Lila

She stood at the gate and peered between the bars. Thick metal towered over her head and down to her toes. The brick walkway was illuminated by dim yellow lights at the end of each path. Some of the gravestones to her left were lit by a nearby street lamp. Ahead of her, she stared at the shadow where the words weren’t visible at this distance on the stone. The grass was darkened around the markers at the end of the path under a large oak tree. A loud creak of iron sounded into the still air from her right hand grasping at a bar. She held a bouquet of flowers taken from the party. The following silence was soothing to Melanie. She had missed the locking of the graveyard for the first time since Lila passed away. Melanie’s heart pounded through her dress in loneliness. The ends of her straight blonde hair moved soft and slow with the breeze. Thinking of a plan, she walked along the edge of the black iron fence that stood at least double her height. She found a darkened spot under another tree, a maple, where she could get through without detection. Melanie’s only hope of putting the flowers on her sister’s grave was to avoid the light and make little noise as possible. So far, she had not been discovered outside of the party or her dormitory. She wasn’t simply lucky, the chaperones were enjoying themselves on the dance floor. It seemed almost silly to celebrate with a rival school, to Melanie. Lila always enjoyed meeting new people and discovering new hobbies. Melanie was quiet, reserved. She preferred to hear Lila talk about the new experiences than to have them herself. Melanie looked up to her sister despite the fact that Lila was only five minutes older. She endured the party as long as she could, choosing to smile at her friends and teachers as often as she could to avoid therapy. The grief counselor didn’t make her feel any better about her loss. Perhaps he wasn’t bad at his job so much as Melanie was just more intuitive. She knew the pain would never go away. She also knew that it wouldn’t be wise to dwell in it either. She grieved for months, in her own way. Choosing to take two weeks off of her schoolwork and weeping for Lila was the best thing for her. She returned to school with a stack of homework. The grief councilor told her that it could be postponed, her professors would understand. Instead, Melanie dove into her work and let it consume her until bedtime. She would stay up studying until her bunkmates were sleeping peacefully in their twin beds then softly cry into her pillow, taking slow deep breaths. She was always studious but after Lila’s death, it became her obsession. She consumed knowledge for the both of them. Her aspirations of becoming more social, for Lila, were thwarted by her ever thinking mind. She had a few friends that became closer after Lila passed. Sarah had always been intimidated by Lila’s bubbly personality and took the opportunity to try to fill Melanie’s affections. Melanie let Sarah, Tiff, and DeeDee occupy the space that was left without Lila. It wasn’t enough but, it was something. They walked the halls together between class, ate meals together, bickered, and laughed. They whispered and giggled during assemblies about the co-ed dance Melanie was avoiding by being in the graveyard. 

A ditch, created by an over active dog, looked just big enough for Melanie to slip under the gate. She pushed the bouquet of flowers under and set them within reach inside the graveyard. If she couldn’t fit, she would find another way. Hesitant to get dirt on her clothes, she contemplated returning to her dorm and crying herself to sleep instead. Melanie sucked in a deep breath of cool air and laid on her belly.  She army crawled under the fence, slipping under like a snake, undetected by the cameras. When she stood, she briefly brushed her knees of small stones and decaying leaves before picking up the bouquet. She adjusted a few stems that had gotten out of place under the hair tie she had around her wrist earlier in the night. Surveying the area, she saw no movement; her breath was the only noise. She crushed samaras under her feet and took cover under the tree canopy to avoid the light and detection of the motion sensors. Melanie saw the broken pieces of helicopters on the grass around her that almost glowed in the darkness. She recalled playing with Lila as children in the woods behind their grandparent’s house. They would climb the low branches into trees as high up as they could go. Melanie would sometimes get all the way to the top just to prove she could. It was never hard to find a way to push her leg hard enough to get a hand to the next branch but, coming down was sometimes an issue. The older teenager who lived nearby would come to her rescue by meeting her in the tree and providing a guard while she found her footing. She hadn’t thought of Stan in many years. Melanie’s family had moved away the year he graduated from high school. Lila didn’t care for him as much but Melanie loved him like a brother. She thought about standing on the edge of the creek on a boulder with a pocketful of whirlybirds, twisting them with her fingers or sending them away with a blow from her mouth. Lila would be swimming and trying to catch them before they floated to the water, swept away downstream. Melanie would bore Lila with the details of the tree species from one of the library books in the elementary school. 

