Whatever motivation that had once propelled me forward at the beginning of my journey of work was gone, like a flame blown out from a candle. I didn't know how I could have possibly let it get to this point. Maybe I had been given too much to think about all at once. Maybe I poured too much of myself into it just to reach expectations and overdid it. All I knew was this was no longer how it used to be.

I had so much to remember and keep control of that it felt like it was piled up on top of me now, tearing me down with a weight I struggled to lift. Gradually, I began to think of leaving for work less as a chance to form my path to my best future and more like ten hours of constant expectations to exceed and the pressure to focus on too many things at once. My motive to pursue my future had slipped from my grasp quicker than I could prevent it and now I was participating in the work not because I wanted to but because I had to. My highest priority was to sustain my emotional health, but I was losing my ability to even do that.

I was very slowly being pushed to my limits on what I could handle and did what I could to withdraw from the pressure to ease the demand. I allowed myself more and more time to stay in bed in the mornings to escape the responsibilities of the day, resulting in my arrival to work becoming a usual of eight ten or eight fifteen. I dropped out of routine in organizing my time productively and only allowed the lack of progress in my non-interactive work to grow. I could imagine myself succeeding, that part was easy. But it was less easy to sit down and force work out of yourself when you could barely force yourself to feel significant emotions anymore. If anything was clear, it was that I desperately needed help now, but the words were trapped inside of me, crashing through my mind and disappearing from my tongue once I tried to speak them. I didn't know how much longer I could handle moving on like this.

Everything in my life was falling apart and there was nothing I could do. The idea of what could happen if I continued to struggle in my work overtook my mind more times than I could count and it was enough to turn my stomach, leaving a clenched gut and a deafening mindspace several hours in the day. The worst part about that might have been the fact that nobody seemed to notice the war that was raging in my mind, but after all, it wasn't my place to blame them for that. Nobody questioned what you were going through when you had a smile on your face and a bounce in your voice.

I contradicted myself frequently, trying to convince myself that I could find a way out of this chaos that was conquering my life and then failing to achieve the strength to change it. My act of confidence and charisma felt like it was simply a game of pretend and updates on my progress report became considerably rare. I added a sentence or two on lucky days and read through it countless times on others. At this point, I was doing what I could to still be okay. I approached the tense situation by reminding myself that I could manage my responsibilities if I gave a decent effort and that it would have been just like keeping up with schoolwork, but it was in times like those that I remembered that I almost failed out of school by struggling to finish my work on time.

I knew well that I was doomed to failure if I continued the way I did. This was a professional job and the inability to complete work would not be accepted here. Despite this, I had done well to avoid the consequences—That is, until Lottie stopped by at my office one morning to check on my advancement in my essay.

The knock on my office door caused me to nearly jump out of my skin. I had been sitting in my chair in front of my computer where my report sat untouched on the screen while I fiddled with the latches on my briefcase propped up against the desk to pass the time. I didn't often get visits to my office, so this must have been an important issue.

I stole a glance across the room to find Lottie standing on the other side of the door, peeking through the window at me as she waited for my permission to enter the room. This time, she did not carry an extra assignment or any paper at all in her arms and had arrived with nothing. Bewilderment crept through my mind at the unlikely occurrence, completely clueless as to why Lottie was here in the first place, but I gave a nod for her to come inside. Lottie ducked quietly into the room, shutting the door behind her.

"I'd just like to check in with you for a minute, if that's all right with you," she said as she turned to face me again.

Check in with what? Had I done something wrong? Did she know something I didn't?

"Sure," I mumbled as my mind reeled with thoughts as to what I could have possibly done wrong. I hadn't been aware I was doing something wrong.

Lottie relocated the chair from the wall to draw it up close to the other end of my desk as she always did when initiating a meeting between us.

"I would just like to remind you that you have your first progress report due in about two weeks," she told me as she lowered herself into her seat, and a ripple of dread slithered through me. Was it really that short of time? "I hope that you haven't been having any trouble with that. Of course, I'd like you to work on it at your own pace, but if you've scheduled your time well, I think you should be about ten to twelve pages through. Am I reading that correctly?"

