Twins Read online

  She had meant, over Christmas, and later over the long weekend of Madrigal’s visit, to talk about the barrette incident, to see if Madrigal felt better about that stuff now that it had come to an end. But the time had never come to discuss barrettes. I could wear it now, she thought, and knew that she never would, for even the ash and wind of Madrigal would hate her for it.

  She left Madrigal’s room, with its secrets, and went into her own former bedroom. The bed had a comforter, but no sheets and blankets beneath it. The floor had only a carpet. The closet only musty air. The dresser drawers were empty. For her own possessions had not, after all, been shipped back.

  Too painful, Mother had said.

  We can’t bear it, Father had said.

  The school agreed to dispose of Mary Lee’s things.

  Dispose.

  It was a garbage word. A trash word.

  The possessions of Mary Lee had been disposed of.

  She wanted to run down the stairs and fling herself on her parents, let out her pain and anguish. I made a mistake! Everybody made a mistake! We switched clothes, that’s all! And it’s me, it’s Mary Lee, I’m still here, please be glad, please be glad that I’m the one who lived.

  Yes, she thought, I will do that. I cannot just adopt my sister’s life.

  Bravely, she left the empty room and headed for her mother and father to tell the truth.

  At the top of the stairs she paused, hearing soft conversation between Mother and Father. “I don’t miss her,” said Father.

  “I don’t either. But it still hurts so much.”

  “Of course it hurts,” said Father. “But if we must lose a daughter, better it should be that one.”

  “What kind of parents are we?” said Mother. “And what are we doing now? I’m sure it’s another terrible mistake.”

  “Having twins was the mistake,” said Father.

  Mary Lee was stabbed through the heart.

  She crept back into the room that was not hers, and stood in front of the mirror, trying to grasp the reality that it was only a reflection and never never never again a twin.

  Oh, Madrigal! They don’t miss me! They think it was a mistake ever to have had me. They wanted only you!

  The mirror spoke to her.

  Mary Lee shuddered convulsively. Ridiculous. The mirror —

  The mirror spoke again.

  For a moment she thought it was her sister, living between the silver and the glass. She even heard her sister’s voice, whispering out of the long ago as if, in another life, the twins had lived in a fairy tale. Madrigal had once stood before this very different mirror, murmuring, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who Is the Fairest of Them All?”

  And to Madrigal, the mirror had replied, There are two of you, exactly the same.

  No! I will not be somebody’s double. I will not be interchangeable parts, like something out of a factory! I will not have a twin.

  Mary Lee stared at her reflection: the closest she would ever come to seeing her twin again.

  When the twins had been Separated, it had been like divorce. Mary Lee got the clean slate and the plane ticket. Madrigal got the new wardrobe and the boyfriend. They had not split the beauty, for their beauty could not be divided.

  Madrigal, if we hadn’t changed ski jackets, you’d be listening to this mirror. And when you said, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who Is the Fairest of Them All?” the mirror would say, “You, Madrigal. Only you. Is that what you dreamed of, Madrigal? Being the fairest of them all? Which is something only one can do, and never two?”

  The mirror held onto her. “You,” spoke the mirror, its voice silvered and shining.

  This was not happening. No. She was reading a children’s fairy tale. Remembering a children’s story.

  “Say it,” ordered the mirror.

  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” she whispered. But she didn’t care who was the fairest of them all. She didn’t even care about being fair. She wanted only to be loved.

  “Who is the fairest of them all?” finished the mirror.

  The silence was liquid.

  “You are,” said the mirror. And it laughed, as Jon Pear had laughed, its laugh oozing out like slime from under the silver layer.

  Chapter 8

  MADRIGAL IS BACK.

  The news whirled like winter winds through the long and heavy corridors of the school. On the second day she was in class, hostility hung in the halls.

  The school was overlaid with apprehension. It lay like another textbook on top of everybody’s burdens.

  Madrigal is back.

  Madrigal herself — Mary Lee, that is — was thinking only of Jon Pear.

