Jake got one thing right—I didn’t like Bump from the start. But more about that meatball later.
Because we had been awake since three o’clock in the morning that sixth birthday, we went to bed right after dinner. The last thing I said to Jake was, “Should we tell Mommy and Daddy?” Jake said, “Not yet.”
Years later not yet is still going on.
For a long time our parents didn’t have to tell us to go to bed. We couldn’t wait to be alone in the dark so we could giggle and talk about our amazing secret. Our talk happened in an up-and-down direction because we had bunk beds then. Of course I was on top.
It’s like the secret was our new toy. But it wasn’t an easy toy to play with. I think at first we thought we were magicians or wizards. We figured we had powers. “Maybe we’re superheroes,” Jake said one day. “Yeah,” I said, “maybe this is what superheroes are like when they’re little kids.” We were actually serious. Well, not serious enough to try flying off our roof. But serious enough to make up magic words and paint a stick gold and convince ourselves it was a magic wand. We tried to make the teakettle talk. We tried to make daggers spring from our fingernails. We tried to set the sofa on fire by staring at it. Nothing worked. Shoot, we couldn’t even make a chair walk across the room.
We tried to wizardize somebody else. Bump Stubbins started coming around on his WonderWheels the day we got our own WonderWheels. We would go riding off down the sidewalk and there he was, pedaling along with us. He kept turning off and saying, “This way! This way!” but we never followed and he had to turn around and catch up with us. One day I had enough. I pointed the gold stick at him and said, “Moozum!” three times and concentrated as hard as I could. At first I pictured his arms falling off. I peeked and saw that wasn’t happening, so I settled for just making him disappear. But there he was, as visible as ever and even more annoying because he was smirking at me.
So we figured out pretty quick that whatever power we had—we still didn’t have a word for it—was just between the two of us. And we had more to learn. One day I heard a thump in the dining room. Jake was on the floor, ready to cry, rubbing the back of his head. “What happened?” I said. “I let myself fall backward,” he sniveled. “I thought you would catch me.”
Another time I was in the backyard and I wanted Jake to come out and play, so I closed my eyes and I concentrated on his name: Jake…Jake…come to me. My eyelids were getting sore, and still he wasn’t coming. I found him in the basement playing with Mom and Dad’s tools.
I would think about cupcakes and say, “What am I thinking about?” and he would say “donkeys” or “Bugs Bunny”—anything but cupcakes.
Every day we said to each other, “What are you thinking? What are you thinking?” We never knew. Weeks went by. Months. Nothing happened. We tried playing hide-and-seek. We couldn’t find each other. We were back to being ordinary run-of-the-mill twins. It’s like our powers had tricked us. Teased us. Made us feel special, then backed off.
“Maybe it was a phase,” I said.
“What’s a phase?” said Jake.
I had heard our parents use the word. “I think it’s, like, when you outgrow something.”
Jake’s mouth pouted. “I don’t want to outgrow it.”
“Me neither,” I said. Our heads came together and we were sad. We went to bed sad.
But on our next birthday—our seventh—we woke up in the middle of the night. At the train station. To a blinding light. And the smell of pickles.