Dark Needs

by Maris Black

  “Obviously.” Gavin walked over to me and gave my hair a playful roughing up. “Crazy, right? Even our own parents can’t tell us apart.”

  He loved telling people that, but he never bothered to explain that the reason our parents had a hard time telling us apart was because they hardly ever laid eyes on us. Serena could easily tell us apart. She was the only one who really gave a shit enough to pay attention to our mannerisms, and the only one who stuck around through puberty and the changes that came with it. To her, it seemed absurd that people couldn’t tell us apart.

  Once, during our parents’ annual publishing industry shindig, a well-known fantasy author who had slammed one too many shots of fine Irish whisky stood marveling over us, his glassy eyes bugging out of their sockets. Looking like a slightly more polished Doc Brown from Back to the Future, he kept running his hands through his wiry white hair and proclaiming in an affected English accent, “What sorcery is this? You can’t tell the difference!" At one point, he’d reached out and run a shaky hand over my cheek, and then he’d done the same to Gavin.

  The moment Serena had seen him touching us, she’d gone into mama bear mode, grabbing me and Gavin each by the elbow and walking us out of the room and up to bed. “Tonto del culo,” she swore in her thick Spanish accent as she dragged us along so fast my feet got tangled. “That stupid idiot. After five minutes with you, people should know which is which.”

  “But how can you tell us apart?” Gavin had asked. “Most people can’t.”

  “Well…” she mused, pausing in the hallway and studying our faces, her expression softening. “Bain is the sweet one, and you are the devilish one. Your faces are reflections of your souls. Did you know that? I can see all of your mischief, Gavin. Right… here.” She tapped a fingertip to the end of Gavin’s nose, making him giggle. Then she bent and cupped my cheeks in her palms, bringing her face close to mine with a sigh. “And your eyes, Mr. Bain… so deep they could hold all of the joy and misery of the world.”

  Ironically, the crazy author from the night of the party soon published a book about a pair of dark-haired pyrokinetic twins from another dimension. One wanted to destroy our world, while the other wanted to save it. Gavin read the book aloud to me over the course of many nights, and though we laughed at the implausibility of it all, we were both secretly flattered.

  I think my mind went to that long ago incident because Drake, with his wide eyes and slack jaw, looked as if he too were the victim of some sorcery. When he was finally able to get some words to come out, there was no stopping him.

  “Holy fuck, you’re the Murphy Twins, aren’t you? Leo said the sons of a celebrity had enrolled this year, but he wouldn’t say who. This is unbelievable. I’ve seen you guys in the tabloids, but it’s been a while. You look different, though. Don’t you usually wear baseball caps and sunglasses?” The look on his face said he was sizing us up, trying to figure out if we were impostors. “You know, some dude came in here last year saying he was the brother of that pop star all the high school girls piss their panties over. What’s her name?” He shook his head. "Are you sure you’re the Murphy Twins? I’d have bet my life you were taller.”

  “I don’t have a gun on me,” Gavin said with a wicked smile. “Otherwise I would gladly take that bet.”

  Drake froze and glanced at me as if for backup. Some ghetto badass he was, ready to bolt at the first mention of firearms. But what he didn’t realize was that my brother was the king of deadpan. There was no way to tell if he was being serious or if he was joking, at least not to most people. I was damn good at judging his intention, but even I had occasional moments of uncertainty.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” I said, pausing to aim a dirty look at Gavin. “His sense of humor is on the rude side, but he’s harmless. And don’t worry about not recognizing us. The only time we had the paparazzi camped outside our house was two years ago when our dad’s book Judge and Jury debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. And really, the attention was less about book sales and more because some crazy religious group decided that our dad was the Antichrist and his book contained coded messages for the Church of Satan.”

  “I can’t imagine being famous,” Drake said with a dreamy look in his eyes. “What’s it like? Is it easier to pick up girls?”

  I laughed. “It’s easier to meet people, but it’s harder to make any real connections. Lots of girls want to talk to us because we’ve got money and because we’re on the internet.”

