Chapter 5

- 3 YEARS AGO -

- ERROR. -

No matter how much I looked at the dusty old monitor, the word didn't go away.

No matter how much I looked around the room, Aliyah didn't appear.

No matter how many deep breaths I took, the panic wouldn't go away.

No matter how hard I covered my ears, the beeping wouldn't leave me alone.

In those moments, a paralysis descended on me, one that, to this day, still persists.

I try not to think about it much… but I have a good idea of what happened that day, all it takes is one look at the screen to know. She thought I was going to go, and she tried to stop me, accidentally sacrificing herself in the process.

I mean, the signs are all there, the trail of blood along the floor from where she pushed me off the platform, her stylish glasses shattered on the floor, but mostly… T

he end of her ponytail, was cut cleanly off by the bounds of the platform during the teleportation. She likely turned around in shock as it activated, the end of her hair flying over the rail of the platform.

Not that these details matter. What really matters is that Aliyah is gone. And it's my fault.

"Honey, you need to tell us where Aliyah is. Whatever happened is not your fault." My mother gazed at me, fear and intensity reflected in her dark brown eyes. Often she looked more youthful than this, but today it felt as if the years were catching up to her.

"Harper. It's going to be okay. You can talk to us, we will find Aliyah." A younger, unfamiliar man with a toupee and slick blue suit sat at the sunlit kitchen table with us.

Even with the intensity of the situation, I just couldn't bring myself to focus on them, my eyes wandered from the white wooden floor to the graying hairs on my mother's head. This was the fourth meeting this week, a new suit each time, just how much did this man make anyways?

"Harper, please answer us."

I just stared back. I tried to speak the words, but they just wouldn't come out. Even if I wanted to, I knew they would fall on deaf ears. I already told them what happened.

It's pretty obvious that they wouldn't believe me. Who in their right mind would believe that some high school girl and her brother accidentally teleported her to a different world. Kid must've been hit harder on his head than we thought. Or at least, that's what I imagined they were thinking.

Slowly, the man stopped coming, and my mother stopped asking me questions.

It became apparent that Aliyah wasn't a missing person. She left no trace. Aliyah Trieste was no longer on this earth.

At that point, the days were silent. The start date for my college came and went without my notice, and each day began to seep into the next.

In those times, I didn't daydream once.

My voice stopped coming out.

I don't know when it happened, maybe I was sick, maybe I didn't want to hear it anymore.

My body was weak as well, barely able to muster strength or fight off illness.

It was probably from all the days spent idle, but even in this condition, it was the bare minimum I could do to keep myself bathed and fed.

Despite this, I slowly recovered.

Through the years that followed Aliyah's disappearance, I fought my own battles with an ever-present sense of self-loathing and depression.

Thoughts and memories from that day didn't disappear, but through time and effort, I was able to wrangle back some sort of normalcy back into my life.

I made the decision to begin attending online university lectures. I started running errands for my mother again and even picked up a part-time job to save up for a down payment on a cheap apartment.

I was beginning to glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel.

Even with my progress, the symptoms never went away.

I fought to regain control of my life, but my voice, my strength, and my health seemed to evade me, crippling me at every turn. It felt as though someone was forcefully holding me down, preventing me from standing back up.

I was never the religious type, but these days it felt as though it was some sort of divine judgment, holding me accountable for my sins.

It was the final day of my junior semester in college when I got a call from the hospital.

I stared at my sleeping mother from the side of her bed in a dark and sterile white room.

The past 3 years hadn't been kind to either of us.

Draped in white and covered in tubes, my mother looked more akin to a ghost than the youthful single mother I was accustomed to. Her long brown hair had faded into a matted gray coat to match her once smiling cheek's new lines and wrinkles.

Staring at the ghost of a woman my mother had once been, the weight of my actions felt as heavy on my shoulders as that day.

"You're here, Harper."

It seems she had woken up at some point. Rather than speak, I simply nodded.

For a long moment, the two of us sat in silence, the only noise being the rhythmic beep of her pulse.

There was nothing for her to say, there was nothing I could say, yet, her face was tight as if she was thinking deeply, eyes misty with regret.

"You know, Harper, ever since that day I was thinking… I really wish-"

WHP! The door swung open.

"Mrs. Trieste, it's time for your dinner!" My mother had been cut off mid-sentence by an obnoxiously loud nurse announcing her entrance. I was shuffled out of the room in a hurry to "give my sick mother some space."

That was the last time my mother spoke to me. I didn't need to hear the end of it to know what she wanted to say to me. There's no doubt that she was going to say, "I really wish that it was you."

It may not have been in the way she meant it, but later that week, she got her wish.