The Dominant Child

Though Amethyst was eleven, she was still afraid of the dark, and it was from the dark that the other girl seemed to come.

On a long summer night like many others, Amy lay in bed curled up and sniffling. The more she tried not to think about the terrible things she was sure the darkness harbored just out of her sight, the more real they became: hunched, gnarled shapes bathing her neck in their subtle, hungry breath, monsters waiting for her to give one inch, twitch one muscle, their dark-furred or scaly limbs coiled, ready to pounce. She was an only child, and was thus used to weathering the foolishness of childhood alone and unvalidated.

Imagine yourself brave, her mother said, touting one of her many favorite psychological gems before she sent her packing back to bed. It sounds silly, but when you imagine something is already the case, it has a habit of becoming so.

Amethyst did think that sounded silly, but she didn't have many other options, so she lay frozen in bed and stared hard at the crack of light emanating from the hallway beyond her door. Slowly but surely, she drew herself up in her mind: tall for her age and slightly hunched because of it, mousy brown hair that was always messy, falling out of the ponytail she wrangled it back in. Pale blue eyes; timid eyes.

No. Not timid. Amy scratched that part of her mental image. This was not ordinary Amy. This was Other Amy, Brave Amy. Brave Amy had eyes like chips of ice and a mouth that curled at one edge in a mocking smile, challenging the monsters to come forth. The posture was all wrong too; the Amy she envisioned straightened up in response to her silent critique, squaring her formerly rounded shoulders and stepping forth from the far wall.

Amy gasped as the light from the door crawled up one side of her other self, highlighting the grin on her mischievous face.

"You look surprised to see me," the other girl said. She didn't bother to pitch her voice low, which made Amy nervous. What about her mother? What about the monsters?

Other Amy smirked at her as if she could hear her worries.

“They're not so brave, you know," she said. "Monsters, I mean. They depend on you being afraid."

"I am afraid, though" Amy whispered. "I don't know how not to be."

Other Amy shrugged one shoulder, flopping down on the ground and pulling her legs up so she was sitting criss-cross.

"That's okay," she said. "That's what I'm here for. Go ahead, go to sleep. I'll keep watch."

It was tempting. Amy's eyes had been fighting a battle not to droop shut for the past hour. Somehow though, it felt rude to have imagined up the Other Amy only to leave her here; part of her wondered, too, whether the other girl would disappear when her eyes shut.

Amy's tired mind couldn't find a good way of giving voice to these thoughts. "I don't want to leave you," she said instead.

The Other Amy smiled. The sharp curve of her mouth in the near-dark looked almost predatory. "Oh, don't worry about me," she said. "I've always wanted to fight a monster."

That smile was the last thing image she took with her down into sleep, following her, lighting her way like a dark moon.

.

When Amy woke to the light streaming through her window, the idea of monsters seemed preposterous and embarrassing, as always. Almost as embarrassing as imagining a full conversation with another version of yourself. Her mother was always telling her she read too much fantasy for a girl her age, as if the threshold of adolescence was the time to turn in otherworldly escapades for more dry, practical matter. It was true that virtually all she'd done thus far in the summer was read, books about wizards and unicorns and the ongoing battle of good vs. evil. Was it impossible that the amount of time she'd spent immersed in these worlds combined with the lack of friends she'd had over to break up the long hot days, had put her imagination into overdrive?

After breakfast, she decided to test this idea. Just for today, Amy thought, I will do other activities. At a loss for how to occupy herself without books, Amy fished a box of Jenga blocks from the basement and was setting them up on the coffee table in the living room when she heard a familiar voice, like her own but bolder.

"There's a better way to do that."

Amy looked up as her mirror image took a seat adjacent to her on the couch, studying what she'd done so far.

"You have to make sure the blocks are flush, that way it's easier to nudge them out in the end."

She leaned forward and began to rearrange the base of Amy's tower while Amy stared at the impossible fact of her presence. Her hair was plaited back in a braid, something Amy had never mastered doing with her own, and she was wearing a summery dress Amy knew she didn't own herself. But here in the daylight streaming through the picture window of the living room she looked inescapably solid.

"What?"

Amy came back to herself, realizing she'd been staring.

"Sorry it's just...are you real?"

Her other self- what Amy was starting to think of as her better self- raised an eyebrow, another skill she herself had never mastered.

"Of course I'm real. Are you?"

"I...I think so," Amy said. A sense of excitement was growing in her as the general weirdness of the situation grew further from her mind like a toy boat drifting off across the water.

"Great," the Other Amy said like she was settling something for them both. She straightened up, a completed tower of blocks in front of her. "Now let's play a real game."

