Page 1 (1/2)

Prologue

A long tio, I lived a fairy tale life There

was always ic in the ocean and ht ere only ten years old, Cary and I would lie back on our blankets on the deck of our daddy's lobster boat and gaze up at the heavens, pretending ere falling into outer space, flying past this planet and that, circlingout to touch the stars We per anted to each other, never ashahts, our dreams, our intimate questions

We were twins, but Cary liked to call hi to Papa, he was born two minutes and twenty-nine seconds before me He behaved like an older brother from the moment he could crawl and protect hed when he heardWhen I asked hihter was music to him and it pleased hih, too It was as if ere enchanted children who heard our own songs,to us by the sea we loved so much

As far back as I can reic in the water Cary could wade in and co out with the most spectacular seaweed, starfish, clas he claimed had washed across the ocean from other countries to us When it ca he said Soht Cary must have been born with seawater in his veins No one loved it as much, even when it was nasty and wild

What discoveries Daddy let us keep, we kept in either Cary's roo had sorant us a wish or the power to ned an enchanted quality to each thing we found

When I elve and I wore a necklace made from the tiny seashells we had found, my friends at school were a how this one could drive away sadness or that one could hed and shook their heads and said Cary and I were sirew up and put away childish ideas There was no s for them

But to rain of sand Cary and I once sat beside each other and let the sand fall through our fingers, pretending each grain was a tiny world unto itself Inside it lived people like us, too tiny to ever be seen, even with a strong microscope

"Be careful where you step," we told our friends when they ith us on the beach "You ht crush a whole country"

They gri us behind, enveloped by our own iinative pictures, pictures no one else wanted to share We were inseparable for so long, I guess people thought we had been born attached Soirlfriends oncescar down the side of my body from my underarm to my waist and Cary had the same scar on his body It here we supposedly had been connected at birth

Soht, maybe it's true, that froun, a slow and painful process It was a separation Cary fought rew older

As a very young girl and even when I first entered h school years, I was