chapter

one

Friday, June 4

Jim

Outside the car window, palm trees flash by, and there’s sand by the side of the road. Mom’s window is rolled down a crack. The breeze coming in smells salty, like the ocean. But all that does nothing to change the fact that I’m on a vacation I’m not looking forward to.

“Is it the introductions, Jim?” Mom speaks out of the blue, as if she can read my thoughts, though we’ve been sitting in silence for a while. Maybe the silence is what she can read. “Is that what you’re dreading?”

I pause before answering, sounding more sullen than I intend. “Part of it.”

Mom turns around in her seat. “Matt doesn’t think it will be that bad.”

I look at her in disbelief. “Of course he doesn’t! He doesn’t have to be here until tomorrow.” My next statement comes out even poutier. “Another thing you could have solved by letting us switch days. He could have flown and gone through the awkward introductions he doesn’t dread as much as I do.”

Mom frowns. She’s been through this many times—with both me and Matt—and isn’t excited to go through it again. “We don’t switch days, Jim. It’s a rule.” She faces forward. “And Matt will have ten times as many introductions as you at the reunion tomorrow. You should be grateful you got the days that you did.”

I slump back, making the leather seat creak. It’s never fun to realize that your parents are right about something.

“Come on, Jim.” Dad glances at me through the rearview mirror. “It won’t be that bad. At least you get a few days off from schoolwork.”

I don’t reply. Last time it was bad.

“Think about the fun stuff we’ll do.” Dad repositions his right hand, which is balancing his phone (and driving directions) against the steering wheel. “The beach, out to eat…Rick said we might go to a state park on Sunday.”

I lean against the car door and let my head fall against the glass. Rick is one of the main problems. Taking us to a state park won’t make up for the way he’s going to treat me.

“The sun and water should feel nice after being stuck on a plane.” Dad is having a hard time leaving the car in silence. He signals and turns the car down a sandier road. “Aren’t you excited for the beach?”

“Sure,” I mutter. “Just not excited about everyone forgetting everything about me, if they remember that I exist at all.”

That isn’t the only thing that will make this trip lame. I have a whole list of things that are making me miserable at the moment:

1. I probably won’t be called by my own name for the next few days.
2. People are going to get my likes, dislikes, and memories mixed up with Matt’s all weekend long.
3. I forgot to pack a toothbrush, so I’ll have to share with Matt, who will chomp all the bristles flat.
4. I’m tired and feel dirty from being in airports and on a plane all morning.
5. The rental car smells weird.

“Jim.” Mom’s tone tells me I’m pushing it. “Please stop pouting. You have to give everyone a chance. Maybe this time it will be different.”

“Why should it be different?” I lean closer to Mom and Dad. “They just don’t get it. If you tried to explain it to them last time and they got confused, why should this time be different?”

“Well, their kids are older now.” Mom rolls down her window a bit more, letting in a stream of warm air. “They’ll have a better chance of understanding you and Matt. At least your cousin Maddy.”

“Michelle, too.” Dad avoids my eyes, and I feel guilty since it’s his cousin’s family I’m complaining about.

“And Rick?”

Mom and Dad glance at each other. Maybe they know a lost cause when they see one.

I lean back in the seat, wondering again why we have to stay with family at all. This whole trip would be better (not perfect, but better) if Mom, Dad, Matt, and I could just stay in a hotel. But Dad’s cousin Michelle and her family are going to the same huge family reunion we are, and they invited us to stay with them for the whole trip. And last time we stayed at Michelle and Rick’s house—four years ago—I didn’t enjoy it.

Then again, maybe Mom’s right. Last time we saw them, Maddy was ten, Jill was four, and Dan was two. You couldn’t fault them for not understanding how Matt and I are different people.

We pull into a sandy parking lot. “Why don’t you give them a chance?” Mom picks up the swim bag she pulled out of her suitcase at the airport. “At least Maddy.”

Dad looks for a parking spot. “You two might have fun together this trip.”

“Especially if you explain you and Matt to her.”

I groan. I hate explaining me and Matt. “Can’t you do it?”

Mom smiles at me. “It would be more natural coming from you.”

“OK.” I sit up straighter. “But that doesn’t change the fact that people will confuse us. Even if they all understand how me and Matt work, they don’t know us well enough to treat us like individuals or tell us apart.” I remember something. “Did Matt agree to wear a hat on his days like I asked him to?”

Mom puts on a pair of sunglasses, and Dad avoids my eyes as he replies. “He said—these are his words, not mine—that if you’re the one who’s bothered by it, you should be the one to wear the hat.”

“But it’s his hat!”

Dad doesn’t respond as he parks the car.

I frown and lean back against the seat. Mom and Dad are unbuckling and climbing out of the car. Realizing there’s no way out of this, I unbuckle my seatbelt.

