My gaze drifts around the scene, watching people run around and call orders to one another, when I catch three people standing over a body across the road.
The jeans, the black hair, the Eastwood hockey hoodie…Jurian.
I sit up, pushing Mark away from me in the process and try to stand. “What are they doing?” I ask.
They’re walking away from him.
“Sasha, you need to lie back down. We don’t know the extent of your injuries, you could-“
“Why aren’t they doing anything?” I cut him off. Panic grips me, and the need to run to him crawls under my skin, “m- make them do something.Please.”
No one says anything, they just hold onto my arms, trying to force me back to the ground. I don’t look at any of them. “Please, you have to make them do something. They can’t just leave him there, he’s hurt.”
“Honey.“ The female paramedic grabs my wrist, and I finally turn towards her. She wasn’t even over there, she has no idea if he’s alive or not… but the look in her eyes, it’s like a stab in the chest.
“No, they have to save him. That’s my brother, they can’t just stop. They have to do something.”
They try to fight me, hold me down, but I win. “You can’t just walk away from him, you have to try!” I scream at the backs of the paramedics walking away. My left ankle throbs with pain as I sprint towards my brother. People yell at me to stop, but I can’t stop. He’s my other half, my twin, myperson.
My shins scrape against the pavement as I slide across it and grab Jurian’s hand. He’s still warm, but there’s no life in the grey-blue eyes that used to light up when he looked at me.
His hair falls messily around his face. I tried to convince him to cut it for so long, and now all I want is to see him run his fingers through it like he always did. I want to hear him laugh and tell me that everything’s going to be fine. I want him to poke fun at me. I want him to give me a hug and take me home.
Glasssticks out of his neck, dark red blood sitting still around him like his heart has stopped beating.
That’s because it has,the voice whispers again.
I killed both of them.
Whatever god answered my prayers has a sick sense of humour. I lived to see my brother… but we both know that’s not what I meant.
Everything hurts.
I feel like my heart’s been ripped out of my chest, like there’s a part of my soul missing.
My parents walk in front of me, heads down and holding onto each other for comfort. My mother’s black dress blows slightly in the wind, but she does nothing to fix it. My father, on the other hand, runs his fingers through his hair, the same way Jurian does—did.
The same way Juriandid.
He looks over his shoulder, greyish blue eyes staring into mine, and for a second, he’s Jurian. I blink, and he fades back into himself.
My father’s eyes drift to the bandages on my forehead, staring at them for a second before making eye contact again and quickly looking away, probably seeing just as much of my brother in me as I do in him. We can’t escape it, we all look too much alike to look at one another anymore, and when we do… it’s no longer than a second, anything more hurts too much.
It’s just the three of us here. No wake, no service, nothing.My parents didn’t want to make a spectacle of my brother’s death, they wanted to get it over with.
We all saw it at my grandparents’ funerals, the way people would come and make it all about themselves, or even worse, pretend to know them better than they did.
Jurian deserves better than that.
There are so many people who loved him, so many people who would want to say goodbye, but today is just for us. Everyone else will get their chance at the memorial game this Friday.
Nathan swore up and down that he wouldn’t resent me when I told him he couldn’t come, but part of me knows that he will. Even if it’s deep, deep down.
My mother holds her hand out to my father, gripping him tightly as they lower my brother into the ground.
Neither of them reaches for me.
So I hold onto myself, forcing back the tears because I don’t deserve to cry. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.
