Boon's Bookcase

MAD

by

Chloe Esposito

BLOG TOUR

Today, it's my stop on the Blog Tour for MAD by Chloe Esposito and below I have an extract for you.



Extract

DISCLAIMER here’s something you should know before we go any further: my heart is in the wrong place. So is my stom- ach, my liver and my spleen. All my internal organs are


on the opposite side, in exactly the place where they shouldn’t be. I’m back to front: a freak of nature. Seven billion people on this planet have their hearts on the left. Mine’s on the right. You don’t think that’s a sign?
My sister’s heart is in the right place. Elizabeth is per- fect, through and through. I am a mirror image of my twin, her dark side, her shadow. She is right and I am wrong. She’s right-handed; I am left. In Italian, the word for ‘left’ is ‘sinistra’. I am the sinister sister. Beth is an angel and so what am I? Hold that thought . . .

The funny thing is that to look at us, you can’t tell the differ- ence. On the surface, we’re identical twins, but peel back the skin and you’ll get the shock of your life; watch in awe as my guts spill out all mixed up and topsy-turvy. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s not a pretty sight.

We’re monozygotic, if you want to know; Beth’s zygote split in two and I materialized. It happened at the very earliest stage of development, when her zygote was no more than a cluster of cells. Mum had been pregnant for just a few days and then – poof – out of nowhere, I show up, cuckoo-like. Beth had to share her nice, cosy amniotic bath and Mum’s home-cooked placenta.

It was pretty crowded in that uterus; there wasn’t a lot of room for the two of us and our umbilical cords. Beth’s got tan- gled around her neck and then knotted pretty badly. It was
touch and go for a while. I don’t know how that happened. It had nothing to do with me. 

Scientists think identical twins are completely random. We’re still a mystery; no one knows how or why I occurred. Some call it luck, coincidence or chance. But nature doesn’t like random. God doesn’t just play dice. I came here for a reason; I know I did. I just don’t know what that reason is yet. The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.