The Twinning Project

by Robert Lipsyte

It certainly wasn’t like playing a duet with Dad. Alessa tried hard. She threw plenty of energy into her bow, but her left hand was sloppy, and I had to keep slowing down. It was tough. Before it was time for me to go we got through the first duet, but not always together.

  TWENTY-SIX

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  GRANDPA was peering down at Eddie. “How do you feel?”

  Lousy, he thought, but he said, “Okay.” The moment he said it, he felt better. He stood up. “Where am I?”

  “You’re on EarthOne now.”

  “Where?” said Eddie.

  “I told you it was a lot to take in. There are two Earths. One is about fifty years older than the other one.”

  “How could that be?”

  “Many years ago, the scientists on another planet began an experiment. It was called the Twinning Project,” said Grandpa. “They created dozens of sets of two planets around the universe, usually starting one planet fifty years before the second one. The idea was to keep track of their evolution, see what went well and what didn’t, and make changes whenever necessary.

  “We’re not sure what happened in the case of the Earth twins—maybe we weren’t paying attention—but things got out of control. Wars, famines, genocides. Then the atomic bombs in 1945 really shook us up.”

  “Us? Who’s us, Grandpa?”

  “Good catch, Eddie. I was one of the scientists. And your dad was one of the monitors sent down to keep track of the Earths.”

  Eddie felt a wave of excitement. “Tell me about Dad.”

  “Later. We have to get you to Tom’s house now.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  USUALLY, I conk out as soon as my head hits the pillow, no matter what’s going on, but tonight I couldn’t sleep. I had the feeling that something, somebody, was in my room.

  I got up and turned on all the lights.

  I turned all my electronic devices on and off and back on again.

  I looked out the window. I looked under the bed. There was only one place left.

  I guess I was a little scared of opening the closet.

  “Okay,” I said loudly. “My Taser’s on stun. Come out and nothing will happen to you. Otherwise, you’re barbecue.”

  My closet door opened, and someone who looked like me stepped out.

  He looked like me, but he was wearing clothes I’d never wear: a button-down blue shirt, chinos, and sand-colored desert boots. But he looked like me. He was either me or my identical twin.

  Eddie?

  Tom?

  He walked over and stuck out his hand. I shook it. It was a real hand.

  I thought I made you up.

  Made me up?

  He grabbed my shoulder and knee, spun me around, and dumped me on the floor.

  I was lying on my back.

  Why’d you do that?

  To show you I’m real.

  This real?

  I looped my legs around his ankles and dumped him.

  We started wrestling. He was stronger and quicker, but we each seemed to know what the other was about to do, and my mind worked faster than his.

  Then the Lump started banging on the wall, and we stopped, flopped back on the floor, and lay there side by side, breathing hard.

  You’re good, Eddie.

  Almost as good as you, Tom.

  It’s like I’m fighting myself.

  We couldn’t stop staring at each other.

  How’d you get here?

  Slip.

  Slip?

  “Can you talk out loud?”

  “That better?”

  “Yeah. What’s ‘slip’ mean?”

  “It’s how we travel between the two Earths.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “You feel sick for a couple of hours. Fever, chills, aches and pains. Then you land. Hard. And then you’re okay.”

  “I felt that. I thought I had the flu.”

  The Lump’s voice boomed, “Turn the TV off, Tom. Go to sleep.”

  “Go to hell, Lump,” I said, but not loud enough for him to hear.

  Eddie and I started laughing so hard, we had to cover our mouths and stick our heads under the blanket.

  It was great. We were up all night.

  PART TWO

  The Switch

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  I TOOK Eddie’s picture with my cell phone, showed it to him, then printed it and gave it to him.

  Neat little camera.

  We were back to talking in our heads so the Lump wouldn’t hear.

  It’s a cell phone.

  A phone?

  I can listen to my tunes, see movies, play games, send a text.

  What’s a text?

