Free On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming Page A

and the movable sidewalk that jutted into Lake Michigan was shut down because of the whitecaps breaking over it. I had even heard rumors that Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show would be canceled.
    Such a shame! I would have sincerely loved seeing my sister, Blanche, get trampled by a herd of stampeding bison.
    “I cannot believe this weather, and on the day
I
decide to attend the fair,” Blanche fretted, fumbling with her parasol. It might have been windy, but the sun beating down on us was a hot July one.
    Just as soon as she opened her parasol, though, the wind snatched it from her lace-gloved hands. It flew out over the North Pond like a fleeing raven.
    I giggled.
    “I fail to see the humor,” said Blanche in her usualnose-in-the-air tone. “I’ll be baked crispy as a farmhand if I don’t escape this dreadful sun.”
    I imagined a curl of smoke rising from a charred, withered thing. Blanche baked to a crisp. Delightful!
    Blanche noted my pleasure.
    “Sister dear,” she said oh so sweetly, “you’re positively
dewy
.” She offered me one of her lace-edged handkerchiefs. It smelled of rose water. “Really, Evelyn, you sweat so profusely one might think you were a common laborer.” And with that bit of nastiness, she sailed off.
    I stood there, hating her. I think I had always hated my twin sister—since that day, sixteen years ago last month, when we were born.
    Blanche came first, of course, shoving me aside so she could make her dramatic entrance into the world. The firstborn. The special one.
    “She had such wide blue eyes,” Mother once recalled when I asked about that day, “and such translucent alabaster skin. The midwife claimed she’d never seen such a beautiful infant.”
    “What about me?” I begged. “What do you remember about me?”
    “You were different from Blanche,” Mother said. “So small and dark. We were”—she fumbled for the word—“startled.”
    Something cold and bitter began nibbling at my insides.
    Did anyone coo over me when I appeared minutes later? I longed to ask. Did they marvel at my skin, too?Admire my eyes? I guessed not. As always, Blanche had seized all the attention for herself.
    As we grew, our differences became more pronounced. Blanche was all golden light. I was dingy and plump. Blanche glowed with wit and laughter. I preferred to keep to myself. Blanche was all cultured breeding. I detested putting on airs.
    “Like day and night,” Father often said.
    “More like Beauty and the Beast,” Blanche would taunt behind his back.
    That was Blanche—sweet kisses and pretty smiles in public, hisses and torment when we were alone together.
    Now Blanche turned, the wind snapping at her skirts. “Come
on
, Evelyn.” She pressed her
Handbook of the World’s Columbian Exposition
to her chest to keep its hundreds of pages from ruffling. “Honestly, you dodder like an old man. We won’t have time to see a thing if you don’t hurry up.”
    What she meant was that we wouldn’t have time to see all the things
she
wanted to see. If I’d had my druthers, we’d have been walking along the Midway Plaisance, a mile-long stretch of the exotic and miraculous—Persian belly dancers, Hindu jugglers and, of course, Mr. Ferris’s big steel wheel. I heard there was even a wax museum where one could see Marie Antoinette about to be guillotined.
    I studied Blanche’s delicate neck. A charming picture sprang to mind.
    Earlier that morning at breakfast, Blanche had haughtily announced, “I have decided on our itinerary.” She had dropped the thick handbook onto the linen-covered table, causing Mother’s bone china to rattle. “We will take in the lace and embroidery demonstration at the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, followed by a lecture about silkworms at the Horticulture Building, and then refreshments in the ladies’ tearoom at the Woman’s Building. Afterward we will tour the Palace of Fine Arts, where some of the fair’s most culturally significant