Page 110

“Her name was Mia.”

Was.A boulder sits on top of my lungs. She’s lost someone close to her, just like I have. I pull her tighter against me, wanting to give her my warmth.

“She was the rebel, the extrovert, the sun. You couldn’t help but be drawn to her energy. She had this gift,” I hear a smile in her voice now, “even if she pissed you off, you couldn’t stay mad at her. And she’d piss me off so often, always getting us into situations we weren’t supposed to be in. Breaking rules. There was one time she pulled the fire alarm before sixth period because she found out there was a pop quiz in calculus and she didn’t study for it. She made us run in opposite directions, because if they suspected us, but they couldn’t tell which one of us did it, they couldn’t punish us, you know?”

I chuckle, imagining the rule-following Olivia scared shitless as she sprinted down the hallways of her school. “She sounds like a riot.”

It sounds like shit I’d pull.

“She was. She always said, ‘carpe diem,’ like it’s an excuse to do shit because you only get one life to live. God, I was so mad at her. If she’d studied weekly like I did, she would’ve been prepared. A bad grade wasn’t worth a potential suspension. I didn’t speak to her for a week.”

Olivia looks up, her beautiful brown eyes soft, and she gives me a sad smile. “But Mia would weasel her way into my good graces again. She’d give me her slab of barbecue pork when Mom made ramen for dinner. She’d save the purple Skittles, my favorite flavor, into a bag and give them to me. She’d sneak ‘I’m sorry’ notes into my pencil case so I’d see them when I opened it. I couldn’t stay mad at her.”

I brush her hair out of her face, relishing the soft silkiness I never got to enjoy before. Olivia’s eyes flutter shut.

“She was the sun. I was the shadow she cast on the ground. I let her shine because I was more comfortable being in the dark, in the background. No one knew she was depressed. She partied hard, worked hard. She was beautiful and brilliant. She had the world in her hands.”

Her eyes fill with moisture again. “I had to work twice as hard to accomplish what she could easily do. If anything, I should be the one to be depressed, right? It’d be easy—I was the forgotten twin, the second fiddle. None of us ever expected her to be sad. She had everything.”

Olivia pulls away from me and steps toward the fire. “We were supposed to start college together. It was prom. She had a hot date with the student body president. I was going with my first and only boyfriend. He booked a hotel room for our first time.” A flush creeps up her face and I try to tamp down the burn rising in my chest at the idea of her with another man. “We were going to talk about our experiences the next morning.”

She tosses another scrap of paper into the fire. From this distance, I see they are photos—this one of the cave excursion in Mykonos. “When I went home the next morning, wanting to tell her sex was overrated, I knew something was wrong. You see, twins would have a connection. When she was scared, I felt it. When she was happy, I sensed it.”

Olivia shakes and I walk over and pull her against me as a foreboding weight sinks deeper into my gut.

I smell the damp earth tinged with metal from the night that changed my life. Visions of my mom’s twisted body appear before me.

“It was the nothingness I felt when I stepped inside the house that morning. Dead silence. An eerie hollowness. It was wrong, terribly wrong. I remember sweating when I made my way up the stairs. I remember holding my breath when I turned the doorknob of her bedroom door.”

She pulls in a sharp inhale, then the rest of her story flows out in a strange monotone. “I knew she was dead before I saw her up close. She swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and tucked herself into bed, the comforter up to her shoulders like she was going to sleep.”

Olivia shook her head. “She didn’t do the work, Rex. This is why I always say you have to do the work. No one can help you unless you want to help yourself. I thought something was bothering her before. I told her she could talk to me. I even took her to the bookstore so we could get self-help books. I thought it was stress—graduation, moving across the country, something run-of-the-mill. But she never confided in me. She laughed and told me I should get books for my overactive imagination.”

I close my eyes, remembering the small boy who found his mom, his marbles scattered around her. Then the maids screaming and my siblings bawling when they heard my cries.

And my dad, the great Linus Anderson, who was strong, brave, and everything I wanted to be when I grew up…

He collapsed.

“I’m so sorry, Olive,” I rasp, knowing exactly the pain she went through and how one event could change the rest of your life.

“She asked me to come to Las Fallas when I turned thirty. I thought nothing of it then, how she made it seem like I’d be making the trip alone, but it was her last wish for me. ‘To burn our regrets,’ she said. But she didn’t leave a note. She didn’t leave a reason. She didn’t tell me what regrets she had. I don’t even know why she wanted me here at thirty, not twenty-five, not any other age.”

Olivia knots her hands into tight fists at her side.

“I missed the red flags. I didn’t realize she was severely depressed. I was her person, and I had no idea.”

Let go, Olivia. You don’t have to be strong anymore. I’m here.

I squeeze her shoulder. “Scream. Yell at her. It isn’t your fault. None of this is your fucking fault.”

Why can’t you tell yourself that? How many times did your family, did Casey tell you this?

“Why are you so selfish, Mia? Didn’t you think about what would happen to me after you left? Why didn’t you talk to us and get help?” she cries into the roaring flames. “Carpefuckingdiem! You could’ve had a whole long life to do crazy stuff. Did you know how many people would’ve wanted that time? How could you? How could you leave me?”

The courtyard is empty now. Only me, her, and the small burning fire.

“Let it out, Olive. Let it all out. It isn’t fair. What happened to you isn’t fair at all.”