“Do they have a name?”
“Hey, I mean it when I say she’s totally legit. I could send you a copy of the lease she has so you can see that we got the place once we get that deposit down. I’m figuring some things out, you know? They say it’s never too late to find a career,” Ada said, her inflection changing.
When she was high, everything about her morphed into someone else. It was agony to see how she faded, but the one thing that crushed the little pieces of my broken heart was when the familiar laughter that had always laced her voice vanished.
Ada had always been the one going places, her flame brighter than mine. It never felt like a competition because I wasn’t the type who cared about having a degree, much less the degrees our parents wanted out of us.
I was perfectly content cheering Ada on in all her dreams of being a lawyer and tackling the world’s injustices while I took a spontaneous trip across the country with a couple of friends in a van.
A sharp whistle cut through Ada’s ramble, and I looked up to find Dakota pointing at his wrist, letting me know it was time to go. I braced myself for the shit show.
“Look, Ada, if you really need somewhere to stay, your room is ready at the apartment. Otherwise, I’m out of options for you.”
“Are you serious?” Ada said, the hiss in her voice barbed with acid. “It’s not like you need money for anything. You just work for whoever will hire you, and you won’t help your sister have her own place? God, I should’ve known you’d be selfish and worthless, just like you always are.”
Ada’s words hit my stomach like a punch. The bitter taste of bile crawled up my chest and throat with an acidic burn that made it hard to speak. The Ada I knew would never say something cruel like that, and it was hard to remind myself that this person, this Ada, wasn’t my sister.
After the hurt always came the anger, and the burn in my stomach fueled my resentment that Ada constantly refused to make the choice to get better.
“I work hard at my job, and it pays me well. Fuck, the reason I have to work overtime today is from all the times I gave you my money,” I said, unable to stave off the rising anger in my voice.
“I hate you so much,” Ada said, her voice the shiver-inducing sound of a growl. “I wish I never knew you.”
The deafening silence on my phone told me she hung up. An ironclad grip strangled my throat, the sting of tears pricking the corner of my eyes. My chest twisted like a tight coil, and I pressed my palm against my hammering heart to relieve the pressure.
This always happened. Whenever I didn’t give Ada what she needed for her next fix, I knew the monster the drugs had made her would sear my insides. But no matter how many times Ada did it, her venom left me winded, like I’d suddenly had to sprint around the block.
With shaky hands, I tucked my phone away, grabbed the ignored box, and headed back to the loading bay. The aftershock of the phone call still quaked inside of me. With blurred vision, I wobbled toward my truck, and I almost dropped the box when I tripped on a rock. Dakota waited near my truck and opened his arms to take the box. With his back to me, I wiped harshly at my wet eyes, destroying the evidence of Ada’s vitriol.
Dakota stared at me as he closed the distance between us, naked concern in his vivid green eyes. “Ada?”
“The one and only.” I stared off into the distance, squinting against the waking sun. The ache in my chest remained, Ada’s voice ringing in my ears. “This one was pretty bad.”
“Did she say where she was?” Dakota leaned on my truck, and I shook my head. He exhaled through his teeth. “Damn, that’s rough.”
He didn’t say he was sorry, and I was grateful for it. Someone else may have thought he was insensitive, but I appreciated how Dakota didn’t hand out pointless solutions. He just let things be what they were, holding off till the end to say he was right. I respected that about him. Probably why he’d been my best friend since we were fourteen.
“We’d better get going,” I said after checking my phone. Dakota and I split toward our trucks. Other trucks had already pulled out, and I watched them slowly form a line before they turned different directions to their routes.
As I drove toward the exit of the parking lot, I cleared my mind and expanded my diaphragm with a deep breath. I shouldn’t let Ada get under my skin like this. It was because we were so close that she knew how to press all my buttons, but it wasn’t my twin sister Ada doing the pressing. That Ada would never have said those things. It was Addict Ada, who was cruel and cutting.
When we were younger, Ada would ask me if I could sense her whenever we were apart because we were twins. It was a folklore we’d often play off as a joke, but deep down we really believed it. I channeled every cell in my being, hoping that our bond would be a signal that cut through the smog that had taken over Ada’s mind. That the bond to Twin Sister Ada ran deeper than Addict Ada’s defenses.
I wondered if she’d feel it. I wondered if she was nearby, if I’d see her on the street corner with her usual group. I wondered if I’d be able to recognize her.
The rest of my workday was wonderfully boring. Funny how the thing I hated so much became a respite after a call with Ada. I settled into the routine of my deliveries with my playlist blasting through the speakers of my truck. By the time my shift ended, the disquiet of my argument with Ada had faded into the background.
All I wanted to do was go back to my apartment, take a long shower, and bury myself in bed. But my day wasn’t over yet. After I dropped my truck off, I took my car to the Wright Place, a local diner close to the warehouse that a lot of the delivery crew used as a stop for coffee and a bite to eat.
Mom sat at a table at the front window with her usual order of iced tea in front of her, squinting at whatever she was reading on her phone.
For as long as I could remember, Ada and I were told we looked like a carbon copy of our mother. We both inherited her ice-blue eyes and raven hair, but Ada shared Mom’s heart-shaped face and infectious smile.
Ever since the accident, Ada was a threadbare resemblance of herself. That night had changed all of us, and the halo of light that had always surrounded Mom dimmed forever.
She stood with a smile and opened her arms for a hug that enveloped me in the comfort of her lilac shampoo. She ran her hand around in a circle on the middle of my back, and some of the tension of the morning unraveled.
We sat down, and Mom returned to her phone, sighing as she typed something out, then flipped her phone faced down on the table.
“Thank you for rescheduling last minute. This week has been absolutely hectic, and we still have a lot to finalize with the coordinator.”
My parents’ vow renewal was drawing closer. She kept trying to fool everyone that she was going to keep it small, but none of us believed her. Every week when I met up with her, there was someone new on the guest list. At this point, there would be at least fifty people there.
Mom circled her straw in her cup. “Did you get the time off?”
I yanked a menu toward me under the illusion of interest in food. The last thing I could tell Mom was how I’d run out of all my paid time off because Ada would call out of nowhere and need my help. What she needed was faith that Ada could get better.
“I’m working on it. I just got the new route I’ve been asking for, and I don’t want to give that new asshole supervisor a reason to think I’m taking advantage of it.”
Mom leaned back in her seat and sighed. “Love, please take up that offer I told you about. It’s a good salary with wonderful benefits. You’d even be eligible for a yearly bonus.”
What Mom didn’t understand was that I didn’t care about yearly bonuses and holidays off. I wasn’t interested in company parties and networking. That was all Ada, and she’d made her determination for success so loud to keep our parents off my back. The few times my mother had been concerned about my future, Ada would meet up with her and guide those worries away.
Now it was my job to prove to my parents that having Ada back in their lives could actually save her. In the meantime, I had to deal with deflecting my mom from trying to push me into a cubicle.
“I swear I’ll get the time off. If I have to switch shifts with someone, I can. Don’t worry about it.”
