I nodded. It made sense, I guess.

“She had one of her shoes on. Blue sneakers, I think, if that helps.”

It did, actually. I could picture them. They were light blue with gray laces. There was writing on the side, like somebody had signed them with a black Sharpie. And comfortable. “What was I wearing?”

“Nothing. You left your shoes at my house. I found them on the lawn next to a chair. Why?”

“No reason,” I said, and stared down at my sister. Her eyes were closed, the skin surrounding them a dusty blue. Maybe it was bruising from the accident. More likely that’s the way dead eyes looked.

Her lips were parted as if she were trying to say something, but no sound came out—not a whisper, not a weak breath. I could see her wounds, where her head had met with the shattered windshield, where a stray piece of glass had embedded itself in her shoulder. She was pale, ashen white, and her tangled hair was splayed across the steel, parts of it streaked with blood. But even like this, bruised and smeared with death, she looked exactly like me.

“I … me … we’re the same.” I choked out the words, and Alex hurried to my side. His entire frame shook next to mine as he looked down at the same dark reality. That could’ve been me. That should’ve been me.

“Of course,” Alex said. “You’re twins.”

She didn’t just look like me; I had a distinct feeling she was me. I ran my hand across the gash outlining her cheek. It cut across the bone, a jagged mark stretching to her ear. I tucked a darkened strand of hair behind her ear and bent down to kiss her cheek, to beg for forgiveness and promise that I’d keep her memory alive. That’s when I saw them … the two tiny dots marring her right ear.

Without thinking, I reached for my own ear, running my finger across the earlobe, knowing what I’d find: One hole, one minuscule depression.

“What’s wrong, Maddy?” Alex asked. When I didn’t answer, when I didn’t so much as blink, he grabbed my hand and pushed me toward the door. He could drag me out of here, he could remove me from this room, from this hospital, from this world, and it still wouldn’t stop the memories from flooding my mind.

My sister and I were thirteen and away at summer camp. It was the last year we went, the last year I remembered spending hours at night talking about anything and everything until the batteries of our flashlights died. The girl in the cabin next to ours was evil; in seventh grade she already was what Jenna would become in high school.

She’d been making fun of us for days. Apparently, one-piece bathing suits were for losers who chose to take art classes over sailing and volleyball. Didn’t bother me—the total influence that girl had on my life would last two weeks, then I’d never have to see her again. But Maddy … she was peeved and wanted to prove that she was as good as, if not better than, that girl. Somehow, Maddy decided a second piercing in each of her ears was the way to do it.

Maddy handed me a needle from the sewing kit Mom had stashed in her trunks and an ice pack she’d snagged from the nurse’s office. Everybody else in our cabin was asleep, had drifted off hours ago. We hadn’t told them about our plan. This was our secret … a secret sisters would keep.

Maddy squinted, her eyes shut so tightly that her face scrunched up, making her look painfully amusing. I told her to relax, but she didn’t. She grunted for me to get it over with, then dug her nails into the wooden frame of our bunk bed.

We were naïve back then and assumed five minutes with an ice pack would numb her ear enough for there to be no pain. I never did get to pierce the other ear; she swore and jumped the second I jabbed the needle through her skin.

“Jesus, Ella. That hurt,” she yelled, and shoved me away.

Maddy made me swear to never tell Mom, and only wore an extra earring when we were at school. She stopped wearing the extra one altogether a few years back. The hole was nearly closed now, the pinprick-sized mark almost invisible.

I remembered her words clear as day. It was the first time she’d ever yelled at me, the first time she’d ever physically pushed me away. I also distinctly remembered her calling me Ella. Me. Ella.

Seeing my sister lying there on that steel table unlocked a piece of my mind I’d lost a few short days ago. A history, dreams, a future that belonged solely to me. They came back … every memory I ever had, hurtling to the surface. The My Little Pony lunch box I got the first day of kindergarten. The matching dresses we wore for Christmas each year until we were ten. The day we graduated from junior high—Maddy in heels, me in flip-flops. Josh arguing with the pizza guy last week over whether or not he should get his steak-bomb pizza for free because it took them more than thirty minutes to deliver it. And Maddy, yelling at me in the car because she thought I was a loser, someone to be ashamed of.

I turned my head toward the hallway, half-expecting my parents to walk through that door, to have somehow come to the same horrifyingly insane conclusion I had: that they were so completely wrong. That it was Maddy who was dead. That it was me—Ella—who had survived.

“Maddy, this was a bad idea,” Alex said. “I shouldn’t have let you do this, not without your parents here at least.”

My parents. Mom was so excited when she realized Maddy was the one who had survived. Dad standing there next to her, immersed in the same joy. They didn’t see me; they saw Maddy. Everybody saw Maddy.

“Josh?” He was the one person who knew me, who would see me. “Where’s Josh? I want to talk to Josh.”

Alex’s hand tensed around mine, his eyes looking everywhere but at me. “He’s at home, Maddy. After Ella … he’s home.”

“What?” That didn’t make any sense. Josh and I had been inseparable since ninth grade. I had to kick him out of my house most Saturday nights, and he’d be back first thing Sunday morning with a new anime movie or some extra-credit project for physics. The only reason he wasn’t at my house the night of the accident was because I’d kicked him out. I’d needed to finish my last sketch and the constant chiming of his phone with incoming texts from Kim had been distracting me. But why wasn’t he here now? “This doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense.”

“He came to the hospital with me, Maddy, but by the time they got you settled into your room…”

“No, wait.” The burning in my chest amplified and panic began to wash over me. I yanked on his hand until he stopped. I wasn’t ready to leave. Not yet.

“Miss Lawton, we need to get you back upstairs,” the nurse said. She stood up from her seat in the corner and grabbed the wheelchair I’d left sitting in the middle of the room. “I want to take your vitals and give you something to calm down.”

I waved her off and took a step closer to Alex. I didn’t want to sit down and be wheeled away. I wanted an answer. “Why did Josh leave? Why didn’t he stay?”

Alex hesitated as if weighing his words. He started to step back, but I reached for his wrist, holding him in place. The tears had begun again, my body shaking with frustration over the truth that everybody refused to see. How could I make him understand that I was Ella? That the hand he was holding on to was not his girlfriend’s but her sister’s. Mine.

“Alex?” There was a demand in the nurse’s tone, a plea to him to do something to calm me down, or she would.

“Don’t worry about Josh,” Alex said as he gently guided me into the wheelchair. “He knows it wasn’t your fault.”

Oh, it was absolutely my fault. I remembered everything now, every last gruesome detail of how I’d killed my sister. My sobs echoed through the hall as he wheeled me onto the elevator, the sound so hollow, so pitiful, that I winced. But it wouldn’t stop: not the tears, not the sobs, not the pain.

“Nobody blames you, Maddy. Nobody,” he continued as the nurse leaned over to take my pulse. She looked worried, scared even. Alex looked like he was going to be ill.