I held the razor lightly between two fingers. I had taken it out of the Exacto-Knife that James stored in a kitchen drawer.

The junk drawer.

That was what he called it. It should be called the useful drawer, because I had found everything I needed in it.

I held the razor up to the light, watching it reflect and refract, shining onto the wall next to me.

I rolled up my sleeve, pushing it above my elbow. My mind was screaming at me, my desperation clawing at my throat and chest.

Lyric was leaving. She would be gone forever. She could never love me. I hated myself. I couldn't help her. I couldn't help anyone. I couldn't help my family. I would let them down. I would let her down.

I pressed the razor gently on my arm, watching the brown skin depress. One light swipe would make it all better.

"Kell?" Her voice echoed through my bedroom and I threw the razor next to the sink.

Her green eyes searched mine.

I could do this. I could feel this. I would save her. She would save me.

"Kell?" Lyric's voice pulled at me though I was far away.

I struggled toward her, to her voice, pushing away the heaviness burying me deep inside myself.

"Lyric!" I called to her and her face came into focus. I crawled toward her. She held out a hand to me and I looked down.

Blood stained her palm: pink, red, almost black. Another hand reached toward me. Darker, smaller.

"The blood," I whispered, trying to make her understand. "I can't."


The water closed over my head and I floated away. I followed the darkness, letting it surround me and suffocate me to keep the pain at bay.

"Kell?"

I stood in my kitchen.

"Papa?" I called.

No one answered me.

"Advika?"

My sister was always home when I got home. She went to work at seven in the evening at the nursing home and was back before I left for school. She took care of my father during the day and I took care of him all night.

My father wasn't well.

After an incident at a grocery store when my father threw oranges gleefully in the air, and then tackled the manager who dared stop his fun, my sister and I finally found the reason for his strange behavior: early onset dementia. It was a name that gave no insight into the changes such a diagnosis wrought. My once caring, logical, brilliant, and organized father was now unreasonable, irate, paranoid, and aggressive. I had bruises on my forearms and shoulders from protecting my head when he decided to swing his walker like a shotput. For an increasingly frail man, he was surprisingly strong when angry.

"Advika?" I called again, walking toward my father's bedroom. 

It had once been the living room, but as he became weaker and needed more care, we decided it made the most sense to keep him on the main living floor. 
I stepped in something sticky and sighed, tired and disgusted. My father threw his food at times. He couldn't chew and swallow whole foods now and was on a soft diet. It made him incredibly frustrated and meal times were some of the worst times in our house. In fleeting moments of clarity he begged for familiar foods.

Sure enough there was a handprint stain on the hallway wall, along with a weird smell; like dirty diapers and vomit.

Tatti. Shit. 

"Advika?" I hated the idea of my sister dealing with this all by herself. I should have quit the Academy. I should have begged my oldest sister to emigrate from England to help us. I should have focused on my family. Family first.

But which family?

The smell was getting worse and I paused, suddenly anxious. This felt wrong.

"Advika!" I yelled and heard a groan.

I ran, slipping again in whatever was on the floor and fell hard. I pushed myself up with my hands, but now in the entry way of the living room, with the waning afternoon sunlight pouring through the big picture window, I could see what was on the floor.

Huge red pools of sticky liquid.

My brain began to operate separately from my body. It took in the visual stimuli, processed it, spit out a label: blood. The other part was pure feeling: terror, confusion, denial.

I saw my father lying on the floor. His shirt was covered in blood.

"Papa!" I cried and crawled to him.

"Stand up," I demanded of my body.

"Impossible," it answered.

My father's eyes, so much like my own, were wide and confused.

"Chi," he said thoughtfully in Hindi, looking at his shirt. "Yuck."

My brain clicked. Academy training coming into play: triage. He had no life-threatening wounds, just some scratches on his face and arms.

I put my hands under his arms, dragging him to the sofa and propping him against the side.

"Stay," I demanded, amazed my voice was working.

"Advika!"

Push forward, move.

My legs responded, finally, and I stood, taking a step forward.

I tried to make sense of the mess. Streaks of red, starting light, like a finger painting flipped upside down and pulled across the floor, out of the room. I groped in my pocket for my phone, and hit buttons, any buttons: Taylor. James.

I just needed to find my sister, move forward, administer first aid, do what was needed. Act first, think second.

Why couldn't I stop thinking, though?

I saw a foot, clad in a purple converse sneaker, one foot bare. The leg of a blue scrub pulled up to reveal a brown calf, another leg, pulled up like a cricket's, ready to spring into the air. Rosie the Riveter scrub top. The old ladies loved it. Advika wore it for them.

The top shifted, lifted shallowly. A sound like a rattle, coins in a can, wet mucus, the inability to clear one's throat.

Black hair spilled. Pulled from a ponytail. A hand, opening and closing, covered in thick blood, pulling at the floor, nails broken.

I fell on my belly, face to face with my sister.

Her eyes were bloodshot, vessels broken from gasping in air that punctured lungs could no longer accept. Lips blue, dark skin made darker with blood and bruises. Wet rivulets of tears.

Her mouth moved, opened and closed when she saw me.

"Cho.. cho... chot..." Little brother.

It was barely a sound. I only knew what she tried to say by the shape of her lips, by the words I'd heard repeated in love, in frustration, in anger, in confusion, my whole life.

I couldn't speak. Her hand reached toward me. It was covered in blood. Her palm red. Her nails red. Her knuckles red.

