As we got older, we stopped talking about being mommies or getting married when we grew up. Our mom was always carrying on about how normal we were and what normal lives we could lead, but I think we both began to understand that she didn’t actually believe this. Or maybe in some ways she did, but not in others.
And it wasn’t that I wanted to marry Alek anyway. It wasn’t that I wanted to have his babies.
Did I want that someday, with someone? It was hard to say. There were so many uncertainties behind that question, so many far-flung unlikelihoods and questions buried deep inside it that it was like a tangled knot of yarn that I’d set aside, pushed deep into a corner of the closet of my mind. I didn’t know what I would want someday, or what might be possible.
But I knew what I wanted right now. I wanted to dance with Alek. I wanted to feel his hands on my arms, my waist, my skin. And I wanted him to look at me again, the way I had caught him looking at me a few times now, when he thought I hadn’t noticed. I wanted him to look at me like that, and to do it even when I was looking back.
The light turned green.
“Clara,” Mom tried as the minivan pulled forward, “you don’t want to go to the dance, do you? You’ve never been interested in that sort of thing, and just because Hailey has this forceful personality—”
“No,” Clara said, “she’s not forcing me. I agreed to it.”
“You want to go?” Mom demanded incredulously.
Clara shrugged. “What I want is for Hailey to go. And I’m willing to go with her.”
“Well, I’m not willing—”
“Mom,” Clara said, her voice quavering just a little, “we’re almost eighteen. You have to start letting us make our own choices.”
Mom didn’t answer. She just kept driving. But a minute or two later, when I looked up into the rearview mirror, I saw that she was silently crying.
29
Clara
Late that night I whispered into the darkness, not even knowing for sure whether Hailey was awake or not. “I want to talk to a surgeon.”
I felt Hailey’s quick intake of breath, and then the absence of any breathing at all. Finally she said, “I truly did not think you were serious about that.”
“Well, I was.”
Her voice turned sharp. “You’re afraid of walking down a city sidewalk. You’re afraid of going to a dance at our own school. But you’re not afraid of elective surgery that might very well kill us both?”
I breathed in her anger. I held it in my lungs until I could speak. “I didn’t say I wasn’t afraid.”
She made a frustrated noise, half groan, half wail. “Clara, honestly, you can’t be this in love with Max. You’re going to cut us apart on the off chance that he might start liking you then?”
“It’s not Max.”
“I’m sorry, that came out really mean, but I just—”
“It’s not Max,” I repeated more forcefully. “I want you to go to art school, Hailey, and I don’t want to come with you.”
“Oh, Clara,” she said, her voice quiet and sad, “we don’t have to go to art school. I’ve always known that wasn’t going to happen.”
“But I want you to. I want you to have the life you want.”
“And what about you? What would you do then?”
“I don’t know.”
I would have to go off to college somewhere, I supposed, since I would have no excuse to stay back in Bear Pass. I would have to learn how to live on my own—without Hailey, without my parents, without my familiar landmarks. The whole idea made my stomach churn painfully. I had to try not to think about it, though. Had to focus on doing the right thing. The right thing for Hailey, and maybe for myself.
“Caltech?” Hailey suggested. “Berkeley?”
My chest tightened, and my throat felt dry. “I haven’t given it that much thought.”
“Well, we couldn’t go anywhere right away,” Hailey said. “If we actually got surgery, I’m sure the procedures and recovery would take up our lives for a good long time before we could move on.”
I hadn’t thought about that. But it was almost a relief—a waiting period.
“You know,” she said, “you really don’t need to keep worrying about all this. We can go to Sutter. I’ll apply to film school there, and the painting program too, and it will be fine. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, actually, and I’m okay with it. Hopefully we can live with Juanita and Bridget. But even if we have to live at home, it’s still okay.”
“I don’t believe you, Hailey. I don’t believe that would be okay for you at all.”
“I still think,” she answered gently, “that this is kind of about Max.”
I could still see him looking down at me, a sadness in his clear blue eyes that was maybe not quite pity but close enough. Honestly? I have no idea.
“It’s not about Max,” I said.
“You’re talking about a huge decision,” Hailey said. “You’re talking about risking your life and changing everything. And it’s the first time you’ve ever told me that you want this. Are you completely sure it’s not about Max?”
“God, Hailey, would you just—I just— It’s not him, but any other guy I ever— This is what I’m always going to be to everyone who looks at me, ever. And I’m sorry, Hailey, I’m not trying to make you feel bad, and maybe it’s different for you, but I’m afraid I’m going to be lonely for the rest of my life.”
Out of nowhere a sob wrenched my body. I covered my face in the darkness.
I had thought I was suggesting surgery for Hailey’s sake, so she could go off to art school and pursue her ambitions. I had never meant for the conversation to take this pathetic turn.
Hailey leaned a shoulder against me, the back of her arm brushing mine, her skin surprisingly warm. Her foot touched the bottom of my calf, and I could feel the pressure of the touch in my own leg, but I could also feel it in her foot, in the nerve endings that transmitted their information up through her body to the base of our spine, and from there up to both of our brains.
She said, “We might be the least lonely people in the entire world.”