I snuck a glance at my progress report on the computer screen. The single paragraph and three sentences that I had managed to compose seemed to etch into my soul. I was definitely not where I needed to be.

"I'm doing fine," I said, the lie easily escaping before I could gulp it down, so I built around it with something closer to the truth. "Actually, I'm struggling a little bit. I'm capable of finishing it by the deadline, it's just that my progress is a little slow right now."

"Really?" Lottie inquired. "I'd like to help you where I can. How much have you written?"

I made a point to avoid her gaze as my eyes danced over the words on the screen again. The answer I was about to give sat like a hundred-ton weight on my chest.

"I've written about two paragraphs," I said.

"I'm sorry?" Lottie replied instantly.

The piercing shock in her voice pulled my focus back to discover that a startled expression had fallen over her face at the news. I searched her face for the anger that would surely arise once the surprise had passed, but it didn't come. Instead, once the situation had sunk in after several seconds, a sort of shimmering, pained anxiety filled the void of her dark eyes.

"Digby, you know how important this is, don't you?" Lottie said. Her voice was fragile as if it would soon break like glass. "It's crucial that you get this done. I'm worried that you won't be able to finish on time."

I caught it in her tone. She was disappointed in me. She expected more from me and I had let her down. A rotten feeling pooled out into my stomach as I examined my fidgety paws in my lap.

"I need to know that you're going to be able to do this," Lottie urged weakly when I didn't give an answer. I didn't look at her as she spoke. "I'm worried about your commitment to this work. Please tell me that you're sure you can manage this."

I couldn't tell her that. At least, not truthfully. I could barely even tell myself that anymore. But just because the sorrowful tones in her voice cut deep into my chest like a sharpened blade, I forced a nod for her own peace of mind.

"I can," I muttered.

A thin atmosphere clouded the room as silence fell. I had nothing to say and, so it appeared, neither did Lottie. My heart throbbed with a tug of guilt as I sat in the quietness, alone with someone who had nothing to say to me anymore and the fact that I had somehow managed to fail one of the best friends I'd ever had.

"Stay on top of it, please," Lottie murmured eventually with a broken voice. She rose from her seat and went to leave the room without another word to me.

The conversation with Lottie spun through my mind throughout the rest of the day, shame pounding into my chest with the rhythm of my aching heart. I didn't want to put myself through that again and, more importantly, I didn't want to put her through that again. If anything, this was a clear wake-up call to change my behavior. My own bad habits and poor choices were starting to lash back onto those around me and if I didn't fix the problem, their permanent view on me would start to be affected. Lottie was already disappointed in my failure. How much worse could it possibly get?

Tears threatened to spring to my eyes through Open Advisory while the conversation was still fresh in my mind, but I concealed this well by my performance of lively confidence. Words of apology crept through my mind to bring to the light when I would see Lottie next during the lunch break in the cafeteria, but once that time arrived, I swallowed my excuses and sat in silence instead. As the hours rolled on and I assumed the event was in the past, it was only as I was taking the journey home that it occurred to me that Lottie was sure to have told Lyle about my mistake and I was going to hear it again from him soon. I doubted that he was going to treat the situation as gently.

Days passed like any other. The early mornings brought me to work again and again as if I were living the same day repetitively before the evening dimmed into nightfall by my departure. It was a daily chore that I couldn't seem to free myself from no matter what I tried. With putting on a mask to prove everyone around me that I was someone I couldn't quite identify with and dragging myself through the weight of the day, the only time that I could sink back into myself and just exist was the short time that I was at home.

I needed and relied on Isabelle more than ever. Every time I abandoned the work building for the night, I was already thinking about returning home to her from the moment I pushed my way through the doors. When I spent time with her, all of my problems and worries slipped from my memory as her positive, bouncy attitude lit up the room. It was my escape from the stressful reality that snatched my days away from me. It was my hope, my reminder that optimism was possible.

Someday, I was going to tell her everything. I couldn't help imagining the possibility that I would dim her spirits if I let her know what I was being put through, but she deserved to know the truth about what was happening. As the days flew by, I searched for the right words to say to her, the best way to open up about what life felt like for me, but there was a part of me that sensed that somehow, she already knew. I wasn't entirely sure whether it was the connection we held both as best friends and as twins or her keen perception, but every time I allowed myself to slip into revealing how drained I really was, her eyes glimmered with a sort of dismal, unspoken understanding. More than once, I caught her watching me with a contemplating, careful glance as if she was trying to figure out how to approach the situation. But still, she said nothing.

