My twin’s name is Charlotte, and there’s a picture on the wall in my parents’ condo in Florida that completely encapsulates our entire childhood.

I think it’s from our seventh birthday, and Mom made one of those cakes with the doll in it, so the cake looks like her dress? Anyway, me and Charlotte were apeshit over that cake. Mom frosted half of it in yellow for Charlotte and half in pink for me.

In the picture Charlotte’s about four inches taller than me, so much taller in fact that she looks like my older sister and not my twin.

Charlotte’s got her arm around me, and she’s smiling so hard at the camera her eyes have disappeared. Her crazy curly hair is in pigtails and she’s pretty much happiness brought to life.

I’m standing next to her, looking two years younger than my age, gray-faced, sucking on an inhaler and giving everyone my best young side-eye.

My family used to make these jokes about how Charlotte starved me out in the womb, and they were stupid crappy jokes that hurt Charlotte so I never made them and I’d yell at anyone who did.

But somehow those jokes got woven into our relationship. Charlotte took care of me like it was her job, like she was apologizing for her health in the face of my un-health. Everywhere we went, she made sure I had my inhaler and my EpiPen. She helped me with homework, and if we went over to someone’s house after school she’d be the one asking if there was a cat or dog in the house. And if there was, she’d be the one explaining why we couldn’t go in.

And then she’d walk home with me like she didn’t care that we didn’t have friends.

She acted like I was all she needed, and I think I acted the same way. We were an inseparable force for a long time.

But I was pissed.

I had to be the angriest kid at Lincoln Elementary School.

I was angry because I didn’t have any friends and I couldn’t go over to anyone’s house because everyone had a pet, and my report cards were full of D’s when hers were full of A’s.

And that I had to work so freaking hard for those D’s.

And I’m not proud of this, and I didn’t blame my sister, but I took it out on her. I took it out on her because she was there. Because she looked at me with pity in her eyes.

When someone projects a constant “I’m so sorry” onto you, well, you can grow a pretty serious “fuck you” response.

Anyway, for years I thought this was just the way we would be, Charlotte and me. Her taking care of me. Her helping me with school, with jobs, with my life.

And my resentment—oh God, it burned. It burned so hot inside me I would lie in my single bed across the room from her single bed and I would think I would die I resented her so much.

And then something miraculous happened.

Puberty.

I outgrew my asthma. Most of my allergies.

I got boobs. Great boobs. Hips. Great hips. My hair got long and shiny and my face changed and my voice changed, and suddenly instead of feeling powerless, I felt all kinds of power.

The way boys looked at me gave me power. The way girls looked at me gave me another kind of power.

Charlotte got the pimples and she gained weight that she never lost and she retreated deep inside her brilliant, creative head.

And I was—for the first time in my life—living out loud in my body.

I only graduated high school because Charlotte pretty much dragged me through, and while she was looking at colleges I was looking at studio apartments.

She went on to art school, where she pretty much slayed for four years, and now she’s a hot shot designer/illustrator living in a fabulous condo, sometimes forgetting to shower for a few too many days in a row.

I got a job in a bar because I’m hot.

And nothing has changed. Not for years. My life is… one long stretch of the same. Party, bar, party, bar, party, bar.

And when I look at pictures of Maria’s baby, I get sick with wishing for something more. When I think about my savings account and that dream I don’t ever talk about, I feel so small I can barely move.

And when I think of my sister and her amazing talent I’m filled with something I don’t want to name, but feels like hot, hot jealousy.

Charlotte and I meet for dinner a few times a week. I remind her to shower, and that people aren’t terrifying wild animals, and she should try to meet a few, and she tells me to pay my taxes and talks me off ledges with men and tries— without much luck—to get me to find a different job.

But I don’t resent her anymore, and I hope she doesn’t resent me. Sometimes I catch her looking at me like I’m some kind of creature that wandered in off the street, but I don’t think she means it.

I hope she doesn’t.

