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Zoe — Description

Zoe is my older sister. Growing up, I never actually got along with her. When she moved off to college, I was actually pretty excited to not have to see her anymore.
You see, when I was in 7th grade, and Zoe was in 10th, our parents separated. Zoe and I already didn’t get along at this point. I liked listening to pop music, and boy bands. Zoe on the other hand was listening to heavy metal and rock music. I played sports, she would sneak out at night to hang out and drink in abandon buildings with her friends.
I would of course rat her out every time. She would always hide or damage my gear to make me late for my games. If we spoke at all, we were always yelling at each other. She was just too different from me. I went to church, dressed like everyone else at school. She was an atheist, wore dark clothes and dyed her hair black. My Mom hated it. My Dad always said she could make her own decisions.
So of course when they separated, I took my Mom’s side, and my sister took my Dad’s. Even though they had shared custody of us, I made it my life’s mission to make him look bad. I would report every time Zoe snuck out to my Mom, and she kept notes. Of course my Mom never let Zoe out of her room after 9:00, she had even locked her bedroom door. At the time I thought she deserved it.
Shortly before she went to college, My Mom was able to convince the state that our Dad was unfit to have custody over us. He was devastated, and I remember thinking he was crying to put on a show.
I celebrated never having to see him, and once my sister went to college, her, ever again.
But on Zoe’s 21st birthday, she ended up getting a little too drunk, and ended up falling off of a balcony. I don’t know how or why it happened, I just know that that’s when I started to notice things about my sister.
Every time we visited Zoe in the hospital, Mom would go on and on about how the devil did this to her and how she had deserved it. I could see the familiar anger in her eyes, but for the first time ever, I noticed the pain that they were hiding. Normally she would fight back, but now she couldn’t. She couldn’t talk because of the ventilator, she couldn’t run away and hide in her room. She couldn’t sneak out, or even turn to her friends.
For the first time ever I felt bad for her. I didn’t show it, I didn’t want to believe that my Mom was in the wrong. I wanted to believe she was just upset with the situation and was taking it poorly.
But even after Zoe moved home, things didn’t get better. Despite Zoe’s protests, Mom wouldn’t let her dye her hair, or even choose what to wear. Even her wheelchair was specifically chosen by Mom to be as bright of a color as possible to ‘keep the demons away’.
She started claiming her treatments were unnatural, and even got some of her friends from church who worked in the medical field to get her exempt from some medications that I had genuinely seen help her.
During this time is when I think I started to connect with her the most. We would shoot each other glances whenever my Mom talked about the Devil, or how her treatments were just forms of control by the government.
I even would help her get in touch with some of her old friends when Mom wasn’t home, just to keep both of us sane.
But neither of us were prepared for what Mom had been planning. One Sunday afternoon, when I was supposed to be at a game, my Mom had invited a bunch of people from church over. I had had a massive headache, and my coach ended up sending me home.
I walked in on a group of adults from church standing around Zoe. Her face was blue and her ventilator was disconnected. They were shouting for the “Demon to leave”.
The rest was a blur. I actually only know what happened from the police report. Apparently I had ran to my neighbor’s house. He was a retired police officer, and he was able to stop the situation from becoming a tragedy.
I remember my Dad coming to the hospital. Mom had told us that Dad didn’t want to come see Zoe after her college accident. But the look of shock on his face revealed that no one had ever told him.
Suddenly I was on my Dad’s side, fighting in court to let him take care of Zoe instead of sending her to a home. Fighting to have our Mom sentenced for attempted murder. Fighting for the people I had spent my entire life fighting against.
Somehow both of them forgave me almost instantly. Neither of them really cared about what I had done before, or even my part in getting us taken away from Dad to begin with. I think Zoe was just happy to have someone on her side again.
So here I am, in another state, going to see a rock bad I always hated, with Zoe’s friends that I never got along with. But I’m here to make sure that Zoe can be herself, especially since I spent so much time before trying to force her to be me.