Page 39 of My Twin Sister

She runs inside again. A ladybug lands on my knee while I wait. I watch it walk around before its wings extend and it flutters away just as Brooke bounds down the stairs. She sets a picture in front of me. I pick it up to get a closer look.

It’s me and Morgan, our arms slung around each other’s shoulders. We’re bent over in exhaustion but smiling ear to ear. We’d just finished our meet, and Morgan got second place. Her best placement so far.

“Wow,” I say. I smile and let the image bring her back to life in my mind.

I remember how she looked, but there are details I forgot. How her hair was wavy at the ends. The black plastic choker that went out of style in eighth grade but that she wore every day.

“She kept this on her vanity mirror,” Brooke says. “I took it. I like how happy she is in it.”

“Her and that damn choker.” I laugh and Brooke snorts.

“I bought her like five different necklaces for her birthday to replace it, but she refused.”

I slide my thumb across her face, frozen at sixteen. “I liked that about her,” I say. “She acted like she didn’t care what people thought, but she did. But even so, she liked her necklace and refused to take it off to fit in.”

“I like to think she got that from me,” Brooke says.

I can tell she’s joking, but I think she’s right.

“Morgan idolized you, you know.”

She nods. “I know.”

Tears shine in her eyes, but she sniffs and sits up taller in her chair. “So. How has it been being alive in Raven again?”

We chat for the two hours she has free. About Raven. High school. Everything and anything. The topics stay light and I’m thankful. It makes me feel normal if only for a few hours. But all too soon, Brooke looks at her phone and sighs.

“I have to get going.”

I stand up. “It was nice. Doing this.”

“It was. I’ll text you, okay? Take care of yourself.”

Her expression says more than her words and I nod. I don’t want to leave, but I need to. I have another task to do before anyone gets home at Geny’s house.

I drive over and park near the front porch to make it easier to get my things into the car. I use the key Geny gave me to let myself in and head straight downstairs to pack up the few things I unpacked.

It takes only about an hour to relocate my things to my parents’ house and return to Geny’s. While I wait, I start a load of laundry to wash the bedding I used while I’ve been here. My phone vibrates. I expect to see a text from Murphy, but it’s a number I don’t have saved.

For a split second I think Murphy might have given Tara my number, but that thought flees as soon as I read the message.

Find what you were looking for? I’d be careful if I were you. I wouldn’t count on coming back to life twice.

Twenty-Six: Geny

Grace is sitting on the couch, staring at her phone when I get home. She jumps when she sees me and puts her phone down beside her. More conversations with the man she’s hiding from me.

“You’re home early,” she says. “How was work?”

I set my stuff down beside the door so I can get out of my coat. It’s only then I realize my shoes are covered in sand. I kick them off and scoot them under the entryway table with my foot.

“It was fine. How was your day?”

“Fine.”

I nod. She’s watching me, and I wonder what she sees. My mood switches between self-righteous annoyance and the urge to gloss over our earlier argument to make things more pleasant.

“Hey,” Grace says. She shifts to face me fully and pulls her foot beneath her to sit on. “I don’t know if you’d be interested, but I was talking to Murphy, and we were thinking it’d be nice for all of us to get together like old times.”