Page 21 of I Was Always Yours (RCA: Royal Crown Academy)

I wish I could rewind; I wish I could redo it all.

I wish I had my brother back.

Rogue and Rhys walk into my room, the latter carrying a football under his arm. They haven’t left my side since it happened, sleeping on the floor of my room and silently lending me their support.

Rogue’s mum left him and his dad last year, so he at least partially understands what I’m going through, and Rhys is helping the best way he knows – by doubling down on his jokes and trying to make me laugh.

“Your dad told us to give you this,” Rogue says, handing me a bag, “It’s the things that Astor had on him when it happened.”

Something tugs at my chest as my fingers close around the bag and I pull it towards me. I open it and dump the few items on my bed.

“We’ll let you take a look. Come find us when you’re ready.”

I’m so immersed in the items now laying on my bed that I don’t acknowledge Rhys before they leave.

Astor’s things. Things he had on him on his last day.

On first glance, they don’t look like anything special. There’s a pen, a stick of gum, his keys.

But there’s also his wallet, which I open to find a picture of us. It’s from a school recital of ours when we were five. He’s dressed up as the sun and I’m a flower. His arm is thrown around my shoulders and he’s grinning happily at the camera while I look into the lens, stone-faced.

Grief claws at my insides as I put it down and grab the two bracelets he always wore on his wrist; one I gave him and one Six made for him.

Tears pool in my eyes when I realize I’m already thinking about him in the past tense, so quickly removing him from the present like he was never even here with me.

I wipe them with the back of my hand before they fall and grab the last item, a folded piece of paper that’s suffered some partial water damage.

I flatten it and what’s left of my mutilated heart shrivels up and dies when I read what’s written on it.

It’s a love note from Six to Astor covered in hearts and asking him if he wants to be her boyfriend.

Worse, he’s ticked off the ‘yes’ box below.

I feel like I’m going to puke.

That’s what they were hiding from me when I walked into the treehouse that day. I saw them acting suspiciously, hurriedly putting things away and stuffing pieces of paper in their pockets when I walked in.

It got my back up and hurt my feelings, jealousy billowing through me when they then ran out without asking me if I wanted to join, but then the accident happened, and I forgot about it.

They like –liked– each other. The whole time that I was thinking she was going to be mine one day when we were older, she washis.

And he was hers. He met her first, he was her friend first, he probably had a crush on her first.

Apparently, he was her boyfriend first.

Two days after I walked past Astor’s room and heard my mum cry, ‘why did it have to be you?’ as she held his favorite teddy and sobbed, now I see that the girl I wanted actually wanted him all along.

It’s not hard to realize that the wrong twin died that day.

I crumple the note in my fist as hate unfurls in my bloodstream and wraps itself around my empty, echo-y heart, its tentacles holding it hostage behind the impenetrable wall of ice her betrayal creates.

She allowed me to think I had a chance with her.She was his and now he’s dead, so she always will be.

Loathing balloons until it casts away every other emotion, anger suffocating them against the walls of my body. There’s no longer room for any other feelings when it comes to her.

Whatever this was, this weird, stupid, useless friendship that we had, it’s done.

I never want to see her again.

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