The Opposite of Me (41 page)

I paused, staring down at the envelope in my hands.

The normal thing to do would have been to shove the envelope back into the shoe box and race to the hospital, where, right about now, the surgeon’s gloved hand was poised to cut into Alex’s naked skull and the anesthesiologist was monitoring her
steady, deep breathing, and machines beeped and hissed while nurses stood by over trays of savage-looking instruments.

That would’ve been the natural thing to do. So why didn’t I do it?

Why did I open that envelope? What compelled me to look inside it while the Magic 8 Ball’s murky eyeball stared up at me?

Words jumped out as I scanned the first page: “. . . official results . . . Stanford-Benet . . . intelligence quotient . . .”

My God, these were the results of the IQ tests Alex and I had taken in the fourth grade. I glanced down at Alex’s score; then I flipped the page, to my score. I read it once, blinked hard, read it again. The room swirled around me, spinning faster and faster as I stared down at the papers in my hand. How could this be? There had to be a glitch somewhere, some flaw in the system. It must be a computer error.

I double-checked the names at the tops of the pages again. But nothing had changed. Alex and I had different Social Security numbers, and different fourth-grade teachers. All of that information was correct, so the scores had to be, too.

How could this be?

I was smart. Garden-variety, run-of-the-mill bright. Your average clever kid, the kind that can be found in every classroom all across the country.

But Alex was a genius.

Part Four
 

 

Trading Places

Twenty-six
 

 

AT OUR OLD ELEMENTARY school, there were two boys with faces full of freckles and round blue eyes and curls that looked spring-loaded. Their names were Johnny and Tommy, and they were identical twins, the only pair in the school. They were cute enough to star in a commercial for breakfast cereal, or to be the world’s most cherubic-looking altar boys.

But looks were more than just deceiving in this case; looks were shifty-eyed snake-oil salesmen who took your money and skedaddled to the next town in the dead of night before you woke up and realized you’d been suckered.

Because angel-faced Tommy and Johnny were total hellions.

Tommy—or it could’ve been Johnny—once leaned over his desk, a pair of scissors in hand, and snipped off the long, shiny braid of the girl sitting ahead of him. Johnny—or maybe Tommy—snuck a garden snake into school under his shirt and threw it in the teachers’ lounge before closing the door and holding it shut with all of his ten-year-old might. They tied sheets together and rappelled down the side of their house (one broken leg—Johnny); they bribed the neighborhood girls to show them their private parts (two victories; two apoplectic fathers); and they stole a life
guard’s bullhorn and snuck up behind unsuspecting adults, bellowing, “Fire!” (one near heart attack—old Mrs. Mullens). They were constantly being hauled into the principal’s office, where their harried mother would come, a baby on one hip and a runny-nosed toddler trailing behind her, throwing around apologies like confetti as she dragged one or both of the twins home.

But no one was ever sure if the right kid was being punished. Because Tommy and Johnny also loved to switch identities.

“Tommy!” our teacher would bellow after he’d belched the alphabet in the lunchroom.

The kid—whoever it was—would invariably shout, “It wasn’t me! I’m Johnny!”

“No he isn’t!” an outraged voice would shriek. “
I’m
Johnny!”

What would it be like to slip into another person’s skin like that? I wondered once as I watched the giggling boys swap jackets before heading home. How would it feel to shed your own identity and try on someone else’s? Would it be like wiggling into tights that were three sizes too small, or would it feel deliciously liberating?

Who would I change into, if I could be anyone at all? I wondered as I loaded my backpack with gifted and talented math notebooks and Great Books reading assignments while Alex flitted past in the hallways, a gaggle of girls trailing behind her like ladies-in-waiting.

Would I become the president? A princess? A superhero with the ability to fly and see through walls?

If anything were possible, who would I be?

Who was I?

I stared down at the papers clutched in my hands as the words on them finally stopped churning and twisting around and slowly settled back onto the page. My entire life was a mis
take. I was never supposed to be a National Merit semifinalist, or make the dean’s list, or win a scholarship to grad school.
Alex
was supposed to do all that.

Everything I’d thought about myself had been flipped upside down. My very identity was wrong, all the way down to its core. I wasn’t the smart sister. I never had been.

