Classes were always tedious that hadn't changed much either. But what was unusual was the amount of pitying looks I received each day, both teachers and students from other classes looked at me with pity as if my life had ended. Anna always stayed by my side and asked me every five minutes if I was okay or if I needed anything and my answer was always the same: "No, I'm fine."
Caleb was in a coma. His brain was swollen and he was within the key 48 hours to know if he had any hope of waking up or not, 24 hours had passed and I felt more and more relieved not to have any calls from my parents giving me the worst news.
My relationship with my brother is... distant. We were never close but he always helped me when I needed something, I also did it when I had some request for help from him. For both of us we were always an existence with which we shared air and roof, never anything more. A part of me always wanted to be closer to him but I never managed it. Caleb had a barrier around him that was very difficult to cross, when I was little I tried to play with him but he always ignored me or kicked me out of his room. In those days I thought my brother hated me.
However, there was evidence that this was not true. Like for example the gifts he gave me for my birthday (they were always things I liked), his presence at my school functions (he went on his own when my parents couldn't attend) or the little smiles he gave me when I owed him something clever at dinner time. These were moments that felt like precious jewels to me, his furtive smiles and his gifts and his distant displays of affection. Would I be left without all those things if he didn't spend the next 24 now in peace? Thinking about it made me sick.
When school ended, my father came to pick me up from school in his car. That was unusual and an intuitive part of me told me something was wrong.
I got into the car and put on my seatbelt, I looked at my father and I could see dry traces of tears on his cheeks.
"What happened?" I asked him.
And my father didn't answer, he just started driving without saying a word. I took advantage of those moments to analyze my father's profile, he had a square jaw and three-day beard and his blue eyes looked dull and lifeless and his light brown hair was disheveled and he seemed to have more wrinkles around his eyes and his subtly curved nose twitched from time to time as if he was holding back a sneeze.
We arrived at the hospital, my father parked and I knew exactly what had happened. My body tensed completely but I also felt adrenaline running through every single nerve. A sharp pain went through my chest and tears began to flow out of my eyes without limits and I turned to see my father who was also crying.
"When?" was the only thing I could ask or my words would be drowned out by sobs if I spoke any further.
"This morning."
I got out of the car and started walking towards the hospital ignoring my father who was calling my name and running after me. I felt his hands holding my shoulders and the breath of his whispers in my ear asking me to calm down but that was impossible. We went to the room where Caleb was, I entered and saw my brother's body covered with a blanket up to his face and my mother lying on top of him sobbing as if a part of her soul had been torn from her.
I approached her and touched her shoulder, she slowly moved her head away from my brother's chest and looked at me and she began to cry harder when she saw me and hugged me, pulling me towards Caleb's lifeless body. I hugged him too because I had no other choice, because I would miss him every day of my life.
That day we went to a fast food restaurant for dinner because Caleb had been craving a hamburger with fries with cheddar cheese and bacon for weeks. I laughed because we had to wait until he was dead to fulfill his whim. That comment made my mom cry and earned me a rebuke from my dad so I didn't say anything else. We had hamburgers with fries with cheddar cheese and bacon for dinner then we went home and each one was drowned in his own darkness. Mine was my room.
I lay down on my bed wondering why young people had to leave before those who were over 90 years old. I wondered how the man who ran into Caleb and killed him was doing. I also wondered if he even knew what he had caused in our family. I wanted to go find him and scream in his face that he had taken my brother away from me, that he had taken away Caleb's every dream and that thanks to him I would never see his smile again. I was filled with hatred in one night.
I fell asleep not realizing it was later than I had thought but I had no plans to go to school the next day so I didn't care. However I was awakened by a sound coming from my video game console. I opened my eyes sleepily and looked at my television that had turned on out of nowhere with the start screen of "How to be a Villaness", that seemed very strange to me but I didn't pay much attention to it either. I got out of bed and turned off the console (which had also turned on on its own) then the television and went back to bed to sleep.
Two hours passed until I woke up again, it was 4 am. It wasn't the console or the television that made me come out of my slumber, but a voice calling me from the kitchen. I thought it was dad because it was a male voice. I got out of bed and left my room, I approached the stairs and heard that voice again that wasn't my father's… but my brother's.
— "Sloan. Come here." — he said to me — "Let's go home."
At that moment I was standing on the first step of the staircase leading down to the living room, my brother's voice could very well have been a hallucination caused by the grief I was not yet aware of or simply a dream. But I didn't care, I took a step forward and went down the first step and suddenly I was no longer in my house.
As if that measly step had teleported me to another place, I found myself on a giant white staircase. It seemed to be made of marble and it had gold details on the railing and on the steps themselves. Looking around I realized I was in a rather luxurious mansion where the predominant color was white. Next to me there was another staircase as if one were not enough and at the foot of the one I was standing on was a man of about 50 years old. He was wearing a black three-piece suit and his hair was dark, you could see the gray hairs on the sides of his head combed neatly.
I finished going down the stairs still not understanding where I was or what was happening, probably all this had to be a dream. I met that man who bowed to me as if I were some kind of noble.
"Good morning, Miss Hosui. I see that you are not ready to go to the academy yet. Would you like me to bring your breakfast to your room while you get ready?"
Hosui? It was at that moment that I noticed the black hair that fell over my shoulders and the bangs that covered my forehead and the increase in the size of my bust (I was thinking that I felt something heavier in my chest). I went back up the stairs running and ignoring the warnings of that man who told me that it was dangerous to run on them. I reached the second floor and entered the first door I found, it was a bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror and stifled a cry of horror.
My skin was white as milk and my eyes were red as rubies. My black hair was straight and reached my waist and my body was proportioned as if I were a doll molded by some hegemonic god. I touched my face and kneaded my cheeks and felt the softness of my skin. I was wearing a white lace nightgown and my nails were painted burgundy red, I felt my heart beating thunderously in my chest. I was scared and I didn't understand anything of what was happening. I was afraid to speak because what if my voice had changed too? This must all be a dream, yes, it has to be a dream.
I walked towards the bathroom door when it suddenly opened hitting my forehead. The blow hurt and made me stumble backwards, I complained of the pain and the person who entered looked at me surprised.
"What are you doing here? I thought you were having breakfast? Don't you have school?"
That person was a boy my age, I shouldn't know who him is because it's the first time I've seen him in my life but that wasn't the case. His name is Reese and he's my stepbrother.
I didn't answer him, I left the bathroom pushing him aside and using these strange memories in my head to get to my room. Once there, I focused on the throbbing pain in my forehead where the bathroom door had hit me when Reese opened it. I brought my hand to that spot and gasped in pain, feeling it swelling into a painful bump. I definitely wasn't dreaming, whatever had happened I had been transported to another world.