Amy watched Leigh trace lazy patterns on the car's window, her tongue between her teeth, and her brown eyes intense. True to her promise, Amy had rushed home and was driving her little sister to Dr. Abernathy's house for her counselling sessions. For a long while, she hadn't participated in any afterschool activities so her timing was of little significance. Amy had spent a healthy part of an hour reassuring her mother constantly that she would drive slowly and cautiously. Leigh sat up a little straighter as soon as the golden trees lining their path cleared and they began their descent beside Lake Trent. The cliff overlooked sparkling cerulean waters and it was Leigh's favorite part of their weekly journey.

Amy rolled down the windows on either side of them and the crisp, bracing scent of the lake right after a shower filled their lungs. In the afternoon, the clouds had returned, bursting with water. Leigh giggled as the wind tickled her face and she looked unreservedly happy, not a care in the world. She mimed skipping over the ripples in the lake with her fingers. Amy lovingly ruffled her sister's soft hair. A small portion of the guilt knotted inside her heart alleviated. Leigh's curls had almost grown past her ears.

It was her fault that Leigh had to endure therapy.

For months, Amy had found herself waking up in the middle of the night, fading in between mottled levels of consciousness, cold sweat making her hair stick to her face, stumbling into her sister's room - only to find her sleeping soundly and cuddling with her beloved penguin plushie. Over and over again, she relived the same memory in her nightmares - Leigh standing on her little plastic stool in the bathroom, surrounded by a mess of her own hair, blood trickling down her chin and a pair of scissors clutched in her tiny fist.

Every morning after Amy's nightly torment, Leigh would squeal with glee to see her big sister snoring beside her.

Growing up, Amy had cherished the little pink bundle; from the very moment she laid eyes on her. Leigh had been in her mother's arms and then she was in Amy's. She had been immensely fascinated by how lumpy Leigh was. Promptly, the lump had pooped and peed in her arms. Amy often claimed she knew all about infants because she had studied her baby sister's every move exhaustively. She was Amy's very own pet project.

"Do you think the time you spend with Dr. Abernathy helps you?" Amy shot at her sister, injecting some of her own misgivings and fears into the question. Once again, the lofty ginkgos had enveloped them. They were nearing their destination.

Leigh mulled it over, timidly pulling at her seatbelt.

"Dr. Abernathy listens to me. I think she likes talking to me. I don't have anyone who wants to talk to me apart from you, Mom, Dad, Dr. Abernathy," she was counting them on her stubby fingers and her voice was like a sparrow's call. "And Georgie! I get to sit with him the whole time."

Amy pulled into the driveway of Dr. Abernathy's two-storied house. It was built like a faux log cabin, all dark timber with a grand brick chimney towering alongside the birches and the bald cypresses. The forty-five-year-old doctor waved in greeting from her front porch. She was wearing a floral cardigan and cream pants with a periwinkle woolen shawl wrapped around her frail body. Her close-cropped silver hair stood out against the puce woodwork on the outer walls of her house. Leigh hopped out of the Corolla and rushed up the stairs to hug her. Amy followed more reluctantly.

"I am writing a book," Leigh enthusiastically told Dr. Abernathy.

She smiled kindly down at her. "What is it about?"

"Pretty people doing stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"It doesn't matter. As long as they are pretty, people will read it."

Dr. Abernathy did not comment. 

Amy wanted to object but she knew that her opinions no longer mattered. She felt cold.

They heard a loud bark from within the house. To her credit, Leigh didn't barrel onwards with her usual gusto. She tried to act cool and grown-up. She was almost ten, after all. Five seconds later a frantic whimpering could be heard from inside and she gave up all pretenses. Barely restraining her yearning, Leigh gave Dr. Abernathy one of her biggest, floppiest brown-eyed pleas who laughed in response.

"Leigh, why don't you go meet him? He's been waiting for you. I will be with you shortly."

Leigh excitedly opened the screen door and disappeared inside. Amy's sense of foreboding deepened. She was about to hear things she knew she would beat herself up with. This was the part of the sessions Amy looked forward to the least. After the standard pleasantries had been exchanged, Dr. Abernathy's deportment changed. She fixed her plain eyes on Amy in the sternest professional therapist sort of way. 

Amy felt the temperature drop a couple of degrees.

"She's projecting her peers' young, shallow ignorance onto the adult world of which she knows very little," Dr. Abernathy pursed her lips and once again, her penetrating gaze made Amy feel like she was being shamed. "Last week Leighton told me that bad karma doesn't result in reincarnation in the form of some lowly insect. She firmly believes that in rebirth we find ourselves with extremely ugly noses as punishment for the wrongdoings of our previous life."

Amy hung her head down, suddenly interested in examining the patches of dried mud on her white canvas shoes. The fascination with noses could be genetic.

"This is not the way a nine-year-old child should come to terms with her self-image and the consequences of her negative thoughts. She is bottling her feelings and nonchalantly proclaiming that her extreme anguish is "karma" for the things that have happened in the past."

"Amelia, you must interact more positively with her. That is the key to her improvement. She has been awfully tormented by her fellows because of her short hair. The way she is coming to terms with it is not healthy," Dr. Abernathy said with such finality that it almost physically burdened the downcast teen. 

Amy took a deep breath, trying not to buckle under the pressure of the penance she was being subjected to. She did not know how to be perfect for her sister. Amy didn't understand why she was the beginning and the end of all problems Leigh faced. Had she really damaged her sister that badly?

Every single time Dr. Abernathy looked in her general direction, Amy could see the revulsion crystallizing in her eyes. While the counsellor's words assured Amy that it had not been her fault, that she couldn't have possibly known that Leigh would retaliate in that manner, her body language betrayed her true thoughts. Dr. Abernathy abhorred Amy for almost ruining her brilliant younger sister's life.

