“You,” he answered, and I wondered what he saw.
A tiny glow of light flickered out in the yard, the first of the lightning bugs making their nightly appearance. I cupped Ian’s chin in my hand and turned his head away from me. At first there was just the one. I traced its path as it darted at the edge of the woods. Then more joined in, creating an entire blanket of lights bobbing at the edge of the yard.
“I caught one once,” I told him. “When I was seven or so. I put it in a jar and set it on the table next to my bed. It made the tiniest of lights in my bedroom that night, and I fell asleep staring at it. The next morning, it was dead.” I hadn’t caught any more after that, even though Pops told me they didn’t live long anyway. It seemed selfish to catch them like that, just so I could watch them glow up close.
Ian leaned in, his breath tickling my face. His lips were my lips, and even the fireflies faded.
My heart pounded and my stomach fluttered and twisted. I loved being with Ian, and I hated myself for it. Because I wanted to be with Luke, too. I shouldn’t have been able to even think about Luke when Ian was kissing me that way. His kiss was sweet, lingering and deep, but careful, and not at all the way Luke kissed me. But Luke was trouble—I knew that from the very beginning. And it wasn’t just because he told me he was. There was something dangerous about him. All the sarcasm in the world couldn’t hide his anger.
Ian stroked my cheek with his thumb, kissing the edges of my mouth, and I found it easier to push Luke out of my head. All I knew for certain was that I liked them both. I liked them both way more than I should have.
Kissing Jenna was like trying to hold water in my hands. No matter what I did, I couldn’t keep her from trickling away. I tried to press her into my mind, form her into some tangible image that I could keep with me even when she wasn’t there. I made a memory of her to keep my few remaining memories company. And while my memories were hazy black-and-white photographs, Jenna’s were vivid, 3D movies. The more I was around her, the more I listened to Jenna’s stories and began to make some of them mine, the brighter everything seemed. The brighter
I
seemed. My blurred edges became sharp and defined. I was afraid of losing that.
I didn’t know how much of me was already gone. Unrecoverable. I didn’t even know how much of me was really me. The gaps in my memory were bridged by what everyone told me I was. Like a mockingbird, I repeated and mimicked what I heard and was told. I didn’t know if a mockingbird even had its own song. I didn’t know if I did. I only knew I was a good athlete because everyone told me I was. I knew I was an honor student because everyone told me I was. I had trophies to prove it. I had awards and pictures, but I’d lost the experiences. I wasn’t even sure if the things I did remember were my actual memories or just remnants of the stories I’d been told.
This town, and this girl, had such a deep past. There were families who’d been here since this place was just a pit stop, generations in the same place. These memories went back years, and I wanted a piece of that. If I couldn’t have my past, then I was going to have a future, and I was going to make sure Jenna was a part of it.
That was one of the reasons I had come straight here after my session with Dr. Benson. We’d spent most of the time talking around the issue, and I couldn’t remember anything more than when I first got here. Spending an hour stumbling in the dark made me want to sit in the sun. It made me anxious to find what I’d lost, but it also made me even more determined to make sure I held on to as much of each day as I could.
Being with Jenna helped. She was fascinating to watch because she watched everything. She followed her mother’s every movement, from the time she sat down to eat, to each time she went in the kitchen to refill her drink. Jenna steered the conversation away from herself and to her mother, which wasn’t hard, since her mom seemed to like to talk, and mostly about herself. Vivian Oliver was funny and witty, but she was sad, even when she was smiling. She reminded me a little of my mom. I could tell that Jenna just wanted her mom to be happy and was frustrated she couldn’t do anything about it. I knew exactly what that felt like. It was like trying to tear down a brick wall with bare hands—painful and futile.
I brushed my fingers through Jenna’s hair and down the side of her neck. Goose bumps formed under my fingers as I trailed along her collarbone. But it didn’t matter how tightly I tried to hold on, she flowed out of my grasp. She kissed me lightly on the lips and smiled. Her smile would cause crops to grow in the middle of winter.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said.
“To what?”
“To tell me a memory.” She asked the impossible, and I found myself wanting to give it to her.
