“I’m sorry,” I said, breathless, “for hanging up on you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. I could picture Chloe shrug. “You called back.”
She told me, again, where her game was being played. Chloe’s voice sounded different from when I first started calling. She had sounded flat and tired; she had scared me when she said she quit playing basketball. I knew that somehow, unknowingly, I had done her harm. But I was not like Smita’s father; I wanted to be good. I wanted Chloe to love me the way I loved her. She made me cry when she told me about her high scores because she was feeling better. I wiped away my tears, grateful that she couldn’t see them. I had expected Chloe to get angry with me, but she didn’t. Instead, she thanked me. Our whole life, I could not remember Chloe thanking me for anything. I told her about my hair, which was red and came down almost to my chin.
“Red?” Chloe said, laughing. “Really?”
I had been accepted to Hampshire. I would start college in the fall. Out of the blue, my useless parents had sent me a laptop computer. I was typing my memoirs, beginning from the moment I was born, four minutes behind, smaller, louder, and cheated from the start, when my parents gave Chloe the better name. I could type fast, without looking at my fingers.
At school, I hung around with my new friend, Carrie Lind. She had long, curly hair. We played footsie under the desk during classes, and once we made out in the janitor’s closet.
Lisa Markman still visited every weekend. She taught me how to drive in her red convertible. She let her tongue linger longer and longer in my mouth when she kissed me good-bye. She had stopped wearing her diamond engagement ring and started calling during the week. She got jealous when I talked about Carrie. This made me ridiculously happy.
For days I wandered around nervous, excited, thinking about Chloe’s game. And then, finally, I told Smita. She flung a cheese puff at my head. “Ding-dong,” she said. “Are we going or what?”
“We are going,” I said.
I was going to see Chloe.
Chloe
I could hear the crowd yelling my name. I had gotten fouled as the buzzer rang, marking the end of the fourth and final quarter just as I scored a layup to tie the game. If I made the free throw, I’d win the championship for the team. Kendra stood beneath the basket, sweat dripping off her face, her hands clenched into fists as she watched me. Kendra had already gotten into college and been awarded a four-year scholarship, and still, she wanted to win.
“This is your shot.” She mouthed the words.
I felt as if I had entered a scene from one of Mr. Markman’s basketball videos, except that I was actually on the court, and the crowd was cheering for me. There was no gentle song of tropical birds in the distance.
I needed to focus.
I had spent the entire week in a nervous state, unable to fall asleep, cursing myself for inviting Sue. I was certain she would not show up, and I felt humiliated knowing how much I wanted her to be there. Kendra had also instructed me to invite my parents. She had learned forgiveness long ago in Sunday school; she said that my parents were in dire need of redemption. I had shrugged, telling Kendra that my parents were busy people.
“They will come,” Kendra said. “It’s the championships.”
She was right.
Everyone I had ever known was in the stands.
My parents, sitting upright in their bleacher seats, wearing matching sweaters and clapping politely whenever my team scored a basket.
James and Jamal, who I had not spoken to since the day they had left. They sat in the rafters, waving an enormous red and white banner that read, “Go, Chloe, Go.” I could tell from one quick glance that they had a smoked a joint before the game, and that James still enjoyed looking at my legs. I was happy they did not hate me.
Mr. Markman was there, tall and amazing, in the very front row with his children, both Lisa and Todd. Before the opening whistle had been blown, I looked into his deep, dark eyes, and he held my gaze. We stared at each other, and then he smiled, blowing me a kiss. “Be aggressive,” he yelled, and I knew that he had read my letter.
Before the game had begun, I was in the locker room lacing my sneakers extra tight, taking a long, deep breath, when I heard a loud burst of applause. The coach came up to me. “Rodney Markman is in the house.” He patted my back with a kind smile, and I realized that the coach, for one, had never believed the rumors. He had always liked me. Everyone on the team liked me. Kendra told me I was not a difficult person to like.
All through the game, I felt my legs solid on the court, my hands on the ball, fielding rebounds, scoring baskets, but really I was floating through the stands. I saw my mother mark something down on her legal notepad. I saw my father nod in approval when the ref blew the whistle after I’d been fouled. I saw Todd staring at the clock, and Lisa whispering into the ear of my beautiful twin sister, Sue.
My twin sister, Sue, who was no longer identical to me. She had chin-length red hair, long bangs that hung in her eyes. Sue! She sat between Lisa Markman and a beautiful Indian woman who smiled at me as if she knew who I was. My brother, Daniel, was there too, his arm around the Indian woman’s shoulder.
Sue never clapped when I scored. She sat on her hands, biting her lip. After I scored the layup that tied the game, I looked for her. I smiled at Sue, and nobody else, and she grinned back at me, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Drama queen, I thought, bouncing the ball to calm myself down.
I was ridiculously pleased that I could still make Sue cry. I stood at the foul line and I stared at the basket. I could feel all of their eyes on me as the ball rolled off my fingertips and sailed up toward the basket. I could sense a hush in the stadium. I closed my eyes, and I listened.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my agent Alex Glass, my editor Joelle Yudin, the Writer’s Room in NYC, the Soaring Gardens Artists’ Retreat, the wonderful Dermanskys—Ann, Ira, Michael, and Julie—and especially, Jürgen Fauth.