Slipping on my sandals, I adjust my swim trunks. They felt weird to wear walking out of an airport, but we’re in Florida. I couldn’t have been that out of place. I open the door and step out.

It’s sunny, warm, and windy outside the car. I can see the blue gulf between gaps in a row of beach grasses and shrubs. Dad’s right—I do like the beach, and the sun and wind should feel good. But it’s hard to muster up the excitement.

Voices call and people walk toward us. Dad calls out in greeting and heads their way. I have one last moment to face my mom.

“Mom,” I plead. “It bothers you, too. I know it.”

She frowns and takes off her sunglasses. I know she can’t deny it. She likes me and Matt to be treated as individuals as much as I do, and she works hard to make it happen.

“OK.” She leans close to me. Everyone’s getting nearer, and we’re running out of time. “Yes. I know. It’s hard. I recognize that. But it’s important to your dad. So…?” She smooths out my T-shirt at my shoulder. “Do it for him?”

Mom’s eyes move beyond me, and she beams at the extended family members approaching. Before I know it, we’re surrounded.

We say hi to Dad’s cousin Michelle, her husband, Rick, Grandma Mickelsen, and a couple other adult first cousins once removed. I know them less well than Michelle’s family. Rick calls me Jett and, worse, asks which “personality” I am today, “the Matt one or the Jim one?” I send my mom a See? I told you look that she ignores.

My second cousins are down at the beach. I slip away from the adults to put my shoes and shirt on a beach chair under the canopy they’ve set up and make a beeline for the shore before Mom or Dad can stop me.

This close to the water, even the air tastes salty. I’m standing alone ankle-deep in the water, looking out at the gulf, when someone splashes in the shallows behind me. I turn and see my cousin Maddy, looking a lot more grown up than when she was ten. Behind her, I can see Mom in her sunglasses looking at me. She nods, and I guess she sent Maddy over. My younger cousins are out playing in the waves.

I resume staring into the gulf as Maddy comes to stand by me.

“Hi, Jett.” She sounds nice enough.

“It’s Jim.” I do not sound nice.

Maddy’s confused. “Oh…I thought my mom said I could call you Jett.”

Yeah, and I could call you dumb, but you don’t see me doing that.

Out loud, I say, “I prefer Jim.” I can feel my mom watching me and reluctantly go on. “Matt and I can go by Jett, but around people who know me and know who I am, I’d rather go by my own name.”

“Oh. Sure. Sorry.” Maddy moves back to where the waves occasionally wash over her feet. “Jim.”

I come to stand by her. “That’s OK.”

“So…” Maddy shifts her weight from side to side and starts to bury her feet in the sand. “I haven’t seen you in like four years. You’re sixteen now?”

I nod.

“And taller. With longer hair.”

I half-smile. “You too. For both.” Then I tell myself to act less like a jerk. “Are you still into singing? Last time I saw you, you had started taking lessons, right?”

Maddy brightens, lifting her head. “Yeah. My teacher said I have a good chance of making JV choir when I start high school next month.”

“Cool.”

But before I can start feeling any better, Maddy has to make me feel worse. “You and Matt are musical, too, right? Do you still play the drums?”

“Matt plays the drums. Not me.”

“Oh. Right.” Maddy is confused. “But…if it’s the same body…” she says, her voice higher and uncertain, “…does it matter?”

And here we go. “Yep.” I look at the foamy bubbles on top of the wet sand. “Yes, it matters. Just because we take turns in the same body doesn’t mean we like the same things.”

“So, you don’t like the drums like Matt does, so you choose not to play?”

“No. I can’t play.”

“But…if the knowledge is in your brain…” Maddy scrunches up her nose. “Can’t you access it?”

“Nope.”

“Huh.” Maddy looks in the same direction I do—out to sea. “Weird.”

Yep. There it is. Weird. Less than five minutes and I’ve been called weird.

“Well…” Maddy turns toward me. “Then…does Matt still play the drums?”

I sigh. I’m being a jerk again, I know it. But I can’t help it. “I guess you’ll just have to ask him tomorrow.”

Saturday, June 5

Matt

“Matt.”

Someone’s saying my name.

“Matt!”

I’m distracted, looking into the park as a guy plays fetch with a brown dog that reminds me of Termite. I turn around. “Yeah?”

“Buffet line is starting.” Dad pulls me up from my seat. “Go get a plate.”

“OK.” I grab a paper plate and fall in line behind Dad. Mom must be somewhere with Dad’s cousin Michelle. I don’t know where my second cousins are.

Someone plops a scoop of potato salad on the plate I’m holding. At least the food looks good. Was it catered? I wouldn’t know. All the people at this mega reunion are as unrecognizable to me as any caterer would be.

