Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga

As I Lay Me Down to Sleep

When Louisa arrived at school the next day, she was stopped by no less than four people from the dance committee, all asking about her opinions on various things related to the dance. She had been kept in the loop about what she missed the previous afternoon via text, but apparently, the committee found this unsatisfactory. Grace Saunders seemed particularly distressed by the overwhelming amount of ticket sales that they had generated, citing lack of supplies and not enough funds. Louisa tried to reassure her that this was actually a good thing, but they were interrupted by Angela Webber, who wanted to write an article for the school newspaper. By the time Louisa managed to escape, she found herself having to sprint to homeroom. Mr Varner gave her an annoyed look when she dashed into the room before returning to a large stack of papers on his desk.

The Babe and his siblings were already present, somehow managing to make the plastic chairs they were sitting on look like thrones. Rosalie had dragged her chair away from her desk and was leaning casually against her husband, texting. As Louisa approached, Jasper turned his attention from the nearby window, and gave her a small smile, causing her to nearly collide with a desk.

"Running late today?" Rosalie asked without bothering to look up from her phone.

"I was accosted by many people this morning. Please be sympathetic."

"That's what you get for skipping yesterday," Rosalie said in a huff, locking her phone and dropping it on her desk. "And I seeing as I was by myself, my tolerance is running incredibly thin."

Louisa sagged into her seat, stretching her long legs out. She felt her foot connect with the Babe's, but she didn't move it, and he didn't seem all that concerned about it either. "You'd think I was the president or something."

"You sort of are," Rosalie replied with a snort. "If you had graced us with your presence yesterday, you would have heard Katie Hyde telling everybody to text you if they had questions."

"That does explain the large number of texts I received," Louisa said slowly. She had planned on taking a nap the moment she had returned to the house but had been inundated with questions about decorations and playlists.

"Will you be joining us today?"

"I'll be there. Unless I'm not."

Rosalie sighed in annoyance and sat up. She looked like she wanted to say something more but was cut off by Mr Varner, calling the class to order. Louisa briefly wondered in Rosalie had been planning on apologising for the other day, but quickly dismissed it. Rosalie wasn't the type to ask for forgiveness. Not that Louisa wanted an apology from Rosalie, now that she understood the blonde's intentions. Well, Louisa couldn't truthfully say that she understood Rosalie's intentions, but she didn't harbour any ill feelings towards the girl.

When they were dismissed from homeroom, Louisa bid farewell to the Babe and company and wandered off to her first class of the day. After classes, she would be bombarded with questions about the dance and have to fix problems that she really didn't know how to fix but everyone seemed to believe that she did. This pattern continued in a similar fashion for weeks, and before Louisa knew it, there were only a few days before the Halloween dance, and Jasper had yet to ask her out.

She supposed she shouldn't be all that surprised, she had basically told him that she didn't want a date, but she still felt a thrum of disappointment shoot through her every time he gave her a shy smile in class. Perhaps she could have asked him, but a part of her really was reluctant to have a date for the dance, especially one like the Babe. You couldn't just take Jasper Hale, hottie extraordinaire, to a dance and then ignore him for the entirety of the night. So she waited and held out in the hope that he would ask her again.

And besides, there were bigger problems on Louisa's plate, besides dance planning and dates. Namely, her sister. Dottie had become more paranoid lately: she was sleeping less and she refused to be alone in the house most days. On more than one occasion, Dottie had crawled into Louisa's bed at night, too terrified to sleep by herself. Louisa desperately wanted to comfort her sister but was at a loss as to how. Especially when Dottie was so convinced that their house was haunted.

Two days before the dance, Louisa returned home after a long session of preparations and was greeted by a lot of salt. There were lines on window sills, across thresholds, in front of doorways, and even a ring around the toilet in the bathroom. On her way to her room, Louisa counted fourteen empty and abandoned cylinders of kosher salt. Confused, she picked one up and sought out her sister, who she found sitting in the centre of a ring, doing her homework.

"Why has the house been assaulted?" Louisa asked, giving the empty salt container a shake.

Dottie gave Louisa a nasty glare. "You're hysterical."

Louisa nearly made a quip about Dottie being the one who was a hysterical but stopped herself at the last second. "Is there a particular reason you have covered the house with enough salt to fill the Dead Sea?"

"As a matter of fact, there is," Dottie snapped, closing the textbook on her lap. "I read that the salt would keep the ghosts at bay."

"Right," Louisa said slowly. "And what are you going to do when Dad gets home?"

"Tell him that the house is haunted and the salt lines are not to be broken until I have thoroughly smudged the place."

"And how do you plan on doing that?"

"I got watched a video on YouTube and ordered the supplies off Amazon."

"Of course you did," Louisa said with a sigh before walking over to Dottie's bed. She dropped heavily onto it face first. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled. "You know that ghosts don't exist, right?"

Louisa didn't have to see her sister's face to know that Dottie was giving her an unimpressed look. "Then explained what happened!"

