Wren

~

I don’t quite remember how it came out, but everything went to hell when it did. Rowan screamed at our parents, and they screamed right back at him, and nothing good came of any of that…

The argument lasted for what felt like hours — with the loudest part of all being Rowan’s almost-shriek about his twin’s name — and the whole time I stayed in my room. Door closed.

At one point I might have tried hiding under my pillow.

It didn’t help.

Rowan would come to me later in the week, dragging his boyfriend (who I’d never met before, and actually hadn’t heard a word about, which meant it was impossibly serious) along and using the poor boy as a glorified tissue box. He’d tell me what the words ‘you have an identical twin’ felt like to him, and I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the analogy he used.

“Like being ripped in half, Wren,” he whispered, voice muffled by Olly’s shoulder.

Isn’t that… ironic? I’m sure if I was told I had a twin — sister or brother, I don’t care — I’d feel more like the ‘missing half I didn’t know was missing’ had just been found.

I don’t know.

I really don’t know.

___________________

Rowan

~

Constant. Absolute constant comparison to a boy who doesn’t exist.

They ‘invented’ River years ago, Dad said — a perfect boy who did everything right, in order to show me that nothing stopped me from doing the same. And while five-year-old Rowan didn’t question why their hypothetical needed a name, fourteen-year-old Rowan was hating it.

Had they had contact with River’s ‘parents’? Of course they had.

Did River know that I existed? Always!

And maybe the ‘perfect boy’ and I were meant to have a meeting next week.

But I still hated the very idea of him. Or maybe it was the idea that my efforts to be Mum and Dad’s image of perfection were useless, because they were comparing me to someone I had no hope of being. They were comparing me to someone who did exist.

That made it all the worse.

What I had become in the nine years since the ‘perfect’ boy’s creation was such a lie… and what had it even been for? Had I ever been able to live up to their expectations?

I hated them.

And I was prepared to despise River.