It felt more like she was convincing herself than saying something she actually believed. But it was enough to make Ayanna press forward. Everything and everyone she touched, every sound heard, even the way her mouth tasted a little acidic from fear, was meaningful. If these were the last moments of her life, Ayanna was grateful to be feeling them so intensely. Then, the door followed its schedule, and opened. The mood shifted. It was not to the golden path, but to the meadow and its verge-of-evening skies.

She wanted to say “I love you” as she stepped into the new world, but that felt too much like goodbye.

9

Seeing Ayanna’s shoulders, her bent head, feeling for the first time in their shared life like her sister was truly afraid, was too much for Olivia. Before anyone could react, she chased her sister through the door. She yelled something that some people said was, “If you die, I die,” and other people said was just her sister’s name or maybe even just a yell.

Then, the second unexpected thing happened, which was after Olivia chased her sister, the door shut quickly, reopened, and the meadows were gone. The path was there, but for the first time ever, it was snowing. Iridescent flakes large as moths gathered beneath a streetlamp. One person immediately began writing, but almost everyone else froze. A few heads swiveled toward the girls’ father, but his eyes were darting from the door to the snow beyond already starting to accumulate on the golden branches to the military officers who were now running toward them to the expedition driving down the red dirt road in Hummers to a cloud that swirled up like a perfect soft-serve cone.

Out in the meadows, the twins looked at each other. Ayanna, a moonbeam in her still mostly white clothes. Olivia, in her sneakers and blue-and-white sundress, feeling the long navy grass tickling her calves and thighs. There was no door. In the distance, over her sister’s shoulder, Ayanna could see light. She wanted to take a picture of Olivia here, the light blue of her dress contrasting against the cerulean and indigo and navy of the landscape. Even in the whoosh of panic, she couldn’t help but notice how beautiful all this was.

“We’re alive,” Ayanna said, then laughed because it was such an obvious thing to say.

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said once, twice. “I panicked. I thought. I thought you—”