bracelets. It was as if I had stepped through a mirror and was living a
day in the life I might have had, if I’d stayed on the mountain. But I
hadn’t stayed. My life had diverged from my sister’s, and it felt as
though there was no common ground between us. The hours passed; it
was late afternoon; and still she felt distant from me, still she refused
to meet my gaze.
I had brought a small porcelain tea set for her children, and when
they began to quarrel over the teapot, I gathered up the pieces. The
oldest girl reminded me that she was five now, which she said was too
old to have a toy taken away. “If you act like a child,” I said, “I’ll treat
you like one.”
I don’t know why I said it; I suppose Shawn was on my mind. I
regretted the words even as they left my lips, hated myself for saying
them. I turned to pass the tea set to my sister, so she could administer
justice however she saw fit, but when I saw her expression I nearly
dropped it. Her mouth hung open in a perfect circle.
“Shawn used to say that,” she said, fixing her eyes on mine.
That moment would stay with me. I would remember it the next day,
when I boarded a plane in Salt Lake City, and it would still be on my
mind when I landed in London. It was the shock of it that I couldn’t
shake. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that my sister might
have lived my life before I did.
—THAT TERM, I PRESENTED myself to the university like resin to a sculptor.
I believed I could be remade, my mind recast. I forced myself to
befriend other students, clumsily introducing myself again and again
until I had a small circle of friends. Then I set out to obliterate the
barriers that separated me from them. I tasted red wine for the first
time, and my new friends laughed at my pinched face. I discarded my
high-necked blouses and began to wear more fashionable cuts—fitted,
often sleeveless, with less restrictive necklines. In photos from this
period I’m struck by the symmetry: I look like everyone else.
In April I began to do well. I wrote an essay on John Stuart Mill’s
concept of self-sovereignty, and my supervisor, Dr. David Runciman,
said that if my dissertation was of the same quality, I might be
accepted to Cambridge for a PhD. I was stunned: I, who had sneaked
into this grand place as an impostor, might now enter through the