“I’d rather hear yours,” I told her. “I like your stories.”
“You never talk about your family. I really don’t know that much about you.”
“There’s not much to tell,” I lied. “You know the important things.”
I could tell she didn’t believe me. “Luke isn’t important?” she asked, then seemed surprised, like she hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
Shock jolted down my spine like electricity.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a brother?” she asked. “A twin?”
I didn’t know what to tell her, since there were so many reasons I’d kept Luke a secret and I didn’t want her to know about any of them.
“It never came up. How do you know Luke?” My voice was harsher than I wanted it to be.
“I came by a couple of weeks ago to see you. I met Luke instead.”
I hated the way she said his name—that she knew his name at all. There was a familiar tug at the back of my brain, a promise of a headache and anger. Then a vague feeling of sameness as the blonde girl appeared in the yard. I knew she wasn’t really there, and I wondered if I was losing my mind. She screamed words I couldn’t hear. I tried not to lose my temper. This wasn’t Jenna’s fault. The blame belonged where it always did.
“Luke didn’t tell me,” I said. Of course not. He knew better.
Jenna straightened her shoulders and turned to face me. “You didn’t, either.”
She blamed me. Nothing about this was my fault. “You don’t know Luke,” I said. And it was a good thing. “There’s a reason I didn’t tell you about him.” I didn’t need to find all my memories to know Luke had never been able to control himself. It was why we were in this mess. “I was trying to protect you,” I told her. And Luke, if I was being honest. As mad as I was at him, I still felt the need to shield him. Even if it was from his own stupid, irresponsible self.
“From your brother? That’s ridiculous.”
Her voice told me she knew him better than I wanted her to. But she didn’t know him at all, not really. She wouldn’t be defending him if she did.
The blonde girl danced in the dark spots of my vision, and I realized where I’d seen her before. The picture. I tried to remember her, but before I could even try and focus, she slipped behind the walls of the maze my mind had constructed. I needed to talk to Luke.
“I have to go,” I said, standing up and causing the swing to rock back. I should have known something was different. Luke hadn’t spent nearly as much time in his room as usual. And while he normally reveled in his self-loathing way too much, the other day I overheard him whistling. He never whistled.
I wanted to stay with Jenna, but I had to get home. Because I was responsible. Because I did what I was told. Because I wasn’t Luke.
I felt a headache coming. It was just a scratching at the base of my skull, but I knew it would be a clawing before I could get home. They’d been getting worse, and I was having trouble sleeping. I didn’t know if it was the headaches or the dreams. Both were painful. I kept having the same dream. Nightmare, really.
I dreamt I was in the tree house, the one Luke had built when we were kids. That memory hadn’t disappeared—I had a picture of it in my room. I wasn’t sure if I really remembered the tree house, or just the picture. In my dream I was in the tree house. Jenna was there, taking the thing apart. She removed boards, first from the roof, then the walls, and finally, from the platform where I stood. I screamed, because the tree was too high and I couldn’t get down. I yelled that she would kill me as the floor got smaller and smaller. But she never heard me, never looked up. It was almost like she didn’t see me. No matter how much I screamed or how loud I yelled her name, she kept working. The air filled with the screech of her prying the nails out of the boards. And then I saw what she was doing with them.
She was handing them to Luke.
He was in another tree, one that was bigger and stronger. Jenna handed him the boards, and he built a new tree house. For her. With her. I woke up just as Jenna took the last piece of wood from my house; I woke up right as I was falling out of the tree.
This dream had been trying to tell me what Luke wouldn’t. We’d always just known things about the other. Luke had felt the pain of my appendix bursting. I gripped the steering wheel. The idea of Luke spending time with Jenna made me dizzy. She said they’d only met once, but that was once too many. She knew about him, and I couldn’t take that back. It couldn’t be fixed. But I could make sure it didn’t go any further than that. Luke was in his room when I got home, but I went to the living room first. The box of pictures sat underneath the window, but I couldn’t find the blonde girl. I flipped through every single album, but she wasn’t there. Someone, probably Mom, had removed those pictures, erasing her from our ink and paper lives. I didn’t know why, but I could guess who was to blame.
