by Tiffany King
I told him about my aspirations to help others, how I hoped to major in human relations in college.
“I want to be there for those in need. I would like nothing better than to set up foundations that would help others. It doesn’t matter if it’s as simple as raising money for books that volunteers could read to children in the hospital, or as big as finding funding to open a soup kitchen for the homeless. I just want to help,” I said empathetically.
“That’s what I love about you. You put the needs of others ahead of yours. I’ve watched as you struggled with guilt from lying to your mom and putting her peace of mind ahead of yours. I feel so lucky that the woman of my dreams turned out to be so fantastic.”
After two hours of talking, all remains of the dream had vanished. By the time Sam and Shawn found us, I felt at peace.
“Are you feeling better?” were the first words out of Sam’s mouth as she perched at the bottom of my lounge chair.
“Yes much better,” I said, drawing my knees up so she would have more room to sit.
“You have to try to control it better. It’s not good for your body to keep going through this. I’m going to try to show you some tricks that I picked up while I was growing up that seemed to help me cope. I want you to practice them and learn to use them. I’m worried that you’re endangering yourself and I don’t want you to wind up in the hospital. We love you and need you,” she said giving me a quick hug. “You need to trust Mark more, let him know when the emotions are going to attack.” She whispered in my ear.
I was touched by Sam’s speech. I knew I could always count on my parents growing up, but I had always felt like the odd man out around other people. My childhood was lonely, friendless, and now for the first time, I was surrounded by three people who made me feel like I belonged.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hungry, and unless all of you feel like eating left over take-out Chinese food from who knows when, we will have to go out for breakfast.”
“Well, as much as I would like a good case of food poising from old take-out, I opt to go out to breakfast,” Sam piped in.
“Me too, I’m done with throwing up for a while, let’s head out,” I said.
I waited as the others got ready to go. I already changed back into my clothes from the day before. Mark had thrown them into the wash while we were talking.
I needed to pick my mom’s car up from the Boardwalk and take it home. All of us would have liked to stay together another night, but tomorrow was a school day, and I knew, there was no way my mom would let me stay at “Sam’s” on a school night.
Sam did think it would be easy for her to talk her foster parents into letting her stay over at my house since they would be busy in court all week. The trial for their case was finally starting, and the time they weren’t in court would be spent at the office preparing for the next day.
I felt I could play on my mother’s sympathies to let Sam stay over.
We swung by Sam’s on the way to breakfast so she could pack an overnight bag. I told her to pack extra just in case we were able to con extra nights from my mom.
I knew if I had to be separated from Mark, I at least wanted Sam to be with me.
The Boardwalk was packed when we finally showed up, stuffed from breakfast, to pick up my mom’s Focus. I groaned when I saw the parking ticket sticking out from under the windshield wiper. “Great, how will I explain this to my mom?”
I got out of Mark’s car and walked to the front of my mother’s car. I pulled the ticket out from under the wiper blade and looked at it in dismay.
“Seventy-five bucks!” I screeched. “You have got to be kidding me!”
Mark came over and grabbed the ticket from me. He folded it up and put it in his pocket.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, embarrassed that I made such a big deal about it.
Mark watched as color began to stain my cheeks. He leaned forward and gave me a kiss. I forgot my train of thought as I lost myself in his kiss. I liked that he was a neutralizer for me; the kisses were a definite bonus.
“We’re going to work on those tricks later;” I heard Sam mutter behind me. “He’s not going to be there every time.”
I heard her muttering more, but I tuned her out as I kissed Mark one last time. It would be almost twenty-four hours until I saw him again, and my heart already ached, thinking about the separation.
I noticed that Sam was being unusually quiet.
I turned around to see her locked in Shawn’s arms. I felt a twinge of guilt. Poor Sam and Shawn, they would be separated for longer than Mark and I. At least I would get to see Mark at school tomorrow. Sam would have to wait until after school to see Shawn again.
Mark and I stepped away to give them a few more minutes of privacy.
“You don’t have to pay the ticket. It was my responsibility,” I told Mark, making a grab for the ticket.
“I want to, anyway, Shawn and I planned on coming back to get it last night, but we forgot. Besides, I’m a working man and you’re just a mere student,” he said teasingly.
“Mere student,” I said in mock anger. “You’re a dirty old intern who preys on sweet innocent students,” I teased.
“I like to prey on you,” he said, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
He was joking, but my heart still skipped a beat. The idea seemed a little too appealing.
Sam and Shawn finally separated, and both looked quite flustered. Both had the same dazed look on their faces, like they had forgotten where they were.
We got in my mom’s Focus.
Mark came over to the driver’s side window to give me one last kiss.
“One to sleep on,” he teased. “I’ll call you tonight.”
I had no trouble convincing my mom to let Sam stay over. I went for broke and pitched for the whole week. Playing on the fact that Sam’s foster parents would be working late hours all week, and that Sam hated being alone at night.
My mom said it would be fine, but we had to promise to go to bed at a decent time.
“Just because you’re in your last nine weeks of high school, I don’t want you to fall off now.”
