by Meg Leder
For my brother, SJL
Prologue
WHEN I WAS SIX, Grandma McCullough told me this story:
Once upon a time, there was a girl made of gravity.
Both of her feet were firmly planted on the ground.
Everywhere she went, she carried her heart around with her in a metal cage. It was comfortable there.
Her parents were made of gravity too, and they liked to keep her close, to keep her safe, everyone with their heart locked in their cage.
The little girl was mostly happy. She liked the garden behind her house with its red and yellow flowers, and having ice cream with her parents on special occasions. Sometimes she felt a little lonely, but then she’d take a walk in the woods and put her bare feet in the creek, or she’d lie on the grass and look at the clouds.
One night, in the middle of the night, the little girl heard a noise outside. When she looked out the window, she saw another little girl hovering in the air, one of her wings caught in the branches of the oak tree outside her window.
A helium person!
The gravity girl’s parents had told her about the helium people. They came out at night and flew through the clouds and soared among the stars. They had wings made of moonlight, and their hearts lived outside of them.
(“What does that mean, ‘lived outside of them’?” I asked Grandma McCullough.
She clenched her hand in a fist and pounded her chest. “Their hearts are free on the outside! Not safe in a cage!” She stomped her Velcro sneakers against the foot guards in her wheelchair, her cancer-stale breath hot, her big eyes wild.)
“The helium people are reckless,” the little girl’s dad had said.
“Their hearts could fly away at any moment,” her mom had said.
The little girl worried about the helium people, that they’d steal her from the ground, that she’d lose her heart.
But right then, the helium girl in the tree seemed more sad than scary.
“Will you please help me?” the helium girl cried. “I’m stuck here.”
The gravity girl nodded and snuck outside. She climbed up the tree carefully, using all the gravity in her to make sure she stayed steady against the limbs.
She drew nearer to the helium girl.
She was close enough to see her eyelashes, as delicate as a spider’s web.
She was close enough to see her eyes, all the colors of the sky.
“Hello,” the helium girl whispered, fear making her voice shake.
“Hello,” the gravity girl whispered back.
And then, with one arm clasped around the tree trunk for balance, the gravity girl gently shook the branch holding the helium girl’s wing, setting a flutter of green leaves falling, the caught wing moving free.
The gravity girl climbed back down to the ground as the helium girl fluttered above her.
“I wish we could be friends,” the helium girl said. “Would you like to visit the sky with me?”
“It’s not safe,” the gravity girl said, and held up her cage. “I don’t want to lose my heart.”
“But I’ll make sure you’re safe,” the helium girl said. “Plus, the sky is the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see! You can sleep on the clouds and touch the stars. We can be best friends!”
The gravity girl wondered what it would be like to take a nap on a cloud. She secretly wished she could keep a star in her pocket. She had always wanted a best friend.
So she nodded, and the helium girl took her hand.
“All you have to do is close your eyes, then jump up. You’ll be able to fly too.”
“But I don’t have any helium in me.”
“Everyone does. They just don’t know it yet. Trust me.”
So the gravity girl scrunched her eyes shut, but it was scary not being able to see the ground. When she tried to jump up, her legs simply wouldn’t move. All she could think about was falling, not flying.
“I’m too scared,” she whispered. “Something bad might happen.”
“Something good might happen too!” the helium girl insisted. “You just have to trust me.”
The gravity girl was too scared to change. It was much easier to believe there was no helium in her heart. It was much easier to believe she would fall.
But she didn’t want to lose her new friend.
“You should stay here. With me. It’s safer,” she said. And she began to pull the helium girl toward her.
“I don’t want to,” the helium girl said.
The gravity girl tugged at her new friend even harder.
“Please let go,” the helium girl cried as she began to resist, her heart straining, her wings aching to fly free.
The gravity girl could feel her hold on the helium girl beginning to slip, so she stretched out her other hand to grab tight, dropping her cage on the ground, her heart tumbling out onto the dirt.
She left it there, refusing to let go.
The helium girl’s wings began to wilt, and her heart got smaller and smaller in its sadness.
But still the gravity girl didn’t let go.
And so they stayed, heartsick and lost, both of them stuck in the in-between place for the rest of their days.
The end.
(“What’s the in-between place?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
“No place for anyone to live, that’s for sure,” Grandma McCullough said.
I wasn’t so sure. Thanks to my copy of The Big Book of Greek Myths, I knew what happened to kids who flew too close to the sun. The in-between place sounded a lot better.)
I remember telling Charlie this story later, how he wrinkled his nose, like I had just served up a plate of lima beans.
“Why didn’t she just let go?”
“Because flying isn’t safe!” I said, trying to convey the same amount of authority as Grandma McCullough.
But he seemed unmoved, which in retrospect isn’t surprising.
Charlie’s always been the one who wants to fly.
I’m the one who won’t let go.
