Free If You Wrong Us by Dawn Klehr

it.”
    It seemed Becca had her own theories, and she was here looking for proof.

12
    B ECCA
    T he suffocating guilt grabbed me by the throat and continued to squeeze during all those long days at the hospital … waiting. That waiting can mess with a person’s mind. We were waiting for her to die. Waiting so we didn’t have to make the decision to let her go. And in classic Brit fashion, she made a difficult situation even harder to bear. It was the way she worked. Though, if I’m being truthful, I actually made the decision that sealed her fate—when I took my boyfriend’s side against hers.
    Despite how secretive we’d been, Brit was onto my transgressions with Travis from the very beginning. But she waited until the fall, when it became serious, before she stepped in with her authoritative approach.
    “Listen to me, Bee,” she said, after admitting she knew we were together. “You’re out of his league.”
    “You mean, you’re out of his league and it’ll make you look bad if anyone finds out I’m dating him,” I countered.
    “That’s not it.” She began working me over. “He’s odd, and a total loner.”
    “Yeah? Well, so am I.”
    “Not true. You deserve so much better.”
    “Try again,” I said.
    “People talk about him, you know. I heard that he used to beat up his old girlfriend.” She paused, waiting for my reaction.
    She didn’t get one because I already knew this. Though by now I was getting to the real reason why our relationship bothered her so much. She didn’t want to be linked any of that “talk.” I mean, how tragic.
    “That was one incident,” I said, making light of it even though the mounting accusations against him were disturbing. Still, I wasn’t going to let her get her way this time. “He also explained the whole thing to me. It was a misunderstanding. Charges were never filed.”
    Call me sick, but I liked Travis’s dark side and the cloud of mystery and danger that hung over him. Brit didn’t understand this because she always got attention. For me, it was new and exciting the way he fussed over me. I liked his possessiveness. It made me feel precious or something. That is, until I felt like a precious possession.
    I knew our relationship was becoming more intense. I knew Travis was unpredictable. I knew I shouldn’t have let Brit go over there to threaten him. But I tried, didn’t I?
    “You need to end it,” she said, once again governing my life as she had been since she’d learned to talk.
    I wanted to ask my sister if she could actually hear herself speak. Hear how demeaning and patronizing she was. But I didn’t. Because I was scared. I mean, the girl had even tried to snuff me out in the womb. Like with dogs in a pack, the runt often dies. I’d been very close to dying. My sister, conversely, was Darwin’s finest example. And since her actions toward me before birth didn’t work, she eliminated me in other ways. Silenced me every chance she got. She was the girl who had an innate sense of survival, no matter the cost—even to me.
    Still, I couldn’t fault her for it.
    Genetics, I suppose.
    Mathematically, I knew all about genetics. Dominant and recessive genes; DNA; patterns. Emotionally, I’d never understand it. The desire to protect someone just because they shared the same genes, and all the feelings that went along with that.
    How could you completely love and hate someone at the same time?
    Brit didn’t back down on Travis. She went on about his alleged sketchy history and said that if I didn’t call it off, she’d tell our parents about all the rumors surrounding him. That’s when I knew I didn’t stand a chance. Brit had this way of appearing she knew what was best for me. “I’ll look out for her,” she’d always say. And our parents would go along with whatever she said.
    So instead of fighting, I played her game for a few months, agreeing not to see him if she promised not to tell Mom and Dad.
    Of course, that wasn’t going