Snow

     Crystal Wright…my other half. I have finally come to this day. Oh, but please let me explain myself before I tell the horrible plan I am about to execute. My name is Amber Boyd and today, January tenth, is my seventeenth birthday. I was born in a small town to a single mother who was knocked up in a drunken one-night-stand. As a child, I was bullied at school for not having a father, and when I got home, I was bullied by my mother. “If only you weren’t born, my life wouldn’t be this miserable!” she would say drunkenly, and one day when she hit me, a pot of hot boiling water knocked over onto me and left a big keloid across my left cheek. This was when I first started wearing my hair down in a way that covered half of my face. I naturally grew up to become a girl who didn’t smile much, nor did I talk to anybody. But I did have one friend. His name was Gram Murray. He was a graduate student AT some college at the time and a neighbor. I would go over to his apartment after school where he made me food and told me funny stories. He was my only source of laughter at the time. Although he soon moved away to marry his long distant girlfriend.

     It was my second year in high school, still alone, when my mother fell heavily ill. “Amber, I won’t be much longer, so I want to tell you something I haven’t told anyone for sixteen years, I’ve almost even forgotten about it but…sixteen years ago, when you were born, I also gave birth to another girl. You have a twin sister.” It all came upon me out of nowhere. She told me how a young man came to her room the following day of our birth, bringing an offer and a suitcase full of money. He had heard about her situation from the chief surgeon. He too had a new daughter the day before but the child was born dead, his wife was in a coma and did not know about her stillborn child yet. He said that the baby girl was the first child they were longing for and that they could both help each other out.  And so that was how it happened, my mother sold my twin sister for a stack of cash. Nobody knew except for her, him, the chief surgeon, and the two nurses who delivered me and my sister. She told me all this in the hour right before her death, leaving me no time to question her.

     I was soon taken in by an uncle to live with his family. There, I was bossed around to work for their family business liquor store with no pay, like a servant and wasn’t allowed to go to school. I had a cousin of the same age who I watched go to school every morning while I scrubbed the floor. One day when I was sorting old magazines in the garage, I saw my face in an article. The picture was of me smiling with a man and a woman on either side of me, also smiling. The headline read “The Family that has it all!” It took me a second to finally realize that it couldn’t have been me, it must be my twin sister who I still didn’t believe I had until this point, her name was Crystal Wright. How wealthy she looked, how happy she looked, even just the sound of her name sparkled. If only if I was the one handed away sixteen years ago at the hospital...if only if we could trade places! That was when a small flame lit inside me to begin proceeding with my secret plan. That night, I packed all of my few belongings and snuck out my uncle’s house for good; the revenue of the liquor store that I had stolen and the cutout of the article gripped tightly in my hand.

***

     It has been a full year since I left my uncle’s house, and I am fully prepared. I researched every detail about Crystal and her family, I grew out my hair just like hers, and I got rid of that horrid keloid covering half of my face by an unlicensed plastic surgeon I found. I purposely waited for this day, my seventeenth birthday, and hers. It is going to be the beginning of a new life for me.

     I am at a public phone stand at this ski resort. Crystal, her two best friends Tanya and Mary, and her personal servant Gale are staying at the Wright’s cabin for the weekend to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. I look at Crystal’s face smile so happily through my binoculars. A hint of doubt crosses me. Oh Crystal, this may be the last time you will ever smile, you don’t know what’s coming about you today, on your birthday, on our birthday. But life didn’t treat us equally, you lived with all the wealth you could have in this world and I lived a life of misery. Crystal, poor little girl, my sister, or god knows if you really are, I’m really sorry, but life isn’t fair.

     “Miss Crystal, here’s a phone call for you.” I hear Crystal’s servant say on the other side of the phone.

     “Gale, who is it? Hello?” Crystal picks up, probably thinking it was a birthday wish phone call from a friend.

     “I know a secret.” I instantly speak and continue without letting her respond. “Listen carefully, you are not the real daughter of Ed Wright and Synthia Wright. This is not a joke. You don’t look anything like either of your parents. Your blood type doesn’t match theirs either. It’s true, I’ve already checked.”

