I have finished revisions on the first part (of five) of my Middle Grade supernatural horror novel, Something’s Wrong with Sissy. I’ve pasted the text below. I’m happy with it overall. If you like it, I’d love to hear from you with a comment.
Part One: Summer
It was this time last summer that Sissy stopped talking. I remember it clearly. We were in the backyard, near the woods. Midsummer, so it was really hot. She turned to me, face shining with sweat. She glanced at the treeline and grinned. I could see the mischief in her eyes.
“C’mon, Mags! Find me!”
Those are the last words she ever said.
She took off, clearing the lawn in no time. She had always been a fast runner. Before I could say anything, she had disappeared beyond the oaks and maples. I groaned as I got to my feet. I was tired already from the heat and really didn’t feel like moving.
“Come back, Sissy!” I yelled. “I don’t want to play!”
No response. I called out again. Nothing.
I stomped forward, slowly building up the energy for something faster than a crawl. As I reached the treeline, I shouted again.
“Sissy! I’m not playing!”
She didn’t respond. I figured she didn’t want to give away her position. She was a champ at hide and seek. It always took me forever to find her on the best of days. I was always a little annoyed by the time I found her crouched inside a box in the attic or stuffed in the lazy susan (after she had stashed the pots and pans inside the oven) or, one time, hanging from the top branch of the tree by our bedroom window.
Sissy had always been small. She was born that way. I was the big twin, that’s what people called me. Sissy was the little one. The sick one. The frail one. “Frail” was what Gramma Mullins always called her. Frail little Sissy.
But she wasn’t frail. She was strong. And fast. “A natural athlete,” our father said.
As I walked through the woods, I kept an eye up toward the sky. I was looking for a hint of her green shirt or white shorts or bright blue shoes–something to give away her position. On the ground, I gently kicked at any large piles of upturned earth or fallen acorns. She had never hid in the dirt, but I bet she could dig like a dog and make herself a spot in no time flat.
I called out again. Then again.
Nothing.
“Look, Sissy,” I yelled at the trees. “I’m seriously not playing this stupid game right now. It’s hot and I am going inside. And if you don’t come with me then I’m going to–”
I struggled to think of something appropriately wicked.
“–I’m going to throw all your books in the trash. After I burn them. I mean it!”
I screamed the last part so loud, it made my throat hurt.
Still no answer.
I was so angry by that point, I almost didn’t hear the thud.
All my anger sank to my feet and suddenly I felt scared.
“Sissy?” I called out. “Sissy, are you okay?”
I ran toward the sound, almost snagging my shoe on a tangle of branches. Some twigs stuck to my laces and I kicked them off as I ran. I spotted something white in the distance. My brain tried to process what I was seeing in the confusion of color.
White. White shorts. Green. Green shirt.
Blue.
Blue shoes.
Sissy.
I ran.
Roots scraped at my ankles, twigs crunched under my feet, leaves gathered into darkness above me. Every step seemed like a mile. I couldn’t run fast enough. Finally, I reached her. Finally, I saw her.
My sister, slumped against the rough trunk of a graying tree.
She looked like a broken bird. Arms bent at her side like dead wings. Her head at a hard angle, face turned away.
I stopped, unsure of what to do. Something inside me pushed me forward, my feet suddenly stones. My hands shook. My thoughts were nothing but a blur.
When I got close enough, I dropped to my knees beside her.
My mom always said never to move anybody who was hurt because you could make their injury even worse. While that warning was in my head, I couldn’t resist rolling her over. She was breathing, which was good. But her face. Her face was pale. Blood trickled from her nose in thin red rivers. Tears lined her eyes. A stream of saltwater trickled down her cheek and pooled inside her left ear. She stared at the sky, eyes wide, catching the beams of light breaking through the leafy cover of the woods.
I snapped my fingers in front of her face. She didn’t respond. No blink, no sound.
Nothing.
I didn’t want to leave her but I had to. I cemented her location in my mind. I memorized the path I took out as I ran back home to get our parents.
The emergency room smelled clean–too clean. The metal arms of the harsh orange chair were cold and stiff. I couldn’t find a comfortable position no matter how hard I tried.
I kicked my legs at the air furiously. My bottom lip, which I had chewed bloody, throbbed with heat and pain. Patience wasn’t my strong suit.
“When are we gonna hear something?” I looked straight ahead as I spoke.
“I don’t know, honey.” Dad patted my knee. “Stop kicking though.”
“I can’t.”
He let out a long sigh. “Well, try.”
My dad always did his best to make me feel better. Any time I fell off a swing or tripped on the stairs, he would hold me, tell me some jokes, bring me a soda. He wouldn’t stop until he’d brought a smile to my face. But he wasn’t doing anything like that this time. He just stared at his hands and turned his eyes to the clock. Back and forth like that for over an hour.
