Later that evening, when I returned to my bedroom still clutching the folder, I’d already come to a decision.

                  It hadn’t exactly taken years of thought; in fact, my mind had been made up somewhere between climbing the stairs and making it to our room. The obvious seemed clear: what I held in my hand belonged to Reese, and Reese only, regardless of whether she was still around to make use of that privilege.

                  So, after the door clicked into place behind me, I shoved the folder into her now-empty drawer and tried not to think about it.

                  On that front, however, I failed miserably. The harder I tried not to dwell on the fact my sister’s unread possessions were idling six feet away from my bed, the more I thought of exactly that. Sitting cross-legged on top of my duvet, as I buried my head in that day’s homework just to try focusing on something else, the curiosity only swelled.

                  What if it’s important? The voice in my head was taunting, drawing me away from my own resolve. What if it’s something you need to find out, and you never know?

                  It doesn’t have my name on it, I pointed out, though it was only to myself. It’s not my business.

                  So? Just do it anyway.

                  I can’t.

                  Only then did I remember the back-and-forth exchange was going on inside my head, and that had to be a sign of madness in itself. I stopped straightaway, shaking my head and trying to return my attention to the page of buffer calculations in my lap.

                  Ten minutes. That was all it took: ten minutes spent glancing up and down, eyes flitting between chemical formulas and Reese’s closed drawer, before I cracked. All of a sudden, the weight got the better of me, pushing down on my shoulders, until I couldn’t take it any longer. I jumped up from the bed with slightly unnecessary haste, headed over to the bedside table and retrieved the folder.

                  It didn’t contain anything earth-shattering – not that I expected it to. Most of it was random: forgotten sheets of A-level notes that had got muddled into my own; a to-do list dating back to three weeks before her death; login details to her UCAS application. Though it still hurt to see the handwritten words on the page, coupled with the striking normality of everything, none of it really meant anything. The only thing that jumped off the paper was her blissful ignorance: how she’d written down facts for exams she’d never have to take, applied for a university place she’d never fill, listed tasks that never mattered in the grand scheme of things. Her unawareness now seemed so ridiculously out of place, but of course at the time we’d all been as clueless as each other.

                  The pace of my heart slowed before I reached the end of the pile; I’d already realised there was nothing significant amongst it all. Whatever Mitchell might’ve seen hardly mattered. But just as I allowed myself to be lulled into a sense of relief, I uncovered the last piece of paper.

                  It looked unassuming at first; a folded sheet, it was creased all over, like it had been well-thumbed or carried around in a pocket. I expected to find a shopping list, or something else that had long since lost its relevance, but instead was faced with something quite different.

                  Suddenly, my heart started thumping again.

                  It was a list, but not of anything as disposable as a week’s shopping. Composed of ten items, written in vibrant purple ink, it was headed by a title that had my stomach doing a somersault.

                  Reese’s bucket list.

                  My eyes skimmed over the words too fast for comprehension; I had to go over it multiple times until they began to sink in. The voice in my head had suddenly turned into that of my twin sister, so loud and clear it almost had me jolting in alarm. I could hear every item in her clear, breezy tone, spoken with a confidence that left no room for doubt about any of it being ticked off. And yet all this was tinged by a sinister underlay; despite Reese’s distinct assurance coming right off the page, this was a list she’d never even got to start.

                  I shivered. The temperature of the room had dipped, a chill coursing through the air, even though the window had been closed all day. With trembling fingers, I folded the list along its original lines, sandwiching the ink between several layers of paper.

                  I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I tucked it into my back pocket, struck by the strange compulsion to keep it close.

***

                  As the week went on, I tried to forget about Reese’s list, but it proved much easier said than done.

                  I probably could’ve made the task a little easier for myself by not carrying it everywhere I went, folded against the material of my trousers, but I kept doing so anyway. It felt like a comfort, if a strange one, to have it with me, almost like I was doing my sister a favour just by keeping it around.

