By: Chloe Xiao

“So, what’d you know about the shooting?”

Lydia sank down in her seat, her puffy eyelids making a bare effort to stare at the seemingly emotionless officer. She stared down at her shuffling feet before Officer, Officer… Lydia just sat there trying to recall the events in her mind. When she finally looked back up at the nameless Officer, she told her everything.

Her heart felt betrayed by her mouth, but her mind forced it to keep running out. Her lungs screamed in protest but she still kept going. By the time she stopped, she realized that a new, still nameless officer was in the room. A girl with hair black as night, and deep brown eyes. Her face was tanned from long days at the beach. Her big sister, Jenny.

Jenny’s familiar smirk made Laura nearly burst into tears again. Her mind raced around all of her classmates, funny little Ishwin, always desperate to prove herself and somehow able to drag the four of them behind the towering bookshelf. Mean and yet brave Jon, shielding them all from the hail of bullets. Bossy and strong Bridgett, dodging out of Jon’s shadow with a hidden scalpel that she took from a cubby in the lab, killing at least one of those killers.

And how could she forget about the most annoying yet sweet little sibling ever. Her younger twin Lucinda was tall, towering over those intruders, smashing books, and dissecting trays, the frog’s still on them.

And it was all for nothing

Jenny waited, sitting there for over an hour watching her little sister scream out incoherent sentences, raving and screaming, sobbing how she should have done more. Her head-on, sensitive little sister. The little sister who she hadn’t seen in so many years after she became part of the police. There wasn’t ever time for a meet up. Now there would never be a meetup.

Lucinda, the Lucinda who had hoped would one day join her older sister Jenny in the police department, would now never get the day a shiny badge was pinned to her chest, never getting to stay up many a night trying to solve a difficult case.

So much that she could never do.