My mom, on the other hand, couldn’t keep still. She paced the perimeter of the ocean of orange chairs, twisting and untwisting her necklace around her fingers.
“What’s taking so long,” she muttered. This made my dad sigh some more.
“I’m thirsty,” I said, even though I wasn’t. My mom dug out some change and handed it to me. I slipped off the chair and walked toward the vending machine in the corner.
“Something diet!” my mom called.
A can clanked its way through the machine and landed in the slot. As I bent over to pick it up, the door to the waiting room swung open. My dad leapt to his feet.
A woman in the lab coat clutched a clipboard to her side.
She slowed as she neared us. “Mrs. Brewer?”
Mom nodded. It wasn’t her last name but she was used to answering to it. Everybody always called her by our last name. Unless they were work friends of hers. Then they always called us
Mullins.
I didn’t understand much of what the doctor was saying but I got the important stuff.
Severe trauma.
Trauma? What does that mean?
I asked my dad how long Sissy would be in the hospital but he shushed me and told me to listen.
Closed head injury. Unresponsive. Admission for observation.
I tried to make sense of it but the strain or the stress or something made my head really light and I toppled backwards onto a hard orange seat. The landing sent a cold shock up from the bone in my butt to bottom of my neck. My entire back ached. Darkness washed in from the edge of my vision. I focused on breathing, slowly, steadily.
I braced myself against the chair and waited for the darkness to pass. By the time I could see again, could focus again, the doctor was shaking my parents’ hands.
My mother took a deep breath and excused herself to the restroom. Dad put his hand on my shoulder and walked me outside.
The sun was low, hidden behind a tower overlooking the parking lot. I could see our car parked in the distance. The air was thick and sticky from the heat.
We sat on a bench at the top of a big U driveway. An ambulance, lights spinning but its siren quiet, idled ten feet away. My dad stared at the big blue cross on the vehicle’s side. His blinks got longer and longer until his eyes spent more time shut than open.
It didn’t seem like a good time to talk but I did anyway.
“What did the doctor say?”
Dad cleared his throat. His voice sounded wet, deep.
“Maggie, your sister is, um.” His voice trailed off. Dad looked around, like the right words might be laying on the ground somewhere. “Marilyn hit her head. That’s what the doctor said. And that may have hurt her brain.”
Marilyn. That’s Sissy’s “real” name. Margaret and Marilyn. Twin girls with twin names.
I shrank in my seat. “Oh.”
My legs kicked at the air. I couldn’t stop them.
“So she needs to stay at the hospital?”
My father nodded. “Yeah, they’re going to admit her. That could take some time. They have to wait for a room to open up. And then they’ll move her and we’ll find out where she is.”
“Are we going to stay here with her?”
My dad glanced at me. “One of us will. I dunno. Maybe we’ll take turns.”
“You mean you and Mom?”
Dad sighed. “I don’t think this is a good place for you. Besides, they just want to watch her for the next 24 hours. See if there are any other symptoms.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t really know. Anything, I suppose. Vomiting, headaches, whatever.”
“And I can’t stay?”
“They don’t want too many people. Besides, there’s nowhere to sleep in those rooms. Besides a chair or the waiting room.”
“I don’t mind. I’ll–”
“After your sister is moved, we’ll head home. I think your mom wants the first shift. It’s almost dinner time now and we skipped lunch so we should–”
“I’m not hungry.”
Another big sigh. He closed his eyes and breathed. A few seconds later, he opened them again. “I’m not either. But we’re not staying here. You. Are not staying here. Okay? I just–I just need you to listen to me. Can you do that?”
I wanted to stay. But I understood, even if it made me angry. I nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
My dad looked terrible. His face was puffy. His eyes red. He hugged me as soon as I stepped into Sissy’s room.
“I’m glad you came,” he said, like staying away had been my idea.
A nurse was checking on Sissy. My mom told me to stay back while the woman worked.
Before long, the nurse made some notes on a whiteboard near the door, said her goodbyes, and left. Mom followed.
Dad kept pace behind me as I neared Sissy’s bed. She had a tube in her arm hooked to a bag full of something clear. She was surrounded by small machines on roller legs.
As I got close, she turned her head towards me and smiled. Her face was so thin. She had always been skinny–or “frail” as Gramma called her–but this was different. Her cheekbones pushed out her skin like pink plastic stretched over a cartoon skull. Her brown eyes bulged from their gray sockets like the orbs of a strange lizard. How had she gotten so sick so fast?
A bony arm reached out toward me, grasping my hand in hers. She squeezed my fingers together, weakly.