Luke was the reason for every bad thing that had happened recently. I was having a hard time remembering the good times, since my past was fuzzy and out of focus. But the last few months were all jagged edges and dizzying drops, and Luke was the cause. He was the reason our parents divorced. If he hadn’t hit Dad, if Dad hadn’t hit him back, then Mom and Dad wouldn’t have split up. Dad wouldn’t resent me as well. If it weren’t for Luke, Mom wouldn’t be depressed. I wouldn’t hear her crying herself to sleep at night, helpless to fix it. I wasn’t going to let him take away the one solid thing in my life. He wasn’t getting Jenna.
“We need to talk,” I told him through the locked door. I had no idea when we’d started locking one another out. We’d shared a room for years, until we were fourteen, and there’d never been any locks between us. There’d never been any secrets either. A lot had changed since then.
The door opened. Looking at Luke wasn’t really like looking into a mirror; Luke’s face was usually twisted in a mocking way. He always looked like he was waiting to start something. This time it was my turn.
“Well, hello there, brother,” Luke said. “Long time no see.”
“Cut the crap, Luke. Why didn’t you tell me about Jenna?”
His eyes flashed surprise before his mask of arrogance slid back into place. “Why didn’t you?” he asked. “Afraid of a little competition?”
I clenched my fists. I couldn’t hit him, no matter how badly I wanted to. I was the good twin. I wasn’t supposed to get angry. I wasn’t supposed to want Luke as far away from me as possible. But I was getting sick of trying to be that Ian.
I knew something was up when Ian banged on the door. He hardly ever came to my room anymore. I’d been asleep, but when he started hollering, I pulled out of my stupor.
He knew about Jenna—sort of. He knew I’d met her. I admitted it. He hollered some more. Good thing Mom was still at work. She really hated confrontation. That was why she’d left Dad instead of hanging around and trying to work things out. Not that anything could be worked out with Dad. He made sure he was always right, even when he was wrong.
“Don’t you realize how lucky you are?” I said. Ian was acting so unbelievably selfish, which was totally out of character. Usually that was my role. “You don’t have any idea what it’s like to live with this kind of guilt. You have no idea what it’s like to remember and know it’s your fault. You’re lucky you have no memories.” God, I hated him for that. And myself for feeling that way.
But I didn’t want Ian to remember that night. He hated me enough already, and that was just for the divorce. For my behavior. If he knew what I’d done, who he’d lost, he’d never forgive me. And I didn’t think I could stand that.
“Are you kidding?” His voice rose several octaves. “I have no memories which don’t include you. I have no life that isn’t part of someone else’s. I have a three-month gap where I remember absolutely nothing. I know what you’ve told me, what Mom and Dad have told me, but that isn’t a whole hell of a lot. I want a life that doesn’t include you.”
I couldn’t blame him. I’d want the same thing. Hell, sometimes I did want the same thing. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
“Stay away from her,” Ian told me. “She deserves better.”
I knew he was right, but I didn’t want him to be. Jenna wasn’t mine, but I couldn’t stand the way Ian talked about her. Like she was his. I didn’t want to think about her smiling at him, kissing him. Ian was exactly who Jenna should have been with. He was everything she should have wanted, and if I cared about her at all, everything I should have wanted for her. But I didn’t. I shouldn’t have wanted her, not after what had happened with Ian’s last girlfriend. I didn’t deserve to be happy, but all of a sudden, I wanted to be. “And you think you’re better?”
“I always have been. Just stay away from Jenna.”
I nodded, but I knew I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to. And I didn’t.
This time, when the phone rang in the middle of the night, I knew who it was. Ian was the responsible one, the one who made sure I was home by curfew. Luke snuck me out of the house. I was surprised to find I’d sort of been expecting the call. Or maybe just hoping for it.
“Can I come up?” Luke’s voice was rough and quiet, reaching into my chest and wrapping itself around my lungs. I didn’t even let my mom in my room, and I’d never had a boy in there. I didn’t know if I wanted him to see me that bare.