by Mia Miller
“Those things aren’t that bad,” I commented.
“He slept with my high school girlfriend,” he shot back to me. “And he stole you.”
“Whoa!” I said, my palms rising on their accord to block the absurdity posed by that assumption. “First of all, we really need to go back to that sleeping with your girlfriend story, and then we can move on.”
“We really don’t.”
Knowing he wasn’t going to budge, I moved on. “Fine, but he didn’t steal me. Had I known you had a twin, I wouldn’t have let him kiss me the other day.”
“You wrote to him,” he objected, and I felt frozen. That was why he seemed angry when I mentioned the letters. That was why he didn’t know about some things I had clearly told him before.
“Because I thought he was you!” I yelled, scrambling to get up, to put some space between us, but he clung to me, curling his arms around my waist and putting his forehead to my stomach.
“Please, don’t go,” he pleaded. “When we met in camp, you were the first person who was meeting only me. I had argued with Oswald and told him I didn’t want to see him, and that was why I kept rambling on about the similarity of tadpoles. You made me laugh, you made me feel special. I wanted you all for myself. When I got to that bus, I was the last kid there, and it broke my heart that you weren’t there to say goodbye. I was forcibly pushed into the bus, or else I would have come to your cabin. It wasn’t until years later—after Eliza slept with him—that I found your letters. I was going through his room.”
“Did you read them?”
“Only your last one. The one you ended with ‘Fuck you, Oscar.’”
“Fuck you very much, Oscar,” I corrected, trying to make light of the situation but stopping when he scowled at me.
“He stole everything from me, including you,” he said slowly.
“Oscar, he didn’t steal me. I thought I was talking to you. The only thing he said was he quit playing piano, probably because I was asking him technical questions,” I said and saw his eyes lighting. “We exchanged a couple of letters, really, and then he responded when it pleased him. After a while he just stopped responding. You should have read them.”
“It was too much for me,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet and moved to his desk. “I have them, though.”
A second later, he pulled out a stack of letters tied together with a slim ribbon. Just the letters, not in envelopes. You could see the writing on the top and the bottom of the stack. The paper looked worn.
“Why didn’t you tell me about him even now, Oscar? I thought we started from a blank page.”
He shook his head and drew in breath as if he was going under water.
“Do you know that I learned how to play piano when I was four? I just sat down, touched the keys, and went with the flow. Mother said I learned by ear, trying to reproduce what she played for me. I learned how to read music sheets at six. I could read it before I could read actual words. Music is my biggest love and my biggest wish, it has always consumed me. At least, it did until I saw you again standing in that hallway. Do you have any idea how it felt to find you again, all grown up? What it feels like to want something more than the one thing that has been the center of your universe throughout your life?”
I had a small idea, but I didn’t want to interrupt him.
“Music is more than a way of expressing myself to me—it’s like air. Imagine what it feels like the day you discover there’s something more precious than air, and that something is what you can’t possibly have.”
“But you can have me,” I interrupted.
He declined, shaking his head almost violently.
“No. That wasn’t what I thought when I saw you again. For all I knew, Oswald was who you wanted since you’d been talking to him for all those years. I was sort of figuring out if you liked me for me or for him.”
“I didn’t know about him, to be able to decide that.” That came out wrong. “I mean, I only had one of you I was interested in!”
He gave me a sad smile. “I know that now. But then, I just needed to figure it out. I needed to figure out us, and I wanted to do it without him,” he said, head bent low. “Then he showed up and I didn’t know what to do. He keeps calling me to meet with him, and I keep putting it off. He’s staying at a shady hostel called Echo or something.”
I was only half-listening. I had dozens of thoughts swirling around my mind, making my stomach queasy and my limbs numb. All the words in his song made full sense then.
Are you even mine?
The desperation in his chorus, the tempest of his hands on the keyboard. I got it. I wanted to hug him, but I wasn’t ready yet.
“For what it’s worth, I think he is in trouble or at least hanging with the wrong crowd,” I said.
“Yeah, sounds like Oswald. Mother used to say I was the light to his darkness. The yang to his yin. It always made him go out and do even more stupid stuff. You know those tales about the evil twin?” he asked in a joking tone.
“No, Oscar. I don’t know. Can you try to explain to me what happened between the two of you, to make you reject him so?”
“I . . .” He paused, sighed an anguished exhale. “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me to explain it.”
“Well, I’m asking. Try.”
He hesitated for a beat.
“At school, we were the ‘Os’. At some point, nobody made an effort to make a difference between us anymore. It made Oswald super giddy because he could prank people. He found it amusing, but I found it insulting and I declined taking part in it. You were my first found friend who didn’t have a reason to call me Os, and I enjoyed that. Don’t look so sad, I wasn’t a loner. I started growing into my skinny body during high-school and then the girls started paying more attention—”
“Whoa. Are you really trying to make me jealous while we’re having a fight?”