Alex had unusually early childhood memories.

Most geniuses did; I’d learned that in a psych class in college.

I dragged a hand down my face. How many other clues had I ignored because they didn’t fit in with what I thought I knew?

The
Wheel of Fortune
puzzle
. She’d solved it with almost no letters showing. I’d made a joke about it, then I’d reached over Alex to grab Mom’s house assessment letter to decipher.

Mom had asked the wrong sister for help.
Alex
was the smart one. I could barely wrap my mind around it. How had such a staggering truth been buried for so long? How could I suddenly feel like a stranger in my own skin?

I lifted my hand to massage my forehead again and caught sight of my watch. It jarred me back to the present. I had to go right now; I had to get back to the hospital immediately, before Alex woke up. I dropped the IQ tests to the floor and ran down the stairs.

I left the attic a complete mess, with papers scattered everywhere and half-empty boxes turned on their sides and the Magic 8 Ball sitting there in the center of it all. It wasn’t like me to leave things a mess, but then again, I wasn’t quite sure who me was anymore.

A few hours later, Alex’s eyes slowly opened.

“Hey,” I whispered, gently patting her shoulder and being careful to avoid bumping the tubes snaking in and out of her body. She was in the ICU, a place devoid of color. Everything was starkly white—the walls, the glistening tile floors, the
nurses’ rubber-soled shoes. No one spoke above a whisper so as not to disturb the patients, who were tucked into private rooms with futuristic-looking machines surrounding them. The machines went about their business efficiently, dripping fluids into Alex’s veins and displaying dancing EKG lines and monitoring her vital signs with metronomic beeping. Alex’s room smelled like bleach and vinegar and something else, something musty and unfamiliar and unsettling.

Alex looked at me like she didn’t recognize me. I concentrated on not doing the same thing to her.

“You’re at Georgetown Hospital,” I whispered. “Your surgery went great. The tumor wasn’t malignant, Alex. It wasn’t malignant.”

Alex gave a tiny nod. Her once-delicate face was puffy, and her head was swathed in a giant white bandage. Underneath it, I knew, was a shiny, bald skull with an angry-looking incision where her hairline used to be. A tube snaked up Alex’s nose, and more disappeared beneath her sheets.

“Honey?” Mom stepped up next to me and reached for Alex’s hand. “We’re here. You can go back to sleep if you need to.”

“We’ll watch over you,” Dad promised as he took Alex’s other hand. I felt tears come to my eyes as I watched my parents stand guard. In spite of their bifocals and arthritis and cholesterol medication, they’d protect Alex with a ferocity that would scare away anyone or anything that tried to harm her.

I stepped out of the room and into the hallway, where Bradley waited.

Impossible to believe it had been less than a week since I’d been breathlessly anticipating my date with him. Everything had changed; it was like we were inhabiting a whole different world now. I didn’t even feel uncomfortable around him anymore. I knew he wasn’t thinking of me sobbing on the rooftop while he tried to tell me, as kindly as he could, that he didn’t love me anymore.

The only thing Bradley was thinking about right now was Alex.

“She woke up,” I said. I watched relief pour into Bradley’s eyes and smooth the furrow between his eyebrows. “I think she’s going back to sleep, but the nurses will wake her up every hour to make sure she’s recovering.”

“Thank God,” Bradley said. “She’s not in any pain?”

“No,” I said. “And she’s going to have a morphine drip, so she’ll be able to control it if she does. The nurse said you can see her after a few hours. They’re only allowing family in now, but once she stabilizes you can go in. I know she’ll want to see you.”

Bradley nodded. “Thanks.” He searched my eyes for a moment. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good,” I said. “The important thing right now is Alex.”

Bradley took a deep breath and exhaled with a soft whooshing sound. I knew his question was loaded with meaning, and I’d given him the answer he wanted. We weren’t going to talk about us—or the lack of us—now. That conversation could wait.

“If she’s asleep, I might go grab a cup of coffee,” Bradley said. “Can I get you one?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

He smiled at me and headed toward the elevator.

“Bradley?”

He turned around, his finger poised over the call button, and raised his eyebrows questioningly. How could I say this? “I think the recovery might be tougher than Alex expects. I just want her . . . to be prepared.”