My sister died, and then she moved in. Not into her old room, but into my body. At first, my parents didn’t believe me. Then, they got used to the switch. And then, they found a hypnotist to erase me. 1 I destroyed the living room. Anything I could lift, I threw. Anything I could break, I shattered. The floor glittered with a thousand pieces of my soul, each one a silent scream. Mom covered her mouth, tears tracking through her makeup. Dad’s face was a mask of fury, but he didn’t stop me. “Why?” I screamed at them, my voice raw. “It’s my body! Why do I have to give it up for her?” Dad pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead, a gesture of someone who has finally made a terrible decision. “We saw a therapist, Chloe. This… arrangement. It isn’t working. Neither of you can live a full life this way. We have to choose.” He tried to soften his voice, but it was rough with false pity. “This is tearing us apart. You’re our daughter, too. We wouldn’t do this if there were any other way. You have to understand.” I snatched a water glass from the end table and hurled it at his feet. It exploded, and he flinched back. He opened his mouth to yell, then shut it, remembering he needed something from me. “I understand you,” I spat, the words tasting like poison. “But who understands me? You’re in pain? You have no other choice? So I’m the one who has to die? This was always my body. If anyone should disappear, it should be her. It should be Stella.” Rage and despair were a storm inside me. Just days ago, they had been my parents, the people who loved me. Now they were my executioners. My words made Mom sob harder. But Dad’s brow furrowed in annoyance. “Don’t be so dramatic. Stella will live on through you, using your body. And it doesn’t matter if you agree. The decision has been made.” He had no more patience for this. He took Mom’s arm and pulled her out of the house, leaving me in the wreckage. After another fit of destruction, I collapsed onto the floor, a single question echoing in the ruins of my mind. Why me? 2 I had a sister, Stella, three years older than me. I was six when she died. Mom and Dad came home late that night, their faces hollowed out by grief. Mom saw me, crumpled to the floor, and pulled me into a suffocating hug. “Stella’s gone, sweetie,” she choked out. “Chloe, you don’t have a sister anymore.” I didn’t understand, but her grief was contagious, and I started to cry, too. Through my tears, I pointed to a pile of dolls in the corner. “But she’s right there.” At first, they didn’t believe me. They scolded me for making things up, for being cruel. But then I started repeating conversations they’d had in private, whispered behind their bedroom door. They accused me of eavesdropping, but over time, they realized I couldn't have heard. They finally accepted the truth. I wasn’t lying. Stella was always there, a shimmering outline only I could see. She slept in her old room, walked to school with me, and told me everything our parents said. She knew she was dead. But when I told other people, they looked at me like I was broken. “The Millers?” I heard a neighbor whisper once. “Such a shame. One daughter dead, the other one crazy.” Friends at school called me a liar, an attention-seeker. They’d play with me on the playground, then I’d hear them laughing about me behind the slide. Stella would fly at them in a rage, but she was only a ghost. The most she could do was make them sneeze. Eventually, I stopped talking about her to anyone but my parents. At home, life went on, a strange new normal. They got used to me speaking for her, a living telephone to the dead. They couldn’t see her, but they would buy two of everything—one for me, one for the ghost of their other daughter. No distance, not even death, could stop them from loving her. I was their bridge, the translator for their grief. Then, on my sixteenth birthday, she vanished. I couldn’t see her anymore. At the same time, I lost two days. One moment it was Tuesday, the next it was Thursday. Mom and Dad explained it to me later. Stella had woken up. Inside me. The two days I couldn’t remember were the days she had been living in my body. After that, it became a regular thing. I’d go to sleep and wake up days later, with no memory of what had happened. We shared a life, documented in a spiral-bound notebook, leaving notes for each other about where we’d been and who we’d seen. We lived like that for three years. I never imagined that in just three years, my parents would decide she was worth more than me. 3 Maybe it was the pure force of my resentment, but I could feel Stella deep inside me, sleeping soundly. It was a relief, but then I remembered my parents’ words, and the air I’d just inhaled caught in my throat. After yesterday’s explosion, my mind was unnervingly clear. I’m not explosive by nature; that’s