Sister

My thirteenth birthday is in two weeks, my older sister Grace had her seventeenth birthday two months ago. I love my older sister, and I think she’s amazing. She works really hard in school because she says she wants to be lawyer.
I want to be like her, Grace wants to help people, and I wish I knew what I wanted to do when I got older. I want to help people too.
I told Grace that once and she said that she wasn’t amazing. I asked her if it was because she smoked.
“Why do you think that?” I pulled a black lighter out of my pocket.
“I found this in the couch.” She took the lighter and shoved it in her pocket. She walked away looking sad. I didn’t like how she was sad, and I didn’t know if the cigarettes helped her. But I didn’t tell my mum.
Since last year when I told Grace I knew, we’ve still been close. I still love her, even if she does do something wrong. Mum always said that smoking was a horrible thing and that it could kill you. My mum is a doctor and she says that she sees people everyday with cancer caused by smoking.
I never want Grace to get into trouble. What if mum says that Grace can’t go to school and be a lawyer unless she quits?
Mum said that if we ever wanted to know anything we could just ask. So I once asked her about smoking. I asked what if someone smokes when they are a teenager. She asked why, and I told her that I knew a girl at school that smokes all the time.
“That’s awful it’s harder for girls than for boys to quit.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, the longer you smoke the harder it is to quit. How old is this girl you know?”
“Well I don’t really know her, but I think she’s the same age as me.” I didn’t know that kids my age could smoke, I just didn’t say seventeen so I my mum wouldn’t think I was talking about Grace.
“Does she have friends that smoke?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s probably why she smokes, most teenagers smoke because of their friends do.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, a person could also smoke because they are insecure.”
“Insecure?”
“They don’t think very much of themselves.” Last month I found another of Grace’s lighters. Grace always loses little stuff. I didn’t say anything to mum, as usual, and talked to Grace next time I had the chance.
“Why don’t you quit?” I handed the lighter to her.
“I’ve been smoking for so long that I can’t quit.” She didn’t look at me when she said that.
“When did you start?” I don’t think I’ll forget how out of place I felt asking that.
“When I was your age.” She almost sounded like an adult saying that.
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My seventeenth birthday is in two weeks; my older sister had her twenty-first two months ago. I am visiting Grace in the hospital, and my mum says that Grace has bronchitis and a lung infection.
I knew my mum had never lied when she said that smoking can kill you. I lied when I asked my mum about it when I was thirteen. I at least did one thing right when I was younger, I didn’t start smoking. If only I said something, my sister wouldn’t be here slowly suffocating from chronic bronchitis. When I was younger I wouldn’t know that this kind of bronchitis is the one that cannot be cured.
Because I lied my sister is going to die from a lung disease. Now she can never help people like she wanted too. When I was younger I thought she was going to do amazing things with her life. Instead she had to drop out of school and be checked into a hospital.
I still love my sister. I hope I can help people the way I couldn’t help her.