The doors to the room were locked. They always were.
When I was little, Beth and I used to sit there, our faces pressed up against the wood. I would ask Beth why the doors never opened, why the people never came out from behind them. And she would say, "They'll come when they're ready. I know they will."
But the doors stayed locked, and Beth and I were forever shut out.
The summer I turned eleven, everything changed for Beth. She lost all the weight, and suddenly, she was beautiful. With that beauty came confidence, and with that confidence came everything she had ever wanted. She did well in school, made friends, fell in love. She was no longer content to be locked out, and so I was left alone.
Then, I was sixteen. I had only seen my parents ten times since Beth left, last year. They did not come out of their locked doors, and their bottles never leave their hands. Beth never calls.
It was the night she did call. It was her twenty-first birthday, and her boyfriend of two years, Andrew, had gotten down on one knee for her. The wedding was soon, she said, but it was just family--his family.
I was not wanted at my sister's wedding. I was not wanted in my parents' room.
I was not wanted in the lives of my family.
And so I opened the door. It was something no one, not even Beth, had ever attempted. The door was sealed too tightly to pry it open. But I did. I took the key Beth had found, once, lying in a box in the corner, and I opened the door.
I did not say anything that night. I just walked out and shut the door again. But I came back in the next night. And the next.
Now, I come in every night. I say hello, sometimes, nothing more. Every once in a while, my mother will speak. Once, I could not smell any sickly sweet scents in the room, much less on my parent's breath.
The door is no longer locked.