Louisa flipped over and stared up at the ceiling, recalling the way the lights had flickered. They were working fine now, just as they had been when their father had taken the sisters back home as if nothing had happened at all. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't give her sister an explanation. The wind had been non-existent that day, and the electric company that Louisa had called had claimed that there had been no power loss to the house. Mrs Cullen had even confirmed that the house's electric wiring had been updated recently, with the most current renovation. Dottie had taken this as proof that something paranormal was happening, much to her annoyance. Louisa massaged her temples in frustration.

"I don't know, Dot. But it isn't ghosts." There wasn't proof for the existence of ghosts. Ghosts weren't logical.

"We can agree to disagree, then," Dottie huffed. She turned her attention back to her textbook.

After a few minutes of angry flipping and sighing, Louisa sat up to watch her sister in interest. "Speaking of scary things," she drawled, pleased when Dot glared up at her. "What are you planning on doing for the dance?"

To Louisa's amazement, a light blush tinged her sister's ears. Dot's glare softened and she looked back down at her textbook. Avoidance of eye contact. There was definitely a story there.

"You're planning on going," Louisa stated.

Dottie nodded, still not meeting Louisa's eyes.

There was no easy way to pry secrets out of her sister when she was determined to keep things quiet. Louisa had learned this years ago and had worked hard to perfect her interrogation techniques. With Dottie, you had to lure her into a false sense of security and then catch her off guard. Anything outright would cause her sister to shut down completely. Louisa settled herself back down on the bed and looked back up at the ceiling.

"What are you going as then?" Louisa asked, trying to calm her heart, which had begun to race with excitement. "I've been browsing Pinterest for days now, and I still can't make up my mind."

The pink had receded from Dot's ears and she looked up at her sister through her eyelashes. "You still don't have your costume?

"I've been a bit preoccupied."

Dottie let out a long sigh. "What were your ideas?"

Louisa scooted over on her sister's bed and patted the spot next to her. Dottie rose from her salt ring and ran to join her sister on the bed. Louisa shifted, allowing her sister to rest her head on her shoulder, and pulled out her phone.

"My original thought was a gender bent Sherlock, but I couldn't find anything that I liked that would be easily recognisable." Louisa pulled up Pinterest on her phone and began to show her sister her most recent searches. "I liked the idea of Sandy as a Pink Lady from Grease, but I didn't want to commit to heals for the night."

"And Sandy before her greaser transformation wouldn't be easily recognisable either," Dottie said, following her sister's train of thought. "What about something more dramatic?"

"Well, I thought, maybe Scarlett O'Hara, from Gone with the Wind, but —"

"Too dramatic," Dottie said, cutting her off. "Not to mention how difficult that would be to wear to a dance, let alone make."

Louisa nodded, her sister's hair tickling her nose. "I wanted it to be a couple's costume though," Louisa explained. She didn't actually, but Louisa had a feeling that she needed to push the conversation in this direction. "But I'm kind of stuck on what to do."

Dottie sat up and retrieved her laptop from her desk. "If you had told me a few weeks ago that you wanted to do a theme, I would have been able to help you. I've already got my costume figured out."

Louisa sat up when her sister joined her back on the bed, the laptop perched on her knees. "Oh," Louisa said, trying to sound disappointed. "What are you planning on going as then?"

"Eleven from Stranger Things," Dottie replied simply as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"And your date will be dressed as Mike?"

Dottie jumped in surprise and her head spun towards her so fast that Louisa could hear her sister's neck crack. "Date?" Dottie stuttered, the blush returning.

Louisa watched her sister, her head tilted in interest. "Yeah, you said that you had your costume figured out already when I mentioned that I wanted to do a couple's costume. If you didn't have a date, you wouldn't have had a problem being my partner."

Dottie spluttered for a moment, trying to find a way to deny her sister's statement. "No," she managed to stutter out. "He didn't want to match."

Louisa pushed this comment aside, deciding to reflect on it when her sister wasn't so flustered. "And does this date have a name?" It was fascinating watching as Dottie's face turned bright red with embarrassment, and Louisa had to wonder if she had ever seen her sister react like this.

"I'm not telling you," Dottie managed to stutter out. "You'll just harass him."

"I just want to make sure that he's worthy of you," Louisa responded, suppressing a laugh.

Dottie was focused on her computer screen and was flipping through Pinterest. "Why do you even need a couple's costume? Are you going with someone?"

If Dot had intended to embarrass her sister with her question, she didn't succeed. Louisa merely shrugged and leaned forward to rest her chin on her sister's shoulder. "Maybe. Jasper Hale sort of kind of asked me to the dance."

Dottie paused and her back straightened. "You mean the boy who drove us home that one time?"

"Let's not talk about that," Louisa replied. She reached around Dot to click on a link that promised a list of 14 genius couple costumes for Halloween. "Anyway, it's not official."

"Did you screw it up?" Dottie asked, her tone laced with amusement.