  A text is a message.

  Where are the wires?

  You don’t need wires.

  Cowabunga!

  LOL.

  What?

  Stands for laugh out loud. Never mind.

  I showed him everything in my room: the HDTV, the TiVo, the Gameboy, the xBox, and the DVD player, which I hardly use anymore. He got so interested in my laptop that we never got to the really interesting stuff, the trackers and hackers and jammers and booby traps and screamers. Or my best stuff—the TPT SafecrackerPlus and the CloakII, even though I could never get it to work.

  I showed him the YouTube of me greasing the jock bully in my last school. He watched it twice, holding his hands over his mouth so the Lump wouldn’t hear him laughing. Eddie had a laugh like bells ringing that made me want to laugh along with him.

  Eddie and I flopped on the bed. We couldn’t stop grinning at each other. It was so fun.

  He pulled a pink rubber ball out of his pocket and began squeezing it. When he noticed me looking at it, he said, It builds up your hands and forearms. You should try it.

  He flipped it to me.

  It might be good for the violin.

  I wish I could play a musical instrument.

  Maybe I can teach you. You going to stay for a while?

  That’s the plan, man. But you’re splitting.

  Where?

  We’re switching places tonight.

  In your dreams.

  I’ll be you, and you’ll be me.

  Why?

  Because of the aliens.

  What aliens?

  The bad guys who are after us.

  That’s not real. I made it all up.

  You’re not that smart.

  Smarter than some jock who never saw a laptop. You can’t even play the violin. How are you going to pretend to be me?

  Just give me the ball, I’ll find a way. C’mon, we’ve got to go.

  Where?

  To the slipping place. We have to go now.

  Who said?

  Our grandpa. He explained it all to me while we were riding over here. C’mon. He said slipping only works when the sun’s at a certain latitude.

  Grandpa’s demented.

  That’s not nice.

  Truth hurts.

  How come your truth only hurts other people?

  Okay, let’s go meet this grandpa.

  He said you can bring your violin, but that’s all.

  You nuts? I need my laptop, my iPhone, my . . .

  What for?

  Text, get online, Google . . .

  LAL. We don’t have that stuff yet.

  Wait just a minute. How do we even know we’re really twins?

  We thought about that a long time. We stared at each other. I felt as confused as Eddie looked.

  And then we stopped breathing. We had gotten the same idea at the same time.

  “Scar.” We said it together out loud.

  We pulled down our pants. His pink scar, long and raised like mine, was on his right butt cheek. We got cheek to cheek in front of my closet mirror.

  We were a match.

  TWENTY-NINE

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011 />
  EDDIE and I rode double on my bike to a field behind Grandpa’s nursing home. Dad told me that all this had been woods long ago.

  Grandpa was waiting beside a big old tree. It was my grandpa all right. But he was standing straight. His eyes were bright.

  “Both my puppies together,” he said, hugging us. “I’ve waited for this day.”

  “Is it really you?” I said. “I mean, are you feeling . . .”

  “I’m fine, Tom. When the monitors landed, I needed to pretend I had dementia, so I could hide out in the nursing home.”

  “Wait a minute.” I felt angry. “You’ve been lying to me, too.”

  “Listen up, boys,” said Grandpa. He kicked some branches to clear a place on the ground. He sat down. Eddie and I squatted close to him. “This is all happening faster than we expected. We didn’t have as much time as we hoped to prepare you to switch places. So. What can you tell each other? Tom?”

  “Alessa’s gonna like you, Eddie, because you’re me, only nice,” I said. “She’ll pick you up for school tomorrow at eight. Britzky is the bully who wants revenge on you.”

  “What can you tell him, Eddie?” said Grandpa.

  “You can trust Ronnie—he’s my little sidekick. Be careful of Dr. Traum, he’s the—”

  “There’s a Dr. Traum here, too,” I said.

