Almost Alive by Christina Barr Page A

you don’t mind me asking?”
                  “I’m studying Latin.”  She handed the book to me.  I didn’t think I would be interested in learning Latin, but it seemed intriguing.  The strange girl was suddenly becoming cooler by the second.  I felt like I could trust her and almost as if I had known her for a long while.  Maybe I could have a friend.
                  “It must be hard studying a dead language.  You don’t have anyone to really talk to.”
                  “Well,” she smiled, “not everything stays dead.”
                  I did my best not to make a reaction, but I certainly felt like she was poking holes in my story that I didn’t come up with yet.  Why would she say that and why that specific way?  It was like she knew.  “I guess not.”
                  “Take Julian for example.”
                  My eyes bucked.  “You know about his suicide?”
                  “Of course.  Unfortunately, everybody in the school who bothers to know he exists knows.”  I didn’t think it was publically blasted.  If I were him, I would have gone to a different school.  Well, I did go to a different school.  How did Julian live with that burden and why?  “But I’ve actually talked about it with him.”
                  “I didn’t peg him for someone being so open about this.”  I was surprised about that.  I knew he didn’t owe me any favors, but I wished I knew the circumstances of his death.  It would help me understand him more; maybe it would even help me.  I didn’t think he’d want to be that open with me.  I didn’t have the right to think this way, but I was almost a little offended that other people knew about his reasons and I didn’t.
                  “It’s hard for him to talk about.  We just have a special connection.”  She was really trying to rub it in my face and I didn’t care and it bothered me both at the same time.  “He actually taught me some Latin and got me into it.”
                  “Does he know how to speak it?”
                  “Fluently.  He’s very intelligent.”  And she was trying to make me interested so I could be more jealous of their relationship?  I so did not want him!  “Unfortunately, we don’t hang out as much as we used to.”
                  Ah ha!  It was a case of jealous female.  “Are you his old flame or—?”
                  “Oh no!”  She laughed, but she was disgusted as well.  “I’m his younger sister, Maria.”
                  “Oh.”  I was caught completely off guard.  “He didn’t mention he had a sister.”
                  “He’s embarrassed by me.”  She shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t care, but it completely broke my heart.  “It sucks, because we used to be thick as thieves.”
                  So she wasn’t a completely jealous female.  She was just a concerned and protective littler sister trying to feel me out.  Maybe she liked me and wanted me to become impressed with Julian and actually start to like him.  That wasn’t going to happen, so my heart went out to her.  “What happened between you two?”
                  “He hasn’t been the same since his suicide.  He’s completely different.  He doesn’t laugh as much, he dropped all his friends, and he completely avoids family as much as possible.  He makes me feel like a stranger.”
                  That poor girl!  She made me feel bad about leaving my parents completely in the dark.  I never really talked about my feelings with them before, but they knew something was really wrong with me and I did my best to make them feel like powerless jerks.  That wasn’t right of me.
                  “I must say, I find it odd that he’s even talking to