A few moments later, as Amy worked at nudging a block from the safe expanse of the center of the tower, she asked, "What do I call you?"

The girl beside her seemed to think a moment.

"Malachite,” she said finally, decisively. “But you could call me Mal."

Malachite. The name sounded familiar somehow, like-

"It's a rock," Mal said, mischief sparkling in her eyes. "Like you. Mom couldn't get enough of those geological names."

It was only a few moves later that she realized Mal had called her mother 'mom' in the casual way someone might who'd grown up alongside her. Moments later, the thought was swept away by the clattering calamity of blocks falling, scattering across the table and onto the floor below.

Mal looked at her across the table, a triumphant smile on her face.

"Better luck next time," she said.

But Amy did not have better luck the next time, or the next. Growing tired of defeat, she asked another question that had been building for the length of their third game.

"How do you do your hair like that?"

Mal shrugged. "It's not as hard as you might think. Here, I'll show you."

She came to sit right next to Amy on the couch, and Amy could feel her body heat, her warm breath on the back of her neck and the gentle tug of her fingers as Mal separated her hair into segments and begin to braid. About halfway through, Amy heard the familiar sound of the garage door rolling up outside- it must be just after noon, the summer school her mother taught at concluded for the day. Mal's hands stilled in her hair at the noise and Amy's heart began to pound. The front door creaked open and her mother trudged through, looking through the open arch of the living room at her.

"Wow," she said, exaggerated shock shifting over her features. "Not reading for once? Are you sure you're feeling all right, Amethyst?"

Shaking her head and chuckling, her mom moved into the kitchen and Amy turned to look behind her, knowing already what she'd see: Mal had disappeared, seemingly into thin air.

I am going crazy, then, she thought grimly, swiping the Jenga blocks back into their box and tearing the half-braid from her hair with the rough fingers of one trembling hand.

Yet when she got upstairs to her room she found Mal sitting on her bed, smirking at her.

"What the hell?" she blurted, feeling brave at the use of the curse word. "Why'd you do that?"

"Look," Mal said, holding up her hands in surrender. "Did you really want to have to explain yourself?"

"But if she could see-"

"I'm here for you, not her," Mal said, and something in her tone said she was done with the conversation. Her face brightened. "But look," she said, "There's a mirror here anyway. Better for braid practice."

.

The days passed like the whirling colors in a kaleidoscope. With Mal, Amy felt like a different version of herself: bolder, less awkward, more adventurous. In the mornings when her mother was gone, they would hang out and play or explore. One time they even took a dip in the neighbor's swimming pool on a dare from Mal. Amy, heart pounding, treaded water for the allotted five minutes of the dare, wondering what the neighbor would see if he looked out his window: one pre-teen vagabond or two? But the time passed with no incident and Amy found herself thrilling at the forbidden sensation she felt after, wrapped in towels on her own lawn again, giggling with her secret friend.

Mal was fun, but she was also cool. She wore a two-piece swimsuit. She could tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue and whistle loud enough to send the birds from the trees. She could recite the alphabet backwards fast, and she even claimed she knew how to make boys like you, something Amy wasn't even sure she wanted to do. This is how it must feel, she thought, to have a best friend- or a sister.

Her mother seemed to notice something different in Amy. One night she stared at her daughter for a long while over dinner before asking, “Are you all right, Amy?”

"Yeah, of course. Why?" Amy asked.

"It's just... the bookmark in that book of yours hasn’t moved in a couple of weeks now. When I come back, sometimes it looks like you've been staring into space for hours. If you're worried about middle school-"

Amy cut her off, embarrassed. "I'm fine, mom."

In the ensuing silence, she wondered if they were thinking of the same moment. Earlier that day, her mother had left work early, coming through the door so silently that Amy and Mal, standing by the desktop computer in the den watching funny videos, didn't hear her at first. It was the sound of an overfull grocery bag hitting the ground, cans and produce rolling out onto the floor, that caused Amy to spin around and see her mother standing there, face pale as if she'd seen a ghost.

"Wh-what was...who?" she asked. Amy turned to look but by then Mal had gone.

"What's wrong, Mom?" she’d asked, then, over the droning of the YouTube video she still had open, "I know I'm supposed to ask permission for the computer, but-"

Amy's mom shook her head, blinking once, twice, slowly. She bent down to collect her groceries with trembling hands. "I thought I saw- never mind."

.

It was only later that night, half-buried under the covers that Amy admitted: "I am worried about middle school, though."

On the end of her bed, she felt Mal move.

"Don't be," the other girl said. "You're lucky. I'd be excited if I were you. You get to meet new people and do new things. You can't stay a baby forever."

