Blank Tapes


When I come back from the hospital, no one knows me. It’s better that way. Blue contacts hide my normally brown eyes, my light blond hair dyed a dark chocolate brown. I’m going by my middle name this time, my last being common enough that no one makes the connection. It’s been two years. Feels like an eternity.

“Class,” the teacher, Mrs. Kopel, begins, clapping her wrinkled hands for attention. The space between her first and middle fingers on her right hand is yellow. It matches her teeth.

“Class, we have a new student joining us. This is Hannah Johnson. She just moved her from…” She trails off, scanning the pink paper that I had handed her when I first walked into the room. My receipt of delivery from the office.

“Indiana,” I offer.

“Yes!” Her head snaps back up to face the class as she lays the pink paper back on the desk behind her. “Yes, Indiana. Please make sure to make her feel welcome. And if anyone would be so kind as to help show her around…?”

The class is silent, the other students’ eyes flitting around the room, anxious butterflies, unsure if they should volunteer or if the cup can be passed to someone else. Finally, a girl in the back of the room raises her hand. Her blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail, dark freckles peppering her cheeks.

“Yes, Amy, thank you,” Mrs. Kopel gestures to a seat beside the blond girl, “Hannah, you can sit there, beside Amy. She’ll show you to your next class after homeroom ends.”

I make my way to the back of the room, the whispers and stares of the other eleventh graders filling the air around me, a cloud of words and phrases so stereotypical they might as well have come from characters in a bad teenage drama.

“Who is she?”
“She’s kind of pretty.”
“She looks like a bitch.”
“I wonder if she’s seeing anyone.”

Taking my seat, I smile at the blond girl. She extends her hands to shake and we make our introductions. She asks the scripted questions: where did I go to school before, what made my family move here, where was I thinking about college, do I have any siblings?

I answer with carefully constructed answers, all fabrications save for the last. I can’t lie about Elizabeth. Amy reacts as expected.

Whenever someone finds out that I’m a twin, their interest is instantly piqued, their questions standard. Amy is no different, her blue eyes seeming to grow darker in her excitement.

“Really? You have a twin? So, do you guys, like, finish each other’s sentences? Do you have the same thoughts?”

I tell her no, and respond simply that Elizabeth is dead. Drowned. We don’t share anything, anymore.

Her face falls, sympathy etched into her mouth. Her eyes stay bright with interest. I knew they would. There is always one question left to ask.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she qualifies her next statement with an expression of sorrow to make it seem as if she really cares, “that’s horrible. But…” She looks thoughtful. Here it comes. “Could you, you know, sense when she died? Did you feel it?”

I sigh, making a mental mark, adding another to the count of how many times I’ve given this answer.

“No,” I say, noticing the time. The bell will ring soon. I pull my bag onto my lap, “I didn’t feel anything.”


Amy makes good on her promise and leads me around for the rest of the day, pointing out where my classes are, the safe places to sit in the lunch room, where each group in the hierarchy of high school cliques hang out. As we walk to the parking lot after our final class, she rubs at her eyes.

“Damned contacts,” she mutters, pulling at the side of her eye.

“You wear contacts?” I ask. My chest constricts. I’m not sure why.

“Yeah,” she mutters, her fingertip on her pupil, moving the thin piece of plastic in an attempt at making it more comfortable, “I can see fine, I just don’t like my eye colour.”

My heart races, trying to crawl into my throat. All of a sudden the sounds of the cars pulling out of the lot are a little too loud, the smoke from their exhaust pipes a little too heavy, “Really?” I ask, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, “What’s your normal colour?”

“That’s better,” she sighs, blinking. A tear slides down her cheek, dragging a bit of eyeliner with it. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, “Oh, brown.” She answers, nodding her head to the small red car we’re standing next to. “This is mine, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I answer, my mouth moving, but my brain not really connecting the words, “Tomorrow. See ya.”

I turn away, making my way to my spot. I stop half way, dropping my bag to the ground, desperately digging my fingertips into my eyes, my nails lightly scratching the thin top layers. Her eyes are brown and she wears blue contacts, my mind tells me, her eyes are brown and she wears blue contacts, her eyes are brown and—

Finally, the plastic dislodges from my eyes, sticking to the tips of my fingers. I throw them to the ground, disgusted. Tears flood my eyes, making it hard to see for a few minutes as my pulse slows, breathing becoming easier.

I make sure to step on them as I continue on my way to my car, crushing them into the hot afternoon pavement.


That night, I dream of Elizabeth. We’re wading into the lake behind our grandfather’s farm, the cool, murky water splashing up against our thighs, darkening the bottoms of our bikinis. The sun is in my eyes, causing me to squint as it reflects against the surface, shining back up at me. I dive under the water, my cheeks puffed, liquid flowing between my fingers as my arms cut through the current. I can see my sister’s distorted image above me, turning this way and that, trying to find me beneath the gray-green water. I swim a bit closer, deeper, into the cold, dark water at the bottom of the lake where her feet are buried under the silt. I grab one of her legs, pulling it out from under her, causing her to tumble fully into the water as I push off of the bottom, swimming for the sky and some much needed air. I laugh as I break the surface, gasping to fill my deflated lungs. I shake my hair out of my eyes, wincing as the sodden locks whip against my shoulders.