In times when I was away from Isabelle and our home, times when I had no option to find my hope for a better future, I was drowning. I was drowning in responsibilities, drowning in expectations I couldn't seem to meet, drowning in the surging wave of brokenness that was taking over my life. It was a cry for help, one that no one could hear. With every day, I was tormented by the thought of others losing their faith in me after proving that I was incapable of being anything but a disappointment. I thought that I was in the clear of hearing about it after the difficult conversation I had shared with Lottie, but the consequences came back around during the next constructive meeting in the evening with Lottie and Lyle on the fourteenth.

I was the last to arrive shortly after five thirty. I emerged into the main conference room to find both Lottie and her uncle seated at the table in their regular places, waiting for my arrival so that the meeting would commence. Lottie was the first to meet my gaze, but she was quieter than usual, having no smile or friendly greeting for me as she usually did. Lyle was sitting beside her and at first had his head ducked as he scribbled down a note onto a sheet of paper on the table in front of him. When he raised his head to look at me as I neared the table, he was frowning.

"Digby, have a seat," Lyle instructed, folding the sheet of paper in front of him with abrupt, impatient movements. Something in his voice was a bit more stiff than usual. He wasn't happy with me.

Somehow, this was all it took for the threat of tears to swell in a soreness around my eyes again. Silently, I wheeled my chair out from the table and plopped down into it to join the meeting.

"Lottie told me a few things about the progress of your work," Lyle told me as I inched my chair close to the edge of the table again. A throbbing jab pierced my stomach at the reminder. "She said that you're not getting it done in a timely manner and that you're falling significantly behind. Is that true?"

"Hmm," I mumbled. It was the only answer I could bring myself to give as I studied the pale surface of the table.

"Okay, well, you need to learn how to fix that, don't you?" Lyle replied. Even as I refused to meet his gaze, I could feel it locked upon me like it was burning right through my very being. "I don't want you to be slacking off while we're all counting on you to get this done."

The accusation struck me like a slap in the face and my next words slipped out in a flash of distress.

"I am not slacking off," I insisted, a dull pain snapping through my chest at my rising anguish.

"Then tell me what's stopping you from doing your work," Lyle shot back.

"I don't know." I was already breaking down, launching myself to the edge of the table to drop my face into my paws. I wasn't yet crying, but a dampness clung to my eyes and my breath had quickened, in and out, in and out. "I don't know. I just can't do it. I can't."

Lyle didn't answer at first. I removed my paws from my eyes to clutch them together over my mouth as he reached up to take his glasses from his face, rubbing his face with his free paw for a moment as if he couldn't believe that I was breaking down in front of him over something like this.

"Digby, listen," Lyle said, slipping his glasses back onto his face. Even after taking a moment to recollect himself, a sharp edge still sat in his voice. "Lottie is too polite to say this herself, but you need to get it together. I won't tolerate this kind of behavior here."

This statement caught Lottie's attention immediately, and her eyes narrowed at her uncle.

"I wouldn't have said that," she said firmly, but Lyle didn't seem to acknowledge her response as his gaze remained still upon me.

I felt like the world was caving in on me. Suddenly, everyone who had agreed to stand as a group had become very tense with each other and I had caused it. Tears swelled in my eyes at the thought and I rushed to press my paws over them again. I wanted nothing more than to just get out of there, my mind screeching with pleads for Lyle to stop scolding me for something that was beyond my control. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

"If you don't know what's keeping you from doing the work, do you at least know what would help you?" Lyle asked me.

I drew in a sharp, sniffly breath, running my paws through my tousled hair to push it back from my face.

"I don't know," I insisted. "I just need time to figure this out."

"How much time, Digby?" Lyle pressed as my shaking paws rested in my hair, holding up my head. "You can't just keep putting off the work and then getting overwhelmed by it. I expect you to do the work you are assigned. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be done. Those are the requirements that must be met for this job. If you can't meet those requirements, you need to tell me that."

