Our Lost Stars: The History of Death
The introduction of my Young Adult fiction novel Our Lost Stars, a story about 17-year-old Persephone who is one of the only surviving members of her family after a tragic car “accident” with her twin brother and father.
“Nearly everyone in my family is dead. This has led me to believe that I don’t have much longer here either.”
Prologue
Nearly everyone in my family is dead. This has led me to believe that I don’t have much longer here either. The thing is––there’s nothing wrong with me. I have been to the doctor for at least three check-ups in the past two months, convinced that the queasy twist in my belly or the searing headaches or the uncontrollable shakes in my hand meant that I had cancer or some disease that they would not detect in the routine check-ups. But nothing. When I had the chronic migraines, the doctors even scanned my brain––but, as they would phrase it, “there is nothing physically wrong.” So, yes. There’s nothing wrong with me.
Except for the fact that I can still see my twin brother.
And no matter how close to Death I seem to get, Death does not seem to want me.
Not yet, anyway.
Chapter 1
I lay under the Angel tree, hands on my stomach, next to my twin brother, Luke. He’s supposed to be dead, though, which is why I can’t tell anyone that I still see him.
There was a tree next to the Castle (which is what I called our grandmother’s house), on a slight hill––it was the perfect tree––tall, old, strong, and most importantly, its branches spread a halo of leaves during the spring. She called it the Angel Tree because we would stargaze out in the open night and still feel safe under the arms of that tree. She said that some of those stars were our angels. And we could wish as much as we wanted under that tree, and our angels would be listening. I could dream about having telekinesis powers or breathing underwater or flying all the way to space and seeing my angels––I’d be invisible. Nothing could hurt me, and nothing did.
Everything hurts now.
“You only have a month of junior year left, and then senior year. Been talkin’ about this pretty much our whole lives. The last year to suffer before we can escape. Well, you will anyway,” Luke said, chuckling. I turned my head.
“That’s not funny, Luke.”
He nudged my shoulder with his elbow. “Lighten up, sis.”
A hot tear carved down my cold cheek like lava. “We just buried you and dad. Don’t tell me to lighten up.”
I started seeing him the minute I woke up from the hospital. After the crash––only a week ago––the doctors informed me that my brother was dead, but then he’d appeared in front of my eyes. I thought they’d been playing a joke on me. When the nurses came back later to check on me, I told them, “Why did you lie to me? My brother’s not dead.”
They told me he’d died almost instantly in the crash. I asked to see him. They wouldn’t let
me, but I ran. I fought.
I don’t like to think about what I saw. But I’d gotten used to him appearing whenever he felt like it by now, looking very much alive.
He wore his favorite gray Nike sweatshirt, hands under his head of golden-brown hair as he looked up at the stars with me. Like we used to. Always when we wanted to run away from something painful.
He sighed and shifted his arms, crossing them on his chest. “You think that’s Mom?” Luke croaked, pointing up at a star with faint pink rays. Or maybe it was a planet. I didn’t actually know much about the real science of the stars. Only the stories we made up.
“I dunno. Why do you think she stopped coming to the Angel tree?”
“She got really sick. Maybe she was just tired, Seph.”
“I think she stopped believing.”
Silence. “Maybe.”
“I think she got worse after Halmeoni died.”
Luke uncrossed his arms and picked at the damp, April grass with his fingers. “Yeah.”
Halmeoni was Korean for “grandmother.” That’s what we actually called her.
And it was true that my mother went from smoking maybe half a pack a day to smoking a pack, even two packs a day after Halmeoni died. We were ten years old. I remember her as an energetic grandmother who could never stop cleaning or humming to herself. We lived with her in the Castle from the time we were born until the day she died. When my mom got pregnant, she didn’t expect twins, until the ultrasound revealed that there were two heartbeats. My parents were already struggling financially, and were only twenty-two years old. So my grandmother had them move in, and we ended up staying.
And she loved us like any grandmother would––with smiling, wrinkled eyes, spoiling gifts and food and hugs, she even dyed her hair lavender because she got tired of dying her graying hair plain black. I remember the day she died, too. The Castle seemed so cold that day, despite the spring sunshine.
Mom picked us up early from school. We sat in the backseat of the white Toyota as she cried, her mascara smearing down her round eyes. “Your Halmeoni had an accident.”
That’s usually what people first call a death when they cannot say the word “dead.” It’s almost as if “accident” softened the blow, lessened the permanence of such a thing as death.
“Did she break her arm?” Luke asked. He always asked this when my mother said someone had an accident, because he had broken his arm after falling off the monkey bars and my parents called that an accident.
“No, honey.” Mom sniffed and slammed on the breaks before she could accidentally run through the red light. “Sorry.”
“Did she die?” I asked. I had remembered that when my hamster died a year ago my mother also called that an accident, and I cried the way my mom was crying right then.
In a broken whisper, my mother answered, “Yes.”
Halmeoni had a stroke. Random. Couldn’t have been prevented. But it happened, the doctors said.
I had a feeling Luke was remembering the same moment that I was, but he had seen it in a different lens, a more innocent one. He thought “broken arm,” I thought “death.” Luke sobbed at Halmeoni’s funeral, I held his hand and did not shed a single tear.
I closed my eyes and clutched onto a fistful of grass. Underneath the Angel tree, the stars, the darkness, my twin brother held my hand. The lava tears had dried up on my cheek, but the burning sensation in my chest did not leave me.
