prepared to free-fall onto her bed, so she can tell me all the ways Lucas is an asshole and how I deserve better and blah-blah-blah feel-good bullshit.
But her room is empty. The clock on her nightstand reads 12:48 a.m. She should’ve been home by now. Ugh. I don’t have enough emotional energy to process this breakup—is this even a breakup?—and worry about Clementine’s well-being.
I plop down on her bed and fidget with her laptop, looking for the perfect song to properly wallow in this very particular sorrow. I settle on Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts,” and I swear to God I’m about to push her laptop to the side when an email alert from the University of Georgia pops up in the corner of her screen.
Subject Line: Re: First Year Bulldog Camp Dorm Request
I click. It’s a reflex. I can’t control it.
Dear Clementine,
Yes, if you decide to attend First Year Bulldog Camp, we would likely be able to fulfill your dorm request. Though the final say would be up to your camp adviser. I believe you would be with Julia. This is her second year doing Bulldog Camp and I think you two will really hit it off. Testing out your dorm is a great idea. I actually stayed in Hawthorne for my first two years of undergrad and loved it. My roommate was even in my wedding!
I know you have yet to commit to UG, but as a reminder, our extended deadline is right around the corner in a few weeks. Please don’t hesitate if you have any more questions.
-Paulina
Paulina Fernandez
Admissions Adviser
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia
I snap the laptop shut like it’s a can of worms.
What. The. Fuck. I scrub my hands through my curls, like that might somehow erase everything I just saw. Clem can’t be going to Georgia. Georgia? Why Athens, Georgia? If she’s going to leave me, she might as well make it worth it. Everyone knows cities in the south named after European cities are total duds. You don’t see people lining up to go to Paris, Texas, do you?
I go back to my own room and take a few deep breaths. Clem and I aren’t just twins. We’re best friends. But we have boundaries too. Text messages. Emails. Those are things we don’t go tromping through, so even though I am aching with confusion and hurt feelings, I’m not about to get caught snooping through her emails.
After marking the email as unread, I settle into my own bed, and it hits me harder. Forget snooping through emails! Clem is about to betray me in the biggest way. She’s abandoning me. On top of that, she’s not even offering me the decency of a warning.
My twin—the person who I am so closely synced with that when I lose my keys she always knows where I left them—is considering leaving me. And worse than that: she kept it a secret. Does Hannah know? Our parents? Grammy? Surely Grammy would have told me. If Clem is considering her dorm prospects, then this is more than her feeling out her options.
An alert buzzes on my phone, jarring me back to the present. I grab my phone and swipe to find an Instagram post from @FiercestOfThemAllOfficial. The image is of a crown on a red velvet pedestal, and below that, the caption reads: Season 16’s queen has been crowned, but the search for Season 17’s queen begins now! Click the link in our bio and send in your audition video today. Who knows? You might just be the Fiercest of Them All!
I read the caption again and again until I’ve memorized it. You might just be the Fiercest of Them All.
Double dumped in one night. Lucas wasn’t worried about coming out. He just didn’t want to come out with me. Hearing it, really piecing it together in my head and seeing the dots connect, cuts deep. But Clem. That hurts me in a way no boy could ever. If she really is going to Georgia, I get the message loud and clear. The life I dreamed up for us isn’t enough. She wants something bigger and better. Without me.
Fine. Let her have it. She can go. She can leave me. She can be anyone she wants to be. And so can I.
It doesn’t take me long to find the Merle Norman makeup starter kit Grammy bought Clem for her fifteenth birthday. The mauve leather case was tucked under her bed, collecting dust in between a shoebox full of failed drawings Hannah ripped