Page 43 of My Twin Sister

She never cared what people thought of her. She did only what she was comfortable with, never afraid to be called lame or no fun. I wasn’t like that. I lived off others’ perceptions of me. It drove most of my decisions. And eventually my decisions to lie to the people I love. I couldn’t handle what they’d think of me if they knew the truth.

The cold air feels good on my bare face. I inhale deeply and hold the chilled breath in my lungs for a few extra seconds. There’s a giant pile of logs and branches about thirty yards away from the house. When we get closer, I see that there are tree stumps for chairs and a blanket folded on each one.

“This is nice, Murphy,” I say.

He smiles. “Thanks.”

He starts working on getting the fire going while we pick our seats. They’re arranged in a semicircle so we can all see each other even if we’re not sitting right next to one another. Wyatt takes the first seat on the end, and Geny takes the one next to him. I sit next to my sister and Tara next to me, leaving the other end seat for Murphy.

All at once, the fire erupts into a tall blaze, burning my cheeks.

“Whoa!” Tara yells with a laugh. “Trying to light us all on fire, Murph?”

“Sorry! A little more gasoline than I thought. Everyone good?”

We answer in a chorus of yeses. Wyatt opens a beer and hands it to Geny. She pulls back for a second as though she’s going to turn it down, but then she takes it from his hand. Then he opens one for himself. Tara takes a drink out of the mini cooler she brought. I stare into the flames and try to remember what it felt like to be a teenager with these same people. Before everything went wrong.

Murphy leads the conversation and I try to keep up, but all I can think about is how to get Tara alone to ask her about the picture I found at the police station. I’m taken out of my thoughts by a bottle popping in front of my face. I look over to see Murphy holding a beer out to me. I take it with a grateful smile and take a sip.

“We should have music,” Geny announces. “Grace, play the music from the car.” She stands up and takes another bottle from the few that Wyatt brought outside.

“I have a speaker,” Murphy says. “I’ll grab it.”

I take my phone out and prepare to pull up the playlist, but stop when I see I have a text. Another unknown number, different from the last one.

Careful, careful. You know no good comes of you five being together.

My chest constricts and I feel a wave of dizziness. I sit up straight and look around the dark vastness. I can’t see past the light of the fire. Everything beyond is lost to the night. A mystery. A danger. Is someone watching me right now? I look around at my friends. No one has their phones out. But that doesn’t mean anything. It could have still come from one of them. One of them could have scheduled the text to send later, and each of them knew about these plans for half the day.

But what reason would any of them have for trying to scare me? It doesn’t make sense. Murphy appears with a small Bluetooth speaker and turns it on. I try to rein in my panic, hide it from my face. I close the text and find the speaker on my phone to play the music. When the first song starts, Geny sways in her seat. She seems like she’s drunk, but we just got here.

“What’s it like being home?” Tara asks. “You know, besides horrible with your dad.”

“That part is horrible,” I say. “The rest is . . . I don’t know. Weird.”

She laughs. “I bet. I think it’s a bit weird for everyone.”

Murphy turns his eyes on Tara like she’s said something wrong, but I don’t mind it. It’s the truth.

“Yeah. It’s strange for everyone to think you’re dead and then look at you like a ghost.”

“Well, that’s what you wanted, right?”

I look over at her, not sure what she means.

Tara leans forward. “You knew everyone would think you were dead after disappearing in the water like you did. You stayed away and let everyone think it and then came back the way you did. That wasn’t an accident.”

“Tara,” Murphy says.

Geny has stopped dancing. She and Wyatt are watching too.

Tara laughs. “What? I’m not trying to be a bitch.”

“She doesn’t remember,” Geny says. “She woke up on a shore and had no memory of any of us.”

Tara looks over at her with a raised eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” I say. “That’s right.”