• It was about a hundred feet, possibly more. It only took us up two stories, but that’s all you need. I was around twelve or so, I can’t remember, but I was young and I thought that this little trolley in the midst of the urban chaos was something to admire. It stood out like a sore thumb now that I think about it, old and rickety in the city that left its old news behind. Downtown L.A. has some pretty messed up streets and the green grass next to it is smothered in trash and hobos. It’s so dirty and it reminds me of something chipping away, but then there’s the Angel’s Flight. It stares in front of the old California Market Center; everyone passes it, almost through it because it’s old. It’s old, the tracks are the only thing to look at, and the little orange door looking right up to the next floor is all you see. May be that’s all you need to see. It doesn’t matter because Angel’s Flight is gone, and all is left are her beautiful orange door and a too tall sign with small lettering of what it used to be.
    May be that’s all you need to see to feel her beauty, you can understand beauty if you understood her passion before.

    “Lyra, you’re hurting the poor thing.”

    I blink quickly. It’s dark right now, and I’m poking a small lizard with a stick. I feel really cold, and adjusted my jacket and looked to my side. I’m at a beach and I look at my watch. It’s around nine o’ clock, the sea looks like a scary navy blue, almost like ink from a fountain pen. I wobble because the lizard wiggles away and I had to adjust myself next to the rocks I’m sitting on, cursing softly. My sister Jay throws a small rock into the ocean, and the wind is blowing so hard into my ears I don’t hear the water swallow it.

    It looks so damn cold and so deep, the water…I thought. I try to make myself comfortable on the rocks, and I glance towards my left to see the Queen Mary, the ship that stood so perfectly it made the dark sky look palpable. A lot of things scare the heck outta me, but right now I felt more vulnerable than usual, I had no idea why.

    “Wanna head back, Lyra?”

    “Yeah.”

    I push my shoulders up and dive my head into my scarf. I feel close to my city when I’m with my sister, Jay. She doesn’t question me when I ask her to come with me and admire L.A. for what it’s worth. She sticks to me and I can see her dark brown eyes glaze over to the scenery, silent. She had beautiful long hair; I always kept my hair short for my own dignity. We were close in a sense where I didn’t need to tell her everything, because she understood me. We’re of the same blood, of the same flesh and part of the same mind. I love her, and the city. I’m about two days due into rehab.

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    “Lyra! Please, be careful!”

    My mother’s sharp words cut through me and I flinch. I looked at my hands and back at the floor, seeing that I had let go of two plates. They crashed on the floor beneath me and the shards were broken into a million pieces. I started shaking a little from seeing the glass everywhere, the color red was everywhere, all around, in me and everywhere. The thought of me being there at that point in time didn’t occur to me, I couldn’t move I couldn’t sense anything but this desperation flooding in and out of me. I felt my stomach lurch when I see my mother’s face. It was puffed from crying and her hair shook with each swipe she took, her mind blocking me out completely. I’m being blocked out, blocked out…

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    “Doctor Krintzman, please tell me you’re going to fix her! Fix her; just bring her back to me!”
    More screaming, more yelling. I don’t understand. I breathed quickly, feeling a sharp pain on the side of my head. I’m sitting now, and my shirt is covered in small splatters of blood. I try not to scream, but my voice just quivers as I watch my father and mother quarrel with a Doctor. He seemed in distress, and my mother was hysterical. All the while, I say nothing. Do nothing, feel nothing. I couldn’t do anything, say anything, feel anything. I wanted to know why my mother cried so much, and why Jay wasn’t with me. She would know what to do, because she was the oldest and everyone loved her. She wasn’t the one with the addiction, and wasn’t the one screwing up her life. Why wasn’t she with me?

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    “Lyraaaaaa—C’mon! Everyone’s in the car! Let’s go!”

    “Coming!”

    My mind is a blur, but I can feel this sensation of happiness flutter about me. I can see myself run around my house and look frantically for something. I hear myself cry out and grab a pair of ice skating shoes, and dash out the door. How old was I? Six? Seven? She doesn’t look like me, but I know that little girl was me, and that older looking version was my sister from a while back. Oh, I know this. This was when I first started to ice skate, and my first time hating it too.

    “Right, left, right, left Lyra. See, you’ve got the hand of things! You’ll be like me in no time!”
    The ice was cold, and I could feel my nose disappear from my sharp pants and deep breathing. I was no good even moving forward, let alone gaining momentum. I wanted to beat my sister so bad that day I ended up falling flat on my face when I gained too much speed and broke my nose. I hated her so much, I hated her because she was the one dying and it wasn’t me.

