Laws of Physics Book 1: MOTION

by Reid, Penny

With a resigned sigh, I accepted that Gabby was correct. “I look like Lisa.” Which meant I also looked like our mother. Even at fifty-two, our mother and Lisa were often confused by the press.

  “Exactly.” She grinned. “Like I said, you’re gorgeous. You work out, right?”

  I gave her a noncommittal shrug. I swam daily and used a standing desk, which probably didn’t meet her definition of working out. Lisa and Gabby, I was pretty sure, both had personal trainers. Theoretically, I wanted a personal trainer—because wouldn’t that be nice? Someone to plan my workout, keep it interesting, keep me engaged, think about my health so I didn’t have to—but in reality, I didn’t want one.

  I’d tried it once. The guy touched my arm to reposition it without asking me first. I flinched, which caused me to drop the dumbbell on his foot. I never went back, but I did pay his doctor’s bills and sent him a year’s supply of protein bars.

  She walked to the other side of the chair, and the Sephora external aesthetic-modifier technician (which is what I decided they ought to be called) stepped back, giving Gabby room to inspect my face from a new angle. “Wow—” her eyes swept over me, from the black and white Converse on my feet, up to the leather pants, to my bare midriff, chest, collarbone, neck, “—you really do look like her.” She sounded surprised.

  I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t point out the obvious, that we were identical twins. Of course I looked like her. But Gabby wasn’t being insulting for once and I had enough on my mind. No need to pick another fight. Hopefully, merely looking like Lisa would be enough to convince Leo’s friend that I was Lisa, because I had no idea how to act like a normal person, let alone like my sister.

  Gabby cocked her head to the side, her gaze growing thoughtful. “Why don’t you wear your hair down ever? Or do your eyes. You’re beautiful, or would be if you put in the effort.”

  “We already talked about this.”

  “Because you want to be a nerd-girl stereotype, Mary Sue?”

  “Human beauty is irrelevant in physics,” I mumbled. Not wanting to get into it, but beauty was more than irrelevant. It was a liability.

  “Okay, Borg.” She lifted that eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Then it has no mass,” I said automatically.

  “What?”

  “If it has no matter, it has no mass.”

  Her stare was blank. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a physics joke. If something has no matter, then—never mind.” I pressed my lips together.

  “No more physics jokes!” Gabby stabbed a finger at my shoulder.

  Leaning away, I lifted my hands in a show of surrender.

  She administered one final exasperated eyebrow lift before turning and giving the external aesthetic-modifier technician instructions on what items we were going to purchase.

  Meanwhile, I stood from the chair and tried not to lick my lips. The lip stain wasn’t flavored, but the gloss the employee had applied over it tasted like bubble gum. In a word, delicious. I’d had a minor addiction to cherry flavored Chapstick at one point and it had taken a year to break the habit. Thus, I vowed to throw away the bubble gum gloss as soon as I left Chicago.

  Or as soon as I landed at LAX.

  Or, at the very latest, as soon as I made it back to the hotel in Los Angeles.

  Maybe I’d keep it for a week, what’s the harm in that?

  “Let’s go, Mona Lisa.” Gabby nudged my arm, pushing me toward the door as she handed over the bag with all the makeup. I gave her the side-eye, accepted the products, but said nothing.

  Once outside, she nudged me again. “Get it? Mona Lisa?”

  “Yes.” Hil-AR-ious.

  My parents had decided naming my brother Leonardo, me Mona, my sister Lisa, and giving us the last name of DaVinci was a really great idea. It could have been worse. They could have named my brother “Michel,” me “Ang,” and Lisa “Elo,” which had been their original plan. Over the course of my life, I’d come to understand that my parents had named their children as a reflection of themselves rather than as a reflection of their hopes for us. Based on my informal sampling of celebrity children, it was always thus for superstars.

  I glanced at my watch, it was only 1:00 PM. I considered calling the lawyer to check on the status of Lisa’s release even though she’d just touched base a few hours ago and I’d left her a voice message already.

  “Your backpack.” Gabby flicked my bag. “What are you doing with that? Where will you put it?”