                  Of course, that wasn’t the real favour. That much I’d worked out; the obvious had been staring me in the face for several days already, even if I hadn’t mustered the courage to look it in the eye. For some people, it would probably be an easy decision, but apparently I didn’t fall into that category.

                  The noble thing would be to take it upon myself to complete the list. If I was the perfect sister, that would’ve been decided in a split second; maybe I’d have even set to work on the first few items. I wished I could be that sister. But things were more complicated than that, and I wasn’t nearly as together as Reese would’ve been in my position. It was always going to take me longer. And now she wasn’t around, I couldn’t even look over for comparison, glancing over my shoulder at the example I was supposed to follow.

                  That was perhaps what scared me the most.

                  The following Friday evening, an entire week later, I was lying in bed with my laptop after a long day at school. Five consecutive lessons, the last of which involved an exceptionally painful hour spent listening to our biology teacher drone on about synaptic transmission, had left me with no motivation to do anything but spend hours in bed with my favourite TV programme.

                  Halfway into my second episode of Catfish, however, my phone rang.

                  Sparing a glance for the caller ID flashing onscreen, I jabbed at the button and put it to my ear. “Archie,” I greeted, hitting pause on the laptop. “What brings you to my mobile phone at this ridiculous hour?”

                  “You know it’s only half ten, right?” his voice sounded from the other line. “Hardly what I’d call ridiculous, unless you’ve aged eighty years since I dropped you home from school.”

                  “Nope, I’m fine. Just checked the mirror and I’m definitely still wrinkle-free.”

                  “Glad to hear it. Are you really too preoccupied to talk?”

                  Shifting my position on the bed, tucking my legs beneath me, I switched the phone to my other ear. “I mean, you’re dragging me away from a hot date with a Catfish box set,” I told him, only half-joking, “but if you can live with that on your conscience, I’m here.”

                  “As much as that sounds like an unbearable burden on my soul, I think I’ll go on. I need your help.”

                  “With what? If you’re going to ask about the biology homework Miss Kirkpatrick set earlier, you’re wasting your time. I haven’t even thought about getting my textbook out of my bag, let alone got anywhere close to actually doing so.”

                  “Nah, it’s not the homework.”

                  I paused then, realising his tone sounded slightly less bright than usual. Where he was usually irritatingly positive at all times of the day, whether it be three in the afternoon or the morning, that now wasn’t the case. I could tell something was off.

                  “What is it?”

                  “It’s Hannah,” he said, a name which preceded a brief sigh. Hannah was his little sister, only a year younger, and he’d acted like she was the bane of his existence ever since she moved up into the lower sixth. She wasn’t as bad as he made out, from the skewed perception of being her brother, but she was pretty much the opposite of the two of us. Whereas we tended to stick to our own at school, she was one of the most popular girls in her year, always out at one party or another, sparing more attention on her next social occasion than her A-levels.

                  She and I had always got along fine, but maybe that was because I didn’t take the same older brother stance that Archie tended to.

                  Hannah was fine. Hannah said in that tone, however, could only mean trouble. “What’s going on?”

                  “Did you hear about that guy’s party?” he asked. “The guy from the year below. Sean, I think his name is. He’s been bragging about having a massive party this weekend in some kind of warehouse.”

                  “What?” I found myself frowning. “Why in a warehouse?”

                  “Apparently he got the keys off his uncle, or something. They just cleared out an old warehouse in the middle of town and he’s got permission to use it for his birthday. Apparently. I’m really not convinced.”

                  “That’s all Hannah said?”

                  “Well, it was pretty difficult to ask questions when she was already halfway out the door,” Archie said. “You know how she is. She waits until she’s in the halfway, tottering around in those ridiculous heels, before she tells anyone she has plans for the night. That’s all I managed to weasel out of her before she got into her friend’s car. The rest I looked up on Facebook, because this guy’s been bragging about it for weeks.”

                  “I’m sure she’s fine. You know Hannah. She knows how to look after herself.”