She sat up, peering at the shape of her friend in the dark. Mal sounded almost resentful.

"You could come with me," she said. Mal snorted.

"No, I could not. You're the only one who gets to do all that. And you'll be fine. People always are. You'll make new friends and you'll date and you'll forget all about me."

"I won't!" Amy protested. "Besides, you're giving me a lot of credit. I can do scary stuff when you're with me, but I'm not so good on my own. You're braver than me and prettier, and you're always better at everything. You wouldn't get it," she said, feeling some of her own resentment swell up. "You're probably not afraid of anything, ever. I wish you could go instead."

There was a long silence from the end of the bed, and Amy thought she might have gone too far, caused Mal to do her disappearing act, a virtual cold shoulder. But eventually, the other girl shifted, her shadowy outline becoming distinct in the faint light from the hallway.

"Do you mean that?" she asked.

"Mean what?"

Mal slid down the bed so that they were sitting with their legs touching. "There's a way, you know. We could switch places, if you're scared. I could go to school for you. All you'd have to do is let me in."

"What are you talking about?" Amy asked. She felt a shiver prickle over her skin that had nothing to do with the air conditioning unit humming away in her window. Mal reached out and put a hand on her leg.

"Let me in," she repeated, and this time it did not sound like a request. She grinned, with that hungry hunter's grin Amy remembered from the very first night. It was the grin of a starving animal closing in for the kill.

She jerked away, rolling to the edge of the bed, and for a moment she was free until she felt Mal on top of her, hands pressed like vices into her upper arms. She was impossibly strong. Amy let out a scream and Mal shushed her, an angry hiss in the dark.

"Stop being so dramatic," she snapped. "You wished for it. You as good as gave me your blessing. Now let me in."

Amy felt the strangest sensation, as if something inside of her was being torn, stretched to breaking. Mal bore down on her, and she retched as something moved up her throat, threatening to spill out. "That's it," she thought she heard Mal say, before all sound was blotted out by her own screaming. And this time when Amy started, she didn't stop.

.

She woke up to the glow of fluorescent lights overhead and the sound of steady beeping from a monitor nearby. Amy tried moving her head, but found it made her dizzy. She heard footsteps clacking across a hard floor, and on instinct, shut her eyes tight again. She focused on the smells that permeated the air, antiseptic and latex gloves, as she listened to the hushed conversation taking place by the foot of her bed.

"I should have known," her mother was saying. "The signs were there that something wasn't right. She was acting weird. Hallucinating, I think..." She trailed off, sniffing back tears and then only said, "I'm sure she didn't have a fever until tonight."

"Try not to blame yourself," an older, kindly voice said. "These things can be hard to catch. I was once a single, working parent too. This situation is especially unusual. That something so small should have caused an infection like that."

Her mother seemed to think about this. "So it's gone, then?" she asked. "You got all of it?"

"Yes," the doctor said. There was a clinking sound, as of a glass being lifted. "This is it. All of it."

Her mother breathed in sharply. "Is that...are those teeth?"

"Mm," the doctor affirmed. "Sometimes when two fetuses start out in the womb, one ends up absorbing the other. The dominant child will carry a piece of the other with them, some bit that hasn't been fully absorbed. Most of the time, it causes no problem. But sometimes, the foreign body will drift, lodging itself somewhere in the host where it causes a problem, becomes infected or necrotic. This was found dangerously close to Amethyst's brain, which might have been what caused the seizure you found her having."

Amy's mother was silent for a while, thinking about this. "Can you throw that out?" she asked. "It's too weird, I don't want her to see. I just don't know..."

"I take it," the doctor said gently, "That Amethyst doesn't know she was going to be a twin?"

In the silence, she felt she could hear her mother shake her head.

"No," she said. “I never told anyone."

.

On the ride home from the hospital, Amy was silent. When she got home, she examined the small incision behind her ear for a long moment, running a finger wonderingly over its tender length. Over dinner, her mother kept hovering, asking if she was okay. Yes, she kept saying, and surprisingly, she found that she meant it.

The eve of middle school came before she knew it. She’d been shopping and purchased her first day's outfit, a floral dress. She had a hairstyle in mind too: she’d been practicing her braid in the mirror. Every once in a while when she did so, she’d let her vision unfocus and separate, and for a moment she'd see a shape behind her, imagine bolder hands guiding her own.

When she lay in the dark on the final night of summer, no monster lurked in the shadows waiting to take her. There was only the moon, her ticking clock, and the mounting excitement in her chest at the sound of the future, the whole long expanse of it, rushing towards her ready or not. Amy shut her eyes and in the new perfect dark of her own making, she was perfectly, wonderfully alone.