Silence.  Sad silence.  Shocked silence.  Ear-splitting silence.  Nothing but the sound of my sister, Kelyna’s, and my own breathing.  Kelyna laughed nervously.  She didn’t realize where the silence came from, but I did.

We were sitting Indian-style on the bed, facing each other.  I don’t remember what we had been doing, but I remember the feeling that something had gone wrong.  No, not wrong, something awful had happened.  The feeling of dread that came over me caused the silence.  It was Sunday night, September twenty-first, 2003, when my mom walked into the room and said three little words that changed my life.

“Sarah Beagles died,” she said.  Then she added, “Mr. Mulrooney just called to tell us, and I thought you should know.”  She walked away, the phone loosely gripped in her left hand, her hands hanging listlessly at her sides.  My perspective of time jerked to a screeching halt, and the silence grew darker, uglier.  I had pulled my pillow, with Cocoa, my stuffed dog, on it, into my lap.  I hadn’t even realized I had done it.  Then I just sat there, staring numbly at my wall.  I don’t know how long I sat there before my sister left.  My mom came back in to offer comfort.  They say that family is our haven in a heartless world, but I didn’t want her sympathy masked as comfort.  I didn’t want comfort from anyone.  It just didn’t seem right.  I ignored her and continued staring, never really seeing.  I sat there.  Without thought.  Without time.  Without emotion.  With only that damned silence.

“Dinner’s ready,” Kelyna said softly.  I didn’t move, I didn’t even acknowledge her.  She said it a little louder, and then left to eat.  She had just turned eight the previous Friday so she didn’t understand the cruelty of the death of someone as full of life as Sarah.  Eventually I got up and dressed for bed.  I didn’t say good night, I just lay down and shut my eyes.  Tears squeezed out from under my eyelids, dropped off my cheek and soaked into my pillow.  I hugged Cocoa to my chest, the only comfort I would take.

The next morning, before getting out of the car for school, my mom handed me a newspaper article.  I still remember the headline: “Teen Strangles Girl, Then Calls Mom”.  Sarah didn’t just die, she was murdered.  Murdered by some ‘man’, if you consider a nineteen year old boy a man.  I shut the door and walked away.

“Breanne?  Are you okay?”  Leisa had a sixth sense about people because she had been through so much, and she made a great friend because she could identify with so many different things.

“One of my best friends was strangled to death Friday night.  I just found out.”  Silently I added, “on my sister’s birthday.”  Silence.  More silence, but I was screaming inside.  Hell, I’m still screaming inside, and it’s more than three years later.

I still remember that Monday like it was yesterday.  I remember the emotionless void during my first class.  Then the numbness faded, and the realization hit me like a nuclear bomb in the beginning of my second period class, Honors Humanities.  My teacher, Mrs. Rowan, asked who I wanted to take me to the Programs Office.  My first thought was, “What the hell is the Programs Office?”

“Jessie Whitley,” I responded.  I hated crying in front of people, but I couldn’t stop the sobs that racked my entire body, my entire being.  When we got to the Programs Office, Jessie gave me a fierce hug and went back to class.  One of the women asked who they should call in.

“Ian Dunn,” was my immediate response.  I was in shock again.  However, there was no Ian, “Russell,” I told her.  Five to ten minutes later he walked in wondering what was wrong.  My tears had started again and I was digging my fingernails into my opposite hands.  He sat on the sofa next to me and took my hands apart.  He knew I would break through multiple layers of skin if given the chance.  Then he wrapped his arms around me and let me cry.  I went home after talking to Ian and writing a list of things into two columns that he labeled: “Good Shit” and “Bad Shit”.  He filled out the “Good Shit” because all I could think of was the “Bad Shit”.

When I got home all I could think of was Sarah.  Sarah, only seventeen.  Sarah and how she looked when I last saw her.  She had her rectangular black-framed glasses on.  Her dirty blonde hair hung to just past her shoulder blades.  I remembered how she looked when she laughed at some memory that we were talking about at an adopted aunt’s memorial service.  “Ironic,” I thought, “the last time I saw her was at a memorial service.”  I remembered how happy she looked then, even under the horrible circumstances.  If I had only known what was to come, I would have warned her and she might still be here today.  As the saying goes, though, “Hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

I then started thinking back to when I had first met Sarah.  She was so ticklish that if you just barely poked her she would laugh and squirm away.  Sometimes if you just pointed at her she would laugh because she was so full of joy and life that it would just bubble out.  She always had a joke or a funny story to share, so that everyone around her was always laughing.  That’s what I really liked about Sarah; she always made you laugh, no matter what kind of mood you were in.

But her life was extinguished prematurely by her ex-boyfriend with whom she had remained friends.  She had gone over to his house to hang out with him.  From there, the articles disagree.  Some say they were wrestling with each other and the guy landed on her throat accidentally, and immediately killed her.  Others say that he continuously put pressure on her neck for twenty minutes, intentionally killing her.  Then he called his vacationing mother, who called the cops.  He was found guilty of killing her, but he’s only in some mental hospital because he’s “been hearing voices since he was five,” his attorney claimed.  I don’t care; I think he should be in jail for life, if not on death row.

“Do you hate him?” people ask.

“Yes,” I answer, “he is the one person on this planet that I truly hate, will always hate.”  Silence.  They don’t know what to say, and if they understood the look in my eyes, they’d wish they didn’t understand, and that they hadn’t asked the question.  I hide my reaction now.  Keeping my face impassive has become a habit.  I hide my true emotions behind false cheer and lies.  I keep people at a distance, or I push them away altogether.  I won’t lose someone else like I lost Sarah.

Hate, one of the two strongest emotions, and if you mix it with stubbornness, vengeance, and the object of hatred, you can’t stop the outcome with words.  Words mean nothing to the ones left behind.  So be silent.  Stay silent.  And I’ll just keep screaming on the inside.