Chapter Twenty
Twenty
“Tell me a story,” Ronan said during my audition, his voice gentle, encouraging. “A ghost story. Something scary. Something…dreadful.”
This is what I said:
“A long time ago, when I was just a little girl, I saw a ghost. But it wasn’t just any ghost. It was my sister.”
Ronan had interjected then. “You told me you were an only child.”
“No,” I said. “I told you I grew up without siblings. Which is true. I did grow up without them. But once upon a time, I had an older sister. She died when I was four.”
“How old was she?” Ronan asked, lightly probing. Like a doctor examining a wound.
“Eleven,” I said. “Quite the age difference, I know. I was…an accident. No one’s ever said as much, but I can do the math.”
I let out a self-effacing chuckle then, hoping it would mask the pain of knowing I was never intended to be here, never wanted.
“I loved having an older sister. I loved having someone to look up to. At that age, my sister was my entire world. Playing with me. Protecting me. It felt like she would always be there for me. Until, all of a sudden, she was gone.
“I don’t really remember her death. Just the aftermath. And even with that, it’s unclear how much is my imagination. I’ve never been able to summon the courage to ask my parents for more details. I think it’s too painful for them. Even now.
“The little I do know is stuff I heard people whispering when they thought I wasn’t listening.
That, one day while my father was at work and my mother went to the grocery store, my sister decided to go swimming in our backyard pool.
They know it was intentional and that she didn’t fall in because, one, she was wearing her bathing suit.
Two, it wasn’t an in-ground pool. Those are easy to fall into.
You read about it all the time. Some kid gets curious, drawn to the water.
Next thing you know, they’re found dead in the deep end.
“Ours didn’t have a deep end. Only rich people have pools like that and, well, we weren’t rich.
This was one of those flimsy aboveground things.
The kind you need to climb a ladder to get into—another reason they knew my sister didn’t fall in.
It was four feet deep. Not deep at all. Yet it was still enough for her to drown in.
No one knows how it happened. She was a good swimmer.
Strong. So, for her to drown like that was—and is—a mystery.
“What I remember most about that time is watching my father dismantle the pool. It was right after my sister’s funeral.
We’d just gotten home and, still dressed in his black suit, he stalked into the yard with a sledgehammer and swung it right into the side of the pool.
The grief, you know? It made him crazy. He wouldn’t stop swinging, even as the pool fell apart and water rushed over him, soaking him until his suit clung to him like a second skin.
“With the pool gone, we tried to move on. That’s all you can do, really.
Just muddle through life and try not to spend too much time dwelling on the bad things, even though we do.
Then came my fifth birthday. There wasn’t a party, of course.
It was too soon. There wasn’t even cake.
I pretended there was, though, and while blowing out imaginary candles, I made a wish that my sister would return.
“Well, that night, after crying myself to sleep, I woke to a strange noise.
A single footstep outside the window, squishy and wet.
I opened my eyes, looked out the window, and there was my sister.
She was more shadow than anything else. There was nothing of substance that I could see.
Not her face. Not anything. Just a dark shape taking her form.
Still, I could tell it was her. I knew it in my bones.
She was wet. Hair stuck to her skull and flowed straight down.
And water dripped off of her, like she had just gotten out of the pool.
“At first, I was thrilled to see her. Just so damn happy. For the past year, I’d been told she was dead.
I had gone to her funeral. And I had missed her so much.
I still do. Every day. But there she was, standing at my window, and I got so excited.
I even said hi and asked her where she’d been the past year.
It’s only when she didn’t say anything back that I realized something was wrong.
She just stared through the window, never moving, as the water kept dripping from her hair.
“I wanted to go to the window and let her in, but I couldn’t. My body refused to move. And I realized it’s because I was scared. Literally paralyzed with fear. Because the person at the window was my sister, but also…she wasn’t. And then she was gone.
“In the morning, it felt like it hadn’t happened.
