I was the child she didn’t have to worry about, which meant I was the child she didn’t worry about.

Anger’s real name is Grief.

I’m not a whole person. I don’t think I’ll ever be. The parts that are missing died in the house I grew up in. They died when the straggling pieces were holding me back and I had to rip them off. They only exist in dreams now. It’s Grief for the child I could have been, not the child I grew to be; the child who learned how to desperately lick any moisture just to quench her thirst. It became another form of hating myself. It’s my grief that I couldn’t understand myself. There was no point in telling anyone what was happening inside me.

I don’t know where to go or who to go to.

I just run, and keep running, and running, and running, and running. There’s no destination. And I run. Until I can’t breathe anymore.

I was bullied before Elizabeth’s suicide, and I was bullied after. It was always about the same thing, that there was something wrong about me. That I’m cursed and bring bad luck. That I was better off never being born. That I was too ugly to ever be loved. I just wanted proof that I could.

I’ve been aware of the root issue, I just have been hiding from what caused it. It’s not some big epiphany. It’s not some big secret. It’s made me empty my entire life. I waited and waited but that torture would never end. I thought I would be saved when we moved to Darkwood. It was a new start. But when Elizabeth killed herself in front of me, how could I not believe it was my fault? I’m a disease. I infect. Even now, what I’ve done is proof of that. My existence hurts people.

The rain and thunder muffles out my screaming.

I can’t even stand right now and only hope my heart doesn’t explode while I’m holding it.

I don’t want to be alive anymore.

And my eyes open.

There’s no other sound except for the rain. Everything else is muted. The world is silent. It’s still. It has stopped. And I understand where I need to go and where it takes me, so I follow it.

“I’m here, Elizabeth.”

Since I can remember, my presence has been called. It’s always been unrecognizable, just another thing to add on the list of my deformities. I didn’t understand what it was until I got close to where it wanted me. As if it was fate, it brought me to this town. It was ripped away before I could understand why. The invisible thread towards Elizabeth has never been more violent.

I stand up and the world has gone completely silent. Not even the rain makes a sound anymore.

Elizabeth was an idea. Everything I learned from her was secondhand. Each person had their own unique story and their own opinion of her. She was a sweet girl who made everyone feel included. She was a stuck up bitch who thought was better than everyone else. She liked to eat at Darkwood’s Diner every Saturday morning. She didn’t have any hobbies but always enjoyed trying new things. The reason why she never did drugs before was because her brother became a homeless drug addict. She disliked certain people if it meant getting the approval of who she wanted. She volunteered at the community center. She once spent an entire day looking for her neighbor’s lost dog. She once organized a charity to help one of her classmate’s family medical bills. She once bullied a girl so much that she was forced to move away. She once stole money from her mother, enough to go to a ski resort for the weekend with her friends.

Elizabeth was selfish. She was selfless. She was a person. She was human. I don’t know a thing about her. I never did. I never got to know her. All I had was an immortalized idea. How could I ever possibly know what was true and what wasn’t?

Was she as selfish as it turned a blind eye? Or was she as sweet as she’s remembered?

This is what it’s all been leading to. I’m destined to be her. I always was. I can’t escape it. This is where she wanted me to be. It’s why I could never escape her.

Her front door is unlocked.

The house has changed. It’s trashed and graffiti is splattered on the walls. It was barren like it was ready to be moved into at any moment before. Now the house is broken into and vandalized. Her room is the exception. It’s clean but it isn’t empty anymore. It’s as if she’s still sleeping here. Her bed is here. It’s made. Her cabinet and drawers are here too, but they’re empty. Her closet remains the same. On the wall, a poster is back on where it left its discoloration. The bed's decorative pillows and plush dolls are scattered around the room. Elizabeth was also a fan of Emmah. The artist is wearing a beautiful white dress that almost looks like a wedding gown. She’s posed in the middle of performing with her violin.

There’s a journal on the ground in the middle of the room.

I set my soaked backpack down and dry myself with an old towel in her bathroom. It’s the only thing there. As I dry myself, take out the drugs my mom tossed back inside. There’s an 8-ball of cocaine, two grams of Molly, a pill of ecstacy, and two xanax bars. I take a dip of Molly with my finger and put everything in my back pocket.

I pick up the journal. It’s sealed with a band and a lock. The key is in my pocket. I open the journal. Almost every page has writing on it, even if it doesn't fill it entirely. This is Elizabeth's handwriting. These are her words. This is what she left behind. A page has been ripped off and it makes me pay attention to the one after it. It sinks my heart. This page shouldn’t exist. It should not be possible.

