No one really knew what happened that night, not until years afterwards at least. My parents knew what happened of course, but they refused to talk about it. The only other person who truly knew what happened that night was my sister, but she wasn’t around anymore to tell anyone.
I remember bits and pieces of the night, but I was only 12 at the time. I remember it was my sister’s senior prom, she was so excited to go. She didn’t have a date, but she was going with her best friend, a girl in her year that had transferred from out of state. I remember that my parents never liked this other girl, they thought she was a bad influence on my sister. I thought she was awesome. She used to read me batman comics when her and my sister would babysit me.
I remember my sister’s friend had come to pick her up, she gave me an issue of a batman comic I had been struggling to find for years when she arrived. I went to bed at my usual time, only to be woken up a few hours later to screaming and slamming doors. My sister and my parents were arguing. I wasn’t sure exactly why, but they didn’t sound happy with something she had done. They told her to leave. She must have done because she wasn’t there the next day.
I tried to ask my parents where she had gone. They refused to give me a straight answer, in fact every time I tried to ask them about her they completely side stepped the question. They told everyone else who asked that she’d run away, that it was a moment of teenage rebellion, that they were doing all they could to find her. They tried to tell me that she’d run away as well, but I remembered my father yelling at her to get out the house, to leave and not come back until she’d sorted out her lifestyle choices.
It wasn’t until I left home at 18 to go to college that I got anywhere close to finding out the truth. I decided to try and track her down, which was a lot harder in the days before social media. Eventually I did find her, or rather she found me. God I’d missed her.
Eventually I found out the truth about what happened that night. My sister’s friend, the one who read me batman comics, wasn’t exactly my sisters friend. She was my sister’s girlfriend. They’d been dating in secret for a few months before prom and were hoping that if they could just last it out until they made it to college they could be together and no one from our town would know.
The plan would have been perfect, until prom night. My sister’s girlfriend had driven her home after porch and, assuming our parents had gone to bed, kissed her in the driveway. Unfortunately, they were waiting up for her and saw everything. They told her to leave, to get out. She left that night and never looked back.
A Place of Mine 