Parker returned home that night, distraught, and angry.  He was more angry then he had ever been in this, how dare she How DARE she put him through this, how dare she figure causing everyone else so much pain would take her own away.  He knew the way she had written the note that she had planned on not living, but why her heart?  Was it that broken that she couldn’t see the way it would impact?  He didn’t understand, he COULDN’T understand.  He slammed the door shut to the house and then walked around, pacing the floor as he tried to figure it out, to try and see into her world a little clearer.

His thoughts brought his steps to her room.  It was still packed up; boxes were still taped as if the things contained were nothing more then memories that could be thrown away, and that she wouldn’t need them where she was going.  Had she done this so neatly for him?  So he didn’t have to do it later?  Not a nick-knick, nothing.  Nothing that was personal and might shine some light on the kind of person she was. He touched the bed, the sheets were starting to dry and her blood was cracking. Police tape was everywhere, because of course they had been called, but he had spent more then a day in hospital, so they were done, it was an apparent attempted suicide, nothing more then that.  He left them along though, refusing to clean them, let her stain fill the room.  

Parker tried to feel her, to sense what was going on in her mind when she did this, would the air here tell him anything?  Would the breeze through the house whisper her secret to him and finally give him some peace in the matter?  He slumped to the floor near the foot of the bed, staring at the bare boxes that contained his sisters life, and the bed that contained her blood over it’s fabric.

“God damn it you selfish bitch!”

He screamed it out to the empty space, hoping that somehow she would be able to hear it or to feel it in her coma sleep.  His arm went flying and he slammed his elbow back into her desk, how could she DO this to him, how could she just want to leave him.  What had been SO bad that she couldn’t survive here even with him!  They had been able to dig themselves out of such deep trenches, but now, it had gotten too much and she hadn’t shared a word with him.  He crawled towards the boxers so neatly packed and stacked in the corner and he grabbed the first off the top, and started to rip it open.  He tossed pieces of clothes, some papers digging around, there had to be something that would tell him, some clue, some hint.  He wanted the story to this.

Dispatching the first box without care behind him he dug into the other, struggling and grunting to rip off the packing tape and rummaging through the things contained inside without a care.  She had no care for his feelings, and he in turn would have no care for her things.  There was nothing in that one, but he was like a man possessed, tears flowing from his eyes and he ripped open the third and sighed softly.  Neatly stacked on their ends, in what he knew was chronological order where notebooks.  All in the same colour of dark green, and probably all filled with her daily musings.  He had found what he was looking for.

He hefted the box up and carried it off to his room, dropping it on the bed without preamble and he flopped down near it.  He danced his fingers along the wired spines before plucking one near the beginning and flipped it open.  He smiled at the familiar handwriting, the way it looped in that careless way of hers, and how she would scribble out a word misspelled, the doodles that she left in the margins.  He skimmed through the first few pages, trying to pick up where she was in her life, and he found it was law school.  To the end he let his eyes go trying and then laid it down beside him.  He plucked the next in line and again started to skim, nothing there that was out of the ordinary, class schedules, getting the job for the summer, and her rating system for teachers.  She was highly proficient in learning from just about anyone, but that also meant that the bad teachers got bad grades in her book.

The next contained more of the same, a few failed dates and the decision that being a girl just plain sucked and there was no reason to try and flaunt herself anymore.  He chuckled lightly as he read the words, “I have come to the conclusion that having breasts and no dick just mean I am going to be dumped all that much quicker and I should just quit while I’m ahead.”  Only his sister could actually describe herself as with breasts, but no dick, instead of just saying female, she liked to be colourful in her writing, even if she couldn’t be with her words.  It was towards the end that he found something worth noting.  At the beginning she had been very anti-male and now she finding herself attracted to a male that she called E.  No name.  Damn that woman.

He continued on with the other and instead of skimming he started to read it in earnest, starting with that first page.  It picked up where the other stopped, with E and how she felt about him.  He made her nervous and made butterflies not just appear, but fight in her stomach.  It was an undeniable, but dangerous combination she wrote.  How could one person cause such a myriad of emotions by just walking and looking at her.  She went on for paragraphs about his eyes, the unnatural colour and the way sometimes they could stare through her, and how others she could feel the heat from them as if they were made from molten gold.  He felt a surge of happiness for her, for exploring something she had been so adamant about keeping silent for so long.