One
I CLEAR MY THROAT, one hand white-knuckling the edge of the podium, the other at my side, and remind myself I’m almost done. And it has gone perfectly—my voice clear, not too fast, not too slow, pauses just right.
I’ve practiced this end part so much, my body is on autopilot now. I hear the words come out of my mouth independently of me actually reading the typed pages: “And so, my fellow graduates, in conclusion, I leave you today with the immortal words of Lord Alfred Tennyson from his poem ‘Ulysses.’ ”
And then, like habit, like breath, I look for Charlie, eyes darting to the row where he should be sitting.
I only see Christine Miller, intently focused on searching for split ends in her platinum-blond hair, legs crossed, impatiently tapping one stabby-looking high heel in front of her.
My eyes scan the crowd.
I meet Em’s eyes, her wild blond hair a beacon amid blown-out highlighted waves, as she tugs at her necklace, smiling at me. Next to her, her cousin Matty gives me a reassuring thumbs-up.
No Charlie.
To the side, my parents. Dad—his grin so big, it looks like his whole body is in on the smile—and next to him, Mom, her love quieter, a low-level steady recurring pulse of warmth.
I still don’t see my brother.
Principal Taylor clears her throat from behind me, and I realize my pause is too long.
“Lord Alfred Tennyson from his poem ‘Ulysses,’ ” I repeat, trying to recapture my momentum.
But it’s like someone’s unplugged my speech, the words flickering to a black screen.
I can’t believe Charlie’s not here. I can’t believe he didn’t come at all.
I feel my grip sliding, m
y bottom right eyelid starting to twitch. I glance down at my one hand on the podium, and I’m not sure it’s connected to me, that it’s even mine anymore, and I miss it.
“Parker?” Principal Taylor says from behind me, touching my elbow, and I realize everyone’s waiting for me, that anyone who wasn’t paying attention before certainly is now.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head and looking up, putting on a smile that isn’t really mine.
“And so, my fellow graduates, in conclusion, I leave you today with the immortal words of Lord Alfred Tennyson from his poem ‘Ulysses.’ ”
My finger shakes slightly as I trace the typed pages in front of me, and my bottom right eyelid is still twitching, but I force my voice to be steady, reminding myself I worked hard for this moment, that it’s all mine.
“Though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find—”
And then, when I’m within four words of being done, a loud “Vroom vroom!” bursts into the air from the left side of the auditorium.
It stills everyone and everything, even me.
I see her: a dark-haired little girl, squatting in the aisle, gleefully running a toy car around on the floor.
The whole crowd shifts like they’re waking up, adults smiling, people from my class laughing.
An older woman leans into the aisle, jerks the child’s arm, and shushes her.
The little girl starts to cry, a wail echoing through the auditorium, and a man—probably her dad—scoops her up, heads toward the exit.
I stop, close my eyes, listen as the cry gets fainter.
In front of me, there are 233 fellow seniors in bright-red polyester gowns, and I don’t have anything real to say to them—not anything they care about, not anything that’s mine.
I’m just quoting some words from a dead white guy.
I wish I had something of my own to say. Something totally new—words that no one in the entire history of the world has ever said before, a sentiment that is totally and perfectly and particularly mine.
But I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
I open my eyes and finally see him, right under the exit sign.
Charlie.
My twin, my other half, cohabitant of our mom’s womb, older by six and a half minutes, the person in the world whose DNA is the closest to mine.
Except my blood cells have always been orderly, behaved, healthy.
The light makes the brown fuzz of his newly grown-in hair look even softer.
He’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, legs forever too long for whatever space he’s in, his face unreadable from where I’m standing, and I wonder when we lost each other.
“ ‘—And not to yield’?” I finally say, making it a question.
There’s an excruciating silence, everyone waiting because they’re not sure it’s the end of the speech—who ends an inspiring poem with a question? Tennyson didn’t, that’s for sure—but then Emerson starts clapping like she thinks I’m Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama all in one, and then more people join in, and I step back, let out a long exhale, finishing up quite possibly the worst conclusion to a valedictorian speech in the history of valedictorian speeches.
Principal Taylor steps to the podium and thanks me, and I smile hard, because right now my teeth have a mind of their own and if I don’t, I’m pretty sure they’ll start chattering and never stop.
Sitting on a folding chair on the side of the stage, I tighten my hands in my lap, listening to Principal Taylor talking about this year’s class of graduates—all the scholarships we’ve won, all the marvelous places we’re going, the incredible adults we’re becoming.
I pretend to listen, but really I’m promising myself that if I see Charlie again, everything—this summer, college, med school, my life—will be okay.
When I look back at the exit sign, he’s gone.
Two
CHARLIE’S BEEN LEAVING ME behind since we were born.
He was the first out of the womb, a full six and a half minutes before me, a fact he never tires of pointing out.
