I thought of Ethan and his endless collection of superhero T-shirts and his deep and abiding love of Cam Jansen mysteries. He could hang with lighter sci-fi movies—Galaxy Quest, Star Wars, anything that was animated—but he was nine and mostly freaked out by aliens and robots. And he’d fallen asleep during the last two of my Fourth of July showings of Independence Day, a sin I couldn’t quite forgive.
I was starting to lose hope that he’d ever be ready for the grand Terminator marathon that I’d been saving to initiate him into the true sci-fi canon.
“Does he have a major picked?” Leigh asked.
“A major?” I asked, Ethan’s round, light-skinned face still hovering in my mind. He was going into fourth grade. The last time I checked, he was still set on wanting to become a roofer because he liked ladders.
The marker went slack in my hand as I remembered that Ethan was Elliot Gabaroche’s brother. I hadn’t considered that I’d have to erase my real little brother from Ever’s biography. Guilt sucker punched my heart as I forced myself to think about Isaiah instead.
“I’m not sure,” I said. That was something that I should know. Sid definitely would, but she’d know something was up if I randomly texted her to ask. I’d spent Isaiah’s entire life purposefully not memorizing facts about him. Since I couldn’t admit this, I turned back to my paper. “He likes a lot of stuff.”
It wasn’t a lie. Isaiah had plenty of interests. But even Rayevich wouldn’t let him major in whining, tattling, or disgusting food combinations.
“Ever’s a twin,” Leigh explained to Kate and Perla. “Her brother is on Team Three.”
“You both got in?” Kate asked. She studied my face with a sudden curiosity. “Dizygotic twins only share fifty percent of their genes. What’s the discrepancy between your IQs?”
I shrank back from her intense stare. I didn’t like knowing that she was picturing my brain. “I don’t know. It’s not like we got the results back from the admissions test.”
Perla tossed her scissors aside with a clatter that made Leigh and Kate jump. “Well, this is great. If Ever takes it easy on her twin, we’ll never make it to the final round.”
“We aren’t those kind of twins.” I didn’t know much about being a twin, but I knew that there was no way I would ever take a dive for Isaiah.
“Oh yeah?” she sneered. “What are you going to do if only one of you gets the scholarship?”
Throw a parade from here all the way back to Sacramento? Buy his plane ticket to the academy?
“I’ll go to school here and he won’t,” I said.
“Entering the Melee is a shortcut,” Leigh said. “It’s not the only way to get in. Isaiah could always apply in the fall.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I muttered.
“Is that a Firefly?” asked a voice above me.
I tilted my head back and saw the Perfect Nerd Girl staring down at my poster. Her eyes were pale to the point of being nearly reflective. Combined with her supremely fake red hair, the overall effect verged on terrifying.
“‘Love keeps her in the air,’” I said, unable to stop the quote from tumbling out. I didn’t know if I wanted her to like me or if I just wanted to stop her before she started gatekeeping. A lot of old-school Joss Whedon fans thought that anyone who couldn’t talk about the vampire shows didn’t deserve to be a fan of the rest of the Whedonverse. Like just enjoying something wasn’t enough to be considered a fan.
Besides, I might not have known anything about Buffy or whatever, but I could talk about Titan A.E. or Alien Resurrection for hours.
The Perfect Nerd Girl smiled. Not enough to show teeth, but it took some of the edge off of her face as she said, “And the glitter makes her gorram fancy.” She nodded to the other girls. “I’m here to take your water cup. We need to pack up before dinner. And Meg is…” She glanced over her shoulder at Meg, who was deep into making her banner. “Otherwise occupied.”
Kate looked up, the puff paint tube poised between her thumb and forefinger. “You went to the Messina, right?”
The Perfect Nerd Girl twitched a shrug. “All four years.”
“What’s the incentive for you to come back to be counselors?” Kate asked.
“Yeah,” Perla jumped in. “Don’t you guys have jobs and apartments and lives?”
The Perfect Nerd Girl pressed her lips together, locking back whatever had first leaped to the tip of her tongue. She tried again, measuring the words. “We get class credits and free housing. Not paying rent for two months is a definite bonus. And we get to see each other again. We all spread out for college.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “But mostly we all owed a favor that got called in. The proverbial ‘offer you can’t refuse.’”
“Then why didn’t Cornell’s girlfriend come, too?” I asked.
Her eyes locked in on my face. I had to force myself not to flinch away. “Because she’s much, much smarter than the rest of us.”
She bent down and took the water cup before moving on to the next group.
“Do you think the Messina teaches all of their students how to be that vague?” I asked no one in particular.
“Okay, everybody,” Meg crowed, bouncing to her feet at the front of the room. “It’s time to decorate. But the rule is, no one can decorate their own room or the room of anyone on their team! Go introduce yourself to a new Onward lady and get her room key!”
“No,” Perla said, mashing her valentine heart to her poster. “I think they’re all dicks.”
8
While lights-out was set, unshakably, for ten thirty, there wasn’t a real “lights-on.” The sun threw a wrench into the idea of controlling when people could and couldn’t be awake. As I stretched on the cement outside of the residence hall, I considered that, if I’d bothered asking one of the RAs, there were probably rules about when we were officially allowed to wander campus.
But that was why I hadn’t asked.
After hours of falling in and out of consciousness on my new tiny mattress and scratchy sheets, it was bliss to be out under the bruise-purple sky. The air was so cold that it felt solid as it scraped through my sinuses and pressed against my cheeks.
I’d left my headphones in the dorm. The only music I wanted this morning was the patter of my own feet on the concrete.
Hours away from breakfast, I stopped worrying about getting lost. Losing myself on campus was the first step to knowing where everything was. I passed the library and made a sharp turn, heading straight toward a cluster of buildings and the arboretum that spread across the back of the campus.
As I approached a squat brick building with a sign that read “LeRoy Hall,” there was a clomping sound in the grass behind me, and a wheeze, before, “El, wait up!”
I closed my eyes but didn’t slow down. Not my name. Not my problem.
“You’re the worst twin in the world, you know,” Isaiah gasped. From the sound of his footfalls, he was stumbling behind me. He must have been trying to run in skate shoes. Too slippery.
“I believe it,” I said, refusing to look behind me. “Considering I was born to an entirely different woman from an entirely separate egg over a year before you.”