“Well,” Hailey said quietly, “everything she said was basically true. I feel pretty bad when I look at it that way. She rubs me the wrong way, but she’s not actually mean to us. Other than dating the guy who should be with Clara.”
“Hailey. Please. Shut up.” My fingernails dug into her arm.
Alek raised his eyebrows, looking interested. “Max? What’s the story there?”
“Hailey’s just being ridiculous,” I said. “There’s no story.”
“I still see him looking at you,” Hailey said.
“So what? Everybody looks at us.”
Though, this wasn’t really true, not here in our home territory. Not usually. But it had been true tonight.
I realized, to my great embarrassment, that tears had sprung up in my eyes.
We stood just above the football field, looking down at the bleachers that gradually descended to the field farther down the hill.
“Let’s sit,” Hailey said, and we took the two steps down, filed in, and sat down in the top row of bleachers.
As we sat, Alek reached for Hailey’s hand, and for just a fleeting moment as he took it, his fingertips brushed against her thigh. It had to have been an accident. But I could feel it, and I could feel the shot of warmth run through her bloodstream to mine.
“Actually,” Alek said, looking at Hailey but somehow making it clear that he was speaking to both of us, “I think I’ve noticed that too.”
I swallowed. “Noticed what?”
“Max looking at you. Maybe he likes you.”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t. He told me.”
“Well, maybe not. But you never know. Some people just don’t know what they want. Or they’re scared, or too worried about all the wrong things.”
“Do you think that’s it?” Hailey asked him. She sat close to him; I could feel her knee brushing against his. “You think Max is scared?”
He shrugged. “I don’t really know the guy. I’m making wild guesses.”
“And what about you?” Hailey’s voice dropped to a hush. “Are you sure you’re not scared?”
Oh my God. What is she saying?
I couldn’t speak for Alek, but I, for one, was terrified.
“Nah,” he said. “Why should I be?”
“We’re two girls.” She was almost whispering. “We’re never apart. They’re going to call you a freak. In fact, they’re probably saying it already.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. And I’d rather be a freak than a coward.”
There was a strange pause as we all took that in. What did it mean, exactly? Was he trying to prove some point to someone, coming here with the two of us tonight?
But then he answered the unspoken question. “What I mean is, I’d rather do what I really want to do, no matter what anyone thinks. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
I had promised to disappear tonight. I had to try to not even be here. I had to distract myself, to make my mind go somewhere else, to be anywhere but here.
I looked up at the moon. All its features were so clear and visible, so distinct in its full light. All right, there was something I could do to occupy my thoughts, to pull myself away from this moment. I could spot and name the lunar craters. Copernicus, that was my favorite. Aristoteles. And over there was Humboldt. I searched for Picard.
Try as I might, though, I couldn’t distract myself enough not to notice what was happening behind me.
I could feel the silence. I could feel the space between them gradually shifting, their bodies and then their breath drawing closer.
And I knew the moment his lips brushed hers, because a burst of electric heat that must have started at her mouth took no more than an instant to run straight through her whole body and into mine. I could feel the voltage at the base of my spine and everywhere below it, in all the shared parts of our blood and nerve fibers and flesh.
And it ran right back up from those shared places, straight up through the rest of me, and I felt my face growing flushed, my whole body growing warm and tingling, and I thought, This is wrong. I’m not supposed to be feeling this. I’m not supposed to be a part of this. I’m supposed to not even be here.
But I was there. I was there completely.
And Alek was there too, even though Hailey was a conjoined twin, a freak of nature, no closer to normal than I was. Alek was there anyway, and he was kissing her, and not just once.
I knew they were still kissing, because I could feel the heat still stirring throughout my blood. And I couldn’t help it. I wanted.
Not him. Not Alek.
Not even a boy, really; not even a kiss.
Or yes, okay, I wanted those things, but also a thousand other impossible things, and maybe a few possible ones too. I wanted to take off in a rocket ship; I wanted to bungee jump in the moon’s Apollo Basin and go for space walks in the asteroid belt. I wanted to be the one to finally discover a radio signal coming from another planet, and I wanted to study with real astronomers and find out all they knew. I wanted to parachute over the Grand Canyon, and when Hailey climbed the Eiffel Tower, I wanted to be there with her.
But mostly what I wanted, as Hailey went on kissing Alek, was this feeling of blood rushing through my veins. This surge of life, of energy, like something in the world was calling out to me, and my body was answering. It was something that I almost never felt.
I pressed my hands against my face and closed my eyes, and I felt the moonlight washing over my closed lids, and the heat of Hailey’s desire washing through my veins, and I saw, finally, that this just wouldn’t do.
All this wanting inside me was not going to go away. I couldn’t turn it off. Something had been flickering to life inside me for years now, and it was growing steadier, and hotter too. If I tried to keep it buried much longer, I was going to go up in flames.
• • •
Deep in the middle of the night, as Hailey slept, I quietly picked up my phone. Earlier in the day I’d gotten an email from the surgeon I’d contacted about separation—or, technically, from his assistant—offering to set up an appointment. If I set up a time, just to talk to him and get his thoughts, with no commitment at all, how could Hailey say no?
