The girls walked across that stage one after another, in alphabetical order by last name, same as they’d been sorted their whole lives whether they liked it or not.
Ava — no. I’m getting ahead of myself, mixing up an old draft of this story in my head. Their names were Nadia, Camille, and Zora Boone. Triplets, but never copies of one another, not for one single day of their twenty-two years.
Nadia cried before they even called her name, wiping her face with the sleeve of her gown, her business degree already lined up with a job offer from a regional bank two towns over. Camille waved at me from the stage like she was still eight years old at a school assembly, grinning so wide I could see it from the back row. Zora, the serious one, the one who’d been quietly watching everything a beat longer than her sisters since she was old enough to watch anything at all, walked across that stage like she was carrying something heavier than a diploma.
