"Yes. Wait, what's going on?" I asked.
His rotund partner shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled. "Your advisor needs you to meet her at Alton Tower. We're here to give you a lift. That's all we know."
"Please come with us, Ms. Thomas." The taller guard stepped aside and ushered me past.
I took a step before I saw the sharp look pass between the two men. "What is this all about? Has something happened?"
Neither said a single word more. I fought the urge to run, and instead walked downstairs and out the front doors. The fat guard waved a thick hand towards the campus vehicle. My feet froze and an angry buzzing started in my ears. The taller guard stepped around me and opened the passenger side door, relegating his partner to the back seat.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
The lanky man folded hims
elf into the driver's seat. Instead of answering, he turned the key in the ignition. I tried to close my eyes and take a calming breath, but an incessant flashing of lights stopped me. An ambulance drove past and joined the whirling lights of a police car not far away.
Alton Tower. That's where the guard said my advisor was waiting. I knew it because it was my sister's dorm.
The campus vehicle bucked the curb and drove right onto the lawn outside Alton Tower. Another campus security Jeep, the police car, and the ambulance blocked the front door of the dorm. I sat in the car, not sure where I was supposed to go.
Ms. Alice appeared, skittering around the front of the police car. She ran up to my door, and I could see she was talking before she opened it. "Quinn, I'm so sorry, but I was afraid you wouldn't answer if I called back."
"What is going on?" I asked. I gripped the side of the passenger seat and refused to get out.
"There's been a…um, well, an accident," my advisor said. She reached for my hand.
"My sister? Is Sienna alright?" I slapped away Ms. Alice's hand and vaulted from the security vehicle. The rotund security guard tried to stop me, but he was too slow getting out of the back seat.
"Wait, Quinn, stop. Let me tell you what happened," Ms. Alice said.
The raw agony in her voice made me stop, but I could not turn around. She slipped around to stand in front of me and held out her hands. I crossed my arms tightly and waited for my advisor to speak.
"Sienna committed suicide tonight."
I laughed. The sound fired out of me. The two security guards backed off, as if I brandished a gun. "That can't be right. Sienna would never do that."
"Quinn, I'm so sorry. Her roommate came back from the library and found her in the bathtub–"
"She slit her wrists?" I asked. The world was spinning away and getting smaller. It felt as if everything around me was shrinking onto a television screen and some terrible afterschool special was on.
"Please, Quinn, come sit down," my advisor begged.
I yanked my arm away from her reaching hands. Before my thoughts returned to my body, I had started running. I dodged around the ambulance before the fat guard could catch up. His lanky partner tried to cut me off on the front steps, but I spun out of his reach. The guards keeping the front hall clear were too shocked to move. I slammed into the stairwell and ran up two steps at a time.
Sienna lived on the second floor at the end of the hall.
"Quinn, no! That's her sister," Sienna's roommate cried as I ran past where she sat wrapped in a blanket in the stairwell. The EMTs in the doorway called out, but I could not stop.
A detective in a gray suit looked up as I barreled through the door of Sienna's dorm room. His bright badge and ashen face stopped me.
"Is it true?" I asked.
"You're the sister?" he asked. His gray eyes swept towards the bathroom door. "I wouldn't."
He made no move to stop me, seeming to understand that I had to see for myself. I lurched towards the bathroom and stopped two feet short of the threshold. A wet puddle of bath water mixed with dark blood inched towards the door.
Sienna was gone. My perfect sister with her flawless beauty and driving ambition was gone.
I sank to the floor, unsure gravity could keep me from spinning away. I clung to the rug with both hands – Sienna's outrageously-priced woven rug she had begged our parents for last Christmas. I gritted my teeth and swallowed hard. Sienna would never forgive me if I threw up on her rug.