Elena feels it when her brother dies. She knows it in her bones before the phone rings. She sits for an unknown time, staring at her hands. At the floor beyond. At nothing. Max is dead and there is nothing she can do to change it. Nothing she could have done. She is powerless and pointless and empty and torn in half.
It is the first time she’s experienced loss. Even in the depths of her grief, even as her every thought drowns in the ocean of her pain, she understands that it won’t be the last.
Everything dies, after all.
She says pretty words at Max’s funeral. About how he was her twin, her other half. About how he still chased after butterflies and never bothered to tie his shoes and insisted that puns were clever. People laugh and cry, and her voice quavers but doesn’t break.
But when it’s her turn to pour dirt into the hole, onto his coffin, to cover him and say goodbye forever, she crumples. She falls onto her knees and clutches the dirt to her chest and weeps.
She doesn’t remember how she gets home, after. She comes back to herself curled on her bedspread, still in her muddy black dress, one shoe on, one in the doorway, wedging the door open.
She wonders if this is what going crazy feels like.
Then Max sits next to her on the bed.
“It’s not so bad,” he says. His voice sounds just like it always has. “Being dead, that is.”
Elena just blinks at him, rubs her eyes, blinks again. He’s a little translucent, a little fuzzy at the edges.
“You need to pull yourself together,” Max says. “Mom and Dad are taking it pretty hard too, you know? You can’t just break down. They need a functioning kid.”
“You’re dead.”
“I know.”
“No. I felt Max die. I felt him… go. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not my brother.”
Max’s form shimmers, then settles, like wind ruffling the surface of a pond. “Well, that’s disappointing,” he says. He still looks like Max, but everything else about him is different. His posture, his expression, the way he sits in her room like he’s never been there before. “I thought that I’d be able to fool you. I suppose I should have known better.”
“What are you?”
Not-Max shrugs. “You’ll see me as your enemy, I suppose. I killed your brother. Ate him from the inside out. Consumed his memories and shape. His mind. His attachments.” He sighed. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you all of this, but I have all of Max’s memories. It’s like I’m used to telling you everything.” He sighs again, this time rubbing his forehead in an achingly familiar gesture. “They told us that the attachments are the worst part, but I wasn’t prepared. Loving someone is quite painful, you know. Especially if you’ve never done it before.” He pats her hand. His skin is dry and cold. “I’m going to go talk to our parents. I hope I can fool them.”
“I’ll tell them you’re a fake.”
He smiles Max’s crooked smile, but his eyes are smug and condescending. “You’re a little unstable at the moment. Having a rough time. They won’t believe you.”
“Of course they will. You’re impossible.”
“How can I be impossible? I’m standing right here. They’ll want to believe me. So they will. It’s the only feasible way forward.”
Her mother makes pancakes for dinner, since they were Max’s favorite. There are four places set at the table. Elena can’t believe that they’re just accepting this. “That’s not Max. It’s some kind of replicant or something. It told me so itself.”
“You’re right,” Not-Max says, his voice pitched low. “She does seem overwrought.”
“Don’t be absurd, Elena,” her father says. “I’d know my son anywhere. It’s a miracle. And Max isn’t the only one who’s back! It’s all over the news. They’re calling them shadows.”
“That isn’t Max! It’s the thing that killed Max!”
“Honey, stop it. I thought you’d be happy to have your brother back. Now, sit down and eat.”
Not-Max sits in Max’s chair. Elena storms back to her room and slams the door.
No one comes after her.
More and more people fall sick. But it’s not a problem anymore, because their shadows will just take their places. And of course their shadows are still them–they have all of their original’s memories, know things that only the original person would know. People test them, and they perform perfectly.
And if only people who die of this specific illness get shadows, well, that’s part of the miracle. Accidents still happen, after all. It’s not like death is over.
There are others who see the truth, of course. But they are dismissed as deluded, as fearmongers, as selfish girls who want to wallow in the misery of losing a twin instead of accepting that he’s still right here.
Not-Max is more and more solid every day. Less translucent. He doesn’t need to look like a ghost, so he doesn’t bother. Elena’s parents seem happy to just forget the months of sickness, the funeral, the fear and pain. Elena ignores him. Ignores her parents’ disappointment at her attitude, ignores his sad, pleading eyes.
“I miss you,” he says, over and over, increasingly frantic. “Please, tell me what I can do.”
She ignores him and walks away.