1

“Why are you bringing your friends here?” Henrietta Hanson asked her brother, who was sitting across the table from her as the two sat at the table on her patio eating a quick lunch together. There were complete opposites in everything in their lives, even though they were not only brother and sister. They were twins. They couldn’t not be any more different if they actually tried.

Christian looked at her as he took another bit of food. He looked at her through his soulful brown eyes as he met her light blue ones. He had long accepted that his twin was different from him. He knew that everything about her was something he didn’t understand. Unlike most of their family, he tried to keep in contact with her and help her understand the differences in life that she didn’t seem to get. “You need to meet some new people.” He easily replied after he swallowed his bite. “You never go out or even remotely act our age.”

“Why would I?” She asked. “Chris, We both know I am different from people our age. I don’t get along with them because I am in a different place in my life. I am okay with that. I don’t understand why you keep trying to push me to do things like this, though? I am fine the way I live my life now.”

“You don’t act any different with me.” He said as he sat back in his chair and looked at his sister. He knew they were different. He tilted his head and wondered how they could even be twins. She was so much smaller than he was by more than a foot and a half. There was nothing that he could think that was the same. Her skin was almost pure alabaster, and though it shined in the light of day. He looked at his hand, and it was bronzed much like the rest of him. She also didn’t reach his chest when they were standing next to each other. She was the smallest in the family, and he was the tallest. It also went far beyond physical traits. Henni was light years ahead of everyone else in the family with the way she thought. It was even there when they were young children. People just watched her differently. They all could see how she was and the way her thought process was more complex than most adults.

“I don’t have to be any different with you.” She said as he looked at him, looking at his hands. “You don’t expect anything from me. You are simply there in the bubble I call my life. That is fine as well.”

“No, I guess I don’t,” he said as he sat back and smiled a bit. “But I do think that you should get out and meet some new people.”

“I don’t know why.” She said as she looked to the backyard. “and I really don’t want them here at all. This is my place, and I don’t like people in it really even if I know them. I really I don’t understand why you want me to meet new people. Most people don’t like me. I am fine here in my place. I don’t really need to find more people that don’t like me. I have enough of those already there all around me.”

“Come on.” He said as he looked at her, and Chris knew that he was pushing her out of her comfort zone. He didn’t really care, though. He knew his sister. He thought he did. She couldn’t be fine with how things were in her life. To him, that didn’t make any sense. He knew he had to be around people. He had been that way all of his life. She had to have some of the same wishes and desires like he did. Even if she didn’t realize it yet. “Alright, I will compromise. How about instead of coming here, you go out and meet with the group in our go out place. It is a bar and club in the same building. We will have some fun there.”

“Chris.” She said as she sighed. “You aren’t going to let me get out of this, are you?”

“No.” he said, “One time, and if you don’t like them for any reason, I will let you off the hook for a few months at least. I know you are busy, but you still need to be a twenty-two-year-old. It isn’t fun being alone.”

“I was a twenty-two-year-old, eight years ago.” She said with a laugh. He didn’t really understand how she felt. She was trapped in her skin. She had been forced to be something completely different than what she was really. The Curse she was born with. That is what she called it. The thing that changed her life forever and set her on a different path from those around her. “When we were fourteen.”

“Being advanced doesn’t mean you have to give up on still being young.” He said as he looked at her and shook his head. “By the way.” He started to say, and the look on his face changed slightly. She knew what was coming. She wanted nothing to do with the news he was going to share. It was best if she didn’t even have to hear it.

“If it is about mom, I don’t care,” Henni said as she looked at him. He knew the reason she stopped talking to most of their older siblings. He had taken the stand with her though it was not hard for him. He had seen first hand the way she had been treated when they were growing up. She had been used from the day she was born. She had been the lucky one to be a near perfect match to their older brother for her blood and bone marrow. That was the only reason the last six of the kids in the family had been born. They had all been told this almost from birth. Henni had been different even then.

She had gone through two of the painful procedures to save her brothers life. Once when she had been a month old and then one when she was twelve. Each time her mother addressed her as their brother’s spare parts. She didn’t care about her getting hurt and then sick afterward. She had actually left the room to follow the life-saving fluids to where she would sit holding her brother's hand while he got everything implanted in him. That was how much her mother had cared for her. Henni didn’t want to hear about the woman who had turned her back on her for many different reasons. She had blocked all contact and didn’t want to even think about the woman. Henni also did that for the siblings who listened to their mother more than they could see out of their own eyes. She wanted nothing to do with any of them. It was easier to cut them from her life than it was to deal with the pain they caused her.

Henni had handled it all well until he had come out of remission a third time. She was eighteen this time. That was when all hell broke out in the family when she told her brother she was sorry, but she wouldn’t be his donor. Her mother had lost her temper and nearly hit Henni, who was waiting for it. It wasn’t like she had made the decision lightly either. The only reason she had even said no was because the three people who could be a better match than her had never been tested. His children. The answer to a simple question is what made Henni say no rather quickly. She had asked why they had not been tested because they could be better than she was, as they were his children and therefore half of him. The answer had come equally as quick. Why would they put the kids through a hard and painful test and procedure if they already had a good enough match? She understood her place in her mother’s life more than she had before. There was no chance of her being seen as a person in her mother’s eyes. Henni would be nothing more than the extra spare parts for her brother, who had been unnecessarily cruel to her through the years. She would never be anything to them. 

With her quick no, she had torn her family apart. It was the last time she had spoken to her mother. Henni had moved on. Christian had stood beside her for the most part. It wasn’t like she needed it, though. She was brilliant and one of a kind. Though he had accepted her as she was, sometimes it was difficult to be around her. He still wanted a relationship with his other family as well. Henni had never put conditions on their relationship either. The others had many times. It was them or her. He tried very hard to find a balance between the two options.

“Are you two ever going to make up?” Christian asked with a major sigh.

“No,” Henni said with a smile and a soft sigh. She knew her brother wanted to keep the peace for his own sanity. Henni had long since accepted her place in the larger family. She was nothing important to them. “I was just kept for spare parts. Hell, she didn’t even want to see me when they got divorced, and she wanted me and only me to go live with dad. Close enough if she needed me to fix Darren but not a part of her sphere.”

“Henni.” He said as he stood up and stretched and looked down at her as she looked up. “Fine. I will get with you later this week to see when would be a good time to have this meet up.”

“Fine.” She said as she sighed as he walked through the door and through her house. She leaned back in her chair, and then she knew this was not going to go as he thought it would. It never was the way he planned. However, meeting up with a group of people for a few minutes would get him to leave her alone for a few months if he kept his word. That would be worth it possibly. It might be worth it in the end. He would see people just didn’t like her. She was fine with that as well. He needed to get over it. This would be a great time for him to see it firsthand.