Hard Glass

by Lina Langley

  I thought about coming clean in the car, but they had already put so much time, effort and money into getting me there, I thought that the least I could do was try and get through the year. Plus, maybe—just maybe—it wasn’t so crazy. Maybe I could stay out of my brother’s way and simply graduate. That was, I supposed, possible. It wasn’t likely to happen, but it was definitely possible.

  But if I did run into him—and I was bound to run into him—then I figured I would just tell him the truth. He deserved to know, just as much as I deserved to know. He needed to know that things had been kept from him.

  I was going to tell him. I was ready to tell him.

  But when I saw him walk in my room with two other guys, he was smiling, and he looked so happy and normal. His eyes were glimmering, there was a smile on his face. When our gazes met, my first instinct wasn’t to tell him the truth—because it would bring his world crumbling down, because it wouldn’t be okay, because at least one of us had managed to be happy. My first instinct was to protect him from the truth.

  Even if it was literally right there, staring right back at him. We looked at each other for what seemed like a very long time before one of his friends broke the silence.

  “Dude,” he said. “This is so freaky.”

  I looked at him. He was a good-looking kid, tall with black eyes and dark brown skin. He was wearing a pink polo shirt and skinny jeans. The guy next to him—the one who wasn’t related to me—nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Are you my new roommate?”

  I cocked my head. “I guess so?”

  “Oh my God,” Polo Shirt said to his friends. “You guys even sound the same.”

  I thought about an explanation. I needed to come up with something, and it needed to happen quickly. Polo Shirt was holding my brother—fuck, I didn’t know his name, and I needed to stop calling him down before I slipped—by the shoulders.

  “This is trippy as fuck,” the other guy said. “You know, I hear it’s super rare to run into your doppelganger.”

  Hashim moved his head from side to side. “I can sort of see that,” he said. “But I bet the chances are higher if you look like a regulation white person.”

  “Hey!” my brother protested, but he was smiling. I didn’t feel like smiling, but at least he had given me an out. “Be nice. He’s new.”

  I could feel the knot in my throat growing. Of course he had to be a nice person.

  He stood up. “Hi,” he said, walking over to me and extending his hand. “Sorry I was rude, that has never happened to me before.”

  I shook his hand. The skin on the palm of his hand was soft and warm, and his grip was tight and friendly. “You weren’t being rude,” I said quietly. “Mason.”

  He was staring at me, almost as if he was trying to see if I was real. “Jules,” he said. “Jules Dubois. These are my friends, Hashim Dowe and Brandon Peacock.”

  “Mason Payne,” I said as I stopped shaking his hand. I didn’t want to jerk away from him, since that would have been rude, but I didn’t want to touch him anymore. I didn’t like how touching him made me feel, like I was losing myself.

  Like I wanted him to keep touching me. I definitely didn’t just want to shake his hand. It scared me.

  “Welcome,” he said. “If you need one of us to show you the ropes, I’m sure Hashim will be more than happy to.”

  Hashim glared at him, which made him smile.

  “I’m just fucking with you,” Jules said. “But, yeah, we might want to make an appearance together. I don’t want my friends to think I’m blanking them or something like that because you don’t know them.”

  I blinked. That had never occurred to me. I knew my presence was going to make his life harder, but I had never expected that it was going to do it in such a mundane way. Certainly not before dropping the bombshell on him.

  Brandon shook his head. “It’s honestly uncanny,” he said. “No offense, but I’m pretty disturbed.”

  “Yeah, no, that makes two of us,” Jules said. “Nothing personal. It’s just so weird.”

  “Yup, strange as fuck,” Hashim chimed in.

  I blinked. They were all looking at me, expecting me to say something else, and I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to say. I opted for nodding instead, which felt like the most obvious choice. It seemed to satisfy them, since they all begin to chatter between themselves again.

  “We normally help each other unpack,” Brandon said as he pointed at his luggage. “I mean, no one wants to do it, but it gives us a chance to catch up with each other without any of the adults overhearing us.”

  “Right,” I said. I expected to have nothing in common with them, but I understood having to hide from adults. I’d had to do that my entire life.

  “But no one has said anything exciting yet,” Brandon said, shaking his head. “Which is a real shame, isn’t it?”

  Hashim’s gaze darted between Brandon and Jules. “Why don’t we let the new student go first?” he asked. “We don’t want to overwhelm him.”

  “So we just tell him to reveal his secrets when we first meet him? Great idea, genius,” Jules replied, a smile on his face.

  I couldn’t help but smile back. Fuck, it was a problem, I wasn’t supposed to actually like him, but he was charming and sweet and he had a winning smile that was making hating him difficult for me.

  “Thanks for ruining my fun, jerk,” Brandon said, sticking his tongue out at Jules. There was no real undercurrent of annoyance there, they were just having what seemed to be goodhearted fun.

  “Um,” I said. “I don’t mind telling you a secret.”

  They all stopped what they were doing just to stare at me. I felt heat rising to my cheeks, my heart beating fast in my chest. I didn’t know what had come over me, but it felt important that I ingratiate myself with this group of people. They were the ones who were going to lead me to have contact with my birth family.

