My sister and I were twins. But from the moment we were born, she was the beautiful one. The sweet one. The day the earthquake hit our summer cabin, the ground violently tearing itself apart, my mother grabbed my sister. My father grabbed my sister’s dog. I was left buried under the rubble for twelve suffocating hours. I nearly died in the dark. When they finally pulled me out, my parents didn’t hold me. They warned me. “Josie, don’t make a scene,” they said, their voices tight. “If you throw a tantrum over this, we will beat you half to death.” My childhood felt like one long, unyielding season of rain. Right up until the day my sister’s biological parents showed up at our front door, explaining that there had been a mix-up at the hospital. In that fractured, surreal moment, a laugh actually bubbled up from my throat and spilled into the room. My mother grabbed me by the hair. She slapped me across the face. Then again. And again. She leaned in, delivering that same, familiar warning. “Josie, don’t make a scene.” “If you cause trouble now, I swear to God, I will end you.” 01 My mother was a tenured high school principal. She didn’t usually hit her children. And on the rare occasions she did, the apologies followed swiftly. Like right now. My cheek was still throbbing, swollen hot and tight, but she had already said “I’m sorry” three times. “Josie, honey, you know it breaks my heart to lay a hand on you.” “It hurts me more than it hurts you.” “But you cannot be cruel to your sister. It breaks her heart.” Her apology sounded fiercely sincere. But a sudden, visceral wave of injustice washed over me. I lifted my chin, staring right back at her, and forced the words out. “No. That’s a lie. Sabrina isn’t my sister.” “She’s someone else’s kid. She has nothing to do with me.” Yesterday, two strangers—a weary-looking man and woman—had sat in our living room. They explained that fifteen years ago, a nurse had handed them the wrong baby. They said Sabrina was actually their only daughter. I was only stating a biological fact. Yet, my mother raised her hand again. Her face went entirely dead. “Josie, you are incredibly ungrateful.” I was terrified of my mother’s hands, but the suffocating weight of the unfairness was heavier than the fear. Just then, Sabrina emerged from the hallway. She had thrown a fit yesterday and refused to come down for dinner. Now, her eyes were brimming with delicate, crystal-like tears. The thing about beautiful children is that even their grief is aesthetically pleasing. “Mom, please don’t hit Josie,” Sabrina cried softly. “This is all my fault.” And because Sabrina cried, my mother’s palm cracked against my skin once more. Summer clothes are thin. My mother’s acrylic nails were sharp. Angry, crisscrossing red welts began to rise along my arms. In the Gallagher household, the cardinal rule was this: when an adult disciplines you, you do not cry. But the sting was blinding. And Sabrina was still talking. “Mom, please. Don’t let yourself get so worked up. It’s bad for your blood pressure.” It was a dance we had perfected over a lifetime. The more Sabrina begged for mercy on my behalf, the harder my mother struck. Tears finally broke free, streaming down my face. Eventually, my father intervened. He was my rescuer. But all he did was wipe my cheeks with a rough thumb before pulling Sabrina securely into his chest. “Alright, that’s enough. No one is crying anymore,” he declared. “Sabrina is our daughter. Period.” “Anyone who makes her feel otherwise will have to answer to me.” In that moment, the tears just stopped. They dried up in my throat. Yet my parents still felt the need to instruct me. “Josie, you need to be kinder to your sister.” “Imagine how she feels. If she feels alienated in her own home, with no one to talk to… how heartbreaking would that be?” They truly, deeply loved her. I looked at them, my vision blurry, and asked a quiet question. “What about my real sister?” “If she feels alienated in someone else’s home, with no one to talk to… isn’t that heartbreaking, too?” The words hung in the air. I watched the color drain completely from my mother’s face, leaving it the color of ash. My father raised his hand. “Josie,” he said grimly. “You just never learn.” 