The day after Jack’s kiss, though, I felt like a creature that had walked in off the street. I felt not myself, and what was worse—the worst—was I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell my sister about any of it.

Not just because she would try to convince me to walk away from Jack—which, I could be honest, was sound advice.

But because all of this would stress her out.

And she was already stressed out by me.

She’d made it her life’s work to be stressed out by me and I had—for years—made it my job to stress her out.

But I was twenty-four years old. I couldn’t punish her for something that wasn’t her fault forever.

I let myself into my sister’s condo with my key, wondering how I was going to manage not talking about Jack, when all I thought about about was Jack.

“Char?” I yelled.

“I’m in the office!” she cried. “Give me a second.”

Right. Charlotte’s seconds could be another hour if she was in her office.

“I know I said let’s go out, but can we just order in?” I asked, shrugging out of my coat and putting it down on the back of the purple velvet chaise lounge. And then I just collapsed on the chaise lounge. She’d painted flowers on her ceiling, bright red poppies, right above this spot.

That, right there, was so Charlotte.

“You okay?” Charlotte yelled.

“Fine,” I said, and I heard the creak of her chair rolling across the floor upstairs.

“Why are you lying?” she yelled.

“Why do you think I’m lying?”

“I know something is wrong when you don’t want to go out.”

I smiled at the poppies. What incredible medicine to have someone know you so well.

She came downstairs a few seconds later. My sister was a total one of a kind: crazy fashion sense, the same wild white blonde hair, but hers was super curly, where mine was straight as a pin.

Today she wore bright blue leggings and an I Stand With Standing Rock tee shirt. She was scowling at me through her red glasses.

“Uh oh,” she said.

I figured I looked about how I felt, which was like shit.

“I didn’t sleep last night.”

“What happened?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Hard to say.”

Char walked over and put her hand on my forehead. She’d been my mother growing up, far more than our own mother, and this, her hand on my forehead, was as familiar as breathing.

“You don’t feel hot.”

“I’m not sick,” I said, taking her hand in mine and giving it a squeeze before letting it go. “But let’s figure out dinner, I’m starved.”

“Sure. We can get whatever you want.”

See? I knew she would say that. Part of our childhood endlessly playing out.

“Sushi from the place on the corner?”

“Sounds great.”

“Can you order?” I asked even though we both had the number in our cells. I could play my part from our childhood too. I wasn’t proud of it, but the pattern was fucking seductive.

“Abby!”

“Please?”

She made a show of grumbling, but all the same she walked into the kitchen where her phone was always on the counter. I lay back on her chaise lounge and toed off my boots.

“Extra California rolls!” I shouted.

“Am I not your twin?” she yelled. “Do I not know your sushi order?”

I sighed and melted back against the lounge, thinking, despite my efforts not to, of Jack. His hand against my stomach, the press of his fingers through the dress, as vivid now as it was last night.

She came back into the living room with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“None for me,” I said. “I have to work tonight.”

She blinked, because I wasn’t averse to a couple drinks before work. Nothing crazy, but like the vial in Sun’s dress, it just went with the job.

But I was so off tonight. From last night. And I didn’t know how this would end. I worried drinks would make me feel even more out of control.

“Boo,” she said, which made me smile.

She sat in the orange chair across from me, folding her legs up under her and opening the wine bottle. She flapped her shirt out around her belly because she was always worrying about her belly. “You want to tell me what’s going on? And let’s just skip the part when you say nothing and I say, I can tell it’s not nothing and you say—”

“Do you ever want… more?”

She blinked. “More what?”

That wasn’t right. I sighed, wishing I could find words for these things in my head. I’d felt like this before, but never this bad. Never this sharp. Like I wanted to peel off my skin. Like I wanted to run away from my life. “Maybe not more, but…different?”

She set down her wine glass and the fact that she was taking me so seriously made me love her with a sharp ache. “Sometimes, yeah.”

“What do you want?”

“Sex, mostly,” she said with a laugh even though I knew she wasn’t joking. “I’d like to be a little more like you—”

I groaned shaking my head. “No, Char. No.”