  At least Jules was. In a way, he was already doing it, though he didn’t quite know that yet.

  “I, uh, am a virgin?”

  Hashim laughed, Brandon rolled his eyes, and Jules cocked his head. “Well, you’re supposed to tell us something we don’t already know,” Jules said quietly, then he smiled at me. “Anyway. Do you need any help unpacking?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MASON

  I was determined, absolutely resolute, not to like Jules Dubois. The problem was that he had decided to make that incredibly difficult for me. The first week was orientation, and I had barely attended school in the first place. I had reasonable enough grades, mostly because I had been sneakily working toward emancipation for a while, but they weren’t good, and it was clear that the standard was a lot higher at Wildwood.

  I didn’t understand half of what the teachers were talking about and even though it was only the first week, I found myself poring over books trying to catch up with everyone else. Brandon often called me a nerd, but he let me copy of his sparse notes, and when Hashim and Jules were around, they would offer to explain things to me.

  I hated how see-through my veneer was. It didn’t matter how respectable I looked in the blue uniform and the red tie—with the Youtube-learned knot—I was sure that almost half the things I said were resulting in a certain amount of side-eye, so I tried my best to be quiet, keep my head down and learn. I didn’t want to get kicked out of Wildwood, I needed to prove to Denise and Clive that I was taking this seriously, that I wasn’t just there to waste their money. I had to try. It was the least I could do after they had been so nice to me.

  I didn’t think how little I knew was going to catch up to me so quickly, but after saying Les Misérables was that musical where everyone was really sad and The Wizard of Oz was the movie with the creepy monkeys when I was called upon in English class, it seemed to become clear to everyone that I wasn’t going to be a stand-out student.

  My jokes—or what people thought were my jokes—weren’t quite good enough to earn me a reputation for class clown. All I knew was
that I needed to work very hard to catch up and I spent hours after class in the library. My education had certainly not been phenomenal up to that point—if anything, it had been remedial. Trying to catch up by myself had turned out to be a surprisingly big challenge, mostly because I had no idea where to start.

  The librarian knew me by name and she frequently brought me little snacks. I liked her a lot, though she seemed to worry about me a little too much. There was always something like pity in her eyes and I hated it.

  I hated the way she looked at me like I was about to break apart and crumble, but it was hard not to understand where she was coming from when I would wake up with drool down my chin and my head in a book.

  It was in one of those late night library expeditions, reading a book about history I didn’t understand, that I realized there was no way I was going to be able to catch up. Being accepted had been random, and lucky, and mostly due to the influence of my foster parents, but I was never going to be able to pull it off.

  I couldn’t do it. I simply didn’t have it in me. It didn’t matter how much I studied or how hard I tried, these kids had studied for the majority of their lives while I had gotten in fights or went dumpster diving for food. It was very clear that this life simply wasn’t for me, and I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be able to keep up the façade for.

  I was thinking about that as I walked down the stairs toward the vending machine. The Hanleys had given me a considerable amount of cash, which I didn’t plan on touching, but I had also brought along with me some money from tips, which I’d use mostly for food.

  And by that I meant the vending machine in the little room downstairs. I’d subsided on Twix chocolate bars and bad vending machine cappuccino, because at least those things kept me awake. Not being awake wasn’t doing much, considering all the cramming I’d had to do.

  I stuck my hand in my pocket and dug around for change. My uniform needed to be washed and pressed, but I hadn’t really managed to get any laundry done and I didn’t have time to even think about it.

  There were too many other things to worry about. Clothes were pretty low on my priority list. I began to put change into the vending machine, but I was short a nickel. “Fuck,” I said, pawing at the vending machine. I knew it was unlikely to do anything, but I needed my candy fix if I wanted to keep reading the history book.

  I heard laughter from behind me. I looked back over my shoulder and smiled at Jules’ smirk. I hadn’t expected to see him there—in fact, I had seen him in the library one time—and his very presence had taken me by surprise.

  “Hey,” he said. “That never works.”

  “It’s not stuck,” I said. “I’m five cents short.”

  “Lucky you have such amazing friends, huh?” he said, then handed me a dime.

  I looked down at it, wondering if I should turn it down. Cents added up. But he had offered it to me, and it would probably be a bit weird to turn him down.

  I grabbed the coin from him and the tips of our fingers touched for the briefest of seconds. We hadn’t touched at all since that first day when he had introduced himself to me and I had yearned it.

  I didn’t expect it to be so fleeting.

  I definitely didn’t expect it to send an electrifying current through my entire body.

  I had to stop myself from jumping back, managing only to smile weakly at him. “Hey, Jules,” I said. “I didn’t expect anyone to be down here.”

  “Same,” he replied, furrowing his brow. “I come here when I want to think about things. You know, alone.”

  “Hashim never shuts up, huh?” I asked, smiling at him.

  He snickered. “Right?” he said. “I love the dude, but he never has one internal thought.”

