When the Hector twins were three years old, one fell off the bed. The other, playing downstairs, suddenly began to cry. When they were eight, Amanda tumbled down the basement stairs, and Aimee, up in the bedroom, felt a sharp pain in her rear end. And once, Aimee injured her knee in a gym class accident and had to be rushed to the hospital. Amanda, completely unaware of her sister's injury, limped around the school all afternoon complaining that her knee hurt.

Twins are truly sisters under the skin, two bodies joined by a common soul. Without each other, the Hector girls actually feel incomplete. Amanda was once invited to a bar mitzvah by a boy in her science class who didn't know Aimee. "I went by myself but it wasn't fun. Something was missing. Being around other people without my sister is hard." When Amanda got sick at summer camp and had to come home, Aimee insisted on leaving with her. They knocked down a wall in their house so they could share a bedroom. "Sometimes we climb in bed together," Aimee says. "I love Amanda so much. If I'm scared about something, she's right there next to me."

Do they fight like other sisters? Of course. "When we get really mad, we divide our room with a piece of tape. It never stays up more than ten minutes."

"And when we have a fight with a friend, we automatically take each other's side. It makes it hard on our friends, because our loyalties are always first to each other."

Are they ever jealous? "Well, when Aimee did so excellent in soccer and got all those goals, I was kind of jealous she was getting so much attention."

"But Amanda, you're a better singer and more artsy. You get to do the solos in our singing group."

"And how about the time we tried out for the school play, and the teacher said we could share the part. That was so stupid. Everybody else gets their own part and we have to share." The one area where sharing isn't a problem is their modeling career, a profession they've been pursuing since they were toddlers. "If someone doesn't want both of us for a job, we take turns," Aimee says, and Amanda finishes, "They don't know who they're getting anyway." Do they ever get bored spending so much time together?

"Are you kidding? It's like having a best friend around for your whole life." Still, Amanda admits that every now and then, "Itıs fun to be home sick and all alone with Mommy." But by lunchtime they can no longer endure being apart, and they must talk on the telephone.

In an effort to make the twins less dependent on each other, their mother enrolled them in different classes when they started school. Recently she persuaded them to stop dressing as twins by promising to buy them individual wardrobes so that, between them, they'd have twice as many clothes.

"We liked to dress alike because it gave us attention and at first, we were afraid that without matching outfits no one would. . . ." Amanda says. ". . . notice us anymore," Aimee continues. "But that didn't happen,² they both chime in.

"I had this idea yesterday," Aimee says, "and I couldn't wait to tell my sister."

"But when she started telling me," Amanda picks up, "I already knew what her idea was before she said it."

"Like the time we had that course together," Aimee goes on, "and you would raise your hand to ask a question, and it would be the same question I was ready to ask. It got so, if I saw her hand up, I just lowered mine."

Amanda jumps in. "Sometimes, in a mirror I think I'm seeing Aimee when it's actually me. I remember once we were alone in a hotel, just the two of us in the room. I got up to go to the bathroom and on the back of the door was a mirror that I didn't know was there. When I went by, I thought I saw Aimee's reflection, but that was impossible because she was back on the bed. Then I realized I was really looking at myself. Isn't that weird?"

"I guess it's hard to understand our relationship," Aimee says. "We're attached beyond regular sisters. Once I was Amanda. We were one; now we're two, but we're still part of each other. We're the same, even if our personalities are different. I love her not because she's like me. She is me."

They think so much alike that in conversation, their words are practically interchangeable. Ask them what would happen if they both fell in love with same boy? "We'd shoot it out for winners like we do everything else."

How about if one got accepted into a better college than the other? "We'd both go to the same place. We'd never let something like that come between us."

Do they think they'll get married some day?

"Yes, but maybe we can have a big house and live in different wings. It's hard to imagine having a relationship with anybody that's closer than ours."

When you're 14-year-old twins who've never spent a night apart, it's even harder to imagine being old and, worse yet, alone. Aimee muses, "I think that when we grow up and get old, if one of us dies, the other one will die pretty soon after that. I hope we're lucky enough to die at the same time." "Me, too," says Amanda. "I want us to die together."

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