  “Uh-oh.” Grandpa frowned. “Be careful, both of you. This Traum is probably a monitor. They can be in two places at the same time.”

  “Like you,” I said.

  He ignored that. “You boys are going to be just fine.” He stood up. “John raised you to be rebel heroes.”

  He handed me a paper bag and pushed me against the tree. “I got you a turkey wrap for the trip, Tom. I’ll see you on EarthTwo.”

  He took a small black box out of his pocket. He adjusted the dials. He pressed a button.

  Eddie gave me a thumbs-up.

  I felt myself moving. I was coming down with the flu again. I clutched the violin bag like it was a teddy bear. Through the padded fabric, I felt my cell, the TPT SafecrackerPlus, and my CloakII. Dr. Traum still had my TPT GreaseShot IV. I missed it. You hate to go off on an adventure without your best weapon.

  But I knew I could do it. I was raised to be a rebel hero.

  And then I slipped away.

  THIRTY

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  EDDIE was confused and nervous. How could he pull this off? Tom was so smart. And all those electronic gadgets. He didn’t even know how to turn them on.

  Tom’s bike was complicated enough. The brakes were attached to the handlebars, and there were twenty-one gears. Twenty-one! He wobbled and nearly fell off before he got the hang of gently squeezing the brakes. Grandpa had his own bicycle. Eddie followed him back to Tom’s house. He rode fast for an old guy, and Eddie had trouble keeping up until he picked up the rhythm of the bike and finally figured out the gears. He began to feel less nervous.

  The houses in Tom’s neighborhood were bigger and fancier than the houses in Eddie’s neighborhood back home on EarthTwo. There were streetlights and traffic lights and many more cars, some as big as trucks. The trees were bigger and older. But the streets seemed sort of familiar, and they had some of the same names. Elm Street. Lois Lane. Knickerbocker Avenue. Tom’s house reminded Eddie of his own house, but with a second floor and a garage. There were lights on upstairs and downstairs.

  “Are they having a party?” Eddie asked.

  “It’s just Keith, and he’s probably locked away in the basement,” said Grandpa. “Tom’s mom is out of town for her job. Just go to Tom’s room, up the stairs, first on the right. Get a good night’s sleep. Alessa and her mom will pick you up at eight tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m scared, Grandpa.”

  Grandpa hugged him. “If you weren’t scared, you’d be nuts, Eddie. Like your brother.”

  “You think Tom’s nuts?”

  “Kinda. He’s angry—about your dad disappearing, about his mom’s business trips, about her tenant in the house. He just found out that your birth mom died.”

  “I knew that years ago.”

  “You seemed ready. He didn’t.”

  “You don’t think he’s scared?”

  “He just shows it in a different way.”

  “How am I going to learn all those machines?”

  “They’re not hard. Every idiot on EarthOne has a phone stuck to his face. Every old lady in my nursing home is texting her grandkids. They’re on Facebook . . .”

  “What’s a facebook?” Eddie looked worried. “See? How can I make people think I’m Tom?”

  “Don’t worry. Just be yourself. People will believe you’ve turned into a different person because you’re taking special pills to help you lose your bad attitude.”

  “They have pills like that?”

  “People here on EarthOne have been gobbling them by the handful for fifty years. Tom’s mom helps to sell them. They’re just starting to get big on EarthTwo.”

  “I don’t have to really take them, do I?”

  “No. But you have to say you do. And here’s the good part. The cover story is that these pills have side effects. They give you amnesia for a while, so you forget names, where classrooms are, songs everybody’s listening to, TV shows. It’s so bad, you can’t even play the violin or use your computer.”

  “That’ll be easy to prove.”

  Grandpa laughed. “Any problems, just come on over to the nursing home.”

  “You’ll be with Tom, too, right? That means you’ll be in two places at the same time. Like the monitors.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you were a scientist, you told me,” said Eddie.

