Partners in crime, that's what everyone called us. Everything we did, we did together. Outsiders and strangers never saw us separated. When facing the world we were never without one another. We came to be known, not as individuals, but as a pair. I was never Tegan, and she was never Sara. We were both Tegan and Sara. It was rare that even our family saw us apart, so the nickname we'd adopted to passed their lips too.
When I walked into a room without Sara, no one noticed the massive emptiness beside me. Inside me. If they did notice, I think they assumed that we'd finally fused into one. We had combined into the single person we should have been born as. Alone, we were addressed in plurals. If I entered the play room and Sara's presence was no where to be seen, it was never, "Tegan, can you pick up your toys?" It was always, "Can you two pick up your toys?" I would do the task without telling Sara or recruiting her to help me. I thought if she didn't have to do any work, then she would be happier.
I was often doing things to please her. She was much more than my sister or my twin. She was my best friend and the only person who really ever mattered to me. I considered her to be part of me. She was who I was. Or maybe, more accurately, I was who she was. A large portion of my being seemed to be concentrated on her and how she felt. I considered ourselves one person. Maybe it was just because of people thinking that of us for years. Maybe I was simply, unconsciously trying to live up to their expectations. But I knew inside that there was more behind it than that. Sometimes I forgot my own name. I didn't know if I was Tegan or Sara, and then I'd get angry that we had two names at all. If no one was going to call us by our separate names, what was the point in them?
Looking back, I realize that I thought of Sara way more than I should have. It was the beginning of feelings I would carry with me into my adult life. Only then I wasn't afraid to speak what was on my mind.
And my thoughts weren't normal little girl thoughts. They were dark. I was obsessed with us. Obsessed with her. I told her, too. She knew how much she meant to me, and she knew all of my dark secrets. Knew that I would die for her. Knew that I would kill for her. Knew that more than anything I wanted to be her, and her to be me, for us to be us as we should be: one.
We had a tent set up in the back yard. It was a heavy duty tent, camouflaged, valuable monetarily and nearly the size of a twin bed. It's worth was represented more in memories than it was in money, though. Our Dad took us camping a lot. It was something he loved, and he had plenty of equipment. After our parents got divorced, he left this tent with our mother. It was the one they'd used the first time they went camping together, back when they were young and in love. He gave it to her for sentimental sakes, and she kept it. But Sonia was never much of an outdoorsy type. When she went, she went for Stephen because he loved it. It seemed natural that she give the gift to the products of their love instead of leaving it to waste, unused in the attic.
It was set up underneath the sycamore where it stayed year-round. The tree possessed enough years that it had wisdom. Not human wisdom or knowledge, but it knew preservation, protecting the tent from the elementals with its canopy of dark branches and fluorescent green leaves as well as storing memories, etching them into its bark. It seemed to hold memories just as powerfully as an Indian dream catcher. It was timeless, and one look at it could bring back decades of previous lives and thoughts of the ones who'd coexisted with it.
But Sara and I only saw the tree as moving, asymmetrical shadows through the tent's thin roof when the sun was bright enough to shine through the thick blockade of the tree's foliage. But that only happened on the hottest days of summer. We stayed in that tent year round. It was our escape place. The only place we could go that we didn't have to share with the outside world. We could talk in private as much as we wanted, and sometimes we didn't even need to talk. We knew what the other was thinking. Closeness will do that to you, tie you to a person emotionally.
While we were perfectly happy to spend all of our time together, our psychologist mother thought our closeness discomforting. She told us to play with other kids, like the others in the neighborhood. She didn't try to force us apart, but rather to make mutual friends.
We didn't much care for others, though. When she set up a play date for us, we always found ways to leave early, sneak into the backyard, and stake out in our camouflage hideout. It wasn't that we didn't like the other kids, we just didn't understand them. They were too different. After spending nearly every second of your life with someone who was exactly like you in every way, it became difficult to comprehend the concept of different and the uniqueness of individuality.
Once when we were seven, new neighbors moved in across the street. They had a daughter a year older than us and a son our age. Our mom thought we would adapt better to making friends if they we could make friends with other siblings. She thought we could relate better to them, but after meeting them, the fact that they were related made it worse. They angered and scared me in irrational ways. The two fought constantly. And over insignificant things like toys. They screamed at each other and threw tantrums. They didn't even act like they loved each other. I didn't understand how they couldn't love their sibling, feel the same way about each other as Sara and I felt. I watched them interact and was more scared than I'd ever been watching a horror movie on TV with Mom. I gripped Sara's hand in my own and squeezed tighter as every minute ticked past, holding on for dear life.
I couldn't stop thinking about whether Sara and I were capable of fighting like them. Could I really hate her? What if I turned on her? What if she turned on me? What if one day we didn't love each other anymore?
Their posh living room turned fuzzy. My head started spinning. My breathing became deeper. It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. I was on the verge of sobbing hysterically.
Sara could tell there was something wrong with me. She knew I was having a panic attack and that she need to get me out of there as fast as possible. She lied to the children's mom, telling her that our mom had instructed us to be back at 3:00 when she'd actually said to be back by dinner time. Her hand squeezed mine until her knuckles turned white, and she led me outside. I had never been so happy for fresh air. Finally, I was no longer suffocating, drowning in a sea of doubt.
She didn't make me walk. She didn't make me move. She didn't make me talk. She didn't make me do anything, and for that I loved her more than I ever had. She wrapped her tiny arm around my tiny shoulders, and she held me while I sat on the curb and cried my eyes out. I was overwhelmed with emotion, and only she could understand why.
I'm not sure how long we sat there, but I'm sure it wasn't as long as I thought it was. If we had stayed out there long enough, then our mom would have happened to glance out of a window and seen us. But she didn't see us. I calmed down and we escaped to our tent like innocent convicts.
I think Sara had spent too much time listening to our mother because after I'd recovered from my trauma, she wanted to talk about it. Mom told us that telling someone about our problems would make them easier to deal with. Sara believed this, but I didn't want to talk about it so soon afterwards. I was afraid the what-ifs would come back, and I would start hyperventilating again. Sara sensed my hesitation, so she talked for both of us. Because her thoughts were mine, and my thoughts were hers.
"We're not like them, Tee. We love each other. I love you." Sara held me in her frail arms again. I buried my face into her chest and listened to her soothing voice. She was wearing her Calgary Flames hockey t-shirt. I was wearing mine. "They're too different from each other. Do you know what's different about us?"
My head shot up, and my eyes were quick to water, as it had only been a few minute since I had last cried and my tear ducts were still eager to leak. I couldn't think of a difference between us. I was her, and she was me. I couldn't bear to be different from her. The thought that she had come up with something unique between us was mortifying. We weren't like the neighbor kids. We just couldn't be.
She wiped the tears from the corner of my eyes with her thumb and smiled. "Nothing. That's what's different between us."
I smiled too, relived, and gave her the biggest hug I could muster. I loved her more than anything, and I wanted everything to stay the way it was for the rest of our lives.