I couldn't find the words to answer. Lyle was waiting for my response, but it was one that he wouldn't receive. A thick, suffocating silence filled the room in the break in conversation and a stale, salty taste lingered on my tongue. A rustle of movement on the other end of the table brought my paws away from my watery eyes to see Lyle shift in his seat to glance quietly up at the clock on the wall. Five forty. We'd been here less than ten minutes.

"I believe there's nothing more to be discussed here," Lyle muttered, thrusting himself up from the table to prepare to leave. Taking note of this, Lottie climbed to her feet as well to follow without protest. "I think we should all call it a day and head back home."

Without another word, Lyle cleared out from the room and disappeared back through the doorway, leaving the door to carelessly swing shut after him. Lottie hurried off after him as I numbly dropped my paws to the table, but she paused with her own paw perched over the doorknob as her gaze silently strayed back to me. For a moment, she only studied me from the door, words unsaid dancing in the darkness of her round eyes, words that remained unsaid as she vanished through the doorway as well and abandoned me sitting helplessly alone.

At the HHDA, we stand for your best and brightest future, and we stand together.

The fact that I was failing everyone around me was old news by now, but that didn't make it hurt any less. Being alone on my way back to my office to retrieve my coat and head out for home eased my urge to cry and dried my eyes, but I couldn't help feeling worn and beaten down by the breakdown I had just surrendered to. I walked home with thoughts of the argument still reeling in my mind, emotionally empty and drained, and a sour nausea uncoiling in my stomach for the sake of my affected image. By the time I was pushing my way through the doorway of my house, I was ready for the day to be over and done with. Mom stopped me in my path a few steps into the house and told me that dinner was just about ready, but there was no way that I could have managed to eat after the day I'd had. I skipped dinner and went right to bed.

The next day at work, Friday the fifteenth, was tormenting, to say the least. I was substantially more conscious of the way I presented myself at work after realizing that what I was doing was starting to make me let others down. Before I knew it, I was trying to perfect my behavior even while I was alone. I used my first hour well, but at the cost of my composure. At this point, I was exhausting out work from myself just so that nobody could look at me as a disappointment anymore. Before the end of the hour, I succeeded in writing ten pages of carefully polished work, broken for validation and not pleased about what I had caused myself to get there.

That day alone lasted a lifetime. Three hours of Open Advisory felt like thirty until I had the chance to escape to the cafeteria at noon. Studies was just a bit too noisy, voices bouncing off the walls during transitions, and everyone seemed a little too eager to get out of there once it was done. I left the building that day at six o'clock feeling like I had broken free from the pure suffering I had just put myself through.

On the night between the fifteenth and the sixteenth, I tossed and turned in bed with my mind buzzing with thoughts into the late hours. The worries of my reputation being permanently damaged by the fact that I needed to physically force myself to get any work done had resurfaced, clawing through my mind with a throbbing unease in the pit of my stomach, and sometime in the night, a different thought had occurred to me. After what I had seen, it appeared that I wasn't just ruining my reputation at work. I was destroying whatever connection I still had with Lottie and Lyle.

It had been around this point in the night when a deep loathing had begun to wrench my being at my own habits and behavior tearing down everything that had ever made me happy. Why did I have to go and ruin something that had been so good for me? Why was I like this? Why did I have to be this way? What possibly could have been so wrong with me that I had become such a failure that everyone around me had begun to take notice?

I knew well that I wasn't going to get any sleep if I kept myself awake with damaging questions, so for my own peace of mind, I tried to challenge these questions with my hopeful thinking practices that Isabelle had trained me to sustain from her own radiant positivity. I reminded myself that just because things were going wrong didn't mean that there wasn't the potential of change. I could likely reverse this problem with the right actions and the best apologies. There was no reason that I couldn't continue to view this opportunity to work as a blessing even through the responsibilities that piled up on me. That only meant I was trusted to be able to complete it in the first place and had the chance to take a genuine step forward into my future. Besides, stressful experiences never lasted, despite feeling so in the moment, and the chaos would ease up again in time. I was okay. Everything was okay. Everything was going to be okay. I just needed to take a deep breath to clear my head and everything would be fine.

