I pushed the nurse away and turned toward Alex: “Look at me. Stop telling me it isn’t my fault and look at me!”

He circled around to the front of my wheelchair and looked into my eyes. “I’ve been looking at nothing but you since the accident, Maddy, and I still see the same strong, beautiful girl I always have. This … what happened to your sister doesn’t change that.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what he would say when he figured out that it was Ella and not his precious Maddy he was taking care of.

10

The elevator doors opened at my floor and Dad rushed toward them at the sound of my cries. Mom was there, too, hollering at Alex for not waking them up.

“Not Alex’s fault,” I managed to sob out. “Ella.”

That last, heavy word took an enormous amount of energy, and I felt myself slipping, my mind closing in on itself.

“Maddy?” Alex said, the fear I felt pouring off him rivaling my own. I didn’t want to see the hope in their eyes die as I forced them to realize that I was Ella.

I studied my dad, my own father, the man who I’d had breakfast with every day for the past seventeen years. The man who coached my middle school soccer team. The man who tried to teach me how to ride a bike one afternoon when I was seven and sat with me in the ER later that same day as they splinted my sprained wrist. Years of time together … of experiences, and my own father didn’t even recognize me.

Or maybe he didn’t want to. Maybe he wanted it to be Maddy who had lived, so that was who he saw.

Horror flashed through his eyes as he took the wheelchair from Alex and pushed me into my room. Distantly, somewhere in the remote crevices of my mind, I remembered that he still thought I was Maddy and that the soothing words he whispered weren’t meant for me.

“What were you thinking?” Mom had Alex by the collar of his shirt and was yelling at him. “Why would you let her go down there? Why didn’t you wake us?”

“Please. He didn’t do this. I did,” I protested.

Realization of who I was and what I needed to tell them set in. I started to shake, every inch of my body freezing. Cold. I tried so hard to say the words, to tell my parents I was Ella, but I couldn’t get a sound past my lips.

Dad helped me out of the wheelchair and back into bed, then sat down next to me. “We’re gonna get you through this, Maddy. I promise.”

Get through this? The phrase sounded so foreign to me, an unattainable solace that I had absolutely no right to hope for. I had been tired and angry and jealous that things came so easy for her. I’d screamed at her. The last words I said to her, the last words she would ever hear came from me, and they were bitter and mean.

“What have I done? Oh my God, what have I done?” I wanted nothing more than to trade places with Maddy, to give her back the life I’d taken. I didn’t want to be here. Not without her.

“We are not angry with you, baby girl. We could never be angry with you.”

Dad never called me that. He called me Bellsy when I was a kid or Isabella when I was in trouble, but mostly he called me Ella. Baby girl was Maddy’s nickname, one she both hated and used to her advantage when she wanted a curfew extension or extra money for shoes or a new pair of jeans.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for her to die.” I shrank backward, the weight of those words settling deep in my core. Pressing my aching shoulders deeper into my pillow, I wished, for a moment, that I could dissolve into the bed and never come back.

“We know that,” Mom said. “It was a terrible accident, but you are here with us, Maddy. You’re alive and you have your whole life ahead of you. Your whole life. I want you to think about that, concentrate on getting stronger. That’s what your sister would want.”

I looked at Dad, wondering if he felt the same way, if he believed that, too. He smiled and nodded, but I could see the anguish behind his eyes, the battle he was waging to keep his emotions in check. “Ella wouldn’t want you to waste a single minute of your life feeling guilty. She’d want you to live, to do everything you ever dreamed of and more. Do it for her, Maddy. Live for her.”

They wanted me to be Maddy. Alex, Dad, Mom, the friends who had waited in the hall for hours … days until I woke up, only leaving when Alex promised to call them if my condition changed. Every single one of them wanted Maddy to live. That was who they thought I was, that was who they told themselves I was. Maybe the real problem here wasn’t that they didn’t recognize me, maybe it was that I was me and not my sister. How was I supposed to tell them the truth, the horrible truth—that the girl they had rallied around, had begged God to let live, was gone?

I couldn’t do it to them. I couldn’t do it to her. If they wanted Maddy to live, then I’d make sure she did. Maddy deserved a chance at a real life, at happiness. I’d taken that from her with one angry jerk of the wheel. In my own selfishness, I’d done this to her, cut her life short. She’d get the life she deserved. She’d grow up, go to college, and have a family. I’d make sure she had everything she ever wanted or die trying. I’d make this up to her, to my parents, to Alex. I’d bury myself and give Maddy my life in return.

11

It was freezing out. A thin layer of frost glistened on the granite headstones as people carefully picked their way across the slick grass. It was supposed to warm up and be bright and sunny by midafternoon. Didn’t matter to me either way.

The inside of the car smelled like a combination of rug shampoo and pine trees, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a cheap cardboard air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. If I tried, I could probably see it from here. But that’d mean I’d actually have to move, and I didn’t want to.

The windows had fogged over, and I swiped my hand across the glass. Mom and Dad were already there, standing by the giant hole in the ground and talking with the minister. People filled in around them, their heads bowed and their shoulders tense.

I was glad to be out of the hospital, doing something besides staring at the white walls while everybody talked in hushed tones about how much progress I’d made. I was no longer crying and hadn’t taken a pain pill in days, but that had little to do with “progress” and everything to do with me not caring anymore. Part of me had died with Maddy, a piece so significant, so integral to who I was that I felt completely lost without her.

The shrink they’d sent to talk to me in the hospital thought it’d be a good idea if I went to the burial. Something about closure and moving on. My doctor agreed and discharged me a day early so I could attend. I’d said I’d go, but now that I was here, I couldn’t move from the car, couldn’t walk ten yards to the graveside to see my sister … to see myself buried.

The car door opened, and I slid over to avoid the rush of cold air.

“You coming?” Alex asked.

I’d been in the hospital for twelve days and he was there the entire time, hovering, always asking me if I wanted something to drink or if my shoulder hurt. At first I thought it was sweet. I enjoyed his company over my dark thoughts. But now I felt suffocated. I needed some privacy to say goodbye to my sister, to apologize for the last words I’d said to her. But I was never alone. Alex was always there.

He offered me his hand and I took it, stared at it as I memorized every minute detail, every insignificant flaw as his fingers entwined with mine. “Where’s your coat?” he asked as he helped me out of the car.

“At home,” I said.

My parents were paranoid about bringing me out into the cold and had thrust two coats on me when they picked me up from the hospital this morning. Truth was, I didn’t want either one. Something about the slap of the cold air against my skin felt good, reassuring. Each goose bump that rose on my skin was welcome, a sharp reminder that despite the misery I was encased in, I was, in fact, still alive.