Stella’s territory. The rage was an aberration, born of pure terror. I showered and dressed, knowing what I would see when I went downstairs. The disappointment. I steeled myself and opened my bedroom door. And there it was. In the instant they saw it was me, Chloe, the hope in their eyes died and was replaced by a flat, weary resignation. To be rejected by your own parents is a unique kind of pain, a blade that twists in your very core. The wreckage from yesterday was gone. The house was clean, broken things replaced with new, unfamiliar ones. I walked downstairs, trying to look calm. Dad snorted and turned away, staring pointedly out the window. Mom opened her mouth to speak, then just sighed. My nose stung. And beneath the smell of my own silent grief, another scent filled the air. Flowers. There was a vase of lilies on the dining table. Another on the coffee table. More in the bathroom, and even a small bouquet on the kitchen counter. Lilies everywhere. Stella’s favorite. It was a passive-aggressive welcome mat for a ghost, and a clear message for me: You are not the one we want. I could almost hear the sound of their love for me cracking, the sound of my own heart breaking right alongside it. The cloying, funereal scent and the suffocating silence were too much. I grabbed my bag and ran. It wasn’t until I was outside the neighborhood gates that I realized my face was wet with tears. I got on the bus for school automatically, my body moving while my mind was stuck. Sobs shook my shoulders as I watched the scenery blur past the window, a perfect metaphor for the last three years of my life. When I walked into my art history lecture, my classmates stared. “Chloe? What are you doing here? We heard you transferred.” In that moment, a fire I didn't know I had burned away the last traces of love I felt for my sister. 4 My academic advisor said it was too late. My major, a specialized fine arts program, was impossible to transfer back into once you’d left. I walked to the Business School in a daze. I sat in a cavernous lecture hall, listening to jargon about market caps and shareholder equity that sounded like a foreign language. The room buzzed with the chatter of strangers. I felt like I was on another planet. I endured the class and then, with the sun still high in the sky and no desire to go home, I just walked. I wandered the campus aimlessly, my thoughts a tangled mess. But one thing was clear: Stella had been planning this. That’s why her journal entries had become so sparse. She didn’t want me to know what she was doing. My legs ached. I sank onto a bench, exhausted, with no idea what to do next. On one side was a major I knew nothing about. On the other, a family who wanted to steal my life. I leaned back, letting the sky fill my vision. And then I saw it. Three words carved above a stone archway: University Library. By the time I left, my arms loaded with books, the sun had set. When I got home, Mom was setting the table. She saw the stack of business textbooks and her expression flickered with guilt. She knew. Of course she knew. It was probably her and Dad’s idea. Dinner was silent and heavy. I picked at my food, only taking a few bites of the roasted fish, one of my favorite dishes. Mom forced a laugh, trying to break the tension. “Look at that, honey. Chloe’s just like us, loves fish. Stella never would touch anything from the water.” Her words made it worse. The silence that followed was even more profound. Dad put down his wine glass. “I hear you got some business books. So you know Stella switched your major. Just listen to me, Chloe. Stella’s brilliant. She has the mind for this, for helping me at the company. You, even if you started now, you’d be in over your head. You wouldn't be any help. You understand what I’m saying.” I nodded, pushing a few grains of rice around my plate. Seeing my compliance, they brightened. “So you’ve come around?” Dad said, a genuine smile spreading across his face. “Good. I’ll call the hypnotist in a few days. Finally, you can have a normal life.” I looked up, my eyes meeting his directly. “Will I be normal, Dad? Or will Stella?” He frowned for a second, then his smile returned, slick and practiced. “She’s your sister. You share a body. Her being normal is you being normal.” I nodded again. Then, as they beamed at me, I spoke each word with cold, clear precision. “I would burn this body to the ground before I let her have it.” The sound of his wine glass shattering against the wall echoed my father’s rage. He pointed a trembling finger at me, sputtering, too furious to form words. Mom rushed to his side, stroking his arm and glaring at me. I couldn’t stay here. Living with two people who were actively plotting my demise would drive me insane. I packed a small bag and moved into the dorms that night. 