by Laura Tims
“Does this have anything to do with that night this summer?” Dad wants to know.
I bend my toenail backward against the front of my sneaker until something cracks. But he’s not talking about the night, he’s talking about the night they picked us up at the police station. I forgot how many things went wrong over the summer.
“No. I’m sure she’s fine.”
Silence again. I stare out the window at the town, at the patches of trees, the small neat houses, the cracks in the sidewalk I’ve memorized.
They’re not going to question me. We’re twins. I know Grace better than anybody else. If something were wrong, I would know.
But I do know, and I promised to stay silent.
My bedroom’s built from fossils of me and Grace. Scattered plastic horses from our horse phase at age nine. Beads jammed between the floorboards from our jewelry-making phase at twelve, when she insisted we work in here because I kept spilling the beads. I papered the walls with every birthday card, every stupid drawing. It’s a shrine to the way we used to be.
It was so much better, the way we used to be.
Now there’s also Pop-Tarts wrappers, empty Gatorade bottles, crumbs in the bed. Sometimes I can feel Grace’s younger self in here, being disappointed in me.
I bend to pick up a crumpled paper plate, but my phone buzzes with Preston’s name.
How was the funeral?
mr gordon puked, cassius called adam a prick, I was accidentally nice to adams half brother
Adam has a half brother?
gonna ask u a thing on a topic that is not that. r u like sad? abt adam dying?
I didn’t like him even before you told me what he did.
I thought maybe u should always be sad when someone dies no matter what
Im not sad and Im scared that makes me a bad person but Im always kinda worryin about bein a bad person. idk
I hated him so much I didnt understand how he could not feel it, and it feels kinda like I killed him by hating him that hard even tho u say I left the party before he died. sometimes I feel like I have so much hate inside me and I have to spend all my energy tryin to keep it from gettin out but idk if Im strong enough to do it forever
I’m still typing, losing track of what I’m saying, my hands shaking, when my phone buzzes hard and loud. He’s calling me.
“It was an accident, Joy,” Preston says as soon as I pick up. “People always said how someone was going to fall in.”
I roll across my bed, pull Grace’s old stuffed tiger toward me. I rescued it from the trash after one of her yearly room purges. There’s nothing worse than being something someone used to need. “You’re right.”
“Say it again, slower.”
I need to be better at convincing people I’m okay.
“It’s just a weird coincidence. But for every person who dies, I guess there’s someone who wanted them gone and can’t believe their luck.” One of the tiger’s legs is half-severed. “I just have to pretend to be sad about him at school for a couple days.”
“How’s Grace taking it?”
Maybe I can sew the tiger’s leg. I rotate it and it comes off in my hand.
“It makes me anxious when you don’t answer,” he blurts. “I start thinking I said something annoying and that I should stop talking and that maybe you don’t like me anymore, and I know it’s ridiculous but I can’t help it.”
People are always turning silence into a knife to stab themselves with. “I would never stop liking you, I promise.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Relief, embarrassment.
“I should probably go. I have a thousand years of homework. I’m still failing American History because I hate America and I hate history.” Make another joke, show him I’m fine. “Also tomorrow’s trash pickup day so I gotta go put myself out on the curb.”
“Please don’t say things like that.”
Wrong joke. “Just kidding.”
“You’re the only person at school I feel comfortable around, and you’re a very important friend to me, and I don’t think you should call yourself trash.”
“You always cheer me up every single time you talk to me, did you know that?”
I can feel him smiling.
“Don’t stay up too late tonight, okay?” I tell him before I hang up.
I stare at my history book on the floor. Principal Eastman’s brought me in twice to talk about American History. But I can’t start the homework. It’s not just a sheet of paper, it’s the horrible black hole of my future.
I toss the broken tiger into my closet, go out into the hall, knock three times on Grace’s door.
She doesn’t open it all the way. “What’s up, Joy?”
It’s the way teachers talk to you when you go to them after class and they know you’re gonna ask for an extension. That kind of weary readiness.