After all, this was everything I had hoped for. This was what I had dreamed of achieving in life. This was exactly where I wanted to be.

. . .

"Your sister is leaving home."

I had just broken out of sleep moments ago. Mom had arrived knocking on my door in her pajamas and flicking on the lightswitch, telling me that she had urgent news to deliver, but as drowsiness clouded my mind, the words couldn't quite sink in. The lights that had flooded the room in the early hour throbbed against my tired eyes, dimming around the edges in longing to fall back asleep as I propped myself up on my elbows to look at my mother in the open doorway.

"What?" I mumbled.

"Isabelle is leaving home," Mom echoed. Her voice was fragile and shaky as her face was painted with the distinct anxiety of something that was truly wrong. "She's leaving in the morning."

It was at this moment that I began to consider the likely possibility that I was still dreaming. The situation was so ridiculous and surreal that I struggled to process it to be actually happening. There was no way that Isabelle would suddenly decide to abandon this family, especially at this hour of the night, and there was less of a chance that Mom would have been telling me helplessly as if there was nothing she could do to stop it.

I heaved myself up to a seat in the bed, causing my blankets to fall around my waist, and I ran my paws over my face to help myself wake up more.

"What do you mean, she's leaving home?" I asked, dropping my paws to my lap again.

Isabelle herself appeared in the doorway behind Mom. She was still in her white nightgown but the lack of drowsiness on her yellow face implied that she had been awake longer than I had. Her dark eyes glistened under the nights of my bedroom with an anxiously questioning glance as she peered into the room at me.

"Sweetheart, she's been worried sick for you," Mom told me. "She knows that you're struggling and wants to do everything she can to support you."

My stomach had begun to feel like it was curdling like sour milk as I tried to process the situation. Based on the shared expression of worry on both Mom's and Isabelle's faces, this was serious.

"Mom, that doesn't answer my question," I urged.

"She's leaving home to search for her own work and share that weight for you. She's taking a boat first thing tomorrow to stay on the island where Lottie grew up," Mom explained weakly. "She's already bought the ticket, Digby. We just heard about it now. She's not taking no for an answer."

Mom had quietly removed herself from the doorway to return to her own bedroom, but Isabelle lingered at the door. A touch of guilt crept onto her face and mixed with the previously existing stress that had sat there in the silence of the room. She had never concealed her emotions well.

"Why did you do that?" I said. A piercing ache of betrayal settled in my chest and my voice was hoarse and heavy after what I had just heard. How long had she been planning to leave me behind? "Why didn't you tell me?"

For an extensive pause, Isabelle's only response was the remorseful expression on her face, an expression that spoke a thousand words that I couldn't seem to read, and then she drew in a deep and unsteady breath.

"The boat leaves at nine," Isabelle told me. "I didn't want to see you suffer anymore."

The right words in this situation no longer existed. In the final seconds that Isabelle remained in the room, she quietly examined me sitting up in bed as if she were trying to memorize every aspect of my appearance, and then she disappeared from the door as well and was gone.

In the morning, I was torn from sleep with a blind hope trickling away that the conversation I had spent last night with Isabelle and Mom had been nothing but a bad dream. Isabelle's presence in my life had been snatched from me without any warning whatsoever and so abruptly that my mind made its desperate rounds trying to convince me that it wasn't real. But when I awoke at seven o'clock in the morning, I was once again faced with reality and the acceptance of the fact that I wouldn't be going to work today. I would be saying goodbye to my best friend instead.

Nobody spoke as we gathered as a family at the table for the last time to enjoy our breakfast before we would go to the boat dock. I supposed we were all too busy letting the fact of the matter settle in to find something to talk about. My thoughts fed off of the silence to flood my mind of losing the one thing I couldn't afford to lose and Isabelle's unspoken decision to abandon me. After everything we had been through, she didn't even think twice about leaving me. Like I meant nothing to her in the first place. I hated the silence.

Once breakfast had come to an end, Mom left for the phone to give Lyle a call and let him know that I wouldn't have been coming in to work today before she and Dad joined Isabelle in packing her belongings into a massive black backpack with countless pockets and pouches. I didn't stick around to watch this happen and excused myself to my bedroom. I needed some time to think.