  A good night’s sleep had been impossible. But even a bad night’s sleep showed her how ridiculous yesterday had been. Of course she had been afraid, but to call her twin’s boyfriend evil? Nonsense. Jon Pear, said her mind and heart, Jon Pear Jon Pear Jon Pear.

  She was as nervous as a cat on a string, jerking and looking and tying herself in knots.

  But Jon Pear was not around.

  She found her way to European history without him. This was not a subject Mary Lee had taken at boarding school. It was going to be a challenge, suddenly starting in midwinter. The text was dauntingly thick.

  Again Mary Lee sat in the back row, but today she had company — Van. What a pleasure! “It was so nice of Scarlett,” she said to Van, “to tell me she was sorry about Madrigal.”

  Van stared at her.

  She’d used the wrong name. She colored deeply. “I mean Mary Lee, of course. I’ve lost half of myself. I keep forgetting who I am. Because half of me — isn’t.”

  “That’s sick,” said Van.

  “No, that’s twins.” She tried to imprint the name Madrigal on her tongue. But the name didn’t feel like hers. It felt like a summons, as if she were calling Madrigal back. If only she could!

  Mary Lee forgot European history.

  Grief filled every cell of her body. It was time to weep, to bawl, throw back her head and wail and keen. But it didn’t happen. She wept without tears and without sound, a huge and terrible despair for the beloved life that was gone forever.

  I have no tears, she thought. Jon Pear took them.

  As if he were sitting next to her, she saw the swinging vial of her captured tears. For a moment, she was so fearful she might have been dropped herself into the tube. Her soul encased in glass, fixed by a rubber stopper.

  Why can’t I cry? she thought. Does Jon Pear have some power over me now that he possesses my tears? Does he own me?

  Stop this, she thought. Stop this pitiful absurd train of thought! Some people become deadheads. Some people become glue freaks. Jon Pear is a tear collector. It’s a little weird, but Madrigal loved him, so he’s lovable.

  Van lifted his hand. Mary Lee misunderstood, reached over and clung to it. He took his hand back as she had jerked hers away from the principal. Wishing for harsh soap to scrub off the touch.

  Get a grip! thought Mary Lee. Do something, girl, do anything; collect tears, just don’t keep having these creepy ideas about people! “That time Scarlett and I went shopping together,” she said to Van, and caught herself again, “I mean — she and Mary Lee went shopping — and I caught up to them — that was so much fun. Your sister’s a lovely person.”

  Van was kind, serious, and brotherly, with all those wonderful traits like medieval knights: gallant and true. She pretended her hour with him was a hundred hours, a week, a hundred weeks. True love.

  Van looked at her as searchingly as an explorer hunting for the Northwest passage. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Madrigal, but don’t think for one minute I’ll let you near my sister again.”

  She was getting a pounding headache. She didn’t want Van to give her headaches. She was in the mood for love and companionship and laughter.

  “And so,” said the teacher, “we will split into pairs to discuss the oral presentations you will be giving next month. Madrigal, do you feel up to this
? If so, you and Van will work together.”

  Van gave a strange laugh. His eyes were bright as fever.

  Could Van have had a crush on Madrigal? Was he jealous of Jon Pear? So jealous he couldn’t even let his sister be friends with her?

  If that was true, even Van didn’t miss Mary Lee, but had moved right on to Madrigal.

  But I could still make it work, she thought. The thing is to bury Mary Lee and really be Madrigal. Take advantage of Van’s crush on her. I mean, me. Jon Pear’s a little scary. Not my type. I’ll drop him. I want to be friends with easy people, like Scarlett and Van.

  She said softly, “I’d love to work with Van.”

  The class turned as one to gape at her. Van’s laugh was out loud, and out of bounds. A wild twisting laugh.

  Mary Lee wrapped her fingers around the edge of her desk, because she needed something, in this strange world, to hang onto.

  Van shoved his desk hard and quick right against hers. He meant to slam her fingers between the desks! Just in time, she yanked her fingers back. The two desks hit hard enough to break bones. She stared at her undamaged hand and then into his eyes.