The right side of the page is written with her handwriting. What’s written on the left isn’t hers. It’s not as neat or pretty. It’s mine…

The Aphex Twin Flame

Float away | With an ocean’s breeze

A lullaby of hymns | A whisper on the beach

What did the waves say | Some secrets are meant to be shared

You looked good | With a smile so warm

Dancing in the wind | A flower will bloom

Think you can teach me | The love that was chosen

When you come back to me | You’ll heal my soul

No matter how long it takes | I’ll heal yours

I’ll wait for you | Oh my oh my

My little | Raging blue

Twin Flame

Half of it is undoubtedly mine, but I never wrote this. I would remember something like this. How could I? When?

The key was in my pocket.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Is this what you want to show me?”

I don’t get a response. She’s dead. It’s not possible. I’m going crazy, but so was Elizabeth. It’s a poem that can be read in three completely different ways; in it’s entirely, or just with what I or Elizabeth wrote. Either way, it doesn’t make sense. I’m speaking to her, and she’s speaking to me. Together we make it whole.

Dread washes over me and I turn away from the page. When was this written? What did Elizabeth know?

I start from the beginning. Most pages are left more empty than filled. Her thoughts are incomplete and unresolved. Some of it is just rambling about nothing. Some pages only have a single sentence. Some have a date while others don’t. But mistakenly, this is her suffering. She’s angry. Elizabeth is so fucking angry.

Elizabeth’s ex best friend, Megan, slept with her boyfriend. All her other friends knew and nobody told her. They were all secretly laughing behind her back. This is the same Megan who invited me to the party at the night of the suicide. The one who made everyone bully or avoid me because it happened in front of me.

Elizabeth called her friends snakes in the tall grass.

She was angry that she didn’t know who her real friends were, if she had any. She started to date Cody and hang out with his group because she thought they were different. They weren’t. She was intoxicated and obsessed with Cody. So much so that she created meaning to his dumb silver tongue and took it more than it was, just a boy trying to impress a girl.

Then on the Fourth of July, Emily told her the promise she had with Cody. Her jealousy turned into anger, and anger became revenge.

None of this is new to me. It’s just nice to read her side of what happened.

It’s true she took revenge on Megan and exposed her inappropriate affair with a teacher in their school. It’s true she got revenge on Amanda by making Amanda’s brother fuck the girl she hated the most, Sara. It’s true that Elizabeth purposely made Emily jealous and twisted Cody’s image to her. It’s true that she cheated on Cody with Andrew just to see what would happen. It’s true that it made her pregnant. It’s true that she did all this and meant it.

But it’s also true that it killed her inside.

On the next page, I read:

I met the girl in the white dress

My neck nearly tears for how fast I snap my head to the poster. My breathing gets heavier and my heartbeat gets deeper. The fog from outside is seeping through the window and clouds the room. I’m going crazy. My heart is telling me that I’ve been connected and I didn’t want to acknowledge it.

The poem follows after that single sentence, then on the page after that:

I found love. I found peace. I found relief. I found out why I’m alive.

This body of mine weighed nothing.

I no longer had to struggle.

There wasn’t anything to run away from

But I can’t remember now. I can’t remember why I don’t have to suffer anymore. She said something to me. She said that everything could go back to the way it was. She said how. I don’t remember. I can’t remember.

The next page:

Fate is a cruel mistress. Is there any point in life if everything is predetermined. Does anything matter if it is? In what world was I destined to be cruel? For what purpose? What if that’s not how I want things to be?

If I just remember, can I change it?

Next:

This tragedy exists because I was full of rage. I was full of rage because I was full of grief. My grief kept telling me the same thing:

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t want this. And everyone laughed. I was held up by the throat and was told:

But this is how it is.

I’m such a waste of a girl, of a person. Rumination. I’m nothing more. We lament the suffering we all go through. We delude ourselves that we’ll come out stronger on the other end. Pain does not make a better person. It doesn’t teach anything. There’s no lesson to learn.

Next:

Lyle is thin and pale, like snow. He has silver white hair and the lightest of blue eyes. Lyle has a silver tongue. He promised to give me a vial of Winter if I do some errands for him. I’ll be able to meet the girl in the white dress again.

It’s easy. I’m just collecting money and he keeps me safe while I do it. We get to talk in between. It’s nice. He’s not as intimidating as I first met him. He listens to me. He cares about me.

I told him what I wanted the Winter for. He said I didn’t need it to take back control of my life. I have the power to do it already. But I’m unsure. Lyle says he can show me how.

I trust him.

Next:

There will never be another you, another me. I could have done so many different things to prevent me from losing my sanity. Did it seem fair that I didn’t? Was there a better way to let go of my anger? I was always meant to be used.

I just wanted them to see how much they were hurting me. It’s pathetic and selfish, I know. I just wanted to be understood. Even if it’s pointless, even if I can’t be saved, someone, just please, hold me. Please, I’m so tired.

Lyle said he’ll give me the Winter after one last day.

