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As I sit here, watching my younger sister fiddle with her hair anxiously, waiting for the bus to come and carry her off to seventh grade, I feel myself smile against my wishes. She was becoming a bundle of nerves, though she had no reason to be. Kylie was beautiful. She was smart. Her voice was as smooth as honey. When her mocha-like eyes danced, the men in the room fawned over her. With a pang of indescribable sadness, I realized she was the spitting image of me a few years ago. She was my baby sister, and though I never thought I'd say this, I missed her. I wish I could hug her, kiss, her, and tell her everything was going to be alright. I wish I could advise her about what to do, what not to do. But, then again, would my advice do justice? I was the one who involved myself in that horrible, horrible car accident. What would I tell her?


Life is short, that would be what I would tell her. Life is too short to worry about life itself. Seventh grade is a time where friends are made, where grades are starting to count towards high school, where life starts to get complicated. If you spend that time worrying, it's another year of your life that you've wasted. Out of all the advice I could give her - about boys, friends, and teachers - this would be the most important, in my eyes. This would not be valuable just for seventh grade; it would be valuable in life.


The bus is coming, I tell myself with grief. I'm yearning to step out of my tiny little cubbyhole, to defy the laws which I swore to uphold, to tell her things. But I am held here by some invisible force, some brick wall that is holding me back from my family. A tear trickles down my cheek forlornly as the innocent girl before me boards the yellow bus, her backpack swinging like a pendulum in the wind. She sits down near an eighth grader, who just ignores her as his music player fills his eardrums. I cry out, my heart physically breaking in two, tears now streaming down in torrents. The bus driver ignites the engine, but I just sit, left behind, my body shaking uncontrollably. She is gone, and I cannot save her.
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