  “Sorry,” lied Van, smirking, and she knew — and he knew that she knew — he was only sorry he had not caught her fingers.

  Not all the knights of old were gallant. Some were black and evil.

  She focused her green eyes on Van, knitting her thick eyebrows above them, trying to find out what was going on.

  “You hate me for that day with Mary Lee, don’t you, Madrigal?” said Van. “You hate us all. You came into the world a split. A division. The rest of us were born whole, and you’ll never forgive us, will you? Well, you have what you want now, Madrigal. You got rid of your sweet sister forever. Leave us alone. Stay with your new twin, Jon Pear. He’s your type.”

  Van’s gotten into drugs since I saw him last, she thought.

  “Madrigal and I can’t come to an agreement on the topic,” Van told the teacher. “Would you reassign us?”

  Maybe I just need lunch, she thought. Lack of nutrients is making me light-headed and absurd.

  “Of course,” said the teacher smoothly. “Who will volunteer to work with Madrigal?”

  Nobody volunteered.

  Nobody moved.

  Nobody turned.

  No pages flipped. No pencils wrote. No voices spoke.

  She was a prisoner in this classroom, with its wall of windows and the straight indifferent backs of people who were not her friends.

  Madrigal, whose life she had wanted so much, had no friends.

  Madrigal had only enemies. People who wanted to crush her fingers between desks.

  What have I done? thought Mary Lee.

  Van followed her.

  If he had been her ghost, he couldn’t have stuck closer.

  He was staring at her from down the hall, he was staring at her from the library, he was staring at her in the cafeteria, he was staring at her across the computer carrels.

  She wanted him to be the Van of the strawberry sundae, not the Van of the smashed fingers. She looked at her hand. It was unbruised. It had not, after all, been damaged. Only her own nerves were damaging her right now.

  Van was studying her. He was so cute. He had that wholesome look, that After-School-TV-Special look, the dear brother who takes care of the dear sister. Perhaps, had he known how, he would have said he was sorry for his behavior in European history.

  She smiled at him. Mary Lee’s smile. Then of course it was necessary to pull it back, find Madrigal’s smile and paste that on instead.

  Van stared on, trying to figure her out.

  Me, too, Van, thought Mary Lee. I cannot figure out Madrigal’s life. If I fail to accomplish even that, what’s the point in having it?

  At lunch, she joined in the cafeteria line and filled her tray. Food was so satisfying. Boyfriends were not a simple pleasure. But food did not hide itself behind strange actions and strange code words. Food was your friend. Mary Lee loved meals, she loved between meals, thinking about future meals, and remembering past meals.

  Pizza day, so she chose extra cheese. She loved pizza, especially the way you dragged the strings of mozzarella through the air, and whipped them around your finger and ate them off your finger, laughing. She took two milks, because pizza induced thirst. She took a green Jell-O, because it had a castle turret of real whipped cream. She emerged from the kitchen tray-filling line and into the cafeteria.

  Red tables seating six filled an immense noisy screaming room. Some tables were pushed up against each other. Mary Lee looked into the packed room and knew most of them: people from when she was a twin, and had a person to sit with every moment of her life. People for whom she had been half a set, and who required a name tag to get the right twin.

  But no friends.

  It was like boarding school. Packed tables for the winners. Spare, empty, distant tables for the losers.

  She wanted to fling her pizza tray against the wall and run out of the school. Run out of this life. Where could she sit? Everybody else had a friend!

  She saw Scarlett.

  Oh, yes, thank you for Scarlett.

  She walked swiftly to Scarlett and sat down.

  Scarlett was utterly and completely astonished. She exchanged a glance with the other girl seated next to her and both stared at Mary Lee.

  I mean Madrigal, she corrected herself quickly.

  “Emily,” said Scarlett in a strange voice, “I’d like you to meet Madrigal.”

  “Emily Sherwood,” said Emily, without smiling. “Do you have a last name, Madrigal? I have heard you spoken of all day long, but nobody uses your last name.”

