Twin String

by Tamar Mekredijian

When P got her Chevy, I was saved. My mom was always late to pick me up from school, and when I complained, she asked me whether I wanted a roof over my head or food on the table. If I had to, I’d choose the food. I knew she’d choose the roof, her large clay bowls strewn about, ready to be assembled into decorative water fountains. A home for her art. Her work. 

When I told her about P’s Chevy, she said “Oh that adorable Paisley, so resourceful,” and that was the end of it. She was off the hook. P’s hatchback, its paint chipping down the left side and passenger seat stained brown in the shape of a J, felt like redemption. 

But really it was P who saved me. She saw me. And I kept loving her even after she stopped loving me. Even after I pulled on the string too hard.

On Tuesdays, 7-11 had one-dollar diet Slurpee’s, and by the time we reached P’s house, our tongues were stained blue and numb. We took big sips and said tongue twisters like Betty Botter Bought Some Butter and She Sells Seashells by the Seashore. June was the first to stumble and we made her do three laps around the Chevy at the next stoplight. P’s lips didn’t seem to have a beginning or an ending. She would swipe strawberry lip balm in one circular motion around and around while she drove, telling us about her newest obsessions, like magazine quizzes and vanilla-chai-scented candles. 

No one ever said it out loud, but P’s house was a mansion. She lived in the nicer part of Altadena. You turned right at the famous cathedral on Lake Avenue and you were there. Her parents were cool. They popped up here and there to say hello or ask about school, but mostly they were hidden in different corners of the large house. If P’s dad happened to be around, he was easily distracted by questions about the house’s origins. I was always the point person to ask him about the house while P and June snuck wine coolers upstairs. We drank and did Mad Libs until we laughed so hard we had to walk away from each other to catch our breaths. We spent our time flipping through trashy magazines from P’s mom’s stash, circling outfits we liked and crossing out the faces of boys that were not our type. Her mom would fix us macaroni and cheese from a box and leave it on the stove. I would sneak it when P and June were distracted, spooning big mouthfuls, flecks of the powdery cheese clumping, pops of salt.

June said my belly was cute. She made me squeeze it and told me it looked like a bagel, my belly button the hole in the middle. Her and June could wear crop tops and tight dresses without sucking their stomachs in. They would forget to eat, and I would stay hungry. If I did eat, June would ask “You’re hungry again?” and P would roll her eyes and tell me to ignore her. It felt like a punishment for having any meat on my bones. Hunger felt like misbehavior. 

Michael told me my eating habits were charming. He would catch me sneaking bites of bread from the breadbox or chocolates from the crystal bowl in their living room. He was taller than P but had the same circular lips and the same eyes that squinted shut when they smiled. P told us that having a twin was weird but cool. She said she felt unsettled until she checked in with him. I ran into Michael in the hallway upstairs sometimes. I was tall like him. It was easy to look him in the eyes. His blond bangs were fluffy, pulled down against his forehead to cover up the acne underneath. P said their mother got him steroids, but they obviously weren’t working. His face still looked like a pepperoni pizza. She covered her own zits with globs of L’Oréal concealer.

Everyone loved Michael. At school, he hung out with the popular crowd, the ones who always got chosen for homecoming court, whose mothers made homemade baked goods for fundraisers, and whose fathers were at every football game cheering from the sidelines. Unlike my own dad whose child support felt like donations, like pity, even though they were required. The girls Michael hung out with looked stunning in their baggy Dickies and stiff Polo shirts, like our school uniforms were made for them. They ate school lunch everyday while I had just one meal ticket a week, unless my mom sold a fountain. Then I would get an extra one. Otherwise, it was PB&J’s and orange wedges. 

In the cafeteria, the girls watched me savor my weekly lunch.

“You could start mingling,” P suggested.

“Seriously. You need to come out of this bubble,” June said.

“It’s not a bubble,” P said. 

