Gemini

by Sonya Mukherjee

  I looked at her and quickly shook my head, though I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance she would just ignore me.

  After a moment Hailey said, “I forgot something. I dropped a pencil. We’ll see you later.” She turned us back toward the classroom, and I felt myself breathing again.

  There was a pause, and when Max spoke, his voice wasn’t quite as low-pitched as it had been before. “All right,” he said. “I’ll s-see you later, then.”

  • • •

  That afternoon we were walking to the Sandwich Shack and had almost arrived when Max caught up with us. “Hey, Clara, Hailey,” he said, nodding as he fell into step with us, his voice once again just as easy as it had been that morning. “Braving that bad coffee again?”

  I watched my feet as we walked. I couldn’t think what to say. How could I just make him go away?

  “We go there every Monday,” Hailey said.

  We all kept walking.

  Max cleared his throat. “So, what did you guys think about that physics homework?”

  We had arrived at the Sandwich Shack’s front doors, and he moved forward and pulled one door open, then stood waiting for us.

  I forced myself to look up at him. “Were you, um, planning to stay? Because we . . .” What excuse could I make? I was so desperate to find some diplomatic, creative, and clever way to get rid of him that my mind had gone completely blank.

  “We’re meeting up with our friends,” Hailey said, “and there’s going to be so much girl talk, you’ll get sick if you get within twenty feet of us.”

  “Oh.” He was still standing there, holding the door. “Um, okay.” He turned, peeking inside. “I was thinking of maybe just grabbing a snack? And then I’ll go?”

  I sucked in my breath. My face was as low as I could make it, but probably not low enough to hide how red it was. It was unbearable. I twisted away from Max, which forced Hailey to look at him straight-on.

  “Just go to the convenience store,” she said. “It’s right across the street.”

  I caught my breath. She had basically just told him that he couldn’t even come in. Any hope of dodging him subtly was gone.

  He let the door swing shut, but he didn’t leave. “Wow. Okay,” he said. “Um, sorry, but what’s going on? Did I do something to piss you off?”

  I looked up, even though I knew my face was still red. “It doesn’t matter. Can you just go? Can you just please drop this and stop trying to pretend that we’re friends or something?”

  He stared at me, his brow wrinkled with what might have been confusion or annoyance, his cheeks turning slightly pink.

  He stepped forward. “I’m m-missing something here. You know, what you s-said on Halloween—and what I s-s-said—maybe I should have explained—”

  I drew back, taking Hailey with me. “It doesn’t matter.” My voice came out so squeaky and quiet, I couldn’t even understand myself. I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t matter,” I repeated, “what you said on Halloween. Just leave us alone, all right?”

  I brushed at the corners of my eyes. I looked around, hoping that no one else from our school was near enough to witness my little episode. We stood right at the edge of the main road outside our school. Various classmates were bound to be driving by, and there would usually be a few walking, though I didn’t see any right then.

  Finally I looked back at Max. His face had gone from pink to red. “W-wait a second,” he said. “What are we talking about?”

  “We’re not talking about anything,” Hailey said quickly. “Just leave my sister alone. Leave us both alone. We just want to go in there and drink some bad coffee and eat some chips and talk with our friends. All right?”

  “About Halloween,” Max said. “We were talking about Halloween.”

  I tried to look up at his face, but I got only as far as the slightly frayed hem of his jeans. “We’re not talking about Halloween,” I said.

  “I only talked to you guys for a few minutes,” he said. “I don’t think I did anything terrible. I know it ended a little abruptly, but I figured I would see you again later, at the party I mean, but somebody told me you guys had left early. . . . And that was . . . That was after I came in, after . . .”

  A silence fell around us. Behind me I heard a couple of cars go by, but thankfully, there were still no other pedestrians.

  Hailey took my hand. To Max she said, “Just let us go in. You’re blocking our way.”

  “But I’m worried now,” he said.

