Twins Read Free

often as Mary Lee. I am having a great year . What a good idea this was! What wonderful times I’m having .
    No doubt Mother and Father supervised the writing of such paragraphs. She pictured them, ripping up the letter in which Madrigal wept and sobbed and confessed how awful it was without her twin, and dictating those hateful sentences: I am having a great year . What a good idea this was! What wonderful times I’m having .
    Sometimes she remembered another sentence. Madrigal, Mother had said, will stay home under our supervision.
    The twins had always behaved perfectly. When had they ever needed supervision?
    Certainly boarding school was supervised. Mary Lee got used to it, as people get used to any form of torture. With cruel slowness, Christmas holidays inched closer.
    Twenty days at home. Twenty days with Madrigal. Twenty days in which Mary Lee would not stand before a mirror, because she would be, and would have, a mirror. Her living twin. Her other self.
    No one ever returned home from boarding school as joyfully as Mary Lee.
    But it did not happen.
    There stood the identical twin. Madrigal, her mirror, her lost fraction, remained lost. Mary Lee could no longer read Madrigal. She was no longer joined in heart and mind with this sister.
    Mother and Father had accomplished their wish.
    The twins were Separate.
    When they were eleven, they had been forced to have separate bedrooms. It had taken them years to learn how to sleep with walls between them. Now the wall between them was invisible, but higher. The twins might as well have been divorced.
    … and Madrigal was glad .
    “But Madrigal,” whispered Mary Lee. She was beyond heartsick. She was seasick, as if they stood on a tossing boat. “You must want me back!”
    Her sister sighed. “Of course I do, MreeLee.” MreeLee was Madrigal’s baby nickname for Mary Lee. Madrigal kissed her, but it was a kiss of duty. A kiss because she had to.
    “Why?” cried Mary Lee. “What’s happened? I miss you so much! It’s so hard, Madrigal. At school most of the day and night I try to hear you, but I don’t get through! It’s like being anybody .”
    Madrigal would comfort her now. Because that had been their special pride, their special secret. We are not like anybody . We are us .
    “Life has changed,” said her sister briefly.
    Fear rose up like floodwater to drown Mary Lee. “But we haven’t changed!”
    Her sister’s eyes moved in an expression Mary Lee could not duplicate. Mouth curved with an emotion Mary Lee did not know. Two words came out of her sister’s mouth like spinning tops. “Jon Pear,” said Madrigal. “My boyfriend. Jon Pear .”
    Mary Lee was stunned.
    Boyfriend? What boyfriend?
    Had her identical twin mentioned Jon Pear in letters?
    No.
    Had Mother and Father mentioned that Madrigal had a boyfriend?
    No.
    Had Mary Lee felt that her sister had a man in her life?
    No.
    “I’d love to meet him,” she said shyly. How extraordinary, to be shy with her own twin!
    Madrigal shook her head firmly. “He knows I have a twin,” she said, “and I imagine people in school have told him we are identical. But I don’t want him to see you. I want him to think only of me. Not a set of me.”
    “You don’t want your boyfriend to meet me? I’m half of you!”
    Madrigal made a face. “Don’t be so melodramatic, MreeLee.”
    “But you’re keeping me offstage! Hidden away, like a family scandal!” Mary Lee found herself fussing with her hair, poking at her buttons, tugging on her earrings. Not once did her twin move with her. The simultaneous broadcast had ceased.
    “MreeLee,” said her sister, being patient, putting up with her. “Come on now. Your girls’ school has a companion boys’ school. Boys are stacked ten deep just across the street from you. A thousand of them! Pick one.”
    “Of course I want a boyfriend,” said Mary Lee, “but that has nothing to do with us. I want us.”
    Madrigal fixed her with a stare for which Mary Lee