If you placed your finger on the Pacific Ocean just north of the U.S.
But I admit, there is also great comfort that comes from traveling through life with a witness, an identical twin to corroborate your version of things. There is often a violent urge in me to tear those early memories of us apart, even if just in my own head. How much of my early life have I confused with hers? Our tangled nature makes even me feel interchangeable with Sara-indistinguishable, bound, and suffocated. I wonder frequently how many of the memories I carry of Sara are actually my own. When I shared this memory years later, my mom and dad were quick to correct me: it was me who suffered from the terrible dreams all those years ago, and Sara who watched from her bedroom at the end of the hall. In the memory, I am reassured by my mom and dad that Sara is okay, that everything is fine. I have a vivid memory during that time of her flat out on her back, in the hallway outside her bedroom, her pajamaed limbs flailing, and my parents on either side of her trying to calm her down. When we were three years old, Sara suffered from a bout of night terrors. Opposite me, I registered the empty space. On the second day, I lay on our grandmother’s living room couch with a fever. While her children played together, I sat on the floor of their bedroom, stunned by my sister’s absence. On the first day of her hospital stay, I was left in the care of another woman with a set of twins, the same age as Tegan and me. We were separated for the first time since birth. In preschool, a lump was found in her left arm that required surgery. As if she existed everywhere, and in everything. But the snapshots in my mind contain no trace of her. There is proof of her existence: scores of photographs of us posed together on couches, sitting on laps, or standing side by side in our cribs. I have no visual memory of Tegan before we were four years old. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara. Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan's and Sara’s points of view, the book is a raw account of the drugs, alcohol, love, music, and friendship they explored in their formative years.Ī transcendent story of first loves and first songs, High School captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from each another. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents’ divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, who grew up at the height of grunge and rave culture in the nineties, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. From the iconic musicians Tegan and Sara comes a memoir about high school, detailing their first loves and first songs in a compelling look back at their humble beginnings