The Twinning Project (3 page)

“Just got my bell rung.” His head hurt, but he didn't want to leave the game. “Did he catch it?”

“How many?” Dr. Traum held up some fingers. They were blurry.

Eddie guessed. “Two?”

“Close enough. Blue seventeen. They'll never expect it again.”

He opened his mouth to say,
They always expect it. It's all you know.

But Eddie never talked back to a coach. He shut his mouth and got up.

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

D
AD
and I talked about history all the time. He was into empires—the Roman and the Mongol, the Russian and British, and the Han Dynasty in China. He said Americans had better study those empires if they expected to survive. Dad had a saying that went something like, “People who forget history repeat the bad stuff.”

I wanted to like my new history class, but the teacher, Mrs. Rupp, spoiled it. She had this thing she called Mrs. Rupp's Timeline, with all the dates she thought were important from ancient times to the present. She said that the best way to understand important events was by memorizing her timeline, so you would know the order in which things happened. I could understand that you should know there were almost a hundred years between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, but I hated wasting time memorizing dates. I liked to read about dinosaurs and the Roman Empire and Custer's Last Stand and the civil rights movement, but I hated to memorize the dates. Math, French, and music you have to memorize, but not history. History should be stories about real people. Dad said so.

My first week, Mrs. Rupp made the class memorize “Great Dates in Science and Technology,” like when the telephone was invented and when Earth conquered outer space. She tried to make it into some kind of demento game show we should be thrilled to play.

“Oh-kay-doh-kay, here we go,” she shouted. “It's time for . . . Mrs. Rupp's Timeline!”

She cranked up her laptop, and a picture of a spaceship with a hammer-and-sickle emblem flashed on the wall. “We haven't heard from our newest student, Tom . . . Canty! Let's break it out for Tom.”

The class applauded, but they were sarcastic claps. They didn't like memorizing dates, either. Or maybe they just didn't like me. I'm oh-kay-doh-kay with that.

“Let's have the day . . . month . . . year when the first rocket ship orbited the Earth.”

“That was
Sputnik,
” I said. “It was a Russian satellite, and it really freaked out America. We were afraid they would use it to—”

“Thank you, Tom,” said Mrs. Rupp in that tone teachers use when they want you to feel so brainless that you'll shut up. “Now, what's the answer I'm looking for? Day . . . month . . . year.”

A girl with long dark hair that covered most of her face raised her hand. Mrs. Rupp said, “Let's hear from another new student. Merlyn?”

Merlyn stood up and said, “The fourth of October, 1957.” She had a sweet, silvery voice.

“Excellent, Merlyn. Got that, Tom?”

I said, “It was important because America and Russia were enemies and—”

“Thank you for sharing, Tom, but that's not today's takeaway.”

I couldn't stop myself. “It was a big deal, it changed history, it—”

Mrs. Rupp glared at me. “Maybe you should be teaching this class, Tom.”

“Excellent idea,” I said. I stood up, and Alessa pulled on my sleeve.

Lucky for Mrs. Rupp, the bell rang. I was ready to give a lecture on how we hated the Russians back in the 1950s and what a waste that was. Dad told me all about it.

The next class was orchestra, and I was looking forward to getting lost in the music. I could shut out everything in my life, even the scratchy out-of-tune violins around me, and hear only myself. I was thinking about the music, and I didn't notice Britzky rush out of Mrs. Rupp's class ahead of me. He was waiting for me in the hall when I walked out.

He looked wild. “You think you're so smart!” he shouted.

“Tom, watch out!” screamed Alessa. She was right behind me.

Britzky charged me. I jumped out of the way, but Alessa didn't move fast enough, and he slammed into her.

“Mind your business, whale-butt,” he growled at her.

I helped Alessa pick up her music books. She wouldn't look at me because she was crying.

Too bad,
I thought.
I might have liked it here at this school for a while. But now I have to do something about Britzky.

