My birthday was Crap City. I got the Gray Shadow Crimestoppers kit. It has a hat and magnifying glass and handcuffs and whistle and Crimestoppers manual, and I couldn’t care less. I just wanted the day to be over. Poppy whispered that he was never so nervous in his life as he was sneaking me back into my room. If I thought my parents wouldn’t make me get up, I’d still be in bed.
Jake
I can’t sleep. Those eyes hang over me in the dark, like burning stones. Eyes might not speak louder than mouths, but they speak deeper, the terrible name: Jake? Jake?
We meet in the hideout. We get takeout and eat lunch there. We ride. We hang. We goof off. We spit-bomb cars from the bridge. We still laugh, but not as much as before. Sometimes I wonder if the others can see those eyes following me. My pumpkin seeds don’t taste so good anymore.
Lily
My first thought was: I don’t believe Mom is dragging me out of bed so early. It’s summer freaking vacation! Then I opened my eyes. It wasn’t Mom. It was Poppy. “Let’s go,” he said. He tickled my feet. I shrieked. “You’ve been a zombie long enough. I’m off work today. You’re spending it with me.”
We went to used car lots, and by noon we were riding home in an old Malibu.
“Wish it wasn’t red,” he said. “But the price was right.”
“Red’s okay,” I told him.
After lunch we went for a spin. Back home, he went for the cards. “Ready to lose millions?” he said.
“Nah,” I said. “Don’t feel like it.”
He snapped his fingers. “Bummer. I guess my strategy’s not working. I figured if I kept you busy all day, maybe I could drag you out of your mood.”
We were at the kitchen table, our usual card-playing place. “I’ll never be out of this mood,” I said. I slumped in my chair.
“Sure you will,” he said. “Bad moods don’t last forever.”
“It’s not even just a mood,” I told him. “It’s my life. It’s me. You don’t understand.”
He shuffled the cards over and over. “I understand time passes. Time heals.”
I stared at him. “Poppy, you’re not a twin. You don’t know what it’s like to lose half of your self.”
He stared back at me for a long time. His eyes were shining. He smiled—a sad, remembering smile. He nodded. “Oh yes I do.”
It took me another minute of staring, and then I got it. Grandma. I felt rotten. I reached out. “I’m sorry, Poppy. I forgot.”
He patted my hand. He sniffed. “It’s okay. You’re allowed.”
I looked at Poppy’s white ponytailed hair, at his eyes, at his face. I thought, Wow—love lasts a long time.
And then he was talking. About the old days in California. Him and Grandma. How they used to dig for clams on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean. How they stomped on grapes and scrubbed the purple off each other’s feet and made their own wine. How sometimes Grandma would suddenly bust out laughing and he would look around but he couldn’t see anything funny. “Why are you laughing?” he would ask her, and she would say, “Who needs a reason?” and pretty soon they were both doing it. “We’d look at each other and just out of the blue bust out laughing.”
I watched his hands shuffle the cards. I knew he wanted me to play. I knew I should. But I couldn’t.
When I looked up, the same smile was on his face, but the eyes were different. A minute ago they were reaching back across time and miles to California and Grandma. Now they were only reaching three feet—thirty-six inches—to the other side of the kitchen table. To me.
“Poppy, what?” I said.
He was wagging his head now.
“What?”
“It’s not that I didn’t believe you. You know…the sleepwalk, the train station, all that.”
“Okay. So?”
“I mean, if I didn’t believe you, I wouldn’t have been there that night. Would I?”
It was feeling a little heavy. I tried to lighten it. “Even if you were a little late.”
He chuckled. “Right on that. But then…then…seeing you with my own eyes, standing there on the platform in the dim light, in your bare feet and pajamas, all by yourself”—he wagged his head some more—“touching you—remember that?—I touched you, I poked you, remember?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
“Lily…I’ve been around the world, I’ve seen it all, but that night…you…”
I rushed to him. I dived into his lap. There were no more words. Just being close. And I think it was not just Poppy who was squeezing me. I think it was Grandma too.
Jake
Lindop.
That’s his last name. I had to give the eyes a name. The face I dream about every night, it had to have a name. A full name.
I rode to Meeker Street. I didn’t have to worry about him because today was Wednesday and that’s when he goes to his art lesson. That left his mom, who actually scared me more than him. I didn’t go straight to the house. I parked my bike a block away, sat on the curb, and watched. I must have waited two hours before the mailman finally came along. As soon as I saw him stick mail into the box by the front door, I took a deep breath and started walking. I wore a dorky shirt I never wear. I wore my sister’s Pennsylvania Railroad hat. And sunglasses. It was the best disguise I could come up with. Every step of the way I was ready to run if I heard somebody yell, “Hey!”