“Sometimes I just can’t believe it.  Why do I shake when he stands beside me?  What is this new tremble that runs through me and that heat I feel in my stomach.  Why can’t I just get rid of it?  No matter what I do it’s always there and I can’t seem to shake the feeling of being afraid and exhilarated. I never want it to stop, but I know that it probably will.  Nothing good can ever last, specially when dealing with me.”

He sighed reading that.  His moment of happiness dashed when that paragraph.  Why would she feel that way at the beginning of a relationship?  Or whatever it was she was having with this man.  Why would she bother to put herself through it if she already felt bad, she could have walked away before she was invested.  What drew her?   Why?  The notebooks were vintage her though.  The scribbling of what he assumed was his full name in the margins, how it changed from just being E to the name Mat, how sometimes she would circle the name as to emphasize how much she enjoyed it. Some of what she wrote actually made him blush and he had to flip through, feeling like he shouldn’t read about his sister’s sexual activity. But sometimes he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“I’ve never been touched like that before.  Sometimes I can just be sitting there and he’ll look at me and I’m instantly feeling that arousal burn between my thighs. My breath goes hot in my chest and it takes a few quick ones to try and calm me down, but by then it’s too late.  He’s seen it, and smirks at what he has caused.  That squirming girl behind the book turned on by a look.  The Dirty Bookworm he whispers in my ears when he’s close enough. HIS Dirty Bookworm. How can I resist it then, why should I have too?  I’ve waited so long for someone to want me.”

He sat like that for hours, reading through the journals as if his life depended on it. He read about her trip out of the country, why hadn’t she even called him to tell him she was going in case something bad happened! Where was this strength she possessed that was now gone! Why couldn’t she old on to it that damn woman.  He took in every word, with surprise, with anger, and some hatred growing in the pit of his stomach.  But he didn’t know whom he hated worse.  Who was this girl, what had happened to his sister and WHY had she allowed herself to become like this.  And what was this creature that had drawn her in, who had taken her love and twisted it into something that wasn’t real He had left her, and she had tried to go on, he had read through that, how she had gone back to school, gotten her own place, but not mere pages later she was back in his arms. What drew her to that force to the point she couldn’t break away?   More importantly why didn’t she want to leave?  

When he came to the end, it was clear she had been through more then he could ever imagine, but he was confused by such things.  She had started to rant and rave about vampires and other things that he didn’t believe existed.  How sometimes she wanted to bleed herself out along the floor to remove that taste from her mouth, to just get him away from her once and for all.  She had made the decision to move in with Parker not too long after that one was dated.  

“I can’t do it anymore.  I can’t stay in this place and hide myself away in a corner.  Everything I touch dies.  Everything I love holds tight to me and then throws me away.  I’m not just left.  I’m thrown away like so much trash.  I wish I could be as cold as the Colonel.  I wish that it didn’t matter to me if someone stayed or go, or if I could see them, then it would be all easier to me.  I can’t bear my own skin anymore because he’s touched it and nobody else will touch it in the same way. How do you get over it?  How do you sit there and let the fire burn out when you clung to it to keep yourself warm and alive?  What do you do when all the faith you have in someone was misplaced and your judgment no longer works on the same level as your heart?  Why do people let go of me and I’m left with my hand tingling from where they held it so tightly?

Why do I still love when no one loves me in return?  I can’t stand it anymore. I have to get out of here, and as far away as I can.  It hurts so badly when I try to sleep.  I can feel him there, I can taste him in my mouth and I want to rip out my tongue because of it.  My skin is tainted.  Those eyes stare back at me in the mirror, how I wish I had the strength to take a knife to it and gouge what remains of him out of me.  If I can’t make him go away, I’ll make myself go away.”


She’d make herself go away.  He rubbed his face slightly.  He knew she hadn’t meant for this to be read while she was still alive, but this was what she got for doing this. He had dipped into her private life, found out what was going on. Even though some of it confused him even more.  Why had such a strong woman, given it all up for the lack of love from a man that, at least in Parker’s opinion, didn’t deserve her.  Then again no man had ever been good enough for his sister. He closed the last one and laid it on her chest. The most current one obviously wouldn’t have been packed away; he would search for that later. Already light was streaming in from the outside, it was already a new day. He slumped down into the bed and closed his eyes, the pictures that the notebooks had given his brain were his dreams and he slept fitfully.