Inseparable

Chapter One

“You sure about this, kiddo?” Mom asked, a twinge of sadness in her voice.

I smiled at her, and leaned across the stack of boxes to give her a hug. She’d been so understanding about why I needed to get away, and I was going to miss her so much.

And I knew she was going to miss me.

“I’m sure, mom,” I could see tears welling in her eyes as she glanced around the partially furnished house, “Kella will be here soon anyway, and you know how we get when we’re together.” Mom smiled in spite of her sadness.

Almost twelve years of experience had shown mom how Kella and I behaved when together, and most of that wasn’t pretty.

“I know you’re in good hands with Kella,” She hugged me again.

“I’m less than an hour away,” I smiled, trying to cheer her up, “You can come and see me anytime. And I’ll call every week,” I added. She nodded, another forced smile playing on her lips.

Mom and I had always been close, but after Abby died, things had changed. We were still close, but something had shifted. For her, I guessed that looking at me was like seeing Abby. I was a constant reminder of the daughter she’d lost, and I could understand how that would be hard for her. I felt the same way every time I saw my reflection. I saw Abby.

The weeks following her death had been bad. Really bad. I’d just lost my twin. I’d felt like a part of me had died along with her, and while mom had lost a daughter, our ways of coping, or not coping, had been completely different.

Mom alternated between acting as though everything was fine to shutting everyone and everything out. I, on the other hand, had completely lost it. For nearly eighteen years, being Abby’s twin had defined me. It had played a big part of who I was. In losing her, I lost my sense of who I was. You can’t really understand the pain of losing a twin without going through it yourself.

Imagine every part of your life, every milestone, every hurdle, was shared with someone so entwined in you that their every emotion and feeling directly affected your own. Then imagine they were ripped from your life, gone forever. That’s how I felt.

Imagine you’re holding a Twizzler.

See how the two strands wrap around each other, depending solely on each other for support? Now hold the top of the Twizzler, one hand on each strand, and pull. Watch as they unravel, separate, and fall apart. That’s how I felt after Abby died.

Wow, I just compared the death of my sister to a sweet.

Acute myeloid leukemia. That was what she’d died from. I suppose the blessing was that we knew we were going to lose her, so we were able to show her how much she meant to us.

People die suddenly every day through car accidents, and heart attacks. Thousands of loved ones are left behind, regretting the last words they said to their loved ones, or regretting not spending more time with them. We had known for six months that her disease was terminal. We had tried everything to save her. Even my bone marrow hadn’t been enough to save her.

How the fuck did that work? We were identical twins, yet her body had rejected my bone marrow. Our genetic make-up was the same. It should have worked, but it didn’t. At sixteen, I’d blamed myself for not being able to save her. Everyone had talked up the high odds of my bone marrow taking, and when it didn’t, I had felt on some level it was my fault, that maybe if I’d had more faith in the treatment working, my bone marrow would have been stronger. I felt like I had let my sister down.

That had been the last treatment option. After that, everything that was done was only done to prolong the inevitable, not to save her. My sister, my twin, was dying.

“I better go,” Mom’s voice brought me back to the present. She smiled sadly, “I have to pick up Anna from grandmas.” She gave me another hug. Kissing her on the cheek, I watched her leave.

After mom left, I wandered around the apartment. Looking at the bare spaces, you’d think Kella herself had only just moved in. Boxes littered the floor, and only the essentials of furniture were there.

A sofa, a widescreen television, and a dining table.

In actual fact, she’d been there for over a year. I’d been over plenty of times before, though usually after an all-night bender out with Kella. When she had suggested I move in after I’d found out my application had been accepted, I was ecstatic. Living with Kella was exactly what I needed right now.