The Wrong Twin

My sister, Ava, and I are twins. She was born brilliant, the sweet, lovely girl who got into a school like Duke.
I was the problem child, the one our parents sent to a behavioral academy to be reformed.
Later, when Ava was hospitalized because of her college classmates—the same ones who laughed and said they could cover the damages if they each skipped a meal—I put on her clothes, picked up her backpack, and practiced her innocent face in the mirror.
This time, my parents didn't try to stop me.

1

The academy only let us go home once a month. I had been waiting for this day for a long, long time.

When I pushed open Ava’s bedroom door, my palm was sweating around the gift I’d brought her. It was a butterfly specimen I’d made in art therapy.

I could already picture her expression—the way her eyes would go wide with surprise before she launched herself into my arms.

But the gift never left my hand. I found her unconscious on her bed, not moving.

Ava was rushed to the hospital. A doctor took one look at her injuries, and his face went grim. “Get her to an OR. Don’t wait. Now!”

The heavy steel doors of the operating room swung shut, and that was all we saw for hours. Every time they opened, it was only to deliver more bad news.

Mom was a heap in a plastic chair, sobbing. Dad stood rigid, signing what felt like a hundred forms with a shaking hand. “What has she done to deserve this?” Mom wept. “My beautiful, good girl.”

When a team of surgeons finally came out, their faces were etched with defeat.

“We did everything we could,” one of them said. “She’s unlikely to ever be able to have children.”

The only comfort he could offer was this:

“If her recovery goes well, she’ll need to use a colostomy bag for the rest of her life.”

He paused, letting the weight of that settle on us.

“And if it doesn’t go well…”

2

Mom’s eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted. Dad, his composure finally shattering, grabbed the surgeon’s arm, his voice cracking. “Please, Doctor, you have to save her. She’s just a kid. Her whole life is ahead of her. This can’t be her life.”

The surgeon could only shake his head, his expression grim. There was nothing more to say.

A vibration from my pocket. It was Ava’s phone. I’d grabbed it from her nightstand in the chaos. Notifications were popping up, one after another, like relentless taps on a coffin lid.

I typed in her birthday and the screen unlocked.

It was a group chat. Eighteen members, including my sister. A girl named Ashley seemed to be the ringleader. She and a few others were tagging Ava over and over again.

“Don’t forget our lab reports are due tomorrow. Bring them done.”

“Breakfast tomorrow is bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll. Extra bacon on mine. Don’t forget the hot sauce.”

And in that sterile, silent hallway, I realized the truth. I had always thought Ava was the one living in the sun, the golden child who had it all. But she had been living in a darkness deeper than any I had ever known.

Unlike Ava, I was never the good one. I was never obedient.

When I was eight, my parents took me to my grandparents’ farm for the summer, hoping the "country air" would fix whatever was broken in me.

3

Every time I acted out, Mom would come at me with a leather belt.

"Why can't you just behave?" she'd cry, her own face streaked with tears. "You have to learn to control that anger! If you don't, you won't be our daughter anymore!"

Ava would always throw herself in front of me, taking the blows meant for me, until Mom would just collapse, hugging us both and sobbing.

So I learned. I buried it. At Blackwood Academy, I was a model student. A ghost.

But now, standing in that hospital corridor, a thousand angry voices were screaming inside my head. And deep down, in the quietest, darkest part of me, one voice rose above the rest, clear and cold as ice.

Hush now. Not a single one of them is getting away.

Ava was finally moved from the OR to the ICU. She was alive. That was the only victory we had.

Dad spent hours on the phone, getting transferred and disconnected, until he finally reached the principal of her high school. The man offered a perfunctory, "I'm sorry to hear that," before launching into a well-rehearsed damage control script.

“Our security cameras in that wing were unfortunately down for maintenance,” he said smoothly. “But I’ve asked around. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I assure you.”