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    “Look Look Lyra! That’s Angel’s Flight! Isn’t she so beautiful?”

    I’m wondering why everyone’s screaming in my mind, and why I can’t stop. By this time I try to register things, but as soon as I open my mouth, my sister grabs my hand and jumps into the little trolley. I could only catch a glimpse of her beautiful etched orange door that stood outside and into the trolley, but I was already inside and tried to grab a seat before it went up. The whole time my sister bubbled in her seat the whole time like a kid, she held my hand tightly. The inside smelled of wood polish, and the lights were small and dim, but everything seemed different in that little trolley. That day I knew we must have spent five dollars taking that trolley one flight up and down continuously. The admission ticket was fifty cents, and by the time we knew the clerk’s name, the driver, and the assistant’s name we were allowed on the trolley for free.

    It was never a predictable moment with my sister Jay. She never wanted it to be that way. We were opposites in everything. When I was reserved, she was outspoken. When discouraged, she would be full of energy and cheer me on. I couldn’t understand why she had so much strength and I didn’t, and the simple answer would always come out of her mouth,

    “I’m your big sister silly.”

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    It’s so blurry still. It hurts to move around my eyes. I’m in a patient’s room sitting on a crunchy bed spread, holding my head and tear from the pain and confusion. I still don’t understand, still so blurry. No answers, no Jay. I’m confused, and I want to leave the pain. I want to feel her hand like before, and the way her jittery touches made me feel the same way. But right now I’m confused, and I don’t know why I’m here and why I can’t see with all this water in my eyes. I forget why I’m crying and I don’t remember how I got this gash on my head. I can feel the booze from the night before gurgle with my stomach acid, hear my mother outside with my sister, but she’s not with me. I don’t know why they’re screaming, but I know it was something to do with me. I don’t remember, I can’t remember...

    “I’m sorry Mrs. Medina, but your daughter…she didn’t make it. It was a severe blow to the head and she was alive for a few hours, but she took quite the beating on her head and she was in a coma for twenty eight minutes. We were assuming the tumor in her brain had something to do with it. After that, she had a heart failure and – I’m sorry Mrs. Medina, We tried everything – “

    I’m behind my mother and father, their bodies crumpled on the floor and I still don’t understand why she wails like that and why he pulls her arms around her tightly from becoming putty on the floor. The pain throbs in my head, but the pain in my soul is quickly increasing and it’s becoming hard to see. It’s still so blurry…hard to see…hard to feel…

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    “This is my favorite place, this can be our secret place, you know that Lyra? Right in front of the Plaza market, remember? I might not see you as often, since you’ll be in that rehabilitation center, but you’ll do fine. I believe in you, I’ll visit you next week okay? Bye Lyra, I love you so--.”

    It was quick; I couldn’t see her during rehabilitation. I wanted to see her, but I cancelled because I knew I would be a mess and make her cry if she saw me. If I saw her that day it would have changed her mind that following week. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t know anymore. When her voice cut off that quick and I heard that crash, the way a paper is crumpled easily my ears filled from a car screeching. I couldn’t stop. I ran as fast as I could outside, because I didn’t care for getting better, I knew something was wrong. I pumped my broken body in search for hers, my head throbbed so much from my gash and my legs felt limp from the exhaustion. She shouldn’t have been far because she just left the center when I cancelled on her. It was about three blocks away, when I saw her blue car and a large truck crumpled together in a four way intersection.

    I couldn’t do it, my mind and body couldn’t take it that day, so I blocked it out. I chained that memory of her beautiful hand limp and filled with splattered blood in the driver’s door, the car lopsided and her beautiful hair tangled. I don’t remember much from that point on. I couldn’t even remember her face. I stayed in rehab until I got better, but the damage was done. I have been sober for two months, but the pain of something unfilled still lingered.
    It was too much, the beauty being tainted by something so ugly, tainted by me. It was beauty at its finest, and then destroyed. Her beauty wasn’t afraid to die; she embraced the beauty of death, made death so beautiful it hurt. Beauty is something that feels so real; it was neither a sensation nor perception, neither fact nor imagination. Beauty is just Beauty in itself that remains beautiful and shall continue to be beautiful in your memory. Beauty is an Angel’s first steps of her flight, seeing her wings for the first time and filling herself with it and becoming whole.

    Beauty feels real. Beauty is real.