On Monday morning, I was jolted by a beeping outside my bedroom window.

                  It was strange to hear, mostly due to the fact it’d been noticeably absent for the last four weeks, for obvious reasons. There’d even been time to get used to mornings without it, long periods of quietness that allowed me to sleep well past eleven. With school not a pressing commitment, there’d been no reason for me to wake early; in fact, it was preferable to sleep as many hours as possible, because those were less painful than any waking moments. Today, however, the startling familiarity of the sound was almost overwhelming.

                  Poking my head out of the window, it was everything I expected: the same old silver Micra was straddling the pavement outside my house, its wonky parking obviously my best friend’s handiwork. Archie, despite having been a licensed driver for over a year, had failed to improve his parking skills at all over those twelve months, and the car outside my house still kind of looked like it’d been abandoned in a run from the police. Despite myself, I managed a smile.

                  It was almost like we’d been transported back, zapped into an unspecified day sometime before it had all happened, a time where our normal arrangement still stood. Archie had been giving me lifts to school ever since he got his license, because of course that kind of thing was a requirement of best friendship. A lot of the time, Reese had joined us, hitching a lift under the insistence that we came as a package deal – even though she was often more than happy to ditch both of us in favour of whatever car-owning boy she was leading on at the time. Her relationships – if they could even be called that – had never stood the test of time, but for the few weeks they’d stretched, Archie and I had taken the morning drives alone.

                  Sparing myself one last glance in the mirror, I picked up my bag and headed downstairs. Mum and Brian’s voices could be heard in the kitchen: a hushed conversation over coffee that dwindled into nonexistence at the sound of my footsteps. On any other day, they’d have left for work already, but they’d both unsubtly hung back, acting like they had reasons other than my first day back at school.

                  I knew Mum would be expecting a goodbye, but as my foot landed on the final step, I realised I couldn’t face it. Conversations with her nowadays seemed to have a way of ending up at counsellors and coping mechanisms, one way or another. So, even though there’d be hell to pay later, I avoided the kitchen altogether and made straight for the front door.

                  I kept up a brisk pace all the way down the front path, only hesitating once I’d reached the passenger side of Archie’s car and clambered inside. With the door closed, at least there came the guarantee that Mum wouldn’t be out for a pep talk.

                  “Hey, you.”

                  For a moment, the familiarity of the voice threatened to overwhelm me. I couldn’t help drawing a sharp breath, letting my eyes wander towards the driver’s seat. Archie, of course, looked the same as ever; his appearance was comfortingly unchanged, even though mine must’ve morphed beyond recognition. He still managed to look lanky, even wedged behind the wheel, and his swooping blond style was as expertly crafted as ever. I knew full well he woke up thirty minutes early each morning to perfect his hair, and today didn’t look like an exception.

                  Our eyes met across the car, and a small smile crept onto his face. “How’s it going?”

                  With anybody else, the question would’ve been unbearable, but this was Archie, and therefore a whole different story. “Fabulous, actually,” I said, with more sarcasm than I’d been able to muster for four weeks. It was kind of a surprise to hear the inflection on my words. “So good, in fact, that I think I’m over it completely.”

                  He laughed, and I felt some of the tension leak away at the sound, like he was drawing it right out of my muscles. “Making jokes already, huh? That’s got to be a good sign.”

                  In a way, it must’ve been true, but Archie wasn’t just anybody. We’d been best friends for years, and though it had never come anything close to what Reese and I had, he’d always been a close second place. He was the only person I felt I could make a joke to, if not only because it felt like the most normal situation I’d been in since Reese’s death. It was, at least, the first time my throat didn’t feel ready to close up every time I thought about her.

                  “Yeah, well,” I said, leaning over to clip my seatbelt into place, “a month spent in bed is supposed to cure everything. Or at least that’s what my mum seems to think.”

                  “Well, you seem to be doing better, at any rate.”

                  I shrugged. “I’m okay, I guess.”

