Chloe & Zoe

Photo by Sai Balaji Varma Gadhiraju on Unsplash

All of our lives, we’d been Chloe and Zoe, completely inseparable due to the duplicating nature of our facial features. Mother and father never kept us apart, and Chloe never minded it.

It gave Chloe the eternal role of puppeteer, pulling the strings of her indistinguishable pawn. On the other hand, I could have done without the constant comparing. Simply enough, I only wanted to be me. I was just never allowed to be.

As the quieter twin, I always stood silently to the side while Chloe’s cries for attention became habitually tended. No one else seemed to recognize my loneliness, except for Grandma Abbi, who had come to visit once a year with her usual set of matching outfits for her ‘darling twins.’

This past birthday, Grandma Abbi arrived a week late, and even in her tardiness, she delivered her usual outfit pair sewed for girls five years younger than we now were. She couldn’t have known how much of a disaster our double sweet 16 became the week prior, but she must have sensed something in the air, as she called only me (and not Chloe) to visit her in the guest bedroom.

With meticulous care, Grandma Abbi silently handed me an antique wooden box with tiny grooves, flipping open to showcase a shining locket, heavy for its smaller size, golden and oval with a beautiful chain draping from its bulky rounded edge. Grandma Abbi cupped her hand over my tightened grip of the locket, whispering, “You don’t have to share.”

Those words were enough to swell my heart to twice its size as I stuffed the antique locket in my jean pocket and gave Grandma Abbi a soft kiss on the cheek and a “Thank you” before I headed out the door.

Before joining Chloe in our bedroom, I locked myself in the one hall bathroom we had, facing the mirror to yank the locket from my denim pocket and feel its surprising weight in my hands. Cool to the touch, my fingers clipped together the ends of the long locket chain, admiring the gold reflecting from my neck before a couple of raucous knocks on the bathroom door led me to jump in fright.

“Zoe, let me in,” and after hearing that sentence, I quickly stuffed the locket into my shirt front, knowing what would come as a result of Chloe seeing me wear something she hadn’t vetoed beforehand. After a deep breath to calm my shaking, I turned from the mirror to boldly open the door and confront the face so similar to mine, born to taunt me.

Before I could shuffle past, Chloe asked the one thing I didn’t want her to, inquiring bossily, “Where’d you get that!?” while pointing at my neck. Replying to Chloe’s questions had yet to ever work in my favor, so instead, I sped-walked to our shared bedroom, yelling “Nowhere!” as I zipped past her. Chloe was behind me faster than I realized, prying the bedroom door open before my grasp could shut it closed.

“That’s not yours, Zoe!” was all I heard before the golden chain snapped from the back of my neck. Without allowing me to explain its origins, Chloe gripped hard on the sides of the heavy oval locket to have it pop open before her. Instantly, a light shined from the locket, brightening the mirrored image of Chloe’s face to then blind my complete vision.

As soon as my lids slid open again, I looked all around my empty bedroom to see no Chloe, only sighting the locket flung to the ground right where she once stood. Quickly, I ran to grab the locket, bracing myself before pushing the small button on its side to pop it open. Surprisingly, the only thing facing me was the shocking mirror image of my twin sister I’d just seen, only now the face was plastered in a small picture frame within the gorgeous golden locket.

Even if it’s only temporary, I couldn’t help but look through the window with spiritual gratefulness and absolute glee. Clasping the locket back around my neck, I took a hearty look at the empty bedroom, glad that, for once in my life, it was just me, myself, and I.

With a hand covering the oval weight preciously on my chest, I finally opened the bedroom door to meet my parents downstairs and let them know Chloe had packed a bag and fled.