Five Facts About My Twin Sister by Nora Ray

     One. She had a peculiar sense of humor. Stand-up shows and sitcoms made her yawn, glance at her watch, and close her eyes. She laughed at certain noises, like a car’s siren or a frog’s croaking. Once, she turned hysterical and erupted in laughter when a kid popped his balloon in the park. Embarrassed, she ran away to the bus stop and left the park. I never understood the absurd, looking at her with bewilderment and smiling just because she did.
     Two. She used to bake cakes for weddings, birthdays, and gender parties. The cream was the best part, melting in my mouth, making me want to devour it until the plate was empty and I woke up from a sugary trance. Her waffles and pancakes were mediocre though.
     Three. She chose butter for baking more diligently than she chose men. Well, a man. Andy wasn’t a bad one; he was just a bit odd. All he did in his free time was hate-watch soap operas. In general, he saw more than a thousand episodes while drinking vanilla coke and arguing with an invisible director and a screenwriter. Andy and she met at the Laundromat. She used to watch washing machines sometimes—her remake of trainspotting. He walked into the place; they chit-chatted and fell in love.
     Four. She always claimed she had that phobia of long words, but we both knew she was afraid of the numbers 13 and 666—as much as she was of black cats. When we were teenagers, I made unsuccessful attempts to ridicule this fear. Once, I changed the date on her phone and watched her eyes turn bleak. She found out I did it and locked herself in the bathroom for three hours, resentful. Perhaps our grandma had scared her when we were kids, told her that planes fell on people’s heads on Fridays the 13th, or my sister saw that movie.
     Five. She loved me. She loved me when I was sick and whiny, leaving empty, dirty mugs all over the house, clearing my throat nonstop, shaking my leg, and singing along to the radio with my squeaky voice. She loved me when I rolled my eyes at her laughter, refused to eat her dry waffles, called Andy a desperate housewife, and told her that a large pack of toothpicks contained exactly 666.
I don’t do this anymore, and I never will.

     “What are you doing?” Tony asks, reading another soap opera review.
     “Writing facts about myself. I started something like a blog, you know.”
    “Wild,” he says, chewing on the cake I baked. “You’re adding too much flour.”
He coughed, and I barked with laughter.
     I look at the date, and I know Friday the 13th is going to be in three months. It’s not going to be outstanding; there was only one important Friday the 13th. My twin sister should’ve been afraid of darkness, thick rains, and lampposts being out of order, just like my car—not plain numbers and grandma’s superstitions. She should’ve been careful that day; she should’ve took her headphones off and run away from me.
     The collision was an accident, I convinced myself. I didn’t want to hit her that night and watch, observe her fall, her cranium splitting into two parts.
     Two parts that no longer exist.

​About the author:
Nora Ray is a writer who explores the dark sides of human relationships in her fiction.