• It wasn’t something we talked about much, if at all. The subject had become taboo in our house. But the weight of it pressed down upon us all, working between our bodies, pushing itself into the cracks of our resolve. Though it was never said, it was always fresh in our minds, back there, lingering in some distant thought.
    Back when it first had happened, I remember how close we had suddenly grown. A group of strangers at first, merely dwelling in the same house hold. But after that day, I remember being sprawled on my bed, weeping into a pillow for hours, my aunt gently rubbing my back as though to rub strength in to me. It took ages for the tears to stop, but still I wept inwardly, tears of blood.
    The night that Anna died I had crept into her room, unconsciously looking for her. It had been three in the morning, and everyone had long since taken themselves to a sleepless night. I had shut the door behind me and collapsed onto her bed, falling face first into her pillow. I could still smell the fruity tang of her shampoo from the previous night’s shower. The scent cut through me like a knife, and I sat up, pulling my nose out of it, tears pricking my eyes.
    Through a haze of unwelcome milky tears, I saw something sitting on her dresser. It was her diary. Curious and desperate for some connection to her, I walked over and picked up the book. Cradling it in my small, puny hands I made my way back to the bed and sat down, staring at its cover. I felt a sense of foreboding as I looked at the cover, my instincts still expecting Anna to come through her bedroom door at any moment and yell at me for snooping. My hands trembling slightly, turned on her dim, bedside lamp, and began to read.
    The date at the top of the first page indicated that she had started the diary three years ago. Three years and a few months.

    Moving out here is such a hassle. I can’t believe I have to put up with all of this. This isn’t fair. I hate being the oldest and having to take care of things all the time. I hate how I am supposed to hold it in and be strong for those people who can’t even keep it together themselves-

    I stopped reading and shut the book. It was about our move to the country after our parents had split up. Anna had been left in charge of me during the move to our aunt’s farm, and her resentment came as a shock to me. She had never expressed it to anyone. Reading this three year old log was strange; it was like reading about a different person. A view into somebody else’s past life. Not Anna’s.
    Just then I heard my aunt getting up out of bed. I quickly shut off the light and hid myself, and the diary, under Anna’s bed. It was a good thing too because a second later I saw Anna’s door open a crack, then shut quickly.
    I lay beneath her bed for a while that night, looking at the diary, my heart pounding. I didn’t open another page, didn’t dare to. But here was Anna in my hands, bound in leather, not linen, her cover a deep green, not mahogany and black. Her words, her feelings, her heart perfectly preserved. And I didn’t want anybody else to have them. She was my sister, after all.
    I left her room, taking her diary with me, hiding it at the bottom of a stack of books. It felt as though I could keep her forever, even though she was gone, I had this piece of her. This piece that would not die.

    It took the search crews three days to finally find her body on the banks of the Ivory River. They called it the Ivory River because as the water crashed over the rocks, it turned a brilliant shade of white.
    I’d known she was dead long before they found her though. It was instinct that told me something was wrong, even before the policeman came to tell us she was missing.
    “Her friends said she went off to swim and that was the last they’d heard or seen of her,” he had told us in a quiet, gentle voice.
    I spent hours after that, trying to imagine my sister and what had happened to her. In my head I watched her floating in the river, treading water, treading water, treading water, until her arms felt limp, until her legs didn’t want to kick. I watched her head fight to keep surface, but the weight of her body, although a meager amount, was pulling her downward, to the bottom of the river. And when her head vanished beneath the slowly churning surface, it was as though she had never been there at all.
    I tried to imagine what it must feel like to drown. To hold your breath so long your head pounds and your stomach aches. To hold it so long you can’t anymore and you breathe in, a deep breath to fill your shriveling lungs. But instead of air, satisfaction and relief at the breath, you feel cold water fill your mouth and nose. It’s a horrifying realization, letting death fill your body, but you can’t help it. Your body screams for air and doesn’t understand there is none to be had. You feel the water running down your wind pipe, into your lungs, filling them to the brim so that they might burst. There is a new heaviness in you, your body weighed down by the extra water. You continue to breathe in and out until your organs are saturated in liquid, until you grow tired and sleepy from the lack of oxygen, and slowly drift to the bottom to rest.
    I could feel her death so vividly, I almost thought I was the one dying, not her.