Al was the first friend the girl made in this new area. So it was natural that she was attached to him during school, they were the same age after all. She liked being around him, he always listened to what she had to say. There was an openness about him that the girl found intriguing. She was never left on the sidelines when she was with him. However, it did not take long for the girl to realize he was slightly different from the rest.

“I’m a phoenix,” Al looked at the girl straight in the eye. They were sitting on the creaking swings of the tricolored playground just under the shade of an ancient oak tree. “Wouldn’t that be so cool?” He turned over the thick page of the enormous mythological book. “They die in their own flames but rise up again from their own ashes.” The girl wondered what he could have meant then.

“Look over there,” she pointed to the sprouting white lily of the valleys at the base of the metal structure.

“Oh, I’ve read about them before!” Al always seemed to know everything, he was always exploring new worlds through books. “They have a special meaning. Um…. What was it? Oh right! ‘The return of happiness.’ Yeah that’s what it was.”

“Hey throw it back!” A dull red rubber kickball was bouncing over to the swing set towards the foot of their feet. A group of energetic young boys were playing a game, a bit too roughly.

“No wait! I’ll go get it!” One of the boys dashed over. He scooped up the ball just before it reached Al, crushing the flowers in the process, and glared at the two on the swing set. He was causally covered in scratches and dirt, but other than that, he was the mirror image of Al, right down to the top of his auburn hair to his thick swirling lashes. The only distinction between this doppelganger and his counterpart was their expression. He was stubborn.

“Why are you with him again?” His nose scrunched up. “Why are you always following him? Are you in love with Alan?” he stressed out the word love.

“Shut up Alex!” Al turned to the girl with a smirk, “he’s just jealous cuz’ he doesn’t have any real girl-friends.”

“Nuh-uh!” His face was flushed. “There’s a bunch of girls out there who wanna be my girlfriend!” This part was true. There was always a mini cheering squad for him during recess. All the girls in their grade seemed to swoon over the twins. They were both the usual center topic of all conversations in bathrooms and sleepovers, equal in terms of looks and intelligence, but Alex they adored because he was also athletic.

“Well whatever!” Alex took one final look at the girl and huffed back to the playing field. The game paused without his presence.

“See you at home!” Al shouted at his shrinking back. “He’s always the center of attention isn’t he?” He laughed as the players gathered around Alex and resumed their game.

In reality, Alex was not the main focus in his life at home, it was Al. He was always watched and fawned over, always having someone else do a task for him in fear. His parents worried he would bruise or cut himself on some impossibly dull object, that he would need to be rushed to the emergency room.

“Hemophilia,” he told the girl his story, “A rare genetic disorder in which the ability of one’s blood does not clot normally which is caused by the absence of suf-fi-cient blood clotting proteins.” He had heard these phrases multiple times from consultations at the hospital. “There are three hundred and fif-ty nine ge-net-ic differences amongst a pair of monozygotic twins. So that’s why Alex doesn’t have it too. But they always poke at him too when we go to the hospital together.” The girl did not know what to say, this was not something she could quite comprehend at age eight. All that she understood was that Al was different, as if he was broken. “It’s funny how something seems so rare and distant until it’s sitting right inside of you, really it’s been there the entire time.” Words said too early for someone of their age, the girl wondered for how often these facts had been replayed in the boy’s mind. The doctors had also confined to his parents in a more private setting that he may live up to 35 with liver disease, 60 if he managed to acquire something else called AIDS.