Chapter 1

Not watching the news today was as hard to resist as sinful white chocolate in my hands. My eyes were already fixed on the white letters gliding on the red band at the bottom of the screen.

Brazilian man steals plane and crashes it into a mall, killing himself and 5-year-old son.

“Jeez,” I sighed with a sense of voidance in my chest. “Wasn’t enough to steal the plane already?” I arched my eyebrows, angling some of the snarky attitude towards the unknown, out-of-his mind man. Dad had been right. The world was getting crazier each day. That’s why my fingers stilled whenever my mind shot the command to press the two buttons that led to CNN.

Only today, my fingers seemed to be on a rebellious streak.

“Nope,” I continued. “Crashing a plane into a mall full with innocent people and killing your son in the process isn’t apparently enough.” But it wasn’t worse than colliding commercial airplanes against two major buildings in Manhattan and killing almost three thousand innocent people.

I remembered watching through the crystal screen the horrifying images of the Twin Towers falling to dust. A ghostly, pale shattering dust. My whole body went cold, wiping out the fever blazing in my forehead that morning. The first thought that flashed into my seven-year-old mind was: war. And then, “Oh no…I'm going to live through a world war like Granny”.

I mean, what else was I supposed to think when everything seems to be solved with guns and bombs? I almost fell to the living room floor right there.

Dad was beside me, though. His big, soothing hand found mine and grasped it in a strong, comforting grip. “Everything is okay, Dafne, nothing will happen to you. Daddy is here,” he said, wrapping his arms around my small body. I lost the worry pricking in my heart and felt grateful. Happy. I had him and Mom with me. I felt as if I could face anything, anytime.

As long as they were next to me.

My throat clenched.

I looked aside. Nothing. Only empty air drilling a deep hole in the side of the couch Dad used to take. I turned back and dropped my watery eyes to my hands. They looked pale, lifeless. They had the same cold shade as, well, two years ago.

Two years.

It looked as if my hands had been frozen in time, waiting. Waiting for them and their soothing warmth, the only one able to melt the unseen ice crusting my palms and fingers.

“This was a bad idea,” I whispered with a shaky voice. A small, crystal tear fell down on my slender finger. I watched it slide down, tracing a damp trail on my skin until it merged into the ice of my palm. I closed my hand and looked up. Watching news was something I used to do with Dad. Since that dreadful day, I’d promised to myself I wouldn’t go back to the morning routine. But sometimes, the deep hole in my chest seemed to ask for it, as if only for a few seconds a thick, cozy sensation filled the huge gap in my chest. Even if I knew that afterwards, a sharp, burning feeling would deepen the hole.

“Breaking news,” the CNN anchor announced, shaking me off from the hard waves pressing my chest. “Three people have been hospitalized in Chicago after suddenly falling unconscious at two separate locations in that city. The three are reportedly in comas. Two, both teenagers, were watching a movie at a local cinema when they unexpectedly fell unconscious, according to officials. Around the same time, a twenty-eight-year-old female collapsed at the Eckhart Park Library, exhibiting the same symptoms. Officials have not confirmed a cause, but have ruled out stroke, alcohol and drug use and injury.

“We’ll keep you informed as new developments come in.” The man ended and looked down at a thin pile of sheets between his hands, his face meaning business.

I turned off the TV and strode into the kitchen. Gran was eating that nasty looking chunk she used to eat every morning. It looked like mashed worms. Yuck. My curiosity wasn’t big enough to ask her what it was. I was afraid to throw up.

“Guten Morgen, Dafne,” she told me as I sat down and grasped the cereal from the middle of the round table. I didn’t know why she insisted on throwing German words at me instead of simply saying “good morning.” But, hey, she was half-German. Even though I didn’t like the language—it sounded like rocks were stuck in people’s throat—it was part of Gran’s identity, and if grating out harsh, guttural words made her happy, my dislikes came at the bottom of the list.

“Hey, Gran.” I emptied some of the Oh’s into a chipped black bowl. Looking at it sent a warm wave to my chest. Everyone in the house knew I’d taken this bowl under my care—and I say care because I was really fond of it. Ever since I’d seen it all pushed down at the bottom of the cupboard behind newer, shiny china, I’d claimed it as mine. My heart had squeezed at the sight.

I knew that feeling sorry for a hollow piece of ceramic, which had no heart or spirit whatsoever, was outright ridiculous. But I did. I loved this bowl. Breakfast wouldn’t be the same without it.

“I heard you watching the news,” Gran said with a smile in her voice, a faint accent lacing her soft words.

“I, uh, yeah.” I lowered my eyes, averting them from her knowing stare. She had the ability to peel away layers of skin with those eyes, often leaving one’s core uncovered. And today wasn’t a good day to let that happen. “Where’s Aunt Morgan?” I asked as fast as I could to change the subject.

“Oh, she had some tutoring half an hour ago.”

“Another one?” I said, pouring some organic milk over the yellowish loops. “That makes three new students this week. How does she handle it with her classes and all?”

“One word honey: workaholic,” Gran said with her pale eyebrows pulled up.