It would probably get me expelled again.

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

T
HE
night before I did something about Britzky, I rode my bike over to Grandpa's nursing home in time for dessert. It's against the rules for visitors to eat there without advance notice, except for me when I bring my violin and play with Grandpa, who plays the piano. He can still do that, except if you ask him to play Mozart, you might get some old song like “Moon River.”

He was glad to see me and gave me a big hug. “Who are you?”

“Tom, your grandson. John's son.”

“John.” He smiled. “He was here yesterday.”

I wish. Dad disappeared two years ago when the small plane he was on crashed into a lake. He was on his way to give a violin master class. Everybody was saved except Dad. His body was never found.

“Want to play?” I said.

“Chess?”

“Music.”

“What do I play?”

I led him over to the piano. We got applause before I even took my violin out of its padded backpack. Grandpa surprised me by starting Beethoven's Sonata no. 1. Then he suddenly switched to a song from
South Pacific.
It was fun trying to keep up with him. He played tunes from other Broadway shows. I was sorry after a half hour or so when he got tired and quit.

Dessert was great. Chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. Old ladies kept coming over to our table to pinch my cheek and rub Grandpa's back.

Grandpa leaned over to me. “Listen up.” He put his mouth close to my ear and whispered, “Stay on your toes. It's crunch time. The monitors have landed.”

I felt sad. Poor Grandpa. Sometimes I thought he was my only friend in the world—at least the only nonimaginary one—and he was old and crazy. I hugged him and told him I had to get home.

He said loud enough for all the old ladies to hear, “Come back soon, John.”

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

B
OTH
cars were in the driveway when I got home, and there were lights on in the kitchen and living room. I didn't want to have to talk to Mom or the Lump. I rode around to the back of the house and into the little stone garden that nobody ever used except me. I leaned my bike against a tree and waited for Eddie.

Sometimes it takes a while for the clouds to open up so I can spot the double stars in Eddie's galaxy. Until there's a clear path through the sky between us, we can't send our thought beams.

I know this sounds insane, which is why I don't talk about it. It all began about two years ago.

The summer Dad disappeared, Mom was a wreck and I hung out with Grandpa. His mind was fine then. We'd sit in the stone garden and take turns reading books to each other. Grandpa's favorite author was Mark Twain. Grandpa said everything you need to know about how the world works and how people act was in Mark Twain's books. He said Dad thought so, too.

First, we read
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
which I liked, and then
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
which I liked even better. Huck was a rebel. Next we read
The Prince and the Pauper,
and then
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,
which I liked even though it was too long and I didn't understand everything without Grandpa's help. It was about a guy who goes back in time to fight knights and dragons. He defeats some bad guys by predicting an eclipse of the sun, which he knew was going to happen because he was from the future and had studied history and remembered the date. Mrs. Rupp would love that.

Grandpa's number-one all-time favorite Mark Twain book was
The Mysterious Stranger.
In that book, the devil comes down to Earth and explains the human race to a couple of boys my age. It's almost like Mark Twain was on the devil's side.

Grandpa and Dad always told me to use my imagination instead of just believing what I was told. They said that Twain made up stuff that was truer than most of what you learned in school.

It was during that summer hanging out with Grandpa after Dad disappeared that I started using my imagination to keep from feeling so bad. I came up with the idea of a twin brother.

In my fantasy, Eddie and I were separated at birth to save us from the aliens who secretly ran Earth. (We were truly separated—we had been connected at the butt!) Then I came up with a great story to explain it. These aliens were scientists who had created two Earths as an experiment. I stayed on the first Earth they had created, while Eddie was sent to the newer planet, EarthTwo, which is almost like Earth but fifty years younger. But the experiment wasn't working out because humans were messing up their planets, poisoning the water and the air, dropping bombs on each other, and letting kids die of diseases that could be wiped out. The aliens were thinking seriously about blowing up one or even both planets.

