Part 2

Part 3

The wall between my sister Maia’s room and mine is paper thin. If it wasn’t, I would never have found out. I’d be safer and happier, and I wouldn’t be huddled over my computer screen in the dark, terrified of what’s happening on the other side of the wall.

Things didn’t always used to be this way. We used to live in a big old house with a pear tree out front and plenty of space for everyone, instead of the basement apartment the four of us are crammed into now.

But that was before Maia got sick.

Back then, I thought that nothing bad could happen to Maia. She was just too perfect. My sister was one of those fit, tanned, hyper-friendly girls who seemed able to participate in every sport and social event without ever running out of energy. She always seemed to know the right thing to wear or say, and she bore the burden of our immigrant parents’ ridiculously-high expectations with a smile.

I, on the other hand, was the opposite of all those things–

But as long as Maia was around, it didn’t matter.

No matter how discouraged or unloved I felt, I was always sure that somehow my older sister would take care of it.

When Maia first got sick, we all thought she'd be better in a week. But the week became a month, and the months stretched on into years. My parents dug our family into a pit of debt trying to save their golden child.

“You’ll see,” my mother would soothe my father while he stared, incredulous, at the pile of bills on the kitchen table. “It’ll all be worth it when we get our Maia back.” That was six years ago, and since then, my sister has only gotten worse.

It started as just a little tiredness, a little lightheadedness, the way Maia’s smile faded faster than it had before. As always, my sister tried to be the strong one, but the truth was that Maia was becoming weaker every day.

There wasn’t any one cause that the doctors could diagnose or treat; my sister was just…less, like her body had an imperceptible leak from which her spirit was slowly draining.

Now, my sister is twenty-three, and she can no longer eat or use the restroom without help. Of course, she can’t walk or speak either–

Or so I thought, until late last night.

I awoke to the creaking of the floor in my sister’s room. At first I thought my father or mother was helping her out of bed, but then I heard something I hadn’t heard in seven years. Something that chilled my blood. I heard my sister’s voice through the wall.

“If I could do anything, what would it be…” Maia used to have a loud, almost aggressive way of talking, but now her words came out in a dry rasp that sounded horribly close to my ear.

“...Maia?” I whispered back–

But I don’t think she heard me. She just kept on talking:

“If I could do anything, I think I’d walk down the street and toss my hair. I’d smile at a guy and watch his face light up…that’s what I’d do first. Then I’d go shopping and buy a whole new wardrobe for all the parties my friends would host to welcome me back…”

Sometimes Maia would pause, as though someone else were in the room with her and they were sharing a conversation…but that was impossible. The whole family was already in bed!

Maybe my sister is just lonely, I thought, as the strange one-sided conversation went on.

I started spending more time with Maia than I usually did, hoping that talking to her a little more would help. I spent an hour or two in my sister’s room every day, doing homework or reading, but I hardly ever said more than a few words to her.

Maia had stopped speaking to us years ago…yet here she was, talking to herself in the middle of the night. It was unnerving to say the least.

The next day, I made a point to talk to Maia more than just the usual “how are you, sis?” and “love you lots.” I described my day, told her a stupid joke I’d heard at university, and asked her opinion about what outfit I should buy.

The truth was, I had no intention of going shopping anytime soon. I just thought it might lift her spirits, but Maia stayed silent as always.

That silence was one of the things that makes it so hard to stay in Maia’s room for any length of time. There’s no television, no radio, not even the ticking of a clock. We’d offered my sister all of those things, but she had just waved them away with a feeble gesture of her hand.

There isn’t much light, either. Maia keeps the blinds closed, and the only other illumination she’ll tolerate comes from a tiny bedside lamp. Between the dim light and the fact that nothing in the room has changed in the past six years, sitting by my sister’s beside feels like being inside some kind of creepy time capsule.

My sister’s lacrosse uniform, prom dress, and massive collection of jeans all still hang in the closet, as though they’re waiting for her to get out of bed and slip them on again.

