It happens in flickers, flashes. When Hazel looks inevitably up from the porcelain, she catches her own reflection, her short hair, that teardrop freckle. But Hazel will never be just herself again: Jenny reveals herself in a flare, a lurch. Jenny smirks in the curve of Hazel’s jaw. She hides in the crease of Hazel’s eyelid, lingers in the divot above Hazel’s lip.
A toilet flushes. Hazel breaks from her trance, startling backward into the sharp corner of the paper towel dispenser. When the stall door creaks open, a girl appears in the frame. She appraises Hazel, confused, the silence curdling.
“I’m sorry, I—” the girl finally stammers. “It’s just, you look exactly like her.”
“Excuse me?”
She reaches out, passive, as though to shake Hazel’s hand, her arm hanging limp between them. A flash of tattoo, a little bird on the inside of her wrist. She is dishwater blond, mid-twenties and notably unsettled, though her eyes flame with a distinct curiosity.
“Um, I’m Blue,” she says, like a question. “I’m really sorry, I should have known. He told me Jenny had a twin, I should have—”
“You knew my sister?” Hazel asks.
Blue shakes her head. “I never met her.”
The girl’s eyes are Ansel’s. A faint shade of light green, like early-summer moss.
“You’re here for Ansel, aren’t you?” Hazel asks. “His witness. You’re not—you can’t be his daughter.”
“Oh,” Blue says quickly. “No. I’m his niece.”
“Ansel doesn’t have any family,” Hazel says.
“His brother,” Blue says. “My dad.”
Hazel remembers that Christmas, so many years ago. How Ansel’s face had softened when he’d talked about his baby brother. A mask, she has since assumed, an intentional show of tragedy, engineered specifically for sympathy. Blue steps tentatively past—she flicks the faucet on, pumps soap from the dispenser. Hazel can see bits of Ansel in the slump of her shoulders. The pitch of her nose. It all seems so fallible, the things she once took for truth.
“Why are you here?” Hazel asks. “Why would you come, for someone like him?”
“If I’m being honest, I don’t really know.” The girl’s voice collapses. “I think—well, bad people feel pain, too.”
Blue’s hands drip into the basin. The bathroom echoes, cavernous. In the long wait, Hazel sees hurt. It is different from Hazel’s own, but it is hurt nonetheless. With soapy fingers, Blue reaches up. She says nothing more as she watches Hazel leave, her fingers playing at a locket, rusted red, dangling graceless around her neck.
*
When Hazel imagines death, she pictures a long, yawning sleep. More than a few times, she has yearned for it. She does not believe in heaven or hell, though faith would certainly be easier. As she stumbles back down the hall, abandoning Blue to the mirror, Hazel thinks how stupid it is. How absurd. A death like this—sterile, regulated, watched from a box—is just death. She has no idea to what extent it serves as punishment. The futility comes barreling down, a crumbling house. Hazel itches in the rubble. The utter pointlessness. The pure waste.
Back in the conference room, Hazel’s mother sips a paper cup of water. The warden paces by the door—when he sees Hazel, he nods toward the exit. The reporters gather their things, as Hazel takes her mother’s feathery hand.
“Are you ready?” the warden asks.
*
The memory comes with the first reluctant step. As Hazel follows the procession down the blank and empty hall, ribs thrumming, the enormity brings her back.
Come on, Hazel. I swear, the view is worth it.
Hazel is eight years old. She stands near the backyard fence, blinking up at Jenny, who straddles the highest branch of the maple tree. They are not supposed to climb this tree—too dangerous, their mother has warned. From below, Hazel can see the soles of Jenny’s bare feet, black from playing on the asphalt. Jenny leans down, offering a slippery hand, so confident, so easy to trust. Hazel kicks panicked at the trunk, fear twisting through her abdomen as Jenny grips her wrist, pulls her onto the creaking branch. Hazel balances, her legs dangling down toward the lawn, savoring the rush of fearlessness.
Look, Jenny says, beaming.
The neighborhood fans out through the speckled leaves. Hazel can see into neighbors’ yards, over fences and onto roofs, through shiny windows. The horizon is wide, and for the first time, endless. Jenny seems to know what she has gifted, because she pats Hazel on the shoulder, abundantly wise.