About the Author
MARCY DERMANSKY is a MacDowell fellow and the winner of the 2002 Smallmouth Press Andre Dubus Novella Award and the 1999 Story Magazine Carson McCullers Short Story Prize. She is a film critic for About.com and belongs to the New York Film Critics Online Society. Dermansky lives in Astoria, New York, with her husband, the writer Jürgen Fauth. For more information, check out www.marcydermansky.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Praise for Twins
“Marcy Dermansky’s Twins is a startlingly beautiful love story about two very unlikely identical twins. It’s a joy—no, a thrill—to read. . . . This is easily the most detailed, disturbing, and lovable oddball romance you’ll ever read. Dermansky is a writer through and through.”
—Frederick Barthelme, author of Elroy Nights
“Marcy Dermansky’s sly fairy tale of a novel explores how we learn to live with who we are rather than who we’d like to be.”
—John Biguenet, author of Oyster and The Torturer’s Apprentice
“Marcy Dermansky is a lyrical, gifted, and original writer. She portrays the (like-no-other) twins, Chloe and Sue, with both artistry and empathy. Their distinct voices are pitch-perfect, humorous, evocative, and always compelling. With a style that’s extremely accessible and lots of fun, Dermansky is, nevertheless, a top-of-the line ‘writer’s writer.’”
—Janice Eidus, author of The Celibacy Club
“Who would have known that the perils of being a twin are also the perils of life? Marcy Dermansky has captured, in her funny and honest book, what it takes to survive those perils, and what it means to live that life.”
—John Haskell, author of American Purgatorio
“Marcy Dermansky’s Twins is spectacular, weird, extraordinarily real, and funny in ways they don’t have names for. The perils of contemporary adolescence—from pill-popping to not eating to bad tattoos—are chronicled with an immediacy so intense it’s almost alarm
ing. Dermansky inhabits her characters with a savage, hysterical eloquence. Her novel grabs your heart from the first sentence, and breaks it by the end.”
—Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight and I, Fatty
“Dermansky gives her misfits real dignity and avoids psychosocial clichés. . . . She neatly captures the girls’ suburban high school world with every telling detail. Sometimes despairing, sometimes blackly humorous, always engrossing, and thoroughly original. A wonderful debut.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“With dark humor and raw power . . . Dermansky has created a fascinating set of characters. . . . Her portrayal of the difficulty of growing up and of raising children in today’s world rings true.”
—Library Journal
“Entertaining . . . [a] moving and well-written story of two girls learning to accept who they are.”
—Publishers Weekly
“If you thought your childhood was twisted, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Marcy Dermansky weaves a spellbinding tale.”
—Genre magazine (Grade: A)
“A beguiling story of the powerful ties between identical twins. . . . With the ability to blend humor with these sometimes sad and lonely lives, Dermansky has crafted a memorable novel.”
—Booklist
“Twins is a witty and slyly subversive take on the teenage American dream. It’s narrated in turn by both girls and is particularly worth reading for Sue’s hilariously vitriolic abuse of virtually everyone she meets.”
—Mail on Sunday (four stars)
“Raw, extraordinary. . . . A dark, heartbreaking tale about adolescents trying to survive.”
—Huntsville Times
“Compelling, dark, and like a traffic accident that you try to look away from, only to find your gaze returning with odd fascination. . . . This well-written book gives readers a voyeuristic, insider’s glimpse into the lives of not only twins but teenagers. Though at times uncomfortable, the novel is comically and darkly entertaining.”
—Denver Rocky Mountain News
“Dermansky excels at depicting extreme emotional states and how we rationalize them.”
—Village Voice
“Fiercely energetic. . . . Told in alternating voices, but it is Sue’s obsessive, urgent, heartbreakingly hilarious story of their shared teen years that drives the narrative. . . . Dermansky’s pace is exhilarating, sending both Chloe and Sue, and the reader, rocketing through an adolescence studded with not-unfamiliar dramas. . . . [Sue’s] self-imposed difficulties bruise your heart and make you laugh out loud all at once. Dermansky, who is not a twin, has never- theless spun a dual spell, capturing the inner world of twins and tapping into our basic human longing to keep those we love most from growing and changing.”
—Newsday (New York)
“With her blunt, unflinching style, Dermansky deftly assumes the voice of teenage turmoil, sparing few details. . . . Chloe and Sue face challenges common to American teens—eating disorders, drugs, sexuality—but their shared identity makes their journeys toward individuality unique, at times jarring, and sometimes heartrending.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“A poignant, compelling story, Dermansky’s debut successfully reconnects us with adolescent angst and leaves us wondering which is the ‘evil twin.’”
—OutSmart magazine
“A wry, believable, and rage-filled portrayal of identical twins who occupy every part of the love-hate spectrum. . . . [Dermansky] writes in a way that will crawl under your skin and make you twitch—in the best possible way.”
—Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind (Pick of the Week)
“A brainy, emotionally sophisticated bildungsroman-for-two.”
—New York Times Book Review
Credits
Cover design by Tina Pohle
Cover illustration by Meryl Stebel
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
TWINS. Copyright © 2005 by Marcy Dermansky. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Dermansky, Marcy.
Twins / by Marcy Dermansky.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-075978-X (alk. paper)
1. Twins—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. New Jersey—Fiction. 4. Teenage girls—Fiction. 5. Difference (Psychology)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.E7545T95 2005
813'.6—dc22
2004063574
ISBN-10: 0-06-075979-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-075979-7 (pbk.)
06 07 08 09 10 /RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
EPub Edition © April 2012 ISBN: 9780062206398
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