––––––––
“Give it back! Give it to me!”
I shout, but it doesn’t make any difference. The little music player sails across the living room of our summer house, flying through an imaginary sky, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. The headphones flap in the air like the wings of an electronic bird, a sneaky little seagull with a square body of pistachio green. As soon as I see it on my right it’s over on the left again, disappearing like some kind of dream. The same face with the wicked smile, the same hands, the same furtive chuckle materializes in one corner and then another of the living room. I should be used to this sort of illusion, but I can’t get my eyes to focus on reality. I lift my hand. I try to take control. But all I do is graze the tip of one of the wings, interrupting its flight, and then everything happens the way accidents always happen—like a sigh in slow motion. The headphone cord tangles around my finger, and with one yank I strip the bird of its wings.
Nosedive to a piece of unclaimed ground.
Freeze frame.
On the left side of the sofa one expressionless face, framed by blond curls. And on the other side, the exact same face.
“I hate you!” The shout wells up from deep inside me with all the force of years of imposed silence, of being practically invisible.
This time my voice at least breaks the stillness.
“Leave your brothers alone.”
My mother is behind an open book, like always.
“Leave them alone? But they broke my iPod!”
“Since when does she have an iPod?” asks my father, not even bothering to look up from his newspaper.
“Ever since her boyfriend gave it to her,” answers Mercutio, a smile crossing his face.
“She has a boyfriend?” my father asks with some surprise, though he still doesn’t put down the paper.
“I don’t know,” says my mother, without looking up from her book.
I watch my father’s hands slowly set the newspaper down on the table.
“Yeah, she’s got a boyfriend and they kiss each other,” Benvolio screws up his lips to blow mocking kisses into the air, and Mercutio copies him like a mirror.
Their voices are identical; it’s impossible to tell which one of the twins is talking if you’re not looking at them. Not even my parents could tell them apart if they didn’t dress them in different colors.
I can feel someone’s gaze on the back of my neck. When I look behind me I see my father giving me the fish-eye. I try to restrain myself, I make my best effort, I even remember that thing about counting in your head to three—or was it ten? It doesn’t matter. No one could stand being looked at like that. Come on, Dissie, hang in there, don’t give them the pleasure of arguing. Don’t call out your brothers. Just one more second and it’ll all be forgotten, just as long as it takes to put the pieces of the iPod in my jeans pocket. One... Two...
“What?! Do you have a question?!” I yell angrily.
Pathetic! I’ve done it again—let a couple of little kids get to me.
“Nothing, dear. We haven’t asked anything,” my father tries to defuse the situation. He lifts his hands and returns his gaze to the newspaper.
The twins keep on blowing kisses from the back of the living room but I go right past them and head for the door to the yard. This time I really won’t to rise to the bait.
“They’re crazy!” I say, spinning around to face the living room, no longer in control of my own reactions. “Boyfriend?... It hasn’t even been two weeks since we got to St Andrews, and it’s not like I brought him with me from home...”
“We saw you in the cemetery,” says Mercutio.
“We did, Mom,” adds Benvolio in his sharp childish voice. “Eurydice was kissing a blond boy. Like this, like in the movies.”
My parents look at me, astonished. What’s the big surprise? Is it so impossible that I might have a boyfriend?
“Of course,” I say, “out of all the places in the world I chose the cemetery to kiss my imaginary boyfriend who I brought from Edinburgh in my suitcase. Yeah, you got it all exactly right. A prize for you both!”
I clap sarcastically and turn to go out to the yard, but I’m not quick enough, and I can still hear my father:
“Dissie doesn’t like blond boys, does she?”
“No,” answers my mother. “But she does like cemeteries.”
After a few seconds of silence they both return to their respective reading material, and that’s it, it’s all settled. Like always, the way everything is settled in this house: without any consequences for the twins. The air makes my lungs ache; it’s hard for me to do something as simple as breathe. I sit down on the porch and try to think about something else. I don’t know why I’m surprised—the real surprise would have been if the twins had actually gotten into trouble for breaking the iPod. Some people are just born lucky, free to do or not do things without anything happening to them. I don’t think the twins will ever have to face the consequences of their actions, even when they’re grown up.
