Sisters Are As Sisters Do

There was nothing about the two girls that, from the outside at least, was the same. Roxanne was tall, athletic and loud, whilst Wren was short for her age, and though she was always smiling she rarely laughed. One drank the spotlight, whilst you forgot the other was in the room.

The only thing that connected the two girls was that they arrived at the school at the same time, but as they were in different years no one noticed. During the school day their paths rarely crossed, and if they did no one spotted the smiles they saved for each other. It was only fair; their class mates were teenagers, all caught up in a flurry of hormones and drama. None of them who’d guessed what that smile represented. None of the teachers would’ve thought any of their pupils would’ve been capable of any emotion that wasn’t driven by their ovaries, not after seeing the stuff they got up to at school anyhow.

After school Roxanne would hang around by the shops, browsing, buying snacks, staying dry if it was raining. At first the shopkeeper watched her like a hawk, convinced as they were that all schoolkids were just waiting for a chance to steal something. But Roxanne was only ever waiting for Wren, who needed extra classes after school to catch up.

Whenever she did arrive Roxanne would have something for her – the last chunk of chocolate, all of her favourite colour sweets from the packet – and the pair of them would walk home together chatting about their days. It was the most talkative Wren ever was during the day, and the quietest Roxanne ever was, yet it was the only time they were both themselves.

In a high school however, nothing stays secret forever. By the end of their first term other pupils had spotted them walking home together, although it took a dozen witnesses for the rumours to gather any weight. At length though it got so bad that Roxanne’s friends couldn’t keep ignoring it.

“Hey, Roxanne?” one of them asked one day, after a bad draw of the straws and lots of glaring from everyone else.

“Yeah?”

“What… what’s the deal with you and that kid from the year below? The bird girl?”

Roxanne had to blink a few times before the penny dropped. “Who, Wren?”

“Yeah, her. Only… only they say you two are, you know, girlfriends.” The whole room winced. None of them knew what the reaction would be, but wincing was a safe bet when Roxanne was involved.

Whatever they had thought would happen, it wasn’t that Roxanne would burst out into laughter.

“Girlfriends? Seriously? You people are desperate, and really need to get a life. She’s my sister, that’s all.”

Everyone shared a look, but none of them were brave enough to press the matter. It was a game of chicken, who would break first and point out the elephant in the room. Yes, everyone knew siblings who were the complete opposite of each other. But you didn’t get siblings who had completely different ethnic origins, like Roxanne and Wren.

In the end, no one broke. It became the favourite topic of conversation whenever Roxanne was out of the room though.

“Maybe they’re half-siblings? And they, like, just drop the ‘half’ bit cos it’s a mouthful.”

“No way, they’d still look more alike. They couldn’t be more different if they tried.”

“What about adopted then? What if Wren was adopted by Roxanne’s family? That would explain why Wren was so… you know, Wren about everything.”

“That explains why Roxanne takes such good care of her as well. I guess her parents have told her to baby-sit her new sister.”

“So, who’s going to ask Roxanne about it?”

Still no one volunteered.

In the end one of the other girls in Roxanne’s class asked her younger (full-)sister in the year below to find out Wren’s surname. It didn’t take long, and when it came back as different to Roxanne’s everyone was even more confused.

It was a slow term, gossip wise, so the mystery of Roxanne and Wren hovered about for months. Various groups took to following the pair of them home after school, but it didn’t get them any further. It gave Roxanne and Wren plenty to talk about though. Wren’s friends thought she was doing great, punching well above her weight with Roxanne, no matter how many times Wren insisted they were sisters. Just like Roxanne’s friends, they’d gesture to their own faces and raise their eyebrows, in the hopes that Wren would give up and explain exactly how the two of them were supposed to be related.

After two months the story was finally getting boring. One group had decided that the whole thing had been a scheme, to try and make the two newcomers to the school look interesting. With them yelling at anyone who gossiped for ‘buying into the story’, the talk went underground. Roxanne and Wren finally thought they’d get some peace back.

Until their nightmares came real once more.

It was the height of revision season, and the stress could be cut with a knife and served in slices. The teachers all walked on egg-shells, with fights being broken up every other day. The school made a big thing of their grades, and the pressure had gotten to their pupils. The place was a powder keg, waiting for a spark.

No one had thought it would be an actual spark.

Mid-afternoon, in the middle of the last week before the holidays, the last week of education before the exams. The word revision had lost all meaning and grades haunted everyone’s dreams.

A girl in Wren’s class finally snapped. She set fire to the chemistry lab. In the exceptionally dry spring weather, the fire managed to catch, and soon most of the upper floors were ablaze.

As the rest of the school trudged outside for the fire alarm they were just grateful for the break. When they spotted actual smoke the panic started. The over-worked teachers did a full 180, flipping from motivating students to stopping them from getting hysterical. It worked, for the most part.

“Wren? Wren? Wren!” No matter how hard anyone tried, no one could get Roxanne to stop. She ran from line to line, desperate to find her sister. If the fear in her voice hadn’t been so fierce it would’ve been funny. No one was laughing though.

“She was still inside!” someone said.

“What!? Where!?” Roxanne screamed, turning on the terrified student.

“I–I’m not sure. But she was in the room, she got us out. I haven’t seen her after that.”

Roxanne let out a guttural scream to the sky, which was enough to turn the teachers’ blood cold. Though they knew what was coming next, none of them moved fast enough. Using her speed and agility Roxanne slipped past them all and got back into the burning building.

The students thought it was brilliant, but they were young and immortal. The teachers were terrified, seeing a future filled with guilt and negligence lawsuits.

It was impossible to say how long it had been. How do you keep track of time at a moment like that? Every second was a year, dragging on, the lives of the two girls in the balance.

A whole school assembly had never been so quiet.

There was an explosion of smoke out of the doorway, and when it cleared the front row of students started yelling. The wave of excitement spread across the hockey pitch, a shock-wave of relief and – further back – utter confusion, as they tried to see over the assembled mass.

In the middle of the smoke, Roxanne and Wren clung to each other.

“That was stupid,” Wren said, still coughing.

“Says you. You should’ve got out.”

“I had to check everyone else was out.”

“Will you never learn? Wasn’t running into one burning building enough?”

“I didn’t run into this one, I just didn’t leave,” Wren pointed out.

“Same difference. Just… promise me you won’t do it again?”

“I can’t. If it’s you in the building again, I’d be in there without a moment’s thought.”

“Damn it, Wren. Stop being stubborn.”

“Did you pause, before running in to find me?”

“Of course not.”

“Well then.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

Roxanne pulled Wren up short, away from the teachers who were rushing forward, and smiled down at her sister. “Because I owed you for last time. You saved me at the orphanage fire, and I still owed you.”

“We saved each other, Rox. I could never have gotten back out of there without you.”

“And I’d have never bothered getting out of there without you. I owed you.”

“Don’t be silly, Rox. Family don’t owe each other anything.”

Roxanne and Wren shared one last hug before the teachers pulled them away and hustled them off to ambulances.

The stories of the fire grew in every telling, but one thing was never in doubt from then on.

Sisters are as sisters do.