by Anne Ursu
Still, Lark clearly wasn’t in the mood to hear that.
“Look,” her mom said. “It can’t be nowhere. And so when something isn’t in the places you think it should be, it must be in the places you think it can’t be. Right? So let’s look in those places.”
Lark’s face screwed up as it did when she was thinking, and then she exhaled. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay!” Iris said. She was used to finding Lark’s things for her.
But the bracelet wasn’t on the bathroom counter; it wasn’t on the bathroom floor; it hadn’t fallen into any of the drawers. It just wasn’t there. So Iris went back to her sister’s room, where Lark stood rubbing her wrist.
“It’s not there. I’m sorry.”
Lark’s face fell. “How could I lose it?” she breathed. “How?”
“We’ll find it, honey,” their mom said again.
Iris didn’t say anything. The bracelet was Lark’s most treasured possession, and no amount of reassurance was going to help. Lark was already seeing the story play out: and then the girl lost everything she had, piece by piece.
Lark would not tell their mom that, of course. Because then their mom would try to tell her that now she was being irrational; stuff like that didn’t happen. Lark already knew that. But she still worried.
She just needed to be able to say it out loud. Iris understood. And so later, when Lark rubbed her wrist and whispered to Iris that she was afraid this was a bad sign, Iris just nodded and listened and tried to ignore the feeling gnawing at her own chest.
Chapter Seven
Report Cards
Iris keeps her desk neat and orderly.
Lark is very imaginative, but needs to learn to pay attention.
Iris has a very assertive personality and sometimes the other children find her “bossy.”
Lark sometimes forgets her daily assignments, and seems to have trouble staying organized.
Iris does not always act appropriately in disagreements with teachers or other students.
Lark excels in art!
One area for improvement for Iris is being a little nicer.
Lark is a dream student.
Iris has good fluency and intonation when she reads out loud.
Lark still struggles to participate in class.
Iris’s presentation on presidential pets was outstanding.
Lark needs more confidence!
Since the incident with the brick of clay, Iris has been appreciably more successful managing her temper.
Lark did well catching up after her extended absence. We’re glad she’s okay.
Iris seemed to have a tough time this quarter, but it is understandable, given the circumstances. I’m sure she’ll be herself again next quarter.
Sometimes it seems like Lark and her sister are in their own world and it can be difficult to reach them.
Sometimes it seems like Iris and her sister are in their own world and it can be impossible to reach them.
Chapter Eight
The First Day of School
On the night before the first day of school, Iris set out an outfit for the next day, as she did every year on the night before the first day of school, as is only sensible. There are so many unknowns you face when you wake up on the morning of the first day of school; at least you can know what you’re wearing.
This year, though, she had to plan more strategically than ever, as she needed to make a statement to Principal Peter and anyone else who thought she’d accepted this separate-classrooms idea. After much consideration she opted for her gray T-shirt dress, with its decidedly unamused-looking owl gazing out from the bottom left, leggings, and cobalt-blue high-tops with magenta laces threaded through them. The dress said, Like this owl, I am decidedly unamused, and the combination of cobalt blue and magenta sent the clear message that she was attending school under protest. I am here, the shoes said. I am so here, it hurts your eyes.
But when she woke up in the morning and stared at her outfit, it all felt wrong, like it belonged to a different girl. So Iris put her clothes away and put on a black shirt and a black skirt over her black leggings, then her black boots, and finally tied her hair with an especially black hair tie.
There. The outfit said, I am not here.
“Girls!” her mom called from downstairs. “Breakfast is almost ready! I made eggs! Are you dressed?”
Iris was dressed, yes. But she’d heard nothing from Lark’s room.
“Girls? If you come down now, you can chat with your dad before school!”
Iris walked to her sister’s door and knocked.
This happened every year on the first day of school—not the video-chat part, of course, and Dad was usually making the eggs. But there were always eggs, and the expectation that the girls would be downstairs to eat the eggs, and there was always Iris who was ready for the eggs and Lark who was not.
Iris opened her sister’s door. Lark exploded up from the bed, hair in chaos, blankets falling everywhere, Esmeralda going flying off the bed, as happened every year.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Lark whispered, rubbing her face.
This was why Iris planned her own outfits the night before. You can always sleep better the night before the first day of school if you plan your outfit.
“Breakfast is almost ready!”
Lark collapsed back in bed, covering her face, and groaned. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
It turned out that there was not time to chat with their dad. There was not even much time to eat, which was fine as the eggs were cold. The fact that this always happened didn’t mean it irritated their mom any less.
In past years, as the girls tried to wolf down their cold eggs, they’d had to work to avoid catching each other’s eyes, because if they did that, one of them would surely make a face to express how disgusting the eggs were, and then the other would surely start laughing, and cold scrambled eggs would come out of her mouth and fly everywhere, and that would irritate their parents even more.
But not this year. This year they sat across from each other—Iris’s hair in a careful braid, Lark’s in a hasty high ponytail—and didn’t have to work to avoid each other’s eyes. This year, the cold eggs weren’t some kind of absurd exception, but rather a sign of things to come. Emotionally, it would be a whole year of cold scrambled eggs.
