Prologue
The room was empty. The faint orange glow from the outside city flooded through the window, casting pulsing patterns across the brown carpet. I held my breath, afraid to wake the dead space.
My eyes traced the speckled blue paint on the wall. It seemed green in the orange light. Had I no clue where I was, would I have recognized the room? There were no pictures of her cluttering the wall. There was no cello hiding in the corner. There was no bookshelf overflowing with untouched, new books. She left with no trace.
I could almost see her here; leaning against the corner of the wall, or laughing as I asked why she kept so many books if she was never going to read them.
But that was all before. Before the government came. Before they took her away. Now this was just an empty room, a ghost of what once was, and what could have been.
The truth was, my sister was gone. She was taken away from me because she was special. Her blood was just like mine, but her brain was not. She understood people, what they were thinking, why they did things, in a way I never could.
My entire childhood, I was never jealous of her abilities. I saw how my parents hid her away, how she had no friends. Only when she was gone did I wish I was the one who was different.
My parents never spoke of her once she left. They painted over the height markers on the wall. They packaged her life away in boxes and sent it to charity, or sold it online. Her cello went to Idaho, her brand new books to Delaware. Her room no longer pained me to enter, because it was not her room anymore.
"Rae!" I hear my mother call. "Where are you? We have to go!"
Silently, I walked to the doorway, pausing once more before stepping out of the room, leaving no hint that I was ever there.
