Alex woke up feeling absolutely miserable, her body filling with dread. It was the first day of school. More importantly, it was the first day of school without Kara.

Alex grumpily moved to smash the alarm clock, and realized how much it sucked to wake up to the incessant beeping as opposed to Kara. Since she didn't need much sleep, Kara always woke up earlier and had breakfast ready for Alex before gently waking her up, smile plastered to her face.

Her alarm clock did not make her breakfast, and definitely didn't put a smile on her face.

As Alex got changed and went to go eat, a fresh wave of reality hit her when she had to make her own breakfast. Kara wasn't there to do it for her anymore. Wasn't there to fight for the bathroom. Wasn't there to race to the school bus. She just wasn't there.

As she left the house, she spotted Kara's backpack. It was empty and it just looked sad, sitting there untouched on a school day.

Sad and empty. Alex thought as she looked at the bag. Just like how I feel.

After Jeremiah and Eliza told her to have a good day at school, she left and began the long walk to her first period. It was bothering her how normal they were acting without Kara there. Especially on such an important day, like the first day of school.

She filed it away for now, promising herself to talk to them about it after school got out. When she finally got to her first period class, she waited, alone by the door, for the teacher to open up.

She turned in a wide circle and surveyed her surroundings. Observed her classmates. All those familiar faces hanging out with and talking to each other. And Alex was alone.

She used to be immensely popular, but left all her friends in order to hang out with Kara. Though she wasn't exactly the best sister back then, Alex was starting to finally warm up to Kara when she decided to leave all her friends. And now all her old friends wanted nothing to do with her. She had left them for her lame little sister, after all.

One of them, named Shelby, called out to her. "Hey, Alex. I saw you were standing here alone and wanted to ask if you wanted to hang out. But then I remembered! You ditched us for some dumb adopted little girl." She looked around. "Where is that dork now anyways?"

Alex felt her face heat up and she saw red. She pushed Shelby up against a wall and in a low and dangerous tone, she seethed,"Do not ever, and I mean ever, talk about my sister like that again. It's none of your business where she went, so you can back the hell off. You're lucky she isn't here, because if she was, you wouldn't be up against this wall. You would be through it." She then let Shelby drop to the floor.

Shelby indignantly pushed herself up and dusted herself off. She then turned to the rest of her friends and said,"Psh. Whatever. We don't care about the dumb Danvers dorks anyways. Let's go." With that, she and the rest of of her friends left Alex. And she found herself missing Kara badly. More than she had in a while.

She would always be there to calm her down after being bullied, because Alex would always get way too aggressive. But no one was there to calm her down today.

School was already miserable without her, and she had only been there for five minutes. And those five minutes hadn't even been in class. She was jolted out of her thoughts by the bell ringing. She inwardly groaned, thinking of the long math class she would have to endure without her little sister there.

As soon as they all sat down, her heart ached when she saw the empty seat in front of her. Her parents had registered Kara the week before the fateful day at the beach.

They never got the chance to retract the registration.

When the teacher called roll and noticed Kara was missing, she asked Alex where she was.

Alex teared up, but immediately blinked them away. She refused to cry in front of her classmates. "She actually is being home schooled now. It was a last minute decision so we didn't get to notify attendance. I'm sorry about that, Mrs. Anderson."

The teacher just brushed it off and continued with the roll. Alex received sideways glances from all of her classmates.

Halfway through class, Alex found it difficult to stay awake. Her eyelids kept closing, even though she wanted to stay awake. She never used to have this problem when Kara was in class.

Now she didn't have anyone to have doodle competitions with. No one to prank or annoy by kicking their chair. No one to trade jokes with. No one to make school bearable.

Alex was absolutely miserable, but she somehow managed to trudge through her day until lunch.

That's when it really hit her. Hard. Harder than it had been for the whole day. And that's saying quite a lot.

Because she had given up popularity to hang out with Kara, she had no one to sit with. She had no one to wait in line with for the food. No one to complain to about the horrible quality of grub they served. No one to laugh with. Sometimes, when it was just her and Kara in the corner of their empty table, everyone and everything else just seemed to melt away.

Now, there was no one. She had taken all of that for granted. Hadn't appreciated her baby sister enough, while she still had one. Sitting there with no one across from her, no one next to her, all she felt was deep regret.

Time crawled by for Alex at her empty corner table. She looked around, and didn't find a single kid who was alone like her. Everyone had at least someone. The popular kids had each other, of course. The jocks had each other.

Even the nerds, the geeks. They had each other.

But she had no one.

She absolutely relished the sound of the bell, signaling the end of the misery that was lunch. She dragged her feet to her last class of the day. And fell asleep.

The bell signaling dismissal finally woke her up and ended her suffering. She bolted out the door and was the first one off the campus. As she ran home, she felt her eyes start to water more and more, as she reflected on the day's events.

She suddenly burst through the door, startling Eliza and Jeremiah.

Eliza then laughed it off and asked,"Hey sweetie. How was your first day of school?"

Alex knew she had wanted to talk to them about something from this morning. But she couldn't be bothered.

She responded to Eliza's question by slamming her bag against the wall and sprinting upstairs to her room.

She locked the door, ran to Kara's bed, and wrapped her sister's sheets around her.

And she sobbed. Loudly and violently. And didn't stop until midnight, when sleep finally overtook her.