“I don’t really care,” I said, dipping my garlic bread in the spaghetti sauce on my plate. 

“But don’t you want a date to the homecoming dance?” June asked.

There was only one boy I wanted to go to the dance with. I shrugged and finished off my bread.

“You’re gorgeous. You’re smart. You just need to talk to people other than us sometimes,” P said.

June nodded even though I knew she didn’t think so. But I believed P was telling me the truth.

 ***

AP Lit was the only class I shared with Michael. We had assigned seats, and he sat right behind me. I could hear him laughing under his breath when his friends said something funny. Sometimes he would slap his notebook on his desk and send my hair flying. I tried to keep good posture. I asked thoughtful questions, hoping he was listening. I wrote as neatly as I could, in case he snuck a peak at my notes over my shoulders, as if the exaggerated loops of my g’s or f’s might enchant him. Most days, he was missing a pencil and I let him borrow mine. He returned it after class, and I would use that one the rest of the day.

One Friday, P announced that her newest obsession was coffee. She told us she felt so alive when she drank it. June and I helped her drink a full pot, leaning over the kitchen island to push up our breasts, comparing our cleavages. P pointed out that June really had no cleavage at all and for once it felt like my body didn’t lose. The coffee made me shake and I had an urge to run around the block. P said that was normal but not to. That the coyotes were probably out already. We jumped in the pool instead. They went in naked, but stripping down to my bra and underwear was as far as I would go. We took turns jumping in the pool and the hot tub, alternating, shocking our bodies with the icy cold and the burning hot, our blood speeding through our veins. I felt like I could jump out of my skin and leave the shell of me in the hot tub while I did laps around the pool.

 My eyelids shook when I closed them. The caffeine would not let up. For a moment, I considered walking all the way home, knowing my mother was probably still awake. It would take me hours, but I knew I could do it. Then I remembered the coyotes.

I went downstairs and ate some bread to try to soak up the coffee. The TV was on and there was Michael. He lifted a beer into the air to greet me and told me to join him. He was watching a nature show, one about penguins.

“Each penguin chooses just one penguin to mate with for life,” he said.

“Fascinating,” I said.

“I thought so,” he said, shrugging. “Want to watch?” 

I felt my body buzzing even though my head felt heavy. I sat next to him on the couch and sucked my stomach in, pulling my jeans over my belly. He handed me a bowl of popcorn and we took turns taking handfuls of it and holding them against our open mouths. Our hands slippery with butter. My stomach rejoicing. My heart beat fast at the thought of our hands touching in the bowl. The hope of it, exhilarating.

 These Friday night meetings continued. I would wait until the girls were asleep and sneak down to find Michael there on the couch with a beer and another nature show. Each week was something different, but all I could think about was our knees touching, the sweet smell of his deodorant every time he moved, hoping he would finally hold my hand.

Africa. Giraffes. His knee grazed mine when he bent to pick up the remote control from the coffee table.

Thailand. Elephants. He sat so close our arms touched the whole time we watched.

Asia. Pandas. I looked over and caught him staring at me before he quickly turned away.

 A week before the dance, Michael had his friends over. P’s mom ordered everyone pizza. We ate it sprawled out on the lawn. Some people watched a movie while others swam. Once P’s parents went to bed, I was in charge of guarding the bathroom door while she and her boyfriend made out inside.

Both P and June had officially been asked to the dance that night. June said maybe she shouldn’t tell us who asked her. We begged and begged and she finally told us it was Michael. P made gagging noises and I laughed along, but in the dark, after they quieted down, I cried. I had never seen Michael even talk to June. I started to wonder if his feelings for me were all in my head. In the silence, I imagined us all as penguins, waddling around, all of us the same. Michael picked June.

I didn’t go downstairs that night.

