The Twinning Project (6 page)

2011

 

W
HEN
the sergeant behind the desk in the precinct house said, “Your ride's here, kid,” my stomach twisted. I knew who was here.

The Lump walked in with a cop who had gold braid on his cap. “I appreciate this, chief. Owe you one.”

“We're on the same team.” The chief shook the Lump's hand.

The Lump grabbed my arm and steered me out of the precinct and into his car. Once we were on a highway heading out of the city, he said, “The cops said you were running away from something. What was it?”

“So what's this ‘We're on the same team' stuff?”

“Classified,” he said. “What happened in the park?”

“Classified,” I said.

We didn't talk for the rest of the ride.

It was way after midnight when we got home. Mom was waiting outside the house, pacing in the driveway. Her suitcase was on the steps. She pulled me out of the car and hugged me.

When the Lump got out, Mom hugged him and said, “Thanks, Keith.”

I said, “Don't thank him. If he had taken me to my lesson, none of this would have happened.”

Lump shrugged. “Noted.”

Like he cared.

“What did happen?” said Mom.

“I got picked up by the cops for WWU.”

“For what?”

“Walking while underage.”

She nodded. “That's what Keith texted me.”

“So then you know it has to be true,” I said as sarcastically as possible.

“I guess so,” said Mom.

Keith just gave me his yellow-fang smile.

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

A
S
much as I hated to eat with the Lump, I stuck around while his big mouth vacuumed up most of the Chinese food Mom had ordered in. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Rice dribbled out as he talked. “We need to finish our conversation, Denise.”

It sounded like he wanted me to leave, so I grabbed a couple of dumplings, leaned back in my chair, and ate them very, very slowly.

“What conversation?” said Mom.

“You know,” he said.

“I guess I don't.” Mom sounded annoyed. I liked that.

The Lump said, “Tom, would you excuse us?”

“I might excuse Mom, not you.”

I liked when his face got red as his whiskers.

“Denise, could you get me a beer?”

I hated it when that lumpy Lump ordered Mom around. I jumped up. “I'll get it.”

I opened the refrigerator door and angled it so they couldn't see me shake the beer bottle a couple of times. Hard.

“Here.” I banged it down in front of the Lump. If I acted too nice, he'd get suspicious.

He didn't even say thanks as he twisted open the top.

FSSSST!
an explosion of foam, all over him.

While he was yelling and jumping around, I stuck a TPT FloatingEar wireless remote mike to the underside of the table.

I grabbed a couple more dumplings and excused myself.

I got up to my room and pulled on the headset in time to hear him say, “You'll be sorry if he hurts somebody. Or himself.”

Mom was sniffling. “He's going through a phase, Keith.”

“He needs a major workup.”

“A what?”

“Brain scans, chemical analysis, neural tracking.”

“He's twelve years old, Keith. If I don't know him by now . . .”

“But you don't really know him—that's my point. You don't really know that much about his dad, and you know nothing about his biological mother.”

Biological mother?
I jumped up. I had to put a hand over my mouth.

“Who told you that?” snapped Mom.

The Lump said, “I figured it out.”

“How?”

“Everything's out there if you know where to look,” he said.

There was a long pause. I could hear the Lump chewing and Mom breathing hard. I was breathing hard, too.
Mom?
She was still Mom, but . . .

Finally, Mom said, “That's enough. Let's see what happens.”

“You need to do something before it's too late.”

“What does that mean?” She sounded angry.

“It means something's going on with him. He's out of control. You ever hear him talking to himself in the backyard?”

“You eavesdrop on him?”

“Not like he eavesdrops on us.” There was static and a thump. “Look at this.”

“What's that?”

He'd found my transmitter under the table. “It could have been a bomb.”

Crunch, and then silence.

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

M
OM
waited while I brushed my teeth, and then she tucked me in as if I were a little kid. I liked it and I hated it. She sat on the edge of the bed and hugged me. “Are you okay, Tommy?”

“Yeah.”

She held me tight. “What are we going to do with you?”

“Send me to military school.”

“Where'd you get that idea?”

“The Lump.”

“I really wish you wouldn't call him that.”

“How about Pigmeat?”

She took a deep breath. “With your grandfather in a nursing home,” she said, “we need the rent Keith pays. And I feel better with a man in the house, especially when I travel.”

“I hate him,” I said.

“Please, Tom.” She put her face so close to mine I could feel the tears on her eyelashes. “I can't go on like this.”

“Like what?”

“I had to leave the conference, fly home. I'm going to lose my job if it happens again.”

“Some job. Selling pills so people can get dates.”

She leaned away from me. “Who told you that?”

“Dad.”

“He never said that.”

“He did. Just before he disappeared, he said it was sad that you quit being a nurse to peddle pills.”

“He never understood,” said Mom. She looked both sad and angry. “He was never around. God knows what he did.”

“You don't know what he did?”

She shrugged. “A private man, your dad.”

“He was a great dad.”

“When he was around, he was a great dad. And a great husband,” she said. “I always thought he had another life, a secret life.”

“Like a superhero?”

Mom smiled. Sometimes I forgot how pretty she was. “Could be. He was very strong. And so smart. Like you. And he hated bullies.”

She looked dreamy. She was off-guard. So I jumped in with the question I'd been waiting to ask. “What about my biological mother?”

She jerked back as if I'd hit her. “What are you talking about?”

“I heard what the Lump said.” When she opened her mouth, I said, “Tell me the truth.”

Her mouth snapped shut. She blinked a couple of times. Finally, she took another deep breath and nodded. “Your birth mother died when you were born.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Your father made me promise. He said he wanted to do it himself when the time was right.”

“When was that going to be?” I made my face very hard so I wouldn't cry.

