Wretched Roses √

CHAPTER THREE| TEARS

Leona

There I stood, dancing on my bed like a little girl. My long, brown hair was set up in a messy bun, my face was naked with the only closest thing to makeup was some chapstick on my lips. But it didn't matter that I wasn't wearing makeup or looked like shit because I was having fun without a care in the world.

Just as I got to the best part of the song and was prepared to grab my hair brush and sing like I was the only one in the world, I heard my phone go off, interrupting the music.

"What," I said as I picked the phone up.

"Yeah, yeah. Pretend like you actually did something productive and I interrupted you. There's this bonfire tonight near campus, you should come. It'll be fun, I swear," she said.

"Sure," I answered. It'd probably be good to get out of the house a bit before my last year of college starts.

"Please, Leona. It's the last week of-
Wait what? You said yes, awesome. I'll see you tonight. I'll text you the time and place," she said, happily. Surprised that I agreed to come since I hadn't done much this summer.
"You'll have fun, it's gonna be good for you to get out of the house after, you know," she said, gulping before she said the last words. It was a sensitive subject and she knew it.

"I'm not gonna break everytime you say her name. She's not gonna die," I said, probably still trying to convince myself that it was fine. That she was fine.

"Leona, I know she's your twin and you don't want to admit it, but she's dying and there's nothing you can do about it."

"No, she's not. She's fighting, she is strong, I know she'll make it," I told her, I was mad, no I was furious that she would say something like that.

"I'm just worried about you, you know there's a really high chance of you getting it as well or something similar. You're lucky you haven't been diagnosed with anything," she said.

Lucky. I was anything but lucky, it should be me in the hospital not her. Did I even deserve to go out and party knowing she was in the hospital fighting for her life? But maybe May was right, maybe I needed to get out. After all, I know she doesn't want me to feel guilty.

I hung up on her. The tears burning in my eyes, I forced myself not to cry. Deep breaths. Deep breaths, I kept telling myself. A tear started to form in the egde of my eye. It all started to feel so real as I tried to keep myself from breaking down on the floor. My knees started to shake, the deep breaths turned into panicking and my knees finally gave in and broke down.

I can't do this. The tears were now falling down my eyes, burning my cheeks. My sobbing started to become uncontrollable and I was now sitting on the floor, crying. Without giving it a second thought I started biting on my nails to try to control the anxiety. My heart was aching just thinking about her.

She brought it up knowing I wasn't ready to talk about the fact that my twin, my other half, my best friend was dying and I couldn't do anything about it. The sadness turned into anger. The tears turned into screams of anger and I picked up the first thing I could find, a glass vase and threw it on the wall with all the force I had left and then punched the wall, letting out all my anger.

Once again, I was on the floor crying. Deep breaths, I told myself once again. But it was too much, the aching pain in my chest was too much for me to bear. It was real, I couldn't deny it anymore.