Even though Isabelle hadn't yet left, the house and my bedroom felt significantly worn down and deserted. I sat on the edge of my unmade bed and felt myself slumping in the dull atmosphere in the room, a weight settling onto my shoulders of a sort of sinking defeat. She had said that she was leaving for me, not to get away from me, but I couldn't tear the thought from my head that she had still created a plan to leave me entirely without my knowledge. If I had known, maybe I could have stopped her. Maybe I could have stopped all of this. Maybe there was still a way I could stop this. Or maybe it was useless.

I set my elbows on my knees and ran my paws through my untidy hair, letting them sit deep in the tousled chunks and hold up my head. All of the words that I had planned to say to her, everything that I had planned to tell her, spun relentlessly through my mind. I would never get the chance to say it. I wasn't ready and now it was too late to become ready. If only I could have stopped her from leaving just to prove to her how much I wanted her to stay.

I spent a few minutes to myself contemplating the words to say to my sister in goodbye before I realized that I was being selfish. She wasn't just leaving for me, she was also leaving for herself. Isabelle had been wishing for a job ever since we turned fifteen two years ago and now she was finally going out into the world and finding one. Standing in the way of her departure would have been standing in the way of her dreams. I might have had my own dreams simply handed to me, but she was taking the initiative to set off and achieve her own. I couldn't hold her back from that, despite how much it killed me to let her go.

We were out of the house by eight thirty, leaving half an hour at most before I would be forced to say goodbye. Vivid colors of pink and orange stretched across the sky in the opening of the morning and melting patches of snow accompanied us on our walk to the boat dock. The worst part about the approaching inevitability of parting ways might have been the fact that I had no idea how much longer I had with her, if not the uncertainty when we would cross paths again. If anything, this was the best time to open up to her about what my reality had been like for the past few weeks, but I held my tongue. She must have been nervous to leave and didn't want to have something so heavy to hold onto when she left. She deserved to leave with a better memory than that.

We arrived at the dock with fifteen minutes to spare before departure and goodbyes began immediately. The colors of the sunrise painted across the sky were gradually starting to sink away to the light, endless blue of the morning. A breeze like a soft breath of ice swept across the grass, so I tucked my paws away into the pockets of my pants to sustain warmth as the hem of my short-sleeved shirt flicked against my bare arms and I stood with my family for the final moments we would be whole.

Mom and Dad had jumped at the opportunity to say goodbye first, so I allowed them space to finish and instead let my gaze travel across the space, burning it into my memory as it was likely I would never be here again.

"You don't have to leave, you know," Mom told Isabelle, her sniffly breaths implying she was dangerously close to tears as she drew her into a firm hug. Isabelle's face was contorted by stress and emotional pain as she clung to our mother. "You can always stay here and find a job at Happy Home with your brother."

A group of twenty or twenty five animals had already gathered in the grassy area, standing scattered across the space in wait for the announcement to board. The boat was already positioned at the end of the wooden platform leading out from the sand to the entrance. I knew that I should have been feeling some sort of urge to cry, or something at all, but an emptiness settled within me and a dull ache throbbed in my chest and for whatever reason I couldn't and didn't cry.

"I have to do this," Isabelle insisted. Guilt tugged at my heart as her reasoning from last night resurfaced in my mind. I didn't want to see you suffer anymore. She had no idea that I was going to be suffering more without her.

"Well, just know that we're all going to miss you terribly and that you can come home whenever you want, okay?" Mom said delicately, withdrawing from the hug to tearfully examine Isabelle at arm's length. Isabelle forced an uneasy nod, stepping back from Mom to then accept a hug from Dad.

"Good luck, Isabelle," Dad told her, locking his arms around her in a tight embrace. Isabelle gave a weak, shaky breath as if he was squeezing the tears out of her. "Have a good trip."

Isabelle murmured something in response, but I couldn't quite catch what she said as an animal in a blue vest that stood at the front of the wooden platform who had been studying a watch on her wrist for the past minute gave a yell that carried out across the space.

"Two minutes until boarding time," she called out to the gathering animals. A wave of shifting movement swept across the group as preparations to start off towards the boat began, and Dad withdrew from Isabelle. "Two minutes until boarding."