I looked at her with humor. Was she forgetting that school was easy for me? Did she forget all those times everyone had commented on my IQ?
She saw my look and laughed. “Okay maybe not you, but school may not be as easy for Sam, so she needs to get enough rest.”
Sam and I had of course kept it to ourselves that Sam’s IQ was probably just as high as my own.
We both thought my mom’s concern was funny.
Once we were in my room, Sam called her foster mom to ask her permission for the entire week at my house. Her foster mom was thrilled.
Sam told me after she hung up, that her foster mom admitted that they had been worried about leaving her by herself so much during the coming week.
We decided to continue surfing the web while we listened to some music.
I ran downstairs to grab a couple of sodas and a snack for both of us.
We ate our snack while we waited for my computer to boot up. Once the computer was ready, I typed in the words, “Strange links between people.”Almost at once, a ton of options popped up. My eyes scrolled down the list and I was surprised to see a lot of sites on twins listed. I clicked on a random site and was amazed as I began to read.
“Listen to this,” I said. “Twins that have been separated at birth will often suffer similar injuries in the same location on their bodies. They have also been found to marry similar spouses from the same backgrounds,” I read on. “This paragraph says that twins often talk about the connections they share. It says it doesn’t matter if they are identical twins or fraternal twins.”
“I know none of us are twins, but we seem to share many of the same traits as twins,” Sam mused.
I patted Feline absently on the head as he settled onto my lap. He was mad at me for abandoning him the night before, but couldn’t turn down the att
ention. I stroked his fur as I continued to read more on twins.
“We share many similarities with the twins on this site, but their connection comes from genetics,” Sam said as she read over my shoulder. “Well, except these ones.” I said, clicking onto another site that had a more paranormal spin on it.
My first instinct was to laugh. “Give me a break. Some of these twins act like they’re some kind of superhero,” I said as I read how one twin was convinced that he and his brother were put on earth to save the world and that they could read each other’s minds. “This is like reading the National Enquirer. I’m surprised he didn’t add that his mother was an alien from another planet.”
“Well, we mock it, but really Krista, is it any different than what all of us are going through? We dream about the same guy every night, we feel a surge of electricity when any of us touch, and not to mention; we all realized that we somehow freakishly neutralize each other.”
She of course had a point.
We decided to call Mark to see if he and Shawn wanted to meet us at the park by my house.
Mark answered the phone on the first ring. “Sam and I stumbled onto something while we were searching the web,” I said as a greeting.
“What kind of thing?” Mark asked, sounding intrigued.
“It’s too much to explain over the phone. We were hoping you could meet us at the park.”
“Sure we can. We’re not doing anything except playing Xbox.”
“Fifteen minutes too soon?” I asked.
“No, that’s fine.”
I hung up. “We better get ready; they’re going to meet us there in fifteen minutes.”
Five minutes later, we were heading down the stairs. “Mom, we’re going for a walk,” I yelled toward the back of the house. I heard a muffled reply and took it for an okay.
The day was pleasantly cool. I zipped my hoodie as we headed down the walkway. The small heat wave from the day before had lifted and there was a nice cool breeze rustling through our hair as we walked. We discussed the possibilities as to why we seemed to share so many similarities with sets of twins. Sam seemed to think that our moms might have been in some kind of test study. I was still pessimistic about the entire thing and didn’t know which way to cast my vote. Both were crazy. I mean really, paranormal vs. sci-fi? I probably would have believed that I was a werewolf or a vampire easier than I seemed to be grasping this. At least that would be a lot cooler.
The guys were waiting at our usual picnic table at the park when we got there. We had only been apart for a few hours, but an ache I wasn’t even aware of slowly began to dissipate. Every time I was away from him, I felt broken and incomplete, until we were reunited, then I felt whole again.
Chapter 10
I gave Mark a quick kiss, joining him on the top of the picnic table. I smiled as the familiar warm feeling began to spread through me. His kisses were becoming like a drug to me. They had a way of reminding me of all of my favorite things.
I pulled back to see him studying me intently. I felt a little self conscious as he continued to look at me.
I looked down to make sure I had nothing on my shirt.
I didn’t see anything.
I rubbed my hand down my face, pausing at the corner of my lips to make sure I didn’t have leftover food in the corners.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing, I’m just amazed at how right life feels when you are with me. When we’re apart, I try to fill the hole your absence leaves, but when I see you again, I feel complete.”
I smiled at his words. They mimicked my exact thoughts. We were a cliché. We completed each other.
Mark smiled as if he had reached the same conclusion as me.
“So what did you two find out?” Mark asked, changing the subject.
I looked at him in confusion and then realized that he meant on the internet. His switching of gears threw me off track.
“Um, let’s walk and we will fill you in.”
Sam and I took turns filling them in on the things we learned about twins. We sparked their interest when we mentioned the many links that twins shared. I told them how I read one web site that suggested that some twins reported feeling the pain of their twin. Some even claim that they could read each other’s thoughts.
“One woman even wrote that she had felt her sister’s labor pains,” Sam said.
