Abby's Twin

  “So, Anna, what do you want to do?” I asked the moment I returned home that afternoon. Anna was sitting on the couch in the living room. A pile of books was beside her, and she was watching some orchestra on the educational public station. I figured that couldn’t be a whole lot of fun. She needed to do something exciting.

  “You’re standing in front of the TV,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I apologized, stepping aside. “But it’s not like anyone is actually doing anything you’re going to miss.”

  “They are doing something,” Anna said. “They’re playing music and I want to watch them.”

  I studied the set. Rows and rows of people dressed in dull, formal outfits, wearing serious expressions, and playing slow, gloomy music. Okay, so — technically — they were moving. But barely.

  How could she stand to watch this? It was so boring.

  And the music was so sad. Anna was probably just sitting there brooding about her scoliosis. I needed to snap her out of her sad, self-pitying state.

  “I know!” I cried. “I borrowed that new video game from Kristy, Drag Race Canyon.” It was a great game. Super graphics. I really felt as if I were careening around a mountainous road in a race car. It was exciting — just the thing to take Anna’s mind off her problems.

  I took the video cartridge from my jacket pocket and then switched the TV to channel three.

  “Hey!” Anna cried indignantly.

  “You’ll love this game,” I assured her as I popped the cartridge into the game system. “Do you want to be the yellow car or the green?”

  “I want to watch the concert, Abby. I was enjoying it!”

  “Okay, you be yellow,” I said. I handed her a control pad. “The thing is to slow down just a little on the curves. If you go too slow, you lose time. If you go too fast you spin right off the course and crash into stuff.”

  “Abby, did you hear what I said?” Anna asked.

  “What? Are you saying you’d rather sit around and mope than play an exciting game with me?”

  “I wasn’t moping,” she muttered.

  “Sure you were. I mean, you have a perfect right to be bummed. But it’s not going to help anything.”

  Anna sighed deeply. “Okay. I still don’t think you’re listening. But if it will make you happy …”

  I smiled, pleased. It was my first victory in cheering up Anna. I’d roused her from her sullen state, and now we were doing something fun. Together. It made up for my selfishness in running off to the mall with my friends this morning. I felt a whole lot less guilty.

  Sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, we played the game. I have to say Anna was hopeless at it. Every two minutes she was either crashing or stalling out. “Concentrate,” I told her.

  “I don’t like video games,” she replied.

  “You’re just not used to them.”

  “No, I don’t like them.”

  “Everyone likes them,” I insisted. “If you keep practicing, you’ll get the hang of it.”

  “Abby, I don’t want to do this, okay?” Anna said, a sharp edge in her voice.

  I snapped off the game. “Okay.” I cast around in my mind for something else we could do. “Want to look through this together?” I suggested, picking up a glossy catalog that had just come in the mail. I handed it to Anna. “We can circle stuff we’d like. Remember how we used to do that when the toy catalogs came around the holidays?”

  Anna smiled. “I remember,” she said fondly. “You always circled the outrageous stuff — the kid-size sports car, the life-size gorilla.” She laughed softly and seemed to have already cheered up. But when she looked at what I’d handed her, she wrinkled her nose with distaste. “Workout Wear?”

  “Yeah, really cool sports clothes,” I said. “We’re not really going to send for them. We’ll just have fun picking them out.”

  Anna and I sat together on the couch. “Great bike shorts,” I said, pointing to a pair in neon purple.

  “I guess,” Anna said. “They’d look really nice on you.”

  “What do you like on this page?” I asked.

  “Nothing, really. You know I’m not much for sports.”

  “It’s never too late to start,” I countered. “I know! We can pick out twin workout wear.”

  “Twin clothes!” she cried.

  “Let’s start,” I suggested. “We are twins after all.”

  “I guess we’re not as twin as we used to be,” Anna said quietly, flipping the page of the sports catalog.

  I felt as if I’d been slapped.

  Not as twin? “What … do you mean?” I asked weakly.

