Her Juliet

“Don’t let go,” she whispers, and Raina can’t think. She’s not strong enough to lift Juliet’s weight, and her side is pushed at a painfully odd angle against the windows edge.

Juliet’s face is beautiful in the moonlight. The perfect picture of fear as tears that are not hers land on her cheeks, slowly roll down off her chin and onto the grass, far, far below.

Raina gasps as Juliet slips a little further, but forget it all she’ll let her wrist snap before she lets Juliet go. Her hands are slick with sweat and falling tears.

She hangs in the open air, her skirts twisting like falling autumn leaves in the breeze. Juliet pulls the edges of her mouth into a grimace, then a pitiful smile. 

“I love y-“ but when she slips her sharp inhale cuts her final words short. Raina screams as she slips too, but her thighs catch the rough wood of the windowsill. She watches Juliet plummet for half a moment before Raina herself almost topless head first through the window after. She screams something raw and panicked, gasps out a painful breath and reaches out with her sweaty hands to grab onto the walls edge. Her palms find painful purchase on rough stone but she fumbles for leverage all the same. Quickly, she finds it, and when she pushes she topples head over heels backwards onto the plush carpet of Juliet’s bedroom. She yelps once more, and she is on the floor.

The side she had pushed against the windowsill screams in protest of its treatment and her palms are rosy and scratched. Not yet bleeding, but soon, blood is already welling up inside the small cuts. Raina’s breaths are heavy and quick as she makes sense of the ceiling and the warm safety of the carpet.

Juliet, her mind screams, and she is clawing at the carpet to get back on her feet. Stumbling, then throwing herself against the window’s edge once more.

Something heavy falls into the pit of Raina’s stomach. Far, oh so far below, Juliet is laying in the grass under her bedroom window. In her descent her foot had caught the edge of the climbing vines and it keeps a firm grasp on her ankle still. Lifting it slightly into the air as it hangs awkwardly from the wall, now partially pulled free by the weight of a falling 13 year old girl. 

Raina has never seen a dead body before, she wouldn’t know what it would look like. But the wrong angle of Juliet’s neck is…. 

There is blood seeping into the grass and her dress and her pretty curls.

Raina chokes on fear, disgust, disbelief, and her too fast breath and pushes herself inside Juliet’s room.

A rapid, heavy knocking comes from the other side of the bedroom door.

“Juliet?” A soft, worried voice calls. Mrs. Capulet. Juliet’s mother.

Juliet is dead.

Raina looks at the blood on her hands. It is her own, but would Mrs. Capulet know that? 

The handle begins to turn but catches; the lock holds.

Raina’s mind whirls in fear and pieces of a terrible puzzle. Raina’s and Juliet’s parents had expressly forbidden their friendship. They had told them so time and time again. She had climbed the stone and ivy to Juliet’s windowsill to see her when her parents were supposedly asleep and unaware. It was the first time. The only time. 

Juliet is dead.

And Raina is in her house, a house she is not allowed in, with blood on her hands and completely alone. Oh god above, would Mrs. Capulet think she had pushed her daughter?

Mrs. Capulet is going to see her, and then the odd angle of Juliet’s neck, and who knows what Mrs. Capulet would do to her. What if she calls for Mr.. Capulet? What if they call the police? They will surely call the police their daughter is dead.

Raina pushes her palms against her face, forcing tears away and letting herself sink into the fear and panic.

She could tell them the truth? She had just wanted to see Juliet. She had climbed through the window because she missed her. Raina was 13 too and rules felt less like expectations and more like reasons not to get caught. They had giggled on the windowsills edge, whispering secrets as they kicked their feet in the sweet air of summer. Pressing little gifts into each other’s palms and featherlight kisses onto each other’s cheeks. Then their lips. She slipped. It was an accident. It wasn’t her fault. 

Juliet had lips as soft as rose petals, and just as pink.

The door handle rattles, and someone is running down the hall.

But she couldn’t tell the truth. At the center of it all was their secret. Juliet had made her promise to never, ever tell. They had sworn it on stars and oceans and futures together.

Oh Juliet.

What was the point without Juliet? 

There were panicked voices on the other side of the bedroom door. 

Raina pushed her hands against her ears and tasted salt as she sobbed. There was nothing without Juliet. Nothing, nothing, nothing. She was roses and sunsets and autumn leaves twirling in the breeze. She was all curls and dresses and smiles and she was good. Better than Raina could ever, ever hope to be. There was something in Raina’s chest that kept tightening with every passing second without her and somehow Raina was certain It would never, ever get better. This pain would last forever.

What was forever without Juliet?

Raina startled when a slam sounded against the door, then, after a moment, another. This time the hinges trembled with the weight of the man throwing his shoulder against the other side. Trying everything to get to his daughter.

Raina brushed tears and blood from her cheeks and ran to the window, pushing herself up and swinging her legs over.

There was light on the horizon. Dawn would come soon and with it, the sun.

Juliet is the sun. No, she is brighter. 

And it is not worth living without her rose lips and moonlit face and light.

Behind her, a door’s frame buckles with another deafening slam. But Raina’s decision had been made. She trembled with the fear of it, shifting her body closer and closer to the edge. Hiccups bubbling up from sobs and soft tears. 

Raina pictured Juliet once more, her lips, her kiss, and pushed herself into open air without a sound.

And like dead autumn leaves, she fell.