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“I don’t understand why you seem so mad at me. Is this about what happened?”
“Shut up.” Her eyes blaze wildly. “Don’t bring that up again.”
“I’m sorry.” I take a deep breath, ready to placate her. “We can talk about whatever you want.”
“There isn’t anything to talk about.”
Olivia leans toward the door, her desire to leave so obvious that I have a hard time not taking it personally. I remind myself for the hundredth time that I’ve been gone for two years. There’s no way for me to know what it’s been like for her here, dealing with our parents all on her own. I have no idea what she’s had to become to survive.
A gulf separates us and I don’t know how to bridge the gap.
“Do you want to hear about juvie?” I ask, yanking off my sweaty shirt.
Olivia regards me in obvious surprise when I start stripping off my clothes right in front of her. I belatedly realize that she hasn’t gotten used to taking showers and changing in front of a dozen other girls like I have. She’s never even had to share a bathroom before, much less one without doors on the stalls.
“I guess,” she responds as her gaze moves to the ceiling.
I pull the dress over my head and smooth it down, still wearing my jeans underneath. “The food was so bad that it made me miss Mom’s cooking. Remember when she somehow melted the plastic on a tray of frozen lasagna?”
Our mother doesn’t cook. On the rare occasion that she has found herself responsible for feeding us, all she can do is reheat a dish someone else prepared.
The faintest smile touches Olivia’s lips.
I press the seeming advantage. “She must have put the oven on a self-clean cycle, or something. I’m surprised the house didn’t burn down.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
Maybe we can’t ever go back to the way things used to be, but I still want my sister back.
I strip off the jeans, but then just hold them awkwardly in my hands. It’s unlikely that Olivia wants my dirty clothes in her hamper. “There was a set of identical twins in the same unit as me. They drove the guard crazy during headcount because no one was ever sure if both of them had been counted or just one of them counted twice. I can’t for the life of me figure out why no one else could tell them apart. One had bigger eyes, and the other had these little lines around her mouth because she was always frowning. I know they traded work details a few times to fool the guards, but they never got caught.”
Her attention shifts back to my face, gaze lingering over my features. “We used to play that game.”
You be me and I’ll be you.
“God, we had so much fun. Remember when you pretended to be me for like the first two months of kindergarten? It drove old Mrs. Callaway crazy. That has to be why the school wouldn’t let us be in the same class anymore after that.”
Olivia’s smile fades. “No one could tell us apart if we didn’t want them to.”
I catch my long blonde hair up in a bun on the top of my head. If I let it loose, the streaks of gold and pale white would be the same as in the waves cascading over her shoulders. Our eyes are the same shade of cornflower blue, slightly tilted up in the corners at the same angle and equally expressive. When we smile, the same dimple appears in our cheek.
Physically, we’ve always been exactly the same. It’s everything else about us that has been the most extreme form of polar opposite.
“No, they couldn’t. Though it wouldn’t be much fun if you switched places with me now.”
Her eyes narrow as she studies me. “You don’t think I could handle juvie?”
“That’s not what I mean. I just don’t see why you’d want to,” I reply warily. This conversation is full of landmines that I can’t see until I’ve already stepped on them. “And it’s not like I’m going back.”
“Right.” Her head tilts to the side, a strange lilt to her voice. “You want to know something?”
“What?”
“Uncle Gary never could tell us apart, either.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, as if she hasn’t quite convinced herself she wants to say any of this out loud. “It was your name he used that night. He only came for me because he thought I was you.”
The revelation explodes between us with more force than if a bomb had been dropped in the center of the room. I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure there is anything I can say.
“Olivia—"