“Are we? Having a fight?” he asked me good-naturedly.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what this is, but it’s weird. I’m still struggling to understand everything.”
“What are you struggling with?”
“When I met you in the street and you were jogging in Greenwich—it was actually Oswald. When we accidentally met on the street after classes the other day, it was actually Oswald who kissed me? And then Leigh saw him with some woman,” I recapped, scrunching my nose and counting the meetings on my fingers. He nodded in agreement. “And then this morning, it was Oswald again. The other times, it was all you.” His feet squeezed mine and we let another small silence reign between us.
“That’s why you changed moods faster than socks?” I teased, which made him scowl. “You could have talked to me about it. No . . . you should have talked to me about it.”
“God, I wish you knew how much I wanted to. Do you know what he did the other day when he met you in Greenwich? He texted me and said the he just run into you and how great you looked. That was it. No other explanation. Do you know what that did to me? I saw red! He has this power on me. He takes everything lightly, I don’t!”
“You two are brothers!” I just couldn’t understand the lack of love that ran so deep between those two, not with all the lucky examples I’d seen during my teens, not with the bond I had with Corbin.
“So were Cain and Abel,” he retorted.
“That’s an awful comparison,” I whispered, staring at him. I didn’t get him.
“Dellie—”
“Do not Dellie me!” I cut him off. “It’s been a dick move from both of you not to mention something as colossal as having a clone walking around the town. You both new I was meeting the two of you and that you were sending me confusing signals. But since I don’t know him, it’s been more of a dick move from you. I don’t know why you don’t see that.”
When silence crept up on us and minutes turned into centuries, I broke the silence again.
“I need to go.”
“Please, Delia,” he asked.
“I need to go,” I told him again, more firmly. “I feel like my head is spinning from not knowing things. I need to be able to hear my own thoughts. And then, maybe, I will come back.”
He nodded and let go of my hands, accepting.
If I could paint the trembling air between us any color, I’d have chosen black. The color of mourning and loss.
Chapter Thirteen
Delia
Now
I spent the better part of the next morning painting in a corner of the room. Or trying to—it was more long stretches of me staring at the canvas, really. Leigh fussed around for a couple of hours, but then she let me know she had one of her mysterious dates with an important person—her words, not mine—and then let me be.
I was part doing my homework, and part searching for that high that came from working with paint, the push to get me over that sea of feelings that was drowning me. I was mixing colors that were as dark as my mood. Oscar and I hadn’t even started and we were already on shaky grounds. After the third spill of too much black into my mix, I gave up hope, tossed my brush into the cup of paint thinner, and strode out the door.
I couldn’t fully understand his way of thinking. He wanted to be unique, and he was. Just because his brother had identical DNA, it didn’t mean that they were the same person. How could he not understand that what he and his brother had was something incredibly special? For him to be so ashamed of his brother that he would hide him and push him away like that was unacceptable. Family trumped everything. Speaking of, if Oscar wouldn’t open up more, I had another source to go to.
Turn after turn, block after block, I walked and stewed over the situation until I found myself glaring up at the decrepit building that was Echo Hostel as if it was the one having kept things from me. I didn’t know what had come over me, but I couldn’t stay in Brittany, I didn’t want to talk to Oscar, and I couldn’t paint for shit. So there I was. Time to get some answers. I ignored the buzzing of my phone in my bag and went to the clerk to ask him if he could call Oswald down. He looked at me like I was a crazy person and showed me a register. I guess I had to track his whereabouts on my own. I was trying to make sense of the scribbles on the third page I was reading when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Why are you here?” Oswald asked as I turned my head to look at him.
“You told me to find you after I talked to you brother,” I returned, unfazed, lifting my chin and holding his glare.
He arched a brow.
“Want to get a cup of coffee?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” I answered instantly, scrunching my nose. “It smells in here.”
He barked a short laughter.
“You should smell the inside of the rooms,” he said loud enough for the clerk to hear, but the dude was so captivated by the reality show he was watching he didn’t care.
“Smells like unwashed old balls,” Oswald said matter-of-factly as he gestured to the door. “After you.”
We found a small cafe that looked mostly deserted and took a window seat.
“I need answers.” I cut right to it since there was no point in waiting.
He didn’t seem to be in as much of a hurry as I was and made a point to take off his leather jacket slowly, revealing an almost complete sleeve inked.
I stared at it.
“This is supposed to tell us apart,” he said, but his tone was so serious it was almost steely. “I started getting inked at seventeen because Oscar couldn’t stand our likeness anymore. Actually, I don’t think he ever liked our resemblance,” he explained and squeezed his lips into a straight line as if he thought he said too much. “What do you want to know?”
“So, let’s start from the beginning. I’ll talk and you’ll correct me, okay?”
He put his elbows on the wooden table, watching closely as he nodded.
“Oscar was the one I saw first in camp, but you were the one I gave my address to when the bus was leaving.”
He nodded again.
“You never told Oscar you’d met me or that we started writing, and you let him think I just didn’t say goodbye.”