Posters of her favorite bands and actors (circa 2016) stare unblinkingly down at where Maia lays, eyes shut, barely breathing. The books she used to read to me are still stacked in her bookshelves, but now, I read them to her.

The eeriest thing about Maia’s room, though, is the fancy oval mirror hanging on the wall across from her bed. She used to say that putting her makeup on with it made her feel like a movie star, but I don’t see how. Maybe it’s just the gloomy light, but there’s something off about how reflections look in that old mirror.

Pale as she is, Maia practically glows in the dusky looking-glass; I look like a gray, insignificant shadow beside her, and the rest of the room fades away into darkness. Sometimes, though, I’d swear that I see something moving in there, out of the corner of my eye….

That’s usually when I leave Maia’s room. I tell myself I’m tired, that the bad illumination is straining my eyes, or that my sister needs to rest…

But the truth is that I’m afraid of what might happen next.

My parents and I have tried to change the layout of Maia’s room and take down that awful mirror, but my sister won’t have it–

And when she reaches out weakly, begging us wordlessly to leave things how they are–

How could we possibly reject her wishes?

“My friends were always jealous of me,” Maia rasped through my wall on the second night, jolting me awake. “It used to bother me, but now I miss it. I mean, look at me now–who would ever want to be me? I wish I could go out again...I wish my old friends would see me dancing and too stunned to speak…” My muscles tensed up with fear as Maia whispered to the darkness about her friends, going on about petty feuds and jealousies that had surely been long forgotten by everyone else involved.

I couldn’t tell which was more frightening: the possibility that my sister was hiding her ability to speak for some reason, or the thought that someone else who sounded like her was talking on the other side of the wall at night. If I went into my sister’s room now, I wondered in horror, what would I see?

As much as they disturbed me, my sister’s midnight rants also gave me an idea about how I might be able to help her. What if I looked up one of her old crew and asked them to visit her?

I decided to start making calls the very next day…but only one of Maia’s friends picked up–

And the past six years hadn’t been kind to Leslie Macomb.

From stalking her on social media, I knew that she’d gotten pregnant by her high school boyfriend, had him locked up after a domestic dispute, and started a GoFundMe to pay for her terrier’s life-saving surgery (or so she claimed).

“Yeah?” Leslie’s voice when she answer the phone was so smoke-choked and aggressive that I almost hung up–

But I had Maia to consider.

“Hey Leslie…you might not remember me, but maybe you remember my older sister, Maia?”

“What?! Who’s this?!” The crunching of Cheetos in the receiver was so loud I had to hold my phone away from my head. “Oh, you mean Maia from high school? The girl with that freaky disease?”

My hands clenched into fists. So now my sister–who’d been the best goalie in the county, had one of the highest GPAs in her class, and always been there when her friends (like Leslie) needed a shoulder to cry on–was suddenly just “the girl with that freaky disease?!”

“I’m talking about Maia, Maia Beridze. Maia’s gotten a lot worse since high school, Leslie. She can’t talk and she barely leaves her bedroom. I was hoping…if it wouldn’t be too much trouble…maybe you could come by and see her?”

“See her? Pfft!” Leslie scoffed, “I saw her just last night, at The Red Room*.* Damn, your sister’s got some moves! I barely recognized her!” I sat in stunned silence, sure that I’d misheard. The Red Room was a sketchy dance club on the other side of town…and my sister could barely leave her bed. What on earth was going on?

“Are you sure that was Maia who you saw?” I finally stammered.

“Yeah, she’s there, like, every night!”

“I think you’re mistaking my sister for someone else. Maia is–”

“Look, your big sis held my hair back while I puked in an ice cream carton at Billy Saville’s party. We went to that not-so-secret swimming spot down by the quarry every summer. There isn’t a chance that I wouldn’t recognize Maia! In fact–” Leslie paused, angry now “–I think it’s safe to say that I know Maia better than you ever will!”

I hung up before I could say any of the words that were burning in my chest. I couldn’t risk alienating Leslie. Rude as she was, if what she’d said was true I might need her help later.

As much as I hated clubs, dancing, and everything to do with them, it looked like I was going to The Red Room.

X

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