My parents decided they wouldn’t reveal which of us was the older twin until we turned eighteen. To keep things “fair,” we drew straws every year to decide who would play the role of the older sister. Being the older sister meant being the pillar of the household—cooking, cleaning, and serving everyone else. For ten years, without fail, I drew the long straw. My hands were permanently raw and swollen with chilblains. Years of relentless housework left me small, stunted, and severely malnourished. Until one afternoon, when I came home early and heard my father’s worried voice from the kitchen: “We keep rigging the draw so Lucy has to be the older one. What if she realizes we’re favoring Emma?” Then came my mother’s voice, laced with smug self-satisfaction: “What is there to worry about? Once they turn eighteen, Lucy can be the little sister for the rest of her life. All the bitter trials she’s enduring now will only make her future sweeter.” Behind the door, my fingers tightened around the school physical report I was holding. But Mom, I don’t think I’m going to make it to eighteen. … I had forgotten to show Mom my physical report. So when I stood at our front door, having been dismissed early from school, I was just in time to hear my parents discussing our birthright and the annual draw. It turned out that my decade of bad luck wasn’t bad luck at all. It was because they wanted me to be the older sister. They needed me to be. My mother’s tone was so absolute, so devoid of doubt, that a slow, burning ache bloomed in my chest. My father seemed to have a sudden revelation. “Honey, I didn’t realize you were looking so far ahead. I thought you were just playing favorites with Emma.” My mother scoffed gently. “Of course I don’t want Emma to suffer. She’s been delicate since the day she was born. If we openly favored her, Lucy would grow bitter. But if we leave it to ‘fate,’ they both accept it without question.” “Besides,” she continued, “we have a massive estate to think of. Emma’s health is too fragile to ever run the family business. We have to mold Lucy into someone strong enough to carry that weight. After years of our training, she’ll have a deep sense of duty. She’ll look after Emma, and she’ll take care of us in our old age. It’s killing two birds with one stone.” She talked about how, back in the delivery room, the nurse had mixed up our ID bracelets. They didn’t know who was born first. So Mom had made a grand executive decision: a modern, progressive approach to parenting, modeled after Western ideals of absolute equality. Since we were twins born only minutes apart, they wouldn’t announce who was older until we were eighteen. Mom used to tell us: Neither of you has to carry the burden of the other’s life. You are each other’s protector, each other’s sister. You must support and care for one another. But a household needed order. So, she instituted the draw. The one who drew the role of the older sister would bear the household responsibilities and care for the family. The one who drew the little sister got to be pampered, to ask for whatever she wanted, to be coddled. There were two straws in the jar—a long one and a short one. Whenever it was my turn to draw first, I always drew the long straw. Whenever Emma drew first, she always got the short one. I remembered one year, when Emma drew the short straw again, she sighed disappointedly. “I wish I could be the older sister just once. I want to take care of everyone too.” I had smiled and teased her, “Sure, let’s swap straws.” But Dad had snapped at me, his voice sharp and harsh: “Lucy! Who taught you to be so deceitful? You accept the hand you are dealt. If that straw represented your health, your luck, your destiny, and you just gave it away, you would ruin your entire life!” But Dad’s warning felt like a curse that had already come true. My health, my luck, my destiny—they had already been stealthily swapped away by my parents, draw by rigged draw. When we were in kindergarten, Emma was always sick. Every flu season, she would run a high fever. Whenever she did, my parents made me sleep in her bed. They believed in an old superstition: if a cold is passed to someone else, the original patient gets cured. So, time and time again, I absorbed Emma’s illnesses. But this time, the rot had started deep within my own bones, and there was no one left to swap with. When the school clinic called me in, the doctor had looked at me with a grave, heavy expression. He handed me a specialist’s business card and told me to have my parents take me to the hospital immediately. “If you don’t get treatment right away,” he had said, “you might not make it past three months.” I reached out to knock on the front door, but then Mom’s voice drifted through the wood again. “Lucy didn’t even mop the floors properly yesterday. I still saw hair on the hardwood. When she gets home from school, tell her to sweep and mop again before she starts dinner.” My hand hovered in the air. Slowly, uselessly, it dropped to my side. My chest felt so tight, like a heavy stone was pressing down on my lungs, stealing my breath. For as long as I could remember, I had done every chore a child was physically capable of. Mom taught me to wash dishes standing on a wooden stool when I wasn’t even tall enough to reach the sink. She said hot water was too expensive, so even in the dead of winter, I scrubbed plates in freezing water. When my hands split open with painful, red chilblains, she would just buy a cheap tube of ointment and rub it in. For my eighth birthday, she gave me a custom set of child-sized cleaning tools. Emma’s gift that