Re-Entry
Chapter One
Katarinna
The click and shudder sounds of the dozens of cameras are nothing but ambient white noise in the background as I step foot into my house for the first time in the last 5 years. Everything's the same and yet nothing is the same all at once. As my sister, Ciera shuts the front door the white noise vanishes completely. In the middle of the foyer my sister looks at me like I’m some rare nearly extinct animal. Like I’ll disappear any second now. Like it’s a privilege just to lay her eyes on me, and I guess that's what it must be like for her. We saw each other all throughout the re-trial but her eyes were always teary. She probably couldn’t get a good look at me for all twelve days. It’s an odd feeling, having the only person in this world I can trust watch me like I could evaporate at any moment. It’s so odd that I simply cannot take it, so I do the only thing I can think of. I hug my sister, younger by just two years, and the only thing anchoring me to this world. She feels so small in my arms even though she’s taller than me now. I wonder when that happened. She smells the same as she did the last time we were together. Still using Gucci Flora Gorgeous Gardenia perfume like her life depends on it. I’m glad to see not everything's changed. “I have some stuff for you.” she says pulling away after a moment, cheeks wet with tears. She’s always been a crier, sad, happy, angry, it doesn’t matter she’ll cry about it. I follow behind her like a guest in my own home still not used to being back yet as she walks into the kitchen. Out of the refrigerator she pulls a cake, sets it on the table, out of a kitchen drawer a bunch of numbered candles and a lighter. “We have a couple birthdays to celebrate” she says, setting up a ‘22’ on the cake.
After blowing out my candles for the fourth time I watch Ciera change the 5 in ‘25’ to a 6 and burst out into tears because I cannot believe I spent all of my twenties in prison, without her. And without him, I think for a second before I realize that he’s the last person I want to think about, even after Christian. And I killed Christian, literally.