     “What...excuse me? What are you talking about? Who is this? Is this some kind of prank?” She sounds frustrated.

     “It’s the truth. I even have a witness with me. Oh, and by the way, how impressive that you score the highest for the statewide test every year. How did you pull that one off? Oh right, you paid that poor child, with the highest grade at your school, to write your name on his test. What was his name again, Alex Duong, was it? You were probably trying to keep up with your father’s successful status. But doesn’t it make sense now? You didn’t inherit you father’s intelligent genes. You couldn’t have.”

     “…Did Alex tell you this? Is he there?” Her voice drops low.

     “Come to the forest off the third private ski route, and you can see for yourself. But make sure you don’t tell anybody where you’re going, unless you want to dishonor your family.” I hang up as I hear Crystal attempting to say something.

     Crystal comes alone right away just as I predicted, her face pale as the snow. I greet her at the entrance of the woods with a mask and pair of sunglasses on. She asks impatiently who I am, stuttering, from the cold or something else. I tell her to be patient as I lead her deeper into the woods. She asks me again nervously who I am and where the witness is, who she believed to be that kid Alex.

     “I’m going to let you meet her right now.” I say as I unveil my disguise, while Crystal puts a puzzled look on her face by the word ‘her’ instead of ‘him’, and soon this look becomes petrified. Here, we finally stand face to face after seventeen years. Crystal can’t seem to help but be startled. The way her round Hazel eyes widened, the way her thin hair waved loosely, the way her nose reddened from the cold, even every little placement of freckle on her cheeks seems to match mine. It’s like looking at a mirror, except for my reflection has a horrified look on her face with her hands cupped over her mouth. A strange feeling comes across me, a kind of a loving warm feeling for my sister. But this feeling is quickly brushed away when Crystal finally moves her mouth.

     “Wha…I can’t….” she can’t even finish a word. “Who are you…what do you want?” she is still in disbelief.

     “I’m Amber Boyd. Your twin sister. We were separated at birth seventeen years ago. You were unofficially adopted under the table to your parents now who had a stillborn daughter the day we were born.” I told her the great revelation in a mere fifteen seconds.

     “Tell me what you want!” She suddenly clings onto me. “It’s money isn’t it? Just tell me, how much do you want?” Her stutter is now gone. My face blushes with anger by Crystal’s insulting words. Money? Money wouldn’t pay off even a bit of the life I had to live until today! That fraction of doubt and love I felt earlier is now gone as well and that little flame lit that night I found out about Crystal’s existence is now flaming violently inside me. I instinctively shove her to the ground and slip off the leather belt from my jeans. Crystal, still on the ground, attempts to crawl away but I step on the tail of her coat and don’t let her. I quickly jump on her back, locking her to the ground, and wrap the belt around her neck. Crystal is screaming hysterically for her life. I smash her face down and spots of red stain the virgin snow. She grips at my jacket with her last strength which was easily undoable. Her scream is reduced to more of a squeal as I tighten the belt. She fidgets a little, lets out something that sounds like a mixture of a squeal and a gag and stops moving.

     There layed my long lost twin sister, dead still, her face buried in the snow. “…Crystal?” I nudge her as though I was expecting her to answer. I breathe heavily with cold sweat trickling down the side of my face. I nudge her again, I gasp as I roll her over to see the terrifying trace of agony on her face. It was like looking at my own dead body. What have I done. I think to myself. My ugly envy is now burnt out. My vision blurs as warm tears overflow my eyes. Snow starts to fall gently in between the trees over our heads. I hold Crystal tightly and close, so she won’t be cold. The snow and wind starts to intensify but I am numb. I rock side to side and hold her closer as I whisper “sorry” over and over into her ear, hoping that she wakes up. But she never does.

     That winter, a strange scene was discovered a week after that January tenth. Two girls with the same but very different faces were found dead a mile and a half away from the Wright’s cabin, half-burried in snow. One had an unbearable horrified look on her face, and the other one had a deep sorrowful one. Nobody could imagine what had happened that one snowy day. Only the snow knows.