  “She doesn’t need one,” said Scarlett. “How many Madrigals do you know?”

  “Actually, dozens. I’ve sung in Madrigal choirs for years. You know what your name is, of course. Renaissance song.”

  Nobody ate. Nobody touched a fork or a cup. They sat very still, watching her, as if they expected her to do something. As if they were braced and ready for the worst.

  Mary Lee was crazy for explanations. “Does it seem to you that everybody is hesitating?” she said. “Does it seem to you that everybody is on edge?”

  Scarlett and Emily merely looked at her.

  A snake sentence slithered through the silent cafeteria. Madrigal is back.

  And then, unexpectedly, Van was also back. His handsome thin features were hideously distorted. Van jerked Mary Lee’s chair violently backward, dumping her out. Mary Lee nearly hit the floor, but caught herself. “Get away from my sister!” he said angrily.

  “I — I thought we were friends,” whispered Mary Lee.

  The whole cafeteria was watching. Several hundred people were watching. She felt their eyes. Everybody here knows things I don’t.

  “Friends!” said Van contemptuously. “You?”

  Mary Lee was glad she had not touched the pizza. Glad she had not sipped the milk. Empty, she felt stronger. “What do you want, Van?” Her throat closed. Only a husky remnant of a voice rasped out the sentence.

  “I want,” said Van, “a ski accident to happen to the right person, Madrigal.”

  Mary Lee no longer knew what universe she occupied. What language she spoke. Talk to my parents, she thought. They think the ski accident happened to the right person.

  “Hush, Van,” said Scarlett quickly. “Sit down! Madrigal’s just lost her sister.”

  “The sister they shipped away in the faint hope of keeping her sane,” said Van. “The sister they thought they could rescue! The sister they were trying to protect! They figured they’d get poor Mary Lee away from Madrigal before her character was ruined, too. But no! Some stupid ski accident has to take the sister who was — ”

  “Don’t make a scene,” said Scarlett. “Please, Van.”

  The words raced through Mary Lee’s mind.

  Was Van saying that Mother and Father had been attempting to save Mary Lee from her own twin? That there was something so wrong with
Madrigal it required hiding Mary Lee on the opposite side of the nation?

  Mary Lee was so cold, so frozen, she might actually have been on a mountain, surrounded with snow.

  Why had Madrigal come to visit? After saying over and over that she had better things to do, why had Madrigal changed her mind and decided to come to the boarding school? She had not had Mother and Father’s permission. She’d arranged it herself. Used the credit cards and gone. Mary Lee thought that was so neat when Madrigal told her: you wonderful brave good dear sister, Mary Lee had thought. Yes! Coming to see your twin no matter what blockades are thrown in your way. True love!

  But had it been … true hate?

  Jon Pear had actually said — and she had not listened; he was so scary that not listening was what you did around him — that Madrigal had pulled it off, had destroyed the sister as planned.

  I refuse to let these people poison me, thought Mary Lee. My twin sister was perfect. I’m not listening to their terrible words. People who say terrible things are terrible themselves, and I’m writing off Van. That’s it, I’m done pretending that hour meant anything. It didn’t mean anything to Van, so it doesn’t mean anything to me, either.

  Then Jon Pear was there.

  How had he done it? How had he appeared like this? Why was his schedule not filled with classes like other people?

  He and Van were looking at each other like pit bulls eager to rip off each other’s flesh. Except that Jon Pear was smiling. “Scenes,” said Jon Pear, “seem to be Scarlett’s specialty.”

  Mary Lee didn’t want anybody to start anything. How was she supposed to have an ordinary life? “Please! Let’s just sit together and have pizza and be friends.”

  Van stared at her incredulously. “You? Friends? Get real, Madrigal.”

  “I have lots of friends,” she said quickly. “Everybody in French told me how sorry they are for me.”

  “Everybody in French is afraid of you,” said Van.

  She knew that. She couldn’t keep up the pretense any more. The smiles had been quivers of fear. The sympathy cards that piled up at the house were letters of protection.