I told him how it’s driving me crazy. The more I see, the less I understand. Bit by bit, it’s becoming harder to resist. I don’t want to be a slave to fate. I refuse to go where it wants to take me. But it’s a losing battle. It has been since I met the girl in the white dress, when I became aware of it. Nothing has been the same since.

I told Lyle about this but I couldn’t describe it with any more detail than it just being what it is, a pull.

He said that I shouldn’t listen to it.

I stop.

The walls of the room throb as if they were breathing. The fog is taking away all the oxygen and it’s getting harder to breathe. A slow melody being played on a xylophone hums inside my head, like a lullaby. There’s a crack in the window and the wind is blowing on the poster that’s only being held up by two push pins.

I continue where I left off:

A motorcycle ran a red light and crashed into another car. His head ended up being run over. Crushed. It was a freak accident.

Lyle said one more day, then all of this could be over.

I turn the page:

The body fell down next to me.

The body fell down next to me.

The body fell down next to me.

I killed someone today.

He made me do it.

And Lyle didn’t give me Winter.

There's only so much that can happen before someone is pushed over the edge. For Elizabeth, it was this. She was already at her limit. She was so desperate and blind that she couldn’t see that she was at the end of the road. She didn’t die because she was in a drug induced psychosis. She didn’t die for the ultimate revenge. She didn’t die because she wanted to.

She just wanted to apologize.

Elizabeth just wanted to be happy again.

I turn the page:

Lyle never gave me the Winter he promised, so I sought it out elsewhere. It wasn’t quite the same. I didn’t see the girl in the white dress again. Instead, there was someone else. White hair. White skin. White Eyes.

Or maybe I was only hallucinating.

Regardless, my eyes opened too late.

I turn to the final page:

Destiny is literal free will. It’s causality. It’s an equal push and pull of a force made from choices. It’s a give and a take. And no one can escape destiny. Bad creates bad. Hurt people, hurt people. Pain begets pain. It’s a spiral of misery. There is no room for kindness as it’ll only get lost in the storm.

Fate is a pull. That’s all there is. Fate is not cruel. Fate does not take. It doesn’t exist.

And it exists within me.

This suffering of mine, this cruelty that I’ve committed, it came from my free will. It wasn’t decided for me. I’m who decided to be part of destiny.

I remember now. I misheard what she said and meant. There is no fixing what I’ve done. Forgiveness is an unrelenting mountain to climb over. That’s all I can do now. Time. All I have to do is wait so I’m not alone when I climb it.

Since the beginning of time, we’re always told that in order for someone to love us, we have to learn to love ourselves first. That’s bullshit because what if you find the love within you, in the love of someone else? What if there was someone who saw the ugly, the mess, the imperfections, and pain and loved you regardless? What if they could give, and give, and give, until there's nothing left? What if their love is there to heal you? Silly me, I was confusing destiny and fate as being the same thing. I should have seen it sooner.

Sometimes being offered tenderness and kindness is proof that you’re ruined. Sometimes it hurts more than it helps. Sometimes it’s so unfamiliar that you can’t accept it. It isn’t yours.

Guilt does not purify me. Remorse does not heal, it leaves scars. Scars are proof of the damage that was done. I’m a collection of scars. Some are shallow, others are deep. Some are sensitive while others are indistinguishable from what they replaced. Violence exists in the pursuit of peace

I can no longer endure violence.

If anyone could have saved me, it would have been you.

I don’t deserve it.

Not anymore. I’m sorry.

Meeting you isn’t going to change that.

The walls were never breathing. The fog was never inside. There was no wind. There was no lullaby. It was all in my head.

At first, I believe Elizabeth was talking about Freyja in the final entry. But deep down, I know, I know it was about me. It’s always been about me. She knew about me. She implies she knew why we’re connected. What else did she know? Just what did she see?

I understand less the more I reread.

Then there’s that poem. There’s this house and this room. Nothing was here when I came here before. This stuff shouldn’t be here. Was I hallucinating that it wasn’t, or am I hallucinating it now?

Weird has been occurring more frequently each day, but this has gone beyond weird.

This is absurd.

This is crazy.

I’m going crazy.

The sun has set and I ran out of tears to cry. Elizabeth’s bed is warm and soft. Her blankets hug me tightly. I wonder if her mother ever carried her up to this room as a child after she fell asleep on the couch during a family party. Was she tucked in? Was it not the most comforting sleep? Could she hear the laughter in the other rooms?

Virginia is trying to find me. Sara is trying to find me. Cody is trying to find me.

I can only rest now.

I’ll sleep and in the morning, I can never go back. I’ll only continue to bring suffering to them if I stay. If I follow the pull of all these new threads, maybe I’ll understand why I do. Maybe I’ll find out why I was born.