5 Campus life became my sanctuary. I spent my days in lectures and my nights devouring knowledge in the library. Dad always thought Stella was the genius, but he never noticed my gift: a nearly photographic memory. If I wanted to learn something, I only needed to see it once or twice before it was permanently etched in my mind. Mom called repeatedly. At first, she pleaded. Then, she accused me of being ungrateful. I didn’t understand. All I wanted was to live. We were both their daughters, but because Stella had died once, their guilt demanded a sacrifice. My sacrifice. When pleading failed, they sent in someone I couldn’t refuse. Leo. My childhood friend. The boy I’d had a hopeless crush on for years. “Chloe, please,” he said, his voice strained. “Just give her back to me.” A chill shot up from the soles of my feet. My own voice was a trembling whisper. “What do you mean… your Stella?” He didn’t seem to notice my shock. “I’ve known for a while, Chloe. About you and her. And I knew you wouldn’t agree to this. That’s why I’m begging you. I can’t lose her again. You’ve had all these years to live, but Stella… she died so young. She’s only had three years in your body, and who knows when she might disappear again. The thought of it… I can’t breathe, Chloe. So please, just agree. Your body, her soul… you’ll be one. Why are you being so selfish?” I was too stunned to speak, the world tilting on its axis. He pressed on. “We grew up together, Chloe. I’ve never asked you for anything. I’m asking now. Do you need me to kneel?” And then he did. He dropped to one knee on the damp grass. My hand trembled as I reached for him, but he grabbed it, his grip surprisingly strong. His eyes were bloodshot. “Chloe, just say yes.” His ferocity scared me. I tried to pull away, but he held fast. Panic clawed at my throat, and the words tumbled out before I could stop them. “You’re trying to kill me, too! All of you! Well, you won’t. I won’t die. Stella’s the one who should be dead!” I regretted it instantly. The words were a stupid, brave mistake. Leo’s handsome face twisted into something ugly. He stared at me with pure venom. “Then you leave me no choice. I will not lose her.” The last thing I felt was his hand, hot and heavy, clamping over my mouth. We were in a secluded corner of campus. No one could hear my muffled screams. No one saw as my world faded to black. 6 Leo looked down at the unconscious girl in his arms, a flicker of remorse in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Chloe. I’ll spend the next life making it up to you.” He carried her out of the school gates and into a waiting car. The room was dim, the air thick with the scent of sandalwood. The gentle hiss of a white noise machine seemed to smooth the deep furrow in the sleeping girl’s brow. Mr. and Mrs. Miller sat nearby, their anxiety a palpable force in the room. They didn’t dare make a sound. Leo stood frozen, his eyes glued to the figure on the recliner. Time crawled by. The hypnotist’s voice was a soft, continuous murmur. Outside, it began to rain. A flash of lightning illuminated the room, and in the following clap of thunder, the girl’s eyes slowly opened. She sat up, her gaze clouded with confusion. The three of them surrounded her. Their hands were trembling, betraying a mix of hope and terror. They were afraid of being disappointed, terrified that the person they wanted was not the one who had woken up. The girl on the recliner looked at their tense faces, and the fog in her eyes cleared. A bright, infectious laugh filled the room, a sound like sunshine breaking through clouds. “Dad? Mom? Why so serious? What day is it? And where are we? Leo, you look terrible.” The words were a release. The three of them sagged with relief, a collective, shuddering exhale. Mrs. Miller burst into tears. “Oh, thank God. Stella, you’re back. Don’t you ever leave me again.” Leo’s face was a study in adoration. But Stella looked confused. “Mom, what are you talking about? Was I asleep for a long time? When… when was the last time I was awake? I can’t remember.” As she tried to think, a sharp pain shot through her head, and she cried out, clutching her temples. The sound made her mother jump back. Leo rushed forward, pulling Stella into his arms. “Shh, it’s okay. Don’t try to remember. It’s okay.” Mr. Miller looked at the hypnotist, who offered a placating explanation. “We have effectively erased a personality. Given the long-term alternation, her own psyche was already unstable. This process can cause some memory fragmentation. It may come back over time, or it may not.” That was good enough for Mr. Miller. He could live with gaps in her memory. Stella was brilliant. She learned everything so quickly. He could reteach her whatever was lost. She was his daughter, after all. She would not disappoint him.
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