“Sit down—I’ll make your plate.” She sighed, wiping her tears and washing her hands with lemon verbena soap. “We better get this over with.”
When she had two heaping piles of food, they sat down, and both looked at their plates as if they held some kind of answer. Before taking a bite, Seth cleared his throat.
“She gave me a very specific set of rules and instructions while we were in the hospital.” He opened the notes on his phone.
“We’re not allowed to mope about, and we’re not allowed to treat her like she’s dying.”
“Even though she is,” Sadie said, her voice granite hard.
“Even though she is,” Seth echoed. “We’re absolutely not allowed to tell anyone. That was her first rule. And we can’t try to convince her to take treatment, and we have to be nice to each other. Hey, it’s in the notes,” he said when Sadie rolled her eyes again. “And when she gets bad, if she starts to get dementia or whatever, we’re supposed to drop her off at the hospital and leave her there.”
“Like that’s going to happen,” Sadie snorted.
“I know, I’m just telling you what she said. Oh, and you’re supposed to re-salt the perimeter every night, whatever the hell that means.”
Sadie nodded, even though her world was fracturing. She could do this. She would do whatever Gigi wanted, even if it was insane. Her greatest fear was coming to pass, and she thought she would shrivel up, curl into a ball, and weep until she submerged herself in a river of her own tears. But to her surprise, a resolute calm was slowly working its way through her system, burning down her throat like elderflower cordial. She would take care of everything.
“Okay, thanks,” Sadie said, nodding slowly. “I’ll take it from here. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
“What do you mean?” Seth asked, genuinely confused.
“I mean”—Sadie waved an airy hand—“you do what you do, and I’ll do what I do. You’re busy, you have a life, you were—”
“Would you quit pushing me away?” he cut in.
“I thought that’s what you’d want,” she said, her brows pulling down in the middle. “I figured I’d be doing you a favor.”
“God, for being my twin, you really don’t get it.” And just like that, the tenuous peace they’d been forming snapped like peanut brittle. “Do you even know why I left? Because I couldn’t take living in your goddamn shadow anymore. I was drowning in magic that I had nothing to do with.”
“You never wanted it anyway!” she argued. “All you cared about was being normal, separating yourself from us, living your own life.”
“Yeah, and that’s worked out really well for me, hasn’t it?” He shook his head like she had no idea about anything.
“Oh, I’m sorry Gigi’s dying and that you have to actually involve yourself in our lives. But please, don’t do us any favors.” She wanted to cross her arms but knew it would look petulant.
“Listen, we can’t do this. It’s one of Gigi’s rules. Can you please just believe me when I say I’m doing the best I can? I was a dick, okay? I shouldn’t have left like that. I should’ve told you. I should’ve answered your calls. But I couldn’t. I was in a black hole. It’s like I have this demon living inside me that dictates when the darkness comes, and I can’t stop it. Some days it’s quiet, and I wake up and think I can do it, I can make it through the day. But other days I’m just suffocating, and I hate not being in control like that. So yeah, I was a dick. And I’m sorry.”
Sadie stared at her brother. He’d never spoken like that before. Tendrils of guilt started to hook into her heart. What kind of twin was she? What kind of sister that she didn’t even know, couldn’t even guess that he was going through any of that?
“Why haven’t you gotten help?” she asked quietly.
“Like a therapist?” He laughed without humor. “How do you think that would go? ‘Hey, shrink. My magic is giving me depression and anxiety.’ Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“But look at Raquel. Her bipolar disorder has gotten so much better. It’s manageable now because she’s on the right meds. She sees a psychiatrist and a therapist.”
“Yeah, and I’m really fucking proud of her for that. It’s not that I don’t believe in therapy, I just don’t believe in it for me. Our magic, it messes everything up. We’re not normal.”