A/N: Just a short chapter this time. Emily got all contemplative on me at the end, but I promise it'll get to the good stuff soon.

Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine.

Chapter 4

Emily

"You're Emily and Katie Fitch?" Will suddenly asked from the front seat, turning around looking fully stunned. I glanced at Katie, who nodded and stared at Will blankly.

"Who the fuck are you?" she demanded, in full tornado mode.

"I'm Willow Wong, we took art together with Ms. Harraday. You two were nine or ten I think? I got orange paint on Katie's dress the day we were making pottery."

Of course I remembered. It was the summer we'd spent in Liverpool, staying there with one of Dad's old mates and his wife and half a dozen children. My mother had had one of her fits of artistic aspirations for her girls, packing us off to art class for two hours three times a week. Katie had been surprisingly good at it, producing perfectly shadowed sketches of apples and eggs and David Beckham, while I had floundered and sank. I ended up sitting in the back of the class, where the teacher had pointedly ignored me for the rest of the course. And now that I thought about it, there was this other girl who sat next to me in the back, who was tall and awkward and had sunk just as hard.

"That was you?" asked Katie for the both of us. "The weird kid with the ancient green bike and scruffy haircut and really filthy tennis shoes?"

Will's face fell a little. "Borderline personal attacks much, Katiekins?"

Katie's face scrunched up a little, and I had to stop myself from snickering. Nobody had called her that for years. Besides, I guess Will had already insured her lifelong position in the bad half of Katie's books with that paint incident. She'd really liked that dress.

"Well, let's just say someone hasn't changed much," muttered my sister. She looked up, as if to ask the universe (through the steel roof of a taxi) why this person from her ancient past had been chosen to come back to torment her. And why Katie had no choice but to stick with it.

Unexpected turn of events, stated my brain. And that was what this trip was turning out to be in more ways than one.

Traveling had been more my idea than Katie's, but I was still her baby sister, and final year of college she had become desperate to escape her life and everything in it, so she insisted in coming with me. Hong Kong had been our first stop, and Katie had become a shark in water, or maybe a sweet-toothed tiger in a candy shop. Hong Kong had made me feel like her sister again, and not her shadow, and that was probably why I'd let my judgment slip for a few days... and we ended up spending way more than we were supposed to, and loaded down with a whole lot more stuff than expected.

Will didn't seem to think it was a problem. "Just post it home, yeah?" she'd suggested, shrugging. "Or ditch it at my place, nobody's going to be using the rooms anyway."

So yeah, the whole traveling thing was turning out quite unexpected. Katie had been in rare good moods (I could tell because she never once tried to throw me at a boy), we'd run into Will, and then there was her. Not least because of her. Naomi.

The corners of my mouth were trying furiously to tug upwards at this thought as I watched buildings and people whiz by the window, although I firmly stopped them. She was cool. She was witty. She had a big attitude and she cared about things. And she was beautiful to boot. Yes, I sighed inwardly, she was all of those things, but she was probably not gay. Friends. I'd settle for friends.

Still, the thought of hanging out with her for the next few months made the corners of my mouth very, very happy.

We packed with very little difficulty, since we were barely unpacked anyway. While Katie checked us out, I headed outside for some sun - the hotel lobby was like the inside of a refrigerator. I spotted Will and Naomi perched on the steps, with matching fags hanging out of their mouths.

"Can I have one?" It was impossible to smoke in Katie's presence without her talking my head off about cancer and disgusting black lungs.

"Naomi here just nicked my last one," Will replied apologetically. "Share?"

I took her extended half-gone roll and was about to put it in my mouth when I noticed Naomi staring at it as if it had just insulted her mother. I handed it back to Will.

"Nah, Katie will never shut up if she smells it on me." Well, it was the truth. "What should we do later?"

Naomi shrugged. "Somebody mentioned having fun?"

Which is why a few hours later, the four of us were buzzingly drunk and dancing along happily in very loud music. Well, you could say that Katie and I were dancing. Naomi bopped around, er, badly, and Will was doing some indescribable thrash headbang thing. Suffice it to say neither looked very attractive (in fact, Katie pulled me over to yell in my ear, they looked like fucking lunatics), but by now we were past caring.

Katie had several boys of various nationalities hovering around her. She was looking just... really Katie. I noticed Will and some random girl stare each other down, snog, and disappear to the toilets. Naomi suddenly leaned over so close that I could feel her breath on my ear, sending shivers up my spine. "Spliff?" she asked simply, and pointed to the door. I nodded.

We leaned up the wall beside a flashing neon light and I watched her roll one carefully and hand it to me. She was about to start on a second when I stopped her. "Share?"

"Katie really likes male attention doesn't she?" she asked me with a smirk as I puffed.

I nodded again, and handed it over. She looked at me for a second with those piercing blue eyes before taking it. "What about you? It's not like you can't get any, I dunno if you've noticed but you do look the same."

"Not interested," I muttered.

"In that huge bloke in the Hawaii shirt or boys in general?"

"It's... complicated."

Naomi snorted. "I'm smart."

"Yeah, I'm sure you are, Naoms," I replied, snickering at the look on her face. Of course I would notice.

We shared lopsided grins for a long moment. My stomach suddenly flipped over, and panic gripped me. Normal, I tried to calm myself. We can do normal right? Last thing I wanted was to do something crazy stupid and not see her the rest of my life.

I hid my face by snatching the small smoking stick and taking a long draw.

"Quit hogging it," she laughed, and we dissolved into giggles. Disaster avoided.

"Hey guys," yelled Will, still operating at the volume of the party inside, and plopping down on the ground next to me. "Wanna go home? This is getting old. Where's Katie?"

We found her in a corner with a boy, and it looked as if they were trying to suck the lips off of each other's faces. It took a bit of convincing before we could peel her off him and hail a taxi. She promptly fell asleep in the back seat.

"What should we do tomorrow?" I asked.

"Spend a day just looking around at real live people," said Naomi's voice from outside. She was hanging her head out the window to prevent puking.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Will sounded a bit groggy. Seemed I was the least drunk.

"People. How they live and what they're really like," Naomi shrugged best she could with one shoulder crammed again the taxi door.

"I'm people," Will replied.

Katie yelled something intelligible in her drunken stupor.

"She doesn't seem to think so, mate."

"What do you think Ems?"

I looked to my left at Naomi, with her blonde locks trailing in the wind, faintly glowing in the light of late night streetlamps. "Sure, yeah, people sound cool."

I lay in Will's parents' bed, totally unable to sleep. Katie snored softly next to me. We hadn't shared a bed since forever, spare rare family outings. These were some of the moments that I felt really close to my sister. Other times, she would just be Katie, and overbearing, and manipulative.

Most people didn't get the twin thing. Just siblings that are the same age, they say. What's the big deal about that? But sometimes, I find myself thinking that sharing that same tiny place for the most of a year, we had to have something deeper.

Something that neither Naomi, the girl that kept invading my dreams, nor Will, who had suddenly emerged from ancient history, would understand. They were both single kids, with no brothers, or sisters, or anything resembling that, to share this link with.

I listened to Naomi's slightly left of mainstream indie alternative music blaring from her laptop speakers, and Will shuffling around the couch outside. That was when it hit me – we were all lonely. I was just as lonely as they were, only in different ways. Just as lonely, or even more so, even if I were attached to someone as a twin, and Katie, being that twin, was just as lonely. Which was why I hid behind whatever I could find, Naomi was sarcastic and hot-and-cold, Will buried herself in various gadgets and skills, and Katie shagged lots of boys. I wondered, as I drifted off to sleep, if one day we would find someone. It seemed that it wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

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