Jake looks like he’s having the time of his life, and I’m not part of it. Things were great for a while, after we shared the snow-fort bruise. That got him off the we’re-different kick. But now it’s back, worse than ever.
Some of me is stunned. Shocked. Like I’ve been walloped by a two-by-four. The rest of me is sad. My heart hurts.
When he’s not riding with them or in their stupid hideout with them or on the porch with them, he’s on the phone with them. Laughing. Howling. Goober this and goober that. One night at dinner he had a volcanic eruption. It started when his fork stopped moving and his eyes got a faraway look. Then his lips flapped and a quick snort came out. A second later his whole face exploded. I swear, mashed potatoes shot out his nose. Mom didn’t even have to tell him—he left the table and we heard him laughing in the kitchen for the next five minutes.
“What’s so funny?” Dad asked me, like I must know.
I just shrugged. “Beats me.”
Jake keeps saying I don’t get it, and for once he’s absolutely right—I don’t get it. I sneaked into their famous hideout once. It’s so, like, nothing. It’s a tree. Sure, it’s like you’re under a leafy roof, but so what? What’s there to do? All I saw were some candy wrappers and whittled sticks. It smells like hoagies.
And this goober stuff they think is so hilarious. I saw them the other day, all four of them walking down the street behind some man that seemed perfectly normal to me. Real close to him, practically clipping his heels. Then he looked back and they ran off laughing. A real riot. I had to check myself into a hospital, I was laughing so hard.
So yeah—I confess—I don’t get it. But there’s something he doesn’t get too. He doesn’t get what he’s doing to me and him. To us. It’s like he’s dumping our whole past and now he’s got three brothers instead of one sister. “Do they know how you’re feeling when you’re five miles away?” I say to him. “Do they sleepwalk to the railroad station every birthday with you? Do they know you’re afraid of worms?” (He almost slugged me for that one.)
He just says I’m making a big deal out of nothing. He says I must be getting my hormones and they’re making me goofy. He says I need a shrink.
I say I’m dumped. By my own twin brother.