It’s weird how daylight can do that. Just sweeps away the cobwebs spun during the dark.
I’d assumed it was a nightmare. That it hadn’t been real.
So I didn’t tell anyone. Just went about my day, which for five-year-old me was toys, TV, snacks, and a nap.
I didn’t really think about what had happened until it was time for bed.
That’s when I got scared that my sister would come again. Which she did.
“That night, it was the same as before. My sister at the window, staring and dripping, and me wondering what was happening. I tried talking to her again. I can’t remember what I said. But I know she didn’t say anything back and soon was gone.
“The next morning, I told my parents that my sister had come to see me. Twice. I was too young to understand that this wasn’t normal.
That things like this were experienced only by an unlucky few.
And my parents got so upset. Especially my mother.
She started crying and asking me why I was lying, why I was being so cruel.
And the more I swore that I wasn’t lying, the madder they became.
“So I said nothing when my sister appeared at my window that night. And the one after that. And all the nights after that. For weeks. I started getting sick each night before bedtime. A queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew what was going to happen when I went to sleep. And it always did. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and see her there, staring and dripping.
“I’d stopped talking to her at that point.
I knew she wouldn’t say anything back. Which made me both sad and scared.
Because I didn’t know what she wanted. Or why she was there.
Or if she was going to hurt me. My sister never hurt me when she was alive, even though she was way bigger than me and certainly could have caused some damage.
Sure, there was the usual hair-pulling and shoving that all sisters do.
But I never thought she’d intentionally hurt me.
I wasn’t so sure about this new version, though.
Remember, it was her, but also not her. And I had no idea what she intended to do.
“When I told my parents about her again, they reacted pretty much the same way. Crying. Not believing me. Insisting I was a liar. But I kept on telling them every morning after my sister appeared. Which was every night. My parents got so sick of hearing about it that, one night, I slept in their room with my mother while my father slept in mine. When my sister appeared, it was at my parents’ window instead of mine.
Still staring, still dripping. I woke my mother up by screaming that she was there, that it was real, that I wasn’t a liar.
But by the time my mother woke up and looked to the window, my sister was gone.
“That’s when I really got scared. Because I knew my sister only wanted me to see her. I was alone in this experience, which is the scariest thing for a child. To be alone like that. To have no one believe you.
“After it kept happening for another few weeks, my parents took me to a shrink. She didn’t believe me, either.
She said the same things my parents did.
That I was just imagining my sister because I missed her and was still grieving and was sad that she was gone.
I swore that it was real. That I saw her.
Every. Single. Night. Even though she didn’t believe me, the psychologist told me what to say the next time I saw my sister.
“‘You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.’
“When my sister came to the window that night, I tried it out. It didn’t work.
Yet I continued to say it to her as she kept coming night after night, week after week, month after month.
Each visit made me more scared of her. I was afraid she was mad that I was still alive and she was dead.
I worried that, at some point, she was going to kill me, too.
That we’d switch places and I’d be the one outside the window, looking in, just staring and dripping.
“Every few weeks, I told my parents that she was still there. They’d get upset. And sad. And haul me to that same shrink who’d tell me to keep saying the same thing.
“‘You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.’
“Then, on my sixth birthday, exactly a year since my sister first appeared, I decided to go off script. Instead of telling her she wasn’t real and that she should go away, I said, ‘I know why you’re here.
You’re afraid of being forgotten. I won’t do that.
I swear. I will never, ever forget you.’ I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again.
My sister was gone. I never saw her again after that.
But I kept my promise. I’ve never forgotten her, and I never will. ”
Ronan and the casting director said nothing at first. They just sat there, staring, until Ronan asked, “Is that a true story?”
“No,” I said with a blithe smile. “I literally just made it up on the spot.”
That moment, I think, is what made him decide that I could play Daisy.
Now, days later, he looks at me the same way he did in that audition room. Uncertain but impressed. Fascinated but confused.