They finished their eggs in silence and stood up, and that’s when their mom fully apprehended them. “Is that what you’re wearing?”
The girls exchanged a glance. Which you did she mean? Iris was in her all black, while Lark was wearing a puffy black skirt, green-and-blue-and-pink leggings, green high-tops, and her bright yellow squid T-shirt. This was not protest, really—it was just Lark.
“Yes,” Lark said, looking down at her outfit. “This is what I’m wearing.”
“And this,” Iris said, chin in the air, “is what I’m wearing.”
“Isn’t it a little much?” their mom asked, looking from one girl to another. She seemed to mean both of them. But both girls just shrugged and she said, “All right, but when the authorities come for me because I can’t dress my daughters, I am going to deny knowing you.”
Mr. Hunt’s classroom was the first room in the fifth-grade wing. The girls stopped in front of it. Lark peeked in, and then looked back at Iris.
“You ready?” Iris said, though she knew the answer.
Lark’s eyes were big. She shook her head, and then stared back into the classroom as if looking for booby traps, rubbing the place on her wrist where her bracelet used to be.
“Tommy Whedon’s in there,” Lark whispered.
Iris stiffened. “He wouldn’t dare mess with you this year,” she said.
Mr. Hunt was standing in front of the classroom eyeing his new charges, and as they lurked in the doorway, his head swiveled toward the girls. And so Iris beheld her sister’s new teacher, who looked like he could be her older brother. (Was he even old enough to teach? Weren’t there standards? Laws?) Mr. Hunt was y
oung, small, with skin that eerily matched the hallway paint, and his head seemed attached to the rest of him oddly, as if someone had forgotten the neck and just done the best they could.
His eyes fell on Lark, and then on Iris behind her. Iris saw it, the little flicker of surprise that always passed over adults’ eyes when they first saw the girls together. She stuck her chin up in the air.
“Does one of you belong in here?” the teacher asked.
Lark nodded, ever so slightly, and Mr. Hunt held an arm out toward the Larkless classroom and grinned. “What are you waiting for, Octopus Girl?”
Laughter from the classroom. Lark flushed, continents of embarrassment spreading across her cheeks.
Mr. Hunt’s grin faded, and Iris opened her mouth, ready to lecture him on the inappropriateness of referring to students by the creatures on their T-shirts, ready to explain to him that that was not an octopus at all but a squid and what kind of a teacher was he that he couldn’t tell the difference, ready to tell him that you should not just treat kids like they have hard outer shells when you don’t know anything about them, ready to lecture the whole classroom on the bad form of laughing when a teacher makes a joke at the expense of another student, and what was to say he wouldn’t start calling them all the names of various sea creatures soon—like you, Tommy Whedon, you look like a blowfish—and how would they like it then, when Ms. Shonubi peeked out of the classroom down the hall and asked in her soft voice, “Does one of you belong in here?”
And then Lark was gone, swallowed by her new class, by the laughing kids and Tommy-the-blowfish and the booby traps, though—Iris knew—her face was still flushed and her hands shaking just a little, the way they did whenever she was nervous. The way no one noticed but Iris.
And then it was her turn. Ms. Shonubi held out her arm and Iris walked into her new classroom.
Alone.
Every year she and Lark walked through together; every year the whole class turned as one to stare at them, the incredible identical twins. But now she was just Iris, alone—not startling, not a sideshow, not even worth taking note of. Iris on her own was wholly uninteresting.
She slid into the desk marked with her name, which was placed in a square with Mira Vang, Jin Larson, and a new boy named Oliver in a blue button-down shirt, yellow plaid bow tie, and close-cropped afro.
Mira leaned over to her. “Iris! You’re all emo now!”
“What does that mean?”
Mira waved her hands at Iris’s black clothing. “That! Or maybe it’s goth.”
“What’s the difference?” Jin asked.
“I don’t know!” Mira said brightly. “Where’s Lark? Did she move away?”
“Uh . . . no. She’s in Mr. Hunt’s class.”
“Ohhhhhhhhhh. That’s weird.”
Iris could only nod. Yes. Yes it was weird.
“You’re singular now!” Jin said.
“What?”
“You used to be a plural noun. Now you’re singular.” He smiled sagely.
“A person can’t be plural,” Oliver piped in.
“She can,” Jin said, waving toward Iris. “She had a twin sister.”
“I still have her!” Iris protested.
“Anyway,” Jin said, “they’re identical, and always together. Except now.”
“Cool,” Oliver breathed, turning to her. “What’s it like to have a twin?”
“Uh . . . it’s cool?” People asked Iris that all the time and she never had a good answer. It was like asking what it’s like to have arms—you don’t think anything of it until you wake up in the morning and they’re not there anymore.
“How do you tell them apart?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Mira said. “Lark is the one who has expressions on her face.”
“What?” said Iris.
Oliver regarded her face and then nodded at Mira. “I see what you mean.”