  “Um.” My steps faltered. “I hadn’t thought about that.” I was bad at this. What other lying logistics had I not considered?

  She continued to eye it. “What’s inside? Clothes?”

  “My computer, research notes, wallet, phone.”

  Gabby started shaking her head before I’d finished speaking. “Ah, no. You can’t bring that to the house. Lisa said Abram was supposed to take her phone as soon as she got there, right? Well then, he’ll definitely take—and probably search—your backpack. If he searches your backpack, he’ll know you’re you and not Lisa. Plus, he’ll find your phone, and you’re supposed to pretend like you left it behind.”

  I scowled even though she was right. None of her valid points had occurred to me. “I guess I could go back to O’Hare, bag check it at the Westin, and pick it up on my way out of town next week.” I didn’t like the thought of being separated from my research or my journal.

  She inspected me. “When we get to your block, give it to me. I’ll carry it the rest of the way and say it’s mine if he asks.”

  I shifted away from her, distrustful. “What will you do with it?”

  She made another of her give-me-a-break faces. “I’ll put it in your room—in Mona’s room—when we go upstairs. By the way, don’t forget, your room is Lisa’s room. Because you are Lisa and you don’t tell physics jokes. You tell peen and poop jokes like all self-respecting feminists.”

  “You’re not going to take it?” I lifted my chin, scrutinizing her dependability in this particular situation. “If you try to take my backpack out of the house, I’ll break character right there and tell Abraham the truth.”

  “You have trust issues. Don’t worry, I won’t take your precious backpack. It doesn’t match my ensemble. And it’s Abram, not Abraham.”

  Speaking of not-Abraham. “Have you met him?”

  Gabby gave me a meaningful look and kept on walking. Unfortunately, I’d never been gifted at deciphering meaningful looks.

  I tried again. “So you do know him? Or what?”

  “Abram?” Gabby blinked, once, hard. “Lisa didn’t tell you about Abram?”

  I shook my head.

  “Leo didn’t introduce you? They’re, like, best friends.”

  “No. Leo never mentioned him.” When Leo and I talked, it was once every six months and typically focused on him telling me about his upcoming gigs as well as questioning me about girls—how they thought, why they did certain things, etc. He rarely mentioned his friend group, if at all. I’d tried to explain that I didn’t understand girls. Or people. He persisted. As such, I did my best to offer generalizable theories about female behavior.

  Gabby stopped, blinking several times as though her brain was having difficulty accepting my words. “Oh, Mona. You are in for a treat.” Flipping her braids over her shoulder, she’d placed special emphasis on the word treat.

  I glanced from side to side. “Why? Does he abhor superstring theory?”

  She made another face of distaste, or at least tried to. I caught the tail end of a suppressed smile as she said, “I know him a lot better than Lisa does, because sometimes I hang with Leo when he’s in town. Abram can be uptight, for sure, but he’s also a big flirt. And woman, he’s so gorgeous it hurts. I mean, it physically hurts my hoo-hah to look at him in the best, hoo-hah happiest way. He’s so gorgeous, I’ve already forgiven him for being mean to our girl. And he’s a musician.”

  She paused here to bite her bottom lip and look at the sky
. “Writes his own music,” she moaned, “plays the bass guitar, and the piano, and every other instrument, and he sings. And when he sings, it makes my panties want to melt right off my body. Just whoop”—she made a swooping motion with her hand, gesturing from her crotch to the sidewalk—“they want to melt right off.”

  “Is he smart?”

  “Uh, what?” Her gaze flickered over me, leaving me with the impression I’d disappointed her. “Here I am talking about his fineness, and you have to rain on my parade by asking about his brains?”

  “Is he smart?” I repeated.

  “Does it matter?”

  Don’t make another physics joke about matter! “It’s relevant if his level of intelligence means he’ll deduce I’m not Lisa.”

  “Okay, first of all”—she lifted a finger between us—“you can’t speak like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t use words like deduce or relevant.” Gabby over-pronounced the offending words, obviously attempting an impression of me.

  “Fine.” A flutter of disquiet hit my stomach, which I hid. “Maybe I won’t speak at all.”

