post·script (pōstˌskript) noun. an additional remark at the end of a letter, after the signature and introduced by "P.S."
2013, 9 years later
I had no idea whether hell existed or not, but I imagined it looked something like an inebriated Caroline Carson dancing barefoot atop my marbled countertop, dried vomit staining the skin-tight white dress that she donned proudly. Her dark brown hair hung limply in sweaty wisps, glued to the perimeter of her face in salty clumps. Her eyes were bloodshot red; whether from crying in her alcohol induced stupor or from whatever drugs she had chosen to take for the day, I couldn't quite tell. The old Caroline, the one that cried with me in the bottom of a cold dumpster was gone, only a remnant of the new Caroline. Old Caroline was a phantom I could seldom catch on the rare occasion that my sister was sober. That Caroline, a stark contrast from the woman belting Britney Spears' Gimme More along with the radio (while shaking her backside in a manner that would have made our mother roll over in her grave had she been given one), wanted to go to school, wanted to become a forensic pathologist. Wanted to make something of herself. She was just hard to find under the Los Santos party image she tried voraciously to keep up with.
"Caroline Carson!" I shouted sternly, trying to mimic our late mother as best as I could, "you come down from that countertop right this instant!" The words sounded rehearsed, as if read from a script, and Caroline could tell they didn't sound quite right coming from my lips. I watched my sister pause momentarily, cocking her head to the side as she looked me up and down, trying to discern whether or not I was an appropriate authoritative figure to comply with. She must have decided that I wasn't, as she turned away and continued to sing at the top of her lungs.
"Caroline!" I repeated, this time struggling to raise my voice over both her obnoxious singing and the radio. "Caroline, you're too loud! Come down from there before someone files a noise complaint!" In response, she flipped her middle finger at me and continued dancing eratically. I dropped my briefcase at the door and stormed over to where the radio sat on the floor, yanking the cord from where it was plugged in the socket. Caroline let out a deep exasperated groan, a homage to her teenaged self, before she crossed her arms and glared at me, still standing atop the marble countertop that was now host to an assortment of smeared, sweaty footprints.
"The fuck is your problem?" she spat at me, venom laced in every syllable.
"What's my problem? Caroline, what's your problem?!" I shot back at her, feeling searing hot anger rise from the pit of my stomach. "You're supposed to be in class right now, y'know, studying. Instead, I get a call from Mrs. Nicholson warning me that you're drunk and threatening to kill yourself!"
At the sound of Mrs. Nicholson's name, Caroline rolled her eyes and plopped down on the countertop, her bare legs dangling off the side. "She's such a nosy bitch," Caroline muttered. "She should mind her own business. If I was gonna kill myself, I would've by now. Its not like you're ever around to stop me."
That hurt. "Don't say things like that, Caroline. She's just worried about you, you know that. There's no telling what you'd do after-" I stopped myself, adverting my gaze to the empty bottles of Pisswasser that rested on the kitchen tile. I wouldn't address the part about me working too much. How could I? "How about a compromise: if you know you're not going through with it and you don't want people calling me, just don't say things like that. These walls are thin, all the neighbors can hear you. Of course one of them is bound to say something to me. It just so happened that this time it was Mrs. Nicholson."
"It's always Mrs. Nicholson," Caroline corrected me, rolling her eyes overdramatically as she drawled over the word always. Caroline could've been an actress if she wasn't too busy chasing alcohol and taking drugs.
"Because she cares about you," I retorted as I walked over to the sink and flipped the tap, waiting for the water to warm up. "We're lucky she calls me instead of the landlord. I'm not sure about you, but I'd prefer a warm apartment to a cold dumpster any day." Caroline cringed a bit at that, and it wasn't until after the words left my mouth that I realized exactly what I'd said. Caroline didn't think back to our dumpster days; I tried my hardest not to mention them, but every so often the words would slip out like raindrops on a sunny day. It was those times that I caught a glimpse of Old Caroline in the new, a bittersweet feeling that I could only manually summon her under such circumstances.
"I thought you were working today," Caroline muttered as I ran a cloth under the warm water and sauntered over to her, dabbing at the sweat on her brow, attempting to make her look – and smell – somewhat decent.
"By the looks of things, you weren't thinking at all," I sighed as she adverted her gaze elsewhere, away from me. Away from this conversation. "Caroline, it's only four o'clock. I'm not so naïve to think that you won't be drinking at all at, being twenty years old and living in Los Santos, but honestly? Four o'clock? On a Wednesday afternoon?"
"I don't want to talk about this right now," Caroline insisted. "I'm twenty years old, you're technically not my legal guardian anymore."
"Maybe not legally, but I'm your guardian as long as you're my little sister," I countered as I heard our doorbell ring. "I'll get that. You start cleaning."
"Um, I actually invited some friends over…" Caroline muttered, her confession trailing off as she hopped from the counter and began collecting empty bottles of Pisswasser. How she could drink so much of it, I wasn't sure. The smell alone was enough to deter me from it.
"How many is some, Caroline?" I asked as I reached for the doorknob. Somewhere underneath the obnoxiously stereotypical party girl was someone who ultimately just longed for some type of social interaction, something I partially blamed myself for due to working long hours to ensure she had a roof over her head. She just didn't know it herself.
"Oh, you know…two or three."
As I opened the door, I noted the fact that four boys and a girl were standing outside. Two or three my ass.