According to our parents, he learned how to crawl a good month before me, while I remained stuck in tummy-time limbo, red-faced and furious, my fists clenching emptily in space trying to pull him back.
He was the first to learn how to walk, to utter “Da” and “Ma” and “cat,” to lose a tooth (the front bottom one, earning him five dollars from the tooth fairy and plunging me into a frantic tooth-wiggling campaign of my own).
In fact, my earliest memory is of him leaving me. I don’t know how old we were or where we were, other than old enough to walk and outside—a freshly mowed green lawn beneath my feet, the sun shining hard and yellow above us.
The memory is like a short home video.
First, an image of Charlie’s back as he runs. He’s wearing a red-and-blue striped shirt, gray sweatpants, and gym shoes, his thick, dark curls wild.
I can’t keep up.
I know this because I can never keep up with him.
That doesn’t stop me from trying.
I call out his name once and then again, my feet pushing on the ground, arms pumping faster, like I can catapult myself into supersonic flight, but instead Charlie gets farther and farther away, while I get a cramp in my side from running so hard.
And then I can’t see him anymore. He’s too far gone.
Right then, the sense of having lost something is so enormous and unbearable that I press my palms to my eyes, making sun spots dance in my vision, trying not to cry.
But here’s the thing: Charlie comes back for me.
After a few seconds, I sense him rather than see him in front of me. I imagine him squatting down and resting on his calves, waiting for me to open my eyes.
“Parker,” he says. “Why are you crying? I got you.”
And without even needing to open my eyes, I know in the deepest parts of me that he does, because Charlie always comes back for me.
These days, I wonder if I made up the entire memory.
These days, I have moments when I see my brother and he’s so impenetrable, so far away, that even his physical appearance has become unfamiliar, like I’m passing him on the street for the first time, noting his lanky frame, the way his ears stick out a little, how it’s possible for brown eyes to burn.
He’s become a stranger.
Mom insists it’s just a phase, that our very natures are inseparable, that we’ll always come back to each other.
For proof, she pulls out her old sonogram pictures, the ones that show Charlie and me curled around each other like a pair of opposing quotation marks in her stomach. “That’s the thing about being twins: You’ll always have each other. Always.”
Dad says that before we learned to talk, we had our own language, speaking to each other in a strange mix of consonants and vowels no one else understood, that sometimes we were downright creepy: these two small people who came from them but clearly occupied a separate world.
When Charlie and I bicker now, Mom brings up the day in preschool I stayed home with the flu. I cried the whole morning—not because I felt sick, but because my brother wasn’t there. Within the first hour, Mom got a call from the school saying Charlie was in hysterics too.
“You two were inseparable,” she says again.
At times I’ve wondered if my parents invented these stories solely to demonstrate why Charlie and I shouldn’t argue over who has the remote control or gets to use Mom’s car on Friday night.
But then I remember those three words: I got you.
They’re leftovers from a morning dream, the kind that as soon as you try to remember, you start to forget, making it easy to dismiss, to let go.
But there are traces glimmering on the edges of your me
mory, clues something more once existed.
I got you.
Here’s the thing: Charlie and I don’t hate each other now. At least I don’t think we do.
We coexist at the same school and in the same home with a minimum of hostility and angst, like distant planets in the same solar system. Occasionally we hang out together when Matty and Em are involved.
But I can’t imagine Charlie ever sitting down and confiding to me how he feels about not graduating with us.
I can’t imagine confessing to him how lonely it is to be the one running ahead for the first time in our lives.
We don’t have words in our vocabulary for that, let alone a secret language.
And these days, other than our mostly shared genetics, we could not be more different.
Charlie is confident and loud, popular and fearless.
I’m orderly, careful, introverted.
Charlie is tall and thin, his hair a lighter shade of brown now, a casual smattering of tasteful freckles scattered across his nose.
I’m far from tall, and thanks to some recessive German hausfrau genes from Dad’s side, I have what I call extra weight and what Em insists are enviable curves. My dark-almost-black hair is so curly it verges on unmanageable, and my face looks like someone spilled a whole jar of freckles on it.
Charlie makes himself comfortable wherever he is—legs stretched out, arms propped casually behind his head—while I wish I could curl into the smallest space possible needed to exist, like a pill bug.
Last spring, my brother pitched the school’s baseball team to winning the national championship. He is loved by the band geeks and the jocks, the smart kids and the art kids, the loners and the stoners and the straight-edgers alike.
I have spent the past four years studying my ass off and padding my schedule with extracurriculars chosen solely to impress Harvard. The few acquaintance friends I have beyond Em, I’ve met through her.
And, of course, there’s that one last glaring difference, the one I haven’t mentioned yet, the one that even our shared DNA can’t overcome:
Charlie got leukemia.
I didn’t.
Three
THE LOBBY OUTSIDE THE auditorium is packed with seniors and parents, and in the middle of the crush, I see Mom and Dad.