  Gavin sat on one of the empty bedside tables and crossed his arms, striking one of his effortless model poses. “You show up on the big entertainment blogs a time or two, and the snakes start slithering out of the woods. They want to be with you— be your girlfriend, your friend, whatever— but only because knowing you makes them more important. I mean, they don’t even know you. It’s weird, strangers wanting to be with you.”

  “I know, right? That’s crazy.” Drake shook his head, but his eyes were full of the kind of awe that said he didn’t actually get it at all. That he thought it would be the absolute bomb if a bunch of strangers wanted to get with him. “Hey, before I forget, Leo has me going door-to-door telling everyone the new wi-fi password. That’s actually why I stopped by, but then I found out who you guys were, and wow. This is so cool.”

  “So what is it?” I asked.

  “What is what?” He stood there with a blank look on his face, and I could have sworn I heard his two brain cells scraping together.

  “The password?”

  “Oh yeah, right. It’s Argento with a capital A. Leo does the network for the dorms, so that was his idea.”

  “Dario Argento,” I mused. “Fantastic director. This Leo sounds like he has good taste.”

  “Oh, he does. He’s amazing. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  I interrupted with a flurried dismissal. “Okay, well thanks for the password, Drake. It was nice meeting you. Hope you’ll stop by again.”

  Instead of taking the hint and leaving so that Gavin and I could talk about him behind his back, Drake moved farther into the room and leaned on the end of my bed. The wood groaned beneath his weight, cracking so loudly I almost expected the frame to collapse.

  Gavin drew his eyebrows together and glared down his nose at the guy, looking for all the world like royalty. “Drake, how old are these beds?”

  “Oh, they’re antiques,” Drake said. “They want this place to feel like a real castle, you know. Everything here is really old.”

  Gavin wasn’t impressed. “Well, no one mentioned we’d be sleeping on rickety beds from the Civil War. What are the mattresses made of? Millions of bed bugs holding hands?”

  Drake’s posture straightened under Gavin’s scrutiny. “Maybe you can talk to Leo about getting new furniture in here. I don’t know with you being freshmen and all. Freshmen usually don’t get what they want.” He shuffled his white-sneakered feet, clearly uncomfortable in the ensuing silence, then hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the hallway. “Hey, I’ve got to see a man about a dog, okay? Catch you later.”

  My polite nice-to-meet-you-now-get-lost speech hadn’t gotten rid of Drake, but Gavin just being his asshole self worked like gangbusters. The guy took off, and I shook my head in disbelief as I turned to face my twin. “Damn, Gavin. That guy was kind of an idiot, but you were pretty rough on him. It’s not like he whittled your bed from an oak tree. He was just trying to be nice, and you just blew his ego wide open. And said you wanted to shoot him.”

  I don’t know why I ever bothered saying anything about Gavin’s bad behavior. Then again, maybe I did know. I harbored this mad hope that somehow I tempered him, softened his edges when no one else could, and served as a buffer between him and an unsuspecting world. Because he said things, raw and brutal things that often sounded like assault, and he rarely backed down.

  That’s why what he said next surprised me.

  “You’re right, I was a dick. I’ll apologize to Gangsta Drake ne
xt time I see him.” He sighed and pulled Blackie, my Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera, from his Louis Vuitton bag and squeezed onto his bed beside the suitcase. Propping up on one elbow, he started filming me as he talked. “I just want to make sure you have nice things, Bain. You’re too easygoing about everything. You’ll let them stick you with whatever chintzy things they want, and I’m not going to let that happen. These are probably the leftovers from last year’s yard sale, brought up out of the basement just to show the Murphy twins they’re not special.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Gavin. Everyone is not out to get us. Hell, Drake didn’t even know who we were at first. Just chill, okay? You’re starting to sound like one of Dad’s books with all of that conspiracy theory bullshit.” Before Gavin even lowered the camera to glare at me, I already knew I’d taken it too far. “I didn’t mean that. You’re nothing like Dad. Please forget I said it.”

  Gavin shrugged like it didn’t bother him, but he couldn’t fool me. I was the guy who shared his reflection.