 ***

That week, my mom had one of her client parties at the house. Normally I would be annoyed when she asked for help, but this time I was glad. I needed a break from the mansion, from the girls, from Michael. I put yellow Post-its on the fountains that sold. After everyone was gone, we ordered Chinese food and watched The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I looked at our old shaggy carpet, the magazines piled against the walls, the lamp with a broken shade, the pile of crumpled up 99 Cent Store receipts on the coffee table next to the bleached ring where dad would put his beer every night. I thought about his coat that still hung in the closet. I stared at my mom’s round eyes, the TV screen making them change colors. Her eyelashes were almost invisible, her hair a tangled mess. It was the first time I noticed it. The loneliness that lingered between the art and the wine and the constant question of when dad would ever visit us. 

After my mom fell asleep, I ate three more plates of lo mein, slurping loud and letting the grease linger like lip gloss.

 ***

We slept over on the Friday before the dance, and I tiptoed downstairs for a snack. Michael was in the kitchen, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

“You ok?” he asked.

“P made coffee again,” I said.

He laughed and made another sandwich, the jelly smearing on the counter and handed it to me.

“Want to watch something? Get your eyes tired?”

I took a bite of the sandwich. It was heavy on the peanut butter. I swirled it around and around, thinning it out and decided it was all in my head: these conversations, these gestures, these moments of togetherness. But I wanted more. I could tell because it was hard not to touch him. It was hard not to stare. It was hard to be away from him at all. When I wasn’t with him, I felt a specific sadness come over me. I couldn’t shake it until the next time I had a chance to be near him. Even just being in the house and knowing he was in one of the rooms somewhere was comforting. I could breathe. He could go and be with June if I could just be near him. Get my fix, like the small bites I took of the block of cheddar cheese they kept on a dinner plate in the fridge.

I followed him into the den.

“It’s about whales tonight,” he said.

I took another bite of the sandwich and stood by the couch.

“What?” he asked.

“Whales freak me out,” I said.

“Why?”

“Look at them. Look how big they are. And who knows what’s down there?”

“You don’t have to go down there,” he said.

“But what if you fell in? What if you were on a boat and fell in and a whale came and swallowed you up?”

“Ok, damn. You’re ruining this for me,” he said laughing.

And then nothing else mattered except sitting on the couch next to him. The whales were migrating. Apparently, they swam across oceans up to 3,000 miles to breed in warmer waters. They swam and swam and Michael began to caress my hand. Then my arm. And when I turned to look at him, his face was close. He was looking at my lips. His breath smelled like peanut butter. When he kissed me, it was soft. Small pecks that started at the edge and when he got to the middle of my lips, he stopped.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t know why I did that.”

“I didn’t mind it,” I said.

“But you didn’t kiss me back. You didn’t even move,” he said, smiling.

“I’ve never done this before.”

He didn’t laugh like I thought he would. 

“Can you do it again?” 

He looked at me, at my eyes, my lips and smiled. 

“You just have to pucker them a little,” he said.

He leaned in and this time, I moved my lips, pushing them out so our teeth didn’t touch. I felt the kiss all over my body. He moved away to look at me.

This time I leaned in and opened my lips. This time, he followed my lead. This time, our tongues touched, explored, and swirled.

I wanted to swallow him up.

We kept going until we heard someone gasp.

June.

We were still in a haze while she was running up the stairs, waking P up, asking her to drive her home.

 ***

“You two disgust me,” P said in the car. “You’re fighting over my gross brother? Like seriously, what is wrong with you?”

All the way to my house, she lectured us about how there were plenty of fish in the sea and to let her brother go deep into the water and forget about him. That he wasn’t worth it. I didn’t know if June would ever talk to me again. But I didn’t care.

She took me home last and when she parked the car I didn’t move.

“Can you just…” she started. “Can you just tell me what’s going on? It’s my brother. This is so nauseating.”

She took her lip balm from the cup holder and rubbed it around and around her lips. 

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“But for what? Like what is this about?”

“I’m sorry I upset you.”

