Black. Black was the only color she wore. Rain or shine, sad or happy. Her pants she wore baggy, and they hung around her waist. Her shirts she wore tight and low-cut. Her shoes were wide and clompy. These were all black, except for her shoe-laces; they were decorated with red-and-yellow-and-orange flames.

Even her music sounded black. It was dark, and loud, and scream-y. Loud, wailing guitars and men who liked to shout, and it's a wonder they still have their voices.

I always thought she was perfect. Her hair was long, dark, and glossy. Her eyes were huge, lined with long, sweeping lashes and thick black eyeliner. I saw no flaw in her body, but then again I was only five years old, and my judgment was biased.

I was too young to see the cuts on her wrists, the old, and the new. It hurts now to think of my tiny, chubby hands grabbing her wrist to pull her along with me to play a game, and the way she must have hidden her flinches and tears. I was too young to understand when her boyfriend, Daniel, came over and apologized over and over and over about the bruises on her body. My eyes were too ignorant to notice the shadows under her eyes, and the way she ignored almost everybody.

Her friends scared me: loud, guffawing teens with matching black clothes and makeup, and she would lock me out of her room, claiming they "needed their space". I was so naive, wondering how her space could be "space" without me. I would sit just outside the door listening to her loud, screaming music, staring at the dents and scratches in the fading white paint on the wood.

 And when she would get up in the middle of the night and get dressed, I would just watch her as she snuck out the window of our foster home, to be with Daniel no doubt.

I remember one time she came back through the window. She was clumsy and loud, and she fell back in, rather than gracefully sliding through like she usually does. She then scrambles over to the bunk bed where my sister and I sleep and whispers, "I love you." Her breath smelled weird, and it scared me, because it reminded me of the smell of my Grandfather's breath as he would hurt me and my siblings. But I said, "I love you, too," and didn't give it another thought.

Until today. Now I'm sixteen, and I recently only thought of the way she said those three words, and how she had to be drunk to say them. And I can't help thinking of how I am very much the same. I will not lie to you and say I know how it feels to be drunk, because I don't. But I do know how hard it is for me to tell others about how I feel, even if I love them very much and see them every day.

Eventually she snuck out one last time. She stayed away for a few days, until she turned eighteen. I was nine years old. Then she continued to live with our birth-mother. Now, I've only stayed with my birth-mother for four years of my life, if that. And they were all in the early years of my childhood, when my memory was destined to fade. But knowing what I do about her, I know for a fact that my sister chose the worst possible path that she had an option of. My mother is all about drugs. Live drugs, breathe drugs, be drugs. It's only natural that my sister would pick up the habit.

Then, one day, five contact-less years later, my foster parents told me that she was in the hospital. OD, they said it was. I didn't even know what that was. Overdose, they replied. Drug overdose.

Those two words stuck a knife into my gut and twisted it. I couldn't breathe, or think. But, in desperate hope, I prayed to a God I don't believe in to make her better. Please, I begged. She's only twenty-three...

Two days later, she died.

I went to school that day, in the middle of the school year. I figured I would be okay if I just kept my mind off of it. Homeroom and first period went by perfectly fine. Then, in second period, somebody said I looked sick, was I okay?

I told them what had happened. At first my voice was steady, but by the end I had to run from the room. I slammed into the bathroom, slumped against the wall, and cried. I cried and cried and cried. I couldn't stop.

Eventually somebody came and got me, when I didn't come back.

Even though she was...troubled, she was still beautiful. She was still strong-willed and smart. Funny, sweet, caring.

So here's to you. Gabriella. My angel up in heaven. I can see you up there, and when some shiny-looking being hands you your white robe, you'll hold it up, squint at it, then hand it back, and ask, "You got this in black?"

I love you, my Angel in Black.