Have fun reading this one
“You look nice,” Aunt Chrystal said dubiously.
Anita stared at herself in the mirror in distaste. “I look fat.”
Aunt Chrystal shrugged and picked up another outfit. “Yeah, okay. Do you think this would look better?”
Anita shook her head slowly. “Nothing ever will.”
“Nita,” Aunt Chrystal said slowly, rolling her eyes, “You need to listen to me here.”
Anita turned to look at her aunt with large eyes. “Of course.”
“No matter how many outfits you try on... no matter how often you tell yourself that you are beautiful... You are never going to change the fact that you hate what you look like.” Aunt Chrystal shrugged. “So you either need to deal with it or actually do something about it. Because I'm getting tired of having you mope about your weight and what you look like and never have you change anything. It's tiring, hon.”
Anita blinked back a few tears and took a deep breath. “Okay. What do you suggest?”
Her aunt shrugged and took a long drag out of her cigarette. “You know, I don't know, kid. I am just trying to give you some friendly advice. Trying to sound wise. Did it work?” Aunt Chrystal smirked. “Maybe you could try to look more like me.”
Anita looked up and down her aunt. Her mom's sister was much younger, an older teenager, and she had this sort of punk rock, goth look going. From her dyed black hair, down to her black clothes, and makeup, and even attitude, Aunt Chrystal was everything Anita didn't really want to be. Looking down at her outfit, she bit her lip. “But I like my colorful outfits, and my sunny look.”
“It was just a suggestion. Maybe you could go on a diet. Then you would have to buy all new clothes, though. Is it worth it?” Aunt Chrystal smiled and waved. “I'm going to go now. You hear me? Nita? Are you listening? Do you hear me?”“Nita!”
Anita opened her eyes with a jerk and sat up, gasping. She stared into her aunt's eyes.
“Hey, hush, quiet. It's okay.”
Anita scrambled to her feet and backed away from Chrystal. “Don't come near me,” she said, her voice shaking. “Where are my parents? Where am I?” She looked around in a panic. “What is going on?” She took in the scene: ambulances, a fire truck, police cars, and two ruined vehicles. “What is going on?” she repeated, her voice rising in panic.
“Quiet, quiet,” Chrystal said, her voice worried. “Your parents are on their way. I was at your house when they called, so I told your parents and came here straight away.” She bit her lip. “Anita.”
Anita jumped at the commanding tone of her aunt's voice. “What?” she asked desperately.
“You have to stay calm. You have nothing wrong, except a minor concussion.” Chrystal waved her hand in front of Anita's face. “Hey. Focus.”
Anita tried, but her gaze kept drifting to the crash. “What happened? I don't remember anything.”
Chrystal frowned. “They said you might have something like that happen. They called it... um... retrograde amnesia. The memory might come back, and it might not.”
“The memory of what?” Anita almost shouted.
“Okay, okay.” Chrystal shut her eyes and took a long, deep breath. “What do you remember about today?”
Anita frowned and tried to focus. “Um, I, um... had breakfast, and Mom and Dad told me they were going to go to an, um, antique show, but they didn't leave...” She looked around, panic rising again. “And now we're here. Oh, my god, why are we here?”
“Stop.” An attendant stepped into Anita's line of vision. “Stay calm. You have to stay calm. You can't yell, or do anything sudden. It will hurt your head.”
Anita took three deep breaths, in time with the attendant, and nodded slowly. “Okay. What happened?”
“You went to a—” Chrystal started, but stopped and bowed her head at something.
Anita turned. “Oh, my... god,” she breathed. “A body bag? Why is there a body bag? What happened? What happened?!” She was screaming at this point, but didn't care.
The attendant took her firmly by the shoulders and glanced at Chrystal. “You want to tell her?”
Chrystal stayed hunched over, her head down, her shoulders shaking slightly. She shook her head.
“You were driving with your friend Danielle today,” the attendant said softly, her face contorting slightly with pain, or maybe sadness. “And I'm very sorry. But she's dead.”
Screaming. That's all Anita could remember. There was a lot of screaming.
She was annoyed.
Why don't they stop screaming? She looked around for the screamer.
“Anita,” she heard a voice. That voice was familiar. That voice was good. “You have to stop screaming, honey.”
Oh, she thought, curious.
I'm the screamer. I need to stop. But when she tried, she couldn't.
She saw someone come up to her. “Stop. Or I'll have to put you under.” A few seconds, or was it minutes, later, she felt the prick of a needle. The screaming stopped.
Anita blinked back tears as she stood in her doorway later. She set down her purse and sat down on her bed. Pulling up Facebook, she saw a message from Carolyn.
“Hey! How are you doing? I was a little worried when I didn't hear from you yesterday. You promised you would message back.
It's okay, though. How are you?”
She sighed unsteadily. “Awful. You know Danielle?”
Carolyn wasn't on, but she would be soon, Anita knew. So she waited.
Standing up, she walked over to her photo album. She opened it up to when she turned eight.
“There you are,” she said softly. “I've missed you.” Danielle's face stared back at her, the face she first became friends with, the face that beat up the boy who called Anita a nerd, the face that never disappeared from her side.
Flipping through the years, she smiled through her tears and brought back every memory she could. She remembered birthday parties, horseback riding, basketball games, sleepovers, cooking disasters, everything she possibly could.
Flipping to two years prior, she choked back a sob to see Danielle no longer there. Instead, there was just Anita, in her black, and so much skinnier than she had been the year before. Anita had never been so proud of her body, but she had never been so lonely in her life.
“I lost those two years,” Anita sobbed, sitting on her floor in a heap. “I lost those two years, and I'll never get them back, and I was just getting my friend back, and this had to happen? Why, God? How am I supposed to believe in a deity that can't even let me be happy for a few months?” She slammed her fist on the floor and continued sobbing.
A ding on her phone brought her back. She slowly stood up and placed her photo album on her shelf before going to get her phone.
Carolyn: “Course. What happened? Did she abandon you again, like two years ago?”
Anita's face crumpled and she typed as well as she could without being able to see well. Her eyes were full with tears as she typed, “Yes, but in the most permanent way.”
“You mean... she's gone?”
“Yeah. Forever.” Anita sent the message before typing feverishly. “How come I lived and she died? She was so much happier, so much more alive, so full of vitality, so full of promise. How come I wasn't taken? We were in the same crash. We both were involved. And yet, here I still stand, alive, when I shouldn't be. When she should be. Why?”
“I don't know,” Carolyn said back after a few minutes. “How can anyone know? Do you need anything?”
“A time machine.” Anita threw her phone on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Her mom knocked and entered without waiting. “You okay?”
“No.”
“I know.” Coming over to Anita, Wendy stroked her daughter's hair. “I'm not, either.”
“Whatever.” Anita sat up and grabbed her laptop. “I think I'm going to write for a bit, Mom.”
“You can't.” Wendy gently extracted the laptop from her daughter. “No electronics. Otherwise you could make your concussion worse.”
Anita turned around and lay down, facing the wall.
“Okay,” her mom said after a few minutes. “Just let me know if you need anything.” Standing up, she left.
Anita swallowed hard and grabbed her phone. Checking to see if she messages on the fic site, she wasn't surprised to see two.
Keithsnumber1fan: “Update: I held a kangaroo. She was beautiful and I lost my heart to her. How are you doing today?”
emmetsnumber1fan: “Keith is being weird today. Please, save me! Okay, maybe I'm dramatizing, but I really think he's up to something, and I'm always scared when Keith is up to something.”
Anita stared the messages. “They're both so happy.” Her eyes welled with tears again, and she threw her phone against the other wall, hard. “So happy.”