12.

"How does that even happen?"

I look at Ben, trying to keep the tears from streaming down my face. "I don't know." I say, chewing on my lip to stop it from shaking. "They said she just left in the middle of the night and someone picked her up and they left."

"Do you know who picked her up?" Ben asks, clueless. "Maybe you can call some of her friends and see where she went? Or call her?"

And now I'm bawling.

All of the pent up emotions I've been holding in since I arrived in Texas explode out of me and I turn away from Ben and Elizabeth and walk into the other room, trying to hide my face and my breakdown.

"Woah, what's going on?" Ben asks, following me into his bedroom. "Sit down, breathe."

I sit on the edge of the bed and fold over on myself, hugging onto my legs with my face mashed into my knees.

I hear Ben moving around me, but my heartbeat is pounding in my ears.

I jump a little when I feel Ben's hand on my back and then feel him sit down beside me. He uses his other hand to pull my shoulder up so that I'm sitting up facing him. I look to the side of the bed where he's laid Elizabeth in her cradle.

I stare at her lying there, trying to focus on the present and shove out all of the stuff I don't want to feel, but looking at her only makes it worse.

When I look at Elizabeth, I can't help but think of Alice.

Alice who abandoned that baby.

Alice who abandoned me long before that.

Alice who I used to love so much but now brings me so much pain to remember her on all of her good days.

Alice who is gone again.

"I don't know...anything." I hiccup.

Ben rubs a small circle on my back between my shoulders. "What do you mean?" He asks quietly, patiently looking at me to explain. I glance into his eyes but I can't hold his stare. It's too kind, no judgment or worry in their dark depths.

I don't want to be seen as weak in front of him, but weak is exactly how I feel right now. Weak and hopeless. The same way I've always felt when it came to my sister.

"She was my best friend, you know?" I say, wiping at my tear streaked cheeks. "She had so many days where she was that person again. Like I could see my sister and not the monster in her eyes. She wasn't always so bad. The real Alice wouldn't do any of this."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean." Ben says softly, still watching me.

"I haven't seen or spoken to her in years." I tell him and I see him reposition beside me, some understanding washing over him. "She ran away when we were teenagers. She didn't even know our parent's are dead. When I flew in the other day after I heard about Elizabeth was the first time I'd seen her in years, Ben." I sniffle and wipe at my nose. "I don't know any or her friends or even have her number anymore. I have no way to find her and I can't put her out as a missing person because she isn't missing she's just gone again."

"I'm sorry." Ben whispers, reaching over to put his hand over mine on my knee. "I know they told me she was on a lot of drugs...is that why?"

I move my head from side to side. "She's not ok." I say. "She's schizophrenic. She was diagnosed really young. She'd always be fighting with these voices the rest of us couldn't hear. She was afraid all the time. Of herself and of me and our parents. She got into drugs afterwards. She liked the way they made her feel but they make her someone else...my sister isn't the person who would do all of this."

"That's a lot." Ben says. "I didn't know about that."

I look over at him, his curls in his eyes. "What was she like when you met her?"

Ben shifts a little uncomfortably. "I mean..." he starts, uneasy. "She was cool. She was the one who came up to me and my friends. She was happy, singing horribly at the top of her lungs to every song, saying each one was her favorite song in the whole world." I smile a little through the tears. "She was funny. She talked a lot. She didn't seem off at all. She was just a fun person."

"That's how I remember her." I whisper. "She always loved music, but she was in fact a terrible singer." I laugh a little. "She'd always blast her radio in the shower and drove us all crazy with it. She always had to be the one to pick the music in the car. On her good days, she was so much fun. She'd be so...alive. On the other days, it's just like someone else steps in. The light in her eyes is just gone. She will barely speak and when she does it's careless and can be cruel. I learned to avoid her on those days so that she couldn't say things she would regret and apologize for later."

Ben nods. "The next day..." he hedges. "After she'd come over, when she woke up she was really stoic. She didn't say anything to me. I offered to make breakfast or call her a car, but she just got her stuff and walked out the front door."

I nod, not wanting to fixate too hard on the things that I know happened between meeting Alice and her leaving his house.

"I don't know what to do now." I sigh, wiping away the last of the tears.

"We can go drive around to look for her." Ben offers. "I don't know where to look either, but it might make you feel better to try." He slides his hand off of mine. "I think I might still have her number." He says standing to go to his bedside table where his phone sits on the charger. He picks it up and scrolls through it before handing it to me.

I look down at the screen and my sister's name and number.

Ashley : hey cutie, what are you up to tonight? ❤️

The text bubble pops up on the top of the screen and I quickly swipe it away.

I ignore the annoyed feeling in my stomach as I press call on the screen.

Alice's name pops up, but it doesn't even ring. It goes straight to voicemail.

I wait for the beep and then take a deep breath. "Alice, it's Hayden. I'm worried about you. I'm...I'm sorry about how I left things. Please just let me know you're ok."

I list off my own phone number, then end the call.

I hand Ben's phone back to him.

"Ashley wants to know what you're doing tonight." I say bitterly, then try to play it off with a smile. "I can watch Elizabeth if you want to go out."

Ben slides the phone into his pocket and shrugs. "Nah, I'm not leaving Elizabeth anytime soon." He says. "Are you sure you're ok?"

I huff a laugh. "No." I admit. "But that's just the way it is." I say, looking down at my hands in my lap. "With Alice, you just have to do things on her terms."

