She stepped closer, the floral scent of her expensive perfume overpowering the sterile, medicinal smell of the heavy burn creams I applied every morning.
“I know what you’re doing,” Chloe hissed, her eyes narrowing into cruel, resentful slits. “You just want everyone to ask, ‘Oh, what’s wrong with Maya? Why is poor Maya wearing a sweater?’ You’re going to put this bikini on, and you’re going to show everyone that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You’re going to prove that you’re just a freak who wants attention. If you don’t wear it… you’re dead to me.”
I looked at my sister’s furious, beautiful face. It was a face biologically identical to my own. We shared the same almond-shaped hazel eyes, the same sharp cheekbones, the same dark, wavy hair. But from the neck down, we were two entirely different species. She was pristine. I was a monster.
My hand instinctively drifted to my collarbone, my fingers pressing against the thick cotton of my hoodie. Beneath the fabric, I could feel the jagged, hardened, raised ridges of the massive burn scars that mapped my body. It was a violent, permanent topography of trauma.
I swallowed the heavy, metallic lump of sorrow in my throat. I couldn’t tell her the truth. The psychiatrists had explicitly warned my parents twelve years ago that forcing Chloe to confront the repressed memories of the fire that nearly killed us could irreparably shatter her fragile mind. Her amnesia was a psychological fortress, built to protect a six-year-old girl from the sheer terror of smoke and collapsing, burning wood.
