Free Beautiful Lies by Jessica Warman Page A

red-paint stains beneath his fingernails and along his cuticles. “You’re saying that nobody else knows who you really are.”I nod. “Yes.”
    “And who are they mistaking you for?”
    I stare at the carpet. “My sister. Rachel. We went to the fair together last night, and she disappeared. She still isn’t home. And I came here because I needed to ask you face-to-face if you saw her yesterday. But you wouldn’t have known it was her. She looked like me. I mean, she sort of
was
me.” I falter. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
    “I think so, yeah,” he says. “You two … switched?”
    “Yes.”
    He shakes his head, like what I’m saying can’t possibly be true. “Alice, come on. Nobody would buy that.”
    I almost laugh out loud. “You’ve never even met Rachel. You’ve never seen the two of us together. We’re identical.”
    “Okay, but still, there must be tiny differences. I’m sure your family—”
    “My family doesn’t know anything. We’ve been doing it for years, and we’ve been getting away with it. Robin, my aunt and uncle think that
I’m
Rachel. They think that Alice ran off last night, so they aren’t worried. But they should be,” I continue, my voice rising in panic, “because Rachel would never do anything like that. Something’s wrong. I know it is.”
    He presses his lips together in thought. “I assume this has something to do with the bruises on your face?”
    When he says the word—“bruises”—I flinch again. I can feel my eyes growing puffier by the minute. I have no idea how I’m going to hide this from my aunt and uncle;makeup can only do so much. I hesitate. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because it will sound crazy. It’s not, though. It’s true.”
    “Alice—”
    “Rachel and I have a connection,” I blurt. “It’s because we’re twins. But it’s not just that, Robin—we’re different than other twins. I’ve told you before. We shared the same gestational space. That isn’t how it normally works.” I stop, watching him, trying to appraise his expression. He can be tough to read.
    “You shared the same gestational space,” he echoes.
    I nod. “Yes.”
    “But isn’t that true for all twins?”
    “No.” When I shake my head, the room goes a little fuzzy, and I begin to feel dizzy. I have to wiggle my toes in my shoes, reassuring myself of the floor beneath my feet in order to remain steady. “During their mother’s pregnancy, normal twins will each have their own amniotic sac and their own placenta. Rachel and I shared them.”
    As he nods, I imagine him visualizing what I’m describing. “Okay,” he says, “but that can’t be so unusual, can it?”
    “Yes,” I say, “it’s unusual. Not unheard of, but rare—only about one percent of all twin pregnancies. And when Rachel and I were born eighteen years ago, medical technology wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is today. At least half of all monochorionic monoamniotic twins didn’t make it.”
    Robin squints at me. There’s a hint of satisfaction in his gaze. “But you two survived. And you’re … perfect.”
    “No, Robin. We aren’t perfect. We’re freaks.”
    “Freaks?” He raises an eyebrow. “You’re being a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
    I shake my head. “Think about it. First of all, we’re genetically identical. That’s not so rare, but
monochorionic monoamniotic
twins? That’s far less likely. Add to that the fact that both of us survived when we were born almost twenty years ago, and it makes us very lucky, to say the least. But now think about this: even though monochorionic monoamniotic twins are genetically identical, they often look different from each other once they’re born. Because of the complications from sharing one placenta and one amniotic sac, they sometimes develop at different rates in the womb—with one twin taking most of the nutrients from the other. Yet somehow, with almost no