The Twin in the Closet

Ever since the accident, life has been a little strange. Mom barely leaves her room, and Dad barely ever comes home from work. I guess it's normal for everyone to handle their grief in different ways. The problem is, I can't tell them that no one needs to grieve. Six months ago, it was my twin's and my 17th birthday, and we were on our way home from a party, and our car crashed into a tree.

At first, I couldn't even get out of bed. The days after the accident all rolled into one. Going to your twin's funeral is probably one of the strangest things that someone can experience. I looked down into a casket at my own face, and I could have sworn that she smiled back at me. Then the fire alarm went off, which I am pretty sure should never happen at a funeral home during the funeral. It made it even harder on my parents. By the time we were allowed to reenter, they just asked the funeral home to close the casket, and we headed to the graveyard to bury Simone.

Correction, I thought we buried Simone.

I got home from the funeral and went to the closet to get a change of clothes and nearly passed out when I felt a hand go over my face.

"Whatever you do, don't scream."

I froze. I was nowhere near screaming because I knew that voice. It was my voice. Slowly, I turned around, and I was face-to-face with Simone, still in the same outfit that she was in the casket.

"What is going on? Are you kidding me? Are you a ghost? How did you?"

"I can't answer any of your questions if you don't breathe for a second, Josie, and no, I am not a ghost. Do you remember Johnny from third-period science?"

"Do you mean the teacher's assistant?"

"Yes," Simone whispered. "He volunteers at the hospital, and when I told him my plan, he said he would help."

"You planned this! You planned for our parents to bury their daughter, for me to bury my sister."

"Stop being dramatic. No one buried anyone. Now, we get to be one person. Don't you see, Josie, everything that is great about both of us can now be one person. Can you imagine everything we can accomplish?"

"What we are going to accomplish is that we are going to go downstairs and tell Mom and Dad that you're here."

"They are going to lose the house, Josie. Mom and Dad have already used your college fund and have already remortgaged. They are lying to you. They took out life insurance on both of us three weeks ago. One of us was going to go, but neither of us did. You can't trust them."

I remember sitting down right there in the closet. This could not be true; our parents were the most normal people I had ever met, and now, according to Simone, we could not trust them at all. Could I even trust her?