She was crying. “He was getting ready to tell you when he died.”

“Disappeared.”

“All I can tell you, Tommy, is I've loved you as much as if you had come out of my body.” She reached out to hug me.

I squirmed away. “Get out!” I shouted.

“I know this is very hard for you . . .”

“You don't know anything.” I jumped out of bed, pushed past her, and ran out of the house.

NEARMONT, N.J.

1957

 

E
DDIE'S
grandpa was silent on the ride to Scout camp, which was okay with Eddie. He felt good dozing in the front seat of the big Dodge. The radio softly played the country-western tunes Grandpa liked, “A White Sport Coat,” “I Walk the Line,” and “Hound Dog,” Eddie's own favorite. He loved Elvis.

Eddie came fully awake when the car turned off the highway and bumped down a dirt road into the woods. It stopped at a clearing.

“Where are we, Grandpa?”

“Where we need to be.” He turned and faced Eddie. He looked very serious. “You're going to have to trust me, son.”

“I've always trusted you, Grandpa.”

Grandpa nodded. “You're going to take a trip, Eddie. By yourself.”

“To Scout camp.”

“No. To another planet.”

Eddie laughed. “Altair IV?”

“What?”

“
The Forbidden Planet.
The movie we saw. Remember Robby the Robot?”

Grandpa shook his head. “This is no movie, Eddie. This is real. You're going back to the planet where you were born. You're going to meet your twin brother, Tom.”

Eddie just stared at him. The old man was no jokester. “Tom? My twin brother?”

“This is going to be a lot for you to take in, but try to follow me. Twelve years ago, when you and Tom were born, you were separated. For your safety. Tom stayed on EarthOne, you came here. Now it's time.”

Eddie's head hurt. He was confused. “Time for what?”

“To meet each other. To switch places. To learn about each other's home planets. To get ready for the rebellion to save the Earths.”

“What about football? I'm the captain.”

Grandpa smiled. He reached out and ran a hand through Eddie's short hair. “
We
need captains, too. Let's go. We don't have much time.”

Grandpa got out of the car. He was carrying Eddie's food sack. When Eddie went to get his duffel, his grandpa said, “You won't need that.”

Eddie followed Grandpa deeper into the woods, to a clearing.

“Just stand there,” said Grandpa. “Against that tree. Here.” He handed Eddie the food.

“What's going to happen?” Eddie asked. He felt a little panicky. He ordered himself to swallow it down.
Hang tough. Pretend it's a game. You're waiting to get the ball.

“You're going to feel lousy for a couple of hours. It's not easy slipping through space and time. But you'll be fine, and I'll be there to meet you and tell you what to do.”

Grandpa glanced at his watch. “Here we go.” He hugged Eddie harder and longer than he ever had before. When he stepped back, his eyes looked teary. “Happy trails, son.”

He took a small black box out of his pocket and adjusted the dials. He pressed a button.

Eddie felt himself slipping away.

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

Eddie? You there?

He'd always been there for me before. Sometimes weeks would go by without us talking, but when I called, he'd show up.

One time I Googled “imaginary friends” and read about how they were normal and even helped some kids learn to think and speak. But then I read stuff that said imaginary friends could be a sign of being off your rocker.

I'd been to doctors a few times about my behavior at school. They told Mom I was “acting out” because I was missing Dad and that when I understood that he was dead and not just disappeared, I would get better.

Eddie? I really need to talk to you.

Sometimes the doctors prescribed pills for me. I got good at cheeking them, even when Mom or nurses were watching. A couple of times I even spat them into the Lump's beer and watched him drink it. The pills never seemed to affect him.

Right now I was feeling lousy, like I was coming down with the flu.

I couldn't even find the double stars.

Eddie? She was your mom, too.

The flu was getting worse. My body ached from being squeezed on all sides. It was hard to breathe. I felt like I had to go to the bathroom even though I didn't.

I waited until all the lights were out before I went back into the house.

I couldn't sleep. My stomach felt like the inside of a washing machine. My eyeballs ached. Chills. I tried to ignore them. I played a game of Ambush III against myself. Everybody died. I got tired of the game. I couldn't concentrate. Too many questions in my head. Mom wasn't my mother. Why hadn't Dad told me? What was he waiting for? What else didn't I know about myself?

I tried to clear my mind by surfing the tech blogs. I hacked around until I found the company memos on the CloakII, which I had put together from a kit I got online. It was an invisibility machine. I never got it to work. The company was also having trouble with the CloakII. I read on a national security blog that the army was working on a machine just like it that could bend light so that soldiers would be invisible. The big problem with the machine was that it distorted the light waves for only a few seconds before you became visible again. I had worked on the CloakII off and on for almost a year.

Suddenly, I felt as though I were upside down, which made me nauseous. I thought about Eddie, and when I thought about Eddie, I felt as though I were whooshing through space.

Then I hauled out my violin and played a few bars from dueling violins before it made me too sad thinking about Dad. I played solos from
The Lord of the Rings
songbook Grandpa gave me a few years ago, “Into the West” and “Gollum's Song.” They really need a piano accompaniment, but Grandpa can't read music anymore and Mom's the only other piano player I know. She's too busy.

“Sounds good.” The Lump had walked into my room and sat down on my bed. “From
Rings,
right?”

“What part of knocking is too hard for you?”

“The part where you tell me to buzz off.”

That's the worst, when he tries to act friendly.

I ignored him and played “Evenstar.”

“I saw those flicks three times,” he said. “People said I looked like Gimli.”

“The dwarf?”

He nodded.

He was right. He was a big, ugly red-haired version of Gimli. “Too bad. Up until this minute, Gimli was one of my favorite characters.”