*
The airport was fluttering busy. Jenny had dressed up for the flight—she’d coated her lashes in a careful layer of mascara, pulled on a pair of low-heeled boots. Back in the hotel room, Hazel had braced for an explosion, an acknowledgment of those ugly vulnerable truths, but Jenny had only hummed idly as she ran a brush through her tangled hair. Hazel hadn’t slept all night, Jenny’s light snores mingling with her accusation in the dank pit of Hazel’s mind.
They walked together to security.
“I guess this is it,” Jenny said, stopped in front of a store that sold luxury backpacks.
People flooded around, jostling.
“Don’t cry, Hazel.” Jenny rolled her eyes. “You’re starting to look like Mom.”
They hugged, and Hazel swayed. You are the strong sister, she wanted to say. You are the brave. But all that came out was a whisper, muffled into Jenny’s hair. I’m sorry. As they broke apart, a snag caught on Hazel’s sweater. A long moment as they both looked at it, the gem tangled in a loose thread: the ring.
“I guess that’s a sign.” Jenny laughed.
She twisted the ring from her finger, placed it in Hazel’s open palm.
“You don’t want to take it?” Hazel asked.
“Hang on to it for me, will you? It’s time to start new. I don’t need to carry any reminders.”
The ring was heavy, morose, sliding into Hazel’s pocket. She wondered how Jenny had worn it all those years, dragging such weight.
“Okay,” Jenny said. “See you on the other side.”
Hazel watched Jenny’s bobbing head disappear into the crowd—she had never, in her entire life, felt further from her sister. On the airplane, Jenny would order a Sprite with a wedge of lime, she’d flip through a tabloid magazine, folding down the corner of the horoscope page. Hazel would always know these things about Jenny—the details, the habits, the tiny gravitations. But details did not make a person. And in the days and weeks and months to follow, Jenny’s details would change. She’d live in a city Hazel had never seen, feel a southern sun that had never scalded Hazel’s skin. Jenny would create a new iteration of her half of the whole, shaping herself intentionally into something fresh. All the while, Hazel would be here. Here Hazel was, paralyzed in the shiny terminal, all linoleum floors and rushing bodies. Here Hazel was, burning with the familiar urge to follow, to keep up, and, eventually, to surpass. Here Hazel was, always the same.
The parking garage was midnight dark. In the concrete dim, Hazel examined the ring—an object from a different universe. Amethyst and brass. It did not belong here. Before starting for home, Hazel opened the glove compartment and let the ring drop unceremoniously in. A clink, a tumble. She would let it sit there, forgotten, until it was like it had never existed at all.
*
“Are you sure?” the woman asked, two hours later. “All of it?”
“All of it,” Hazel said.
She sat in a swiveling chair at the fanciest salon in Burlington. Her clothes still smelled starchy, like the hotel room—when she texted Luis that she’d be late, he replied with a photo of Alma’s gums, a bloody hole where her first baby tooth had wriggled free.
The stylist snipped, admired, held out a hunk of hair. Take a look at that. Hazel’s lank ponytail hung severed in the woman’s hand, still clumped in its rubber band. With an inch of hair left—just like Emma Watson, the stylist exclaimed—Hazel looked like a little boy. Like a nymph, or a fairy from one of Alma’s bedtime stories. A bit, yes, like Emma Watson. Transfixed by her reflection, Hazel imagined she had lived her entire life as this unrecognizable human, that she had always known this slim stranger face. Hazel lifted a hand from beneath the damp smock, to touch the teardrop freckle on her cheek. It seemed much larger than it had before. Less like a blemish, and more like a signal, the very thing that made Hazel herself. The feeling was so utterly delicious—Hazel watched, euphoric, as the twin in the mirror opened her mouth to a laugh that looked like waking, like becoming, like salvation.
2 Hours
Two hours, four minutes.
Jenny used to say that everything happens for a reason—you always teased her for the cliché. If everything happens for a reason, then what about war? What about cancer, school shootings? Jenny would only shake her head, wise and wistful, so resigned in her faith. There has to be a purpose, she would say. Pointless pain isn’t human instinct. We’ll always find meaning in it.
Optimistic, you’d say.