I was sure the stairs leading to your bedroom were trimmed with gold, and that your bed was sheltered by a silk canopy washed in pink, mint green and daisy yellow.
Your bike had a cushy white banana seat and copper-flecked paint that glowed in the NY summer sun,
And without training wheels, too, because your Dad showers you with endless attention. You swore to us that you’d taught yourself, but I knew better.
You were specially-ordered and perfectly engineered.
Your parents found you at the children’s home. They chose you for those big blue doe eyes and flaxen hair. You twinned perfectly with your older brother.
“This way, everyone will think they’re really related,” your mother told mine.
The whirl of pony-ride-and-magician parties still haunts me today. I was one of the chosen ones who were asked to attend, but even at five, I knew it was because our dads worked for the same company.
Twelve. Ouch, that hurt. Tube socks, tube tops and shorter-than-short cut off jeans in the summer; in the fall, Rugby shirts, bright new Pumas. Levis with the neon orange back- pocket tag screaming their authenticity. Comb in back pocket, and notes from the boys falling like raindrops onto the floor next to your desk in English class. Not me. Never me.
Well, no, I’m wrong. I did get notes, but they were from you, not the boys. You didn’t write them. They were mostly stick figure drawings of me, with frizzy hair waving madly above my stick-figure head. Beady eyes, and teeth that belonged on a beaver. Long dog ears. Kevin’s renditions of me, specially made for your eyes, for you to laugh at, to enjoy, to make him like you. They worked, it seems. You stayed together until sophomore year of high school.
High school. Class president, prom queen two years running. Honor roll for all four.
Scholarship. Do I have to go on?
Yeah, I do. Because I’m trying to figure out what went wrong.
After graduation came the celebratory trip to the French Riviera, all expenses paid.
Customs found something stashed in your Gucci purse. You couldn’t have taken care to hide it anywhere else. Why? Why?
I see your picture in the local paper. The story told about how a prominent family’s only daughter did 20 years abroad, how her parents were so heartbroken neither of them survived to see her released. I stared at your photo.
Your hair is brown now.
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