It had been 94 days since Ara vanished.
Ninety-four days of broken sleep, blank stares, and a silence louder than any scream. Every hour stretched like punishment. Her laughter had faded from the house. Her toothbrush still sat untouched by the sink. People said Zara was imagining her — that grief did strange things to the mind. But grief doesn’t invent a sister. Zara knew what she’d lost. She just didn’t know why everyone else had forgotten.
“You say she existed, Zara. But if no one remembers her, how can we be certain?”
The room was warm — too warm. Muted beige walls, a humming ceiling fan, and the faint, cloying scent of lavender candles made it feel like peace should live here.But peace never stayed with Zara.
She sat stiffly on the cream-colored sofa, her eyes glued to the ticking clock above Dr. Myra Desai’s head. Thirty-eight minutes into the session, and she still felt like she was suffocating in the silence.
“She did exist,” Zara muttered, voice tighter than her fingers clenched in her lap. “Ara. My twin. My sister. I’m not making her up.”
Dr. Myra smiled gently, crossing her legs. “You’ve been under immense stress, Zara. Sometimes, our minds fabricate people to fill emotional voids. Especially after trauma.”
Zara’s eyes sharpened. “I didn’t fabricate my own sister.”
The doctor remained unfazed. “You said she was with you all through childhood. But there’s no birth record, no school file, no neighbors who remember her. Even your uncle — Damien — says you were an only child.”
Zara’s voice cracked. “He’s wrong. She was there. Always.”
The therapist leaned forward slightly, her pen tapping gently against the notepad. “Do you trust your uncle?” Zara blinked, caught off guard. “He raised me. After our parents died… he took care of me.”
Dr. Myra tilted her head, watching her like she was studying a slow unraveling thread. “That’s a lot of pressure. Being someone’s only support system. And sometimes, in our minds, we create… echoes. Ara could be an echo of the kind of person you needed growing up.” Zara flinched as the fan above groaned. The lavender scent thickened — or maybe it was just in her head. She stared at her hands, remembering Ara’s chipped black nail polish. How she’d paint Zara’s nails during exam week to keep her calm.
“She liked storms,” Zara whispered. “She said thunder made her feel alive.”
“What else do you remember?” Dr. Myra’s tone was soft. Too soft.
Zara hesitated. A memory surfaced — her and Ara dancing in the living room, music too loud, Damien yelling from the hallway. But when she told him about it weeks ago, he’d only looked at her with pity and said, “You must’ve imagined that. There was never anyone else there.”
She didn’t imagine her sister.
She couldn’t have.
Could she?
“I want to end the session,” Zara said abruptly, standing. Dr. Myra didn’t argue. She simply nodded and jotted something down. “As you wish. But I’d like you to think about one thing before next time.”
Zara paused, her hand on the door.
“If the world insists someone never existed… how long before silence feels safer than the truth?”
Zara stepped into the hallway like,the air itself had thickened. Outside, dusk was stretching over the town, the sky dimming to ash. A cold wind skimmed her skin.
She didn’t go home. Not to the house filled with photographs — every frame showing just her and Damien, never Ara. Not to the bedroom that felt colder without her sister’s sarcasm and late-night rants. Instead, she turned toward the old library. She didn’t remember the library being this cold.
The wooden shelves stretched like sentries, dust clinging to the spines of forgotten books. It smelled like old paper and varnish — and memory. She wandered deeper. Her fingers trailed along a row of classics, stopping at a familiar title: The Bell Jar.
Ara had underlined nearly every line in it. Zara never understood why. Maybe Ara had been trying to say something all along. She didn’t know what she expected to find coming back to this town, this library, this air.
Answers? Ghosts? Closure?
All she found was silence.
Dr. Myra had said familiar places might stir memory. “Face the void,” she’d said. But she hadn’t warned how loud that void would be. Zara crouched near the bottom shelf, eyes scanning the worn titles. One book was slightly askew — tilted, like someone had shoved it back in a hurry. She reached for it.Behind the novel was a black rectangle.
A phone.
Zara blinked.
It wasn’t hers. She hadn’t seen this model in years. It looked older. Worn. As if it had been tucked there for a while.
She hesitated, then picked it up.
The cold weight surprised her.The screen lit up dimly at her touch. Not locked. Just a single folder on the home screen, labeled in all caps:
“A.A.”
Write a comment ...