“I know,” I said, forcing myself to breathe normally, even as the tears still flowed. I knew the truth of what she was saying; I accepted it as a fact; but I couldn’t feel its weight any more than I could feel the weight of the Earth’s atmosphere pressing down against me. It was just a part of my existence.
“I know,” I said again. “But don’t you want someone to look into your eyes from the outside and just love you for who you are, for all of you?”
She didn’t answer.
After a minute I said, “And it’s not only that. Other people just do what they want to, you know? They just get up and go. They don’t have to negotiate every move they make. They don’t have to compromise.”
Hailey gave a short laugh. “Well, which is it? You want love, or you want freedom?”
“I want both,” I said, and the anger that I’d breathed in from her began to grow inside me. “I want both, and if we stay together, I don’t see how I’ll ever have either one. Or how you will either.”
“You’re willing to die for that, Clara? We’re only seventeen. We haven’t even really started our lives yet. We don’t know what we can have and what we can make happen. Are we not going to give ourselves a chance?”
“But that’s what I’m saying. That’s what I want. I want a chance.”
“But I mean a chance at life as ourselves, Clara, without tearing ourselves apart.”
“That’s not what it is. We can still be ourselves. We can be more ourselves, if we’re not standing in each other’s way. Cutting ourselves from each other isn’t the same as cutting ourselves apart. It doesn’t make us any less of who we are.”
“Doesn’t it?”
I couldn’t answer. Really, how could I know what it would mean to separate ourselves from each other? How could I know whether I would still be myself or not, without her?
She sighed
. “Well, anyway, it doesn’t matter, because it would kill Mom and Dad. We can’t do that to them.”
I thought about Mom in the kitchen, watching those video clips, nearly in tears over those baby girls whom she’d never even met.
I imagined our parents sitting in a hospital waiting room like all those parents in the news clips, waiting for their conjoined twins to be separated, hoping that they both might survive. I tried to imagine how that would feel for them, but of course I couldn’t imagine it at all.
“It’s not even a question,” Hailey said. “Not when you think about it that way, right?”
“We don’t even know what the odds are,” I said, so quietly that I could barely hear my own voice.
“Clara, they’ve shaped their lives around us. Mom sacrificed her career, and Dad basically did too, compared to what he could have done.”
This was true; he’d given up a tenure-track position in UCLA’s English Department to move up here and teach at a place that nobody had ever heard of. This was not the life he’d once been destined for.
And Mom—if we’d been regular babies, regular twins even, would she have kept working? If she hadn’t needed to spend so much time taking us to those childhood medical checkups, to physical therapy and the occupational therapy that we used to do when we were small; if she hadn’t needed to spend so much time at our school, creating a path for us there, and running all those playgroups to get people used to us, and modifying our house, and forever readjusting all those clothes that we kept outgrowing, would she have been a tenured professor now too?
Hailey went on. “Not to mention all the other places they might have wanted to live or things they might have wanted to do. They could have signed up for the surgery when we were babies. It probably would have made their lives easier, no matter how it turned out.”
My heart ached. What could I say to that?
“Clara?” said Hailey. “Tell me you’ll forget about this. Okay?”
I didn’t answer.
“Clara?”
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Okay.”
But I lay there blinking in the darkness, my mind zinging all around.
And finally, when I was sure that Hailey was asleep, I pulled my phone under the blankets and searched for the name of the surgeon who had separated those twins in San Francisco. With just a little bit of detective work, I found his email address, and I sent a message.
And when that was done, I found that I could sleep.
30
Hailey
As we opened the front doors of the high school gym, I heard the shrill, unmistakable voice of Lindsey Baker. “Seriously, are you kidding me? I can’t be hungover tomorrow, and you guys can’t either. It’s our first game, and it’s Los Pinos. We have to crush them!”
She stood near the back of the gym’s front entryway, beside a cluster of blue and silver balloons. Vanessa, Jasmine, and two other girls surrounded Lindsey, all wearing dresses so tiny that they couldn’t possibly intend to sit down in them. They wore elaborate hairdos with little sparkly gems and glitter, and masks of thick makeup. As we walked in with Alek, they all turned to stare.
Well, let them look. We looked good.
Back in San Francisco, I had eventually convinced Mom to take us shopping. We had gotten through the mall without causing anyone to faint or scream—not even Clara!—though nearly everyone had stared at least a little, often followed by an all-too-obvious looking away, hushing of children, or speedy exit. A few had made comments or asked questions, most of them sounding well intentioned, a few less so. I’ll grant you, the whole thing had been about as pleasant as having them pelt us with rotten fruit. But, per the agreement that we’d made just before arriving, we had all steadfastly ignored them. It had been a compromise between my strategy of screaming at them like a fishwife and Clara’s strategy of fainting like a Victorian lady.
Most important, we had found the perfect dresses, and Mom and her sewing machine had made them look great on us.
I wore a long black gown, strapless and formfitting, flaring out slightly at the bottom, plus elbow-length black satin gloves and strappy sandals with a chunky three-inch heel. My hair was freshly hot pink and sleek, my makeup dramatically glamorous.
