DOE

I A M N O T T H E S A M E

You cry.

You cry and cry, tears flowing over your stomach, staining the maroon evening gown you'd rented for this night. I know why you're crying.

He left you. He left you and he never looked back.

I want to come over and comfort you but I can't. I'm invisible. I stare at you. I think you feel it, because you turn around and look in my direction, but you don't see anyone, so you look back at your stiletto-clad feet.

You dab at your tears. Some people are staring at you; but most of the people are dancing with their loved-ones on the dance floor. They waltz rhythmically to the music flowing from the speakers; seeing this makes you cry even harder, because George and you were dancing the exact same way a few minutes ago.

I don't think I've ever seen you cry this hard since the day of my funeral. You loved me. You were my only friend. The only light in my otherwise very dark life. I remember that day clearly; I wish I didn't. I'd cried just as much as you. I had sat next to you, tried to make you see me, but you couldn't. Since that day I followed you everywhere you went. I haven't really got anything better to do.

I was your identical -kind of- twin sister.
We were different...so very different.

You were a jock.
I was a loner.

You were popular.
I wasn't.

You had friends.
I didn't-apart from you.

You were something.
I was nothing.

You had always been more beautiful than me -which I know sounds ridiculous because we were twins. But your golden skin is radiant; you don't even put all that much makeup. You were kind to everyone. You were something special; everyone in North East High knew it.

I was not the same as you.

You didn't care about your looks; you would dab minimal makeup on in the mornings and tie your long hair into a ponytail, but you would still look like a goddess.

Me? I would wrestle with big bottles of conditioner and hairspray, but my hair would be lank and greasy, unlike your glossy hair. We both had light brown hair with blonde highlights and forest-green eyes. But your eyes had more dimensions- chartreuse, jade, olive and bright, dense green with gold flecks around the irises. Mine were flat green and dull. Everything about me was. I didn't have anyone to impress; people knew me as your twin. You were Mae Hawthorne; the beautiful, kind, popular girl who got straight As. Then there was me, Sparrow Hawthorne. Your twin. Nothing more.

You put away all your grief over my death when school started, because you had people to lead. Some people gave you their condolences. Most of the students at North East didn't even know you had a twin sister.

There were very few people who were sad when I died.

My mom, dad, you. That's it.

After I died, I was confused. I was this soul stuck between worlds-- stuck between Heaven and Earth. I was there, but not quite. I could touch people, I could feel them, I could even move them. They couldn't see, hear or touch me.

I can see other ghosts too. There are very few. Most dead people have already moved on, to Hell or Heaven.

I talked to Old Jim who used to run the Tea Stall where you and I used to have tea in the mornings before school. He still hangs out around his stall. He had died one year before me. You and I used to like him a lot--he gave us free tea sometimes--so we went to his funeral. Not so surprisingly, even he had more people at his funeral than mine.

Old Jim told me that I could go to Heaven if I did some sort of good deed... something big. I had to fulfill my purpose, or something like that. It was the exact opposite for people who would go to Hell.

Anyway, its been two months since I started following you, after the funeral, trying to protect you from all the bad things in the world. I look over you like a guardian angel.

Because you were mine, before I died.