He was gone. He was really, really gone. Izzy couldn’t believe it until she laid her eyes on him. She wouldn’t dare believe it until her eyes saw him lying in that casket. She felt her eyes burn with salty tears. No. He was just sleeping. Any moment now, Tony, her twin brother, would pop up out of that casket and say it was all just a big joke. That’s what she was used to. That’s what he always did. He had a sense of humor like no one else.

But nothing. Izzy laid her hand on his and realized he was actually, truly, for real gone. Why was he even driving that late at night? Was he racing again? No one knew what caused the accident. No one knew why he was out driving on Five Point Hill. It was storming that night. If he was racing, why would he race in that bad of a storm?

Izzy couldn’t focus anymore. School work was going incomplete. Practices were a no-show. She might have been physically present in her classes, but she was somewhere far away. What was it the grief counselor said about grief? There were stages. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It’s been six weeks since Tony died and she was still in stage one. She never felt angry, she didn’t bargain to switch with him, she might have been depressed, but she would never accept. Something wasn’t right. She needed to get to the bottom of what happened that night.

She walked out of school in the middle of the day. She didn’t care. She drove home and started rummaging through her brother’s room. “He’d kill me if he caught me in here.” She said to herself. Maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t there to yell at her. She rifled through his closet, she went through his drawers. She flipped through books and stories that he’s written. Then all of a sudden, her eyes landed on his favorite pen. It was one of those old pens that you needed to dip into ink. She always thought it was weird that he wanted to write his stories with that kind of pen. But he did write amazing stories. She found one he never finished.

The Lost Gold. She read through it and could almost tell the direction he was going with the story. It was a great fantasy story about kids trying to find some missing ship that went down in a storm. They searched high and low for the missing ship. She could tell it was about The Charlotte. The Charlotte was a ship that crashed in a storm off the coast of Virginia in 1896. Apparently, it was travelling with enough gold to buy a country. She giggled as she read the story.

Then, she picked up the pen and started writing the rest of it. She was in a groove. As she wrote, she could have sworn she heard a voice in her head telling her exactly what to write. It was soft and deep. It wasn’t her conscience. It was Tony’s. She gasped as she heard it coming in clearer and clearer. It was like he was standing right behind her. She turned around and almost expected him to be standing in the doorway. She dropped the pen when she realized it must have all been in her head.

“He’s not dead. He can’t be dead! There has to be some kind of mistake!” She started to cry.

She hardly even cried in the last six weeks. Now, she saw her tears landing on the pages. She was finally crying for him. But she couldn’t believe he was dead. She almost felt angry at him. “How could he do this? How could he leave us? How could he leave me?”

Anger. Finally. She picked up the pen and dipped it into the ink. She started writing again, hearing her brother’s voice in her mind. He was telling her what to write. It felt like his hand was guiding her over the pages. She almost felt like she was being possessed by him. She could almost read his mind. It was startling. Then she felt a breeze behind her, like the door was being opened. She turned around so fast, she threw the pen across the room. There was no one there. Her heart was pounding.

She got up and picked the pen back up. She sat back down and dipped it into the ink. As soon as the ink was on the page, she wondered if Tony was okay. She wanted him to be okay. “What if he wasn’t? What if it’s dark? What if he’s cold? What if-” She started to cry again. “I would trade with you in a heartbeat, Tony. I hope you’re okay.”

Bargaining. She was bargaining with the universe, a God, or some kind of higher power that caused this pain in her life. She would have switched with him. It should have been her. Tony was bright, funny, smart, loving, and had so many friends. She was boring, quiet, and kept to herself. They might have been twins, but they were so different. The only thing they shared was their love of writing.

She dipped the pen in the ink once more, and felt so sad. She wrote over her tears landing on the page. She didn’t care they were smudging the ink. She could still feel him on her hand, controlling the words that were going on the page. She could hear his voice, whispering to her, “the boy knew the gold was hidden, not on the ship, but in the oldest cemetery around.” She wrote the words. She started to wonder if this story was about Tony.

She dipped her pen in the ink again, and started writing the ending. That’s when she knew. She knew how and why he died. He was actually looking for the damn gold! This was about him. “It’s in the cove of Cedar Ridge.” She wrote. Then Tony’s voice was completely gone. She was left with her own voice. She grabbed the loose ink and her pen, then ran out of the house. She drove through Five Point and down to Cedar Ridge. She could see where he crashed. She stood on the cliff where he went over. She fell to her knees.

“You idiot!” She yelled into the chasm below. “That’s what you were doing that night? Trying to find the truth of The Charlotte? Some stupid bedtime story dad used to read to us? You idiot!” She screamed. She was fully crying now. Then she looked down at the ink in her hands. She somehow cracked the container. Black ink was all over her and running into the ground. She finally knew what he was doing out there that late. Why he was in a bad storm. The legend says you can’t find the gold unless there’s a storm like the one that took down The Charlotte. “What an idiot.” She scoffed.

She felt the wind blowing all around her. It was warm. It almost whispered, “I’m okay. Find it. Find the gold.” She shook and shivered. The air was warm, the sun was hot, but her body shivered like it was twenty below zero. She was finally accepting his loss. Tony was dead because he wanted to prove the stories were real. She had to pick up where he left off. That’s what he was telling her to do. But she needed to be smarter. She grabbed the book and the pen. She threw the broken container of ink over the cliff, and smiled.

“Anything for you, Tony.”

Tony was gone, and she needed to pick up where he left off. No matter what. She smiled as she looked over the cliff. She still felt sad. She was still a little angry. She was still wishing it was her instead of him. But she knew he was still with her. She just needed to finish his story. But first… she needed some more loose ink.