  I drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “Max, for God’s sake,” I said, addressing myself to his big, long-fingered hands. “Why do you keep talking to us in public? Don’t you realize that anybody at all could be driving by right now and see you here with us? It’s like you want people to call you a pervert.”

  I bit my lip, my heart pounding as I realized the implications of what I’d said. But maybe it was for the best. Nothing else seemed to be able to shut him up, to make him go away.

  He didn’t say anything. When I finally looked up at his face, all its color had drained away.

  “Holy shit,” he said.

  “It’s all right.” I finally managed to look him in the eyes, and I held my voice steady. “Nobody asked you to be a pervert. Nobody asked you to be disgusting. If you think I was asking—”

  “Clara! I can’t believe you had to hear that crap those assholes were saying about you. And Hailey. Both of you.” He took a step toward us, and Hailey and I stepped back.

  He stopped, looking at us, then looked down. “I had no idea you heard any of that. God, I still want to pound their faces in.” His fists were clenched, and he started to raise them, then stopped. He was looking somewhere over our heads. “They’ve known you all these years, they’ve hung out with you, and then they talk about you like you’re . . . I don’t know, exotic sex toys or something. What the hell is the matter with them?” He looked at me. “Did you know they were like that?”

  “Jesus, Max, you’re the one who said I was disgusting! You’re the one who said you’re not a pervert!” I clapped my hands over my mouth as I realized that I was shouting.

  Hailey reached back and held my hand. Hers was damp and shaky, and she didn’t say a word.

  “I said you’re disgusting?” Max demanded. “What? Did someone say I said that? They were lying if they did.”

  “Max, for God’s sake, I heard you say it!”

  He moved in, and before I could draw back, he grabbed my arm. “You did not. When did you hear me say that?”

  “At Halloween. They said—they said—and you said that was disgusting. I heard you!”

  “I said they were disgusting. They are disgusting. They’re worthless piles of crap for talking about you that way. You thought I said you were disgusting?”

  I pulled my arm away from him, looking up at him warily, my other hand still gripping Hailey’s. “So I’m not disgusting, but the idea of—the idea of—well, thinking of me like that. That’s what’s disgusting.” My heart was jackhammering away at my chest wall, trying to burst out as I said, “Right?”

  He stared at me. His lips were parted slightly, and some wild, insane part of my mind created an image, a stupid, ridiculous image of me throwing myself at him, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling myself up onto my toes and kissing those lips, that almost-open mouth.

  “That’s not what I said.” He shook his head. “It’s not what I meant. But, Clara, I’m not saying . . .” He closed his eyes, and though he didn’t take a step or shift his position, I thought I could see each molecule of his body pulling itself back from me ever so slightly, by no more than the width of an electron or two.

  “It’s not that you’re disgusting,” he said, “and it’s not that the idea of you is disgusting. I’m not saying that at all. And you’re so nice, and so interesting, and I really do like talking to you. But . . .” His voice trailed off. He had angled himself away from me now, and he looked off someplace, out at the horizon.

  “But,” I sa
id softly. “Of course.”

  Behind me Hailey let out the quietest and saddest sound I could ever imagine.

  Max looked down, his gaze almost meeting mine for a moment, but then sinking all the way down to the ground. “You do understand, don’t you, Clara?”

  My heart had stopped beating. My lungs were empty.

  “Of course,” I said, or maybe just whispered, or maybe didn’t really say at all.

  Just one kiss. If he would give me one kiss before he vanished, before the fantasy of him vanished. The fantasy of him, or anyone like him, ever seeing me as just one individual girl like any other—as just myself. And liking what he saw.

  And what if I were normal? I wanted to ask. What if it was just me, standing here on my own? Would I be good enough then?

  “Oh no, you’re crying,” he said.

  “No I’m not.”

  I blinked rapidly and brushed my fingertips over my lashes, which were barely even damp.

  “It’s not like I can’t see myself,” I said. My gaze had fallen back down to the frayed hem of Max’s jeans. “I know what I am. I don’t know why we’re even talking about this.”