02 Sabrina was the golden child of the neighborhood. Heart-shaped face, porcelain skin, doe eyes. The neighbors used to coo over her, telling my parents she was going to be a movie star one day. When I was little, I used to tug on their sleeves and ask, “What about me?” “Can I be in movies too?” The adults would offer me polite, pitying smiles. “Sure, sweetheart. Sure you can.” But as I got older, they stopped pretending. To my face, and behind my back, they were casually brutal. “Josie just doesn’t have the look.” I used to fight back. They would actually hold a mirror up to my face and educate me: “Look at your sister. She has a delicate, heart-shaped face. That is beautiful.” “You have a strong, square jaw. That is not.” “Your sister’s skin is pale and flawless. That is beautiful.” “You are dull and tanned. That is not.” They were so earnest in their cruelty. Once, I slapped the mirror out of an aunt’s hand. It shattered on the floor. I put my hands on my hips, glared at the room, and yelled, “You’re! All! Full! Of! Shit!” After that, the extended family mostly ignored me. Only one uncle, a soft-spoken man who liked kids, bothered to pull me aside. “When you pick out a puppy, you want the prettiest, most obedient one. People are the same way,” he told me gently. “Josie, since you aren’t the pretty one, you have to be the sweetest. The most thoughtful.” “Otherwise, your parents are only going to love Sabrina, and there will be nothing left for you.” He genuinely thought he was helping me, and a dark part of my child-brain suspected he was right. But my mother overheard. She stepped in, her voice dripping with maternal nobility. “I have two daughters, and I will always keep the scales perfectly balanced between them.” My uncle flushed red. “Of course. How shallow of me. You’re an educator, you know best.” But my uncle didn’t know the second half of my mother’s philosophy. She explained it to me privately, years later. “It’s hard to keep the scales perfectly balanced,” she had said, brushing my hair with rough strokes. “So, I tip them toward the older sister. Because a good older sister will balance them out herself.” “Josie, I “have” to give Sabrina more love.” “That’s the only way she’ll learn to share it with you.” And that was how it worked. On our birthday, the artisanal, twelve-piece chocolate truffle box was handed to Sabrina. She would eat her fill, then push the half-empty box across the table to me. When they bought us matching dresses, Sabrina got first pick of the colors. Whatever she discarded became mine. I wasn’t allowed to complain. If I did, my mother would sigh. “There were twelve chocolates. Sabrina gave you six. Isn’t that perfectly fair?” “What more do you want, Josie? Do you want seven? Nine? All twelve? What is your sister supposed to have?” Sabrina would look at me with weary exasperation. “There are only two dresses. If I pick pink, you throw a fit because you want pink. If I pick white, you want white.” “Josie, why are you always trying to compete with me?” “When are you going to realize that because you aren’t pretty, it doesn’t matter what color you wear?” 03 No one could have predicted that Sabrina wasn’t my parents’ biological child. But my parents strictly forbade me from ever bringing it up again. After breakfast that morning, they packed Sabrina into the SUV and took her to the amusement park to “clear her head.” They left me with a dining table full of dirty plates. In the span of twelve hours, they had hit me three times. All because of Sabrina. I quietly gathered the plates and carried them to the sink. The house was empty, so I let my tears drop straight into the dishwater. And then, an idea sparked, bright and sharp in my chest. If my parents wouldn’t send Sabrina back, I would do it myself. I remembered the strangers saying they had taken a Greyhound bus into the West Side Terminal. I dropped the sponge. I grabbed my stash of allowance money and bolted out the front door. But the bus terminal was a sprawling, chaotic mess. There were hundreds of people. I searched for hours until my feet ached, finding absolutely nothing. I trudged home, thoroughly defeated. The whole walk back, my stomach tied itself in knots, dreading my mother’s wrath over the unfinished dishes. But the house was still dark and empty. There was a post-it note stuck to the front door. “Josie, your mother texted. They decided to stay at a hotel tonight. Come down to our place for dinner.” I recognized the handwriting. It was the neighbor from the first floor. A tiny drop of sweetness bloomed in my chest. The neighbor was a terrible cook—I usually only managed to choke down a few bites of her dry casseroles. But her son was Tyler. Tyler’s