Another nod.
Damn it, Oswald!
“Why would you that? Why?” I fired at him, and he sighed and smiled at the waitress who had brought our order. “He said you always stole stuff from him, was that it? Was I some sort of sick-type of shiny object? Like a toy he had and you wanted?” I resented my own bitterness. This wasn’t me, this venomous-spoken person.
“That was what he said? That I was the trickster in the family?” he asked, his eyes a storm of emotions.
“Well, didn’t you sleep with his girlfriend?” my voice came out squeaky.
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I may have slept with his girlfriend, but I wasn’t the one who initiated it. She knew exactly which brother she was throwing herself at and made it clear that she didn’t care.”
“So that makes it okay?”
“No, of course it doesn’t, but one day he’s going to thank me for saving him from that girl.”
I snorted. “Not likely.”
“I did some stuff to get his attention, okay? He denied I existed, and all I wanted was a bit of his attention. That was why I did most things. I took your address and wanted to taunt him with it when we got home, but then he was mean to me on the way home, so I kept it for myself just for a little while longer. I wrote because I wanted to know the girl who took away his attention, and you were so sweet to me that I wanted to keep you for myself. I wanted my own friend, just for a while.”
I was quiet for a long time, forcing him to fill the silence.
“I was a stupid twelve-year-old. I missed my brother. He had made it so we didn’t even share the same building during our stay at camp. He certainly hadn’t mentioned talking to a girl all summer. When I heard you call his name, I turned and saw your extended arms and hopeful smile, and something snapped. I saw red. I took your address, and didn’t really think about it. I didn’t really think about it until I got your first letter, truth be told. And then, the game changed from keeping something from Oscar to hurt him back. All of a sudden, I had something that was all mine. For the first time ever, I wanted to keep it as such. That was why I lied. It was pretty obvious you never assumed there were two of us, so I wanted to check if you’d like the person that I was. The one who can’t sing, but can brawl. The one who hadn’t shared any experience with you in the past, but was super willing to experience things in the future.”
I remembered our pact and felt my cheeks starting to burn.
He pressed a finger on my arm, reassuringly.
“Hey, don’t think about that. It’s so far in the past, it’s invisible.”
“You know, that’s what he said earlier too,” I said, changing the subject. “That in camp I was the first friend he had just for himself. So, I wasn’t interesting on my own. I was just a property neither of you wanted the other to have,” I said, pouting and feeling childish as I did it.
“You’re plenty special, Delia,” he said, his eyes fixed on his triple espresso.
“How did you know it was me? That morning when you were jogging?”
“You sent me that sketch of yours.”
“I sent Oscar one . . .”
“And your curls are pretty uncommon.” He smirked, unfazed by my correction, and I rolled my eyes. These twins and their fascination with my curls.
“Why did you ask me to call you Os?” I continued my tirade.
“It was the only way I could have you address me in our letters. Everyone in school used to call us Os when we were children, like we were some sort of weird entity. Unrecognizable, and I guess it was one of the first thing Oscar resented.”
“Why did you stop writing to me?”
“Which time do you want to know about? The time you were so sweet about my brother’s supposed beauty that it pissed me off? The time when you were compassionate about my brother’s supposed beatings? Or the
time you conceded to being his, and you went on and on about soul mates?”
As he spoke, his eyes slowly lifted to meet mine and held there.
We were silent for a few beats.
“How much of what we talked about was true?”
“I didn’t lie. I just forgot to keep track of when I was talking about him or myself. I only lied when I said he’d quit piano, and for that, I am sorry.”
“For that, you are sorry?”
“I’m sorry about it all, okay, Delia? I really am. All of it. Me, you, my brother. Our teen years were extremely confusing,” he rumbled.
“So the beatings that you mentioned in the letters actually happened?” I poked him further.
“Did he complain I would take his place in different circumstances?”
I nodded.
“Bet you that was one circumstance he wouldn’t have craved to keep his spot in.” Oswald lifted his hands, fluttering his fingers in the air. “He had to maintain these,” he said, letting me notice his knuckles were bruised. “Me? Not so much.”
“Why? If he treated you as badly as you say he did, why would you protect him?”
“Oscar was a bit of a geek and stepped on toes without realizing it, especially during junior high. He kept challenging the bullies verbally during hours and then, when he was at his piano rehearsals, I went to meet said bullies and pretend I was him. I knew I could take their beatings and that my brother couldn’t. I told you I could wrestle.”
“Wait, didn’t he know?”
“I am sure he did, as he saw me black and blue at the dinner table. I’m not sure he cared, though. Or maybe it was what satisfied his need to be different from me. If one of us was always bruised up, people would be able to tell us apart.”
“And you never thought to tell him?”
“No. Why would I? He’s spent most of his life wanting to be nothing like me, and despite that, I wanted to protect him. He would have died had something happened to him that made it so he couldn’t play anymore. I wouldn’t let that happen.”
