Half of Me Still Lives There

I haven’t been back to Grange Street in thirteen years.

It’s funny how long you can avoid a road. How long can you avoid a truth?

The house is still there. The paint is peeling, the porch sags more than it did, and someone’s hung a wind chime that wasn’t ours. But it’s still our house. Mine and Eli’s. Back before the fire. Back before everything split in half.

I didn’t come here for nostalgia.

I came because last night, in the dark corner of a gas station parking lot, I told a stranger I had a twin. I haven’t said that out loud in almost a decade.

He looked at me like I’d admitted to being haunted.

He wasn’t wrong.

The mailbox still says Holloway in fading letters.

I’m the only one left with that name now.

Mom passed two years ago. Dad disappeared into the bottle way before that—long before Eli did what he did. I guess it makes sense that I’m the only one left to remember. To carry the echo.

I stand at the gate and breathe.

The air smells like wet wood and old regrets.

I could turn around. I probably should. But then again, I’ve lived too long with a version of myself that never quite left this place.

Eli was the one who knew how to stay.

He was all roots and rhythm. Guitar chords and dumb puns. Always barefoot in summer. Always had a scrape on one knee. I was the quiet one, the thinker, the “good twin.” He made trouble, and I cleaned it up. It was a rhythm.

Until it wasn’t.

Until the night he climbed out of his bedroom window and never came back.

They never found his body.

Some said he ran. Some whispered he jumped. The official story was "missing, presumed dead."

But I knew better.

Because the night he vanished, I woke up with a gasp. I swear I heard him whisper my name—not in fear, not in pain, but like a goodbye you don’t get to answer.

I step onto the porch.

The boards creak like they remember me.

The front door is locked, of course.

But the side window—the one we used to sneak out of—it’s still cracked.

Some things never change.

Inside, the air is stale with memory. Dust floats like ghosts caught mid-dance.

Everything is quieter now. Or maybe I’m just louder inside.

I walk through the kitchen. The fridge is gone. The light switch still doesn’t work. I reach the hallway and stop in front of the door with the chipped dragon sticker.

Eli’s room.

I open it.

The room is bare. Just sunlight cutting across cracked paint. The old carpet is still the same—that terrible burnt-orange shag we used to complain about.

But in the far corner, there’s a shoe.

His shoe.

The left one. Worn canvas. Size ten. Laces frayed.

I kneel, suddenly not breathing.

I touch it, and for a second I swear it’s still warm.

A memory hits me like a wave.

Eli, fifteen, standing in this room, guitar strapped to his chest, playing the dumbest punk version of Hey Jude I’ve ever heard. Laughing. Eyes alive with that chaotic, brilliant energy he had.

He said,

“You know what sucks about twins? When one of us leaves, the other’s just half a person trying to be whole.”

And I—being logical, and tired, and seventeen—just rolled my eyes and said, “Don’t be dramatic.”

But now, standing here, holding that shoe like it’s an anchor to who I used to be...

I get it.

People say time heals everything. I think that’s a myth we tell ourselves so we don’t drown.

Some losses don’t heal.

They integrate.

They become the way you hold your coffee mug, or the reason you avoid certain songs, or why you flinch when someone says goodbye too quickly.

I’ve spent thirteen years building a life away from this house. I have a job. Friends. A girlfriend who loves me. I’m okay.

But half of me still lives here—barefoot in summer, singing bad Beatles covers, with scraped knees and a grin I’ll never see again.

And maybe that’s okay too.

I don’t stay long.

Just long enough.

On the way out, I tuck the shoe into my bag. Not to keep it—but to bury it somewhere quiet. Somewhere he would’ve liked. Somewhere both of us can rest.

I close the gate behind me.

The wind chime rings as I walk away.

It sounds almost like laughter.