Gemini

For Drew and Maya, with love for who you choose to be, who you aspire to become, and who you'll always be, no matter what

About four years ago, when I was thirteen and still prone to crying spells, my mother liked to show off her so-called wisdom by telling me that every teenage girl sometimes feels like a freak of nature. She claimed that every adolescent worries that everyone's staring at her, and every girl at some point has believed that no one likes her and that she'll never belong.

And sometimes I would just listen and try to believe her, but then this one time (I guess it was the last time she gave the speech) I said, “And does every teenage girl sometimes feel like she has a super-ugly ninety-pound tumor sticking out of her butt?”

And then the tumor started crying, and I felt pretty bad, but not bad enough to apologize.

That was a long time ago, and I have matured somewhat. I'm nicer to my sister now. Nicer to everyone, I guess, or at least I'm trying. I mean, I'm still pretty angry, but what are you going to do? It's nobody's fault, the way things are.

But back then I kind of thought,
If I'm so miserable, shouldn't she be miserable too? I mean, we're supposed to share everything, right?

We were already sharing the lower end of our spinal column, and sensations in the lower halves of our bodies. We had two totally separate upper halves—two heads, two faces, two sets of arms, the whole works. And for that matter, we also had two full pairs of legs and feet. But we were joined together at the midpoint, in basically a back-to-back position—or butt-to-butt, if you want to get all technical about it. While our stomachs were separate, our guts were, according to the world's leading medical experts, as tangled together as a vat of discarded Christmas tree lights, and partially fused.

We were two complete, full-size people, with two normal, fully functioning brains; and yet, if she ate too much pizza, we both felt a little unwell. If the doctor touched my foot, Hailey could feel it. And if I called myself a hopeless, unlovable freak, well, I supposed Hailey could feel that, too. But only if I said it out loud.

•  •  •

And so it was that when we learned a new boy would be entering our senior class, and every girl in our tiny rural school started speculating and gossiping about him—finally, a fresh boyfriend prospect, for the first time in more than a year!—I refrained from pointing out to Hailey that this was hardly any concern of ours.

Not that it was easy to hold my tongue. Sunday afternoon, the day before he was supposed to show up, we were sitting back-to-back on our bed, cross-legged, our laptops open in front of us. I was trying to concentrate on calculus, but she kept bursting out with these random nonsense questions, like, “So, what color do you think his eyes will be?” or “Do you think he'll speak any second languages?”

And I just kept laughing at her, but it made me want to scream, because it was like Hailey had no idea who she was. When I looked in the mirror, I saw what anyone else would see: a bizarre eight-limbed creature that probably shouldn't have survived the womb. But Hailey acted as if, through a strange mental glitch, she could look in the mirror and see some lovely, fascinating nymphet. And this hallucination was so real to her, she thought everyone else could see it too. Even boys.

I'm not saying I hadn't thought about them. It was hard not to, when at any given moment half our school was either making out in the hallways or discussing the latest school dance. Out here in entertainment-forsaken Bear Pass, school dances were the second-most-popular social events, surpassed only by hanging out at the Taco Bell parking lot with pilfered beers and cigarettes.

So yeah, sometimes I would fantasize about a European exchange student showing up, brilliant and witty, cheerfully amused by our small-town high jinks, with a mind as
open as the night sky. I guessed Hailey had her own version of the fantasy (less cheerfully amused, more brooding and dangerous), but even if both versions showed up, so what?

Seriously, who do you think would be the best boyfriend for a girl sharing part of her spinal column with her sister? Be honest.

Exactly.

Normal, normal, normal. It's this idiotic mantra around our house. We claim we're normal. We build our lives around that lie. It's why we can't go anywhere, or do much of anything. If we did, we'd come up against the truth.

A hundred years ago, if you were a conjoined twin, nobody was like,
Oh, sweetie, you're just like everybody else, you're totally normal, and your life is going to be totally normal, rah, rah, rah!

Hell no. They were like,
You know what, we're going to put you onstage, maybe teach you a little singing and dancing if you're lucky, and then make people pay to see this bizarre and amazing spectacle! And we're going to keep all the money for ourselves! Mwaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

It was evil, but at least it was honest, and I'm pretty sure it must have been fun sometimes. Traveling the world, playing the saxophone, meeting giants and bearded ladies.

But that's not us. We have to live in this itty-bitty place where everyone knows us, so nobody will stare or freak out at
the sight of us. Because, you know, if we freaked somebody out, that would apparently cause us to drop dead or something.

When we heard about the new guy coming to Bear Pass, I could tell Clara's first instinct was to worry about it. Like, what happens when he sees us? Will he scream? Will he faint? Will everyone else suddenly realize that we've been monsters all along?

