Page 23 of My Twin Sister

I won’t make that mistake twice. I know there are dangers in Raven, and I know there are people who aren’t the least bit happy that I’ve resurfaced. I have to be careful.

A voice booms over my stereo speakers, scaring me half to death. “Hello? Ms. Chandler?” I’d forgotten I was on hold. I turn the volume down.

“Yes, I’m here.”

The new person on the phone is a woman who sounds older and speaks with the slow confidence of having experience in what she’s talking about. She tells me she can make the arrangements to have the grave dug up, but it’ll take about a week, and she’ll need to make the proper authorities aware. I ask her to go ahead and make the arrangements, and she promises to call me back with the exact date and time in the next few days.

I hang up and walk up the steps to my parents’ house. The spare key is still in the same spot under a fake plant to the right of the porch. I scoop it up and let myself in. The memory of Geny telling me how she found our father rings in my ears as I make my way up the stairs. I can’t even imagine how horrible it must have been.

He was our hero. The glue that held us all together. Now he’s gone and his reputation is being dragged through the mud. I open the door to my parents’ bedroom, and a wave of nostalgia and grief hit me like a tsunami. I push forward, sitting on the foot of their bed like I did so many times in the past.

I take my phone out of my pocket and pull up the article I read before I came back.

Raven High Principal Found Dead by Suicide After CSAM Allegations

Kenneth Chandler had been the principal at Raven High School for the last twenty-five years. Students and staff at the school described him as always positive and always willing to go above and beyond to help the people around him. That’s why it was so shocking when allegations surfaced about the beloved principal.

An anonymous tip is said to have led local police to seize his work computer where it is alleged that child abuse materials were located. Chandler was placed on administrative leave while the case was being investigated, but before police could make headway, he was found dead inside his home by apparent suicide.

I put my phone face down on the bed and stare at the open closet. Everything inside of me says it’s wrong. But how did those types of things get on his work computer? Why did he take his own life instead of fighting for the truth? The answer to my last question comes before I can even finish asking it.

He didn’t.

He wouldn’t have killed himself, just like he wouldn’t have abused children. I know it more than I know anything, but that only leads to more questions.

I know better than anyone that there are people in Raven who will make you disappear.

My mind goes back to the cold water the night it all happened. The waves reaching higher up my chest, me trying to suck in a breath. The storm overhead that promised rain. The weight of my decisions and the hope that I could make things right.

Wyatt’s hands on my shoulders. His face as he pushed me under the surface.

Seventeen: Geny

Grace isn’t home when we get back from church. I fight back the panic that claws up my throat and repeat the mantra in my head that she isn’t gone and she’ll be home soon. But the mantra doesn’t work, and inside my mind feels like the night she didn’t come back out of the lake.

Flashes of Wyatt’s face appear in my mind like a horror film. Him saying he can’t find her. That she swam too far out and the current took her. The ice-cold water on my legs. The raw feeling in my throat as I screamed her name and prayed as hard as I ever had to be able to go back in time. I begged God to let her head pop out of the water. To hear her laughing saying Got you! Oh my God, look at your faces!

But it never happened. We searched and screamed and she never came back. We called 911. They searched and didn’t find her. My parents came and I had to look at the purest form of pain I’d ever seen as they stared out at the water that stole their daughter. I can still hear their cries.

Wyatt touches my arm and I nearly jump out of my skin.

“Whoa, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says.

I shake my head. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“You sure? You look like you’re having World War Two flashbacks.”

I laugh. “Something like that.”

His mouth purses and he pulls me into a hug. I fight back tears.

“She’s just out with a friend. She isn’t going to disappear again.”

“You don’t know that,” I say. I start to cry in earnest.

He holds me tighter.

I can’t remember the last time he held me like this. I think back until I find it, and it actually wasn’t as long ago as I first thought. It was when I found my dad. I can barely remember the few hours after. The shock and the grief pulled me in, and I still don’t think I’ve come out of it. And with Grace coming back, I feel altogether untethered.