I turned on the screen, and my messages opened right up.
Except they weren’t my messages.
They were unfamiliar messages from Gavin and Josh, and from Amber and Kim. They all had attachments.
I must have switched phones with Hailey. But why on earth would she have all these messages from Gavin and Josh? Didn’t we hate them?
I opened the first one from Gavin and clicked on the attachment. It was a video taken just a couple of hours earlier, at the dance. It showed us on the dance floor, moving awkwardly, out of time with the music. We looked even stranger than I would have guessed. Our gait looked more awkward and uneven than it had felt at the time. Maybe the high heels we’d been wearing had made it worse than normal, but it hadn’t felt that much worse.
Behind me Hailey muttered, “You’re keeping me awake. Put down your damn phone and go to sleep.”
I didn’t answer.
“Oh, fine,” she said. “Then I’ll check mine too. Any good gossip come up in the middle of the night?”
She turned on her phone screen.
Except it wasn’t hers. It was mine.
The video I was watching ended.
The room was very quiet. I heard the low clank of the furnace, and a tree branch outside, tapping gently against our wall. I couldn’t hear my breath, because I wasn’t breathing.
“Clara?” said Hailey, pushing herself up with one arm. “Are you setting up an appointment to get us separated?”
“Hailey?” I said, ignoring her question. “Why has Gavin sent you seventeen videos in the last six days?”
34
Hailey
“Oh, that,” I said, straining to keep my voice casual, as if that would somehow convince Clara that this whole thing was no big deal. I coughed and cleared my thr
oat. “I was going to tell you.”
I leaned over to my bedside lamp, pulling Clara with me, and switched it on. Without needing to discuss it, we propped our pillows behind us and sat up in bed.
“Are you friends with Gavin now?” Clara asked. “Are you having an affair with him?” she added, her voice rising. “Do you keep giving me roofies so I’ll black out while you go at it with him?”
I snorted. “Doesn’t he wish. No, dork. I just asked some people to help me out with a project, and for some reason Gavin and Josh keep sending me stuff for it too. I didn’t ask them to.” I hesitated before adding, “But I haven’t told them to stop.”
“Seriously? You’re getting help from them?”
“Ah, yeah.” I grimaced into the dark. In the face of Clara’s anger, I was suddenly unsure whether I should feel bad about this or not. “I guess I figured that they owe us, right? Just for their general assholeishness? So they should do something to help out.” This sounded like a plausible explanation, and as I said it, I thought that yeah, this was probably true. It probably was my real reason. Or one of them, at least. Still, I felt compelled to add, “Plus, some of the stuff they sent me is pretty useful.”
“What kind of stuff? What kind of project are we talking about anyway? And how have you managed to do all of this without me knowing about it?” Her voice was shrill with anxiety.
I thought for a second. How to explain the whole thing? “Um, well, maybe I should just show you what I have so far.”
I leaned over to the nightstand again, pulling Clara with me, to grab my laptop. It flashed through my mind that this was the sort of thing that would seem weird to other people, how we had to always move with each other and be moved by each other, how I couldn’t even reach for something without dragging her along with me. But to me it was as natural—and almost as unconscious—as having to shift my own body parts as I moved.
I opened the laptop and selected the video that I’d just begun to stitch together.
I felt weird showing this to her, or to anyone. It was so far from complete. It was like fragments of thoughts that I’d thrown together without really making sense of them. I didn’t know what Clara would think, or how she would take it.
It started with the video of me and Clara in the school bathroom, the one where I was leaning into the mirror and looking at my blackhead. It was close up, and in the mirror you couldn’t necessarily tell that we were conjoined. It was almost like there was just someone standing really close to me for some mysterious reason.
Then there was one of Juanita leaning into a mirror at home, examining her front teeth, which were not perfectly straight but had a very slight overlap. The video was so close up that you couldn’t even see her whole face, or how beautiful she would look if you were just a few inches farther out.
Then Josh trimming his nose hairs; the camera here was so close up that you couldn’t see much beyond his nose. He had sent me that one himself. It was too bad I hated him so much, because the fact that he’d sent me this was actually kind of awesome.
In the next sequence the camera was a little farther back, the moments a little less private.
Lindsey and Vanessa putting on their makeup together in the girls’ bathroom off the school gym, laughing and having fun, even as one of them remarked, “God, I hate my hair so much!” and the other one said, “I have the ugliest nose. I wish I could just chop it off.”
Amber, straightening out her clothes as she arrived at school, looking around almost furtively as she did so.
Kim, putting on her lip gloss in class.
Me and Clara sitting in the same class; in this one, because the focus was on our faces and shoulders, you still couldn’t really tell we were conjoined. Clara was running her hands through her hair, smoothing it down.
A close-up of a pale thigh, with blue veins clearly visible through the skin, and tiny dots at each hair follicle.
Then a hand with a spray bottle, spraying that leg until it appeared perfectly smooth and lightly tanned.