  Anna looked up at me. “Well, I’ll be wearing a brace, and you won’t. No one will have trouble telling us apart now.”

  To be honest, everyone can tell us apart now. Our haircuts are completely different, for one thing. But we do look alike. I guess we still might be confusing to some people.

  Anna was right, though. The brace might really set us clearly apart.

  I wasn’t exactly thrilled by that idea.

  I like being a twin. I love it, in fact. No matter how different Anna and I are, we’re twins. It’s as simple as that. There’s this twin bond between us that I’ve always taken for granted. When you’re a twin, you’re indescribably close to another person. You always feel confident that no matter what happens, you’re never alone.

  Suddenly — maybe for the first time ever — I felt very alone.

  It was a horrible feeling.

  Anna had said the words as if it didn’t matter to her one bit. How could she be so cold about it? Didn’t the idea of not being twins as much as before hurt her the way it hurt me?

  Then it struck me! She meant to hurt me. Why? Maybe because she was jealous.

  It was an awful thought, but it made perfect sense to me. Anna was probably jealous because she was going to have to wear a brace and I wasn’t.

  I flipped the catalog shut. “Who cares about these stupid clothes,” I said.

  “You do,” Anna replied.

  “Not really. What I care about is you, helping you through this. I’m coming with you to see that other doctor.”

  “You don’t have to,” Anna objected.

  “Yes, I do. We’re twins, aren’t we? We help each other out. We do stuff together.”

  “We’re not getting a brace together.”

  How could I argue with that? Believe it or not, I tried.

  “I’d wear one, too, if I could,” I said.

  Anna laughed. It sounded scornful and harsh to me.

  “I would. I know — I’ll wear yours sometimes so I know exactly what you’re going through.”

  “You can’t. The brace will be made from a mold of my body. It won’t fit you.”

  “Yes, it will,” I insisted. “We’re twins. Remember?”

  “I need a brace and you don’t,” Anna countered, standing up and walking toward the stairs. “Remember?”

  At our Wednesday meeting everyone came in chatting enthusiastically about Claudia’s great idea. We knew about it before we read what she wrote in the club notebook, because we’d walked right past it on our way in.

  “Very cool,” Kristy said as she took her seat. “Awesome advertisement, Claudia.”

  “Thanks, but I had help,” Claudia replied as she worked on a sketch for the Winter Carnival flier she was designing.

  “The Stacey look-alike out there is unbelievable,” Mallory added.

  Here’s what happened. Claudia was very excited about the snow sculpture contest we were planning for the carnival. But she worried that the kids wouldn’t really know how to make the sculptures. So that afternoon she decided to have a practice session.

  She and Stacey were scheduled to sit for the Barrett-DeWitt kids that afternoon. They’d teamed up because there were so many kids to sit for. It’s a club rule that we send more than one sitter when there’s a big group of kids.

  Mrs. Barrett has three kids from her first marriage — Buddy, who??
?s eight; Suzi, five; and Marnie, two. Recently, she married Franklin DeWitt, who has four kids from his first marriage — Lindsey, who’s eight; Taylor, six; Madeleine, four; and Ryan, two.

  Having such a large group of kids made Claudia think it would be a terrific testing situation for the snow sculpture contest. (I suspect our snow shoveling fiasco had reminded her that great ideas don’t always go the way you expect, especially where kids are concerned.)

  “Okay, guys,” Claudia announced. “I’m going to show you how to make a snow sculpture.”

  “Yay! A snowman!” Suzi cheered.

  “Like a snowman, but not exactly,” Claudia said.

  “A snow lady?” Lindsey asked.

  “It could be. Or it could be a cat or a dog or a dragon. Anything you like.”

  “Make Stacey!” Ryan suggested.

  “Oh, that’s too hard,” Stacey objected.

  “No, it’s not,” Claudia said, excited by the artistic challenge. “I bet I could do it. Let’s start by rolling up snowballs for the body.”