Clara’s outfit was a combination of “contrasting good girl” and “don’t upstage the contestant.” She wore her hair in a French twist, her makeup softer than mine. Her dress was creamy white, sleeveless, draped, and she wore white chunky heels. Neither of us had ever worn heels before, but we’d spent some time practicing at home, and we were only a little bit shaky now.
And then there was Alek. In a black suit, black shirt, and black tie, he was devastating. As we walked in, he actually took my hand. His felt so warm and strong, I felt like I wanted him to hold on to me like that for as long as possible.
“Hey, Lindsey,” I said, trying to be friendly. “Does basketball really start tomorrow? I didn’t know that. You have some new cheers for it?”
She gaped at me, almost as wide-eyed as on the first day she’d seen us, back in sixth grade.
“Soccer,” Vanessa said, looking me up and down with a vaguely confused scowl. “Girls’ soccer. We’re not cheering. We’re playing. Soccer starts in November. Basketball doesn’t start until December.”
“Oh, right.” I probably should have known that.
Lindsey grabbed Vanessa’s arm. Though she was staring at my hand—the one that was clasped in Alek’s hand—and looking positively frightened, she was plainly talking to Vanessa when she said, “Hey, didn’t you have something to show me? Inside? Right this second?”
Vanessa followed Lindsey into the gym proper, the other girls streaming behind them, though two of them turned to stare at us as they went.
“Well,” Alek said when they were gone, “that could have been worse.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You sure you’re not worried about it? You sound a little worried.”
We had talked on the phone the night before, and he’d assured me that he didn’t care what anyone thought about him coming to the dance with me, didn’t care what they said to him or how they acted. “I’m used to weird looks and rumors anyway,” he’d said then, but I wasn’t sure if he really knew what he was getting into. Or if any of us did.
He smiled now. “I’m not worried. I was never worried. I admit I’m a little relieved so far. But not worried.”
I nodded; it might not be logical, but it was basically the same way that I felt myself. “Let’s walk in slowly, to give them a head start,” I said. “Which shouldn’t be a problem in these heels.”
Inside, the gym was decorated in an underwater theme. The collapsed bleachers were hidden behind some kind of gauzy fabric, with cutouts of fish, shells, and mermaids; in front of these a few cardboard cutouts of coral stood propped up on the floor. The back wall featured a huge mural of a sunken pirate ship, while layers of blue and silver balloons covered the ceiling. The overhead lights were off, but smaller blue and white lights shone down along the edges of the room, partially illuminating the dance floor.
Beneath it all, I was sure I could detect, however slightly, the leftover smells of sweat and stale popcorn.
A DJ in one corner, set up with a laptop and a sound system, played a slow song. Only two couples danced. Others clustered in groups around the edges of the dance floor, or near some small tables at one side of the room. Some of the tables were already piled with evening bags and red plastic cups.
As we walked through, I could feel people’s eyes on us—watching us but always quickly looking away as soon as they thought we were noticing their stares.
Our classmates didn’t usually act like that. But we didn’t usually have a date. Funny how such a little thing could turn us back into strangers and freaks, right here in our hometown.
I gripped Alek’s hand more tightly. He held mine firmly but not in a tight squeeze. He really did seem relaxed. I could tell Clara was a little more rattled, but she didn’t say anything.
She was trying.
“Let’s go put our things down,” I said.
As we headed for the tables, I spotted Juanita talking with Amber, Tim, and Kim, and I waved to them. This was a surprise, because just that morning Juanita had told me that she wasn’t coming to the dance.
Juanita hurried over, her face flush with excitement. She was wearing a dress that she’d worn to another dance the previous spring, but of course it looked amazing on her.
“What happened?” I asked. “You decided to come at the last minute?”
“Yes! I just decided, like, an hour ago.” She grabbed my hand, and then she grabbed Clara’s, too. The three of us formed an odd shape, but both Clara and I could face her, more or less.
“You guys,” she said, with a little bounce on her toes, “I had the best afternoon, and it made me so excited that I had to come out and dance with all my friends. I got some financial aid estimates, and I went over them with my parents, and they agreed to let me apply to all of the four-year colleges on Pletcher’s list. Nothing is for sure until we get the final offers, but, you guys, I think they’re going to let me go!”
“Oh my God!” Clara shouted, and she threw herself into Juanita’s arms in a giant bear hug, twisting me away from both of them. “I’m so happy for you!”
I was glad I was facing away from them. I felt shaky and flushed, and in an instant, tears had sprung up into my eyes. I rapidly brushed them away, hoping that no one was looking in my direction or noticing my reaction.
I was happy for Juanita. Thrilled for her. This was what I’d been wanting, what I’d been pushing for with all my might.
So why was my whole body trembling? And why did I have to concentrate so hard on steadying my breathing? On holding back the tears that suddenly felt like they wanted to start overflowing?
As soon as I was sure that I wasn’t crying, I twisted toward her. “Congratulations,” I said, giving her a big hug too. “That’s wonderful news.” I breathed in through my nose and blinked a couple of times. “What do you think it was that changed their minds? Was it just getting more information?”
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