When I was a little girl I used to spin around in circles, trying to find reality in the spirals in my mind. I still do that, in places where no one disturbs me and I’m left with thoughts jumbled together like puzzle pieces. No matter how many times I spin, I can’t find that essential piece of the real world I can call my own.
Sarah does that a lot now. Sometimes I catch her spinning around in the meadow, brown curls catching the dying sun as she spins and spins and spins. She never notices me, and I am glad, for I do not know what I would say if she did.
Before it happened, we used to sit, sister and sister, on the porch, watching the fireflies in the darkness. We sang Owl City’s ‘Fireflies’ whenever we saw them and laughed until our lungs hurt. Sarah sung the best, and I laughed the loudest.
The night it happened, Sarah was at a friend’s house and I was aimlessly wandering the deserted streets of the city, hands stuffed in my pockets. I hated the city. The stars were always dim compared to the artificial lights. Sarah hated it, too, which made me love her even more. I remember how on that night I glared at the obsidian sky dotted with diamonds and cursed myself for fading into society, like the stars over the city. I swore to myself then that nothing was going to stop me from living my life however I wished.
I regret making that promise, for I truly believe that fate heard me that night.

Suicide. That was the verdict. Using razors and nylon rope, they slit their wrists and hung themselves from the ceiling. The police told me that they probably used the dining room chairs in order to tie the nylon around the light fixtures.
They didn’t leave a note, but they left everything else. The house was paid off, I got the car, and I was now Sarah’s guardian.
I was only seventeen years old. Sarah was eight. We were too young for such tragedy.
I remember, after the police left with the bodies and grim faces, how Sarah came home with a smile on her face, telling me how she made me a necklace at her friend’s. I remember staring blankly at nothing until her sweet voice asked me what was wrong and where mom and dad were.
I lied. I couldn’t tell her the horrible truth. ‘They were killed. Someone came and killed them.’
At that moment, Sarah was no longer my sister. Tied by blood, yes, but whilst my eyes were gleaming with lies and guilt, hers were empty and lifeless, and that was what made us no longer sisters.
All throughout the funeral, she never spoke a word and never shed a tear. Weeks after the graves were dug and the corpses rotting, she finally broke the silence. ‘Why?’
That question still haunts me everywhere I go, and deep down, I know the answer will never be found, like sunken treasure at the bottom of the sea, waiting for nothing.

Looking back now, I know that in some alien way, I took part in their suicide. I wasn’t the perfect daughter, and mom never loved me the way she loved Sarah, despite what she said. All the fights, all the screaming, all of it amounted to a razor’s kiss on vulnerable skin.
Sarah blames me, I know, though she never says so. She finds release in spinning, a release I yearn to feel. Unlike her, I’m falling, falling forever.
I hope that she learns to find hope in the scars of the past, and I hope that my betrayal won’t make her hate me more than she already does. Fruitless this all may be, I still cross my fingers every night and whisper to the fireflies that everything will be okay in the end, because if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

I don’t know what to do. Should I ask her why she grows thinner every day or why her skin is so pale? I’m afraid to know, because I don’t want to lose my sister. She may be falling, but I’m falling, too, and I don’t want her to land first.
She spins. Sometimes I catch her spinning when she thinks she’s alone, and she’s not finding anything, just like me. We are too alike.
I don’t think I can spin anymore. She thinks I hate and blame her, but I don’t.  I know she blames herself, because she was the other daughter, the one who was loved less than me.
I see her now, fingers crossed, pale lips moving as the fireflies dance around her. I wonder what she is saying, for we never talk like we used to. The stars shine brightly, like diamonds, and I know, as my fallen sister whispers to herself, that everything was going to be okay in the end, whenever it came, and that we would fall together for a long time.