4:11 AM

Hi everyone! So in my school, we have Yearbook as an elective, and in third trimester, Yearbook turns into Creative Writing! We had a prompt to write a story with our assigned number. Our number had to be the title, and the word count. I think the reason we get word counts or page counts now is because the first assignment we got, I wrote 75 pages! Anyways, here’s my story. My number is 411, and the title doesn’t count in the word count! I hope you like it!

I stare at my motionless sister. Hope's hair streams over the crisp white pillow, like a river of golden honey. The strands are fine, soft, and straight. When she hugged me, those strands felt like a curtain shielding me from the world. She would promise everything would be all right.

Perhaps that is the most cruel joke of all.

An unnatural pallor is in her cheeks, normally glowing and rosy, full of life. How can this be my sister?

We got the call at home. Hope had gone over to a friend’s house. A drunk driver slammed into her tiny, run-down car on her way home.

It was his fault. So why is Hope lying here, close to … death? Why not him?

I don't hear the doctor's commands, as they work around me. I don't hear my mother's wails.

But I hear, louder than a shout, as the last, feeble breath escapes Hope's lips. I hear the beep as the line on the heart monitor falls flat - just as the minute hand swings. 4:11.

"No!" I scream, shaking her shoulders, futilely pleading. "Please, Hope! Wake up! Hope!"

My father stands by me. Tears streak down his face. I am afraid, because I have never seen my father cry before. “Sky. It’s … it’s too late.”

"No!" I scream. "Tell him he's wrong, Mama! Hope! Please, wake up!"

But my mother turns away from me, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

"No," I whisper. I look into my sister's face, studying it, memorizing every detail I know so well. How can she look so different in death? Her face is pallid now. Her eyes, always so bright, sparkling with laughter, are shut, the long gold lashes just barely brushing her cheek. I have never spent a day without my sister. We never had sibling rivalry - the two year age gap was nothing to us. We were best friends. I study the tiny details you wouldn't normally notice, the light brown freckle by the corner of her left eye, the nails kept rounded with a file, the way that her eyes slant slightly, giving a catlike impression. She was always bursting with energy, so alive. Come back to me. I need you.

There is no one in the world I loved like Hope.

There is no one I will ever love like I loved her.

4:11. That is when my sister died.

4:11. That is when part of me died.

4:11.