“I went to his funeral.” Mom and Dad are watching football downstairs. The noise blares up to us. She still doesn’t let me in.
“How was it?”
“It was okay.”
“Uh-huh.”
Let me in, let me in, let me in.
She tilts the door closed a little more. “I’m doing some school stuff. . . .”
“Yeah.”
“So I kind of need to concentrate.”
“Oh! I’ll leave you alone.”
She hesitates. “You okay?”
“I’m always okay.” Now I need to ask it back. But what if she finally admits that she’s not, and I still have no clue what the right words are—
She closes the door before I can find them.
We used to crawl into bed together and turn off all the lights and watch YouTube videos until we sobbed with laughter.
Back in my room, I check Adam’s Facebook. His wall goes straight from thirty-seven happy birthday posts to fifty-eight death posts. He’s got more friends now.
Maybe he reeled drunk through the woods to look soulfully at the moon and think about what a fucking “artist” he was. And that last birthday shot caught around his ankles, and the wind carried him into the quarry.
The breeze drags a splintered piece of the overgrown oak tree branch against my window screen. Must’ve done that when I snuck out. The breeze rustles Grace’s old drawings taped to my wall, crayon versions of us. She always drew me taller and gave me a sword.
I get up to close the window. But there’s an envelope on the sill. Sealed neatly, thick. My name’s written on the back.
A weird feeling settles in my stomach.
I tear it open, feel inside. Photographs, stiff and glossy, and a folded piece of paper. A letter.
Only the first few lines make sense to me before the rest blurs and my mind gets stuck and my hands stop feeling like anything.
To Joy Morris—
I was at the party. I was at the quarry. I saw what you did.
I saw you murder Adam Gordon.
THREE
June 7
Grace
“YALE.” PRINCIPAL EASTMAN THROWS A PAMPHLET onto the pile on his desk. “Brown.” Pamphlet. “Penn State. Even Harvard, Grace. I called you in here because your grades, your test scores, they are outstanding. The best in your class. Yes, it’s only the end of your sophomore year, but you should be thinking about college.”
Fourteen pamphlets on the desk. A mountain I have to climb every day. Schedule: study for three hours daily, minimum. Social life: nonexistent.
“A lot of students see summer as their vacation time, so this is your chance to get ahead. Volunteer work? Amazing on an application. And it’s never too early to start SAT prep classes.”
Schedule: study four hours a day, minimum. Two hours volunteer work. SAT prep class on weekends. Two hours exercise—there needs to be less of me. Five hours for sleep. Makeup: two hours.
My phone buzzes on top of my backpack. I adjust my shirt, comb bangs out flat with my fingers, look down at the screen. It’s my sister.
LAST DAY OF SCHOOL YASSSSS. ME AND NOV IN FR
ONT OF BUS CIRCLE, FIND US.
Principal Eastman leans forward, looking at me like I’m the best photo he’s ever taken. “The Honors Club and the Environmentalism Club and the—what was the other one?”
“Art Club,” I mumble, chewing the inside of my cheek.
“They’ve appreciated your participation this year. You ought to think about helping out with the school newspaper. To be honest, I’m a bit worried about the direction it’s taken under November Roseby.”
My phone buzzes. Her again.
big plans for this summer! gonna be v fun.
Eastman claps my shoulder. I’m dismissed. I get up, pulling my shirt down flat over my stomach.
GRAACEEEEE where r u?
She gave up on me being social during the school year. She’s trying hard again, now that it’s summer. Why does she want me so bad? What’s there to have?
I text her back.
don’t wait for me! i have some stuff to do! :)
I have to walk the hallway loop of the school twice before I can go home. If I can do it in two hundred steps, I’ll burn fifty calories and I won’t disappoint anybody.
