11. Emily
11
EMILY
When I was little, I buried a time capsule.
It was just a plastic Easter egg I’d stuffed with a note to myself and some stickers I thought were cool. My plan was to dig it up in ten years and compare it with all the new things I accumulated during that time and see the difference. Mostly I remember being thrilled at the idea of how it would feel to come across something frozen in time.
But now that I’m standing in one, I’m anything but thrilled.
Olivia’s apartment hasn’t been touched since her death a week ago. Well, eight days now. There’s an old plate of apple slices, green from mold, on the coffee table. Clothes are piled randomly on every piece of furniture. The potted plant in the window is nothing but a wilted twig.
I turn the apartment key over and over in my hand, thumbing the rough edges.
The teeth of the key cut into my fingers, but I don’t care. It’s been almost a full twenty-four hours since I learned that Olivia was dead.
And the entire time, the same thought keeps rushing through my head
They should’ve told me sooner.
When the police officer handed the key to me, I could tell he wanted to ask why no family came for eight whole days. I almost wished he did. Because I would’ve told him what I’ve known my entire life.
My Mom and Dad didn’t give a shit about her, I would’ve said. They just care that she might finally be able to repay them for all their troubles over the years now that she’s dead.
Useless. I can hear the Mom and Dad in my head. Ungrateful. Worthless.
Junkie. Junkie. Junkie.
I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my fists tightly around the key. It hurts, but the pain can’t silence my parents’ voices.
They didn’t care. They never cared.
The key came with a few other things that belonged to my sister: her ID, a wallet with nothing in it but maxed-out credit cards, and a phone that I can’t unlock.
She had been my selfless defender when I was a kid—always standing between me and our parents whenever they started yelling. And whenever she did that, they would always turn their attention on her.
No matter what they were mad at me about, the moment they saw her, their anger would grow tenfold.
And they made sure their words hurt .
Useless. Ungrateful. Worthless. Why are you still here?
She’d take their verbal abuse without so much as a blink, even when I could see the hurt written in her eyes. She would stay strong until it was just the two of us, and only then was I allowed to see her cry.
Only then would she allow me to hold her like she held me whenever I was bawling my eyes out. Only then would she nod through the sobs when I promised her what she promised me—that everything would be alright.
And the only time I managed to be there for her was the night when she overdosed.
It was the first and only time I did save her.
And in the aftermath, she asked me why I bothered to bring her back.
Because you’re my sister , I told her. And sisters have each other’s backs .
That night still haunts my dreams.
In dreams, Mom and Dad would walk over to Olivia’s hospital bed and apologize to her for being the reason why she ended up there. They promise that they’ll do better than before, that they’ll start to give a shit about their daughters instead of worrying about how much money we cost them. That they’ll do whatever it takes to keep us all together as a happy family instead of asking when we’ll start doing our fair share.
Then I wake up to reality, where they did the exact opposite, and I have to remind myself that it’s just a dream.
And dreams always die.
“Stop it, Emily,” I tell myself. “You’re doing nobody any favors.”
Slowly, I make my way to the kitchen, and I’m hit by the smell of decay. The sink is full of dirty dishes—unwashed since her death. There’s a small pot with water stagnating in it, and the bottom is all rusted out.
Weird.
Olivia was never much of a cook, which makes the number of dishes feel wrong.
Either she left them for days without caring, or she was feeding multiple people.
She told me she lived alone. The apartment is tiny, to put it politely. There aren’t many places to search. With a wary hand, I nudge her bedroom door inward. My hand hesitates when it makes contact with the rough wooden surface. My eyes refuse to look ahead, preferring to focus on the cheap vinyl tiles lining the floor.
Not yet. I can’t yet.
But I must.
The door swings and bounces off something behind it—a purple suitcase with frayed corners. I know if I try to extend the handle, it will jam before it reaches full length. Dangling off the handle is a bright pink Hello Kitty bag tag, the same as mine.
The same one as Konstantin’s.
