I know what they said was ignorant, about bonding, of course I do. There has never been any distinction between Hannah and I. Sometimes I think about the lost years—those three years when she had them and I didn’t. I wonder who I’d be if I really had Mom’s and Dad’s genes. If I had Dad’s genes, would I be even better at science? Brilliant. Not just good. Because maybe there were drugs when my mom was pregnant, not just after. Maybe brain cells were taken from me, right in the beginning.

I remember feeling jealous when I realized that Mom and Hannah have the same feet and that she curls her toes when she’s talking, just like Dad does. I wanted Mom and Nah’s Greek-ness, to have come from a line of women who make fantastic avgolemono. Mom says I come from that line, but I don’t, not in the way that I want to. I want to know who my ancestors are. The blood ones. Maybe they came on the Mayflower, too, like Dad’s. Or were Irish indentured servants. Or Russian princesses on the run. Or maybe Vikings. My blond hair and blue eyes—very Viking.

Even though I don’t fit in the way Hannah does, I never once doubted my parents’ love for me. The love they gave was equal and constant, deep and wide. One Valentine’s Day, Dad wrote on a Post-it, I love you girls from here … and then we had to go find the other Post-it, which was all the way on the backyard fence and it said, to here. There was a box of chocolates for each of us and little teddy bears holding hearts at that end.

That love—from him and for him—is what makes me throw open the stall door and walk slowly to the sink. I take a long time washing my hands. Long enough for the women to see me and know that I heard. Long enough for them to feel mortified.

I don’t say a word. I just grab some towels, dry my hands, and leave.

There are people everywhere and I avoid eye contact so they won’t talk to me and I push out the doors, looking for Nah. I find her and Micah on a bench near the reflection pools in front of the library. Her legs are over his lap, her body turned into him, head lying against his chest. He’s running his fingers through her hair, and he holds her like he’ll never let her go.

I want to fall apart like her, but I can’t. I’m not built that way, and even if I were, I’d have no one to catch me when I fall. Maybe that’s why that woman thinks I’m not hurting as much—Nah is so obviously shattered.