by Gen Phan
She crossed her arms defensively and her face puckered and pouted back to the usual McKenzie look she wore.
"OMG, I'm just so over this conversation right now I could die!" She straightened her skirt and wiped the mascara from her face, eliminating all traces of the McKenzie that had just fallen apart and suddenly I got it all. My light bulb moment.
This McKenzie that sat in front of me right now. The one that bitched and moaned and pouted was not the real McKenzie at all. This was all for show. All a defense. And my heart felt like it broke again. Just like our relationship had, or maybe I was the one who had broken in.
"McKenzie..." I inched towards her.
"What?" She snapped at me.
"I'm sorry. I mean it. I'm really sorry."
She eyed me suspiciously, as if she didn't believe a words coming out of my mouth, "For what?" She whispered, looking emotional again. She was like a roller coaster right now, and I had never seen her this "un-composed".
"For everything. For abandoning you like that to Mike. But I didn't think you even liked me. It was like one day you just stopped liking me, I never knew you-"
She cut me off with a scream. "I had to stop liking you! Don't you get it? Because if I let myself like you, love you like I used to, it would have just been too...."
She burst into tears again, and this time without questioning my instinct I rushed over and hugged her. She hugged me back so hard that it hurt.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry McKenzie." It was all I could say and all I kept repeating over and over again. It felt good to hug her and all those childhood emotions rushed back. Inseparable twins, joined at the hip, partners in crime- that's what everyone had said about us.
"I'm sorry too," she said into my neck, which felt distinctly wet now from all the tears. "I'm sorry I messed stuff up with Mike."
I shook my head. "It's okay." And in that moment I meant it, and I didn't know what the hell that meant.
We both pulled away from each other and our eyes locked. For the longest time we just started at each other. It happened slowly, McKenzie curled her nose up and wiggled it at me and I smiled. I remember this, she had this weird ability to wiggle her nose and it had always made me laugh as a child. Whenever I was sad, McKenzie was there wiggling her nose. I smiled back at her. Soon my smile grew and without thinking about it, I was chuckling.
"It looks even more ridiculous now!" I said in between a laugh.
"What does." She wiggled her nose again and we both burst out laughing. This moment was so nostalgic, it was filled with all the happy memories of our childhood and more.
"So what does this mean?" I asked her.
She shrugged. "I don't know. But maybe we could start over or something? Maybe?"
I nodded at her. "I think I'd like that."
"Me too." A tear rolled down her check again and this time I joined her.
"FUCK!" She shouted. "I wish I could stop this crying, it's so messy and my mascara is not waterproof!"
I laughed again. That was such a McKenzie thing to say. In a good way.
Mike
I'd been sitting in my bedroom staring out the window expecting to see Maria, but as the hours past, and Maria had not made an appearance, I started to wonder if her dad had locked her up in a room somewhere. Something like that.
It was official, Mr. Glover was just about the most intimidating person I'd ever met. Ever. Especially when he smiled and acted nice, that was when he was most intimidating. But although I had shook on it, I wasn't sure how I was meant to not see Maria for a whole week. I still wanted to talk to her. I wanted to figure this whole thing out. It was such a mess still and I'd said some things that I regretted. Still, she had lied and a part of me still felt betrayed.
A whole week! That would be the longest that Maria and I hadn't seen each other for. Although there had been the odd family holiday that had kept us apart, but we had been in constant communication. A thought hit me, and I couldn't believe I had forgotten all about it. I grabbed my phone and messaged my go-to guy.
Mike: Hey, did you know Maria got suspended for a week?
Brett: Check Facebook. Check Twitter. Check everything.
I logged onto my Facebook feed and there it was. It even had it's own hash tag. #Twinwars. Almost all our friends had seen it or posted it. My feed was littered with pictures of Maria and Mckenzie in a full-blown bitch slap session. The photos were grainy and out of focus, the kind taken on cell phones in the heat of a moment. There was even a video. I clicked on it and watched, and my jaw dropped.
The video showed Maria and McKenzie going for it. Really, really going for it. There was hitting, slapping and hair pulling. Maria was screaming something at Mckenzie over and over again but the quality was so bad, and a teacher was screaming loudly over the fighting, that I couldn't hear what it was.
Was I really the cause of this?
I scrolled down and started to read the comments and my blood boiled. Rage filled every single part of my body.
Chase: Nothing like seeing two hot chicks fighting. #hottwinwars
I fucking hated him right now. And I was glad I whipped his stupid ass and smeared him across the tennis court earlier. I tossed my phone on my desk and felt totally lost. It had only been a few hours since I'd seen Maria, but somehow I felt like a ship without an anchor. Floating aimlessly. It made me realize just how dependent I was on her. And perhaps she on me. We'd been wrapped up in our own world for most of our lives. Without her.... well, I don't know.
I saw movement in her room and raced to the window. The curtains were closed but I could see a shadow. Two shadows. I wanted to throw a stone at the window, but feared that Mr.Glover would pop out from behind the curtain. What the hell was going on there? I was desperate to know.
I started tying a message to Maria and stared at it, unsure about whether I should send it or not. Surly it was okay, I mean, It wasn't anything hectic.