Melanie let the memory linger by closing her eyes for a moment. Trying to keep the sunlight on Lila’s skin for just a little while longer. Watching her small, delicate hands capture the maple keys one by one as they fell, spinning faster. A sound nearby jerked her back to present. Melanie ducked under the branches and scoped the area for the noise. She hadn’t quite registered what the sound could be until she spotted a few figures at the gate she had left only a few minutes before. Her heart began to beat faster now as she tried to listen between the night breeze that began to creak the branches. She could tell it was three people but since they hadn’t all spoken, she couldn’t tell their gender quite yet or if she would be spotted. 

“Yeah, she totally died, like, all of the sudden. It was really weird.” It was a girl, judging by the language, probably someone she knew. 

“Dude, that totally blows.” said a male voice back. He must have been from the rival school. 

“Was she hot?” laughed another male voice. The gate opened behind them as they all turned to look, then slammed as they turned back towards Lila’s grave. Melanie was closer to the grave than to the gate but still not far from the voices. The graveyard was quite small and the empty spaces were closer to the gate. 

“Like, I dunno, she was pretty or whatever, I guess.” said the girl.

“Well, prettier than Melanie!” chimed in a second girl’s voice. Melanie looked down at her feet instantly. Her sister was dead and they only cared about her looks. The two girls giggled and the boys shuffled their feet, clearly bored. 

“So, does she like, haunt the halls or something?” one boy asked, looking for something interesting to happen. 

“No, duh! Come on, ghosts aren’t real!” laughed the other boy at his friend and patted his back. Melanie was hurt by her classmates talking so casually about someone she shared everything with. They weren’t just sisters, they were twins. It was true that Lila was prettier but, Melanie was smarter. They were identical twins even though they had slight differences in appearance. Somehow their personalities were just different enough that they didn’t carry themselves in the same way. Lila was more confident, stood up straight, wore make-up and contacts. She was more popular and dressed better. Melanie wore glasses, never painted her face, and chose her outfits based on comfort rather than style. Lila tried to give her make-overs but ultimately Melanie would accidentally smudge her eyeliner or get something on her dress. She somehow wouldn’t look as fashionable with her slightly slumped shoulders pushing the glasses back up to her face. Melanie had chosen to wear one of Lila’s dresses that evening with a t-shirt over top of it. Lila liked to wear spaghetti straps and low cut shirts but it made Melanie uncomfortable. She got an idea and acted quickly while the double date continued to laugh and rattle the gate, letting the air echo their sounds. Bending down on one knee, Melanie untied her sneakers and pushed them off her feet. She pulled off the plain black short sleeved tee over her head, accidentally taking her glasses along. She fished them out and went to put them back on before she second guessed herself and let them fall into her sneakers, next to her pile of flowers. She shook her hair out and walked out into the grass towards the group. 

“I think they are real.” Melanie said in her most confident impression of Lila she could muster. The four figures turned to her and stared. Melanie couldn’t quite see their faces but as she moved towards them slowly, she could tell they were freaked out. 

“What the fuck?” one of the boys blurted out.

“No fucking way!” one of the girls exclaimed. 

“No, no no!” yelled the other girl. 

“I see you.” Melanie said as chilling as she could as she pointed to the two girls. All four teenagers bolted to the gate. Melanie waited for them to shut the door with a slam before returning to the tree to pick up her temporarily discarded things. She laid the flowers on Lila’s grave. Her hand on her heart, she said to herself, “I really fucking miss you, Lila.” 

Melanie walked back to the tree and shimmied under the fence like she had come in, but thought it wise to pick another route back to the party. The security would be arriving soon to figure out what had happened and she didn’t want to be caught. In the shadows of the front lawn’s bushes, she got her sneakers back on and laced them up. Melanie put the shirt back over her head and this time, she tied a small knot at her waist. Those four would be too freaked out to recognize her dress so she waltzed back into the party as if she hadn’t ever left. 

“Oh my god, Melanie! Did you hear what just happened?” DeeDee had rushed over to her. 

“No, I was just in the bathroom, what’s going on?” She tried to suppress a smile. 

“Someone saw a ghost in the graveyard!” Tiff informed her.

“Prissy is calming it was Lila but I think she’s full of shit.” Sarah said before blushing, realizing it was insensitive to Melanie. 

“No, she's telling the truth. I’ve seen her too.” Melanie replied with a far away stare. She saw her every morning when she looked into the mirror.