  “It will be fine,” I assured him. “If they try to shortchange us on anything, we’ll just call Dad, and maybe he’ll send Baron down here to take care of everything. Nobody wants a two-hundred-forty-pound Samoan bodyguard breathing down their necks.”

  “We don’t need to call that man for a damn thing,” Gavin said. “He probably wouldn’t help anyway, though the thought of Baron running amok on campus is fucking hilarious.”

  He smiled, and that made it easier for me to breathe. I’d never been able to relax when my brother wasn’t happy. It was as if the tension in him tied a knot inside my own chest. I’d nearly forgotten that fact in his absence, but now the sensation came back in full force.

  “I’m just feeling a little uptight,” he explained. “It was hard enough getting accustomed to living in England, and now this college stuff.”

  For the first time, it occurred to me that Gavin might not be as thrilled to be here as I was. I had longed for our first day of college more than anything in my entire life. I’d miss the hell out of Serena, but the need to finally spread my wings was consuming. Did Gavin not feel the same? Was he homesick for England? I wasn’t sure I was ready to find out the answers to those questions, so I put on a fake smile and changed the subject, hoping my disappointment didn’t come across in the video he was shooting. Good cameras were sensitive. They could pick up things, little nuances of character or emotion that you might miss in the cluttered space of reality.

  “What do you want to do tonight?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Gavin hedged, pointing the camera at me and fiddling with the lens as he spoke. “The girl at the front desk told me there’s supposed to be a welcome party in the ballroom tonight.” He chuckled. “Can you believe our college has a ballroom?”

  “Oh, dancing sounds amazing. Can we go?”

  Gavin shrugged, and I could tell already that he wasn’t feeling the whole dance thing. But then he’d probably been partying his nights away in England while I was sitting at home alone every night and binge-watching whatever series was new on Netflix. I was ready to have some fun, and I wasn’t above using manipulation to get my way.

  I moved right in front of Gavin, aware of the camera as he began filming me again. “Remember Mr. Cranston at our middle school homecoming dance?” I moved from side to side with clunky steps while snapping my fingers erratically above my head, imitating the infamous dance our sixth-grade chemistry teacher would never live down. I looked like an idiot, but that didn’t matter. Not when it was Gavin who was doing the looking. “Come on, let’s go dancing. Pleeease? How can you say no to the Cranston Shuffle?”

  Gavin fought against a full-on smile, managing to keep it to a tight grin. “Okay, sure. Sounds like fun.” The change in his tone was encouraging. There was a spark of real excitement there, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of the boy who had waved goodbye to me at the airport nearly a year ago.

  Just as I was contemplating throwing my arms around him in a suffocating hug, we were interrupted by a knock at the door. I snatched it open to reveal a tall blond guy standing in the hallway. He was appealing— clean-cut and confident— and he captured my attention in a way that Drake had not.

  Gavin kept the camera rolling as I stepped aside to let our visitor enter.

  “Hi, my name’s Leo.” He grabbed my hand in a firm handshake, taking rather than offering. “You must be one of the Murphy twins.” He surveyed our room with the air of someone who was accustomed to being in charge and giving orders, looking us up and down and making no secret of assessing us like thoroughbreds at auction. “Nice,” he said after an awkward moment. “Welcome to Otranto. I hope you will enjoy your first year.”

  I stared up at Leo with wide eyes, trying not to imagine a two-day growth of stubble on his smooth jaw, or envision his perfectly combed mop of blond hair messed up after a long night of fucking. My gaze dropped to his chest, which was almost level with my eyes and hidden behind the two buttons of his Polo shirt. When I looked back up at his face, one of his brows was ever-so-slightly cocked, but he didn’t look away.

  After we’d stared at each other for several seconds too long, I broke eye contact and shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans. Leo, heedless of decorum, continued to stare, and before I knew it my eyes were drawn right back to his handsome face.

  “What’s the matter, Leo?” my brother asked, his voice laced with something like contempt. “Never seen a twin before?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen them before. Just none that were quite so…” His words trailed off.

  “So what?” Gavin growled.