Mike: U ok?
My finger hovered over the send button for ages. I wondered what kind of punishment Mr. Glover was able to inflict if I contacted Maria? He was a man of means, he could probably hire a hit man at the snap of his executive finger.
I heard a loud noise and looked at their driveway as Maria's mothers car pulled out. And then Maria and McKenzie walked out dragging suitcases behind them. I watched as they loaded the suitcases into the back of the car. Maria's mother and father then followed suit, loading bags into the car and then climbing in.
Panic. Where were they all going?
I jumped up and ran from my room. Flew down the stairs tripping down a whole bunch as I went. I ran out the house and into the road just as the car pulled off and started driving down the street. I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could, but it was not enough. My lungs felt like they were going to explode and I could taste blood. As the car turned the corner Maria turned and looked at me. She was so far away, but I could still make out the tiny wave as she disappeared out of sight.
Mike
I stood in the middle of the street. I might as well have be standing in the middle of an empty desert. Nothing around me but sand in all directions, as far as the eye could see. No signs of life. Just a flat nothingness. That's how I felt. Totally alone and lost.
And what was killing me the most was that I didn't even know where she was going, or when she was coming back. Those suitcases had not been a good sign at all.
I pulled out my phone. Fuck, I didn't care what her dad did to me at this point, but I was phoning her. He could turn his big, shiny fancy car around and come and run me over for all I cared. At least i would get to see Maria again and find out where the hell they were all going. I started to dial her number. I didn't even need to look down at the keys as the muscle memory in my fingers took over. I had dialled this number so many times. I could probably dial it in my sleep. Probably comatose too.
Her phone started to ring and it was the cue for my heart to start pounding with anticipation. I was either going to hear her
voice, or her dads voice. But after several rings, it went to voice mail. I rang again, and again and again as I walked back towards my house, passing Maria's on the way.
A strange, slight echoing sound make me stop and look in the direction of Maria's room. I could hear a phone ringing, but that would be impossible, Maria never went anywhere without her phone. Ever. I hung up and the echo stopped at exactlly the same time. I dialed her number again and the strange echo-ish ring started up again. I ran for the trellis and climbed into her bedroom, and there, on her bedside table, was her phone.
My heart sunk as the reality hit me... how was I meant to get hold of her? And why the hell had she left her phone. I looked through my contacts for McKenzie's number and rang it...again with the strange echo! I followed the sound into McKenzie's room where I found her phone in the drawer next to her bed.
What was going on here? This was like the twilight zone or something. Maria and McKenzie were both gone. Rushed away by their parents, and their phones were still here. I had visions of their parents driving them off to some girl's boarding school. A school for delinquent young ladies, or something equally dramatic like that. For all I knew Maria's mother was insisting on shipping them off to some finishing school in Switzerland because they had been suspended. The more I though about it all, the worse the scenarios in my head were getting. And with each scenario, it was becoming more and more unlikely that I would ever see Maria again...for the rest of my living life on this planet.
I rushed back into Maria's room wondering if there was a clue as to where they were all going. Maybe she'd left me a secret note. We'd once written each other notes in class in invisible ink, but there were no signs of it anywhere. I went to her desk where her computer always was, but it was gone. Now I was really worried. Only in the worse case scenario imaginable, like a witness protection program, would a family suddenly disappear leaving all their phones behind, like they were trying to erase their identities, but taking their laptops with them.
I was really starting to panic and threw myself onto Maria's bed hoping it would provide some kind of familiar comfort. I had stared up at that ceiling so many times over the years. I think that I had just taken it for granted that I would always be able to stare up at this celling, and that Maria would also always be there. But now she wasn't, and now it was just me and the boring ceiling on our own.
A darker reality was starting to slide in and take up space in my mind. Maria might not always be here. For some reason she felt more far away now, and not just physically, than she'd ever felt before. That strange, psychic connection thing that we usually had, where we just knew what the other person was thinking or feeling, seemed to be gone. The link to Maria felt severed.
I closed my eyes and tried to reconnect. To reestablish the invisible link, I know how weird that sounds. But it was all I could think of doing. I concentrated as hard as I could on her. I recreated her in my mind down to the minutest detail I could remember. She had the tinniest scar on the top of her forehead. I remember the day she'd gotten it, it was about six years ago. We'd been chasing each other around the garden one summer and she'd tripped and hit her head. There was so much blood and her mom had rushed her to the doctor where she'd gotten a few stitches. She was so proud of those stitches, and I'd thought they were the coolest things ever. So hardcore.
Her face was full of freckles this time of year, and on her left cheek, there were three that looked like they were the corers of a perfect triangle if you traced over them with a pen...
In my mind I saw her smile at me, like she always did. Fuck, how had I never noticed how beautiful she was before? How perfect she was for me. How had I not realized that the girl of my dreams had been staring me in the face this whole time?
And why when I finally, finally realized it, after all these years, was she suddenly so far away from me. Out of my reach.
I opened my eyes again. An impending sense of doom started to swallow me up, and I was overcome with a feeling that I was too late. I had waited too long to catch on, and now the ship had sailed. I had had her for only a second, and now she was gone.