  I smiled at him as I put the dime in the machine and waited for my Twix. I didn’t want him around and I definitely didn’t want to engage him in normal, friendly conversation.

  I’d thought so often about our first meeting, it felt like it was part of a video playing in a loop in my head, like his smile and that stupid fucking dimple on his left cheek had been imprinted into the anatomy of my brain.

  “Do you want one of these?” I said when I grabbed the Twix. “You probably don’t know this, but it comes with two chocolate sticks.”

  He grinned. “Bargain,” he said. “But no, thank you. I was actually looking for something salty.”

  “Well, I would offer to get you something,” I said. ”But you know, I can’t really afford it.”

  “You have five cents to put toward it,” he said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Soon, I’ll be rich.”

  “Soon,” he echoed, then furrowed his brow. “Wait. Earlier, you said you didn’t expect me to be down here. Just how often are you here, Mason?”

  “Too often,” I said.

  “Brandon said you were barely in your room,” Jules said, more to himself than to me. “I didn’t expect that you would be down here.”

  “What did you expect me to be doing?” I said, cocking my head.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Working on your drug dealing business?”

  “Drug dealing...?” I said, my eyes narrow.

  “Well,” he replied. “People say you’re from the city.”

  I shook my head. “I mean, barely,” I replied. “I guess I’m more urban than the majority of people here.”

  He raised his eyebrows, then snickered. “Urban, huh?”

  “I mean, poor,” I said. “I’m definitely the poorest person here. If I were dealing drugs, I would hope I’d be making progress.”

  “Ah, yes, climbing the echelons of success,” he replied, then looked me up and down. “You don’t look poor.”

  “That’s because we all have to wear the same uniform, but seriously, how much time do you have?” I asked as I tried to stop myself from laughing.

  “Why?”

  “Because I can, uh, go all Oliver Twist on you,” I said, feeling proud of myself for the library reference. Maybe all the studying was working. At least a little bit.

  He smiled at me, then shook his head. He closed his eyes, and for the first time, I noticed the bags under his eyes. He always looked so full of energy, I was surprised at how tired he looked. “I have enough time,” he replied. “I’m honestly having a really hard time sleeping and I wouldn’t mind the distraction.”

  I twisted my lips. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve talked about it to death. Everyone has a different idea of what I should do. I just, I don’t know. Everything is weird at home right now.”

  I looked him up and down, wondering what could possibly be going wrong in his world, which seemed so perfect.

  “It’s nothing bad,” he said when he saw the way I was looking at him. “It’s just weird and confusing.”

  “I know how that feels,” I replied. I watched him retrieve his packet of salt and vinegar chips from the vending machine, staring at his entire body as he bent over and grabbed the snack. Unlike me, he wasn’t wearing his uniform, he was wearing what looked like pajamas and a tightly fitting baby blue shirt.

  He sighed. “Do you want to sit down and talk about it?”

  “Not really,” I said. “But I think you’ll be more interesting than my sociology book.”

  He cocked his head again. “Are you behind on civics work?”

  I licked my lips, my heart beating fast in my chest. “Yeah,” I said, casting my gaze toward the floor. “I’m behind in everything.”

  He was still staring at me when I managed to pick up my head. “You’re trying, though,” he said.

  I stared at him, unable to even nod my head. He didn’t know how much of a lie that was. He had no idea that he was the reason I was there in the first place, that I had come to tear his entire world apart. That I had specifically gone to Wildwood to get my dues.

  But I hadn’t managed to bring myself to say a fucking thing, and even if I had, I was almost certain Jules w
ouldn’t believe me. The easiest explanation was that it was a weird coincidence, that I was simply someone who happened to look like him.

  He didn’t have any reason to believe anything else and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him he was wrong, that we should have been in each other’s lives from the very beginning.

  He wasn’t just my brother. We were the spitting image of each other, but, unlike me, he had no reason to believe he could have a twin anywhere in the world. Certainly not one who was right in front of him, waiting to shatter the entirety of his life.

  He sat down in one of the lounge chairs and ripped the chips packet open. “I could help, y’know.”

  I sat down on the lounge chair next to his. “Help with what?”

  “With your studies,” he said. “I mean, I’m not the world’s greatest student or anything, but I could help you out a bit.”

  I wasn’t sure why, but I had to tilt my head back to stop the tears welling up in them. I couldn’t afford to get emotional about this. I cleared my throat, trying my best to make it seem like my emotions were the results of something like an allergy, but Jules had his hand on my shoulder and was squeezing it. “Hey,” he said. “The standard here is super high. There is absolutely no shame in not being able to get it when you first arrive.”

  I sniffled. “Sorry,” I said, setting my gaze on him. “I shouldn’t be such a baby about this.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, dude,” he said. “People seem to like babies.”

  I raised my eyebrows, unsure of what to make of his response.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I do mean that. I don’t think you should beat yourself up about it.”

  I exhaled heavily through my mouth. “I just don’t feel like I’m going to catch up,” I said. “And I have so much riding on this. More than I can say.”