Chapter 1: A Strong Foundation

My family grew up poor. In high school, my mother had fallen for a fellow student. Sex education in those days was minimal; none at all until their final year, if parents had not remedied the problem earlier. Enticed by my father's dark curls and dusky skin, my mother had won him over, albeit briefly. She fell pregnant to him, and as was customary at the time, cast off as a fallen woman. He abandoned her, and my grandparents sent my mother to a shared house, which she fled soon after. Not having finished high school and needing to support her family, my mother took a job as a cleaner, desperately saving all she could in the scant few months before she gave birth to my twin sister and I.

After we arrived, my mother went back to work, employing a neighbour in our dilapidated apartment block to watch over us. Struggling between two low-paying jobs, we were stuck in that dingy hole, a two-bedroom affair. My mother relinquished the master bedroom, which had been furnished with a double bed when she moved in. She dragged a couch into the other room, resting there briefly between shifts. She always talked about buying us separate beds, but the needs of the shopping, utilities, and clothing the family always conspired to prevent it from happening.

With little exposure to the outside world in our youth, my sister and I grew up close. Niamh inherited our father's dark looks, her skin the colour of white coffee, raven-dark, curling tresses framing an exotic face with almond-shaped eyes. I, on the other hand, favoured my mother's side of the family, my skin achieving a tanned look, with occidental blue eyes and coppery hair. When we finally started high school, our physical differences suited us; no one could have suspected we were siblings, and we kept the fact secret. With the rather unique surname of Smith, it was hardly as though we aroused suspicion.

I remember the early years of High School being a particular chore. Any brother will know the friction of sharing a house with sisters close to him in age; now imagine, if you will, the unrelenting horror of sharing not just a bedroom with her, but a bed. After our arguments escalated to world war three, I scavenged some wood and used it to build a divider down the middle of the shared bed. My sister complained that it protruded too far on her side, forcing me to re-allocate the space according to her designs. She even went so far as the old tape-on-the-wall-and-floor technique to demarcate the boundaries of our respective territory, her anal approach to the situation forcing me to grit my teeth much the time. As we aged, we stopped fighting and returned to an uneasy truce, which over time deepened into a firm friendship. Even so, sharing a room was hard, and tempers occasionally flared.

As much as our physical appearances differed, so too did our talents and interests. Niamh favoured the athletic pursuits, running track and becoming an adept gymnast before puberty hit her full force; in the space of half a year she became too tall and top-heavy to compete, which devastated her. After a few failed attempts to starve herself back into contention, she turned her efforts to the cheerleading team instead. Meanwhile, I favoured the bookish pursuits, and was especially good at English, Science, and Maths. With such varied areas of interest, my sister and I coached each other through the subjects we found difficult; she helped me to refine my gym techniques, whilst I helped her with homework and assignments.

After graduation, I had attained marks high enough to attend the University of my choice. My sister had fared less well in her tertiary entrance exams, but that did not overly concern her because she planned on entering the workforce rather than dong any further studies. Both of us were tired of living in the cramped confines of our mother's apartment, and looked forward to the freedom of having our own place. We looked around separately, but the market was prohibitive; we eventually decided to get an apartment together, sharing the burden of rent, utilities, and groceries.

As we shopped around, we attracted more than our fair share of sceptical real estate agents. My sister was petite, dark-skinned, and curvaceous; I was tall, fairer-skinned, and lanky. Eventually they came to the conclusion that we were a young couple posing as family to try and barter the price down, and the questions ceased. We finally found what we were looking in, a modest two-bedroom, one en-suite apartment with a tiny kitchenette, dining room/lounge area, and a laundry you could barely move in. Still, it was clean and bright; my sister begged me to enter into the lease as her co-signee. After extorting her for a promise to handle the housework and the bulk of the cooking- the last not a hard sell, as my culinary skills were atrocious- I caved in, agreeing to what she wanted.

Everything went well during the move; we even bought our first separate beds, moving our gear into our two new, spacious bedrooms with a sense of freedom. That sensation was not to last; we spent our first nights in our new apartment restless, tossing and turning in our new beds and bedrooms, both unaccustomed to loneliness after having shared a room and a bed for so many nights. Niamh crumbled first.

I had just begun to doze when a timid knock on my door awoke me. Silhouetted against the burning hallway light, Niamh slipped into my room, closing the door with a slight rasp of improperly-aligned joinery. "Bro," she stage-whispered. "You asleep?"

"Yeah, Niamh. I'm dreaming about sugarplum fairies over here. What is it?" She giggled, then composed herself, her voice returning to her normal pitch. "I can't sleep. It feels weird." I sat up in the bed, flipped my bedside lamp on, and lifted the covers, scooching close to the wall to give her room to join me. A single bed doesn't leave much room for two; we spooned there in the darkness, lulled into sleep by the familiar susurrations of each other's drowsy breaths.