Red.

Red.

Red.

I blinked.

"Kell!" James' voice.

I stared up at him, trying to remember what I had been doing. I heard sirens and other, unfamiliar voices. I felt a weight in my arms and looked down to see I had my sister cradled. Her eyes were closed, her body still.

"Who?" James asked, his face pale and lips white.

"My father," I said, certain and sad.

I looked into the living room, the police and EMTs were lifting my father, helping him onto a gurney. Taylor ran into the room and stopped. He looked young and scared. He met my eyes and took a step forward, then looked down at Advika and stopped.

"No," he whispered, his eyes glued to Advika.

"No!" he yelled again and leapt at my father, knowing, as I did, that he was the one to do this to her.

One of the officers grabbed him. "Calm down!" he yelled at Taylor.

"Let me go!" Taylor cried out. "Why? Why did you do this?" he begged of my father.

I pulled my sister closer to my chest and rocked her, kissing her soft hair.

"Son." A man knelt in front of me. 

I looked around. The lights in the house were on and glaring, blinding me.

"You need to let her go."


Where were Taylor and James?

I looked at my sister. "Advika," I whispered.

"She's gone," the man said kindly. "Let us take her, clean her up. You can see her again later." 


She would have been so embarrassed if people saw her like this. She cared that her ponytail was smooth, her clothing ironed and clean.

I slowly released my grip on her, letting her roll forward out of my arms.

I blinked.

"Kell," a soft southern accented voice said.

I stared at my hands. I could have saved her. It should have been me who died. I should have been putting my energy into my birth family.

"Kell," the voice repeated.

I looked up, saw Dr. Roberts face staring at me in concern.

"Do you remember where you are?"
I cleared my throat, my eyes traveling from my palms to the white bandages wrapped around my wrists. "Yes."


"We're going to help you, Kell," Dr. Roberts said. "We'll take care of you. You don't have to do this alone."


"Advika was alone," I whispered. "No one helped her."

"She was," Dr. Roberts answered, getting my attention, "and she shouldn't have been. We are all at fault. Can you forgive me, Kell?"

I stared at him confused, not sure what he meant.

"You're a sixteen year-old boy," Dr. Roberts said. "The Academy should have stepped in. Not allowed you and Advika to keep your father home as long as you did. I hold myself responsible."


I shook my head without thinking. "Not your fault," I answered.

Dr. Roberts was silent for a moment.

"Your family needs you," he said quietly. "Taylor and James. They are lost without you."


I looked around the room, and then back at my arms. The small cuts were already healing, the ones needing stitches covered with bandages.

"Where are they?" I asked, feeling a surge of guilt at abandoning them.

"They're here," he answered. "They come every day. They were in here earlier. Do you remember?"


I shook my head. I didn't remember.

"Will you see them? Let us help you?" he asked me again. "Will you let them help you?"


I took a deep breath, turning my hands over and placing them next to me on the bed, hiding the bandages. I nodded.

I blinked.

"Kell?" Lyric's voice.

"Kell," Taylor called my name. "Get your shit together. You don't need to do this anymore. You can handle this. Lyric needs you."

I looked around the locker room. Lyric's eyes were closed. James had her lying down on the tiled floor. Riley pressed a cloth against her head. James supported her head, keeping her stabilized.

I blinked again and drew in a deep breath.

"Emergency response?" I asked.

"Should be arriving any moment," Taylor answered.

"Breathing?"

"Normal," James answered. "It's most likely a concussion. I'm stabilizing as a precautionary measure."


"What happened?" I asked Riley.

Her face was pale and I saw she was shivering. My brain processed her response, and recognized the early stages of shock.

"Taylor," I commanded. "Get her a sweatshirt, or blanket."

Taylor nodded and stripped off his flannel shirt after looking around and seeing nothing. He wrapped it around her shoulders.

I heard voices in the hall and stood up. "In here," I called out the door.

Paramedics flooded the room, pushing us out of the way, barking out questions. I let James answer calmly. I directed one of the paramedics to examine Riley and the two girls were strapped onto stretchers and brought out of the building.

"What day is it?" I asked Taylor as we followed the stretchers out of the school.

"Kell," James called to me, interrupting. "Ride with Taylor. I'm riding in the ambulance."


The paramedic near the stretcher raised an eyebrow, but something in James' face told him not to argue. There were moments when James stopped resembling an eighteen year-old, and started resembling a CEO. He exuded confidence and authority, and brooked no opposition. It was one of many reasons he was our Academy liaison.

"What's going on?" I heard someone yell.

"Shit," Taylor whispered. "That's why you asked what day it was."


I had worried it was a "B" day, which meant early morning art class. Which meant the possibility of Garret arriving. Apparently I had been worried for good reason.

"Lyric?" he cried out. "What happened? What did you do to her?" he looked at me accusingly.

The campus security officer who was standing nearby looked over at me questioningly. "I don't know what happened," I answered his unspoken question.

Garret approached me aggressively. "You stay away from her," he said.

I kept my eyes trained on his face, praying that James would make it into the ambulance before Garret saw him.

He took another step toward me.

"She's mine," he hissed, quietly enough that the officer wouldn't hear. "Stay away. Understand?"

I shook my head. "Never," I answered.

He stared at me in shock. Did he think I would agree? That he would intimidate me?

"She'll never be yours," I told him, "and I'll never stay away." 

****************************************

A/N: I know this one was a little strange. Let me know what you think. Please comment.