The Other Half of Me (13 page)

“What?” She scratches her leg, causing her hair to spill out from its bun. The effect is stunning, and when she stands up, I’m amazed that the first thing I noticed when I saw her in the driveway wasn’t how beautiful she is.

“It’s like we knew each other before.” The metal railing is cold, and I hold it with my right hand while balancing on the balls of my feet on the top step. Alexa leans on the concrete wall and looks at me. In the dim light I think we resemble each other more. In art class this coming year, I know one of the advanced techniques we’re learning is how to draw profiles by using an angled mirror. I flash forward to being at school, drawing my face from the side, the class bell ringing in the corridor. Will the profile be mine or look like Alexa’s? And who is waiting for me in the hall?

“Oh, I totally know what you mean,” Alexa says. Her voice holds excitement in it, the pitch high. “It’s like we went to camp together when we were seven. Or you were in my playgroup as a kid. Somewhere we knew each other. And now we meet again.”

“A re-meet.”

“Re-meet? That’s not a word,” she says.

“I know, but isn’t that what it feels like? Familiar? But not.”

Alexa is in the middle of nodding in agreement with me when Tate opens the heavy door and holds it open so I’ll go inside. “Your chariot awaits,” he says. “If paint supplies can be construed as a vehicle.”

I prop the door open with my butt so he can get by. Alexa takes a few steps backward as if she’s ready to leave. I wish it didn’t feel weird. If Sierra or Sage went out with Tate for ice cream, and they were older, it wouldn’t feel bizarre at all. But here, in the half-light of the stairwell, in hushed voices, with me about to go off alone to paint and the two of them about to head out into one of our last summer nights to hang out with friends and drink frothy root beer floats, it does.

“We’ll be back in an hour, okay?” Tate says. “I’ll show your sister a good time.”

“Oh yeah?” I hope I sound breezy and not worried about the potential implications of this. In songs, a good time is always a euphemism for, well, nothing I want to have happen with Tate and Alexa.

“I’ll introduce her around.” Tate swipes his hand through his hair, a move that always makes me ripple inside.

“If you hurry, you can meet us,” Alexa says with gusto. “So get inspired! Think about…” She takes the steps two at a time, not bothering to finish her sentence until she and Tate are one flight down. “Think about us!”

TWENTY-TWO

The next two days slide by like trees when you’re driving on a highway; sometimes they’re a fast blur, and other times, when you’re coming to an exit, slow-moving and defined. My dad’s been distant with me and Alexa, and my mom’s been pecking at us with snacks and chitchat. The twins have become infatuated with Alexa in a way they never have been with me. Her dance ability and paint-free clothing help. Russ keeps up his bravado, but he has been won over by her, too, even lending her his sacred team sweatshirt when she got cold as we strolled around the neighborhood.

I’m still on a high from the artistic charge of completing not one half, but one whole painting the other night. I think about the canvas as I help unload the car. Utopia Lake is crowded today—everyone knows how few mornings and afternoons are left for this kind of outing. Three days until the art show now, two until Sid makes his decisions, and only a handful more before school’s in session and I have to face the hallways, with or without Tate.

At the lake, brightly colored coolers flank the picnic tables, wide umbrellas are perched in the sand, and I long for my sketchbook while the rest of the group begins to wade into the water.

“You coming?” Alexa asks. Her yellow bikini is bright as a sunflower against the placid lake. She sheds her shorts right away, ditching hanging out for splashing.

“Maybe in a few…” I don’t even say
minutes
before she dives underwater and swims with Russ out to one of the rafts. The twins are nearly synchronized in their swimming, and Dad watches them from the shore, his feet in the water.

I sit on a blue-and-white-striped blanket, having organized the food and plates. The chirping crickets hush, and the slight breeze sweeps over my legs until I feel a chill prick the back of my neck. I want to go stand next to my dad, dip my toes in, and slosh around. I want to talk to him about the shades of blue and how I’d paint the water, and ask what he thinks of all this. But I don’t. I feel anchored to the blanket.

Hours later I’m half-dazed in the sunshine, while Alexa does backflips across the sand. Sierra and Sage, huddled together under an oversized towel, are captivated by the gymnastics.

“Isn’t she awesome?” Sierra asks me, but doesn’t expect an answer.

I take a bite of my tuna sandwich and nod, carrying it with me as I wade into the water. Out from shore, my dad swims in circles with my mom, trying to convince me to come in.

“It’s warmer than you think!” Dad says, and I wonder if he means the temperature of the lake or his emotional state.

“Come on, honey!” Mom waves, then splashes my dad.

The water laps the sand as I dig my toes in and eat, making me think of blues and greens and other colors that blend but aren’t the same. I finish chewing, rinse my hands in the water, and am just about to join my parents when I see Russ at the far end of the beach, talking to someone. My heart slams against my chest when I realize it’s Tate—and he’s shirtless.