And then the camera pulled even farther back.
Me and Clara walking down another school hallway, in the weird shuffle that felt so natural and normal when we were doing it. On video it looked a lot more awkward than it felt.
The cheerleaders all lined up, doing a choreographed dance with perfect timing.
Josh dribbling a basketball down the court, fast and graceful, a beautiful performer on display.
And then the screen went blank.
“I don’t understand,” Clara said. “What’s the point of all this?”
“It’s not done yet,” I said. I felt a little nervous and defensive, because when I’d tried to watch it through her eyes, it had seemed even further from being complete than it had when I’d last watched it by myself. Incomprehensible, maybe. Nonsensical.
“It seems a little chopped up, right?” I asked. “A little random? I’m trying to figure out how to pull all this together, so you’ll be able to see the point. The close-ups and the faraways. How different they are. There’s something I’m trying to get at, but—well, you know I’m not very good at explaining this stuff in words.”
I stopped, trying to think of how else to put it, but I ended up saying rather lamely, “It needs to be longer anyway. Two and a half minutes.”
“Needs to be? What are you talking about? What are you doing this for?” She was almost shrieking.
“Well, remember you said I should apply to the film department at Sutter?”
“Jesus, Hailey! This is what you’re planning to send them? You’re going to exploit us and play the conjoined twin card for film school at freaking Sutter? You couldn’t make a real film and rely on your actual creativity?”
Trying not to be stung, I said evenly, “It’s not only about being conjoined. That’s just a piece of it. Plus it’s not finished. I’m trying to build toward something smarter than what I have now. I’m just groping my way toward it, but that’s what I always do.”
“Couldn’t you do something else, Hailey? Is this even necessary? I mean, is it even hard to get in?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess I mostly just thought it might be fun to give it a shot, see what I could come up with. Maybe create some extra options. But I don’t have it figured out. I might not even send it in.”
“You’re damn right you’re not going to send it in. What happens when someone at the admissions office decides to post this thing on YouTube?”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t know. What does happen? Someone sees us? People outside of Bear Pass find out that we exist? Is that the end of the world? Is the sun going to explode in a giant supernova if someone actually sees us, for once?”
I hadn’t meant to say any of that, but now that I had, I didn’t regret it.
She wiped at the edges of her eyes. “That’s not even what’s going to happen to the sun.”
“What?”
“It’s never going to be a supernova. The sun. That’s not what happens.”
“Oh my God, Clara.”
“I know. I know that’s not the point. But you make it sound like you want this to end up on YouTube. Is that what you want, Hailey? Is that what you’re secretly hoping for?”
I was as stunned as if she’d slapped me hard across the face. “Are you being even halfway serious right now? You think I would do that?”
“I’m not saying you would put it up on the Internet on purpose. But you know you want us to move away from here, Hailey. You’ve been looking for ways to push me into that. Maybe somewhere in the back of your mind, this is another way to do it. Get us exposed to the world anyway, and then there won’t be any point in hiding, right?”
“Clara,” I said, every muscle in my body tight and tense, “honestly, you’re crazy. This is the opposite of that. This is about trying to figure out if I can make the film school thing work, so I can maybe learn something new and expand inside myself without having to leave at all. This is me making peace with sta
ying where we are. This is you winning.”
Quietly she said, “But what if I don’t want to win?”
35
Clara
“What do you mean?” Hailey asked slowly. “You don’t want to win? What does that mean?”
“Why do you think I contacted that surgeon?” I asked her. “Because I don’t want to force you to stay here with me forever. I’m not trying to keep you prisoner here in this tiny little town that you hate so much.”
“Oh.” Her voice became more muted. “So you’re just giving up. I was hoping you meant that you actually wanted to leave.”
As she said that, a strange thing flashed through my brain. It was as if Hailey and I were sitting together in a tiny, sealed capsule floating in outer space, and she had unexpectedly opened its door. And all at once I could see the vast universe all around me, a dark, freezing vacuum, awash with the distant fire of uncountable stars; and I could feel the eerie weightlessness of being untethered from the only world I had ever known, and I didn’t know whether the breathlessness that I felt was awe or terror, and I didn’t know if I should jump out through that capsule’s door or slam it shut.
“I don’t know what I want,” I said. “It’s just—well, do you ever feel like you’re trapped in a tiny box and you’re running out of air?”
After a long minute she said, “You’re telling me you feel that too?”
I thought of last night’s kiss, and even now I felt something thrumming inside me. Or maybe I was feeling it thrumming inside Hailey. It was hard to know. Whoever it belonged to, I could feel it just the same, hot and strong and impatient, and increasingly claustrophobic.
But what was this thing that had me tied up and trapped? Was it that band of flesh that connected me to Hailey? Or was it something else?
What would it even mean to jump through that capsule door, if I could find the guts to do it?
“Don’t you ever want to be free of me?” I asked.
There was a long silence, filled with nothing but the sounds of our almost-synchronized breathing. Almost synchronized, but not quite.
Gemini Page 20