  “That works. Don’t speak. Or, just give one-word answers. For example: no, yes, what, who, when, whatever. If in doubt, saying whatever usually works.” Gabby turned back to the sidewalk and we both began walking again.

  While interacting with people about non-academic topics, I’d experienced my fair share of difficulty knowing how to segue into a new subject, or how to end a conversation, or knowing what to say when people over-shared. When I was fifteen, I stumbled across a list of phrases that mostly worked for any occasion, and I’d put them into practice with varying levels of success.

  Phrases like But at what cost?

  Or In this economy?

  Or So . . . it has come to this.

  Or So let it be written, so let it be done.

  Or my personal favorite for when I didn’t know how to end a sentence or complete a thought . . . And then the wolves came.

  These phrases seemed to work best when attempting to diffuse a tense situation or confuse the other person long enough for me to make my escape. Regardless, in the same spirit, I appreciated Gabby’s tip. I could default to saying whatever. That would be fine.

  “Just don’t say anything obviously Mona-like,” she continued. “You look so much like Lisa, I don’t think the possibility that you’re Mona will even occur to him.”

  “But he’s met Lisa.”

  “Yes, but for like five minutes. He doesn’t really know her. Lisa only met him the one time, when we crashed one of your brother’s parties.” She paused here, sighing wistfully, as though remembering the encounter, and then added, “And even though they barely interacted, he was kind of a dick to Lisa.”

  He’d been “a dick” to her? That triggered the ingrained protective-sister sonar. Regardless of how close (or not) we were, sister-sonar meant I would automatically dislike anyone who’d been “a dick” to Lisa, no matter how much hoo-hah happiness he inspired. Hoo-hah happiness was irrelevant.

  “What did he say to her?”

  “They didn’t really, uh, talk.”

  Even with my paltry conversation-nuance detection skills, I picked up on the weird way she said talk. “Expand on that, please.”

  Gabby waved her hand in the air, dismissing my question. “Whatever, it’s not important. Getting back to your original question, Abram might be smart, I don’t know. But he doesn’t know Lisa well enough to tell the difference between the two of you as long as you don’t go around telling physics jokes and asking him to deduce or expand on things.”

  “Fine.” I turned and continued walking toward the house, wondering if Gabby would fly off the handle again if I asked about Lisa’s arrest. Not wanting to inspire another round of insults, I tried a different—but related—topic. “So, why Abram? Why did my parents choose Abram to keep an eye on Lisa?”

  “Uh, I don’t really know. According to Lisa, when I talked to her yesterday on the phone and we discussed the plan, she made it sound like he just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.”

  “Was she okay? When you talked to her?”

  Gabby sent me a sharp, irritated glare. “How do you think she was?”

  Okay, fine. Don’t ask Gabby about Lisa. Got it.

  “Anyway—” Gabby flipped her braids, her tone growing lofty “—Lisa said that your brother was supposed to be at the house this summer, but that he went down to Florida for a thing.”

  “I think he has work in Miami.” The last time I spoke to Leo, he’d mentioned spending part of the summer in south Florida, playing a few clubs.

  “Yeah, something like that. So, I guess your guardian lady was supposed to step in and watch the house. What’s her name?”

  “You mean Dr. Steward? She can’t, I think she’s in China.” I was nineteen now, but the day after I’d turned eighteen, Dr. Steward had taken off to travel the world. She’d been planning the trip for as long as I’d known her.

  “That’s right. So, until Dr. Steward comes back, your brother suggested Abram keep an eye on the house. I think he’s being paid to house-sit. So when your parents issued the ultimatum that Lisa had to go home and wait for their return, they asked Leo to ask Abram to keep an eye on her.”

  “Do they even know Abram? Why do they trust him?” I felt like I already knew my parents well enough to know the answers to these questions. But I also felt like they needed to be asked, just in case this would be the one time my parents surprised me.

  “I don’t know.” Gabby shrugged. “I guess they figure, if your brother trusts the guy . . .”

  I released an irritated puff of a breath, shaking my head, now absorbed in secondhand anger on my sister’s behalf. “That’s great.”