I go back to the picnic blanket and get out the container of cookies and brownies, figuring I’ll offer them around. Then Alexa appears, her body glistening with water and her skin tanned. She fluffs her hair back from her face, snags a cookie, and eats it in two bites.

“So good! You never said you could cook!”

“I can’t,” I admit. “But my friend Faye has great recipes and Mom…” But I notice Alexa’s not looking at me. Instead, she’s focused on Russ and Tate, who are walking this way. Under his arm Russ has an orange Nerf football.

Alexa stands up and waves like a cheerleader. “Chuck it over here!”

Russ and Tate immediately act out a memorized play. Russ throws her the ball, which she catches effortlessly.

“Nice!” Russ yells. “You’re a natural!”

Tate concurs, then gives me his trademark grin—his upper lip twists to reveal his bright white teeth. I walk over, and he kisses me—right there on the edge of the lake in front of everyone. Not a major kiss, just a quick one. But still.

“Brownie?” I ask, pointing to the blanket.

“Sure,” he says as Russ throws him the ball. “Here, Fitz, go long.” He motions for me to run along the sand, which I do, dreading the outcome of this little game.

“Get ready!” Tate yells, pulling his arm back and passing the ball to me.

I stumble on the sand, then quickly recover, and I’m about to actually catch something for the first time. But before I can, Alexa swoops in and nabs the ball, hugging it to her chest. She does it in a smooth and funny way, as if we’d planned it, and we both laugh, as do Russ and Tate. But I wonder if I would have succeeded in catching it if she hadn’t intervened.

After a while my parents take the shivering twins back home with Russ so he can continue his attic project. He’s been dragging equipment down the stairs at all hours of the day and night, sweat running in rivulets from his hairline. Tate has left with his parents. With everyone else gone, and only the water, cookies, and each other for company, Alexa and I lie down on the blanket.

Facing the sky, we talk and then are quiet, just listening to music from my father’s old portable radio, which he generously left behind. She pulls out semi-temporary tattoo paint from her bag. “Want to?”

“Sure,” I say. I’m glad we’re alone. The whole world seems contained in the square blanket we’re sitting on. I draw a small curled motif on her ankle, taking time in my artistry and enjoying it. She does a big smiley face on mine, yellow with a goofy red tongue sticking out of the mouth.

“This is awesome,” Alexa says and blows as best she can on her leg to hasten the drying time. The one I did for her is funky, like one you’d maybe pay for, but the one she did on my ankle looks kind of silly, as if she got bored in the middle and just went for the laughs. I don’t say anything, because I don’t want to sound critical the way people are of my throwing and catching ability, but I’m a tiny bit disappointed that I’m stuck with this yellow happy face on my leg for the next week. It’s just not me.

Alexa admires my handiwork. “You should do one just like this for Tate.”

“Really?” I can’t imagine why he’d want a twin tattoo to Alexa’s, but maybe she’s just being funny. I rub at the yellow paint to see if I can wipe it off, but, as the package suggests, it will last awhile.

She shrugs, and one of her tank top straps slips off her shoulder. She has that beach-tousled look, all sun-kissed and glowing. “I didn’t mean
just
like it. I meant something just as cool.”

I feel better when she says this, but then she adds, “Last night Tate said something about a temporary tattoo he had. A lightning bolt? No, that’s not it.” She snaps her fingers and nods. “He had a Chinese character that meant ‘hard work’ or something.”

Out on the raft, kids yelp and splash, jumping into the lake while the sun sinks down. My heart sinks, too, with the knowledge that my summery afternoons are dwindling. I can count on two hands the days until that school bell rings. “I read that a lot of the time when people get tattoos of Chinese characters, they actually don’t know what they’re getting. Some guy thought he had ‘man of intellect’ inscribed on his arm, and it turned out to be ‘oversized brain’ or something.” I laugh and Alexa smiles, but she stares past me, as if she’s remembering something else from last night but not bringing it up. In my head I talk to Faye as if she were here, but she’s not—and besides, it’s always hard for me to explain my churning feelings.

Later, when we’ve layered on long sleeves over our suits, we sit on the hood of my car, looking out at the rippling water. I wonder if people who walk past see us as friends or cousins or sisters, but maybe they don’t notice us at all.

It doesn’t matter, though. We laugh and talk about the things you always think are nothing, but piled up equal a lot. Stories, old crushes, misheard song lyrics, places we want to travel.

“India first, then Australia,” Alexa says.

“A tour of great museums,” I offer.

The car’s hood is still warm from the sun, radiating from underneath as we watch a group of people play volleyball, the white ball still moving in metronomic time. In one of the dry moments when the ball’s on the sand, I turn my head to look at Alexa. “Maybe we’d travel together?” I have instant photo-op images of us by European landmarks and at picnics on the beach.

