Chasing a Ghost

I had suspected I was chasing a ghost for several months now.  I just hoped it wasn’t time.  If it was time, everything I had been doing – all the work I had done for the last few months – was a total waste.  All I needed to do was to find my cousin.  If she really was my cousin.  Melody and I had grown up together, lived together, gone to college together.  Everything. 

Then I found out everything I had been told was a lie.  Everything had been made up, pulled out of a novel, solely for entertainment.  A story born out of the horror inflicted on me by the long friendship with Melody.  When I was seven, Melody moved in with my family.  I was ecstatic to have a friend to play dolls with and to share secrets with.  Before Melody came into my life, I had been a backseat spectator to my older brothers and their football games. 

Six months after Melody’s disappearance, every secret came to life.  Everything Melody had done and the lies my parents had told.  Both of my brothers had been old enough to move and live on their own.  Almost like they had forgotten about me and how I was stuck at home with two strangers I used to call mom and dad.  All because she was my sister and not my cousin. I knew exactly what to do and how to save myself. Lies now came easily and revenge was best served cold.