  “So similar.” Leo licked his lips before shifting his gaze to Gavin. “I thought Drake was exaggerating when he barged into my room sputtering about how there was no way to tell you apart. He can be a bit of a schnook sometimes, but I see now that he was righteously blown away. I’ll bet the two of you get into all kinds of mischief together, don’t you?”

  Gavin sat up and laughed, the sound thick with derision rather than humor. “Mischief? This isn’t The Parent Trap.” Gavin winked at me in a show of two-against-one solidarity that always seemed to unnerve people.

  “I know that.” Leo smiled, but it was clear he was taken aback by my brother’s animosity.

  Gavin sensed Leo’s moment of weakness and went in for the kill. “I just thought a Dario fan would be a bit more imaginative, that’s all. You seem a bit Disney to me.”

  The look Leo sent in Gavin’s direction was not friendly in the least, but he quickly suppressed it and turned back to me with a smile. “It was nice meeting you, Bain. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a man about a dog.”

  After he was gone, I turned back to Gavin and grinned. “There must be lots of dogs around here.”

  Gavin apparently didn’t think it was funny. “What is he, the fucking welcome wagon?”

  “Just a student being friendly with the new guys. It’s called etiquette. Maybe you should try it sometime.”

  “Etiquette, Bain? I guess you’re right, because he was certainly friendly with you. Maybe you should send him a selfie to keep him company tonight. Would that fall under the umbrella of etiquette as well?”

  “Why don’t you send him a selfie? He’d never know the difference.” I resumed the task of hanging clothes, careful not to let Gavin see my delighted smile at getting him riled. “And just for the record, he didn’t seem Disney to me.”

  “Yeah, I know. I think your bottom lip is still stuck to the floor.” Gavin unzipped the suitcase on his bed with all the gentleness of a hunter gutting a deer and plucked out a towel, a bottle of body wash, and some shampoo. “I’m taking a shower. We leave for the party at eight.”

  After he’d slammed the bathroom door behind him, I stopped hanging clothes and sank down onto my bed to think, my mind racing. Now that Gavin and I had been reunited, I wasn’t sure how to feel. I’d existed in a walking dream for the past year, keeping everything on hold as if he had just poppe
d out for a moment and would be right back. Now he was here, and I was freaking out.

  It was pathetic. I was pathetic. Case in point: the Hoodie Incident.

  When Gavin left for England, he’d accidentally left his favorite piece of clothing— a distressed gray hoodie— slung over one of the posts at the foot of my bed. I had always despised that hoodie and had teased Gavin relentlessly about it, mostly because it was sleeveless and overpriced.

  “Who wears a sweatshirt with no sleeves?” I would ask him. “It’s obvious you’re just trying to show off your muscles for the girls, but I haven’t noticed it working, Gavin. You know why? Because sleeveless sweatshirt is an oxymoron, and that makes you a moron for wearing it.”

  The first couple of times, he argued back. “For your information, this is True Religion. What are you wearing, Old Navy?” Eventually he stopped responding to my taunts, usually just grunting or pretending he hadn’t heard me. After a while I lost interest. I mean, what fun is it to insult someone if they’re not going to insult you in return?

  When I discovered he’d forgotten the shirt, I fell madly in love with it. Suddenly it was mine, and its pretentious TR logo and frayed sleeve holes no longer bothered me in the least. The thing I loved most about it, though, was Gavin’s scent. It haunted the fabric like a welcome ghost. I took every opportunity to bury my face in it, especially as the days passed and his absence finally sank in. Gavin. The scent was all I had left of him, and it left me profoundly hollow even as I sought to fill my body with it.

  Then one day after weeks of wallowing with the thing, and of sleeping in it even when I was doing bad things to myself, I noticed that Gavin’s scent was gone. That made me so depressed I barely ate for a week. Once, I’d caught Serena trying to wash the hoodie, and I snatched it from her fingers so fast she squealed.

  “Don’t ever touch this,” I’d told her. “It doesn’t need washing.”

  But two days before Gavin was set to return from England, I had casually tossed the hoodie into the laundry basket as Selena was carrying it from my room. She’d stared at me for a moment with a look that could only be taken as pity, and I turned my attention back to my cell phone without a word.