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the same ballet class or get the same haircut. But Mom needn’t have worried. Left to our own devices, Alex and I would’ve carved out completely different paths all by ourselves. I can’t imagine my life without Alex, but not because she’s the only one who truly understands me, or because we have a psychic connection from the womb. It’s because I’ve spent my entire life pushing away from Alex, like a swimmer using the force of a concrete wall to do a flip turn and kick away in the opposite direction.
    I learned early on that if I embraced the same things Alex did, like popularity and flirting and fun, I’d always come in such a distant second that everyone would’ve lost interest and gone home by the time I reached the finish line. Alex was chosen for the homecoming court during our freshman
and
senior years of high school; she got to skip school to model in junior fashion shows for Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s; she dumped the captain of the football team at the end of football season and started dating the captain of the basketball team just in time for their first game. As she flitted through the halls of our high school in the cheerleader’s skirt that swished around her long legs, it was obvious from the stares following her that every girl wanted to be her, and every guy was secretly in love with her.
    So unless I wanted to go through life being invisible, I had to figure out another way to get noticed, one that didn’t require a perfect smile or long eyelashes or a size-four body. I learned that if I studied hard and brought home straight A’ s, the principal would call me up onto the stage at the end of the year to give me a certificate while my parents beamed in the audience. I learned that if I crammed four years of college into three and made the dean’s list every semester, employers would come recruiting me. I learned that if I took a job in New York and made six figures and worked until my head felt like it was about to explode and my body felt like it belonged to a woman twice my age, I could fill out the questionnaires for my high school reunions with updates about my life that were sure to impress my former classmates.
    Sometimes when I lay awake in the middle of the night, thinking about everything I needed to get done the next day, my mind would race so quickly that I’d feel dizzy and panicky. I’d toss and turn, my silk sheets twisting around me like snakes. Nothing could soothe me—not a comedy on my wide-screen plasma TV or the softness of my cashmere throw pillows or the vivid colors of the original abstract painting I’d bought at a Soho gallery with my very first bonus.
    During those dark, endless hours, as lists flew through mymind and my heart pounded, I sometimes thought about what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had to fight so hard to carve out my own identity, one that would keep me from fading into a shadow when my twin sister was around. Would I be this driven, this fixated on success, if I’d been born into another family?
    During those long, lonely nights when my body cried out for sleep but my mind refused to allow it, I sometimes wondered: If Alex wasn’t my sister, would I be a completely different person?
    “Are you sleeping?”
    Matt’s incredulous voice cut through my dream, a sweaty, fearful one in which I raced through an airport, trying to catch a plane that was about to take off, desperately running faster and faster even though I could see the gate agent close the door to the Jetway and stand in front of it with her arms crossed, shaking her head at me.
    I lifted my head up off my desk and blinked groggily. Matt was standing in my office doorway, his preschool-teacher girlfriend by his side. A sheet of paper was stuck to my cheek, probably affixed with drool. A good first impression at all costs—that’s my motto.
    “I thought you never slept,” Matt said.
    “I was just resting for a second,” I said. God, I sounded exactly like my father. I