A/N: This is my third story on here. I know this has been done many times recently, but I got an idea and am going to try this. "Snapshots" will cover an important day in each of the Rent character's past, starting with Roger. Like I said, it's very similar to a bunch of other fics out there, but I'll try to make mine unique. REVIEW and I'll give you a cookie!
Snapshots
Chapter 1: The World Stopped for Just an Instant
It was the same every Thanksgiving. Dad would sit down in front of the TV watching seemingly endless hours of football, Mom would overcook the stuffing, and my perfect older sister, Leah, would come home and ask me to help her cook the Thanksgiving dinner. And it stayed that way the Thanksgiving that I was thirteen. I had wanted to be hanging out with my friends, or at least being somewhere other than my house, but my mother insisted on all of us being there, since Leah rarely came home from Yale. And at noon that day, it was the same old thing.
"You know what's really great about Thanksgiving, Roger?" my Dad asked me as he was about to sit on our couch.
"Family togetherness?" I answered weakly, hoping that that was the answer that he was looking for.
"Nope. Getting to watch endless hours of my favorite sport, football. Starting right now," he said as he turned on the television. I walked into the kitchen to check up on how Mom was doing with the cooking. I could start to smell her cooking, and it wasn't a very pleasant smell. Suddenly, a big cloud of smoke came rising up from the stove. Mom had overcooked the stuffing once again.
"Wayne!" she shouted at my Dad. "It seems that I've overcooked the stuffing. Now how could that have happened?"
"What do you mean, 'how could that have happened', you do it every year," I said sullenly.
"Roger! Behave yourself. Your sister will be here any minute."
Just then Leah came in through the front door, her arms overflowing with food and other Thanksgiving goodies.
"Mom! Dad! I'm home!" she said in that always-cheerful voice of hers.
"Oh Leah! You're home! Come help me with this food, I'm so glad you're here!" Mom said, hugging Leah. Then Leah spotted me.
"Hi baby brother!" she exclaimed, forcing me into a hug. I pulled away quickly.
"Don't call me that!" I shouted at her, but she never listened to me, even when I told her that every year. I tried to sneak up to my room to go and play my guitar, but Leah caught me.
"Oh Roger! Come here and help me peel the potatoes, please. And after that I need you to help me with the pies."
Yup, everything was going as it always had been. Now Leah was going to keep me working preparing food until dinner, where we would all say what we were thankful for. I can predict everyone's answers right now. "Football" (Dad), "Family togetherness" (Leah), "Good food" (Mom) and I'll probably give some half-assed answer that I don't really mean, like the fact that Leah's home with us.
I had been peeling the potatoes for about ten minutes when Leah announced that she was running out to the supermarket to pick up something for the dinner. I forgot what it was- probably something for the dessert, but it didn't matter. I barely noticed her leaving at the time, but if I had known what was going to happen, I would have remembered it more clearly than I do now.
I remember that when Leah didn't return after an hour, Mom started to worry. The supermarket was only about fifteen minutes from our house, but at the time Mom figured that she just was having trouble finding what she needed. After two hours, she started to panic. At precisely 4:15 (I don't know why I remember the exact time) we received a phone call. Mom answered. Before she even picked up the phone, I knew that something bad had happened. Don't ask me how I knew, but I just had this feeling. My suspicions were confirmed when Mom's face turned as white as a ghost as soon as she started talking. She nodded, wrote down a few things, and then told me to get Dad from the living room. I had to turn off the TV for him to listen to me, but eventually got him to go talk to Mom, who was crying at this point.
Mom slowly spoke to us as tears were streaming down her face.
"Wayne, Roger, that was the police department. Leah was in a car accident, and-" Tears started to run down her face uncontrollably as Dad handed her a tissue.
"Is she ok?" I asked.
Mom looked at me, sobbing, and managed to form an answer.
"No, Roger. She's dead."
Then the world stopped for just an instant. I don't remember anything after Mom made that announcement, because I was still trying to get the fact in my head. Leah, dead? It couldn't be. Leah is going to walk through the door right now, her arms full of food, saying, "Sorry I'm late, the traffic was horrible" and then we'll have our Thanksgiving dinner. That's what's going to happen. She's not dead. No.
And then I heard Mom and Dad talk about the funeral arrangements, and about the accident itself, and as the hours went by, I knew it was true.
We didn't have a proper Thanksgiving dinner that night. I mean, how can you stand to be thankful when your sister just died?
We ate our meal in stark silence, only talking to ask someone to pass the potatoes or something trivial like that. Thanksgiving wouldn't be a time for the family to be together anymore. One of them was dead.
And I thought about how I acted to Leah on the last day of her life, and I wished that life had a rewind button on it so that I could be nicer to her. Because I'm not going to hear Leah call me "baby brother" ever again.
And I never got a chance to say goodbye.