                  I wasn’t even sure how true it was; it had always been difficult to tell, but even more so since Mum dropped the bomb that school was back on the cards. Every day seemed to run on such an emotional rollercoaster – feeling fine one moment, like I was finally coming to terms with things, but falling apart the next – that there was no real middle ground. I’d always assumed I’d know when I was okay, like a green light switching on inside my head that signalled all systems go, but it was looking increasingly unlikely.

                  “Seriously, though.” His voice had me glancing over as he shifted the car into first gear and pulled away from the pavement. The note of sincerity lingering across both words was different to what I’d received off everybody else; it was sympathy, but not to the same piteous extreme. “You’re doing great, Callie. Going back to school… all of this shit, you know, it’s not easy. I’m proud of you.”

                  I knew he meant it, but it wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on. Not with everything that lay ahead. What I needed was a normal conversation, something focused on things other than how I was coping, something that took me back and kept me there for as long as possible. “Oh, God.”

                  He shot me a sideways look. “What?”

                  “Did you have to make this sappy? I was counting on you to be the non-sappy one.”

                  “Sorry.” Hitting the indicator, we pulled out at the junction, hitting the main stretch of road that would take us in the direction of school. “I haven’t seen you in three weeks; I had to get it out of my system. But I’m done now, I promise.”

                  “Thank God for that,” I murmured, only half-serious.

                  I hadn’t meant to push Archie away over the last month; it was just something that, along with everything else, had just happened. He’d called more than a few times, leaving voicemails and concerned texts, but it had always been at the wrong time. The wrong time, when I was crying so hard any words I forced out were incoherent. The wrong time, when I felt too numb to do anything except stare at the ceiling. The wrong time. At least that’s what I’d told myself. I hadn’t stopped to wonder whether I even had right times anymore.

                  Thankfully, though, he didn’t seem too weird about it. Slipping back so easily into school run conversation came as a staggering relief. Where we were headed, words spoken to me would almost certainly be consumed by the subject of my sister, so I wanted to make the most of normality while I still had the chance.

                  “What’s been going on, anyway?” I asked, as the thought occurred to me. “The whole of December. Anything much happen at school?”

                  He didn’t need much more prompting. “Derek Bishop came out,” he said instantly, which had me quirking an eyebrow. “What? He did! It was Facebook official, and everything.”

                  “You seem unusually excited.”

                  Suddenly aware he’d been caught out, Archie’s mouth dropped open a little. “Hey. All I’m doing is taking an interest in current affairs. Is that such a crime?”

                  “No,” I told him, “but it does sound a little like you can’t wait to pounce on him.”

                  “Callie Washington!” he gasped. Then, after a few seconds, he shrunk down in his seat. “But, I mean… if he were to pounce on me, I’m not saying I’d be complaining…”

                  “Knew it.” Even I heard the self-satisfied note in my tone. “What else, then? Anything other than newly gay guys you’re now going to spend all biology lessons daydreaming about?”

                  “Nope, just Derek.”

                  I smirked. “That’s disappointing. What else happened?”

                  He paused to think. “Er… the school newspaper’s been falling apart without your column.”

                  My head snapped in his direction, an involuntary reaction. “What? Really?”

                  Catching sight of my expression, he broke out into a smile. “Nope. Not really. I just reckoned that was what you’d want to hear.”

                  “I haven’t even thought about newspaper,” I said, with a surprising amount of truth. It had barely crossed my mind over the past four weeks. I’d never officially given it up, instead just assuming my sudden absence from school would serve as resignation enough, and I hadn’t contacted any of them since.

                  “Well, I’m assuming it survived without you.” We turned off left onto one of the side roads, now only about five minutes from pulling into the school car park. The thought already had my heart pounding. “Not that I read the school newspaper, anyway. I didn’t when you were on it, and I wasn’t about to start while you were away.”

                  “It was only one column.” I swallowed as my gaze fell upon a long string of students, all trailing up the path that led to the main entrance. We were driving too fast to recognise any faces, but the anticipation tightened my chest all the same. “I don’t think losing it would’ve been disastrous.”

                  “Oh, I don’t know. Mitchell was looking stressed.”

                  “Mitchell always looks stressed,” I pointed out, thinking of the newspaper’s long-time editor, who spent most of his time running to keep up with his self-imposed deadlines. “He just gets too into his work.”