"I might have accidentally rejected him," Louisa replied. "To be fair, he didn't really ask me outright. It's a bit of a mess."

"Yeah," Dottie said, glancing over her shoulder. "You are."

Louisa rolled her eyes and gave her sister a little shove. "Anyway, do you have any ideas?"

The sisters continued to rib at each other, Dottie steadfastly refusing to reveal the name of her date and Louisa growing more frustrated on what to wear to the dance. By the time their father had arrived home, not much had been done, though Louisa could see the tension in her sister's shoulders had lessened, which seemed like an accomplishment in and of itself.

Mr Collins was not amused by Dottie's creative usage of salt and refused to hear the reasoning behind the decision, forcing her to clean it up whilst he cooked dinner. Louisa, taking pity on her sister, held the dustpan while Dottie swept.

"What about Mary Poppins?"

The question only caused her sister's scowl to deepen. "That would require you being practically perfect in every way."

"Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz."

"If anyone should be Dorothy, it would be me."

"A zombie then?" Louisa asked. She could always do a classic costume. And it would be easy.

Dottie rolled her eyes and swept away a large line of salt from around the television in the sitting room. "You and the rest of the school."

"A weeping angel?" Weeping angels were scary. But how many people in Forks would understand the reference?

"You want Jasper to talk to you, not run away screaming."

"One of the three blind mice?"

"What happened to the other two?" Dottie asked, turning to face her sister with an amused look. At least the scowling was gone for the time being.

"They got lost?"

Dottie let out a laugh and returned to sweeping, shaking her head.

"What about Rey from Star Wars?" Dottie asked suddenly.

Louisa looked up at her sister, only to see that she wasn't even looking at her, but a picture on the wall: a photo of a boy with light blond hair and a face full of freckles, sitting under a beach umbrella. He had a tight smile on his face as if he were being forced to take the picture, which he had been. Louisa could clearly remember having to steal the book he had been reading in order to get him to look at the camera. It had been taken on the family's summer vacation, the last one before the accident.

"Laurie would have loved that," Louisa said, throat tight. Laurie had loved everything to with space: he had always said that he would be the first man to step foot on Mars. His room had been filled with model rockets, an alarming amount of physics textbooks, and from the ceiling, hung a scale model of the Millennium Falcon. He claimed that, while the sequel trilogy could never replace the originals, they were an acceptable way to help bleach the memories of the prequels from his mind, which, coming from Laurie, had actually been a glowing endorsement. He had been so excited to see The Last Jedi, that he had created a countdown calendar for its release. When Louisa had packed up his room, the calendar had been stuck at 352 days. "Yeah, that'll be perfect."

Dottie reached out to touch picture frame. The glass that separated Laurie and her fingers were cold and hard, nothing like how his skin had been. If Dottie thought hard enough, she could still remember how he had smelled like pencil shavings and the B.O. that he had started to get when he turned thirteen. She let her hand drop to her side. "What about Jasper?" She asked, turning away to scrub her eyes.

Louisa reached forward and pulled her sister into a hug. She wanted to say something comforting, like 'it's alright to miss him' or 'he wouldn't want us to cry,' but the words felt inauthentic and cheap in her head; something the therapist they had been forced to see after the accident would have said. Instead, she pushed her sadness inside a little box and shoved it in the deepest corner of her mental library. "If he wanted to ask me, he would have done it by now."

Dottie made a noise that sounded like a mix between a hiccup and a laugh before pushing away from her sister. She tightened her hold on the broom and began to sweep. "His loss then."

"Indeed," Louisa replied, squatting once more to collect a large pile of salt. "Do you have any plans this evening?"

"Apparently, I'll be helping you make your costume," Dottie sighed, pretending to be annoyed at the idea.

"I knew there was a reason I kept you around."

It was nearly one in the morning by the time Louisa fell into bed, too exhausted to even change into her pyjamas. Her homework was ninety percent finished (what was left could easily be done during lunch the next day) and her costume was draped over the back of her desk chair. She could imagine her little brother pointing out the inaccuracies of her costume, his voice cracking in odd places, too deep to belong to a child but too high to belong to a man. She would have told him to stuff it before she stuffed him in the closet. He would have taunted her and told her that he'd like to see her try. It wouldn't have been hard: the kid was seven stone soaking wet. She would have chased him throughout the house, letting him get far enough away that he thought he was safe before grabbing him and tickling his sides until there were tears in his eyes. His skin would be flushed and warm, his hair stuck up in the back.

Louisa turned on her side so that she was facing the window. She could just make out a few stars, peeking through spots in the clouds. Laurie would have loved to be able to see so many stars. As her eyes grew heavy, Louisa wondered just how many Laurie could see now.


"Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go" - Jamie Anderson


(A/N: It's a little shorter than what I had planned, but I wanted to focus on Louisa and who she is as a person. Let me know what you think! If you think you know what is happening to Louisa, leave me a signed review, and you might win a prize! -CheckAlexa)