“Stop, Abby, don’t do that,” she said. “You’re always the first to try and knock yourself down. You are so confident in all the ways I’m not, and wanting some of that, wanting to live in my body like that… why isn’t that something I should want? You think it’s bad just because it’s yours.”

I held my breath, feeling with sharp clarity how true that was. If I had it, if it was something of mine, something about me—it immediately had less value.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I thought of my savings and that little dream of mine, and I almost told her. But saying the words out loud would make them real. And worse, she would jump on this dream. She’d start building it out of real things. Solid things.

She’d make the dream happen.

And I wasn’t ready for that.

I want to change my life, I wanted to say. I want to be different than this person I’ve become.

“California rolls,” I said with a sigh. “And a nap.”

“Abby, what’s wrong?” she asked, not taking the joke.

“Remember Dave?” I said.

Her pale eyebrows lifted over the top edge of her red glasses. “Your shitbag boyfriend from high school?”

I nodded, wishing I hadn’t turned down that wine. “Remember how I showed you the black eye and you locked me in our closet and called the cops on Dave?”

“Of course I fucking remember,” she said, still flinty and pissed all these years later because Charlotte is, at heart, a badass.

“And I pretended to fight you, remember? I like gave you all this shit, and screamed at you to let me out and for you to butt out of my life.”

I’d pounded on the door of our closet, calling her every name in the book, while in my chest my heart was so relieved. My heart had been pudding with gratitude.

“Why are you bringing this up?” she asked. “You’re freaking me out.”

“Because I went to you so you could do the hard work for me. Make Dave leave me alone. Force my hand into breaking up with him. I went to you because you have always been so strong and I’ve always been so weak.”

“That’s not true—”

“Oh my god, Char. We both know that’s exactly the truth. You have always saved me. I need to save myself.”

She got up and sat next to me on the blue couch. Her arm against mine. Her head against mine. “You’ve saved me too, Abby,” she whispered. “My life would be so small if it weren’t for you. I’d be a hermit and I’d be scared all the time, and I would never have a reason to be brave.”

We sat there for a while, just next to each other.

“I’ve met a guy,” I said.

“Is that why you’re talking about Dave?” she asked, immediately stressed out like I knew she would be. “You’ve met some asshole and I’m going to have to lock you in the closet again?”

“No.” I shook my head for extra emphasis because she didn’t believe me, but I’d learned my lesson. “He’s not at all like Dave. He’s not like any guy I’ve ever met.”

Dave had been small and petty and mean from the minute I met him. Jack was trouble, but he wasn’t that kind of trouble. But I needed to be an adult. I needed to take care of myself instead of going, every time, to my sister. Instead of forcing her to take care of me for myself.

“And I think I have to lock myself in the closet,” I said.

“Is he married or something? Why are you saying this?”

“No, he’s just… not for me. I want him to be for me. But he’s not.”

“I’m sorry,” my sister sighed after a minute.

“Me too,” I sighed right back.

He was a dangerous man. A bad, bad man. And yeah, part of me was perverse and awful, and wanted him more for that reason.

But this was better. Best, even.

Smart.

Which was probably why I didn’t like it. Why my whole body wanted to rebel against it. Have a proper tantrum like we were eight again and there was more yellow frosting than pink frosting on the cake—pure proof mom liked Charlotte more than me.

“Sucks being an adult,” I said, and Charlotte laughed.

She laughed so hard she snorted, which made me laugh, and in no time we were howling on that loveseat like the kids we’d been.

“Stop,” Charlotte cried. “Stop, you’re going to make me pee.”

“Okay. Stopping.” And I held my breath until it sputtered out of me on another laugh.

Finally, we were saved by sushi delivery.

We sat on the rug, our backs against the loveseat, and she told me about the book she was working on and I soaked up every word, so happy that she got to love what she did so much.

And if I was jealous, I ignored it.

If I wanted more, I ignored it.

I’d already adulted enough for one day.