“There was also one guy who said he knew when his twin brother died, even though he was nowhere near him,” I added. “We know we’re not twins, but we can’t deny, we share similarities with them. There’s other kooky stuff out there, but you guys would have to read it to believe it. I know it sounds farfetched, but it seems like the kind of stuff we’ve been searching for.”
“You have a point; maybe we should start narrowing our search to scientific studies and anything paranormal we can find,” Shawn said as we all digested the new information.
Sick of all the heavy talk, I headed toward the swings up ahead. I loved to swing. Not swinging up high of course; I just liked the feeling of swaying back and forth. I sat on one of the swings as Mark sat in the one beside me.
We linked hands while we watched Sam and Shawn’s antics on the slide. Sam’s laugh was contagious as she slid down the slide the first time. I couldn’t help smiling just watching her.
Sam and Shawn looked carefree as they went from one piece of playground equipment to the next. They had a knack of being able to put the serious stuff aside and enjoying the moment. I envied their ease, I wished I could put the troubling thoughts on the backburner, but they were always there, butting in.
I watched as Sam and Shawn slid down the slide together, landing in a heap at the bottom, laughing as they landed in a tangle. Shawn pulled Sam close and kissed her.
I looked away feeling like an intruder. I turned to Mark and saw that he was watching me.
“Does it bother you that I’m not as carefree as they are?” I asked, indicating Sam and Shawn as they headed back down the slide.
Mark pulled the chains of my swing, twisting me around toward him. I looked intently into his eyes, waiting for his answer.
“I want you to listen to me. You seem to be under the misconception that there is something wrong with you, that there is nothing special about you. There is nobody else in the whole world that I would rather be with. I could look at you for hours and never get sick of it. I could spend every second of everyday in your presence and I would die a happy man. You belong with me,” he finished as he gave the chains of my swing another tug, dragging me even closer as he kissed me.
I wound my hands around the chains of his swing and sighed as he deepened the kiss. I felt the warmth spread though me and wound my arms around his neck to pull him even closer.
I finally broke the kiss to find that I was sitting on his lap.
“How did I get here?” I asked as he laughed.
Mark changed the subject and brought up a point I had not thought of.
“So, I’ve been thinking, since the Dean knows about us, I don’t see any reason why we need to keep our relationship a secret from your mom anymore,” he said as we gently swung back in forth.
He was right; there really was no reason why we couldn’t tell my mom about us. The fact that he was an intern at my school seemed trivial after all the things we had learned. He was so close to my own age, I didn’t see my mom having a problem with us dating. I suspected it would be the exact opposite. She would probably be thrilled that I was seeing someone and not obsessing about my “dream” guy.
It would be nice to go out on an actual date with Mark. Plus, we could double with Sam and Shawn.
I smiled, things suddenly seemed so much better. The dark cloud that had been hovering over our heads moved away. We may not have found the answer to the turn our dreams have taken, but it no longer mattered, we had each other in reality and that was all that was important.
Sam and Shawn joined us and I glanced at my watch.
“We h
ave enough time to walk around the park once.” I said.
Our conversation was much more light- hearted, and Sam soon had us in stitches, making fun of the rich kids at our school. She gave the best imitation of the stuck up drama queens. “Oh my gosh! My nail polish doesn’t match my shoes or watch. How will I ever face anyone again?” She said in a perfect imitation of one of the Lush Trio.
I had to hold my sides, I was laughing so hard.
It was nice to be around people who were on the same wave length as me. The more time I spent with Shawn, the more I liked him. I had put everyone’s assumptions on the hold after my emotional melt down, but I couldn’t help noticing small habits that we both shared. He rubbed his forehead a lot and I knew I did too. My dad used to tease me that I would rub a hole in my forehead if I didn’t stop rubbing it. I also noticed that he laughed the same way that I did.
When I was in middle school, I tried to change my laugh to be more ladylike, but it didn’t work. When I thought something was funny, it just seemed to burst out of me.
It was an unreal experience to see someone that shared many of my traits. Just watching him filled me with a sense of rightness.
“I hate to break up the mood, but we seem to have forgotten something important. What about the other four?” Shawn asked.
He was right; we had put the others out of our minds, but they could be ignored no longer.
“Hopefully, they’re drawn to Santa Cruz also. If they are, then maybe we’ll run into them. I know it’s a long shot, but the four of us found each other, so it could happen,” Mark said.
“I know how we can try to find them,” Sam said. “We can search the internet for children that were abandoned around the dates we were abandoned. We now know their ages, so that should narrow the search down. Not to mention, that you need to talk to your dad,” she said to Mark.
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “My dad is so freaking straight laced though, that none of this seems like him at all. I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around the fact that he knows about all this since I saw Shawn’s picture yesterday. I tried calling him on his cell phone, but of course it went right to voicemail. His secretary informed me that he’s out of town for at least another three weeks or so, when I tried to call him this morning. She told me in an offhand way that he is way too busy to talk to me unless it’s an emergency, but she would pass a message along to him,” Mark said with sarcasm lacing his every word.