Sounds silly, I guess, but talking to Eddie always made me feel better when things were lousy, and I was lonely after Dad disappeared, especially whenever I got kicked out of school. Even though Eddie was a jock, he never said anything mean to me. He never made me feel bad. After I saw
Star Wars,
I decided that I was Eddie's dark side.

I have a pink scar on my left butt cheek from an operation I had when I was a baby. Mom said it was a growth that had to be removed. I like to pretend it's the scar from where Eddie and I were connected when we were born.

Whenever I had a mysterious pain, like a headache or a stomachache or what felt like a sudden twisted ankle even though I was just playing the violin, I would imagine that something had happened to Eddie. Maybe his ankle twisted coming down wrong after snagging a rebound. Besides being a quarterback, Eddie was point guard on his junior high school basketball team and a starting pitcher when he was wasn't playing the outfield on the baseball team. The pains never lasted long. They were like news flashes keeping me up to date on Eddie. The worst was a pain in my butt cheek one time, like someone had drilled me with a baseball.

Next time we talked, Eddie told me that's exactly what had happened. He had lost a game of Chinese handball—the big game in his neighborhood. If you lose, you get Cans Up. You have to bend over and the winner gets to throw the ball at your butt. But this kid used a baseball instead of the soft pink rubber ball. I asked Eddie what he had done to get back at the kid and Eddie said,
NOTHING
.

I told him he was a wussy. You need to punish bullies right away; you need revenge, payback. Eddie said that you have to pick your spots, wait until you can get something out of all that, put points on the scoreboard.
WIN
. Made no sense to me, but that was Eddie. Whatever.

I didn't mind the pain because I loved the idea of having a twin brother, someone I could tell everything to, even if he
was
imaginary. I never had close friends because I changed schools a lot and because I don't like to share secrets. I don't even have too many Facebook friends, although I'm on Facebook with a phony name, so I can spy on people and hack their accounts if they're bullies.

The summer that Dad disappeared, I spent a lot of time in the backyard garden talking to Eddie. We'd have these long conversations—out loud, if I wasn't careful. Good thing I wasn't going to a psychiatrist. Imaginary twins on other planets can get you locked up in a nuthouse.

A double star double-blinked. That's the signal. We talk only at night.

Yo, Eddie. You there?

Standing on the corner.

That was a big song back in the 1950s. I Googled it first time Eddie sang it.

I think I'm going to do something bad tomorrow. It'll get me kicked out of school.

Not again, Tomaroonie.

No choice, bro. This Britzky is a bully. He has to be stopped.

Why do you have to stop him? You're not the Lone Ranger.

He's beating up on Alessa.

What's an Alessa?

She's, um, well, this girl . . .

You've got a friend?

Well, maybe, sort of . . .

That's super! You're cookin', good-lookin'. Now maybe there's some other way of dealing with this Bratzky.

Bratzky, I like that. Like what other way?

Talk to him. Make him your friend.

He's my enemy. I can't let him get away with what he did to Alessa.

You're not letting him get away with anything—you're looking to get something out of him, make him part of your team.

I visited Grandpa.

Changing the subject?

It was sad. He said, “The monitors have landed.”

Huh. He say anything else?

He said to stay on my toes. That it was crunch time.

What's that mean?

How should I know?

The stars blinked off. That happens when he gets called in to dinner. His grandpa is pretty strict about eating together while the food's hot.

Get Britzky on my team. Right. That's Eddie, always trying to make people his friends. Another way he was the opposite of me.

Why was I making up an opposite? What's wrong with me the way I am?

NEARMONT, N.J.

1957

 

D
R.
Traum called Eddie to his office. He tried to make Eddie feel comfortable, closing the office door, asking him to sit on the couch instead of the hard wooden chair. Dr. Traum sat on the chair himself so he could sit close to Eddie, his bright green eyes boring into him. Dr. Traum was wearing his zooty suit.