He cleared his throat. “It was likely just some minor roughhousing between students. Nothing as serious as you’re suggesting. I’m sure an apology will clear this right up.”

Dad exploded. “The cameras just happened to be broken? Are the cameras broken, or is your goddamn conscience broken? Not one person from your school has even bothered to show up here, and you have the nerve to call it ‘minor roughhousing’?”

To my shock, the principal sounded offended.

4

“Sir, the students at Northwood High are exemplary. We don’t have these kinds of problems. Perhaps you should be asking what your daughter did to provoke this. I was trying to help you, but if you’re going to be abusive, then this conversation is over.”

The line went dead. Dad tried calling back, but he’d been blocked.

I pulled out my own phone, opened a browser, and searched for a picture of the school’s principal. I memorized his face. If he were the one lying in a hospital bed, facing a lifetime with a colostomy bag, I bet an apology would be more than enough for him, too.

Through the glass panel of the ICU door, I watched my sister. Ava, who was always smiling, always laughing, lay perfectly still, tangled in a web of tubes and wires. She looked like a flower that was about to wilt.

And on her phone, the messages kept coming. The group chat was furious that she wasn't responding.

“Ignoring us now?”

“Guess she didn’t learn her lesson.”

Then they started posting videos. Videos of them tormenting my sister, laughing as they did it.

I clicked play.

In a corner of the athletic fields, a dozen girls had Ava surrounded. Their laughter was sharp and cruel as they filmed her terror.

5

Ashley’s voice was laced with venom. “I hear all the guys on the football team think you’re hot. Tell us, Ava. Just how pretty are you?”

My sister was trembling. “I’m not. No one likes me.”

In the chaotic footage, I saw it clearly. A security camera mounted on the corner of the building, its lens swiveling, tracking their every move.

The camera wasn’t broken. They just weren’t protecting my sister.

The humiliation wasn’t over. A glint appeared in Ashley’s eye. “Hey, girls, I have an idea…”

A few of them exchanged vicious smiles.

A moment later, Ava let out a scream of agony that was cut short. The sound drew the attention of the principal, who had been walking across the field.

My sister looked at him, her eyes pleading. He was her salvation.

The principal glanced at the scene, took in the circle of girls and my sister on the ground, and simply waved a dismissive hand.

“The bell’s about to ring. Everyone get back to class.”

And he walked away, leaving her there alone. I still don't know how she found the strength to make it home.

I showed the video to my parents. I had never seen them look so broken.

6

They had worked their entire lives, scraping by, playing by the rules, being good people. Sending Ava to the best public school in the district was supposed to be their crowning achievement.

And it had led to this.

The detective who came to the hospital was named Miller. Dad latched onto him like a drowning man grabbing a life raft.

“This is evidence, right?” Dad asked, his voice raw. “We can sue them? We can press charges?”

“I understand your anger, sir,” Detective Miller said gently. “Let me start by contacting the other students’ parents.”

It turns out the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Even with a detective calling, most of the parents refused to engage. Their indifference was a wall we couldn’t break through. This was just another Tuesday for them. Settle it with money and make it go away.

Dad’s eyes were bloodshot. “We may not have money, but we’re not taking a payoff. I want them to pay for what they did.”

He spent the whole morning calling the numbers Miller gave him. He only got through to a few, and each conversation was more insulting than the last.

“It was just a joke between kids.”

“She’s alive, isn’t she? She’s being dramatic.”

One of them, a lawyer, was the worst. “You’re just trying to shake us down for cash, aren’t you? What do you want, a few hundred bucks? You try to ask for more, and I’ll sue you for extortion. See how that works out for you.”

7

With so many of them involved, the blame was diffused. Spread it thin enough, and no one feels the weight of it. That’s why they were so bold.

Dad finally gave up. I found him in the hospital stairwell, the air thick with smoke, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs. He had spent his life teaching us to be good, to be kind, to turn the other cheek. He believed that being the bigger person was a virtue.

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