year was a massive, limited-edition Barbie dreamhouse. Seeing the look of confusion on my face, Mom had smiled warmly, playing the doting mother. “Lucy, sweetie, your luck just isn’t very good, and you always end up as the older sister. I was so worried you’d hurt your knees kneeling on the hard floor to mop, so I had these custom-made just for you.” I had swallowed the bitterness back then, holding my little broom. And yesterday, I hadn’t slacked off on the floors. My head had just been spinning, my vision blurring into dark, fuzzy spots. When I had leaned against the wall to catch my breath, Dad had chuckled, shaking his head. “Kids these days are so fragile. When I was your age, I could do fifty squats in a row without breaking a sweat.” Mom hadn’t disagreed. She had just nudged Emma. “Hurry up and finish your apple, sweetie. Throw the core in the bin so your sister can empty the trash and take it down to the dumpster on her way out.” The memories washed over me, cold and suffocating. I couldn’t face the chores today. I couldn’t face them. I turned around and slipped away, walking down to the neighborhood park. I sat on a wooden bench, watching the sky turn from grey to purple, staying far past the time I usually got home. When night fell, I finally crept back inside. The three of them were sitting around the dining table, sharing a family bucket of KFC. Mom looked up and waved me over. “Lucy, why are you so late? We ordered takeout tonight so you wouldn’t have to cook. Come, eat with us.” No anger. No scolding. Just a warmth that made my heart ache with sudden, desperate hope. I walked over, my chest swelling with gratitude. But when I reached the table, the feeling withered. The bucket was nearly empty. Only a handful of soggy, cold fries remained at the bottom, alongside a thin, dried smear of ketchup on the cardboard lid. A single chicken drumstick, with a large bite already taken out of it, sat cold on top of the fries. Dad let out a satisfied burp. Emma took a long, noisy sip of the last of her Coke. Mom pushed me down into a chair, gesturing to the greasy paper. “Clean up the leftovers, sweetie.” I forced down the hot prickle of tears behind my eyes. I picked up a cold fry, dragged it through the dried ketchup, and put it in my mouth. It was cold, starchy, and hard to swallow, scraping against my throat. Then I picked up the half-eaten drumstick. The moment I bit into it, an intense, searing wave of chili heat hit the back of my throat, making my eyes water and my scalp prickle. Mom patted my back casually. “Ah, I forgot to ask for mild. Emma took one bite and started crying because of how spicy it was, so she saved the rest for you.” I set the drumstick down, my eyes burning. “But Mom… I can’t eat spicy food either.” Mom brushed it off with a wave of her hand. “You can build up a tolerance. Emma has a weak stomach; if she eats spicy food, she gets terrible cramps. You’re different. Don’t waste food, Lucy.” Under her watchful gaze, I forced myself to choke down the rest of the chicken. Almost instantly, my stomach began to cramp in sharp, violent spasms, but I forced it all down anyway. I stood up, trembling, and wiped down the table, wanting nothing more than to crawl into my bed. But as I turned to leave, Mom grabbed my wrist. “Lucy, the floors were still dusty yesterday. I’m going to watch you do them properly tonight. Grab the mop.” I froze. My fingers curled into the fabric of my school sweatpants. For the first time in my life, I found a tiny, fragile spark of courage. “Mom, I don’t feel well tonight. Can I please do it tomorrow?” There was no concern in her eyes. No worry. Only a cold, hardening disappointment. “If you’re sick, how did you stay out so late? Don’t think I don’t know you were goofing off in the park with some bad crowd after school.” I looked at her, helpless. “Mom, I wasn’t…” Dad, seeing my pale face, intervened. “If she’s really tired, let her rest for tonight.” Mom slammed her hand on the table. “Do you want to ruin her? Spare the rod, spoil the child! Lucy has never been lazy. Today she comes home late, and you tell me not to go looking for her because ‘she deserves some fun.’ Now she refuses to do her chores.” “If she gets away with it once, she’ll find a thousand excuses to slough off her responsibilities. Do you want her to grow up into a lazy, manipulative brat?” Dad slowly lowered his head, yielding to her logic. I walked back to my room, fetched my little plastic broom and mop, and started in the living room. After only a few steps, the doctor’s business card slipped from my pocket and fluttered onto the rug. Mom leaned down, picked it up, and tossed it into the trash can without a second glance. “Honestly, Lucy, stop collecting these sketchy flyers on the street.” I opened my mouth to explain, but her sharp look silenced me. Keep mopping. With every push of the mop, my heart hammered violently against my ribs. My vision began to fray at the edges, dissolving into gray mist. And then, with a dull thud, the world went black. At first, Mom thought I was throwing a tantrum, trying to get out of the chores. But when she called my name three times and I didn’t move, she finally realized I was truly unconscious. They carried me to my bed. From the haze of my fading consciousness, I heard Dad’s low, fretful voice: “I told you that chicken was too spicy. Why did you make her eat it? And then you made her mop the floors. Look at her—she’s white as a sheet, and her lips are completely blue.” Mom muttered defensively, though her voice trembled. “How was I supposed to know she was this fragile? Neither of these