That’s why Eleni being friends with Anastasia was bothering me so much. They made each other laugh, and I started to wonder whether I was funny enough. I didn’t make Eleni laugh like that. But it was also the first time Eleni had ever taken someone else’s side and not mine, and now that I’d lied to my almost-twin, who I loved more than anyone, the world had changed. Just a little bit. But all the same, now it felt completely different.

So different, in fact, that on Sunday at church (we have to go every week or the world will melt or something), I gazed at the high ceilings, the stained glass, the icons and the altar, and felt further away from good and holy than I’d ever felt before. I saw Anastasia near the back with her parents, and my stomach became a gnarly hose of poisonous pus again. The priest waved around this incense holder with jingly bells and talked really fast in an ancient Greek language no one understands, not even my parents, and when the service was over, we went up the gray carpeted stairs to Greek school.

I was feeling pretty bad already, but then, as I stood in the corridor waiting for Eleni to come out of the bathroom, Anastasia, wearing a peach top and orange shorts, walked past me like I was a wall. Like I wasn’t standing right there. Like this wasn’t MY home and MY neighborhood she’d just turned up in. I’d been going to that church all my life! I started Greek school when I was four, and I was nearly eleven now! I knew everybody, and everybody knew me. Our parents were all friends, and our grandparents grew up in the same town/village/house/room back in Cyprus. Even our Greek teacher, Kyria Maria, was Mom’s cousin’s husband’s sister.

It wasn’t the same safe world that I knew any more. People like Anastasia could turn up and change everything.

I ground my teeth. Fine, I thought. You want to be like that? I might have told on you, but I didn’t throw the car keys in the sea.

Just then, Eleni came out of the bathroom. I was about to tell her what had happened when Anastasia came over to us. In two seconds flat, they were laughing about the story Anastasia had to learn at Eleni’s house and ignoring me like I wasn’t standing right there beside them.

“My Greek’s so bad!” Anastasia screeched.

“You need this for luck,” Eleni said and slipped a friendship bracelet off her wrist.

I scowled as Anastasia put it on. She glanced at me and then beamed at Eleni, which really annoyed me. With heat rising like flames licking my face, I went into the classroom and sat where Eleni and I always sat—at the front on the right. While I waited for Eleni to come in, I tried to stop evil thoughts from brewing, since I was still in church and everything.

When our teacher Kyria Maria walked into the room, Eleni came and sat beside me, which made me feel victorious. But then Eleni beckoned to Anastasia. “Come and sit here,” she said, shifting her chair over and squashing me. I glared at the table and ground my teeth. On the piece of paper Kyria Maria always had ready on the table, I wrote:

Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

Eleni looked at me and frowned. Then she wrote:

What? Don’t be like that. She’s nice.

I wanted to write:

She’s not nice.

She threw our keys in the sea.

She’s ignoring me.

She wants to get in the middle of us.

I DON’T LIKE HER!

But I didn’t. Eleni was my twin. She’d get it, surely. And if not, we always had whale song.

“It’s OK, I’ll sit here,” Anastasia said, pulling out a chair next to Demi Kolitsas. “Maybe next week,” she added with a smile. And then class started.