Isabelle quickly finished up goodbyes with our parents. The animals around us had begun to drift closer to the entrance of the boat since the announcement, anxious to board at last when the time came. After her conversation with Mom and Dad faded out, Isabelle stood glancing around at the area as if suddenly realizing where she was as her anxious expression plastered over her face. Time was slipping away from us by the second and if I was going to say something, I had to say it now.

"You look nervous," I told her. She tossed her head to glance back at me. "Do you feel okay?"

"Mostly," Isabelle said. A gentle breeze crept through the space and fiddled with the ends of her light bangs. "I just don't know if I'm ready for this."

"Do you want to wait and catch a different boat?" I asked her, but she instantly shook her head.

"No, I have to take this one," Isabelle urged. "If I don't go now, I'll never go again."

In that very moment, it was clear to me that she was the strongest animal that I had ever known, not just now but throughout all of our years together. She refused to back down on such a bold journey even while she was scared that she wasn't ready. She was the animal that stood against all obstacles to achieve something she wanted and never let anything stop her from reaching for the biggest dreams. And she was my own twin sister. Almost surprising myself, I managed a genuine smile for the first time in a while.

"I'm proud of you, you know," I said. "I wish you didn't have to go, but I'm proud of you for having found the confidence to take the first steps forward in your life, even if it means doing so in this way. I'm not sure if it makes you feel any better, but it's true. You're strong and I want you to remember that."

Isabelle's gaze was no longer wandering, falling still on me as she hung onto my words.

"Thank you," she replied, a sort of softness sinking into her words as she processed what I had told her.

"Mm-hmm," I murmured, forcing a nod in reply, and then I added something that I knew well that I wouldn't have the chance to say for a while. "I love you."

"I love you too," Isabelle said. Her focus on the conversation was abruptly broken by another yell from the animal standing at the entrance of the boat, and we cast a shared glance towards the sound.

"One minute until boarding time. One minute," the worker called out across the space. "Please begin to make your way over to the entrance in an orderly fashion to get ready for boarding."

All of a sudden, it felt like the fact of the matter had just struck me over the head as the truth sank in. Isabelle was really leaving me. She was going to be getting on that boat in less than a minute and would be gone from my life. She was venturing out into the real world and leaving me here in our own little corner of it. I had no idea if she could even take care of or defend herself out there alone. Just the possibilities of everything that could have gone wrong had begun to flood my mind in a matter of moments. What if she found herself in danger that she couldn't get out of? What if she ran into someone like Redd?

Isabelle was already turning away to make her way to the entrance of the boat, gripping the straps of her backpack clinging to her shoulders as she did so. I couldn't let her walk away after the thought that had just occurred to me. I had to say something to warn her.

"Isabelle," I burst out, my paw jolting out to grab hold of her arm. She whirled around to face me again as I clutched her arm to stop her, the bells in her ponytail rattling with the abrupt movement of her head.

"Yes?" Isabelle said.

"I want you to be careful," I told her. "Things aren't always going to be as they seem. Always be cautious with everything you do and please make sure you don't get yourself hurt."

Isabelle stared silently up into my face as if searching my eyes for some unspoken words or explanations, but she didn't have the time to respond as another shout carried out across the area.

"Please begin to make your way over to the entrance," the worker at the entrance of the boat called out. "The boarding process will begin momentarily."

It was time to let her go.

I stood with Mom and Dad to watch Isabelle inch forward in the line at the end of the assortment of animals waiting to board the boat. I could do nothing but stand behind as Isabelle presented her ticket at the entrance to the worker that remained there before she vanished into the boat and out of my sight. It was just minutes later that the boat had eased into motion, pushing on through the water as it removed itself from the dock and starting off on its way.

And there I stood, sweeps of gentle breeze flicking my ruffled bangs across my forehead as I watched the boat travel slowly over the water out from the island, jetting out puffs of steam into the clear air. Across the minutes, it slowly shrunk out of sight again. All too quickly, the rolling waves under the pale blue sky had taken its place. It had disappeared over the horizon, taking my sister and closest friend with it.

She was gone. And with her the dwindling hope for a better future.