"That's still not fair to you." Ben says and I shrug again. "It's not." He says. "What she did with Elizabeth is fucked up. I'd be lying if I said I'm not pissed at her myself. Elizabeth could have died. Elizabeth is suffering anyway because of the drugs. None of this is fair to any of us."

"I know that." I snap at him. "I know she's fucked up. I know that she's not a good person anymore. I don't need you to remind me."

We stare at each other for a long moment. "Look." He finally sighs. "I didn't mean it like that. I know she's your sister and you're gonna love her regardless. I just meant I get it. I understand being mad at her. You don't have to make excuses for her choices."

"I'm not making any excuses for her." I cross my arms defensively over my chest. "She's sick and an addict. Those aren't excuses, those are real things."

"I know that, but-."

"But nothing!" I cut him off. "Until you've lived with someone who can't even control their own brain and emotions, or someone who feels like they have to chase that high just to feel alive for a few seconds, you don't get to say anything about it to me. I've lived with it my whole life. I will never make an excuse for her or try to excuse the things she does. She hurts people. She's not ok. Her sickness and her addictions do not define who she is as a person though. That's not some excuse, that's the truth."

"Ok, I'm not trying to argue with you." Ben says, obviously frustrated as he shuffles his feet and shoves his hands into his pockets. "I was just trying to be there for you. The whole situation is fucked."

"I don't need you to worry about me or about Alice. Just worry about you and Elizabeth."

"Fine." He says. "Say less."

He stomps passed me and goes to Elizabeth, scooping her up in his arms and then leaves the room.

I sit on the edge of his bed for a minute before I stand to close the door.

I sit down in the floor at the foot of his bed and hug my legs up to my chest and ball my hands into fists. I feel the sting of my nails digging into the flesh of my palms.

I just sit here, holding myself together with my own arms. I feel like if I just hug myself tightly enough, I can squeeze out all of the pain laying beneath the surface of my skin.

Alice wasn't what I wanted to be when I went to see her, but I wasn't great to her either. I was harsh and mean, just like her. All of this time I've spent without her and I didn't even tell her I love her still when I saw her again.

I'd played in my head millions of scenarios of what finally getting to see and speak to her again would be like. All of the things I'd want to tell her. All of the questions I'd want to ask. All of the missing pieces of me only my sister can fill.

But I'd missed my chance.

I'd left her, and she didn't think I'd be coming back. Why would she stay, after all? She's always been good at running, and I didn't give her a reason to stand still just a little bit longer.

I see her face in my head, the way she looked at me when she first saw me. How surprised she seemed that I actually came for her after all this time and all that has happened.

I let her slip right out of my grasp all over again.

I still hate what she's done, but Ben is right. I do still love her. She's the other half of me. We are all that is left of our mom and dad. She's been in my heart since we were in the womb together.

And now, my twin sister is lost to me yet again. I'd come to thinking before that I'd never see her again. I'd accepted the fact that the next time I'd ever see her face again would be when it was looking up at me from a casket.

I'd found her again, seen her in the warm flesh, and now I'm right back to where I started.

Right back to having to dread when that inevitable call will one day come.

My heart shatters in my chest for her.

For everything she's missing out on.

I grieve for my sister who has already been gone for so so long.

I am a mess in the floor when the door opens again.

"You can say whatever you want." Ben says, coming over to sit in the floor beside me. "But you're Elizabeth's aunt. You are family now. And family doesn't turn their backs on family. Especially when they're hurting." He says to me. "So be mad at me, tell me not to worry about you. I don't care. I'm gonna do it anyway."

He pulls me towards him and I wrap my arms around him and bury my face into his shoulder and cry.

He hugs me tightly to him, helping to hold all of my broken pieces together.

"I'm sorry." I whimper into his shirt.

"You don't have a reason to be." He says over my head. "I shouldn't speak on things I don't know about. I don't want you to bottle things up and feel like you can't talk to me about things. We are in each others lives now, and that means we have to be there for each other too."

"Why are you so nice to me?" I cry a little harder.

"We are all going through a lot." He says, rubbing my back. "We could all use a little niceness right now."

I hold onto him.

I focus on him and his arms around me. I steady myself by counting his breaths, slow and even. I center myself on the things I can see and feel and hear and I let my mind release the intense feeling of panic.

Ben helps me through some deep breaths, never letting me go.

"I'm still sorry." I say when I've caught my breath. I lean back so that I can look him in the eyes. "I shouldn't have dismissed your feelings earlier." I explain, wanting him to see that I mean it. "You have every right to be angry with her too."

"It's ok." He says, his brows pulled together over his intense stare.

"It's not." I shake my head. I take a big breath and sniffle. "What you said, about wanting me to be able to talk to you...I want the same for you. I shouldn't have shut you down when you tried to talk about your frustration with her." I swallow hard at the thought of my sister. "In the future I'll try to do better. I want you to be able to talk to me too."

"I hear you." Ben says.

I just stare back at him.

I don't know what I expected him to say, but I don't think it was that. I don't know if I can come up with any better response. He hears me. He understands. He gets where I'm coming from and I can see where he is coming from too.

"I hear you too." I say, nodding slowly. "Thank you."

Ben rubs a hand quickly up and down my back and then slowly unwraps himself from me and stands, holding out his hand to me.

I take it and let him pull me up.

"Let's go look for Alice." He tells me and I nod.

He's right.

I can't just sit here in this feeling.

I know we won't find her, but I would feel better if I at least can tell myself that I honestly tried.

"Ok."