                  “I told her to text me when she got there,” he said. “You know, just to let me know that everything’s okay. But she didn’t. Nothing.”

                  “How long ago was this?”

                  “Uh…” He paused, mentally calculating. “Two hours ago?”

                  “Oh.” Where I’d first assumed it was the onset of Archie’s overprotective instinct, I had to admit that two hours of silence was a long time, especially considering Hannah’s reputation. “Have you texted her?”

                  “Only twelve times,” he said casually. “And tried to call her, but she’s not picking up. Tell me, am I being paranoid? Am I going complete psycho older brother here? Be honest.”

                  “Not complete psycho,” I assured him. “Two hours is a long time. What are you going to do?”

                  “I don’t know. Go over there?”

                  I couldn’t help grimacing, even though he couldn’t see. It probably was a sensible suggestion, in an ideal world, given that Hannah could’ve been anywhere. However, all I could think about was what the look on her face would be if her older brother turned up to crash the most talked-about party of the term. He wouldn’t get away with it lightly, that was for sure.

                  “She’s going to completely slaughter me if I turn up, isn’t she?”

                  I knew what he wanted to hear, but there was also an honest answer, and it just so happened that the two didn’t coincide. “She may just do.”

                  “Will you come with me, then? She likes you; the murder scene won’t be as bad. And there’ll be witnesses.”

                  I leaned back against the wall, letting my head rest against it. “Archie,” I began, “are you seriously dragging me out of bed on a Friday night – depriving me of hours spent laughing at people who find out their supermodel internet girlfriend is actually a forty-year-old man – to go look for your sister in a very dodgy-sounding warehouse?”

                  “Yeah, pretty much.”

                  I sighed, though a small smile was creeping across my face. “This sounds like the beginning of a low budget horror film. I’m going to be the idiotic lead who walks right into the very obviously haunted derelict building and then acts surprised when she gets killed.”

                  “No, see,” Archie cut in, “you won’t be surprised. You already know what’s coming.”

                  “Ha-ha. So funny.”

                  “So, you coming?” he asked.

                  Sighing, I looked over at my laptop, its screen paused seconds before the moment of the big reveal: when the front door was opened and the internet dater got to find out whether their two-year-long relationship had been with the right person. There were few things I would’ve rather done that spent the rest of the evening in that exact spot, refusing to move from under the covers, but desperate times called for desperate measures. I couldn’t leave Archie on his own, and I was sure Hannah wouldn’t be too difficult to find. “Yeah,” I said eventually, closing the lid of my laptop and going to stand up. “I guess so.”

                  “Pick you up in ten minutes?”

                  I headed over to my wardrobe, already pulling out a jacket and beginning the search for a pair of trousers that could pass as normal. “See you then.”

***

                  On the way over, we’d been concerned about getting lost.

                  Archie didn’t have a sat-nav in his dated car, meaning we were relying on slightly vague instructions sourced from the host’s Facebook page. In his haste to emphasise how ‘sick’ the party was set to be, providing clear directions to the venue seemed to have been pushed aside, meaning Archie and I had to settle for driving around in the vague vicinity to scout the place out.

                  As it turned out, however, we needn’t have bothered. Two streets away, we could already hear the steady thump of the bass, turned up to a ridiculous volume. All we had to do was follow the racket, and several minutes later we were driving past a tall, run-down building that was in need of either a lick of paint or a demolition notice. The entrance was a side door to the left, which appeared to lead up to some sort of dark staircase, a passageway to whatever was going on inside. Groups of people were gathered on the concrete outside, engulfed by clouds of smoke from their cigarettes.

                  “Well,” I said, as Archie slowed down on the approach, “this looks like it.”

                  “Yeah.” As we passed the largest group at a slow enough speed, he craned his neck, looking back to the road with a frown upon his face. “Are those people from our year? I swear I recognise them.”

