. I thought I know a lot about my sister, including a lot of lies and a few truths. Now, I'm not too sure.

One thing I've learned about Elise is that she hardly expresses her emotions. She despises the idea of telling people about it because it makes her feel like a liability to her friends, especially to us, her family.

Margaret told me that Elise would write down her depressing, drowning thoughts on papers and would leave them there to dry. I asked Margaret if she knew anything about the notes Elise had been writing, and all she said was that she didn't want to get involved in that. I realized right then and there that she was aware that Elise had written them and that she was hiding something else from me.

"All I could really say is that it eventually found its way into daylight," she says, her eyes glued towards the window. "It did find you, eventually."