And, most vividly, she remembered the crushing, heavy, protective weight of a small, screaming body throwing itself over hers, shielding her face from the falling embers while the world burned around them.
Chloe collapsed forward onto her hands and knees. The vanity, the cruel arrogance, the superficial entitlement that had defined her entire teenage existence was instantly, permanently incinerated. She was no longer the popular queen of the high school; she was a terrified, broken six-year-old girl waking up from a decade-long nightmare.
She crawled across the hot concrete, ignoring the scrapes on her knees, until she reached my bare feet.
The crowd of teenagers watched in stunned, weeping silence. Boys who had mocked me hours earlier were wiping tears from their faces. Girls in designer swimsuits were covering their mouths, sobbing openly, entirely ashamed of their own shallowness.
Chloe looked up at me, her flawless face completely distorted by grief and horror. She reached out with shaking, manicured hands. Her fingers, trembling violently, gently and reverently touched the thick, raised burn scars on my shins.
“I’m sorry,” Chloe wailed. Her voice tore from her throat in a ragged, ugly, beautiful sob. “Oh my god, Maya. I’m so sorry.”
She buried her face against my scarred, grafted stomach, wrapping her arms tightly around my waist. Her tears flowed freely, mixing with the sweat and the smell of chlorine, soaking into my skin.
“You burned for me,” Chloe wept, her voice muffled against my body. “You burned for me, and I hated you. I called you a freak. I tortured you. I’m a monster, Maya. I’m a monster. Please… please forgive me.”
Through the sliding glass doors, my parents finally broke. David and Sarah sprinted out of the house, pushing through the frozen crowd of teenagers. They dropped to the concrete beside us, wrapping their arms around both of their daughters in a desperate, tangled, weeping embrace.
“We’re so sorry, Maya,” my father sobbed into my shoulder, kissing the scarred skin of my back, apologizing for the decade of silence they had enforced. “We’re so sorry we made you carry this alone.”
The heavy, suffocating secret that had poisoned our family for twelve years evaporated into the summer air, carried away by the wind.
I sank to my knees on the concrete, ignoring the rough scrape against my skin. I wrapped my arms around my identical twin, pulling her tight against my chest, resting my chin on her shaking shoulder. I felt the frantic, panicked beating of her heart—a heart that was only beating because I had shielded it.
“It’s okay, Chloe,” I whispered, my own tears finally falling, hot and fast, washing away a decade of resentment. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. I love you.”
“I don’t deserve you,” Chloe cried, clutching my shoulders.
I pulled back slightly, looking into her tear-streaked face. “You’re my sister,” I said fiercely, wiping a tear from her unblemished cheek. “I would burn a thousand times to keep you safe.”