                  “I don’t know, I didn’t see.” Twisting in my seat, I squinted in the darkness, but the figures were huddled too close to make out. “It might’ve been. This does seem a little too big to just be a lower sixth party.”

                  “I’ll park somewhere nearby,” he said, hitting the indicator as the car approached one of the side roads. “I don’t fancy leaving my car out the front when there are that many drunks around.”

                  Luckily, the road was pretty much dead, and after some very spotty parallel parking (that still wasn’t entirely parallel, even after five separate attempts), found ourselves heading back down the path in the direction of the warehouse. With each step, the music grew in volume, and once we rounded the corner onto the main street it seemed to vibrate right through the concrete. The host of the party must’ve landed some industrial-size speakers – not to mention paid off the neighbours to stop them making a complaint.

                  We entered through the side door, moving through a dingy corridor and up a set of rickety-looking stairs I wasn’t entirely faithful could hold our combined weight. At the top of the stairs, another door gave way to more corridors, though this time half-hearted signs had been pasted as directions; poorly drawn arrows were headed by a scrawl of THIS WAY.

                  “Seriously?” I heard Archie shout over the music, as we came to the end of the second corridor. “Who on earth thought this was a good place to throw a party? It’s a wreck.”

                  “Somebody who thought it would be way less clearing up than throwing a house party?” I offered.

                  That being said, I did feel kind of sorry for whoever was going to be responsible for getting things straight the next day. The time was barely pushing eleven, and yet the place seemed to have descended well into a state of chaos already. As we emerged in the main room, I realised there was not much to see at all; amongst the darkness, erratic strobe lighting and masses of people packed into a small space, all I really wanted to do was escape.

                  “Do people enjoy this sort of thing?” I shouted in Archie’s ear.

                  “Apparently so.” Still, I could tell he was distracted; eyes darting across the room at lightning speed, he was obviously searching for the bottle-blonde hair of his sister. “Come on, let’s just find Hannah and get out of here.”

                  With that, I neither could nor wanted to argue. Archie’s hand enclosed my own as he tugged me deeper into the sweltering heat of the room. Instantly, we were both swallowed up by the crowd, being pushed and shoved in all directions, our linked hands the only thing stopping us from being carried in opposite directions. When we emerged in a semi-breathable space, somewhere in the middle of it all, he fished out his phone from his back pocket and began tapping away with his free hand.

                  “Any luck?” I shouted, as he brought up Hannah’s number onscreen.

                  He shook his head. “No. How the hell are we going to find her in here? If she’s even in here.”

                  “She’ll be fine. She always is.”

                  Still, despite my words of reassurance, my heart had already started to thud beneath my shirt. Even if Hannah was here, the likelihood of finding her was growing worryingly slim; I hadn’t anticipated this amount of people to search through. If Archie’s fears were confirmed, and she hadn’t made it at all, how were we even going to find out?

                  I could tell he wanted to believe me. The strained look on his face gave it all away, tugging at the seams of his forced smile. But the final note in my tone was missing, and there was no hiding that from Archie. I wasn’t fully convinced, and as long as that rang true, neither was he.

                  Just as a mild shade of hopelessness descended upon us, I saw us. A head of white blonde, teased into perfect curls, falling over the shoulders of a strapless top. My neck snapped in that direction, eyes scanning the area for another glimpse of what had already slipped out of view.

                  “There she is!”

                  The turn of Archie’s head was reflexive; a second later, and he was following my gaze, eyes darting in every direction to see what had caught my attention. Then, at the same time, we both noticed it: Hannah, a few feet away, chatting animatedly to another girl with a drink in her free hand.

                  “Hannah!”

                  Really, there was no hope of her hearing us; the music was way too loud for that, meaning the only way Archie and I had been able to communicate was by shouting right in the other’s eardrum. Hannah, throwing her head back with laughter as she swayed to the beat of the track, was never going to notice her brother’s voice over the commotion.

                  “Archie,” I said, grabbing his shoulder and yanking his ear closer to my lips. “We’ve found her now. She’s fine. We should go.”

