The Door

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It would have been better if the door had remained locked.

She hovered in the doorway, hand still on the doorknob.  Her mouth gaped.  The pleasant surprise of the knob turning in her hand was flash frozen by horror when the bed came into view.

“Get out!” Ceira screeched like a bird startled in its cage. There was more shock than anger in her voice.

Grace backed up and pulled the door shut, trying not to make a sound and hurried to her own room.  She locked the door behind her. At that moment, she would have given anything to have never seen them.

She rooted around in the basket that held her make-up and found her blue eyeliner.  “Black eyeliner is overrated,” she said out loud to her reflection in the mirror.  Ceira could have it.  She looked herself in the eyes and tried to feel normal.  She forced herself to think about going to the drugstore tomorrow to shop for another black eyeliner pencil.  She willed her ears to ignore the murmuring and shuffling from the room on the other side of the wall.

A few minutes passed and the shuffling and murmuring was in the hall, outside her door.  The whispers crescendoed to a frenzy then dropped off to silence.  A soft tapping followed.

“Grace?  Are you in there?”  The door handle tried to turn. “Grace, open the door.  Please.”  The sweetness oozed under the door like a puddle of toxic syrup.

“What do you want, Ceira?” she answered through the door. Her gaze never dropped from the girl in the mirror who feigned disinterest.  The slight shake of the blue pencil poised at her eye was the only hint of the quaking in her gut.

“I wanna talk to you.”  Silence.  Without a word, Grace felt the syrup oozing under the door turn bitter.  If it had been a real puddle, the tint would have changed from a warm brown to a sick green.  Ceira was losing patience with her older sister.  A tantrum was about to start.  On the best day, the fury of her unbalanced teenage sister was too much to handle.  Without answering, she unlocked the door.  The tiny click echoed like a gunshot.

Ceira slipped in.  For the next minute, they both stumbled around the elephant in the room.  Each tried her best to appear unfazed, even bored.  Grace didn’t want to be the first to address the mess she walked in on.  She won in the stubborn match that evening.

“Grace, are you going to tell Mom about what you saw?”  Her attempt at nonchalance came off as defiance.

“I should, you know that, right?  I should get her on the phone right now and tell her.”  Her voice got shrill and she had her hands on her hips.  Seven years separated them, and that gulf of time never felt wider.

“Fine!  Go ahead and tell her.  She won’t care.  He’ll say it never happened.  Do you think she’s gonna listen to you over him?”  This was the logic of a fourteen-year old lashing out with anything she had.

“You’re an idiot if you think Mom isn’t going to believe me.  Of course she will.  She knows you.  We talk all the time about what a pain in the ass you are.”  Grace felt sorry right away.  It was true.  They often talked about Ceira, but her mother wanted advice.  She was worn out from trying to wrangle with a force of nature.

“Well, she tells me all the time about what a stuck up bitch you are!”  Ceira words felt like a slap.  Grace knew there was truth in her sister’s claim.  She had heard it before.  Her mother had more than once accused her of thinking she was better than everyone else.

“This is just like you.  Every day is something else.  Last week it was staying out all night and coming home drunk.  Before, it was getting caught shoplifting.  What’s it going to be next?  It’s no wonder Mom started drinking.” Grace stopped.  Ceira’s face went from shock to pain to rage in one smooth motion.

“I hate you!  I hate that you came here and wish you would just leave.  Mom didn’t want you before and neither of us wants you here now!”  She dared Grace with her eyes to dispute her claim.

Grace took a breath and started back in, “How long have you two been doing this, Ceira?”  She braced herself for the coming lie.

Ceira weighed the odds and decided to go with a partial truth. “It’s only been a few times.  Not very much – maybe four or five times, that’s all.  I swear!” 

Grace knew she was lying.  The trouble was, she also knew what telling their mother was going to mean. The placid calm of the last few weeks would be broken.  The last time her mother and Charles argued, it was over a postage stamp.  After he stomped out, her mother threw a glass across the kitchen.  It shattered all around Grace.  She didn’t want to be caught with bare feet again when her mother exploded with rage.

“Fine, I won’t tell her.  But, Ceira, you’ve got to promise me…promise me that you’re not going to do that anymore.”  Her shoulders sagged under the weight of the secret she was about to keep.  Forty year old men had no business getting high with teenage girls. 

Her sister flitted across the room and attacked her with a hug.  “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!  I promise…I promise it won’t happen again.”  Grace couldn’t escape an uneasy feeling, but she dismissed it as the hug.
   
They talked a few minutes more to keep up the pretense of a sisterly bond.  Ceira sprawled out on Grace's bed and asked about her date that night. Her legs kicked in the air.  Grace asked her about school.  Neither listed to the response.  Ceira sprung from the bed when the conversation ended and went back to her room.  Grace closed the door behind her and locked it tight.

Word Count: 995 words
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