Everything had changed. The moment my brother was shot and killed is something I will never forget. I can remember it as if it was just yesterday, my whole life had changed. This is my story.
    It was the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. The British attacked, there were so many of them. Jonathan gave me the majority of his ammo, “You are more likely to miss, you need the ammo”, he told me. I didn't want to take it, but it was true, Jonathan had a better aim than me, so I didn't really have a choice. We were instructed to not shoot until we could see the white of their eyes, since we were low on ammo.
I killed about seven people, I didn't see Jonathan anywhere, and everyone seemed to be ok fighting off the British. I went to look for him, I turned a corner and found him drinking some water, “Come on the fight is back there, we have to help”, I told him. “I need some am-”, he stopped in mid-sentence, there was something hiding in the bush in front of us. A man popped out with a gun, now imagine this next part in slow motion, he pulls the gun up and he shoots Jonathan, BANG!!. My brother collapses to the floor, immediately the blood starts pouring out of him.
I’m in shock, unable to move, but somehow I manage to snap out of it and aim for the man, I still had one bullet left in my gun. I pulled the trigger, aiming at his heart, but his hand was in the way, I had shot his hand. He let out a scream of agonizing pain, he dropped his gun and ran away with a hole in his hand. I knelt down next to Jonathan, I knew there was nothing I could do, he was losing blood, fast. I knew he was going to die, but I needed to be with him during his last moments.
“Ethan……”. And just like that, he was gone. My twin brother, the person I had known my entire life, the person I grew up with, gone. Of course, I had a younger sister, Sarah, but she's five years younger. How was I ever going to tell her, or our parents?
I ran away, too depressed to fight anymore. After what felt like hours, I had finally reached my parents house, I knocked on the door and waited. Sarah opened it and gasped, she looked at me as if I had a foot growing out of my nose. “We heard you had been killed!”, she said, hugging me. “Are you Ethan or Jonathan?”, we were identical twins, same face, same voice, height, everything, and no one could tell us apart, not even our own family.
“I’m Ethan”, I told her, “So then that means Jonathan…. is dead?”, “Yes”, I told her. We walked in, and I told our parents what had happened, they told me how they heard that the British had won the battle. I walked home, I didn't feel like serving in the war anymore after I had lost my only brother, which I was still upset about, little did I know that in the near future I would find out I still had a brother. I awoke the next day feeling really depressed. I went to the market to buy some food, as I was leaving, I turned the corner and bumped right into a man.
We fell over backwards, we both started apologizing but then stopped, we looked at each other in the face, I thought I had bumped into a mirror at first. This man looked exactly like me and Jonathan, “Well, I guess there’s enough people in the world for someone to look like me”, he said. I asked him who he was, he said, “My name is Ryan”. He told me that he was a soldier who fought in the war, I told him about Jonathan and what had happened, we had a long conversation. He tried to convince me to go back to the war, we had talked for so long we didn't even notice we had reached my house, great, now he knew where I lived.
I don't know what happened, but we just sort of became friends then, I invited him to my family’s thanksgiving party the day before, he said he would come. The next day he arrived and everyone gasped, “I’m Ryan”, he told them. I explained how we had met at the market, that he just so happened to look exactly like me and Jonathan. “It’s time”, dad said, “We found him”, mom replied sounding like she was going to cry. Ryan, Sarah, and I were confused, and asked them what they were talking about.
Mom went up to the wall and pulled a picture out of a frame, I recognized this picture, it was me and Jonathan, when we were born. Mom told us to look at the middle of the photo very closely, there was a fold! I pointed at it, then, mom pulled on the sides, enlarging the photo. It revealed a third baby in between me and Jonathan! I asked Ryan what his last name was, “Johnson”, he said, that was our last name.
“We were triplets!”, I yelled. “When the three of you were only about two months old, we lost Ryan”, dad told us. It was too bad Jonathan would know never know we were triplets, but at least I still had one brother left, he convinced me to go back to fight in the war, I agreed. And it’s just been like that ever since.