But me, I just hoped he would turn out to be someone interesting. Because I really needed a few more interesting people in my life.

“You know he's going to ask us all those questions,” Clara said at one point, leaning over her shoulder to talk while we worked on our homework. “All the same ones that everybody else always asks. Don't you hate that?”

“Better that he asks,” I said. “Remember when Vanessa moved here, freshman year? She was too afraid to ask anything, but you could just feel her wondering all the time. It was way worse.”

“Was it, though?”

“You know what we should do?” I said. “We should type up a list of our Frequently Asked Questions. We can hand it to him the first time we see him. Get it all out of the way and move on.”

“If you do that,” Clara said, “I will stab you with a fork.”

“Yeah, we wouldn't want the new guy to think the conjoined twins are weird or anything.”

But I typed them up anyway, just for fun.

Clara and Hailey's Frequently Asked Questions

Question:
How did it happen?

My answer:
We were in a helicopter accident in Panama, and at the moment of impact, the heat and force fused our backs together.

Clara's answer:
Actually, identical twins happen when one sperm fertilizes one egg, but then the cells divide and separate and become two people. In our case, we didn't quite separate all the way.

Question:
Does it bother you when people stare?

My answer:
Yeah, Emma Watson and I text each other about it constantly. We're both thinking about trying to become less beautiful so people will leave us alone.

Clara's answer:
Yeah.

Question:
Don't you hate never being able to get away from each other or have any privacy?

My answer:
Don't you hate never being able to flap your wings and fly? Or breathe underwater? Don't you hate sometimes having to be alone?

Clara's answer:
It's true, we all get used to the bodies we have, right? You probably can't jump as high as an NBA player, but how often does it ever bother you? Being attached is just normal for us. We only wish it didn't seem so weird to everyone else.

My follow-up answer:
But seriously, how can you deal with sometimes having to be alone? I can't even imagine what that must feel like. It must be unbearable sometimes. It must make you wish you could surgically attach yourself to another person so you wouldn't ever have to be alone. Doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

When we got to school on Monday, Juanita was in the parking lot, scrolling through messages on her phone as she waited for us. As soon as we started our slow, awkward shuffle down the ramp of the family minivan, she put the phone away and started talking.

“Clara, what did you get on that last physics problem? I'm not sure if I did it right.”

Hailey was going first down the ramp, with me backing out after her, so I couldn't see Juanita's face, but I could hear her anxiety. I wasn't sure why, but Juanita always seemed to be haunted by the thought of getting even one problem wrong.

“Why didn't you call me?” I asked as I backed down the ramp.

“More importantly,” Hailey said, “have you seen the new guy?”

“Yeah, I saw him at Mollie's Market. Will you look at my equations during morning break?”

“What's he look like?” Hailey demanded.

“Not your type,” Juanita assured her. We reached the sidewalk and stood beside her, angled so we could both see her. Although our anatomy puts us back-to-back, Hailey and I have stretched ourselves toward each other over the years, so we can both face in pretty nearly the same direction at the same time.

Juanita's thick black hair fell across her shoulders and halfway to her elbows in smooth, glossy perfection. She was president of our class and of half a dozen student clubs, and she was in every honors class that the school offered, but no matter how late at night she finished her homework, she always got up early enough to have amazing hair.

“More details,” Hailey demanded.

“He's tall,” Juanita said, “and kind of cute, I guess, but he's got one of those really sweet-looking, smiley kinds of faces. Blue eyes, I think. Too sunny for you. No clouds, no dark and stormy secrets. Sort of light brown, almost blond hair.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Pretty much the same as Clara's hair color, actually.”

“Ah!” said Hailey. “What do they call that color again? Dishwater? Fish washer? Wishy-washy?”

I shook my head, smiling despite myself. “You know, your hair is the same color as mine, Hailey.”

“No, it's not,” she said, “because I have enough sense to dye mine. My hair color is a sign of my taste and good judgment. Yours is just lazy.”

What you have to understand about my sister is that Hailey is a pink-haired, tattooed conjoined twin. Yup, let me say it again—a pink-haired, tattooed conjoined twin. Her hair, in case I didn't mention this before, is
pink
. Like she's afraid that otherwise no one is going to notice her. Like she might not have any chance of standing out in a crowd if she didn't have
pink hair
. (The tattoo is just a butterfly on her shoulder. I wouldn't let her get one on her ankle, because I can feel what happens to her ankle, and I've heard tattoos are really painful, so I vetoed that. But the shoulder, while I may not approve, is her own body, to abuse as she wishes. Even if spending two hours at a tattoo parlor adjoining a grimy local bar, where Dad secretly snuck us while Mom was away one weekend, is not exactly my idea of a good time.)

“My hair is natural,” I said, “and at least it doesn't make me look insane.”