I look at the two pieces of the music player and then I close my eyes so I can paint a happy picture in my mind, a story where I’m the only child. Better yet, one where I was born into another family, any family, any normal family. The fantasy is so real I can nearly touch it. I can almost feel myself living a peaceful life. I’m starting to breathe more easily when a ball whacks my head and jolts me out of my daydream. Apparently reading time is over, at least reading in the house. Now we’re going to the beach, and yes, I am included in that we. I don’t get an opinion. I have to go because that’s why we’re a family, and that’s why my parents have rented this house in a place that should have been my place, mine alone, my place to go to college. At this point I’ve pretty much accepted it: I will never have a life that’s all my own.
I run up to my room, put on my bikini, and toss the essentials into my bag: a towel, my notebook, and a pencil. I put my jeans back on and grab a t-shirt from the dresser without looking. I haven’t even finished getting dressed when I hear my mother call from the foot of the stairs:
“Dissie, we’ll be waiting for you at the beach. And don’t wear one of those huge t-shirts, please.”
I look at myself in the mirror. I look like a deflated balloon, but I’ll never admit it to a single soul. It’s true that my t-shirts are two sizes too big, or else I’m two sizes too small. But it hardly matters—it’s my life, I can decide what to wear, can’t I? I look at the girl in the mirror and don’t recognize her as myself. Sometimes I feel like we’re two different people. Knowing that I’m about to go out with this t-shirt on makes me feel strong. I smile but right away my reflection turns serious again. I hate myself for being such a baby, for not daring to contradict my parents, for not being able to say that I don’t want to go to the beach with them, for not having the courage to stand firm and stay in Edinburgh instead of already being at St Andrews. Although, on the other hand... On the other hand nothing, I’d have found some way to stay with him. Well, I’d have found a way or I wouldn’t have. I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going to happen with him. Not after what happened yesterday... What I do know is that for the next few years I’m going to be living apart from my friends. I’m sure we’ll only see each other at Christmas. I should be in Edinburgh with Marion and Laura, making the most of our last summer together. There, not here. My parents should have realized that. It should have been their idea. Didn’t they complain for years that I didn’t have any friends? They should be supportive now that I’m finally a little... A little more the way they want me to be. Consistency is conspicuous by its absence in this family. Why aren’t you a little more normal? Well, they should encourage my social life. How is it possible that so much reading hasn’t taught them to see the obvious? Family vacations are not the best thing that can happen to you. Not at eighteen, not when you’re going to start college at the end of the summer, and above all NOT when out of all the beach towns on the planet they had to choose the exact place where you’re going to school. As if there weren’t other beaches in the world. As if I weren’t old enough to be left alone, for once.
I look into the gray eyes in the mirror, take a deep breath, and make a promise to that girl with the dull hair who gazes back at me with hardly any expression: from this moment on everything will be different. I will be strong, I will be myself, I will do only what I want to do. My actions will reflect my thoughts. I will not be like my parents; I will not be so horribly inconsistent. And above all—yes!—above all I will make things happen. This summer something extraordinary will finally happen to me. I will leave this dull life behind.
“I’m not going to the beach.”
My voice is barely audible, but to me it sounds like a triumphant shout. This must be how great captains feel when they win a battle.
Nothing can happen. My parents aren’t going to kill me if I don’t show up at the beach. At this very instant my new life begins, my real life. For once the girl in the mirror and I smile at the same time. I let myself fall backwards and sink into the mattress. My feet join the feet of the girl in the mirror, rising, kicking in the air with new joy. I shake my legs and enjoy the feeling of blood flowing through them. I like the way my shoelaces dance freely. I feel the touch of the quilt on my hands, on my bare arms. I turn over and bury my face in the pillow. Everything is going to be all right, starting now. They’ve all gone, the house is quiet, and I could not feel any better.