The Twin Who Jumped Free Chapter 1

A boardwalk psychic once told my mother that my twin sister had a fragile, aristocratic spirit—a piece of spun glass that would shatter under the slightest brush of misfortune. I, on the other hand, was cast iron. Coarse, unbreakable, and born under a stubborn star. My mother took this to heart: my sole purpose on this earth was to serve as Natalie’s lightning rod, catching every strike meant for her.

For as long as I can remember, I took her medicine.

Natalie couldn't stand anything bitter. Whenever she ran a fever, she would throw screaming tantrums at the sight of the plastic measuring cup. That was when Mom would kneel in front of five-year-old me.

"Drink it first, Iris. Show your sister it doesn’t hurt."

I didn't know what it was. I tipped the cup back and swallowed, and the wretched, chemical bitterness hit my tongue so hard I ended up retching on the kitchen linoleum. Natalie, watching my frantic sputtering, assumed it was some thrilling secret game and drank hers without another word.

From that day on, it became household law.

When Natalie needed a booster shot, the nurse had to prick my arm first to prove it wasn't lethal.

When Natalie needed a baby tooth extracted, the dentist had to pull one of my perfectly sound incisors first. When the dentist refused, horrified, Mom caused such a scene in the lobby that the front desk called security. "I am paying for an extraction," she hissed, slamming her credit card onto the counter. "What business is it of yours which daughter I spend it on?"

The summer we turned fifteen, Natalie developed a small cyst that required a minor outpatient procedure.

She stood outside the clinic doors, screaming, refusing to cross the threshold.

Mom turned to look at me. It was a look etched into the marrow of my bones.

"You go in first, Iris. Just a little demo, so your sister can see there's nothing to be afraid of."

"Mom, I’m not sick," I whispered, backing toward the elevators. "I don’t need an operation."

Mom caught my wrist, her touch as warm and smothering as flannel. Her voice dropped into that familiar, honeyed cadence. "It's barely thirty minutes, sweetheart. You’re her sister. Can’t you do this one little thing for her?"

My father stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows at the end of the corridor, his back turned to us, staring out into the gray city haze without a word.

The nurse approached with the surgical intake clipboard.

Under the line for parental consent, Mom had already forged my name.

Standing there in the sterile glare of the hallway, a cold, quiet thought bloomed in my chest: "If Natalie ever decides she wants to die, will they make me slit my wrists first just to show her how it feels?"

* * *

"Be a good girl, Iris. Put the gown on."

Mom pressed the thin, blue-and-white hospital cotton against my chest. Her voice was gentle, the soothing coo of a mother talking a toddler down from a scrape.

I looked down at the frayed fabric, then toward the double doors of the surgical suite. "Mom, it's Natalie who has polyps on her vocal cords. Not me."

Mom reached out, tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear. Her fingertips were cool, her touch impeccably maternal. "I know, darling. But you know how your sister is. She faints at the sight of a syringe, let alone a scalpel." She sighed, her eyes welling with an exquisite tenderness—a tenderness that bypassed me entirely, landing on the girl weeping softly in the wheelchair behind me.

My identical twin, Natalie.

"The surgeon assured me it's practically nothing," Mom whispered, her hands closing over mine. "A microscopic nick on the neck to guide the scope. You just go in, take a little nap, let him make a tiny mark. When Natalie sees you come out smiling, she won't be terrified anymore."

I yanked my hands back. My fingers were shaking so violently I had to ball them into fists. "A knife to the throat isn't a 'tiny mark.' I don't have polyps! Why do I have to be cut open?!"

Natalie flinched in her wheelchair, clutching her throat with theatrical fragility. "Mom, forget it... I won't do it. It doesn't matter if I lose my voice forever. I don't want Iris to hate me."

Mom turned instantly, dropping to her knees to gather Natalie into her arms. "Hush, baby, stop that nonsense! How are you supposed to sing at your showcase next month? You've practiced that solo for six months."

After kissing Natalie’s temple, Mom turned back to me, the maternal mask slipping seamlessly back into place. "Iris, they’re giving you general anesthesia. You won't feel a thing. Just a surface scratch. The doctor knows what he's doing. You're the elder sister by three minutes—blaze the trail for her, all right?"

I looked past her, toward my father, who was standing by the cracked window at the end of the hall, tapping ash from a cigarette into a paper coffee cup.

"Dad," my voice cracked. "Do you really think I should let them cut my neck open?"

His shoulders stiffened. He didn't turn around. He just ground the cherry of his cigarette into the sodden paper rim.

"Listen to your mother, Iris," he muttered into the glass. "We’re a family. Stop keeping score."

A nurse bustled over, checking her chart with an irritated crease between her brows. "Iris Carver? Why aren't you prepped? O.R. Three is waiting. Frankly, I don't understand how the department head signed off on this, but we're on a tight schedule." She thrust the intake clipboard toward Mom. "Sign the authorization."

I lunged forward to grab the pen. "Don't sign it! I am not consenting to this!"

Mom sidestepped me with practiced grace, scribbling her looping signature across the bottom of the page before I could blink.

"All set," Mom said, handing the clipboard back with an apologetic smile. Then she looked at me, her eyes flat and empty as winter water. "Be sweet, Iris. Thirty minutes and it's over."

Two orderlies stepped forward, their heavy hands clamping around my forearms. They didn't slam me down; they simply used their adult weight to leverage my fifteen-year-old frame onto the gurney.

I threw myself against the metal doorframe, my fingernails scraping screeching lines into the varnished wood. "No! Mom, please, it's going to hurt!"

Mom stepped close, her face inches from mine. With steady, deliberate care, she peeled my fingers off the frame, one by one.

Her touch remained delicate, but the gaze pinning me down was arctic.

"The medicine will keep you asleep," she murmured. "Natalie is watching, Iris. Don't you dare make a scene and terrify your sister."

They pinned me flat against the freezing vinyl mattress.

The surgical lights overhead blurred into streaks of sterile, blinding white as the gurney rolled forward. It pulled me straight back to the summer we were eight.

Natalie had developed an irrational terror of swimming pools after the psychic warned Mom about "water curses." Then, one scorching July afternoon, Natalie decided she wanted to wear a ruffled two-piece and float like the other girls.

To prove to Natalie that the deep end was harmless, Mom walked me out to the edge of the nine-foot diving well.

"See, Natalie? There’s nothing lurking down there," Mom had said. And with both palms pressed firmly against my spine, she gave a casual shove.

I didn't even have the breath to scream before the dark chlorinated water closed over my head. I choked, water burning up my sinuses, my lungs collapsing into leaden stones. As I flailed toward the sunlit surface, my blurred eyes caught sight of Mom standing at the edge, rocking a giggling Natalie in her arms.

"Look, darling! See how easily Iris floats?"

The lifeguard finally dragged me out just as my vision was tunneling into black. I spent the next three days in bed, vomiting chlorine into an enamel washbasin while running a fever of a hundred and three. Mom had brought me a bowl of plain broth, stroking my hair.

"You were so brave, Iris. Because of you, your sister dipped her toes in the pool today."

The double doors of the operating room swung shut, severing the memory from the present.

A gloved hand pressed a hard plastic mask over my mouth and nose. The sweet, chemical stench of sevoflurane filled my throat.

"Deep breath, sweetheart. Count backward from ten."

I squeezed my eyes shut, hot tears leaking into my hairline.

"Ten."

"Nine."

If Natalie ever loses the will to live, will they bury me first just to soften the dirt?

"She's under," someone said. "Scalpel."