Besides, the two wool coats weren’t mine; they were Maddy’s. I’d worn her black dress, but having her coat surrounding me, her warmth seeping into me, seemed wrong.

“Here,” Alex said as he shrugged out of his. I turned to let him wrap it around me, flinching when his hand brushed against my neck. Up until now, the only part of my body he’d touched was my hands.

“Your shoulder hurt?” he asked. They’d reset my dislocated shoulder while I was unconscious. My arm was still in a sling, but that was mostly due to the weight of the cast on my left wrist.

“No, it doesn’t hurt. Your hands are just cold.”

He warmed them with his breath before turning the collar of his coat up around my neck. There were four white chairs facing the coffin, like sterile beacons directing me home. I didn’t want to sit in one. I didn’t want anybody’s focus on me. I wanted to fade into the background and watch from a distance as I made peace with my decision to become my sister.

Mom motioned for me to take the one beside my dad, and I sat down, felt the legs of the white folding chair sink into the wet ground under my weight. Alex took the seat next to me, his hand never leaving mine. Dad sat on the other side, his eyes meeting mine as he patted my hand.

“You doing okay?” Dad asked.

Not knowing how to answer, I shrugged. I was so far removed from okay that I couldn’t even put a name to the mess of emotions I was feeling. Anger, pain, regret, and an overwhelming amount of guilt churned together, leaving me numb.

“It’s going to be fine, Maddy,” Dad said, uttering the same reassuring words he had each morning as he left the hospital to go home and change. “We’ll get through this, I promise. So long as we still have you, we can get through this.”

I hadn’t seen Dad cry since that first day in the hospital, but he looked fifteen years older than I remembered. His suit was impeccable and his shoes polished, but the wrinkles around his eyes were a little too deep, his voice a little too raspy. Mom was quiet, had been since that night the nurse and Alex took me to see Maddy. Her eyes were red and her hands trembled. She caught me watching her and mouthed that she loved me as she reached across my father to smooth my hair. I did my best to smile, every broken piece of me becoming a little more jagged with the knowledge that their love was not for me, but for Maddy.

Not able to look Mom in the eyes, I turned toward the gathering crowd. I wanted them to hurry up and leave, for this whole thing to be over so I could go home and be alone.

The chairs had been set up in a semicircle, my parents and Alex and I seated at the front, my grandparents behind us. From where I sat, I could see nearly everybody, could feel their eyes watching me. Looking around, I spotted my cousins and my aunts. One uncle was quietly telling his kids to stop poking at each other. There were neighbors, our childhood babysitter, and a handful of guys from Dad’s office. I could even pick out the women from Mom’s book club. None of them bothered me. It made sense for them to be here, supporting my parents. It was the crowd behind them that had me squeezing Alex’s hand to the point of pain.

I’d figured Jenna would come. She was Maddy’s best friend and spent as much time at our house as Alex did. The rest—the field hockey team, the boys’ soccer team, the two dozen kids who’d never looked twice at me before today—they bothered me.

“What are they doing here?” I asked Alex.

Alex looked confused. “What do you mean what are they doing here? It’s your sister’s burial service, Maddy. Why wouldn’t they be here?”

“They don’t know m—” I paused, swallowed hard, and corrected myself. “They didn’t know Ella. I mean, with the exception of Jenna, I don’t think any of them said more than two words to her. None of them. Ever.”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t care.”

“Yes, it does,” I fired back, remembering how Jenna kindly asked me to drive myself to school our sophomore year because being seen with me wasn’t good for Maddy.

“They don’t care about Ella. They never have!”

Alex wasn’t one to swallow his own words, but I watched him do it, felt his hand twist in mine as he struggled to stay calm. “They are not here for her. They came for you, Maddy. You.”

“For me? For me?”

I tried to hold on to my anger. If I wasn’t careful, I’d slip, let my own voice seep into my words. I blinked long and hard, then shook my head. Not here. I wouldn’t lose it here.

Mom looked at me, indecision and pity warring in her eyes. The minister had stopped talking and was looking at my father for guidance. Everybody else … well, they were staring at me. They’d heard my rant, heard me tear up Alex’s friends at my own burial.

My vision blurred, the whole world narrowing down to one gaping, black hole in the earth. The grave. My grave. I searched the crowd, looking for some way to escape. Jenna took a step toward me, but Alex waved her off. He leaned in and whispered something in my ear, my dad following suit on the other side. I don’t know what either of them said; it was nothing more than jumbled words in a sea of white noise.

The second my eyes caught Josh’s, I could breathe. It was as if something familiar in me clicked into place, and for the first time in over a week, I felt like me. He wasn’t wearing his standard Mountain Dew T-shirt and ratty jeans. He had on a black suit and tie and what looked like uncomfortable shoes. I liked him better in T-shirts and jeans.

Kim was standing next to him, with the rest of the anime club behind them. They were shuffling their feet, looking everywhere but at me, as if itching for this whole thing to end.

Josh’s eyes met mine with an intensity I didn’t quite understand. He’d never looked at me like that—with such unadulterated hatred. His eyes were red, but the sheen of tears couldn’t hide his feelings.

Kim reached for him and whispered something in his ear. He brushed her off and took a step farther away. I thought he was going to leave, but he didn’t. He shrank into the back of the crowd where he didn’t have to look at me. She followed him, tried again to tell him something before handing him a tissue. Josh took it and twisted it in his hands until it resembled confetti. I fought the urge to go over and still his hands, to throw my arms around him and thank him for being one of the few people who was here for me … for Ella.

“Maddy, sweetheart,” Dad said, his hand on my shoulder drawing my attention to him. “Why don’t you let Alex or your grandmother take you home? I know the doctor thought being here would—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. I had every intention of staying, surrounded by people who couldn’t care less about me as I absorbed the details of my life being memorialized, then buried away. “I’m fine. I want to stay.”

Mom caught the edge in my voice and leaned across Dad to stare at me. She wasn’t angry or embarrassed by my outburst, she was … wary. Maddy never snapped at them. She’d cry, plead, and give them the silent treatment until they cracked, but she never snapped. The one who snapped was me. That was Ella.

“Maddy?” Mom’s eyes roamed every inch of my body looking for something I knew she wouldn’t find.

The only way my parents were able to tell us apart as babies was a small freckle I had above my right eye. That night in the hospital after I’d woken up and had no idea who I was, I caught Mom carefully peeling away the bandage. She thought I was asleep, and I didn’t do anything to tell her otherwise. At first I figured she was counting my stitches or checking to make sure they weren’t infected. It wasn’t until hours later, after I realized who I truly was, that I figured out what she’d been doing, why she ran her fingers gently across my stitches. She was looking for that identifying mark, a telltale sign that would confirm who I was, who she wanted me to be. But Maddy’s face had been cut up when she hit the windshield and … well, I now had seven stitches where that freckle once was. She could stare at that tiny spot forever; the freckle wasn’t there.