“Yeah. You, me, Tate, and some guy I haven’t met yet.” Alexa turns her face back to the sky, the sun coating her. “Me, him, the top of the Ferris wheel.”

I frown. “Hey, you can’t steal my fantasy kiss location.” I told her in confidence that I’ve watched those carnival couples for years and now—finally—I might have the chance to be one at this year’s festival. The potential for this has led to some potent daydreams about Tate; the two of us in one of those metal buckets, a rusting fuchsia one or a sparkling blue one that swings back and forth so much it’s almost sickening. We wind up at the top of the wheel, looking out at everything and everyone. And then, of course, we share a fantastic kiss that seals our fate as a real campus couple. “Anyway, who would be with you up there?” I cast my hand out to an imaginary Ferris wheel.

“Guess we’ll have to see,” she says, and licks her lips. My paranoid thoughts about her secretly liking Tate overcome me. “Tate’s secret twin brother?”

Her joke hits me flat rather than funny. Why aren’t we completely on the same page? She’s brought up Tate a lot in the past two days. Apparently, they had a fun time getting ice cream. It was only an hour. An hour and a half at most. Could it have been two? I do some mental math but can’t figure it out. Plus, measuring time doesn’t always tell you everything you need to know. Tate and I were in school for years, but all it took was one minute of his defending my wet shirt to bolster my crush even more, and his drop-by visit to my house to get us talking. Besides, whatever time they spent together is enough for them to have developed inside jokes and knowing looks and catchphrases like
here comes the dribble
that only reinforce the fact that I missed something.

“I want to go to the studios today. Soon.” I tuck my knees to my chest, my feet on the metal bumper. Alexa lies flat, her back on the windshield.

“Tell me about your painting again,” she says, and closes her eyes to the sun and spray. No doubt about it—in the movie version of this, she’d be the hot one and I’d be the lesser best friend. I shrug off my negative thoughts and tell her, “It’s not bad. Not perfect, but not bad.”

“Enough disclaimers. Just describe it.”

“Okay. It’s bigger than any piece I’ve done before. And I didn’t sketch anything. So there’s this technique of wet into wet, where you try to combine things while they’re still pliable. Different from letting one layer dry and then adding another. So I used poppy oil to slow the drying time of the paint and the colors—well, you’ll see for yourself.”

Alexa keeps her eyes closed. “And does this masterpiece have a title?”

“No. I kept trying to think of one, but everything started to sound either lame, like a new lipstick name—
Sunset Surprise
—or else really weird, like
The Science of Being Alone.
”

Alexa turns her face toward me and opens her eyes. The dimming sunlight radiates off her cheeks. “That doesn’t sound weird. It sounds good. Did Sid see it?”

“Not yet. At least, he hadn’t then. But maybe he has by now.” This makes me nervous, and unlike Alexa, who might get bouncy when she’s extra worried, I just get worried. Sand sticks to my legs as I hop off the car. “I should go check and see. Will you come to the studios with me?”

I stand up, jingle my keys, look around one last time for anything we might have forgotten near the lake, and wait by the driver’s side door, not even thinking for a second that she might want to do something else. But she does.

“I’d rather just hang out at home, if that’s okay,” she says, and sits up. When her hair is wet, it looks a shade or two darker, more like mine. Now I think we do look like sisters. The odd thing is, it doesn’t make me automatically feel close to her. It makes me want to shoo her away like I do when I find Sierra or Sage in my room without permission.

“Come to the studios.” I say it friendly, not whiny.

“Why don’t I drive your car, drop you off, and come pick you up in a while. Then we can go do something.”

“Like?” Cue visions of sisters in movies—eating cotton candy at some fair, doing a tug-of-war, jogging side by side.

“Like go to Tate’s house.”

“I think he has practice today.” I say it this way to make it sound less defensive, because I
know
he has practice. The red in my cheeks isn’t just from the sun.

“Yeah, that’s what he said. But someone the other night—who was it? Chris?—said that everyone was going to Tate’s house afterward for a party. Or a GT?”

I cough and my expression sours. “Oh, a ‘get-together.’” I can’t believe I just used air quotes. When did I start doing this? “That’s the sports guys’ pathetic attempt to keep parents and teachers unapprised of their partying. And they also use this term as a way to exclude people. You know, ‘It’s only a small GT, not a party or anything. Otherwise, I’d invite you.’” My voice trails off because on one hand, I want to paint and have Alexa there as company, but on the other hand, I want to see exactly what the chemistry is between Tate and Alexa. And because I wouldn’t normally be invited to a big GT, let alone a small one.

“Fine. We can go to that later. I just want to make sure I get this done.” I demonstrate
this
by swishing my hands around as though each one holds a paintbrush.

We get in the car with Alexa behind the wheel and leave the lake and the last bit of summer behind.