  “N-no, d-don’t say it like that. It’s j-just m-me. I just don’t happen to—but I really—it’s just kind of r-random, right? Feeling that way or not.”

  I couldn’t be having this conversation. How had this even happened? It seemed I had somehow admitted that I had a crush on him, but I’d never meant to admit it, was sure I hadn’t said the words, and yet somehow it was out there.

  I wanted to run away. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to faint and wake up somewhere else, in a world where Max didn’t exist.

  But I looked up at him, and through my tremors I met his eyes and said, “No, it’s not random. It’s a lot of things, I guess, but some of it is physical attraction, and you’re never going to feel that.”

  Max blinked, and he opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out. What could he possibly say?

  It was time to leave. I would never be able to look him in the eyes again, let alone have a normal conversation. I was throwing myself at him, even as he pushed me away. I was a big wet puddle of pathetic, and all I wanted now was to seep into the ground and disappear.

  Except that wasn’t true. I wanted something else. I wanted information.

  Because even as most of me seemed to drown in this moment, one small part of me was looking beyond it, into a long hazy future, and probably a lonely one, where someone like Max could never be a part of my life. But was that only because I was conjoined, or would it have been true anyway? Were there other things about me that made me unwantable? That was the part I couldn’t answer.

  And as I stood there breathing rapidly, feeling Hailey hold herself so still and silent behind me, my anchor and my shackle and my security blanket and my life’s companion, I found that even stronger than my need to run away was my need to know.

  So I looked up at Max and said, “I’m not going to keep bothering you, but just tell me the truth, just this one time, okay? Just tell me, if I weren’t conjoined, would it make any difference?”

  He looked at me for so long that time and space seemed to open out between us, a chasm as vast as the future.

  Finally, looking into my eyes, he said softly, “Honestly? I have no idea.”

  24

  Hailey

  I’ve seen a lot of movies. I’ve watched a lot of TV. It’s not like I don’t know what the San Francisco skyline looks like. It’s not like I’ve never seen the Bay Bridge. But it turns out real life is a whole other thing. Actually looking right up at those white suspender ropes on the bridge, and across the water at the whole city. Shining under pure sunlight, as if to say, Fog? What fog? Don’t go telling me how I’m supposed to be.

  And the freeways. And then the crowded city streets. All those cars. All those pedestrians. Being right in the middle of so much reality. My blood just started buzzing.

  We drove all the way through the city and out toward the ocean, through rows of narrow houses and small apartment buildings. Pretty Victorians gave way to featureless midcentury rectangles, houses that a preschooler might build with a stack of blocks.

  The Golden Gate Arts campus itself—which was so far from the actual Golden Gate Bridge that you couldn’t even see the damn thing—consisted of several plain, squat buildings surrounded by green grass and trees. At the edge of the parking lot, a dirt walkway surrounded the grass, and a pair of garbage and recycling cans overflowed with old coffee cups and fast-food containers.

  As Mom pulled into a parking space and turned off the minivan, a couple of college-age girls got out of a nearby car, laughing as they collected their jackets and backpacks and portfolios from their backseat. They wore tight black clothes, their hair was dyed black, and their eyes were circled with thick black eyeliner.

  All at once I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of that, and I almost regretted my own thick eyeliner. Was I just a poseur? Were they?

  Maybe at art school my makeup and clothes would look like an awkward, pathetic attempt to fit in. The thought made my chest feel tight and heavy inside.

  I peered toward Clara. “You ready?”

  She nodded in this sort of sped-up, hyperactive way, like she wasn’t so much agreeing as having a minor, terror-induced seizure.

  I pulled open the minivan’s door, and we scuttled down the ramp.

  I could smell the ocean, but I couldn’t see it. Garbage and exhaust fumes mixed with the salty ocean tang, all of it startlingly unfamiliar.