I turned up the walkway to the porch. I was never so terrified in my life. I kept my head down. I prayed she wasn’t looking out the second-floor window. I prayed she wouldn’t come out just as I was reaching into the box. I grabbed the stack of mail. My hands were shaking. I looked at one letter. It was addressed to Mr. Raymond Lindop. Another letter. Another. Each one with the same last name: Lindop. I stuffed the mail back into the box and took off straight across the yard. Lily’s hat flew off but I was too terrified to go back for it. I climbed onto my bike and flew. I was sure somebody saw me. I tried to remember if looking at somebody’s mail was a crime. I didn’t calm down till I was out of town.
I kept repeating it. Silently at first, then out loud:
“Lindop…Lindop…Ernest Lindop…”
Lily
“I was wrong.”
That’s what Poppy said when I walked into his kitchen tonight. He looked up from the sink and said, “I was wrong.”
“About what?” I said.
He turned from the sink. He was holding a cantaloupe. He held it out to me. “What can I do with this?”
I groaned. I grabbed the cantaloupe. I slammed it on the counter. “Jeez, Poppy, don’t you know anything?” I yanked open the counter drawer. All I saw were a couple of butter knives, forks, and spoons. “Where’s your long knife?” I said. “For cutting big stuff?”
He looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. “Long knife?”
I glared at him. “How do you expect to cut a watermelon? Slice bread? Cake? A turkey?”
“I’ll get a long knife,” he said.
I stared at the pitiful drawer. I shook my head. “You’re not even civilized. You don’t even have an ice-cream scoop.”
“I don’t eat ice cream,” he said.
I snapped. “Well, I do!”
“Okay—okay,” he said. “I’ll get a long knife and an ice-cream scoop.”
“And fudge ripple,” I told him. “Every time I come to this house, I want there to be fudge ripple ice cream in the freezer. You know what a freezer is, don’t you?”
He saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”
I poured myself an OJ from the fridge. “See, you got me all worked up.”
“Must be Bite Off Grandpa’s Head Day.”
I snicker-snorted. “Sorry. I’m in a crappo mood.” I flopped into a chair. “So what are you so wrong about?”
He sat down. “My advice to you. Telling you to get a life. Origami. Gardening. All that.”
“Why’s it wrong?”
“It’s wrong because—” He stopped, stared at me. “Look—what’s the bottom line here?
What are we trying to accomplish?”
I didn’t have to think long. “Get me back with my brother. Get our goombla back.”
He smacked the table. “Exactly. And listen to the word you said—get.”
“So?”
“So, goombla, twin magic—whatever you want to call it—it’s not something you can chase after, reach for, get. You’ve been trying too hard. You’re forcing it.”
This time I smacked the table. “Well duh, of course I’m forcing it. I want it.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. It’s like love. You can’t try to love somebody. Either it’s there or it’s not.”
I felt a chill. “Are you saying our goombla isn’t there? It doesn’t exist? I might as well give up?”
He patted my hand. He laughed. “It’s there, all right. Once entangled, forever entangled. You have to trust that.”
I was getting dizzy from all this fancy thinking. “So I just wasted the last couple of weeks—because I was trying too hard?”
He nodded. “Right.”
“So what am I supposed to do now?”
He smiled. “Stop trying. Give life a chance to just happen.”
“Poppy,” I whined, “you’re driving me crazy. First you say try. Now you say don’t try. First you say get a life. Now you say don’t get a life.”
He nodded, like I was making perfect sense. “Right. Because life will get you. Took me awhile to figure that out.”
“But what about my brother? What about us? Our goombla?”
He flicked his hand. “Walk away from it. Turn your back on it.” He smiled. “Forget it.”
I pounded the table. “Never!”
He took both my hands in his. “Listen, your goombla is a gift. You didn’t ask for it and you can’t give it away. But you’re smothering it. It can’t breathe. You need to back off. Let go of it.”
I cried, “I can’t!”
He stood. He got the cantaloupe. He sat it in the middle of the table. He patted it. “Now stand up and turn around.”
“Poppy—”
“Do it. Stand up and turn your back on the cantaloupe.”
I stood up. I turned around.
“Can you see it?” he said.
“No.”
“Okay, now turn back.”
I did.
“And what do you see on the table?”
“A cantaloupe.”
“It didn’t disappear when you turned your back, did it?”
“Poppy—”
“Did it?”
“No.”
He patted the cantaloupe. “Think of this as your goombla. Every day from now on it’s going to be right here, whether you give it attention or not.”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Poppy.”
He came over and hugged me. “You don’t have to know. That’s what grandpas are for. All you have to do is trust me. Trust life to find you.”
I looked up into my grandfather’s eyes. “I trust you,” I said. “It’s life I don’t trust.”
Jake
Riding my bike, eating breakfast, tying my shoes, in my dreams—he’s there, slumping, wonderstruck…. Jake?…Jake?
He hates me. Ernest Lindop of Meeker Street hates me. I’ve never been hated before. It’s like sunburn on my heart.
Lily
I’m trying. I mean, I’m trying not to try.
As I was leaving Poppy’s yesterday, I said, “What exactly does that mean, let go of it?”
“Erase it from your mind,” he said. “Don’t think about goombla. Don’t care about it.”
How do you not try to get something you want?
