The next knock on the door was a rapid, insistent rap. Darla leapt to answer it and this time she pulled the door open. Alice Bonton slipped in our dorm room and locked the door behind her.
"She hasn't called her parents yet. She hasn't even moved," Darla told Alice.
"Quinn, honey, we need to call your parents. Let's do it now so they can come here and get you," my advisor said.
I shook my head. Somehow this was all my advisor's fault. If I had not answered the phone call from her, none of this ever would have happened. Sienna would still be alive and studying her night away. And, I would be slipping into the world of Dark Flag with Darla at the gamer party.
"I'm going to dial the phone and hand it to you, alright?" Ms. Alice asked.
"What I am supposed to say?" I croaked. "They are never going to believe me."
"Believe you?" she and Darla both asked at the same time.
"Sienna would never do something like that," I said. The images came back to me and the room in front of me faded away to darkness. Every time I tried to think of why, how Sienna could do that to herself, a giant chasm opened in my mind.
"Do you want me to tell them?" my advisor asked.
The phone was ringing and my mouth went dry. I nodded just as I heard my father's voice.
"Hello, Mr. Thomas? I'm sorry to be calling so late. This is Alice Bonton from UCLA. I'm your daughter Quinn's advisor. What? No, she hasn't done anything. Quinn is fine. I'm actually calling about Sienna."
There was a long pause on our end. I assumed my father had launched into a righteous lecture about the rudeness of the late night phone call. He was a busy man, probably due in court early the next morning, and he did not put up with such thoughtlessness from people.
If I had called, the lecture would have been the same.
"Yes, I did say I was calling about Sienna," Ms. Alice said.
And that was the difference. When it registered the phone call was about my sister, my father changed completely. I could almost hear him politely giving my advisor leave to speak, even though she stood a few feet away from me.
"There is no easy way to tell you this, but there has been an accident and Sienna Thomas is dead," Ms. Alice said. She looked as if she had fumbled a live hand grenade. "No, you're right, I should be more specific. Your daughter was found in her dorm room bathtub. She had cut her wrists. She was pronounced dead at the scene."
My father was a lawyer and must have switched into default mode because Ms. Alice spent the next ten minutes giving short, factual answers to his questions.
Finally, she cleared her throat. "Sir, I have your other daughter here. Wouldn't you like to speak with her?" Ms. Alice did not wait, she just handed me the phone with a barely disguised expression of relief.
He was still talking when I took the phone. "I'm going to need the name of the detective and the uniformed officers. I have her roommate's contact information somewhere."
"Daddy?" I asked.
"I'm going to have to lie to your mother until this is all cleared up. She can't handle news like this. We'll tell her Sienna was hurt in a car accident. I'll be there in the morning, Quinn. 8 am sharp in your lobby," he said.
The line went dead. I dropped the phone on the floor and lay down on the couch. Darla pulled my comforter off my bed and laid it over me as I curled up in a ball.
Somehow, my body woke up at 7:30 am. On autopilot, I showered and dressed and walked downstairs to meet my father.
He was early and impatiently waiting. "Did you talk to her roommate last night?"
"No."
"But you went to her room? The detective said you were there," my father asked.
"Yes. I saw, I saw…" I stopped and clung to the mailboxes in the foyer.
My father pulled open the front door. He then grabbed my elbow and escorted me out in front of him. "We're going to the coroner's. Didn't you tell me you went there with your class? That's my girl, never flinching when there's something useful to learn."
"That was Sienna," I said.
My father scowled as he opened the car’s passenger side door for me. He scowled all the way to the county coroner's office. He wiped it away when the coroner met us at the door. The two men shook hands.