LJ Idol Prompt 17 Sudden Death — Open Topic

[flipflop_diva]

Theirs was a complicated relationship. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Love and hate.

They met at five years old, the first day of kindergarten, sharing a box of crayons. Light hair and light eyes. Dark hair and dark eyes. Paige and Sarah. Best of friends before the school bell even rang that same day.

Life for a while was perfect. Laughter and smiles. Joy and innocence. Swings and slides and foot races. Kickball and softball and soccer. Paige’s house became Sarah’s and Sarah’s became Paige’s. Their parents became friends. Friends became like family.

And then tragedy struck. A father gone. A mother gone. Found crushed together in a car when neither one should have been there.

And just like that worlds were shattered. Two little girls who didn’t understand the real reason their parents had been together but who just knew that they went to school one morning with smiles on their faces and were picked up early by parents trying to balance rage and confusion and grief.

Paige withdrew. From everyone. Her father and her friends and her older sister. Sarah was the opposite. Always wanting to be with her mother, make sure she was never not in her sight. She tried to do the same with Paige, but Paige pushed her away.

Their friendship withered. Two grief-stricken girls who were too young to face their trauma together. Widowed parents who were doing their best and who tried to do their best together.

They fell in love, Paige’s widowed father and Sarah’s widowed mother. Not right away, not on purpose. Slowly and over time. Over long talks and longer walks and groups for grieving survivors. But it happened, and once it did there was no going back.

Paige’s house became Sarah’s, and Sarah’s house became Paige’s, but not everyone wanted to be family. Not the little girl who didn’t want her father to remarry. Not the little girl who didn’t want a new mother.

It didn’t go well those first few years. Newly married parents who tried too hard and pretended too much and lived daily with too many defenses and excuses for why they were doing their best even when they weren’t. Newly married parents who didn’t catch how the rift between their daughters grew wider, how what once was love turned into something on the opposite spectrum. How their fights and their rebellions were more than just typical of pre-teen girls.

And then tragedy struck again. Cancer caught much too late. Another dying mother.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor said. “Maybe six months. A year at most.”

Paige came to Sarah’s room that night, stood in her door, the first time she had in months. “I’m sorry,” she said, the first words she’d spoken to her new sister in days. “I’m so, so sorry.”

There were no more words that night. Just tears and long hugs and a head cradled in a lap. Falling asleep in each other’s arms.

“Whatever you need,” Paige said in the morning, and life shifted. Gone were the years of being apart. They spent the next five months, two weeks and three days together and with Sarah’s mom, Paige’s stepmom. Talking about life and all the things they might need to know. Learning as much as could be taught in such a small timeframe.

They went to the beach the last few days as a family. Sat on the deck of the rented house and watched the sun set. Listened to the roar of the waves.

“Scatter my ashes there,” said Sarah’s mother — and now Paige’s too — and the girls held her hands and said they would.

Paige and Sarah stood side-by-side at the memorial service two weeks later, arms wrapped around each other, Paige’s father and older sister behind them.

“You’re our family,” Paige’s father said to Sarah after they had fulfilled her mother’s wishes, scattered her ashes in the waves. “We want you to stay. But we’ll all understand if you want to leave. We know you have aunts and uncles and cousins.”

But Sarah stayed. With a family that had been hers since almost the first day of kindergarten. And she and Paige spent time together. Not quite like before — sadder now, heavier — but with the same love, the same adoration.

They both graduated from high school, crossing the stage one after the other as their father and older sister — because they belonged to both of them equally now — cried happy tears. And then they both left — one going east to become a doctor, one going west to become a teacher.

They talked when they could, Sarah and Paige, but days passed and then weeks and months, and life got busy and new friends were made and phone calls became further and further apart and trips back home became sparser too. Paige met a boy she wanted to marry. Sarah met a girl who made her happy.

And then came a phone call from Sarah to Paige on a cold, rainy night in March.

“I miss you,” she said. “I passed the bar. I want to see if I can find a job near you.”

Paige planned a trip to celebrate, just the two of them. The same beach they’d gone to long ago. They rented a house and sat on the deck and watched the sun set and listened to the waves. They drank wine and ate chips and caught up on life. They laughed and they smiled and they cried and they hugged, and they made plans for when Sarah would move.

They went home happy and content, promising they’d see each other soon.

Five days after Paige got home, her phone rang. A surprise call from her dad, but not with good news. Sarah had been in a really bad a car accident. She hadn’t made it.

So, twenty-two years after they met in a little classroom, Paige flew back home to say a final goodbye to the best friend she would ever have, the sister she hadn’t wanted at the time but who she had loved completely with all her heart.

Regret filled her along with the sadness. Guilt along with sorrow. But also gratefulness and gratitude. For they had just spent the most wonderful two weeks she could have imagined. And they had spent it the way they had started — best of friends before the school bell even rang that very first day.





Fiction. Although I did take inspiration from an anonymous post made in a Disney Facebook group I belong to.



This was written for therealljidol as a sudden death entry in a head to head battle with one other person. If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me! Voting should be up Thursday night!

Comments

[adoptedwriter]

Oh my! Such a saga! Wow!

[bluemerperson]

This is such an intense story and as usual you write it so well, I really enjoyed reading this!

[erulissedances]

Oh, this was awesome. If I could see through the tears, I'd write more, but my touch typing skills only go so far when I'm seated at my older computer - the one missing a keycap on the Y.

- Erulisse (one L)

[fausts_dream]

Raw, real and powerful the fiction tag surprised me, but only cause it felt so real.