Framed

"Girl, I know you’re a little extra sometimes, but when did you get this done?" Nara asked, walking into the kitchen where I was elbow-deep in a cardboard box, looking for some cutlery.

I was not about to find out if the Chinese place remembered to pack them this time. I was starving!

"What are you talking about? Get what done?" I asked, muttering into the box of Tupperware containers and mismatched lids without looking at her. Where do lids that don't fit any of my containers come from!?

"This... um, how do I put it... priceless masterpiece right here."

I dropped the red, round lids from my hand and threw one last glance into the box. My back felt permanently hunched after the five minutes I'd spent submerged in the boxes labeled KITCHEN.

With one hand on my lower back, I turned to Nara to see what she was on about. God knows I love her to bits, but she could be so dramatic sometimes. She was holding a picture frame and of course taking a photo of it with her phone.

"What is that?" I asked her.

"You tell me," she said, turning the frame around, trying to hold back laughter.

"That’s not mine," I stated, not as confidently as I would've liked.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture.

The woman in the picture—in the painting, to be precise—could’ve been my twin. She was dressed in this 19th-century-style dress with a corset, puffed-up skirt, long opera gloves—the whole nine. I’d never even touched this kind of attire in my life, let alone worn it, but her face...

You know how, sometimes, your friends tell you that you resemble this or that celebrity, or that you look a little bit like their co-worker, but you never really see it yourself. Yeah, this wasn’t like that. I saw it. I felt it. It could’ve easily been me.

"That’s not me," I said, not sure who needed more convincing.

The resemblance was uncanny.

Nara held the frame up next to me, her eyes pendulating between my face and the one on the painting. "I mean... are you sure?"

"Yes, I’m sure. Where did you get it?" I asked, reaching for the frame.

"It was right there on the mantle," said Nara, pointing over her shoulder at the living room.

"It wasn't there this morning. I would've noticed it."

"I thought it was a little weird that this was the first thing you unpacked, but who am I to judge, you know." She shrugged slightly.

It made me so grateful that I had a best friend who would just shrug off whatever weirdness I happened to present next. Before I could get all touchy-feely, some writing at the back of the painting caught my eye. Written in ink, I think.

A little smushed splash of ink suggested that a drop had fallen and the writer had tried to wipe it off. But the back of the canvas, being very soft, had almost entirely absorbed it before they could.

17th of May, 1814

I suddenly remembered an ad I’d seen a while back.

"Do you think it could be one of those things you can order online? You know, where you can upload a picture of yourself and then they send you this old-timey-looking painting with your face on it?" I asked Nara.

"I mean... it could be? When did you last order one of those?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"Never."

"And it looks genuinely old, not made to look old," Nara murmured, gently touching the surface with her fingertip.

"It does look like it was actually painted. Clearly, I’m no expert, but the brushstrokes look real to me. See the tiny grooves?"

Stroking the spot I'd pointed at, Nara lifted the painting into the sunlight. She tilted it left and right, trying to find more evidence to support our suspicions. The painting clearly had texture, the paint and the brushstrokes rose from the canvas. Subtle, airy dust clung to the surface.

This was definitely real.

I didn’t have to say anything to know that Nara had come to the same conclusion. The room went silent, except our shivering breaths and the fridge humming approvingly next to us, as if agreeing with everything said.

Our gazes still fixed on the painting in the sun, we continued our inspection.

Suddenly, faster than a blink, the brushstrokes shifted, the grooves bent. She tilted her head just a little toward us, smiling slightly.

Nara almost dropped the painting, but managed to catch it mid-air. A shiver shot down my spine, and a lump blocked my throat. I swallowed. Once. Twice.

I opened my mouth, but only a whisper carried my words, "Did she... did that just happen?"

"No! It’s not possible, pictures don’t move. It was the light and the shadows and the angle. She was always like this. It's just... the weirdness of how you look so similar to her."

Nara held the painting as far from herself as she could manage. Her stretched out arm shook like a leaf in the wind. We turned our eyes back to the painting's face.

She’d had a serious expression before. I remember it clearly, because when I first saw it, I had thought—no matter the similarities, this couldn’t be me. I have a serious case of "resting bitch face" going on. I always smile in pictures because whenever I don’t, I look angry or just incredibly bitchy.

