The Twin They Erased novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Not a Student of Record
At the Founders' Day photograph, Principal Ansel lifts Willa out of the frame in front of every girl, then hands her a first-ever town pass and a pencil birthday card from her twin. Willa takes the pass and walks into a barn fight night, where Eamon Bannon tells her the principal owes him forty thousand dollars.
The photographer saw me in the tower window and asked to have me come down for the picture.
He was a young man with a camera on a strap, hired to take the brochure photograph for the donors.
He pointed up at the bell tower, and a hundred and forty girls on the front lawn turned to look at the girl he meant.
Principal Ansel smiled at him with her whole face.
"Of course," she said. "Let me send for her."
The matron unlocked my room at the top of the bell tower and walked me down three flights.
I had not been on the lawn in daylight for a year.
The grass was bright and the sun made my eyes water.
I stood at the back of the last row, in a grey uniform that stopped above my wrists.
The girl beside me stepped away from me by one small step.
Then Principal Ansel came down the line, fixing collars and chins, and stopped in front of me.
She was fifty-six, with round glasses and a cardigan, and a ring of keys on her belt that rang when she walked.
"Not this one, dear," she said, loud enough for the whole lawn.
The photographer lowered his camera. "She's one of yours, isn't she?"
"Willa is a ward of the school," Principal Ansel said. "She is not a student of record. She isn't in the brochure."
Nobody on that lawn made a sound.
A ward of the school meant that no family paid for me and no family had come.
It meant that Marrow Hill kept the roof over my head and the key to my door.
I had been there seven years, and now a hundred and forty girls knew it.
"Back in line, ladies," she said, and the camera clicked without me.
I was walked off the grass by the matron.
I did not cry.
I looked at the tower window and counted the bars.
An hour later Principal Ansel sent for me and I stood in her office, where it smelled of lemon polish and tea.
She was kind to me there.
She always was, when the door was shut and no one was watching.
"I'm sorry about that, Willa. Donors don't understand our arrangements." She patted my hand. "You know you're family to me."
On her desk lay a white envelope, and beside it a small slip of blue paper.
"It's your birthday, isn't it?" she said. "Nineteen. And I've had a thought."
She slid the slip across the desk.
It was a town pass.
Four hours, from ten until two, signed by her in green ink.
"A little fresh air will do you good," she said. "The matron will meet you at the gate at two. And I would so like it if you didn't talk to the photographer."
I had asked for a pass every month for three years.
I had never gotten one.
I took it before she changed her mind.
The envelope was my birthday card.
The flap had been slit open and glued shut again, which happened to every card I'd ever gotten.
I read it standing at her desk.
The card was plain, with a pressed daisy on the front, and inside, in pencil, one line.
Happy birthday. Don't write back. T.
I looked at the pencil.
My twin Tilda hated pencil, because it smeared on the side of her hand, and at ten years old she wrote everything in ink.
This was the seventh card in seven years.
All of them were in pencil, and every one told me not to write back.
"Is she well?" I asked.
"Your sister is very well," Principal Ansel said. "Better than you'd believe."
She smiled at me, and her keys rang.
I put the card in my sock with the pass.
Seven years ago my aunt drove me up to this ridge, told me my parents' will was complicated and that Tilda would visit soon.
Tilda never visited, and she never sent anything but one line in pencil.
I stopped waiting for her at about fourteen.
I had hated her ever since.
So I took the pass.
The gate stood open for the first time in my life, and I walked down the road into Kettle Falls with a pass in my sock and no money at all.
At the edge of town a poster was nailed to a telephone pole.
BANNON'S BARN. FIRST SATURDAY. WOMEN'S CARD AT NOON. CASH PURSES.
Under it somebody had drawn a fist in marker.
The barn was a mile out, behind a hayfield, with trucks parked all along the fence.
Inside it smelled of sweat and hay and beer, and there was a ring made of rope in the middle of the floor.
Two girls were hitting each other in it.
One of them wore a grey skirt I knew.
The crowd was loud, and a man stood at the edge of the ring with a cash box and a ledger.
He was about thirty, with a broken nose and a flannel shirt, and his hands were taped.
I walked up to him and said, "How much does the winner get?"
He looked at my face, then at my sleeve, where the school crest was stitched.
His eyes stayed on it.
"You're a Marrow Hill girl," he said.
"I am today."
He closed the ledger over his thumb.
"Then you'd better know whose barn this is," he said. "Principal Ansel owes me forty thousand dollars."
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