AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She says it’s ’cause we’re twins. It’s our superpower—feeling each other’s feelings, sensing where the other is.
But if that’s true, then what about me? I can’t read her mind at all. I can’t do anything special or cool like the heroes in my comic books.
I draw, I guess, but I wouldn’t say it’s special. Not like how she plays piano. She has a gift. That’s what Daddy and Mommy and her new piano teacher Madam Elise say.
I don’t have any gifts. Izzy got them all.
Maybe it just hasn’t happened yet…
Maybe I’m like Spider-Man. Maybe it’ll happen when I’m older.
Izzy just got lucky. She was born that way—a mutant.
Way above my head, big-bulb string lights twinkle from where they hang around our treehouse, just like the stars starting to peek out from the growing darkness creeping across the sky.
Crickets chirp. Windchimes that Mommy hung up around our fort tinkle in the summer breeze blowing through. And somewhere, not too far away, cars whoosh by along wet pavement from the other side of the woods.
The ground is soft and damp under my butt, and the air still smells like rain, though it stopped hours ago. I look up through my lashes at the sky, imagining drawing it, coloring it, what crayons I’d use—timberwolf and outer space for the fluffy gray clouds off to my right, puffing over the mountains like smoke. Burnt orange and dandelion for the swirls of fire left over from the sunken sun. And midnight and silver for the inky blue darkness spotted with stars and a sliver-sized moon sliding into place like the pictures flicking by in my ViewMaster.
Another stick cracks loudly, echoing, and I hear my sister mutter, “Crap.”
She’s closer now. Any second now, she’s gonna spot me.
I hunch my shoulders, sniffling. A glance down shows that the scrapes on my knees from when I fell tripping over a branch stopped bleeding. It’s all dry and crusty, just like the dirt stuck to my skin. It’s gross, and kind of burns, but I don’t want to go inside yet.
Izzy was fightin’ with Mommy and Daddy. They broke the news to us tonight that I wouldn’t be going into first grade with her and Waylon this year. That I got held back.
Apparently I have to spend this year in some special program called transition, where I’ll get more one-on-one help with my reading and social skills. At least, that’s how Daddy explained it. I don’t really get it. I can read just fine…in my head. It’s when teachers make me read out loud that my brain and tongue don’t wanna work right, and then I get all sick and achy.
My belly twists now at remembering how bad it got last year, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
Please don’t throw up, please don’t throw up.
“There you are,” Izzy says with a huff, before plopping down in front of me, not caring how wet and dirty it is. She never cares about stuff like that. Daddy calls her a tomboy.
She curls her knees up, copycatting my position, and rocks forward, giving me no choice but to lift my head so we’re pressed together forehead to forehead, knee to knee.
Brown eyes the same color as mine peer back at me from between gold lashes.
When I asked Mommy what shade our eyes were—she has brown eyes like us too—she said amber. But there’s no crayon that color, so I have to use sepia when drawing us.
“So?” I utter quietly. My belly clenches.
Her jaw hardens in that way it does when she’s angry or bein’ stubborn about something, and she gives a quick little shake of her head, her long, frizzy brown hair getting swept up in the breeze.
That twisting in my belly loosens and drops, my face crumplin’.
I swallow a couple times, practicing what Mommy told me to do when I feel like this—nervous and sick.
My sister didn’t get them to change their mind. If anyone could, it would be her. It’s why I didn’t even bother getting all upset about this. She beat me to it. And why make things worse when I could just let her take over? They’d probably be more likely to listen to her anyway. She’s good at gettin’ what she wants.
So, when no one was looking, I snuck out here instead, leaving her to it.
“They said it’s what’s best for you,” Izzy murmurs, nose wrinkling in that way it does when she smiles or when she’s fighting tears. Right now, she’s definitely not smiling.
My eyes burn, and I wonder if it’s my twin powers finally kicking in—our s’pposed connection finally working both ways—and I sniffle again, hopeful but also still really, really sad.
“It’s stupid. They don’t know anything. We’re s’pposed to be together. Always. That’s what’s best.”
