Sure, Canada is all well and good, but twins have always fascinated me. Another wrinkle of siblinghood to observe from the outside as an only child.

“Well, this wouldn’t be happening now if you’d let us sit together on the train, Troy. That was the perfect time for factoids like these.”

Corinne shrugs. She had insisted that we sit on two different ends of the wagon because “the impulse to chitchat” would have distracted from the work she needed to get out of the way. We met for a brief lunch in the dining car, after which she returned to her seat to study with headphones in.

I have to admit that, this way, the ten hours of travel time were at least productive. Now I won’t have to think about a backlog of problem sets during this interview.

“Do you have, like, a cousin you share a telepathic connection with?” I can’t help but follow up as Corinne leads us down onto foreign streets with echoes of French in the background. “That’s so cool. Like, if they stub their toe in Canada, do you feel a twinge in New York? Do you look like them?”

“No cousins. Aunt Terry doesn’t have any kids. She and Mom are . . . Well, you’ll see,” Corinne says, with a note of dread.

“C-c-cold!” I yelp out as a wave of chill hits my bones, right through the bubble jacket and long-sleeve T underneath. Unlike New York, which has been snowless, Canada has solid banks of white coiled along the sides of every street. Some dirty, some clean, with lines of boot holes stepping into them. Every step feels gritty from the salt that’s been put on every inch of the sidewalk to help with the visible patches of ice.

“It’s Canada.” Corinne laughs, making a move to tighten my scarf but then moving her hands to the straps of her backpack. “Even if you go by the broadest stereotype, the cold would be at the top of the list.”

“I, um, didn’t expect the temperature to go down by this much since we were traveling by train and not, y’know, plane. Like, how many weather patterns could we have crossed?”

She stops in the middle of the sidewalk and looks at me with a brow so furrowed it may never unwrinkle.

“Thank God you’re pretty because that’s sincerely the dumbest thing I ever heard. Just smile a lot during the interview or something.”

I’m about to excavate as much material as I can from that stray compliment when a singsongy voice beckons to us.

“Riri! I’d recognize that hat anywhere,” a fluffy purple faux-fur coat says, waving at us from across the street. “There she is!”