                  He seemed unconvinced, glancing around at our surroundings, as if internally battling the compulsion to drag his sister out by force. I knew the warehouse wasn’t exactly the most safe or pleasant venue for a party, but this didn’t seem to be of concern to anybody around us. Most of them were too drunk to notice. Still, even Archie knew that trying to force Hannah to do anything never ended up well; when you were dealing with somebody as strong-willed as her, there was a whole art to getting what you wanted. He’d learned from experience that running in without a thought, overplaying the protective brother act, never ended well.

                  And yet before he could come to a final decision, things seemed to play out for us; seconds later, Hannah glanced over her shoulder, eyes glazing for a second before they focused properly on the two of us.

                  I held my breath, anticipating the worst.

                  Then she broke out into a smile.

                  “Callie!” Before I knew it, she’d elbowed her way through a gap between two groups of people, and was pulling me in for a bone-crushing hug. “What are you doing here?”

                  “Uh…” From over her shoulder, I shot a look at Archie, who shook his head vehemently. “We, uh… decided to come along and check out the party.”

                  She released me then, and I staggered backwards, regaining whatever breath she’d squeezed out of me. “It’s great, isn’t it?” she asked, lifting her drink a little too enthusiastically, so some of the liquid sloshed over the rim. Not that she noticed.

                  “Yeah,” I agreed half-heartedly. “It’s something.”

                  Hannah paused, peering at me closely, as if trying to work something out from beneath her drunken haze. “You,” she said eventually, jabbing her free finger into my chest with unnecessary force, “are not drunk enough. Let me fix that.”

                  “Oh, no…” My protest went unheard as she dug a hand into her bag, retrieving what looked like a hip flask full of alcohol. A glance toward her friend and she seemed able to conjure a cup out of thin air, well into filling it up before I could reach out to stop her. “Really. It’s okay. We were just about to leave, anyway.”

                  “No, no.” She shook her head, a little too forcefully. “You’re not going anywhere. Drink up.”

                  My gaze flickered from her to Archie, who for once was wearing a look I couldn’t decipher, and back again. She stood tall – much taller than usual in staggering heels – against the smoky backdrop, in which a mass of people pushed and shoved each other in an attempt at what looked vaguely like dancing. As a strobe light shot in our direction, it caught on the glitter eye-shadow she’d piled on her lids, and then shot right across my heart. All of a sudden, I could see nothing but Reese, who’d always gone overboard on the make-up each time she went out, claiming she’d never have a good night if her eyes weren’t ringed with glitter.

                  Hannah couldn’t have been further from my twin sister in her looks – her hair was paler, a colour from a bottle, and the sharp edge to her facial features weren’t found on Reese – but I couldn’t help seeing her right in front of me, beckoning me closer.

                  All I had to do was meet her halfway.

                  Then my mind darted to something unexpected. Subconsciously, my hand went to my back pocket, where the list sat underneath the fabric. The same piece of paper my sister’s hand had moved across, spilling out her innermost ambitions unburdened by the knowledge she’d never get to reach them. I could think of one thing, and one thing only.

                  In the most unforeseen action of the night, I reached over, relieving Hannah’s hand of what was now my drink, and took a sip.

                  I’d made the decision, and accepted everything that came with it.

                  In my head, I could hear Reese’s voice loud and clear: about time, sis.

----------------------------

Hi, guys! Sorry about the really late upload again. I know I mentioned it in the last author's note, but my life has never been more hectic than it is right now. I love university, but it means I'm constantly busy and writing gets pushed aside most of them time :( 

I'm not doing NaNo this year (way too busy) but I am going to make an effort to write more than I usually would this month, so hopefully I should get some more of this story done. I guess we'll see what happens.

If you want to be updated as to what's going on with me, make sure to follow my twitter (@leigh_wattpad) and my ask.fm (@leighonwattpad). Until next time! Love you guys <3