Teardrops On My Guitar

• Zoe King, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2014

Unrealistic situations constantly play through my head. I turn everything into something it could never be and waste my life praying it won’t. I replay these moments so frequently I no longer know what is true, and what I have imagined. I’m stuck in a fantasy of conversations that never took place, and friendships based on lies. But in that moment everything I felt was honest, and all I felt was fear. I had never been so scared in all of my life. I kept my eyes focused on the end of the bed, and tapped my foot in time to the tick of the clock. People came and left in a blur. I kept sitting there in the hospital chair unaware of anything other than her.
Now months later I’m faced with a group of friends who take their turn to plead their case each examining my arm and staring into my fears. They try to brainwash me with memories and beg me to explain, but how do I explain something they already know? Something they already don’t care about. People didn't understand I was already partly dead, only born seventy four seconds apart, achieving life skills in unison. Now she was gone, and I was left.
I made my way to the councillor’s office. It makes no sense to me how talking to her about Phoebe dying would make anything better for me. She spoke to me like everyone else, but I could see in her eyes the judgement, thinking about what she would label me. Suicidal, depressed, insane? 'Phoebe is your angel now.' But I don’t want an angel, I want my twin sister. I stared at the ground and fought back my tears. Then she held it out, the most beautiful yet heartbreaking thing of all. ‘How do you have that?!’ I screamed, ‘how dare you!’ My knees could barely support my body, tears blurred my vision, but somehow I ran, and I kept running until I was alone, once again in my room. I stared into the room across the hall, and imagined her sitting at her piano peacefully swaying to the chords and I saw myself sitting right there next to her with my guitar, the happiest I’ve ever been.
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Still in a daydream I opened it. There outside with a note attached laid the aged case. I ripped the note off and read it slowly. ‘I thought you might like it back, please just give it a go.’ Angered I threw the case along with my frustration at the piano and sat watching it. Curiosity filled my body. The urge to play was unbearable, my hands shook as I clicked open the case. There in all its glory, laid the only thing I had ever loved as much as her. My mind felt weak, but my body was strong, and I played. I played for hours. I wrote song after song. I cried of pain, and then slowly of relief. I no longer felt the pain that once consumed my mind, heart, and body. I felt strong.