I began noticing a problem with my sister around December. I noticed that she wasn’t as happy-go-lucky as she used to be, and was now dressing less like the cute hipster she was and instead wore baggy jackets and kept the hood up. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It was just a different clothing style. That didn’t mean anything.

Or so I thought.

Since my sister was younger than me, I didn’t see her around school a lot. She had her own circle of “friends,” which I later found out were less like friends and more like bloodthirsty animals. The only time I ever saw her was at home, and even there she locked herself in her room and never came out unless she was really hungry or needed to pee. Again, I thought nothing of it. She was just a teenager, after all.

Finally, I began noticing more obvious changes in my sister. At night, when she was locked away in her room, I could hear faint crying coming from her room. Finally, I took it upon myself to check up on her.

I had knocked on her door. “Sis?” I called, and could hear the crying stop suddenly.

“What?” she replied, her voice a mere whimper.

“Can I come in?”

On most nights, she would never let me in. But that night, she did. When I came in, I noticed that her room was an absolute pit, and a peculiar smell filled the room. I made the assumption that it was drugs, and I later found out I was right.

That night she confessed everything to me: her friends were spreading nasty rumors about her online, usually through Facebook and occasionally Twitter. They were calling her fat and trashy and a slut. They had even managed to have in their possession photos of her without her shirt on after tricking and forcing her to do it on a dare. They threatened to release the photo if she didn’t do everything they asked of her.

I was absolutely horrified, to put it mildly. I doubt a word strong enough exists in the English language to describe my rage. After crying on my shoulder for a while, she continued confessing and revealed that she had been cutting herself on occasion, when she felt really depressed, and tried stealing our mother’s sleeping pills to overdose and possibly commit suicide. I managed to talk her down enough that night to get her to go to sleep without thinking about committing suicide.

I couldn’t keep the information to myself. I told our mother in private, and suggested she try and help. She was horridly upset, but wanted to help.

The next few weeks went by without too much trouble. After talking things out with me and our mother, my sister was finally able to give up cutting and agreed to see a psychologist regularly to help the depression. For a short while, she seemed to make a full recovery and be back on the road to happiness again.

A month after she began seeing her psychologist, the girls posted the photo online. It became viral practically overnight, and the next day at school was absolute torture for her. She ended up leaving at lunch and locking herself in her room the rest of the day. When I got home, I tried getting her to come out, but she wouldn’t. I called our mother to get her to come home early from work and help me before it was too late. Soon, the both of us were desperately begging and pleading from the other side of the door, trying to talk her down. After hours of anxiously waiting for her to come out, my mother finally had to break the lock and go into the room herself. My sister was sitting on the floor, holding a bloody knife in her hand, tears streaming down her mascara-smeared face.

That night was a long night. Mother stayed with her for hours. She decided not to go to school the next day. She skipped more days after that, keeping confided in her room while our mother tried to convince her to get out of her bed.

Then, one evening, she got a text from the girls telling her to meet them at a park later that night to talk. She had snuck out to meet with them, possibly expecting an apology. But instead, the girls made fun of her for being too scared to show her face back at school, and then proceeded to beat her up in the black of night, punching and kicking her until she lost vision in one of her eyes and her bruised arms and knees began bleeding.

She dragged herself home. I heard her come in. She immediately went to the bathroom to examine her wounds. I listened quietly outside. I could hear her laugh suddenly—short and weak. Then her laughs turned into maniacal laughter before transforming into intense sobs and short, ragged breaths. I could feel my pulse race.

I hid in my room and waited until I heard her return to her room. When I did, I was finally able to fall asleep.

That morning, I woke up and immediately went to her room to see how she was doing. When I pushed aside her partially-cracked door, I found that she was not in her room. I began panicking. My heart was racing. I ran throughout the rest of the house, desperately trying to find her. When I did not, I woke up my mother and told her what had happened last night and that she was missing. We began frantically searching for her. But she was nowhere in sight. She was not in the house.

Finally, I checked the garage. When I opened the door to the garage, I found my mother’s car running. I ran to the driver’s side. My sister was slumped over the steering wheel, blue and cold as ice. A tube connected to the muffler rested on the slightly lowered window, releasing the poisonous methane gas from the car directly into her lungs.

She was dead.

Later that day, I had found that she had posted one last parting note on Facebook at 3 AM. It said, “I thought I was strong. I guess I’m not. I didn’t do anything wrong. Remember me as a fighter, but also as a victim. You did this to me. And thanks to you, I’m not taking any secrets to the grave. I’m leaving early, but I left nothing behind. My future may’ve been bright, but I live in the present. Bullies are to blame; they killed me inside. And now they will finally be able to see the consequences of their damage. You’re not a killer just because you never fired a gun at somebody? You’re not a murderer because you never physically killed anyone? Think again. I’m not alive anymore.”