The Eraser In My Brain Moved And My Sister Disappeared Chapter 05

The Eraser In My Brain Moved And My Sister Disappeared Chapter 05

Mom knelt at the edge of the hollow as if the 

snow had glued her there. 

Then she began clearing away the loose snow bit 

by bit. 

First came the faded pink thermal shirt, with the 

little duck I had begged her to stitch onto the 

collar last year. 

Then came my loose hair, threaded with tiny ice. 

crystals and stuck to my deathly pale cheeks. 

My eyes were closed. Frost clung to my lashes, and my skin had an unnatural purple tint. 

“Sien…na?” 

Mom’s voice was very soft, as if she were afraid of 

waking me. 

She reached out and touched my face with her 

fingertips. 

It was icy and hard. 

Her hand jerked back as if she had been burned. 

But in the next second, she lunged forward, grabbed my shoulders, and shook me hard. 

“Sienna Miller! Get up!” 

My head lolled weakly with her movements, my 

neck limp and loose. 

“Keep pretending. Go on, keep pretending. You 

think you can scare us like this? No way. Get up. 

Get up right now, do you hear me?” 

Dad rushed over and shoved her away. Then he 

bent down and held his hand beneath my nose. 

It was as if someone had pressed mute on the 

entire world. 

Dad’s hand hovered there for a long, long time. 

without moving. 

Then his back bent little by little until he finally dropped to his knees in the snow. 

Mom sat there blankly, looking at Dad and then at 

1. me. 

She wanted to say something, but nothing came 

out. 

“How is this possible? My Sienna is seventeen. 

She’s known this road home her whole life. How 

could she not come home?” 

She suddenly crawled over, pulled me into her 

arms, and pressed her warm cheek tightly against 

my frozen one. 

Her hands rubbed frantically over my arms and my 

back. 

“You’re cold, aren’t you? You must be so cold. 

Mom’s here now. I’ll hold you, and you won’t be 

cold anymore. Sienna, open your eyes and look at 

me.” 

“Baby girl, I’m not mad at you anymore. I’ll never 

yell at you again. Please open your eyes.” 

“Didn’t you always love it when I held you? Wake 

1. up. I’m holding you now.“” 

Her body heat melted the frost on my lashes. 

It turned into water, mixed with her tears, and 

dripped onto my face. 

But I could never come back to life again. 

“Why didn’t you come home? Why? Did someone 

hurt you?” 

Mom finally broke down sobbing. 

“Call the police. I’m calling the police. Someone 

must have hurt my baby girl.” 

Sunny was being held by one of the neighbor 

women. Her small hand was clenched tight 

around the button eye, and it dug painfully into her 

palm. 

Suddenly, she broke free and ran to Mom. 

Standing on tiptoe, she reached up with her little 

hand to wipe the tears from Mom’s face. 

“Mom, don’t cry,” she whispered. 

Then she looked at me. 

“Sienna is asleep.” 

It was as if those words jolted Mom awake. 

She jerked her head up, her bloodshot eyes 

locking onto Sunny. 

It was the same way she had stared at me 

yesterday. 

“Asleep? She’s dead. You killed her. Why did you ask her to play hide–and–seek with you yesterday? 

Why?” 

Sunny shrank back in fright. Her mouth trembled, and tears filled her eyes, but she did not dare 

make a sound. 

Dad lifted his bloodshot eyes and yanked Mom 

away from me. 

“Are you insane? What does this have to do with 

Sunny?” 

“How could it not have anything to do with her?” 

Mom pointed at Sunny like she had lost her mind. “If she hadn’t insisted on playing, if she hadn’t hidden and gotten lost, how could I have left Sienna here alone? My Sienna. My Sienna was 

only seventeen.” 

She collapsed into the snow, pounding the ground 

as her words broke apart. 

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have hit her. I shouldn’t 

have left her here alone. She was sick. She 

couldn’t control it. I killed her. I did.” 

Before she could finish, her eyes rolled back, and 

she fainted. 

I watched everything, my thoughts turning slow 

and dull. 

I was dead, so why was Mom so sad? 

Shouldn’t she have been happy? 

I watched the neighbors rush around to help Mom, 

who had nearly passed out completely. 

Someone went to call a doctor, and someone else 

brought a thick blanket to cover me, but Dad 

stopped them. 

He took off his own coat and gently laid it over 

1. me. 

Then, with extreme care, he lifted me out of the 

shallow hollow. 

My body stayed stiffly curled in that same 

position, and my head hung limply in the crook of 

Dad’s arm. 

The snow was still falling, landing on my hair and my face. 

Dad clumsily tried to brush it away with his hand, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not clear 

it all. 

As we passed the old oak covered in memorial ribbons, Sunny broke free from the neighbor woman’s hand and followed us. 

She tilted up her small face and looked at me in 

Dad’s arms. Then she suddenly reached out and 

took one of my cold, dangling hands. 

“Sienna.” 

She gently tucked the button eye, warmed by her 

palm, between my stiff fingers. 

“Here’s your doll’s eye. I’m giving it back.” 

The button eye slipped through my fingers. 

It fell into the snow and disappeared. 

Sunny lowered her head to look for it, but Dad 

stopped her with a low, strained roar. 

“Stop looking.” 

She trembled in fright and stood frozen in place. 

Then, in her own blurry way, she finally understood 

something. 

Sienna would never come back. 

The eraser had really erased Sienna.