“She can’t speak,” my father said. “Or she won’t. They–”
His voice trailed off. He stared at the corner of the room for a moment before turning back to me. “They don’t know why. What’s causing it. She just doesn’t speak right now.”
I put my hand on her forehead. It was cool, dry.
“Do you feel okay?”
Sissy drew her smile up further. She nodded once. Slowly.
I wanted to ask her what happened out in the woods. What could possibly have done this in the few minutes she was out of my sight. She couldn’t speak but surely she could write? Draw? Something?
But it didn’t feel right. This wasn’t the time for it. Whatever had happened, she would tell us later. For now, I wanted her to focus on getting better. To focus on getting home.
The next day, my parents moved a bed into the family room. My parents didn’t want her going up and down the stairs to our bedroom They didn’t want her moving much at all.
“Precaution,” they said.
So Sissy stayed pretty much in the family room, on her bed. She only got up to use the bathroom.
I went into the family room a couple times to see her but Sissy barely looked at me. She either focused on her drawing paper or stared at the television, watching The Office or Friends whatever was on Netflix. I tried to talk to her. I avoided the Big Question and stuck to things like how she was feeling and if she thought she might be going to school in the fall.
She stared ahead, sometimes through me, and said nothing.
All our game systems were in the family room. Sissy liked to watch me play video games, especially roleplaying games. She’d help me make decisions.
“Put more points into magic,” she’d say–back when she could speak.
“But I’m a fighter. I should buff my melee.”
“Magic looks cooler though. Buy that dragon summoning spell.”
“It’s only strong against wind though and I haven’t unlocked the wind dungeon yet.”
“C’mon, dragons are so cool. Don’t you want to be able to make a dragon appear out of nowhere?”
We’d always go back and forth. Laughing and play arguing. I really like those times.
That was the most Sissy ever played video games though. She preferred board games. The board game room was downstairs where she wasn’t allowed to go.
More precautions.
On the third day after Sissy came home, I decided I had had enough.
I laid in my room, not sleeping. The second hand on our wall clock spun around and around above my head. I waited until the little hand was on the eleven before I threw off the covers and jumped out of bed.
My mom always had to get up early. She had to be at the clinic by seven. Before that though, she had to have her coffee and at least a half-hour of “me time” before she could face the world. That’s what she called it. “Facing the world.”
I tiptoed down the stairs and stepped off the landing as soft as I could. Faint moonlight streamed in through the swirly-glass windows of the front door. It gave me just enough light to walk by. I turned and sneaked past the living room, past the cupboard under the stairs, and to the door of the family room.
I pressed my ear against the dark brown wood. Some mumbling and then a laugh track. I turned the knob gently and cracked the door open.
Sissy was sitting up in her bed.
It wasn’t a real bed, not like the kind we had in our rooms. It was the bed my grandfather slept in his last few months. He died in this house. He got sick and couldn’t take care of himself. Grandpa Nick was always so independent, my dad said. Having to rely on others made him sad. Angry.
After he died, my parents but his bed in the basement.
It looked like a hospital bed. A thin metal frame that went up and down via a controller on its side. Sissy had it tilted up so she could see the television better.
The TV was on a small stand. It was perfect for sitting back and playing games but, as it was, the big metal bed was even with the bottom half of the screen. If she was laying flat, everybody in the show would be blocked by her feet. Just a series of heads running across ten pink-polished toes.
All the furniture was pushed against the walls. Not at all how it looked less than a week ago. I looked over the edge of the couch for some sign of Mom or Dad. Seeing nothing, I stepped closer and took another look. Nothing.
When I glanced at Sissy, I was startled to see she was looking at me. She looked so small on the huge bed. Like a puppy curled atop a blanket. My grandfather had been a large guy and he had barely filled it. We shared the gaze for a moment before I braved another step closer. Did she really want to be alone? That’s what Mom and Dad kept telling me.
I stood near the foot of the bed and stared at Sissy. She stared back.
I thought about her getting angry and throwing the paper and the pen. About her ignoring me, not even seeing me. The skin around my eyes got hot and I could feel tears building.
Sissy’s face softened. She scooted over and patted the bed next to her. At first, I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure I could trust it. Then I surrendered.
I hurried to the bed, climbed in, and crawled under the blanket. I clutched my arms around her waist and rested my head on her chest. Laying there, holding my sister, I felt whole again. It had only been a little over a week but it felt like forever. Wetness stung my eyes. With every blink, a new tear rolled down my face.
“I’ve missed you,” I told her with a squeeze.
She put her hand on my hair and stroked it. Softly.
On the television, a screaming man misunderstood something. The audience laughed.