She was right. Aunt Morgan spent nearly ninety percent of her time giving classes and tutoring on her spare time at college. It was only about fifteen minutes away from our house in the Historic Maple Hill in Berryford, Indiana. All the houses around here used to creep me out when we came to visit Gran on weekends while we still lived in Chicago. My mind couldn’t stop flashing at me imagined ghosts when I spotted the old structures haunting the edges of the street.

But watching the same landscape every single day now—without ghostly shapes staring at me through old French windows—helped a great deal. The idea of a ghost-free neighborhood had finally branded into me.

“Where is your sister by the way?” Gran said, looking around.

“Who knows?” I shoved the overloaded spoon of Oh’s into my mouth. “Maybeburying hernose intoabook orsomething.” I mumbled between crunches. I swallowed the sweet mouthful and said, “Or maybe staring all dreamily at her closet, watching that excessive heap of fabric and shoes she dares to call ‘fashion.’ Seriously, I can smell her brain frying from the outfit-picking-exertion.”

“Don’t be so mean, Dafne.” Gran threw me a disapproving look. “Clothes and books are your sister’s way of…of”—coping with Mom and Dad’s death?—”…liberation,” she finally said.

“Right.” I looked away from her, my throat feeling swollen. At least she had a way to do it. Me? I had nothing, only a bitchy attitude that had given me the title of ‘Ms. Ice Queen’ at high school.

Was that my way to cope with my parents’ death? I had no idea. And frankly, I didn’t want to think about it. Watching the news this morning had already broadened the gaping hole in my chest.

“You should spend some more time with her, Dafne. She needs your company, not your coldness—which I know is pretense.”

I snorted. “Whatever, Gran.” And right away felt guilty for the bitter words. Perhaps to the rest of the world I could be Ms. Ice Queen, but to Gran, never. She was the only one who could truly see through me.

“Sorry,” I sighed and looked into her baby blues. “I promise I’ll try to be less cold with Buffy.”

“What’s up with me?” Buffy said as she glided right behind me. She pulled out a Pop-Tarts box from the pantry and turned to look at me. “I heard my name, so don’t play the fool on me, sis.”

“I said Fluffy, not Buffy,” I lied, laying my arm on the headrest of the chair so I could see her straight in the eyes. “Talk about massive paranoia.”

“I may be two minutes younger than you,” she placed her hands on her hips. “But I'm not stupid or stone-deaf. Besides, do you think I’ll believe you were talking about an old, smelly teddy bear? It’s insulting,” she scoffed.

Yeah. Buffy was my twin. Born on the same day, in the same room, and on the same bed. Though we shared these things together, we didn’t share the same physical architecture, or the same emotional traits, or the same personality. The only thing linking us in this life as twins was the day our wobbly forms had come out of Mom’s pain-stricken body. Beyond that, nobody would have suspected we were twins—or related even. We were opposites. An electron and a positron. A yin and a yang.

Where she was cheerful and friendly, I was indifferent and unfriendly. Where she was brown-eyed and blonde, I was blue-eyed and darkette. Where she had a straight nose and straight hips, I had a button nose and curvy hips. And where she dressed all girly, I dressed all tomboyish—sexy tomboyish I liked to think.

We were a walking contradiction.

“Actually, that crap of being stone-deaf and all was true dear, Buffy,” I told her while looking at my midnight blue nails.

“Dafne,” Gran said with a reproving voice. “Mind the dirty language.”

I stopped checking my nail polish and turned to look at her. “ ‘Crap’ is the soft term for the ‘s’ word, Gran.”

“Dafne,” she said in a sharper tone.

“Okay, okay. What I meant was that the poop…”—I glanced at Gran for her approval. She nodded, so I continued—”…about you being severely hearing impaired was true. You didn’t hear my heavenly voice when I called your name to the heavens for breakfast minutes ago.”

“Oh, how could I’ve missed your sweet voice?” She clasped her hands together in an overly dramatic way. “Perhaps the deep knocks on my door, as in let’s-throw-the-door-down deep, masked your calling!”

“Don’t turn all Buffy-the-vampire-slayer on me,” I said to drive her over the edge. I knew she hated being compared to the TV character. Everyone did it. Her name was a curse for life, poor thing.

What I didn’t know was why I was being such a bitch to her. As always, the words seemed to come out of their own will.

“Buffy, watch the attitude,” Gran told her with that sharp disapproving voice, though less hard than the one she’d used on me.

So unfair.

“Why am I the one to watch my attitude?” Buffy said, angry, and tossed the Pop-Tart she’d been holding onto the counter. “You know she’s the one with that problem, Gran, not me. She clearly has some issues. She always does. At least she always does with me.” She looked at me with glistening eyes and stormed away from the kitchen. A sharp snap from a door barked through the house a few seconds later.

“You said you will try, Dafne, not make her cry.”

“I know, Gran,” I admitted full of remorse and stood up. “I know.” I took the cracked Pop-Tart from the counter and stuffed it inside the silver package. “See you later.”