How do you stop caring about the thing that you care about the most?
How do you erase the other half of your own self?
Jake
I was wrong. Ernest Lindop doesn’t hate me.
He’s disappointed.
That’s what it is. Disappointment. Not hate. I wish it was hate. Hate is easier.
It sounds pretty innocent, doesn’t it? You hear parents say it all the time. Teachers. “I’m disappointed in you.”
That’s nothing. When somebody who was always laughing suddenly stops—when you look in a kid’s eyes just at the moment when it hits him that you haven’t been his friend after all—when you see somebody so sad that you know a hundred sucker punches to the gut couldn’t hurt him as much as the words you just said—that’s disappointment.
Lily
What do you do while you’re waiting for your life to happen?
Do like everybody else, you could say—hang out with your best friend.
I can’t. My best friend is my twin brother. Jake. The thing with best-friend-hanging is, it goes both ways. And I’m not Jake’s best friend anymore.
So find another one, you could say.
Easier said than done, I say. Sure, I have friends. But mostly they’re in-school friends. I’ve always spent most of my out-of-school time with Jake. I never had to go looking for some buddy-pal to sleep over with. I already slept over with my best friend. Every night. And now, after the Anna Matuzak Disaster, I’m practically afraid to look at another girl.
So that leaves Poppy. And I can only see him at night now, because he went and made them love him so much at the rec center that they made his job full-time.
So what do I do all day? Can you spell B-O-RI-N-G?
I watch TV. I wish The Gray Shadow was on ten times a day.
I throw darts.
I practice burping.
I look for my missing Pennsylvania Railroad hat.
I walk along the creek and pick up cool stones that Jake would like. Then I remember Poppy’s words: Forget it. I throw the stones into the water.
I ride my bike, looking for crimes. My Crimestoppers manual says it’s not a good idea to try to make a citizen’s arrest, but there’s no law against it. So I take along the handcuffs, just in case I come across a crime in progress. No luck so far.
I go to Poppy’s, but I stay out of the kitchen. I’m afraid to look at the table. I’m afraid the cantaloupe won’t be there.
Jake
My brain is squeezing me in the middle.
The Bright Side says, Stop blaming yourself. Day after day all you did was hang around while Bump did the talking and the mocking. You didn’t paint the shack. You didn’t rip off the plank. You didn’t demolish the place. You didn’t even come up with the name Soop. It was all Bump. All you did was step up and take the heat for him. You’re not a rat. You’re a hero.
The Dark Side says, Don’t kid yourself. You’re a rat. Sure, Bump carried the ball. But you were on the team. You were there the whole time, grinning and nodding and going along with the program, like Bump’s little dog. Did you ever raise a finger to stop it? Did you ever once give the goober a break? You want proof that you’re guilty? You feel guilty. Deep down you know it. You know the guilt isn’t just Bump’s. It’s yours too. That’s why you confessed.
Lily
I figured maybe I’m riding my bike too much looking for crimes. I figured it might be easier for my life to find me if I stayed put. So this morning I never left the porch. I rocked on the rocking chair.
I saw everything. The old lady across the street sweeping her driveway. Cars going by. People walking. Cats. Squirrels.
Nothing exciting. Nothing that would let me know that my new life showed up.
No crimes. Well, not officially. There was one thing that I personally would call a crime if I was a judge. It was a girl and a little kid. Her brother, I guess. The girl was pulling the kid along in a red wagon. The little kid was yelling, “Take me now!” The girl was yelling, “No!”
“Take me now!”
“No!”
That’s how they went past my house:
“Now!”
“No!”
The girl looked my age. She wore a blue-and-yellow baseball cap. I didn’t know her. Every time the runt said “Now!” he thumped the wagon with his feet. I felt like putting
the cuffs on his feet. I could still hear them a block away:
“Now!”
“No!”
That was the big event of my fascinating day.
Jake
I don’t get it. People treat me like normal. Nobody calls me names. Nobody spits on me. My mother kisses me every night when I go to bed. Don’t they know I’m The Big Disappointment?
Lily
It happened again today: the girl, the runt, the wagon.
“Take me now!”
“No!”
“Now!”
“No!”
Thump. Thump.
I yelled from the rocking chair, “Shut up!”
The wagon stopped. They both turned to me, fish-eyed. Then the runt jutted out his chin and thumped the wagon. “You shut up!”
I didn’t have any new lines, so I stuck with, “You shut up!”
That’s how it was going—
“You shut up!”
“You shut up!”
—when I noticed the girl was marching onto my porch. I got ready in case she tried to slug me. But all she did was stick out her hand. “Thank you,” she said with a big smile.
“What for?” I said.
“For telling the brat to shut up.”
I shook her hand. “My pleasure.”
“Do you always butt in like that?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said. “It just sorta came out.”
“Sydney Dodds,” she said. “Two y’s.” She stuck out her hand again.
I gave her another shake. “Lily Wambold. Two l’s.”
“I don’t know you,” she said. “I live over on Clem Drive.”