She didn’t. She looked calm and peaceful and smart. She looked like she knew she didn’t have to do anything for anyone’s sake, like she knew her worth. I’d never managed to get a nice picture of me without smiling.

My dad’s voice echoed in my ears like it did every time I was about to take a photo. “Ana, smile a little, or people will think you’re mad at them.”

I couldn’t believe it. I was jealous of a painting. I was jealous of a woman who’s probably been dead for more than a century. If she’d ever existed at all. Ridiculous.

Before I could even fathom any reasoning behind it, the words slipped out of my mouth: “I wanna know who she was.”

Nara didn’t argue with me.

I’m sure she would’ve wanted to. But over the years she had learned when to try to steer me away from an idea, and when to suck it up and let me go through it, no matter how disastrous the outcome seemed.

She was the one who—very gently—convinced me not to get my boyfriend's name tattooed on my arm in college, and who said it was a bad idea to use vodka instead of water in shisha. She was right both times.

At the same time, she knew there was no stopping me when I had decided to marry Robert, and again when I decided to divorce him. She’d been with me through it all, knowing when to redirect my attention elsewhere and when to prepare for what was to come.

The moment in question was the latter. I knew it. She knew it.

"Is it at all possible that she’s a distant relative of yours? Seriously, you two could be twins," she asked, signaling her support. "Identical twins," she added, echoing my own thoughts from earlier.

"I mean... I don’t know. It feels a bit too big a coincidence for me to move into an apartment that just so happens to have a painting of my relative from hundreds of years ago."

I even felt ridiculous saying all that out loud. But I couldn’t help but feel that whatever was happening wasn’t entirely nonsensical.

I couldn’t quite tell whether it was good or bad. But something told me there was more to it, that this was just a tiny part of something bigger.

My gut was trying to tell me something—muffled and obscure.

I wasn’t sure how or even if I should listen to it. I’d silenced it, packed it away, since our recent… disagreement. I didn't know how to free it again.

As I was bickering with my thoughts, I suddenly felt a light bulb switch on in my head.

"Nara!" I yelled, louder than necessary. She was literally 30 centimeters away from me.

"What?? Whatwhatwhat?"

"Didn’t you take a picture of the painting earlier when you came to show it to me?"

"Yeah, I did."

A second. Two. And another light bulb turned on.

"Geez! Don’t be slow! Show it to me! Is it the same or did... she actually move?" Again, it felt idiotic to even say that out loud.

"Yes! Oh my god! Okay, okay—don’t yell at me!" she huffed, shoving the painting into my hands.

Nara’s finger frantically flew over the screen of her phone, her hands shaking. She finally managed to find the photo and held it up next to the painting.

"Here!" she said, panting as if she'd just run up the stairs.

And there she was. Beautiful, composed, content and not smiling. Exactly as I remembered.

What was it about her that made her able to pull this off? We had the same face. Why couldn’t I?

She looked even more like me now that she was smiling slightly. Why did that make me sad?

Robert's voice hovered in my mind like a distant echo: "Why are you pouting again? You should smile more."

A million other thoughts ran through my mind until my head was buzzing like a beehive.

"No. No. No. Nope! Just no," Nara burst out, interrupting my spiraling thoughts.

"What are we gonna do?"

"What do you mean? You move! You’re not gonna live in an apartment filled with haunted pictures," said Nara, scanning around the room for more.

"Yeah… I can’t do that."

"What do you mean you can’t do that? You haven’t even unpacked your cutlery yet—also, where’s our lunch?" she asked, glancing at her watch. "You know, fuck lunch. We call the movers right now and get you out of here."

She looked at me as if she expected me to already dial the number and run for the door. It sounded simple, and logical, I must add. But unfortunately Nara was missing an important—a vital—piece of information.

A lump was lodged in my throat. I tried to clear it with a small cough before continuing. It didn’t help.

"It was supposed to be a surprise, but... um..."

"But what?"

I felt sweat drops forming on my forehead...

"But what?" she repeated slowly, narrowing her eyes. Suspicious—as if scared of my answer.

"I didn’t rent it. I bought this apartment."