Caged, free (you and me) - Degrassi High, PG-13

Response to prompt “Heather/Erica, mirror” for the ficathon at Degrassi Femslash. Title is from an Imogen Heap lyric. Implied incest.

It wasn’t like she had planned it. But if that was supposed to make it better somehow, it didn’t. It made it more worthy of obsession. The kind of fixation that kept her up all night, every night. Thinking without trying to wonder too much. Without being jealous.

Jealous: that was her immediate reaction. It didn’t make any sense to Heather that, despite being identical, all the boys fawned after only Erica. It was like they knew something that she didn’t.

So Erica was gone. (Again.) Out, again. With what’s-his-face. (Jason.) Right. Jason. And Heather was alone again, always alone, trying to focus on anything except Erica being out with a boy doing god-knows-what. Letting him do god-knows-what to her. Heather didn’t want to speculate and theorize—not like she had to. Deep down, she knew exactly what was going on, and it wasn’t because of the twin intuition thing. This, unfortunately, was just common sense.

Jealous. Jealous. Jealous.

She was practically saturated in jealousy. No, she didn’t want to hear the details of couple life, of her sister’s sex life... not that they were having sex. There was no way Erica could be having sex. It was incomprehensible. But even without sex, plenty remained for Heather to agonize over, to recreate in frantic unwanted detail. Jason kissing Erica... Jason slipping his tongue inside Erica’s mouth... Jason moving his hand slowly up the inside of Erica’s thigh...

Focus. Read a book or something. Anything. But it was summer. And there was nothing to do. She would have to learn how to be an individual for once. She would have to find friends who weren’t Erica to go out with. She would have to be independent. And she didn’t want to. Heather never cared, like Erica apparently did now, that she and her sister were so codependent. She liked it. No, she loved it. She never gave much thought to how unhealthy that might be. Even if they didn’t always get along—hell, even if more often than not, Erica drove her crazy, especially lately—it didn’t matter too much.

“I liked things the way they were,” she said aloud, but no one was around to hear. The words didn’t come out when Erica came home in the evening (and later, in the night, and later, in the early morning, and eventually, just as the sun was rising). Heather couldn’t bring herself to say it. Didn’t want to upset her sister. Didn’t want to sound jealous. Didn’t want to answer the question that would inevitably follow.

Jealous of whom?

It was already there, though. Already suffocating her in nightmares laced with visions of touching that skin, kissing those lips, fingers twisting through hair and gliding over skin, slipping into orifices unexplored. When she awoke, she was breathing hard and dripping beads of sweat. Jealous of whom? What did that even mean? She was jealous of Erica, of course. Erica, the outgoing one, the flirty one, the one who got all the attention. The one who got all the boys. Heather knew she was jealous.

Only she didn’t want attention. And she didn’t want boys. She just wanted her sister back. No, more than that—she wanted her sister for herself. She considered, momentarily, how fucked up the implications of that might be, but then she couldn’t be too sure. She and Erica were each one-half of the same, after all. Everyone knew that twins had a special connection. Maybe this kind of attachment was natural.

Maybe not.

Summer ended—finally—but then, so did everything else. Erica revealed that she might be pregnant. Heather realized, then, that it was all over. Everything. So Erica and Jason had, in fact, had sex—her worst fears confirmed. But that seemed insignificant now. Jealousy (of whomever) seemed insignificant now compared to the enormity of her sister having a human being forming inside of her. An unborn someone who was already becoming a new piece of both of them... and then, suddenly, wasn’t.

Heather found herself plagued once more by sleepless nights, for different reasons altogether.

But she got her wish: Erica was hers again. Maybe that explained her guilt. It took an abortion to get her sister back, but maybe she was responsible. Heather found herself feeling guiltier still when blood-stained cruelties were etched across lockers and washroom mirrors. Maybe, Heather thought, if she hadn’t been so passive... maybe Erica wouldn’t have spent her entire summer misbehaving with Jason. Maybe she would have stayed home, with her, where she belonged.

“I’m sorry,” she said one night, months later. She hadn’t meant to. They were supposed to be past this, and Heather knew it, but she couldn’t be with so many feelings unshared. “This summer, I should have said something... I should have stopped you.”

Erica didn’t get it, of course. How could she? “You couldn’t have stopped me,” she said. “I’m my own person. I make my own choices, and I chose to sleep with Jason.” She said it all so matter-of-factly. As if it were obvious. As if she wanted her sister to shut up before she said something stupid. (As if she could prevent it.)

Heather shook her head. “No, I mean...” And she stopped herself, suddenly unsure.

“You were jealous,” Erica said simply. Only it was not that simple. And Heather knew her sister still didn’t get it.

“Yes,” she confessed. She would have to be more direct, not just if she wanted her sister to understand... but because she needed to make sense of it herself. And she needed Erica to help. “But not of you.” And even though at this point she didn’t have to, she clarified. “I was jealous of him.”

Erica said nothing. Her attention drifted. She turned to look in the vanity mirror they shared, so Heather looked too, for the first time really noticing their shared reflection. There were four of them. Four of the same person, the same DNA. And all those complicated feelings—love, hate, jealousy, sadness, desire, protection, devotion, possession—multiplied. And then Heather turned away, facing Erica again, and all those other pieces disappeared. Perhaps this was her true reflection. Perhaps this—perhaps she—was the only other piece she needed.

Finally her sister met her gaze, and the mirror and the rest of the room and the rest of the universe, even, faded into the background. Four became only two. Heather reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind Erica’s ear. They seemed to melt into one another. Lips pursed. Eyes steady. Heather held her breath before leaning in—and then they were one.

(Maybe it was a bit fucked up after all. But it wasn’t like she had planned it.)