She turned to look at me, her lips shiny in the moonlight.

“I’m not upset. Not really. I just don’t get what’s going on here. He’s my freaking brother. There are so many other guys you can hook up with. We told you to mingle but, ew, Michael?”

“I’m in love with him.”

She laughed. Of course she laughed. I knew how ridiculous it sounded. 

“How the hell would you know what love is?” she asked.

She was Michael with long hair and a smaller nose. They both had freckles right below their eyebrows. They both had the same look when they were asking a question. 

I could never lose her. 

“You’re right,” I said. “How would I know?”

She nodded.

“I wasted my first kiss on your brother,” I said after a pause, laughing.

“Okay, seriously, that’s so gross and pathetic. We will fix this,” she said, cupping my chin with her hand.

 ***

We were at school when P told me Michael and June had made up. That they were still on for the dance and to just keep out of it. Michael was on the other side of the quad on the grass, his arms crossed, talking to his friends. I imagined there was an invisible thread between P and him, a twin string, starting on her cheek and ending on his, so that when she turned her head, he turned his, and vice versa. When she was content, he was. This wasn’t her being bossy. I think she was just trying to keep her own head above water. So, I would stay out of it. For P’s sake.

***

Michael and June danced to every song together. P hooked me up with one of their friends. Jeff held doors open for me and pulled my chair out when we sat down to dinner. He brought me lemonade after we danced for a while and P kept raising her eyebrows up and down across the table. She had told me this could be my chance to make up for my crappy first kiss. My kiss with Michael was something I tried not to think about. It made me crave more. So, I went along with it. It was fun to have a boy’s attention, especially because I kept catching Michael looking at us, from all the way across the room. I milked it, pulling Jeff close on the dance floor and made a show of laughing at his stupid remarks.

 I snuck glances at them. June’s pink sequin dress glittered under the blinking lights. Michael had brushed his hair back and I could see his acne. I was embarrassed for him. Jeff brought me a large plate of mozzarella sticks and nachos that I polished off by myself. I drank cup after cup of lemonade. I was hoping Jeff would kiss me in front of everyone inside so Michael could see, but it happened outside, out back where it smelled like weed and trash. It felt like a dog was licking me and I wished I could wipe my face when it took too long to dry. Soon, Jeff got caught up with some of his friends. He stayed outside to smoke. When P saw me alone, she pulled me onto the dance floor. She grabbed my hands and spun me around and around. I let out a happy shriek, loving the blurriness of it all, pulling on the twin string, getting glimpses of Michael’s stares.

In the bathroom, too much food and too much dancing got to me, and I threw up. P held my hair and then wiped my face. She stood behind me and, in the mirror, I could see the determination in her face, her eyebrows pressing together as she tightened my updo. Pin by pin from her lips, Michael’s lips, pushing them into my hair and smoothing out flyways. 

 That night, I was famished. When P and June finally fell asleep, I went downstairs and ate ice cream straight from the carton with a spoon. Michael was playing video games with some friends from school. I was glad he was distracted. I slipped out into the backyard. The pool lights were on, and I dipped my feet into the water, warm on the surface and cooler as my feet went deeper. I moved my legs to make ripples. The crickets were loud, an invisible chorus. I laid back on the pavement, my legs dangling in the water.

I thought about my mother, probably dozing on the couch next to the pile of clean laundry we would continue to pick through until it was gone. The light of the television probably danced on the walls, on her skin, her body heavy with the weight of her forced indifference to most things. Suddenly, I wanted to be there in the thick, sad silence.

Water sprayed all over me from the splash. It did not take me long to know it was Michael, his form long and slender under the surface, gliding smooth, like the seals we watched a couple of weeks ago. I got up and started walking toward the deck. 

“Hey,” he called out. “Wait. Where are you going?”

I stood a few feet away from the pool and he came out, dripping all over the floor.

“Leaving.”

“Why?”

