Neither of us could have made it alone.

A girl who was all open heart would have broken; a girl who was all cold vault would have hardened into something that could not be saved.

But together, each holding exactly what the other lacked, we were complete — she kept us human, and I kept us alive, and between us we held a whole person’s worth of survival that neither could have held apart.

I have understood, in the years since, that the division between us was not a coincidence of temperament but something closer to a survival strategy, worked out between us without our ever discussing it, the way twins work things out.