There is a disruption under the water in front of me, and again, I shield my eyes from the midday sun. I reach under the water, fumbling for my sister’s hand. My fingers become entangled in her hair, the same light shade of blond as my own. It glints gold in the sunlight. The struggles become stronger, more frantic as my fingers continue to weave in and out of her hair, wrapping it around my hand, braiding it between my fingers. Suddenly, the movement stops, the weight dropping from my hands, a dark shape drifting beneath the surface.

I gasp upon waking, the thin t-shirt I wore to bed sticking to me with sweat. I get up for a glass of water, staring at my reflection in the mirror above the sink. There are cockroaches in my stomach. I turn out the light, and my eyes disappear in the darkness.


The next few months pass in a blur. I get new contacts (violet this time, a colour that I doubt anyone else will choose as they won’t be able to pass it off as natural), I try to blend in with the middle groups on the social ladder, I keep my head down and my mouth shut and try to keep out of trouble. It’s nice to not be noticed, stared at. By the end of the last time I was here, that’s all everyone did—stare, whisper. As if I couldn’t hear them. As if I didn’t know.

I spend my lunches with Amy and her group. We usually sit outside, our backs against the cool cement of the gym building.

It is there that I see her for the first time.

It’s just a glance out of the corner of my eye, but the image burns itself inside of my eyelids. Her hair is the same as mine—shoulder length, dark brown. She wears the same lavender t-shirt, the same knee-high brown boots climb up her legs.

I’m on my feet without realizing it, blood rushing in my ears loudly enough that I barely hear Amy asking where I’m going. My steps are slow at first, deliberate, but when she seems to disappear around a corner, they become quicker, frantic. When I reach the corner of the building she’s gone. I hear Amy calling to me from where we were sitting, wondering what is wrong. I ignore her, and enter the Phys. Ed. Building, making my way to the locker room where I change into my gym shirt and sneakers, tossing the shirt and boots that I had been wearing into the trash.


After that day, I start to see her everywhere. She mocks me from the corner of my vision, identical in one or way or another, stealing my hair, my clothes, my eyes. Her hands make identical gestures, her lips forming identical words. I try and keep up, my wardrobe slowly making its way to live in the trunk of my car, my fingers and nails permanently stained red, black, yellow, hazards to too many dye jobs and not enough gloves. Amy and the others begin to distance themselves from me, but I barely notice. My eyes are too busy searching for her in the crowd, my ears are too full of the whispers of my classmates, single words making up disjointed phrases, toying with some larger memory that I most likely dreamed.

My hair is jet black, cut to my chin. My eyes drip with kohl liner, tattered stockings gripping my arms. I’m running out of new outfits, as she always seems to match my thought. There are only so many ways I can do my make up, so many colours I can dye my stiff and thinning hair. Today hers mirrors mine, cut sharp at her chin, black as pitch around her ears. The next day I shave it, dyeing the stubble that remains a bright pink. I’m tired of blending in, tired of pretending to fit. If she wants to play hard ball, if she wants to call me out into the open, to expose my clichéd reality, then so be it. I’ll play her game. I’ll be a beacon in the crowed, shining so brightly that the other students will have to shield their eyes from my radiance, their whispers turning into exclamations of wonder, of excitement.

Of fear.

Now my eyes are the butterflies, flitting from face to face in the halls, scanning their eyes, looking for her, waiting for her. She is here, I can feel it, a phantom limb, an ache in my soul. She is here and she is watching me, dancing in and out of the crowds between classes, her laughter harmonizing with their whispers, with their words. She knows who I am, she knows what I’ve done. She’ll share it with the world. They must not remember me.

They must not remember.

They must

I see her out of the corner of my eye, standing in the shadows, waving with one glove clad hand. I push my way through the throngs of my classmates, shoving them over benches and against lockers without a thought. My eyes are locked with hers, glinting in the sun light. We both wear only one violet contact, the other eye a dark chestnut brown.

My hands are claws as I lunge for her, my fingers eagerly grasping for the white skin of her throat. Fire slices through my arms as they smash through the classroom window, shards stabbing into my flesh, dripping red rivers to the floor. I cry out her name, cursing her for eluding me once again as the whispers grow louder, turning to shouts and mayhem as strong hands grip my shoulders, holding me to the ground. Again, she laughs, just outside of my vision, winking one kohl lined eye, and I thrust myself away from their grasp, throwing myself towards her. There is more breaking glass, more blood but I hardly notice the pain. She will not escape me this time. My hands will line her throat, choking the air from her lungs the same way they held her beneath the surface of that lake. I will feel her hair through my fingers, her hands slapping at my wrists. She will not hold my identity hostage any longer. I will be free. I will be my own.

I lunge for a final time before a heavy weight is upon my back, slamming me to the ground mid-leap. My arms are behind my back, someone shouting about the blood as fire shoots through my nerves. There is a pinch at my neck and then

darkness.


The doctors give me a tape recorder so as to record my thoughts, thinking that if I talk there will be progress. They keep me away from mirrors, away from anything that will show my reflection. My life is dull plastic utensils, matte finished walls, allowing others to comb my hair and do my make up. They say my arms are healing, though the scarring will be great. They say it with sadness, but it makes me smile as I erase what I recorded on the tape the day before. Her voice follows me, laughing through my words, echoing from the small black box. I have to record over her.

I have to have a blank tape.