                  “Well, you’ll have to ask him when you get your spot back.”

                  For some reason, the words had me glancing sharply over at Archie; he hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary, but it sounded strange all the same. “I’m not getting my spot back.”

                  “What are you talking about? You loved writing for that paper. You’re not even going to go back?”

                  My mind trailed toward the school bag wedged into the space by my feet – or, more specifically, what I’d stuffed into it last night. Somewhere in the hunt for my school stuff, I’d unearthed a stack of half-finished newspaper articles, all stuff I’d been working on before Reese died. I had no desire to finish any of them, not now, but felt kind of bad for leaving them untouched. Instead, in a spur-of-the-moment decision, I’d tucked the papers between my textbooks with the resolve of handing them in.

                  I wasn’t going to finish them, but that didn’t mean someone else couldn’t.

                  “No,” I said, with more finality than I’d ever dared to consider internally. “I’m done with my column.”

                  Archie looked surprised, unable to hide the way it etched itself into his expression, but even he didn’t press. “Okay,” he said slowly. “If that’s what you want.”

                  The throng of students on the pavement was getting thicker, now a continuous stream winding all the way up to the main gates. Everywhere I looked I saw regulation green, the lower school’s uniforms all blending into one gut-wrenching mass, occasionally broken up by the presence of a few sixth formers. I couldn’t get my eyes to focus, not before they flew past the window and out of sight, but it hardly mattered; their names and faces were irrelevant when they’d all have the same reaction.

                  Then, suddenly it was beginning. When I came back to myself, Archie was turning into the school car park, and we’d broken through that first barrier. I was there, inside the school gates, past the point of no return. And once I got out of the car, there’d be nowhere to hide.

                  Once he’d maneuvered the car into a parking space – a feat which took a painfully long time – and shut off the engine, Archie turned to look at me. “You ready?”

                  I could already feel my throat closing up, my heart squeezing uncomfortably with each contraction. Though what felt like my every muscle was fighting to keep the words inside, I forced myself to nod. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

                  “You’re going to be fine,” he said, reaching across the gearstick and finding my hand to squeeze.

                  I managed a smile, even though the effort felt excruciating, and the resultant expression surely looked out of place. “Yeah.”

                  I wanted to believe him, of course. I’d have given anything to share a piece of Archie’s optimism, to walk through the doors of each classroom uplifted by the knowledge that I could handle it all. But with the shockwaves of Reese’s death still running through everything, every aftershock as severe as the real thing, I wasn’t capable of stopping trembling long enough to do so.

***

                  I hoped for a miracle.

                  Reality should’ve been enough of a deterrent, of course, but it didn’t seem to work that way. I wanted more than anything for it all to be normal: to walk into my form room at eight thirty like I hadn’t spent any time away. Staying under the radar was the best case scenario, and I longed for it more than anything.

                  Underneath the mild optimism, however, I wasn’t expecting it. That was probably why my hands wouldn’t stop shaking as I tried the handle to my first classroom of the day. I willed for a silent entrance, but the door creaked loudly as I opened it, drawing every spot of attention to where I stood.

                  The silence that fell across the room could’ve been bearable; it was the accompanying atmosphere that wasn’t. All at once, everybody’s voices fell short of their conversations, and I found myself entirely frozen with twenty pairs of eyes trained upon me.

                  Half of them looked horrified; I was sure, for a moment, they must’ve thought it was Reese, and the subsequent embarrassment was carved into every expression. The other half just looked awkward, like they weren’t quite sure to make of it, uncertain how they were supposed to react. Finally unfreezing my muscles, I forced myself to head towards my seat, though the action probably looked painfully robotic.

                  A couple of girls tried to make conversation: girls that I vaguely knew, but only because I’d spent so much time attached to Reese’s side. As soon as I heard the words sorry about your sister, I knew it was something I couldn’t handle, and all I could do was duck my head and try to shut it out.

