i'm the ghost in the back of your head. | kiara lowe.

I go quietly into the night. Best not to disturb Dad. He's getting old now, hair going grey at the ends. Crinkles around the eyes from squinting at the sun. Not as fit as he used to be either, always pullin' muscles or puttin' his back out working on the farm. Poor bastard needs all the rest he can get. His snoring keeps me up sometimes, specially when he's recovering from a cold. He gets them more often, especially in the winter. Anyway, I go as quietly as I can in winter boots and dead girls' clothing, bundled up from head to toe. Dad won't approve, messing around with ghosts and last names - someone might ask why I'm looking at them, and then I'd have to lie, and I'm shit at lying.

Luckily it's still open by the time I arrive. She's a hike up from the farm, an hour or so by foot, already discarded my hat and scarf stuffed into pockets. The building itself is freezin' but the new hall is warm, warmer than our house is in the springtime. "Closin' up in fifteen," says the man at the door, I just nod and smile. "M'kay," act natural. "Won't be long."

It's as large as all the houses in our area put together. At least a mile each way, but then again, I wouldn't know a mile if I saw it up close. It's grand, is what it is. That's what Dad would say, he'd say it were mighty grand. He's got that old people twang to his voice, the one that pops up in a couple of my words. Said Momma never talked like that, that she was proper and clear. Not that I'd know. I wouldn't know her voice if she spoke to me right here and now.

That's why I'm here, for the most part. Because I don't really remember them. I remember the idea of them, blurry and hazy - like the outlines of them. Nothing in the middle, no voices or words or laughter. No details. So when I take a deep breath and exhale through my nose and hit LOWE, Myara it's all I can focus on: the details. 

My sister. My dead sister - one of them, at least. She's got golden hair and sun-kissed skin all jagged at the edges, her nails are too long, her lips are full. It's coming back to me now, tears in my eyes, but I'm not gonna cry. I'm not here to be a mourner, a sister, a Lowe. I'm just here to take back what's mine: my memories. They're all I'm allowed to have.

Myara is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Golden eyes and good posture, long limbs and hips that hug her reaping dress. That I recognise, hung up in the back of my wardrobe because it ain't never fit me right. I'm just skin and bones, not a curve to me save for a sad pout - now I see it on her, it all makes sense.

LOWE, Emberly, she's got my eyes. A soft smile, a brave face, strands of red hair dance in a breeze I cannot feel. Freckles and pale skin, a friendly aura. I want to be her friend. I want to be her sister. I don't recognise her outfit, but I want to. I want so desperately to understand her that my skin crawls and my hands shake and I bite my lip to stop myself from crying, quickly sliding across the screen to the next one: LOWE, Clementa.

Now she's got fire in her eyes, a scowl, purple bags pulling her sunken face toward the ground. She looks like me, hair a shade darker, jagged at the ends. Scars and thick furrowed eyebrows, as if Emberly had changed moods. Lost, distraught, she was allowed to mourn. It's why I'm looking at her, and she's not standing next to me, and I remember her the most. Mint. That's what I called her. Mint screaming at Saffron, Mint screaming at Dad, Mint screaming in the middle of the night.

I don't blame her for what she did. I might have done it too, if I had the guts.

It's enough for tonight. So I leave my ghosts quietly, set my feet into the snow, and slowly, slowly, as I traipse back home through the cold and the night, I start to remember.