I start my lap. Lockers left open, empty classrooms. Around the corner of the science wing are the glass doors to the outdoor relaxation garden. Ms. Bell’s idea, a place for students to unwind. One more way for Principal Eastman to claim our school’s different, even though we’re exactly like every public high school in every small town in every state. Nothing special here. Keep going. The city’s that way.
I step into the little outdoor courtyard, full of cheap plants. The seeds in the bird feeder are moldy. It was only filled once. Even the birds are headed someplace better.
Ninety-five. Ninety-six. Keeping steps small so I don’t go over. My phone buzzes twice in my back pocket. Two more texts from Joy, I’m sure, all in caps.
“You high?” someone says.
Startled, I turn. Adam Gordon, inches away. Him. Really cute junior. Sitting on the plaster bench, glossy acoustic guitar on his lap. I’ve looked at him all year, but he’s never looked at me. I drop all my college handouts, so cliché it must have been on purpose. My future in the dirt.
“Did you even see me?” Adam laughs, not helping. I gather the handouts. Measure each movement. Must move smoothly, not awkwardly. He leans forward, his T-shirt crumpling at the waist. “You look so high.”
What’s being high like: stammering, heart racing? Maybe this is it. Wavy dark hair skims his cheekbones. Dark eyes. Dark soul? Writes beautiful, sad music, plays it for talent shows, musicals. He has a way of looking at people like they’re special. Like Joy does. Whenever I see him, I want to ask if he’s okay.
“I thought you were a freshman.” He gestures at the pamphlets.
“Sophomore. Or, I was. I’m a junior now, technically.” I wince.
He taps his cigarette on the edge of the bench. His fingers are calloused. “Applying extra-extra early decision?”
“Principal Eastman wants me to look to the future.” I. Sound. So. Ridiculous.
“He probably just wanted to look down your shirt.” He smirks. A bad-boy smile, like the twenty-five-year-old actors who think they can play seventeen-year-old boys in teen movies. “Kidding. A guy with a telescope couldn’t get a glimpse down there.” He holds out a cigarette. “Want one?”
“No, thank you.” Should have said yes. Was he just looking at my chest? I’m wearing two sports bras. “Does Principal Eastman look down shirts?”
“Yeah, he’s a pedo.” He shifts his guitar onto his other leg. “But some girls here are thirsty for it.”
Is he joking? Do I joke back?
“If that’s what you’re into, wear, like, a button-down. Pop the top two before he calls you into his office. Easy.” He breathes smoke and fire. “You freshman and sophomore girls. Half of you have no clue. Makes a guy wanna look out for you.”
Sometimes I think everyone but me had a secret meeting about the way people are supposed to talk.
“Kidding.” He coughs out an acrid smell. His eyes are foggy and rimmed with red. Meaning any mistakes I make might be ones he’ll forget.
“Eastman’s the worst,” I venture. “I bet he hides in the girls’ bathroom on his lunch break.”
He snorts so hard his guitar slides off his lap and thuds against the bench. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have the world’s only funny underclassmen.”
I made him laugh!
“Monroe, right?” He’s looking at me. Finally.
“Morris. Grace Morris.”
“Oh yeah, right. One of the twins. The smart one and the obnoxious one. Which one are you again?”
I nervous-giggle. Joy hates that habit. I don’t know how to stop.
“Kidding. You’re supposed to be brilliant, right? Everyone else at this school is so fucking stupid.” He yanks a book out of his bag. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. “Have you read this? I’m halfway through.”
It’s a terrible book.
“We should talk philosophy sometime. I can never find anyone who can keep up with me.”
I have this fantasy where I finally ask if he’s okay. Fantasy Adam says, “Nobody’s asked me that in years. Thank you. No. I’m not okay.” I say, “Me neither.” And he says, “Maybe we can be not okay together.”
God, I’m stupid.
In real life, he tilts his head to the side. Smirks. “You know, just from a guy’s perspective, you’d be cuter with less makeup.”
Mornings: makeup, two hours.
“I, uh . . .”
