Paula broke Mrs. Winthrop’s perfume bottle, and that’s why she told us we had to get out of the house and leave her alone for a while.

We were playing witches, and we needed things for our magic potion that was gonna turn us into cats. Paula was gonna be a yellow cat, and I was gonna be a black one. We weren’t even gonna use the perfume because we already had dish soap and water and green food coloring and a few hairs from Toby, the cat that lives outside.

The potion was all finished and we were turning into cats and Paula was running around with the long wooden potion-mixing spoon and she was waving it around (because it was also a magic wand) but then she hit the perfume bottle on the dresser and it broke all over the floor with a big CRASH.

I know that it was a bad thing that the perfume bottle broke because there was glass all over the floor, which is dangerous, but after the bottle broke the room smelled really pretty and I thought that was a good thing.

Mrs. Winthrop did not think it was a good thing.

She pushed us out the door, and Paula tripped over the front step a little bit. Mrs. Winthrop was talking really fast with her eyes pointed up to the sky – she does that sometimes when she talks to Jesus – and she said, “Jesus, help me, some days I wish I could just put you two in a cardboard box and tape you up and put a giant stamp on it that said ‘Return to Sender.’”

Then she looked at us and said, “You girls stay in the neighborhood and play for a while so I can clean up the mess you made. Come back before it gets dark. Dottie’s head hurts and she needs to take a nap. God knows this headache won’t get any better when the whole damn house smells like freesia.”

And then she went back inside.

Paula squeezed my hand.

Mrs. Winthrop’s first name is Dottie, like she said, but I don’t like to call her that. A Dottie is someone who lets you sit on her lap and try on her lipstick without yelling and wears polka dots and not just the same brown sweater every day. Paula sometimes calls Mrs. Winthrop Dottie, and that makes me mad. The point is, I don’t like calling Mrs. Winthrop Dottie and since this is my story I don’t have to call her Dottie if I don’t want to.

We were still standing in the yard. Paula looked at me and said, “What’s ‘Return to Sender’?”

I shrugged.

I should tell you that Paula looks just like me, and I look just like Paula. We’re identical twins. We have the same brown hair and brown eyes, and sometimes when I’m looking in the mirror I think I’m looking at Paula. We always hold hands when we do things. Usually we hold really tight, but sometimes Paula’s hand goes wobbly like spaghetti and it’s hard to hold or she lets go and won’t let me grab her hand back. It’s like when a Band-Aid gets dirty and then doesn’t stick to you anymore. Sometimes I worry that Paula will let go of my hand one day and I’ll never be able to stick her back onto me.

Anyway, Paula decided that we were gonna go and ask someone what “Return to Sender” meant.

We decided to ask Brian O’Connor. When we got to his house he was playing basketball by himself in his driveway. He’s the same age as us, but he plays a lot of chess and reads a lot of books so he’s pretty smart. He also wears glasses, which would probably make him look smart even if he wasn’t.

Paula let go of my hand and ran to grab Brian’s basketball after it came down through the hoop. She held it to her chest and said, “We got a question for you.”

“If I know the answer, will you give me back my ball?”

“Maybe,” said Paula, “if it’s a good answer.” All of a sudden Brian tried to grab the basketball from Paula’s hands, but she ran away and yelled, “If you touch me, I’m gonna scream!” Paula’s scream is good enough to scare anyone away. If she’s holding my hand, I feel like I’m screaming too.

“No, no, no, don’t scream,” said Brian. “What’s your question?”

“What’s ‘Return to Sender’ mean?” asked Paula.

“It’s like when you send something in the mail, only there was something wrong with how you sent it or who you sent it to, so the mailman gives it back to you ’cause you’re the one that sent it. Now gimme back my ball.”

Paula looked at him and shrugged, then let the ball go. Brian pushed his glasses up on his nose and picked up his ball.

Paula grabbed my hand, and we started to walk away. I turned around and waved to Brian and said “Bye!” but I don’t think he heard me because the sound of the basketball bouncing was too loud.

I was getting hungry, and I asked Paula if it was time for us to go home yet. “We’re going to the post office now,” she said, “to talk to the mailman.”

“Why do we have to talk to the mailman?” I said. “We already know what ‘Return to Sender’ means.”

“Because,” said Paula, “we just gotta.”

The post office was cool inside and smelled like cardboard boxes. Paula and me walked up to the counter, but we couldn’t see over it because we were too short, so we both had to stand on our tiptoes to see the man who was working there.

“We wanna know who our sender is,” said Paula, and she thumped the hand that wasn’t holding mine on the counter.

“Excuse me?” said the man.

“Mrs. Winthrop said she wanted to put us in a box and return to sender,” I said. I tried to thump my hand on the counter like Paula did. It hurt a little.

“Oh,” said the man. “Okay … well, who sent you to Mrs. Winthrop?”

“Miss Jessie,” said Paula quickly.

“And who’s Miss Jessie?”

“A social worker.”

“She wears big glasses and has curly hair like us and gives us hugs,” I said.

Miss Jessie is the kind of person I could call Dottie.

Paula squeezed my hand.

Paula kept talking to the post office man, and I let go of her hand and picked up a big flat piece of cardboard that was sitting in a corner. I knew that it would turn into a box if I folded it the right way, because I had seen Mrs. Winthrop do it. I was trying really hard but I couldn’t get the sides to stick together and I got angry and then I tried to rip the box but I couldn’t even do that. I punched it a few times, but it just sat there and I got angrier. I didn’t want to be angry at the box but I was and I was angry at myself too and I was really hungry and I just wanted to hold Paula’s hand and go home.

When she was done talking to the man, Paula walked over to me. “What are you doing?”

“I’m making a box so we can sit in it and go back to our sender.” I sniffled a little and felt tears in my eyes, but I wanted to make Paula happy, and I patted the floor next to me so she would sit down and help.

“That’s stupid. We won’t fit in the box and we can’t even go back to our sender anyway.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I wanna be returned to Miss Jessie, and I’m gonna return both of us together.”

“We can’t be returned!” Paula yelled. Paula had never yelled at me before, and I started to cry.

“Miss Jessie’s not our sender. We were somewhere before Miss Jessie, don’t you remember? The man said our mom or dad was probably who sent us in the first place. Stop crying!”

But I couldn’t stop.

“I don’t know why they sent us away, okay? But the man said that they probably thought we would come back and that we got lost in the mail, which is why Miss Jessie took us. He said she takes in a lot of lost mail like us and takes care of them and finds them homes. But we can’t go back in the box because we don’t know where we really came from.”

I tried to cover my ears so I wouldn’t hear what Paula was saying. I didn’t want to hear it, but my ears wouldn’t stop listening no matter how much I yelled inside my head.

“I don’t wanna be lost in the mail!” I shouted. “I want to go in the box!”

Paula sat next to me and held my hand. “Me too.”

Eventually I stopped crying, and Paula kissed me on the cheek. The post office man asked if we were okay. Paula and I said “yes” at the same time. Paula and me, we’re still lost in the mail. But that’s okay, she told me later, because Miss Jessie and Mrs. Winthrop know where we are at least, and they’re supposed to make sure we don’t get lost again. Sometimes I dream about getting into the box and flying and looking down at the houses trying to figure out which is really mine. Sometimes Paula is with me, and sometimes I’m alone.

The whole way home we squeezed each other’s hands, and by the time we got back our fingers were turning purple. Mrs. Winthrop was happy again when she opened the door, and the whole house still smelled like perfume but there wasn’t any broken glass on the floor. It took me a long time to fall asleep that night because I kept staring at the mailbox outside, and when I fell asleep that’s where this story ended.