  The two girls, laughing and teasing each other, stood beside their small, faded-brown car, the doors still open.

  One of them glanced our way, and she stopped laughing. A confused look crossed over her face.

  “What?” said her friend.

  Mom was closing up the minivan, my portfolio under her arm. Clara and I stood there waiting, and maybe we looked like two girls who just happened to be standing really close to each other, or maybe we didn’t.

  The second girl quickly scanned us and turned away. “Um, anyway,” she said pointedly to her friend, and she sort of laughed, but you could hear her discomfort.

  The minivan beeped, and then Mom was next to us, ready to go.

  We started toward the walkway, which meant we were also walking toward those girls. They took turns glancing nervously in our direction. As we passed by them, I could feel them turning toward us more and more, unable to resist the pull.

  “Oh my God,” one girl stage-whispered to the other just a moment after we passed.

  “Have you ever?” asked her friend.

  Of course she hadn’t ever. There are just a handful of us alive throughout the world. We kept walking. I told myself that the shakiness I felt was coming from Clara’s body, not from my own.

  Behind us their voices got louder. “They must be, like, Christian Scientists.”

  “You mean Scientologists?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever it is that doesn’t believe in medicine. You know, like surgery? To separate them? Hello? Or maybe an abortion?”

  I started turning toward them.

  Clara grabbed my hand. “No! Come on. Just keep walking.”

  My mom nudged me. “Hailey. It doesn’t matter.”

  But it did. Not what they thought, but how we responded. Whether we cowered away or pushed through it. That mattered.

  I knew we weren’t really going to come here for the summer, let alone in the fall. Clara could never handle it. Sutter would be hard enough for her, with all those new faces; I couldn’t ask her to tackle an even bigger environment, a place where there would be new faces every single day, day in and day out, with no chance to ever catch her breath and relax. Not yet; not anytime soon. But I did have to convince myself—and convince her, too—that we could at least get through this one day without falling apart.

  And I had to convince myself that the trembling that I did feel in my own body now was pure rage, and nothing else.

  I
strained toward the bitchy girls. Clara tried to pull me away, but I yanked myself around and planted my feet, holding my ground.

  “And which religion is it,” I demanded loudly, “that requires that every child be lobotomized on her third birthday?”

  The girls looked at each other nervously. They didn’t make a sound.

  I said, “You don’t know the name of your own religion? Oh, I’m sorry, was that information stored in your frontal lobes?”

  One of the girls looked at her friend and said, “Let’s get out of here. This is some seriously weird crap, and it’s giving me the creeps.”

  They hurried away. As the adrenaline faded, I didn’t even know whether to feel like I’d won or lost.

  “All righty then,” Clara said, her voice shaking and straining toward lightness. “We freaked out the freaks at an art school in San Francisco. We’re probably the first people ever to accomplish that. Maybe there’s a special prize for it.”

  I forced a smile. “One can only hope.”

  • • •

  So I feel weird admitting this, but growing up in Bear Pass and never going anywhere else, I had only ever seen a handful of Asian people in real life. Bear Pass is just really, really white. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because we’re near the snow line, so the people turn white for camouflage, like polar bears.

  Anyway, when the admissions lady came out to meet us in the waiting area, and she turned out to be Asian, there was this interval where I was so distracted by trying not to pay attention to her Asian-ness that I forgot to even notice how she was trying not to pay attention to our conjoinedness. It was like this mutual game of everybody trying to act like we were totally used to one another and we absolutely didn’t care or even notice what anybody looked like anyway.

  She spoke with Mom for a minute, pleasantries were exchanged all around, and then Clara and I followed her toward the interview room while Mom stayed behind. A few other kids were waiting nearby, some with a parent and some without, and they all played the game too as Clara and I stood and shuffled through. It wasn’t that they didn’t stare, but they tried to hide it. They stared furtively, peeking up at us and then looking back down at their phone screens or their Golden Gate brochures, then peeking again. And none of them said a word.