"We cannot let her associate past negligence with physical flaws and insecurities that exist only in her mind," Dr. Abernathy concluded. The condemnation in her voice stung. "She is far too gifted to be wasted like that."

Amy clambered into the car after her dismissal.

She had never stepped foot inside the doctor's cabin. Her parents had accompanied Leigh during her initial visits until the adults had zeroed on the source of the issue. While Leigh continued to insist that she just wanted to change her hair so that her family would notice and give her more attention, Amy knew that she had been the true reason why her baby sister had tried to hurt herself.

Nothing Amy ever did helped. She had failed to prevent Leigh from unravelling and now she was failing to pick up the pieces of her broken sister.

Amy put her head onto the steering wheel and willed herself to cry. In the apathetic solitude of the car, she begged her body to cathartically heal her broken spirit. But the tears never came. Her sins were far too great to be allowed reprieve through the simplest of human functions.

She pulled at her hair and repeatedly hammered her head against the hard, foam-covered metal curve of the steering wheel; each blow harder than the last one. No one in the world knew how much she despised her own existence. Amy had a mask to hide every other emotion she felt. The one she favored was stark-white and polished; it fit her ugly face seamlessly and unendingly suffocated her.

Amy needed to feel pain.

Every week this was her church. A glass, metal and leather confessional against which the darkness within rattled, threatening to burst open and poison the world.

The face behind all the masks was burnt; the skin raw, the bones underneath cracked and charred. That was her. Not the puppet that functioned, talked and smiled like she used to before; when she had celebrated normalcy.

No one could see the difference. No one was close enough.

And she could not let them see. Amy couldn't be weak. She had to be the strength that Leigh needed.

The Irvines had been a post-card perfect family once. Now, they just appeared to be. It all began in Amy's thirteenth year of life, on the very cusp of popular purgatory - also known as puberty.

She had celebrated her birthday with all of her best friends and most of the kids in her year. Her parents had flown to New York because of some unavoidable conference and the house had belonged to Amy for the night. When she had blown the candles on her favorite southern red-velvet cake she couldn't have wished for a better night. Ashton had kissed her and she had loved the taste of cream-cheese frosting on his lips. Gemma, Kristine and Robin had taken it upon themselves to make sure that not a centimeter of Amy's face was left uncovered by pink cream. Streamers and confetti had hailed down on her in tune with the blaring music, ushering her teenage dreams of wild parties, treasured friendships, and a perfect boyfriend into reality.

Caught up in the revelries Amy hadn't once paused to think, that her baby sister; only five then, had waited atop the stairs for a slice of cake that would never come.

What Amy hadn't foreseen was that her Leigh had become extremely accustomed to her smothering care. Her older sister's face smiling down at her had been one of Leigh's earliest conscious memories. Leigh's first tottering steps had been towards Amy, in that memorable Christmas party at her father's colleague's farmhouse. Half a decade later, when Amy no longer first rushed into her sister's room after dumping her school bag at the doorstep, little Leigh realized something was amiss. When the microscopic attention brusquely went away, she didn't know what to do to win it back.

Over the course of considerable time, Leigh became reclusive, moody, and quiet. She pushed everyone away because her best friend just wouldn't be the same around her anymore. Amy's teenage need to be left alone and Leigh's childlike one for her near-constant presence had nearly torn the household in half. Leigh soon started displaying signs of intense self-depreciation which had become inseparable from her very existence.

The peculiar thing was that all three members of the Irvine clan had been unsuccessful in noticing that Leigh wasn't an average little girl. She was intellectually far beyond her age. Leigh was gifted. Her mind worked faster and better than kids twice her age. The downside of her extraordinary gift was that it made her incredibly sensitive to the littlest changes in her surroundings. An intelligent goof alienated for being a know-it-all, she didn't have friends at her school. And the one Leigh was familiar with had grown out of their friendship.

Dr. Abernathy's words spun around in Amy's head. She picked up her fallen Russian cap and put it on her head, her heartbeat slowing down. A few more minutes and she would be able to breathe evenly again.

She felt lighter, as though she had scrubbed off bloodied scabs crusting her skin. Her soul was left raw, but in no way cured. The wounds would fester again and again. Amy's despair consumed her and a metallic taste filled her mouth. Should I just give in?

The answer came bounding towards her with a snowy Great Pyrenees at her heels. The gentle giant tried to lick Leigh's face and she laughed and kissed his nose. "Amy!"

Her little angel had come.

Amy opened the door and ambled towards them. She sank to her knees and buried her nose in George's neck. He vigorously moisturized her face in a couple of loving licks.

Amy's eyes burned and a wistful, half-smile graced her lips.

There's still hope for me.

The setting sun had stolen the autumn colors from the witch-hazels and the maidenhairs. Dusk had always been a bittersweet affair for the sisters. It announced a beautiful tradition that Amy cherished beyond all others in her life. Every week they drove downtown to Shelly's and ordered double-chocolate walnut ice-creams, merrily slurping their way through desert before dinner, breaking rules they didn't know they were allowed to; and savored being rebels.

Some patterns in the woven tapestry of life were meant to be repetitive.

Amy switched the headlights on and backed up the car, turning it onto the main road. George's booming bark echoed through the gigantic trees and Dr. Abernathy raised her hand in farewell from her leaf-strewn front yard.

Until next time.

✧

A/N: Allow me to express gratitude on Amy's behalf because even though she has no idea about it, she did share her darkest, most painful thoughts with someone. You.