Page 80 of The Unknown

“Well, that night, after crying myself to sleep, I woke to a strange noise. A single footstep outside the window, squishy and wet. I opened my eyes, looked out the window, and there was my sister. She was more shadow than anything else. There was nothing of substance that I could see. Not her face. Not anything. Just a dark shape taking her form. Still, I could tell it was her. I knew it in my bones. She was wet. Hair stuck to her skull and flowed straight down. And water dripped off of her, like she had just gotten out of the pool.

“At first, I was thrilled to see her. Just so damn happy. For the past year, I’d been told she was dead. I had gone to her funeral. And I had missed her so much. I still do. Every day. But there she was, standing at my window, and I got so excited. I even said hi and asked her where she’d been the past year. It’s only when she didn’t say anything back that I realized something was wrong. She just stared through the window, never moving, as the water kept dripping from her hair.

“I wanted to go to the window and let her in, but I couldn’t. My body refused to move. And I realized it’s because I was scared. Literally paralyzed with fear. Because the person at the window was my sister, but also…she wasn’t. And then she was gone.

“In the morning, it felt like it hadn’t happened. It’s weird how daylight can do that. Just sweeps away the cobwebs spun during the dark. I’d assumed it was a nightmare. That it hadn’t been real. So I didn’t tell anyone. Just went about my day, which for five-year-old me was toys, TV, snacks, and a nap. I didn’t really think about what had happened until it was time for bed. That’s when I got scared that my sister would come again. Which she did.

“That night, it was the same as before. My sister at the window, staring and dripping, and me wondering what was happening. I tried talking to her again. I can’t remember what I said. But I know she didn’t say anything back and soon was gone.

“The next morning, I told my parents that my sister had come to see me. Twice. I was too young to understand that this wasn’t normal. That things like this were experienced only by an unlucky few. And my parents got so upset. Especially my mother. She started crying and asking me why I was lying, why I was being so cruel. And the more I swore that I wasn’t lying, the madder they became.

“So I said nothing when my sister appeared at my window that night. And the one after that. And all the nights after that. For weeks. I started getting sick each night before bedtime. A queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew what was going to happen when I went to sleep. And it always did. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and see her there, staring and dripping.

“I’d stopped talking to her at that point. I knew she wouldn’t say anything back. Which made me both sad and scared. Because I didn’t know what she wanted. Or why she was there. Or if she was going to hurt me. My sister never hurt me when she was alive, even though she was way bigger than me and certainly could have caused some damage. Sure, there was the usual hair-pulling and shoving that all sisters do. But I never thought she’d intentionally hurt me. I wasn’t so sure about this new version, though. Remember, it was her, but also not her. And I had no idea what she intended to do.

“When I told my parents about her again, they reacted pretty much the same way. Crying. Not believing me. Insisting I was a liar. But I kept on telling them every morning after my sister appeared. Which was every night. My parents got so sick of hearing about it that, one night, I slept in their room with my mother while my father slept in mine. When my sister appeared, it was at my parents’ window instead of mine. Still staring, still dripping. I woke my mother up by screaming that she was there, that it was real, that I wasn’t a liar. But by the time my mother woke up and looked to the window, my sister was gone.

“That’s when I really got scared. Because I knew my sister onlywanted me to see her. I was alone in this experience, which is the scariest thing for a child. To be alone like that. To have no one believe you.

“After it kept happening for another few weeks, my parents took me to a shrink. She didn’t believe me, either. She said the same things my parents did. That I was just imagining my sister because I missed her and was still grieving and was sad that she was gone. I swore that it was real. That Isawher. Every. Single. Night. Even though she didn’t believe me, the psychologist told me what to say the next time I saw my sister.

“‘You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.’

“When my sister came to the window that night, I tried it out. It didn’t work. Yet I continued to say it to her as she kept coming night after night, week after week, month after month. Each visit made me more scared of her. I was afraid she was mad that I was still alive and she was dead. I worried that, at some point, she was going to kill me, too. That we’d switch places and I’d be the one outside the window, looking in, just staring and dripping.

“Every few weeks, I told my parents that she was still there. They’d get upset. And sad. And haul me to that same shrink who’d tell me to keep saying the same thing.

“‘You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.’

“Then, on my sixth birthday, exactly a year since my sister first appeared, I decided to go off script. Instead of telling her she wasn’t real and that she should go away, I said, ‘I know why you’re here. You’re afraid of being forgotten. I won’t do that. I swear. I will never, ever forget you.’ I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again. My sister was gone. I never saw her again after that. But I kept my promise. I’ve never forgotten her, and I never will.”

Ronan and the casting director said nothing at first. They just sat there, staring, until Ronan asked, “Is that a true story?”

“No,” I said with a blithe smile. “I literally just made it up on the spot.”

That moment, I think, is what made him decide that I could play Daisy.

Now, days later, he looks at me the same way he did in that audition room. Uncertain but impressed. Fascinated but confused.

“That was all true? You didn’t make it up?”

There’s no smile this time. No faking it. Instead, tears well in my eyes, my emotions too wild to be kept in check. When I shake my head, it unleashes a single tear. “It really happened. Only I didn’t tell you the whole thing.”

There’s more to this story. A prequel that I’ve never admitted to anyone.

Including myself.

“I was home when my sister drowned,” I say. “I didn’t see it happen. I didn’t even know it had happened until it was far too late. But I was there.”

It all comes spilling out, as fast and uncontrollable as my tears. How Molly was supposed to watch me while my mother was away. How she insisted on going swimming, even though I didn’t know how and she wasn’t supposed to go near the pool when our parents weren’t home. How she ordered me to leave my bedroom and come outside with her so she could keep an eye on me while she frolicked in the water. How I told her I’d be there in a minute, that I was playing, which in my four-year-old parlance meant I was pretending. To be someone else, somewhere else, in a time other than my own.

Yes, I was acting even then.

Which is why I never did leave my room, not after a minute or five or thirty. I was too caught up in the act of pretending to notice that Molly hadn’t come back inside or that no sounds came from the pool. I was still lost in my imagination, a star in a movie of my own making, when I heard my mother’s station wagon pull into the driveway, followed a few seconds later by her screams.

“If I’d gone outside like she told me to, Molly would still be alive,” Isay. “She’d have swum for a few minutes before I annoyed her enough to get her out of the pool. Nothing bad would have happened to her. Even if it did, if I had been there, I would have been able to save her.”

“You were only four,” Violet says, looking like she’s about to hug me, which is the last thing I want right now. “There was nothing you could have done, especially if you didn’t know how to swim.”