                  What happened that registration was the first of a pattern; I was forced to endure it four times over, as I stepped into each classroom, and the repetition didn’t make things any easier. In fact, by the time I got to chemistry, my third period lesson, I was unnervingly close to breaking point.

                  The students at nearby desks smiled at me uncertainly, treating me with the same hesitant care they might an unexploded grenade. Before Reese’s death, I’d usually been able to make small talk with them, but now it seemed both sides had been robbed of the ability. Intentional or not, they all seemed to move as far away as possible, avoiding any words that ran the risk of my own explosion. It was probably safer that way, because with each second I spent in anybody’s company, the tightness of my chest got worse, and the inevitable breakdown inched closer. All I needed was to hold off until I could get out, but what had once seemed difficult was now verging on impossible.

                  And it was in that class that it happened. The teacher, Miss Callahan, had been fairly distant all lesson, sensing I was on the brink of something and not wanting to push me further. But in the middle of her spiel about acid-base titrations, somewhere amongst the quick-fire questions she liked to shoot at the lass, her plan went off the rails.

                  “And so in a titration between a strong alkali, sodium hydroxide, and a weak acid, methanoic acid, the equation for neutralisation will be… Reese? Any ideas?”

                  She realised her mistake a beat later, just after the rest of the class. By that point, however, it was much too late.

                  As everyone in the room fell silent, all the colour seemed to drain from her face, leaving her a ghostly shade of white. I’d spent the last forty minutes with my head down, eyes so focused on the blank page I’d been expecting them to burn a hole in it, plowing every last effort into keeping the tears inside. For so long, I’d been teetering on the brink of something, clawing at the edge in a desperate attempt to keep myself on the right side, but the mere mention of her name was suddenly enough to throw me over.

                  The tightness in my chest clamped down, forcing all the air from my lungs, and I couldn’t breathe. Four hours’ worth of tears appeared in my eyes, obscuring my vision, and the entire classroom cracked like a broken mirror. Without thinking, I stood up in my seat, shoving books into my bag as fast as I could with trembling fingers.

                  “I need to leave,” I choked out, but my voice came out so quietly I wasn’t sure anybody heard. There was no air in the room, or maybe it just refused to enter my lungs. Staggering towards the door, only half-aware of everybody staring, I wrenched it open and hurtled into the hallway.

                  Once outside, my chest seemed to release itself, and I slumped back against the wall, gasping for air like I’d finally broken the surface of water.

                  It took several minutes for my breathing to slow down, by which point my heart had stopped feeling ready to burst right out of my chest. I was still shaking, legs unsteady as if the ground was moving beneath them, but I was definitely coming out of something. Whatever it was, I could feel it passing, and the realisation was enough to steer me back into sanity.

                  One thing was certain: I wasn’t going back into the classroom. I needed to get out of there, put as much distance as I could between myself and that school, take back all the breathing space I was craving. Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I sent a quick text to Archie, who I knew had a double free period: SOS. Can I catch a lift?

                  Leaning against the wall, something else occurred to me. The folder was still tucked between textbooks in my bag, weighing down the shoulder strap, the thing I’d been meaning to do sometime today. It would take Archie a few minutes to see the text, and a few more to come meet me; I had time, and I was feeling better. Maybe I could face a quick trip to the newspaper office; things would certainly be less hectic there when it wasn’t lunchtime. I didn’t have to linger, and it’d feel better to get something over with.

                  So, not leaving myself time to doubt, I set off for the English corridor.

                  I was hoping for the exchange to be as quick and painless as possible: a short, sterile conversation at the office door would’ve been more than adequate. Of course, it didn’t happen like that. It was never going to happen like that.

                  The guy who answered the door was one I hadn’t seen, or spoken to, in four weeks. Though a couple of the others tried to reach out, their names appearing in my inboxes above concerned messages asking if I was okay, Mitchell hadn’t been one of them. We’d never been close enough to warrant that kind of attachment; we’d never even spoken about anything not newspaper-related, and I’d never felt compelled to breach those boundaries.