And just like that, my heart feels a pang of regret. But at what, I’m not sure anymore.
I look at the bright pink bag tag and I can still hear Mom’s words in my head when the door slammed shut behind Olivia years ago.
We should thank her for throwing out the trash for us. Let that junkie be a problem for whatever cop finds her. Maybe she’ll finally do something good when she’s dead.
Instinctively, my hand reaches up to my cheek. I can feel the sting of where Mom’s palm struck me all those years ago after Olivia had left. I can still hear Dad bellowing that if I ever talked back like that again, he’d teach me a lesson I wouldn’t ever forget.
Mom’s words have come true in the worst possible way.
And I’m the one who has to pick up the pieces.
Sighing, I force myself to look at the twin bed with its disheveled green blankets and checkered sheets. There should be crime scene tape here. NYPD clearly decided that there was no need.
In the autopsy report they handed me, it said that my sister’s death was a suicide by heroin overdose.
And like my parents, they were quick to judge who she was.
But the more I look in the apartment, the less I believe that she overdosed.
So far, I haven’t seen a single needle. There are also no elastic bands, no burnt spoons, and certainly no tiny dime bags.
In short, I haven’t seen a damn thing to support that she was using.
I look back at the bed. Even though the stark yellow tape isn’t here, I know in my heart that this is where she died. I swear I can still see the impression on the mattress from where her body was.
It’s so damn easy to imagine her here.
Suddenly my phone buzzes in my hand. I look down, expecting something from Mom. But instead, I see a text from Nadia. When I open it, another comes in.
Nadia: HOLY SHIT!!
Nadia: There was a shootout at the Zebra Club, and someone fucking burned it down!
My blood runs cold. What is she talking about? Opening Google, I quickly begin to search. It’s not long before the first news article pops up. Reading it sends my pulse racing:
A deadly shoot-out took place outside of a bustling nightclub in the Amalfi Coast in midday, with several casualties...
I stop breathing. I have to sit on the bed before I collapse.
I tuck my phone back into my pocket, and just like that, I’m thinking about Konstantin again. I’ve tried not to think about him since I left Italy. Only a minor fantasy here or there as the plane took off. A dream or five before I landed.
But with this news, grim as it is, I’m pinwheeling back through the intoxicating memory of my time with him.
Is he still there?
He must still be. Is he okay?
It doesn’t matter. I need to get a grip and get back to why I came here.
The front door to Olivia’s apartment suddenly squeaks opens. It startles me so hard I bite my tongue.
Who’s there?
I peer out from the bedroom just enough to get a glimpse of a man standing in the living room close the front door behind him.
His face is all rectangles. Long black hair is pulled back into a ponytail that enhances the grooves of his cheekbones and chin cleft. With his polished leather jacket and his hands behind his back, he reminds me of a snake searching for its next meal.
The hair on the back of my neck rises and my heart pounds like a drum. Slowly, I begin backing away into the bedroom.
Every part of my body is screaming at me to hide.
But where?
The only place I can hide is under the bed, and this stranger is already turning his unblinking gaze towards me.
There’s no time.
Then his unsettling stare catches me, and I freeze.
Shit!
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says quietly, voice so low that I almost don’t hear him over the sound of my pounding heart.
My stomach drops away as his arms move out from behind his body.
And in his hand is a knife.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Without another sound, he rushes towards me, closing the distance in three quick steps.
Shrieking in the hopes that someone will hear me, I try to slam the door shut. But he’s faster than me. In a blur, he crashes through the thin door and knocks me down onto the bed.
The musty odor of Olivia’s sheets rises up to choke me, and long thin fingers close around my throat to silence my cries.
I grab his wrist with my left hand to no avail. He’s just too strong.
Kicking and struggling under the weight of his body, I swing my right hand—still closed around the key to the apartment—towards his face. My left hand extends for anything I can reach, and grab nothing but empty air.
The man snarls. The knife rises.
In that moment, two things become crystal clear:
One, Olivia didn’t kill herself.
Two, I’m about to join her.