  The kids jumped right to it but soon grew tired of rolling their balls and began throwing them at one another. After a brief snowball fight, Stacey and Claudia managed to direct them back to the snow sculpture. (Most went back, anyway. Marnie was content to keep digging in the snow with her small plastic shovel.)

  Soon they’d built a figure about five feet high. “There’s your body, Stacey,” Claudia announced.

  “I’d better start exercising.” Stacey laughed. “If that’s my body, I’m looking pretty lumpy.”

  Claudia giggled. “This is just the beginning, the basic form. Once you have your form built, you can start smoothing and sculpting.”

  “How do you do that?” Taylor asked.

  “Lots of ways,” Claudia told him. “You can use a stick or a shovel. I like to use my hands.” She smoothed the bumpy snow with the edges of her gloved hands. “See? I’m making shoulders and forming arms.”

  “Cool,” said Lindsey. “Can I help?”

  “Sure,” Claudia replied, still working.

  “I’ll help, too,” said Stacey.

  “No, you can’t. You have to model,” Claudia told her.

  Claudia was soon so engrossed in her Stacey snow sculpture that she forgot about the kids. She figured they were there watching her, and she could see that Stacey was watching them.

  Stacey was keeping her eyes on them, but after awhile the kids weren’t watching Claudia anymore.

  “Can we make our own snow sculpture?” Buddy had quietly asked Stacey.

  Stacey nodded, taking care not to move her head too much. She’d posed for Claudia before and knew that Claud insisted on a steady, unmoving model.

  It wasn’t long before Claudia had created a remarkably lifelike snow sculpture with an amazing resemblance to Stacey. She stepped back to study it and smiled, pleased with the result. “Wow! That came out even better than I expected,” she said. “Too bad it’s going to melt.”

  Claudia noticed a gleam of laughter in Stacey’s blue eyes. “What’s so funny?” she asked, perplexed.

  “You’d better not take another step backwards,” Stacey replied mischievously. “You might get bitten.”

  Claudia whirled around and shrieked in surprise.

  The kids burst into peals of laughter.

  A four-foot-high snow dragon stood behind Claudia, its jaw open as if about to bite.

  Claudia had been so caught up in her work — especially once she came to the sculpting of Stacey’s face — that she hadn’t noticed the kids quietly working on the dragon. “It’s good!” she cried sincerely. “Really good!”

  The dragon looked like a sea serpent, with part of its body underground and part of it rising in snowy humps, ending in a spiky tail resting on the ground. The kids had found evergreen branches under a nearby tree and placed them along the dragon’s spine for decoration. Two large, glistening rocks made eyes.

  “Our dragon looks like it’s trying to bite your Stacey,” Suzi giggled.

  Claudia realized she was right. It did look that way.

  People walking along the sidewalk stopped to admire both sculptures. “That is so creative,” said a woman with two small children.

  “You’ll see more of these at our winter carnival,” Claudia informed her. “You should come and bring your friends.”

  “Oh, really?” the woman said, interested. “When is it?”

  “Two weeks from this Saturday. Over on Burnt Hill Road,” Stacey said. (We’d decided to hold the carnival at Mary Anne’s house.)

  “Where can I find more information?” the woman asked.

  “We’ll be handing out fliers soon,” Claudia told her.

  “Great. I’ll be looking for them,” said the woman as she walked down the street.

  In the next few minutes, several other people stopped to admire the sculptures. A car even slowed down to look at them. “Too bad we can’t talk to all these people,” Stacey said. “It would be a great way to spread the word about the carnival.”

  Claudia’s eyes brightened. “You just gave me an idea. Mrs. DeWitt said there were some art suplies we could use. Do you mind watching the kids for a minute? I’ll be right back.”

  Stacey and the kids added some finishing touches to the dragon, draping Stacey’s red scarf from its jaws for a tongue and attaching twig claws.

  Soon Claudia returned with a piece of poster board and some markers. “I wanted to make a poster telling people about the carnival, but I knew I’d need help with the spelling, so I brought it out here.”