  So, not surprised.

  It had been the same way with Dr. Steward. The woman was a friend of a friend, an adjunct professor at a college in the Northeast. They hadn’t even interviewed her in person before sending me to the Northeast to live with her full time as a teenager. She’d been . . . fine. Strict and considerably more interested in the money she was banking than in me as a person, but fine.

  “What?” Gabby poked me lightly, presumably to get my attention. “Leo wouldn’t recommend someone to watch the house who isn’t trustworthy, would he? Plus, like I said, they’re best friends. Plus, like I said, Abram is super uptight.”

  “And uptight is trustworthy?”

  “Exactly. Just look at you.”

  I grumbled but said nothing to that.

  Earlier, Gabby had said, He was kind of a dick to Lisa, and yet she saw nothing wrong with this guy keeping an eye on Lisa?

  Nothing about Abram, or spending the next week in the same house as him, sounded treat-like to me. Another almost-stranger my parents trusted with one of their daughters. Granted, this guy was Leo’s good friend, and Leo did seem to have better judgment about people than either me or Lisa.

  Am I really going to do this?

  Yes. Yes, I was. We were about two blocks away now, I wasn’t a snitch, my sister needed help, and I’d promised. There was only one logical path forward.

  But mostly, I refused to be another person in Lisa’s life who let her down. Gripping my bag’s strap tighter, I imagined the moment I’d have to hand it over to Gabby. Just the thought of trusting her with my backpack for any length of time was making my hands sweat.

  “What?” She bumped me with her shoulder.

  I shrugged, irritated I couldn’t wipe my hands on my pants. Wiping sweaty hands on leather just made for visibly wet leather and still sweaty hands, and wet leather was never a good idea. Never.

  “What is that face you’re making?” She pointed to my face with her index finger, moving it in a circle.

  “I don’t know, I can’t see myself.” There was just something about Gabby that grated, brought my emotions closer to the surface. Or perhaps it was this entire situation. Whatever it was, I couldn’t wait for this week to be o
ver and return to the world I understood.

  “Here, I’ll make the face you’re making.” Gabby caught my arm and I immediately maneuvered out of her grip. My reflexive reaction didn’t seem to bother her, or she didn’t notice. Regardless, she cleared her features of all expression except her eyes. She’d narrowed them subtly, and seemed to peer at the world with a hypercritical coolness. “This is the face,” she said robotically.

  Trying to stuff my fingers into my pockets and failing—because the pockets were sewn shut—I scratched the elbow she’d grabbed and started walking again. “It’s just my face.”

  “Well don’t make that face around Abram. Lisa doesn’t make that face.”

  “Okay.” How the hell am I going to do this for a week? I pasted on a big, fake smile. “Is this better?”

  “God, no. Don’t do that either.” She looked horrified. “What the hell was that? Was that a smile? Was that you smiling?”

  I neither confirmed nor denied her speculation, keeping my attention forward as I twisted my lips to the side, trying not to smile for real. Gabby was a nebulous assemblage of unscrupulousness and exasperating nonsense, and we’d likely never be friends again, but she was undoubtedly charming when she wanted to be. There’d always been something about her timing, her delivery, that veered into the territory of funny.

  “Okay, hand it over.” She touched my arm again, stopping me, and this time I had the wherewithal to not yank out of her grip. Instead, I removed my backpack with extreme reluctance, which elicited an eye roll from Gabby. “Oh, give it a break, Mona. Just hurry up. I have other things to do today.”

  With continued extreme reluctance, I eventually handed her the backpack. She carried it the rest of the way to our brownstone while I continued to carry the makeup bag. Every so often, she’d pretend like she was going to toss my backpack in the road, snickering when I tensed.

  “Relax, Lisa. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the happiness and well-being of my BFF.”

  Gabby batted her eyelashes as I punched in the gate code, all nerves and thumbs. Our brownstone had a tall cast-iron fence facing the sidewalk. I wasn’t surprised by the lack of paparazzi. Everyone assumed the DaVinci family members people cared to gossip about—my parents and my brother mostly, me sometimes, Lisa only when she did something crazy—were elsewhere.