I KNOW HANNAH WANTS TO WALK ME TO MY DOOR. I also know she physically can’t get herself out of the car. She came to a complete stop on the street before she was finally able to turn into the driveway, and now we’re just sitting here, both of us staring at my house while I try to calm down.
My face feels cracked from dried tears and I’m still shaking. Can’t stop shaking. “It’s okay,” I say, when I think I have enough breath. I’m far from calm, but it’ll have to do.
“I can’t go any farther,” she says, her eyes fixed on the top floor windows of the house, my brother somewhere behind them. Her fingers wrap around the steering wheel. “I’m a shitty friend.”
“You’re not. You’re amazing and I love you.” I hug her, as much as I can while my bones rattle together, and press a kiss to her forehead. “Thank you for coming to save me.”
She laughs, but it’s soft. “I didn’t save you. I can’t save anyone.”
“You can. You did.”
“I just hate that we hurt like this, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
She grabs my hand and squeezes. “I think about the things we’ve talked about in Empower. Articles we’ve read about all the girls who were thrown away by boys like they meant nothing. All the times a girl’s voice seemed to mean less than a boy’s. All the times the courts sent out a shit ruling on a rape case. It never really hit me, you know? I mean, it did, but not like this. I never thought it’d be my story. Or yours. I never wanted to let this be our story.”
“You didn’t let it happen, Hannah. You trusted Owen. There’s a difference. And with me . . .” I inhale a deep breath. “I didn’t let him either. He just took.”
She nods and squeezes my hand tighter.
I want to tell her about Alex, about what he saw, and I will, but right now there’s this feeling inside me that I can’t explain. I’m either dying or being reborn, joints coming apart or melting together, all my blood leaving me or swelling my veins. I kiss Hannah’s cheek and manage to get out of the car, promising to text her later, and make it inside my house.
The TV mumbles in the living room, but I head straight for the stairs. I need my room, my bed, my sound machine emptying my thoughts and singing me to sleep.
“Mara, is that you?” Mom calls, but I don’t answer. I’ve just reached the second floor, nearly running, when I ram smack into Owen in the hallway.
Holding hands with Angie.
His other arm reaches out to steady me. Instinctively, I shrink away. He sees my retreat, and some desperate part of me wants to apologize. The other part wants to scream and slap and claw.
“Hi, Mara,” Angie says, but he’s already pulling her down the stairs. He calls something to our parents I can’t make out and then they’re out the front door. I hear our car start up, but I don’t move toward my room. That something growls and stalks, still hungry, still unsatisfied.
Angie’s hair was curly, wild and thick, her cheeks flushed and her hand tucked so trustingly into Owen’s. She loves Mozart’s flute concertos—I remember that from History of Music. One time freshman year, I forgot my lunch and couldn’t stomach the cafeteria’s Salisbury steak, and she split her peanut butter and honey sandwich with me. I don’t even know why we were sitting together. Charlie must’ve been absent or maybe her lunch sucked too. It’s all hazy, but right now, standing in the hallway, all these little moments from going to school with Angie for the past three years come trickling back into my mind.
She suffers from major stage fright and never auditions for solos.
She has a 4.0 GPA.
She has a baby brother. He’s only about six months old, and I remember that every member of the symphonic band brought her a green balloon the day he was born last spring. She left school that day with a ton of balloons, several of them escaping during dismissal and drifting off into the sky.
She came to an Empower meeting once or twice. She said she wanted to come to more, but the time conflicted with her private flute lessons.
Angie is not stupid.
She is not stupid.
Mom calls my name again, and something snaps in my chest. Or maybe it’s in my head, my arms, my legs. Everywhere, something breaks and separates, like the stars splitting apart.
I nearly trip down the steps in an effort to get to my mother. She must hear the frantic pace of my feet, because she meets me in the hall, her reading glasses pushed into her hair.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
She moves toward me, alarm owning her expression. I don’t even realize I’ve moved closer to her, too, but I must have because we sort of collide, my arms gripping hers and her hands on my face, wiping at tears I didn’t realize had started to fall.
“Mara, you’re scaring me.”
“Where is he? Where did Owen go with Angie?”
She frowns. “He just took her home, sweetie.”
“You’re sure? He’s coming right back?”
“I . . . I think so. That’s what he said.”
“Can you call him? I need you to call him and tell him to come home.”
“Mara, what—”
“Please!”
“What’s going on?” Dad says, coming into the hall from the living room. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Mom says. Her hands have moved to my shoulders and she presses down on them gently, as if she’s afraid I might float away at any moment. And I think I might, because that hungry something isn’t anything apart from me.
It is me.
“I need Owen to come home. He’s . . . he can’t be with her. He can’t do that. I don’t want him to be that person. She’s not stupid. She’s not. And he’s . . . he’s my brother. He is.”
I’m sobbing, molecules exploding, stardust covering the earth.
“Honey, you’re not making any sense,” Mom says while Dad smoothes my hair back from my face.
“Yes, I am. You know I am, Mom. Why wouldn’t you believe me? Why couldn’t you do that?”
Her eyes widen, but more with confusion than shock or knowledge. Because I said me. I meant to say her, but I said me and I’m not sure why or how to fix it or what it means.
“I’m not stupid,” I whisper, and Mom flinches. “Hannah. She’s not stupid. She’s not a liar.”
“We talked about this. It’s over, honey.”
“She’s not stupid!”
Mom’s color drains away as my scream echoes through the hall, her shoulders slumping. She takes my face in her hands, her fingertips gentle. “And your brother is? It’s not that simple, sweetheart.”
“No, Mom. You mean it’s not that easy. Because what happened is that simple.” And I know in that moment that I’m right. It’s a tangled mess of simple facts, a kaleidoscope of right and wrong. The aftermath—that’s what’s complicated.
Mom searches my face, and her eyes are wet and wide and round. But before she can say anything, the front door swings open and my brother walks through, tossing the keys onto the hall table with a casual flick of his fingers. Relief assaults me, but not as much as anger. Sadness. I’m delirious with it all, with lies and men and girls and daughters and stars.
He stops in his tracks when he sees the three of us, a little knot of tears and panic in the hallway.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
I break free of my mother and shove my brother in the chest. He stumbles backwards, mouth falling open as he collides with the door.
“Mara!” Dad calls and Mom cries out, but I don’t really hear them. I keep shoving, my fingers ricocheting off Owen’s shoulders only to return again, pushing and pushing even though he’s already against the door.
I scream at him. All the words I could never seem to say to anyone.
Believe. Valid. Scared. Hurt. Space. Body. Mine.
No.
No.
No.
The words flow out as I hit him in the chest, as I cry and shake off my parents when they try to pull me back. I unleash the energy behind every star in the sky onto my other half.
And Owen lets me.
He just stands there, absorbing my fury, until all the light and fire blink out.
When I finally back off, he breaks. A strangled sound rolls out of his throat and his face crumples, eyes bleeding tears. He slumps against the wall, sliding down until he’s sitting. My mother covers her mouth with her hands, but she doesn’t go to him. She doesn’t wrap her arms around him and rock him while he cries. Dad just stares at his son, shock stealing all the color from my father’s face.
I watch Owen break apart, everything he’ll probably never say so clear in every body-wracking sob. I wait for something to break in me, too, but there’s nothing left. My fracture already happened. Exactly when, I’m not sure, but I know it’s done. I feel loose and unmoored.
Half of a constellation.
Because this boy crying on the floor, burying his face in his hands, shamed and silent and guilty, is not only Owen McHale.
He is my twin brother.