                  There was something else, though. In the first week after Reese’s death, he’d wanted to write a eulogy in the school newspaper, nominating himself for the job. We’d exchanged a few emails during my time off, in which he’d pressed for small details about my sister and the ways she’d impacted the school, but I’d deliberately steered away from anything too personal. The eulogy had been printed several days later; Mum placed a copy on my bedside table, thinking I might’ve wanted to read it. I did eventually, and though it felt like a strange kind of betrayal to admit, he’d done a good job.

                  “Callie?” I heard the surprise in his tone, even though news of my return must have reached the office. His hair was longer than I remembered, falling irritatingly into his eyes; it needed a cut, and I kind of wished we were close enough to tell him so.

                  “Hi,” I said quietly, trying to avoid eye contact.

                  “How’s it going?” he asked, as if there was actually more than one answer to the question. As if there was something else to feel amongst the soul-crushing grief I’d been wrestling off my chest for the last four weeks.

                  “Um,” I started, “I’m okay.”

                  I wasn’t, of course. But Mitchell Hunt certainly didn’t need to know that.

                  He stepped out of the office, closing the door behind him, like further conversation was imminent. The action panicked me slightly; I wanted this to be over with as quickly as possible. I wondered whether coming here was a good idea in the first place.

                  “I came to drop off these,” I said, already rifling through my bag, hoping it would put him off whatever else he had in mind. “I thought you might be able to use them in an issue sometime. I was working on them before…”

                  As my voice trailed off, he just looked at me, leaving my outstretched hand frozen between us. Then, his eyes flickered downward, and he took the plastic folder. “You’re not coming back?” he asked, and I wondered whether I was imagining the surprise in his tone.

                  It was the question I’d been assuming I was immune to; surely nobody, with the exception of Archie, would dare cross the line drawn up so clearly around me. But Mitchell had. As if it was that easy.

                  Maybe it was.

                  “Um.” My voice was quiet, timid, an embodiment of the grieving sister. “Probably not. I don’t think so.”

                  He raised his eyebrows, questioning me: something nobody had dared to do all day. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You wrote some really good stuff, you know. And some of this” – he gestured to the folder I’d just passed over – “is almost done. It could be in next week’s issue, if you wanted.”

                  “I don’t,” I said, a little too abruptly. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel much like writing anymore.”

                  It wasn’t exactly true. Over the past few weeks, writing was one of the only things I’d actually managed to do; when putting pen to paper, or my fingers to the keyboard, my mind was generally too busy to think of anything else. When writing, I didn’t have to think about Reese, or how her heart defect could just as easily have been mine. I didn’t have to dwell on how the sudden cardiac death could’ve happened to me, in exactly the same way, and the impact would’ve been a hundred times less severe. I could just think about the words – marks on a page that had somehow been given immeasurable meaning – and shut everything else out.

                  “Oh,” he said. “Okay. Well, let me know if you change your mind.”

                  I forced myself to smile, even though it felt painfully false, and he was probably able to tell. “I will.”

                  As I walked away from the office, I wondered why I did it. Really, there was no reason why I couldn’t take up my spot as before; I could’ve easily gone back to writing articles, and they would’ve taken my mind off Reese in a similar way. I could’ve seen my friends again, forced myself through the initial awkward conversation to emerge back in normality. It was the type of thing that would’ve made Mum take a breath of relief.

                  And yet, in a strangely masochistic move, I’d run away.

                  As Archie’s reply flashed up on my phone screen, telling me to meet him outside in five, I realised that was all I’d been doing lately: running away.

                  Reese would’ve tackled it head on; she always did. But that was the problem: I wasn’t Reese. I was Callie, the second-place twin, always having been content to live in my sister’s shadow, latching onto her personality traits and claiming them as my own. I was the cheap replica, looking identical, but only ever having a fraction of the value.

                  And since she’d gone, that had only become more obvious.

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Hi, guys! I definitely didn't expect to get the second chapter done so quickly, but I guess this happened. It'll have to make up for what's likely to be very slow updates in the near future -- I'm moving out to university next week (eep!) so I have no idea where writing's going to fit in amongst all that. I'll try to keep you updated (the best place to do so is probably my ask.fm, where I'm most active), but no promises. Wish me luck! And until next time... love you all :)