I Found My Sister’s Diary After She Disappeared
She was obviously in love with it, which was surprising, considering it was fully intact. It was beautiful, actually. It was old, but I couldn’t tell how old, with an ornate wooden frame; hand-carved flowers and vines. It was about four feet tall and the same width wide, a cute square. It looked heavy because of its size, but if Emma was holding it as she was, it must have been lighter than it appeared. The mirror was covered in such a thick layer of dust that we couldn’t see our reflections, but it would clean up nicely. I had to admit that it was a beautiful, one-of-a-kind item. Emma knew this, too, but she saw something I didn’t. As I mentioned, she was not an antique collector, so the history of and potential monetary value of items did not impress or matter to her. I thought she just liked the mirror because it was exactly how mirrors are not supposed to be: dirty.
“This is really nice, Emma. Very cool. You should look into it…Maybe it’s worth something! People pay a lot of money for—” Emma looked at me then, but that’s not right, because I felt like it wasn’t Emma looking at me. She looked mean, and mad, and like I had deeply hurt her feelings. “This is mine,” she told me with a sharp tongue. I had a temper like our mother; Emma did not, so her tone rendered me speechless for a few moments.
“It’s a stupid mirror,” I finally told her, taking back my original opinion that it was very cool. “Why are you looking at me like that? Forget I said anything. Go ahead, waste your money on it and add it to your crazy fucking collection of useless shit.”
Although I tried to offend her, because I couldn’t help myself — I hate when people are or appear to be mad at me, and I lash out at them before they say something that upsets me further—I could tell she didn’t care what I said. I could have called her a “long-legged freak,” like a group of girls did in middle school, but even that would not have affected her emotions. Something, I could tell even then, was gone from inside of her. Most words would enter one of her ears and simply bounce around meaninglessly in her head before exiting, unheard, out her other ear. I went to the car and got behind the wheel and turned the car and air conditioning on. I didn’t leave Emma stranded—I wasn’t that mean, and besides, she hadn’t even really done anything to me. I just couldn’t understand and didn’t like the way she had looked at me.
Back home, Emma grabbed a bottle of Windex from the underneath the kitchen sink, then went right to her room. I heard some clanging and banging. I assumed she was arranging and rearranging all her shit so she could find a space for that mirror. It was about 5 o’clock, so I started dinner. Usually my sister and I would switch off and cook every other night (she was a better cook than I because she had a patience that I lacked), and tonight was her night, but I felt bad about my little outburst so I made her favorite dish—classic spaghetti (with jarred sauce) and (frozen) meatballs. Although I have always been more outgoing than Emma, that doesn’t mean that I have ever been very good with being the first to apologize. Making dinner was my apology.
The noises ceased in Emma’s room, so I figured she was reading. I gently knocked on her door and said, “Emma! Dinner!” No answer. I repeated myself, but again no answer. I got frustrated but I kept my cool. “Emma, I made spaghetti and meatballs. I didn’t make the sauce or meatballs, like, not homemade, but they’re the good brands. Emma,” I said again, “let’s eat now before…”