A smile stretched across my face. It felt good to please her. I just hoped I wouldn’t make a mistake and ruin it. “I can’t wait to read them,” I said genuinely. “Thank you so much for buying me more. I’m such a lucky girl.”
She reached over and patted my hand. “You’re my little girl. I’d do anything for you,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze. “Anything,” she repeated. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Mother.” It felt like betrayal. I sometimes thought about my real mother, wondering why she had allowed someone else to raise me despite my sickness. Mothers were supposed to care more than that.
Mother’s eyes got misty at my words. “That’s my sweet girl. Now, I have another surprise,” she said, returning to the dumbwaiter and removing another dish. “Dessert.”
I couldn’t believe my luck. Dessert was usually saved for special occasions. I fleetingly wondered if today was my birthday. It couldn’t be. It was too soon. I knew it wasn’t Mother’s either.
“Chocolate chip,” I said, gasping when she lifted the lid to reveal a plate of cookies. I remembered chocolate chip cookies from before Mother had saved me. The smell would fill our house every week when my other mom used to bake them for Jacob, Mia, and me. I hadn’t had them since. It made me wonder if they were still a weekly ritual in my old home. Did Jacob and Mia still help Mom bake them?
I never allowed myself to feel jealous over Jacob or especially Mia. Life had dealt us our cards and it was not up to me to question how they were laid out. I was sure Mia thought of me also from time to time. Maybe even more often than that. Was it possible she had an illness like me? We were twins after all. How would our lives have been different had we stayed together? These were questions I would likely never know the answers to.
Mother and I ate the cookies in front of the television. Surprisingly, she let me have as many as I wanted. My eyes were bigger than my stomach and I ate until I felt sick. It was the best night I could ever remember having together. It was a night to be treasured.
That night I went to bed without exercising. Instead I lay there wondering if my recent rebellion had been misplaced. Mother loved me. Our relationship may not represent what I read in books or even what we’d watched earlier on TV, but I had to respect her for taking on the burden of caring for me.
My sleep was dreamless that night and I woke up the next day feeling at peace. I ate breakfast with Mother, worked on schoolwork, ate lunch, read, and then ate dinner. It was the same comfortable schedule I’d been following for years.
Lights went out at nine and ten minutes later I heard Mother leave for work. I climbed from bed and started my jumping jacks. I worked out for an hour, until sweat dripped down my neck.
I fell into bed in an exhausted heap.
7
MIA
MY ROOM was pitch-black when I pushed my door open. I fumbled quickly around the wall for the light switch, not wanting to deal with the dark a second longer. My eyes skirted over my bed, past my desk, and across my window seat before finally settling on my closet. The door was still open the way I had left it that morning. Most of my shirts were hanging haphazardly, ready to fall, while the others were already in a heap on my closet floor. Still more clothes were tossed over my desk chair and the foot of my bed. It looked like a tornado had swooped in and strewn my clothes across the room. All was normal.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Normal was good. My room was always a bit messy since I wasn’t exactly the most organized person. I stepped over my favorite pair of sandals and kicked a dirty pair of jeans off the bed. It was only a short-term solution, but I would clean in the morning. I fluffed up my pillows before climbing on the bed and switching on the TV for a little background noise. My real plan was to write in my journal stuffed under my mattress.
It really wasn’t so much a journal as it was an open letter to Leah. Each page was filled with thought after thought in penmanship that had gradually changed over the years. It was a continuous flow of conversation that never ended. I didn’t write in it every day, and sometimes I would only write a few words at a time. It was the only thing that kept me connected to her and made me feel like she was still a part of my life. Somewhere deep inside I wanted to believe that one day I would give her the journal and she could read about everything she had missed. The good and the ugly. Tonight’s entry would be the ugly. I wrote with a fury, pressing hard on the page with my pen. The thin paper nearly tore as the ink bled into the slightly yellowed parchment. Thankfully I caught myself. I couldn’t afford to tear the last remaining pages in the journal. There were only nine left. I had thought a lot over the years about the significance of reaching the end. Now that it was close, I wouldn’t allow myself to dwell on it. The mere thought made my lungs shrivel and my throat close. My penmanship had become smaller and smaller in an effort to avoid it. It was hard to explain. Some people would consider reaching the end to be closure. For me, closure meant complete, never to be thought about again, and I couldn’t go there. Psychologically I couldn’t even wrap my brain around starting a second journal. The journal represented mine and Leah’s lives. A person only gets one life. It sounded sadistic, but I couldn’t help the way I felt.
The flow of words would not stop, filling two precious pages front and back and practically requiring a magnifying glass to decipher. Every detail from the past week found its way into the journal. My fears were transferred onto the page. It was easy to share with Leah. All my fears, dreams, and pain would be hers also. I told her everything about the ominous dark cloud that I had been seeing over the last week. My fear was tangible as I described it in detail. How it felt like a living, breathing creature. That it showed up in the shadows more frequently than not as the days progressed. I knew if she were here she wouldn’t judge me. She would calm me. Convince me I wasn’t losing my mind like I feared was happening. All my turbulent emotions poured out. My pain became Leah’s as the pages absorbed everything I was feeling.
When I finally finished writing for the evening, I closed the journal and stowed it safely back in its place under the mattress. Sliding down to a more comfortable position, I settled in with my lights on and my television droning on in the background l
ike I preferred. It was easier to fall asleep that way. I wasn’t much of a dreamer while I slept and had a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night, so the TV provided some comfort.
I took a deep breath and exhaled, content that my thoughts had once again been purged. Maybe the darkness would be gone tomorrow now that I had confided in Leah. It was a silly thought, but one that gave me peace. Certainly no more silly than believing I was being taunted by something sinister.
The darkness wasn’t gone the next day, or the day after that, or all the days that came later. It remained. Always there. In every shadow I passed. Lurking any place with the smallest absence of light. Haunting only me. The fact that no one else could see it made me question if it was real. Deep down I suspected I was unraveling.
8
LEAH
“WIDER, PLEASE.”
I obediently opened my mouth as Mother poked around at my teeth. Every six months she would give me a complete head-to-toe physical, charting all my stats and measurements. I hated physical day. I’m forced to stand still for an hour and a half while I get probed and pinched, and anytime my numbers weren’t to Mother’s liking, her displeasure was evident.
I’d come to tolerate the physical pain of punishment. At times I think I even looked forward to it in a morbid kind of way, knowing I deserved it. Mother’s physicals were a similar exercise of disciplined endurance. Despite hating the poking and prodding, at least I had her attention during the entire process. If I was good, I was awarded with a treat. Last time it was a chocolate bar. I was so excited when she gave it to me and yet I waited three days to open the wrapper. I was afraid I would devour it in one bite. When I finally opened it, the first thing I did was inhale deeply. The aroma of the rich dark chocolate was almost intoxicating. I wanted the treat to last as long as possible, so I would only eat small sections at a time before carefully rewrapping the sinfully good candy again. I managed to make it last almost two weeks.
With any luck today’s treat would be another candy bar.
“Your teeth look good,” Mother said, switching off her small flashlight. “No cavities,” she added proudly, making a notation in my chart.
I beamed at her. “I brush hard every day.”