We Did

Chapter One

a/n: This chapter has been edited [1]. 

I want to see her alive.

I want to see her running into our bedroom at this very second, screaming "Gotcha!" and cackling the mischievous cackle she always did when she knew she'd pulled off something phenomenal.

Only Mila would never pull a prank like this. There were two things, she always said, that one should never joke about: pregnancy and death. One involves life-- the beginning of a single breath that continues on to become a hundred breaths, then a thousand, and then thousands and thousands of breaths. Mila had told me once that if we lived up to eighty years old, we would have breathed a total of 672,768,000 breaths.

The other involves a finality so ultimate and eventual that death can obviously never be a punchline. It's inevitable. Something everyone will face. That's why, Mila used to say, neither of them are funny. Everyone wants to stay, but not everyone wants to go.

"Mira."

I raise my head slowly, my surroundings shifting back into focus. Papa straightens his tie, stepping down from the podium and patting my shoulder as he sits back down in his seat beside Mama, whose posture is completely stiff. Right. I get up, clutching the wrinkled sheet of stationary that I unconsciously folded over and over again in my palms. The microphone sounds with slight feedback as I lean into it and stare into the sea of black. The only splash of color inside the church is the reflection of the stained glass window at the very back. I train my gaze on that instead of on everyone else. Mila is good at making speeches. Not me.

"Thank you all for coming," I say, keeping my voice low and steady. I try to smooth out all the creases on the page again, squinting at the spots of smudged ink. "Mila was..."

I trail off, my throat closing in on me. I practiced this speech the night before in front of the bathroom mirror. My voice had wobbled a full minute later, at the sentimental story about our early childhood. But now, it seems that all that matters is the word "was." It means that Mila is really and truly gone. The kind of gone that means forever, not the temporary, I'll-be-right-back gone.

So, I do what Mila would never do in the middle of making a speech. I flee.

***

"Why don't you go upstairs and talk to her?"

"Because she should be left alone."

Mama and Papa's voices resonate through our household walls. I hug my pillow tightly to my chest, resting my knees against my chin. Mama's right-- it's true that I want to be left alone. The only person I do want to see is Mila, but I already saw her earlier, carefully being levered into the Earth.

Mila and I are twins. Mama thought she was going to have one baby girl until about two months left of her pregnancy when the doctor noticed an additional figure in her ultrasound. We were born on a lazy afternoon, April 9th. Mama's water broke while she was transferring a plate of dry bowls from the disk rack to our kitchen cupboard. Whenever we ask her about details of our birth, she says it all became a bit of a blur after the epidural. The pain in her stomach and back was through the charts before that shot. Papa says from that day forward, we clung to each other like lifesavers. That's why this makes it all the more harder for me. It feels like I'm drowning. Most days, I let myself sink to the very bottom. It takes too much effort to reach the top again.

I tune out Mama and Papa's arguing and shut my eyes. It's only five o'clock, but I'll skip dinner. As I drift off, I dream that I see Mila again. We're sitting at the edge of a cliff, at the very top, our legs dangling. Her long, dark hair is tucked behind her ears and she's looking straight ahead, not blinking at all. I stare at her, taking note of the earrings I gave her on her eighteenth birthday, the silver stars from Claire's at the mall.

Suddenly, she turns to me, smiling as if she's just noticed my presence. "Mira."

I wake with a start. My cheeks are wet but when I open my eyes they feel strangely stiff and dry. I wonder how long I've been crying while asleep. The room is cloaked in gray. I know it's because the blinds are shut, but I can't bring myself to open them. It would mean crossing to the other side of the room, the half of Mila's side with her unmade bed and her record player left open and still plugged into the nearby outlet beside her desk. I can't even look at it, so I don't. I let the walls of the room stay charcoal. I close my eyes until I can see her again, sitting on that cliff beside me.