family had only moved into the building this year. He was a year older than me. It took exactly one minute for us to become best friends. He was different from the other kids in the complex. Unlike them, he actually preferred hanging out with me over Sabrina. When Sabrina’s name came up, he was entirely unimpressed. “She always has a whole mob of people around her, making so much noise,” he’d say, kicking a pebble. “Those guys are so basic, just trailing after the pretty girl like lost puppies. I’m not like them.” That was how my trust in him was forged. I gave Tyler all my loyalty. I told him all my secrets. I told him that Sabrina would beg for a white dress, wear it twice, decide she hated it, and demand a new one. “She’s so dramatic,” he’d say. I told him how Sabrina hated pain, how she’d scrape her knee and cry for three hours. “She’s so high-maintenance,” he’d say. I told him how Sabrina would have a nightmare, get depressed, refuse to eat, and send my mother into a panic. “Wasting food is a sin. What a brat,” he’d say. Tyler always said exactly what I needed to hear. So now, I couldn’t wait to tell him the biggest secret of all. “Sabrina isn’t my sister. She’s leaving.” Tyler froze. “What? How did that happen?” I lifted my chin, feeling a surge of pride. “Because I’ve been praying to the moon every night,” I said. “And my wish finally came true.” 04 Last summer, we rented a cabin up in the mountains to escape the heat. That was when the earthquake hit. My mother grabbed Sabrina. My father grabbed Sabrina’s golden retriever. In the chaos, they completely forgot about the sleeping girl in the back bedroom. Me. I was trapped under shattered beams and drywall for twelve hours. By the time the rescue team pulled me out, my vocal cords were shredded from screaming, and my arm was broken. My parents were highly educated, rational people. So they sat by my hospital bed and delivered a very rational apology. “We are sorry.” “But you have to understand, if we had a third arm, we would have grabbed you too.” “Josie, you are not allowed to be angry about this.” “If you throw a tantrum, we are going to be very disappointed in you.” I hadn’t intended to forgive them. But they brought me chocolate. So I swallowed the bitter, jagged question burning in my throat: “Why did Dad use his arms for the dog?” “Is it because keeping the dog alive made Sabrina happier than keeping me alive?” Most days, living with my family felt like living in a coastal fog. Stifling. Humid. But never, ever warm. My childhood was just an endless, dreary downpour. But ever since that day in the rubble, I started looking up at the night sky, whispering to the moon. “Make them love me a little more.” “Make them love Sabrina a little less.” It was the kind of magical thinking you see in old fantasy movies. I didn’t have the flowing gowns or the magic wands, but somehow, my wish had worked. I was pacing Tyler’s room, my voice rising with adrenaline. “My dad says they aren’t going to swap us back.” “But that’s not going to fly.” “As soon as I find her real parents, I’m giving Sabrina back to them, and I’m bringing my real sister home.” Tyler usually agreed with everything I said. But right now, his face was drawn and serious. “Are Sabrina’s real parents richer than yours? Will they treat her right?” he asked. I thought about it. “My parents said they run a fish hatchery. They probably don’t have a lot of money.” Tyler exhaled a long, heavy sigh. “Josie, you can’t be this selfish.” “If Sabrina goes out to the country, what is she going to eat? Where is she going to sleep? What if she wakes up crying in the middle of the night?” “Didn’t you tell me she can’t even eat when she has a nightmare?” “She’s too beautiful to be scooping fish guts on a farm.” In that split second, all the blood in my body rushed to my ears, a deafening roar. I slammed my hands onto his desk. “Whose side are you on?!” Tyler scowled. He shoved my shoulder, pushing me back. “You are actually so toxic, Josie,” he spat. “No wonder your parents don’t love you.” I felt a sudden, freezing draft in my chest, like a window had just shattered wide open inside my ribs. But I locked my jaw. I did not let the tears fall. I looked Tyler dead in the eye, my voice eerily calm and distinctly clear. “I am not toxic.” “You are.” “You only pretended to be my friend so you could get closer to Sabrina.” “You’re a hypocrite, Tyler. And you’re pathetic.”
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