“Plus,” Jin said, “Lark is always like this”—he waved his hands around in the air—“while Iris is more like . . .” He propped his elbow on the table and placed his chin in his hand, as if disgruntled.
“That’s exactly right,” Mira agreed.
Oliver turned to Iris. “Do you guys dress alike?”
“No,” Iris said.
“Have you guys ever switched places?”
“No,” Iris said.
“Do you have ESP?”
Iris sighed. It took everything in her power not to prop her chin in her hands. “No,” she said. She’d given a report on twins last year just to fend off these kind of questions, but you can’t give a report to the whole world.
Unfortunately.
“That’s too bad,” said Jin. “ESP could be super useful.”
“Maybe you do have it and you don’t know it yet!” said Oliver. “Sometimes powers appear when you are least expecting them.”
Jin nodded as if he had just heard something very profound. “That’s true! Try not expecting them and maybe they’ll come!”
“ESP isn’t even a real thing,” Iris said.
“That’s not true,” Mira said, shaking her head earnestly. “My aunt is a pet psychic.”
“That can’t be real.”
“It is too real! She has ESP with pets. Like if your cat starts yowling or peeing outside the litter box—”
“Ew,” said Oliver.
“—then she can figure out whether it’s in pain or depressed or seeing ghosts or whatever.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts, either,” said Iris.
Jin leaned into Mira, ignoring Iris. “When did her powers develop?”
Mira gasped. “When she was least expecting them!”
“See?” Oliver nodded meaningfully at Iris.
Iris shifted around in her chair, as if there were any possible position where she could be comfortable right now. She’d heard all these questions before, dozens of times. No, they had never switched places. No, they did not dress alike, not intentionally. No, they didn’t have ESP.
It wasn’t like that.
Still, when Iris was small and would wake up terrified from one of her nightmares, Lark would climb up from the bottom bunk and crawl into bed with her. Still, when some ugly arrow of the world pierced Lark’s heart, Iris’s hand went to her own chest and rubbed the sore spot.
People did not have words for these things, so they used the wrong words, too-bright lights that made the truths look stark and wrong.
As Ms. Shonubi called the class to order, Iris looked around the room, trying to find some comfortable place for her eyes to settle. If Lark had been there, she would have tapped something at her, something like Help me or I wish my powers would develop now or I’ll tell you the whole story later. This was what it was to have a twin and a secret language—you were always connected to someone, and whatever was happening was not as interesting as your secret conversation about what was happening.
But now life only existed on one plane, just the surface world. The world where Iris and Lark were nothing but shells.
It was going to be a long year.
Chapter Nine
The Ogre
Neither after-school camp would start for another week, so today Iris waited for Lark outside Mr. Hunt’s room. She did not peer into the door to see what was happening, because that would be creepy, but she very much wanted to.
Her own new classmates passed her, and in truth none of them seemed to care exactly what she was doing—which fit utterly with her new identity of Not Being Interesting. But Oliver and Jin waved as they passed, and Mira stopped in front of her, beaming.
“I figured it out!”
“What?”
“This!” Mira waved at Iris’s outfit. “You’re definitely emo.”
“Oh. Thanks?”
“You’re welcome! See you tomorrow!” She grinned and bounced off, her long black ponytail bobbing behind her.
Then Mr. Hunt’s class came streaming out like overexcited salmon, and Iris took a census of her sister’
s new classmates. There were Mitali and Gina, who were nice enough; Gracie (now Grace), who Iris still hadn’t forgiven; Ashkir, who’d been Iris’s science-detectives partner in third grade and had impressed Iris with his organizational abilities; the two Naomis, who somehow apparently did not need to be separated. And Tommy Whedon, who Iris glared at, just in case.
And then Lark came out, clutching her bag in front of her. She looked pale, but undamaged. When she saw Iris, she made her eyes big and pressed her lips closed. I have so much to tell you, but not here. Iris grabbed her arm and they hurried down the hall.
“How was it for you?” Lark whispered as they walked along.
She’d been waiting to tell Lark about her day, because nothing really felt real until she told Lark about it. But when she tried to find something to say, the whole day just felt gray and mushy. Like there was nothing solid to hang on to.
“Mira Vang thinks I’m emo,” she said finally.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Iris said. “I have to look it up.”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure she meant it nicely. It’s Mira.”
“I guess.”
“What else?”
What else? She poked around in the mush in her brain. But there was nothing else there.
“I don’t know. It was okay.”
“So emo,” Lark said.
“I guess so,” Iris said.
The girls got on the bus and pressed in together, and this, at least, was familiar. In the mornings, one of their parents always drove them to school—their mom, now, as the trip would be rather difficult for their dad—and in the afternoons they took the bus home, sitting in the middle left for no good reason except that that was the way they’d always done it.
“So what about you?” Iris whispered when they were settled. “What happened?”
Lark’s face twisted. She looked around the bus, then leaned into her sister.
“I am pretty sure,” she said, voice intent, “that Mr. Hunt is an ogre.”