  Grandpa nodded. “I’m glad you remembered. The head scientists decided that the Earths were unstable, that they could blow themselves up and wreck the universe. They wanted to destroy them. Your dad and I were part of the group that wanted to save the Earths.”

  “Was Dad a scientist, too?”

  “Your dad was a monitor,” said Grandpa. “We both became rebels against our own planet.”

  “And now Tom and me are rebels, too.”

  “We’re counting on you boys.” Grandpa knuckled Eddie’s head. “Now go get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

  He handed Eddie a key to the front door, got back on his bike, and pedaled away.

  THIRTY-ONE

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  EDDIE tiptoed up the stairs and into Tom’s room. He planned to look it over carefully, but once he sat down on Tom’s bed, he decided he needed to stretch out for a few minutes first. That was it. As usual, whenever he was worried, he fell right to sleep.

  He awoke early. Tom’s house was noisier than his, alarms and machines humming and clicking. Because it was a big old house, it made creaky, grinding sounds. The groaning of the refrigerator downstairs almost drowned out Keith’s snoring in the bedroom across the hall.

  Eddie had slept in the chinos and blue shirt he was wearing when he left EarthTwo. They were wrinkled and a little stinky, but he kept them on because he felt shy about wearing Tom’s clothes, which were mostly T-shirts with pictures and words on them and denim pants that looked more stylish than the dungarees he wore back home. He wasn’t allowed to wear dungarees to school.

  The kitchen was huge, like the kitchen in a restaurant, shiny metal and polished wood. He opened the refrigerator. It looked like a grocery store back home: boxes of berries, a cooked chicken in a plastic box, different kinds of milk and yogurt, bags of lettuce. There was a bag of green leaves marked “baby arugula.” What was that? Soda, beer, soy milk. What was soy milk? Were there soy cows?

  In the freezer there were various brands and flavors of ice cream, even cones and pops. Pizzas, Chinese food, and boxes of entire dinners, including meat, potatoes, and vegetables. One of them said you could microwave it in seven minutes.

  I have to find out what microwave is.

  Grandpa usua
lly made him scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast, with hot chocolate in the wintertime. Eddie didn’t want to start cooking in this kitchen. He peeked into a lot of cabinets before he found the cold cereals—at least six different kinds, including organic wheat with pecan flakes. He settled for Wheaties—the Breakfast of Champions—which he had eaten at home. He put berries and one percent milk on the cereal. One percent of what? He wondered what Tom ate for breakfast.

  At eight o’clock he heard a honk. There was a huge black car, more like a delivery van or a small truck, in the driveway. He went outside. The passenger window rolled down and a big black face smiled at him. “Hey, Tom. You look soooo preppy.”

  It had to be Alessa, but Eddie was surprised. Tom had never said she was colored. There weren’t any Negroes in Eddie’s school. Not that they were segregated, like in the South, but no Negroes lived in the neighborhood.

  Tom’s best friend at school is a Negro girl, he thought, and now she’s supposed to be my best friend. It made him nervous. What would he say to her? He didn’t talk to girls that much. And he had never spoken to a Negro person.

  “Let’s go, Tom, we’ll be late.”

  He opened a back door and climbed in.

  The driver said, “You look very nice, Tom.” She was a Negro, too, but thin. She wore a suit over a white blouse. She had very short blond hair and piles of makeup. Really pretty. Must be Alessa’s older sister, a high school girl or maybe college.

  “Thank you. You look very nice. Do you go to school here, too?”

  She made a hooting sound. “Ohh, I think I love you, Tom.”

  Alessa said, “I think some alien must have taken him over, Mom.”

  Alien? Mom? Eddie looked back and forth between them, but they were just laughing. It didn’t seem as if Alessa knew anything.

  School was less than a mile away. They could have ridden bikes there—even walked, he thought. It was a red brick box, pretty much like his school but older-looking. The bricks were chipped and grimier. There was a big stone fountain out front, just like at his school.