  With Stacey guiding her, Claudia made a bright, bold poster. “Come to the BSC Winter Carnival!” it read. Then it gave the date, time, and location.

  The Barrett-DeWitt kids grabbed markers and started decorating the poster with drawings of snowflakes, snowmen, sleds, and steaming cups of hot chocolate.

  “Excellent!” Claudia proclaimed, proudly propping the poster in front of the dragon.

  “Wait — I have an idea,” Stacey said, choosing a red marker. She picked up the poster and wrote something on it. When she was done, she set the poster back in place.

  “Don’t let winter drag-on,” Lindsey gleefully read. “Come for fun.” She turned her smiling, red-nosed face to Stacey and Claudia. “That is so cute! I can’t wait for the carnival.”

  “Neither can I,” Claudia replied. It was true. She was really excited about the carnival. Kristy had come up with just the right idea to liven up the long, drawn-out winter.

  Mom managed to obtain an appointment with Dr. Sherman, the specialist, for that Friday. Kristy had been very understanding when I said I had to miss another meeting.

  I made a detour on the way home from school that Friday afternoon and took a bus downtown to Gloriana’s House of Hair. I’d heard some horror stories about the place. (They’d totally annihilated Kristy’s little stepsister’s hair once.) But kids told me if I made an appointment with a stylist named Alexis, I’d be in good hands.

  I settled into the chair and handed Alexis a picture of Anna. “That’s what I want,” I told her.

  “No problem,” Alexis replied, handing the photo back to me. “You want the same hairdo you had before you let it grow.” Obviously Alexis thought I’d shown her a photo of myself with short hair. I simply nodded, not bothering to explain.

  In half an hour, my hair looked just like Anna’s.

  * * *

  “What do you think?” I asked as I burst through the front door.

  Anna looked up at me. Her face was splotchy, her eyes red-rimmed. She’d been crying.

  I went to the couch and sat beside her.

  “I’m scared,” Anna said, her voice a choked whisper. “I’ve been reading about scoliosis. What if I need surgery?”

  “Dr. Abrams recommended the brace,” I reminded her, putting my arm around her shoulders.

  “But what if the brace hurts?” she asked, taking off her glasses and wiping her eyes. “What if it hurts so much I can’t si
t long enough to play the violin?”

  “It won’t,” I assured her. “After all, Dr. Adams said it might make you more comfortable.”

  “I don’t know,” Anna said, getting off the couch. “Why did this have to happen to me?”

  I felt bad for Anna. I didn’t know how to make her feel better. I knew it was no time for one of my lame jokes. All I could say was what was in my heart. “I’ll help you, Anna. Really, I will.”

  Turning toward me, she blinked hard. “Why did you cut your hair?”

  “Because we’re twins! It’s a show of support, you know, like when a whole basketball team shaves their heads,” I explained.

  Anna nodded and smiled halfheartedly. “Thanks. I appreciate that a lot.”

  I cleared my throat. Suddenly my contacts were in danger of floating away. I blinked away the tears and checked my watch. “We’d better head out,” I said.

  “I know,” Anna agreed glumly, going to the front hall closet for her jacket. As she zipped up she looked at me with the tiniest grin. “Your hair looks nice.”

  “Which one?” I joked.

  Anna winced. “Seriously. It does look nice.”

  I smiled. “Sure it does. It looks like yours.”

  * * *

  We took the train from the Stoneybrook station (just four minutes from our house, with Charlie driving) to Grand Central Station in Manhattan. Mom was waiting for us by the information booth. As soon as we met, she hurried us out to the street, where we hopped into a cab and rode uptown to Dr. Sherman’s office.

  I read magazines in the waiting room for what seemed like a million years while Anna and Mom were inside with the doctor. Finally, Dr. Sherman, a thin woman with frosted, permed hair and thick glasses, came out and asked me to join them.

  “I think it would be nice for Anna if you stay with her while we make the mold for her brace,” she said when I was in her office.

  Mom was there, holding Anna’s hand. Anna wasn’t crying, but she looked pretty shaky.