I stared up at the canvas of perfect blue sky splattered with white clouds as I moved through the swaying trees. I had never been to this area before, although the peacefulness and fresh smell of pine was familiar to me. After I had finally pushed myself through the trees, I stopped suddenly. Towering in front of me was a tall, wire fence. But I wasn’t at all interested in the fact that I had never seen a fence like this. I wasn’t at all interested in the fact that I would have to be getting back home soon.
Instead, I was staring into the grey eyes of a girl with a face just like my own. 
Although her torn, ratty clothes differed from my flowery dress, it seemed as though I was looking into a mirror, but instead I was looking at a girl on the other side of a fence.
After a moment that seemed to last for ages, we both spoke at the same time.
“Who are you?”
The question lingered in the air, but none of us spoke.
Bria. My name is Bria. The words couldn’t come out of my mouth.
I was then aware that it was morning, for the sun was now shining straight into my eyes. I knew I would have to be getting back before Mother and Father woke up, but I was still confused. Who was this girl, and why did she look exactly like me?
“I-I have to go now” I stuttered, turning around to go back through the trees. When I looked back over my shoulder, the girl had disappeared.

“Brianna!” Father exclaimed, “Eat your dinner!”
The plain grey cubes of food on my plate didn’t seem so appetizing to me, all I could think about was the girl at the fence.
“Yes, eat. Food is good for you.” Mother echoed.
They both went back to cutting their food up.
“Father?” I put down my fork, “Is there such thing as having two people who are the exact same?”
“Of course not Bria, everybody here is their own person, everybody looks different, everyone has their own individuality.” Father told me robotically, as though he had rehearsed this speech a thousand times in the bathroom mirror. 
Still, I was curious.

The next morning, before the sun fully awoke I decided to venture off back to the fence. I slipped out of my bed quietly, opened my door and tiptoed out. I had made sure the night before to go into the cellar and turn off the cameras.
This was something I had found out one night, when I wasn’t able to go outside, so instead I had decided to explore the house. I had discovered a system in our cellar, in a hidden compartment behind the closet, that controlled every single mechanism in our house. Along the years, my curious brain had learned more and more, about how there were cameras placed in our house that recorded every single move we made, how there were sensors that sensed every time that somebody left the house through our door, how there were microphones placed in every single room that listened to our voices. I decided to not mention this subject to Mother and Father, in case they tried to stop me from being able to access this technology.