“Don’t cover up your face,” he says. “You should relax. Be more like your sister. She truly does not give a fuck.” He laughs and adds quickly, “But not too much like her.”
I die a little inside.
That night, Joy fights with Mom and Dad.
She cries like she lives, never making the sound of herself smaller. It fills the house. Downstairs: Dad banging dishes against the sink. Mom banging the vacuum against the floor. They always clean the house after they fight with her. But she stains.
If I roll this pencil between my fingers thirteen times before Mom stops vacuuming, Joy’ll stop crying.
The vacuum whirs off immediately.
I should study. I should go for a run. Half an hour and I can burn three hundred calories. That cancels out lunch.
Downstairs: Mom, Dad, talking. We can always hear what they say in the living room. Either they don’t realize, they don’t care, or they want us to hear everything.
“I just don’t get why she doesn’t try as hard as Grace,” Mom’s saying.
I slip out into the hallway and through Joy’s door.
Her room is inside out. She saves everything: birthday cards, handmade presents from first grade, memories scattered in the open. A monument to how dorky I used to be. Even stupider than I am now. Everything triggers a crystal moment of embarrassment. Moments that stay alive because of her. I wish she’d let things die.
She’s splayed in the center of the rumpled quilt. Dirty clothes, stuffed animals. Her hair everywhere. Drowning her pillow. It’s hard not to love somebody who hides nothing.
“Hey.” Double-check to make sure I said it. “Hey.” Around her, my volume turns way down. Sometimes my words don’t make it out at all.
She flings herself onto her back. She’s so tall. Six feet. I guess I’m the same height, but it doesn’t feel like it. Her shirt hikes over her hip. Her stomach’s flatter than mine. It sucks to be the chubby twin.
“So I told them that I’m sick of them treating me like their first draft, their screwup.”
This is what she does: shocks people into silence, then takes it as confirmation she’s right.
“See? You can’t even deny it.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I sound like I don’t mean it. “Maybe you could try being a little less . . . honest about what you’re thinking all the time?”
“I have to be honest,” she says angrily. “It’s the only way I can get anything from them. They’
re like robot parents. Sometimes I can get an actual human being to look at me for a second, and then the overlord takes back over and it’s beep-beep, we-are-the-parents, beep, we-don’t-need-to-explain-ourselves-to-you, beep, talk-to-us-when-you’ve-calmed-down. Except to them, I’m never calmed down.”
Because she never does calm down. She slams around the house. Taking her mood out on kitchen cabinets. The fridge door.
“It doesn’t matter if I make a good point. All that matters is the tone I make it in,” she says.
“They just don’t like it when you accuse them of favoritism.”
She props herself up on one elbow. “Because that’s what it is! They’re obsessed with you, and they’re sick of me being a fuckup. Which is fair! I am a fuckup! But they should at least admit it.”
My face warms. “You’re being unreasonable.”
“Ugh.” She throws her head back. Her hair springs all over the place. “You don’t know. Sneeze and they’re like, wow, Grace, best sneeze ever, A freakin’ plus. I could construct a twenty-foot-tall statue of them out of toenail clippings and they’d still be all, your sister could have done a better job.”
Her anger is always a weird soup of humor and self-loathing. Which is why it’s so hard to deal with. “I don’t have it easy, either.”
“You’ve always liked their attention.”
She tosses out words with no idea how much they sting. “You never used to be like this.”
“Oh, hush about what used to be. You don’t know.”
“You’re trying to get a rise out of me the same way you try to get a rise out of them.”
“And you’re analyzing me and taking their side and you never used to be like that.”
“You’ve always liked their attention, too.” When we were little, she was the kid everyone recorded in the hopes she’d go viral online. She was so loud. When we stood at separate ends of the playground and called for our parents at the same time, they’d go to her. They never heard me.
“Wow, okay. I’m being obnoxious. I am aware that I’m being obnoxious. I’m sorry, Grace.” She nudges my arm like a cat. “I know I’m being impossible and you’re so patient and nice and ugh.”
