Chapter Two

Asher

Brenton

I wasn't okay.

My fingertips were numb as my wrists shook under the thick hoodie sleeves, my hair cold against my skin, I detected someone behind me that followed closely but I clenched my book securely.

I shivered rigorously from the inside but I had always kept my toughest face on. Even though the shadow behind me was close enough to me, I wasn't afraid of anyone.

Sometimes, talking less was a pain reliever for me. It was something that gave me my peace. I was aware that being like that didn't bring my twin back from the fire, but it was the only solution to turn it off.

To turn the scenes of the fire that ceased in my head and soul off. The flashbacks was what kept me on my heels through night and day, it was the midnight fire that bursted through my family's house.

"Go, Asher, leave me." My twin, Averly, pushed me out of the house door.

"No, Aver, I can help you." But it was late. She looked at me with longing and fire across her body.

I shook my head momentarily and I was pulled from the back of my hoodie by a girl.

"You're a fucking prick, Asher,"

Jocelyn definitely couldn't get under my skin. She was my twin's best friend who hasn't gotten over the news for a year now. Nobody did for it was the only huge accident that happened ever since and that I had started it.

Hence why Jocelyn hated my guts.

"You're just a wimp that killed Averly. You'll see what will happen to you." Her threats didn't even graze me because I was barely living and if she wanted to end me, I would let her.

I didn't deserve to live. I deserved to be next to my sister. My parents wouldn't put my grave near hers, but at least I would reconnect my soul with hers.

She pushed my shoulder with hers as she moved forward in front of me. She had the same fire in her eyes, and I didn't blame her. Averly was the queen of Ayb School and she had the happiest moments of her life then and there.

I was her dark twin. I didn't socialize around, hated people in all of my years, and I only talked when I was forced to.

As they said, less talking had more meaning. The prickly feel to the icicles on the rails of the book shop made me comfortable; I was immune to pain at the fact that I didn't have anything to lose. The only person I ever opened up to was my sister.

The warmth of the bookshop made me sedated as the librarian greeted me with her pearly whites and overly exaggerated top that showed her cleavage. I breezed by the poetry section, my fingers trailed the outline of the work of Pablo Neruda's Residence of Earth — it was the only thing that Averly and I had in common. I could still hear her singing in every book corner in the library.

I took out the book, putting the other book I held closely on the shelf as I sat down with squared legs and opened the pages to read. I didn't regret skipping the first day, I loved being here with books that surrounded me endlessly. I was engrossed in the poetry until a figure loomed over me.

"Do you not hear the constant victory,

in the human footrace of time, slow as fire, sure, and thick and Herculean accumulating its volume and adding its sad fiber?"

She quoted in soft whispers only for me to hear as she squatted down next to me.