I looked at him and saw P, remembering the warning in her eyes about staying away.

“I’m going to bed,” I said.

“You’re avoiding me, huh?” he asked.

I stopped walking and turned to look at him. He was shivering.

“You need a towel.”

“How thoughtful,” he said.

I started walking away again, my legs prickling as they dried.

“Wait,” he said.

He walked toward me, and I told myself over and over again to turn around. Go inside. Put a lot of distance between us. But my body wouldn’t move. I was hungry for him.

“Stay for just a minute,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“I like hanging out with you,” he said.

I shook my head. “You’re a jerk.”

“Why?”

“Why did you kiss me?”

“I wanted to,” he said.

I looked down.

“What?” he asked.

“You asked June to the dance.”

“No,” he said. “She asked me.”

The water was calm now. Michael’s face glowed in the yellow light of the pool, the deck light bright above his head.

“You said yes.”

“I wasn’t even going to go. My mom told me I had to. Who cares? She asked and I went. It's just a dance.”

“She likes you, Michael.”

He shrugged.

“I’m going inside,” I said.

“Come on,” he said. “Don’t be so boring. How come the other girls say yes to everything?”

He was smiling. P’s smile.

“Why are you trying to piss me off?”

“I’m just trying to get you to stay,” he said.

More than anything else, I wanted to stay right there next to him. I slipped my shirt over my head and unclipped my bra. I slipped my pants and underwear off fast, like ripping off a bandaid, to make sure I went through with it. I walked over to the edge of the pool and although I was scared, I looked up, right into his eyes, to see him looking at me. The way he looked at me is something I’ll hold onto for the rest of my life. I let him look. I wanted him to. He didn’t look shocked. If I was right, there was admiration, in the way his mouth stayed open, in his gentle, unblinking eyes, wandering all over my body, over the parts of me I always covered up.

I dove in first and when I came out for a breath he said, “I want to kiss you again.”

“Then come in,” I said, treading water.

It was the most graceful dive I had ever seen, like the blue whales in Alaska. His body slid into the water without a splash, deep. Him like a whale under the water. Me facing my fears. I swam to the side of the pool and smoothed out my hair, waiting for him to come up.

But the water became cloudy, the pool light dimming. Michael floated to the top of the water like a balloon. First a shoulder, then an ear. The blood fanned out around his head.

I jumped out of the water and slipped his shirt on. My voice was guttural, animal, rough. The house exhaled cold air as I opened the back door and screamed into its mouth. His friends ran out first, yelling when they saw him, then P and June and P’s parents. It was P’s mom that jumped in with her robe and pulled him to the pool’s edge and his dad carried him out. 

P’s mom pushed his hair out of his face. His dad began CPR, the cordless phone on speaker, instructions for how many times to pump his chest and blow into his mouth coming loud.

“Check for pulse,” the phone blared.

P put her fingers on his wrist.

“I don’t know how to do this!” she said.

“No,” P’s mom screamed. “What even happened?”

She was looking at me now. Everyone turned to look at me. My thighs were sticking to each other under Michael’s shirt, and I crossed my arms over my breasts. It was the first time that night I had felt naked.

I shook my head. “We were just swimming!”

“What happened?” P’s mom asked again.

“I think he went in too deep. He dove into the shallow end,” I heard myself say. “He must’ve hit his head.”

It was quiet, except for P’s dad’s panting as he continued to pump Michael’s chest. P bent down and touched Michael’s face.

“It looks different,” she said.

She pushed and pulled on his skin, like she was molding clay.

 “His face. It’s changed.”

Michael lay on the ground, still wet, looking displaced, like a fish out of water. I stared at P’s face, so white it looked blue, like a reflection. It looked different too, sagging, the string disintegrating.

 Blood pooled at our feet on the warm cement, and I wondered why no one was addressing the actual wound, the place his life seeped out of like a fountain, all over the floor, touching us all.