Maria
I stepped out onto the wrap around patio that surrounded our lake house. The sun was setting and it was beautiful. A orange, golden spray of light danced over the still surface of the water. It's aways beautiful here. Our house was perched high on the hill overlooking the enormous lake, so large that it was lined by stoney beaches. The house was tucked away in huge pines that looked like they had been growing forever. If those pines could speak... God, lame thought, but the stories they could tell and then things that they must have seen.
But talk about uncharacteristic impulsivity though! My dad had very suddenly, and loudly, declared that he could take a few days off work. He never took days off work. In fact, he would probably drag his bloody self there if he got run over and lost an arm. He declared again that we should pack our bags, and then declared (even louder this time) that we were going to the lake house for a few days. He had made a lot of declarations.
Family bonding... he'd said.
A time away to think and reflect... he'd used those words too.
Unfortunately, for me, the lake house was also packed with memories of Mike and I. We'd spent a whole summer here once. Reflecting back, it was one of those holidays that McKenzie had been particularly bitchy to me. And now I knew why. And in fairness to her, she actually had every right to be. I was the bitch.....
I can't begin to explain the depth of my regret for what happened with her. The guilt I now felt over dissing her completely, and over night I might add, for Mike. Almost forgetting about her entirely, to the point that she did everything, and anything she could, just to be noticed by me. Shame, that was the other emotion that was contorting my stomach into nauseous knots right now and really making me think about the way I'd spent the last decade of my life.
Lets review. Because when I do, I start to see a picture I wasn't sure I totally liked. It involved me, running around after a guy. Non stop. Always. Day and night. He'd consumed my every waking moment, and most of my thoughts. I'd created an entire life around him to the exclusion of almost everyone around me. Jarred for example, I'd never given it a proper go. Not that I was saying it would work. In fact, it probably wouldn't have worked, but I had never let myself even try.
"Hey?" McKenzie slid up behind me with a cup of hot chocolate. She had one too. Big pink marshmallows floating on top and a generous sprinkling of chocolate.
"That's a trip down memory lane," I said, taking the cup and remembering the good old days, before my mother became allergic to sugar. McKenzie and I used to build tents in the lounge and "camp" there for the night. We'd pretend we were in some far off, mystic fairytale land and drink our hot chocolate. That of course was before... well...
"You're thinking about Mike." She said leaning against the balustrade and looking at me.
I nodded. "I feel so stupid..."
"Don't!" She cut me off with a hand to her shoulder and then stopped and smiled. "God this kind of feels weird, right? Us? Like this...." Her face turned solemn and she removed her hand quickly, like she had scolded it on fire. "This is not... I mean, this is real, right? Not temporary. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and you're gone again. All Gone Girl, without Ben Affleck or something? Except you're prettier than that chick that acted in the film... whatever."
I smiled at her. I'd missed this. Her strange quirks, the way she phrased things. She had this unique way about her. A kind of bubbly, effervescent personality that had been stifled for so long, mainly due to me. And like a champagne cork popped open, it was now spewing out and it was more fizzy and fun than ever.
"No. This is real." I went in for a hug and realised that our mugs were in the way.
"Air hug!" McKenzie quickly declared and mimed patting me on the back with her free hand! I laughed out loud. I can't believe I'd forgotten how funny she was.
We both heard a noise and turned. Our full-of-declarations
father was standing at the window holding a fancy looking glass of red wine. He had a smile on his face and raised his glass to us both in a toast. We held our mugs up and in that moment, this amazing rush of warmth came over me. I had not felt this connected to my family in years. And maybe I had forgotten how good that connection felt. And then, in true mother fashion, she came out of the shadows like a demon and grabbed my dads wine glass. A wiggle of a finger, a shake of disapproval and she was off with it!
McKenzie and I smiled at each other in mutual amused-appreciation of this strange woman that was our mother. No doubt she was going to give my dad a lecture later about how bad wine was for his cholesterol, or arthritis, or bones, or teeth or other bodily part or disease that he did not have.
"So, what are you going to do about him?" McKenzie turned to me, after the parental show was over, and asked.
I shrugged. "I love him." I bit my lip and tried not to show the emotions.
"I know." She sighed. "I really like him, despite what I've said to you over the years. He's pretty cool, albeit as blind as a mole rat... wait, are they blind? Oh, that's bats. Ag, you know what I mean."
"He is cool." I said. "He's awesome, he's Mike. I don't think I know what my life would be like if I didn't love him. It's almost all I know."
McKenzie nodded, looking like she was thinking hard about this. "Well, if it's meant to be, love with find a way. Look at the gay marriage thing, Love Won! That's saying something!"
"Does love always win?" I asked tentatively.
"I don't know. I'm the wrong person to be asking, I totally suck at relationships. Look at all the prize-winning douche bags I've dated over the years..." She looked behind her and then whispered in my ear, "Honestly, I only dated a few of them to freak mom out!" She flashed me a conspiratorial smile followed by a wink.
"I might start dating a chick to freak her out even further." I quipped back.