I got to the fence, and was surprised to see the girl still there on the other side, but she seemed to be asleep. Shining my flashlight on her face, I studied how her eyebrows were shaped in a slight arch, exactly like mine, how her thin pink lips kept in a straight line, just like mine. It felt like I was watching myself sleep, except that she had torn, ratty clothes, and her face was smudged with dust and dirt.
“Excuse me?” I mumbled. The girl stayed asleep. I coughed loudly. The girl stayed asleep. She was even a deep sleeper, just like me. “Hello?!?” I yelled louder.
Her eyelashes fluttered open, and she looked annoyed when she saw me.
She stood up, and I could see that there were cuts and bruises all over her legs.
“Who are you, and why do you look exactly like me?” I demanded.
“You mean, you don’t know?” she asked, looking at me with a confused face.
I shook my head, “Know what?”.
The girl sighed. “I’m guessing you don’t know about the Districts A and B? How we are all divided?”
What was she talking about? What “districts”?
“You live a perfect life, don’t you.” the girl glared at me. “But what you don’t realise, is what it takes for you people to live that way.”
“Wha-what do you mean? What’s “you people”?”
“Our world is divided. There are two districts. You live in the rich district, District A, and we live in the poor district, District B. In the poor district, everyone gets treated horribly, people starve, we have to work a thousand times as hard as you people do, just so that everyone in your district can live happily.”
I shook my head.
“No. No, the government gives us food, the government gives us everything.” I said.
The girl snickered.
“That’s what they’ve taught you? Have you ever wondered where the government gets their food? Where they get all your luxuries?”
I shook my head, over and over. This wasn’t right.
“You’re lying,” I told her.
“Then why do you think I’m here? Why do you think, that one of us is wearing a rich, golden dress, and one of us is wearing torn, ragged clothes?”
A storm grew inside of me, but I could see another storm raging in the ragged girl’s eyes. Our storms were different, but we both had giant, growing tornadoes twisting inside of us, challenging one another through our matching grey eyes. I didn’t want to believe her, but deep down I knew that it wasn’t just a coincidence that I just happened to find someone who looked exactly like me, but with torn rags and dirt all over her.
I turned, and shoved myself back through the trees, the storm still ablaze.
The sun had become to come up, and there was dim sunlight so I no longer needed my flashlight.
I was walking through the trees and bushes, thinking about the girl’s words..
Suddenly, I was startled by the sound of a loud, beeping noise. Glancing to my left, I saw a huge truck moving closer to me. I quickly backed into the trees.
In the front seat of the vehicle sat a middle-aged man, face covered in dirt, slouching over the wheel. He looked tired and worn out, and either his rich clothes had lost their color (which did not happen), or.. or...
Looking closer, I saw another figure, standing next to the truck. Squinting my eyes, I gasped. It was the President. Although… he was quite fatter and shorter than in the pictures that we were shown in school when they told us the great things he had done for us, and what a great leader he was.
Here, he was shouting at the truck driver.
I couldn’t believe his words.
“Hurry up! Our people need their food! You people are so dumb, no wonder your district is so poor!” He yelled at the driver, his hands angrily pointing at him, his face red and scrunched up with disgust.
I was leaning in closer, when I tripped over something, and fell into plain sight. I quickly tried to get up, but my ankle was screaming in pain. Just as I saw the President’s head turn in my direction, I felt hands grabbing my arms, and quickly dragging me back into the trees.
My arms hurt.
My head ached.
My ankle felt like it was exploding.
I tried to stand up, but collapsed onto the ground immediately.
“Stop, calm down,” it was the girl behind the fence. She set me down at a tree, and I winced, holding my ankle.
“How did you get over the fence?” I asked. The fence looked impossible to climb or rip open.
“Climbing. Our life is just work in District B, so we get really strong.”  The girl answered.
“Why did you only climb over now?”
“I knew you would come back.”
I thought about the President yelling at the driver, the disgust on his face while he yelled at the exhausted man.
Staring into eachother’s grey eyes, we- we seemed to have some connection.
“Why do we look the same?” I blurted out the question that had been bothering me ever since I saw the girl.
The girl glanced over my head, sighing.
“Generations ago, before you were born, before our mothers and fathers were born, there was- a population crisis,” she started. “It was year 2115, and the number of humans had overflowed the Earth’s capacity. Man had killed this planet of hope, man had slaughtered our last animals, man had murdered the blue skies and put blankets of dark, grey, sadness over them. There was no more fish to eat, for the oceans had dried up. There was no more trees, for Mother Nature had been cut down. The meaning of Earth had been stolen, and had been replaced with a world of technology. Technology supposedly symbolises the rich, it was something to show off. Meanwhile, we had poor people in the world. We had pollution. We had poverty. We had obesity, and yet we also had world hunger. War broke out between governments, everybody wanted equality, even though we all knew there was no such thing. All of humanity was lost. Now, the government has rebuilt and has tried to have a place where disasters like this would not happen, where we could focus on one community where generations of people could live happily and not have any problems, not have any wars, not have any hunger.”
There were angry tears in her eyes, yet she continued on.
“So why do we look the same? In our District, every 10 years the government takes 50 mothers from our district, and each of them gives birth to two identical twins, thus keeping the population under control. They will alter our genes so that one of the twins is perfect, and the other is- not. One goes to District A, and one to District B. You can probably guess which goes to which.
“What do you mean by ‘perfect’?” I asked.
“Perfect, meaning they gave you a perfect immune system where you would never get sick, and diseases would never spread. Perfect, meaning you are all the same height, hair and color so that nobody would be discriminated from, yet face qualities are different to tell you apart. Perfect, meaning they altered your traits so that you wouldn’t get too curious, or too loud, or too aggressive. Meaning they gave you the perfect amount of intelligence, so that you wouldn’t be too stupid, but not too bright to outsmart the government.”
“So if they had to change our height and things like that, then why do I look the same as you?” I asked.
“I guess there wasn’t much they had to change about you.” she shrugged.
The ragged clothes.
The mirrored face.
The disgusted President.
The blankness in my parents’ eyes.
The fire in the girl’s.
I believed her.
“Why-why did they divide it into a rich district, and a poor district?” I asked. I needed to know.
“Because you can’t have a perfect world if you don’t have people working for you, growing food, making products to make it perfect.”
“Can’t they just use machines?”
“Why take the time and build machines when you can just have people working for you?” she continued, “Your district is the only important one. Your district will be the one who can live for generations and generations a happy and safe life. Your population is always kept under control, because each of your parents are given exactly 2 babies. Your district is where everyone gets what they need, what they want, so there is no reason to rebel against the government. You will grow up, be given two babies. You will have a perfect life. You will have perfect children who have perfect lives. Meanwhile us in District B, we will continue this legacy, this laid-out fate for us. We will have no choice in our lives, and your survival depends on our work. Although we are nothing but slaves to the government... if we die, we have nothing to lose. We have learned how to survive on our own, we have responsibility for ourselves. But I do not accept this way of living, this path of not being able to live a life without having to suffer for others-”
“I don’t.” I blurted out.
“You don’t what?”
“I-I don’t accept it either,” I said.
The girl raised her eyebrow.
“I want to help.” I had to do something.
“Why do you care?” The girl said, scowling.
I looked up at the sky. It didn’t seem so perfect anymore.
“Because you’re my sister.”