girls is easy to raise.” But she sat beside me, and for the first time in a long time, she took a warm, damp cloth and gently wiped the sweat from my forehead. “Let her sleep. She’ll be fine by morning.” When I opened my eyes, it was the next day. Emma had already gone to school. Mom was sitting on the edge of my mattress, looking at me with an expression of deep, unfamiliar worry. My throat tightened. I decided to tell her. “Mom, my body… it really hurts. I need to see a doctor.” The worry on her face vanished, replaced instantly by defensive irritation. “Lucy, I know it was wrong of me to make you eat that spicy chicken yesterday. But you have a strong constitution. You don’t need to waste money on a doctor.” “But Mom…” “I already said I was sorry,” she snapped, cutting me off. “What more do you want? Your father lectured me all night. I promise I won’t make you eat spicy food again.” “But the clinic doctor said…” “Those street solicitors are predatory, Lucy,” she said, her voice rising. “They aren’t real doctors. They just want to lure you into a clinic to scam us out of expensive testing fees. Do you know how much a simple scan costs? Hundreds of dollars. We aren’t rich. Be sensible, Lucy. Would your own mother lie to you?” Remembering how tight money was—how Emma and I only got to eat meat on major holidays—I swallowed the rest of my words. I stayed in bed until noon, when Mom shook my shoulder. “Lucy, we’re out of soy sauce and chicken bouillon. Go to the corner store for me, okay?” She pressed a few quarters and a handwritten list into my palm. “Keep the change as allowance. Don’t tell your sister. It’s some pocket money I managed to save up.” Despite the dull, throbbing ache in my limbs, I dragged myself out of bed. As I pulled on my coat, I saw Mom reclining on the sofa, a luxury sheet mask pressed to her face, eyes closed in deep relaxation. Without saying a word, I opened the door and walked out into the cold. The sidewalk seemed to tilt beneath my feet. My vision pulsed, expanding and contracting, making the world look warped. I had to stop every few steps to lean against a brick wall, my chest burning for air. Suddenly, a stray cat darted out from the overgrown bushes beside the path. Startled, I lost my footing and fell hard onto the concrete. The quarters slipped from my numb fingers, rolling across the pavement, clinking as they disappeared down the gap of an open storm drain marked with a faded Under Construction sign. I remembered Mom’s constant reminders about how poor we were, how every penny counted. Panic surging through my veins, I scrambled forward to catch the rolling coins. My foot slipped on the wet concrete, and I tumbled headfirst into the dark, yawning throat of the drain. It was pitch black. The impact shattered my bones, a cold, violent agony ripping through my entire body as my clothes soaked through with freezing, muddy water. Slowly, my eyes drifted shut. When I opened them again, I was floating. Back at home, Mom peeled the mask from her face. Her phone buzzed. It was Dad. “How is Lucy feeling? Do we need to take her to Urgent Care?” Mom answered confidently, “Why waste the money? She’s perfectly fine. She’s already out running an errand for me.” Dad, taking a lunch break at his high-rise office, sighed. “I keep thinking about our parenting strategy. I wonder if we’re putting too much pressure on Lucy. Her grades dropped to third in her class last semester because of all the chores.” Mom crossed her legs, savoring a slice of a fresh Pinkglow pineapple. “If we let her focus only on school, who’s going to do the housework? You?” Dad hesitated. “We could hire a housekeeper. My salary is over a hundred and fifty thousand a year. We can afford it.” I froze in the air, staring at him through the invisible veil of death. Dad had always told us he only made thirty thousand a year. He said we had to pinch pennies so we could afford Emma’s medical treatments. Dad let out a long sigh. “When I saw Lucy and Emma sitting together yesterday, Lucy looked so small. She’s practically a head shorter than her sister. Maybe we should stop this ‘poverty training’ experiment. You’re sitting there eating fifty-dollar pineapples, while Lucy gets nothing but oatmeal and cabbage. She’s malnourished.” Fifty dollars for a single pineapple. Just two days ago, Mom told me she found that pineapple in the discount bin because it was bruised and rotting, and that it would make me sick if I ate it. But later that night, I saw her secretly feeding slices of it to Emma in the kitchen. I had begged for a piece, trying to snatch it, and in the scuffle, the ceramic plate had shattered. A sharp shard had sliced into Emma’s calf, leaving a thin red line. While Emma wailed, a call had come in from an unknown number on Mom’s phone. Assuming it was a telemarketer, Mom had blocked it after three rings. My body had been burning with a fever that night, too, but my parents had ignored me, rushing Emma to the emergency room for a scratch. To them, I was just a buy-one-get-one-free bonus item from the maternity ward. A shadow destined to live in Emma Colton’s light. Now, Mom’s phone rang again. It was another unknown number. She swiped to answer, her voice dripping with irritation. “I told you to stop calling. I already blocked your other number. Leave me alone.” But the voice on the other end wasn’t a salesman. It was a police officer, cold and clinical. “Is this the mother of Lucy Colton? A construction crew just found her body at the bottom of a storm drain. We need you to come identify her immediately.”
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