My parents returned to work later that day. Their first time since the incident. That’s the word they kept using. Incident. Whatever happened in the woods that day–not even a day, that minute, those few seconds–split our lives in half. There was everything before the incident, and everything after.
“Make sure she eats and drinks,” my mother said on her way out the door. “Write her meals down in the book. It’s by the TV. She should just stay in bed too. Don’t try to roughhouse with her.”
We hadn’t roughhoused since we were children. With every passing day, my parents talked to me like I was younger and younger.
“We won’t,” I said.
“We’re trusting you, okay? She’s your sister. Help us take care of her.”
I nodded. Like I would do anything to hurt my sister.
I watched Mom’s car roll out of the driveway, sit near our mailbox for a minute, and then take off down the road.
Sissy and I did nothing all morning. I sat on the couch and read while Sissy watched a movie. I didn’t catch the beginning of it but it was old. Black-and-white old. Every time I caught a flash of color, I looked up–but it was always a commercial.
By lunchtime, I had had enough.
I was always the indoor person but this was too much. The house felt like a prison. Or a home for the dying.
“We’re getting you out of bed,” I told her, pushing “off” on the remote. “Come on.”
Confused, she leaned on my shoulders as I eased her out of the bed. I thought of Gramma Mullins. Frail little Sissy. She felt like a doll, like she was made of hollow porcelain. She struggled to stay on her feet.
“You’ve been in bed too long,” I told her. Mom and Dad were so worried about Sissy being weak, they were making her weak.
We went up the stairs slowly. Sissy braced herself on the banister, her hand shaking, and kept her other arm around my neck. By the time we got to the landing, we were both exhausted.
“You need to shower, girl,” I said. “You stink like feet.”
And she did. Worse than, actually, but I wanted to keep things light.
Our shower still had the metal bar and fold-out seat from when Grandpa Brewer was here. He had even a harder time getting up the stairs. Eventually, he got so bad that Dad had to sponge-bathe him. I turned on the water and made sure it wasn’t too hot or too cold but just right. I eased her onto the seat.
“Wait here, Goldilocks,” I said. “Can you wash yourself?”
Sissy nodded. I made sure she could reach everything and headed out to get some clothes and a towel.
After the shower, I fed her a ham sandwich on wheat–her favorite. She only ate half and that took more than twenty minutes. Between every bite, she’d set the sandwich down, look at it curiously, look at me, and then quietly grind her teeth like this was the first sandwich she had ever eaten and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. She didn’t touch the tea I poured her or the bag of chips I opened for her. The whole time, I sat across from her and watched, chewing as quietly as I could on my own food.
I reached across the table and snagged a corn chip. It was chili cheese. My favorite.
“We should go outside.”
Sissy choked, spraying flecks of spit in my direction.
“Is that okay? Going outside?” I asked.
Her eyes said no but her head nodded yes. I listened to that.
I knew our parents would have a fit if they found out. They were treating her like she was fragile little baby. Like any bump or bruise would send her right back into the hospital. But I knew my sister. She was strong. She belonged outside. If they did find out, I’d be in trouble. But I wasn’t going to say anything and Sissy, well, she was still as quiet as can be.
I stepped toward the mudroom with a big smile on my face. “Let’s get our shoes on.”
We walked into the house an hour later, slick with sweat. I was so thirsty. I swung by the fridge to grab a water as Sissy stumbled past me.
“Do you want anything?” I asked, enjoying the cool air touching my face.
I felt something change. I looked at Sissy. She sat down uneasily on a kitchen chair.
Despite this afternoon, despite the past hour of us being us, of feeling like things were normal, they weren’t. For an all-too-brief stretch of time, I had forgotten something was wrong with Sissy.
But looking at her now, I could tell it was all too much for her.
It didn’t even occur to me that Sissy didn’t say a word the whole time we were playing. It didn’t seem odd because we didn’t do anything that required talking. I grabbed a second bottle of water and went into the family room. I set them both down on a TV tray and then returned to the kitchen for Sissy.
I walked her, slowly, back to her bed. She climbed onto it, laid down, and curled into her blanket. It was stupid hot outside and I was sweating like mad. I didn’t even want to be wearing a shirt right now much less be under a blanket.
I put my hand on Sissy’s forehead. It was cool. Dry.
I slid Sissy’s shoes off her feet, straightened her blanket, and left her to rest.
That night, my father gave me another lecture. Then my mom came in and they both ripped into me. I sat on my bed, pillow kneaded into my stomach, and listened. At the end, I was sentenced.
Grounded. No television. No games. No phone. Nothing until school started next Monday.
I wasn’t allowed to interact with Sissy in any way.
The family room and my sister were both off limits.
No exceptions.