The potato salad is joined by a hamburger, a scoop of fruit salad, potato chips, and a slice of watermelon. My plate is so loaded, I’m surprised it doesn’t collapse. I move away from my dad so I can stop and dress my hamburger, grab a water bottle from an ice chest, check behind my shoulder to make sure Dad’s talking to someone, and head for the trees.

“Matt!”

I stop, grimace, and turn around. It’s Mom. “Where are you going?” She’s with Michelle and Maddy, the oldest of my second cousins.

“Uh…nowhere.” My answer is pointless. Mom’s face tells me she knows I’m trying to sneak away.

“Well, why don’t you take Maddy with you.” Mom’s stern look is replaced by a kinder one.

I perk up. She isn’t going to make me sit at the table with all the great-aunts and second cousins I don’t know?

Maddy walks up to me. She has her own plate, which holds no hamburger but twice as much watermelon.

“You’re not going to go sit with everyone?” I nod toward the white canopy set up under the trees. “All your extended family and cousins and stuff?”

She snorts. “They’re your family, too. And I don’t know most of them any better than you do. If you get to sneak away, so do I.”

I laugh.

We take our plates to an old wooden picnic table under a tree, brushing aside pine needles from the bench before we sit down.

“The food’s not bad.” Maddy starts on her potato salad.

“Yeah.” I swallow a bite of hamburger. “Still, I’m bitter Jim got to miss this mega reunion and go to the beach.”

“So, you really weren’t there at the beach?” Maddy sweeps aside her dirty-blonde hair from her face. “Like, Jim was there, and your body was there, but you don’t remember it at all?”

I’m surprised. Jim mentioned in his video message that he had attempted an in-depth explanation of our condition with her. I would have thought they would have covered that.

“No.” I put down my hamburger. “No, I don’t remember it. When Jim’s in our body, I’m out of it. Like I’m in a coma. Dormant.”

“And that’s what he is now?”

“Yep.”

“Huh.” Maddy takes a juicy bite of watermelon.

I tap my white plastic fork against the edge of my paper plate. “Didn’t Jim explain that yesterday?”

“Well, yeah…” Maddy wipes up watermelon juice with the back of her hand. “I was wondering if you’d say the same thing.”

I raise my eyebrows and go back to my food, glad that she said that to me and not Jim. That sort of thing annoys him. I wonder what else she might have said yesterday to get on his nerves.

Friday, June 4

Jim

“Hey, look at this one.” Maddy pulls a white, almost complete, shell out of the sand.

“Not bad.” I show her the most recent shell I’ve found. It’s flat and iridescent.

“Ooh, Jill will like that one.” Maddy holds out the plastic bucket, and I drop it inside with a fragile clink. Her younger brother and sister are building a sandcastle, and Maddy and I volunteered to find seashells to decorate it with. Well, Maddy volunteered, and Mom made me come along, hoping, I’m sure, that it would give me a chance to get Maddy to fully understand what it’s like living with duocordis unuscorporosis. I don’t even have to try to keep my cousin on topic.

“What I don’t get…” Maddy bends down for another shell, “…is how your two personalities are so aware of each other.”

“Our two what?”

“Personalities?” Maddy straightens and slips into that high, uncertain tone. “Yours and Matt’s?”

I grunt as I kick through a mound of wet sand. This is one of the misconceptions that annoys me the most. “We’re not two personalities.” I look at her to make sure she’s listening. “We’re two different people. What you’re talking about is dissociative identity disorder. That’s something different.”

“Oh.”

I stop walking. “Look. I know your parents aren’t as religious as my mom, so maybe they’ve never explained it to you this way, but you know what a soul is, right?”

“Yes, Jim.” Maddy’s annoyed. “I’m not dumb.”

“OK, then.” I look away from her to a kite someone’s flying in the distance. “Matt and I are two separate souls.”

Maddy resumes strolling. “But…how do you know? What’s the difference between that and multiple personalities, really?” She says it innocently, like she’s trying to understand. At least I tell myself that to boost my patience as I start walking again.

“Well, science knows, for one.”

“Science has proved the existence of a soul?” Her voice is flat with disbelief.

I roll my eyes. “Call it a consciousness, then. You can read an article about it if you want. My mom could send it to you.”

“OK, OK.” Maddy sidesteps to avoid a dog racing down the beach.

“And…” I sidestep to avoid the dog’s owner. “Can’t you tell? When he’s here and when I’m here, can’t you tell that we’re different?”

Maddy’s hair blows in the wind, and she tucks a strand behind her ear as she looks up at me. Her eyes are the same shade of brown as Dad’s. As mine, too. “Well, I haven’t seen you in a few years. Give me a chance to hang around Matt and I’ll see.”

“OK.” I nod. “Tomorrow, you do that.”

“It can’t be sooner?”

I take a slow breath, trying to focus on the confusion evident on her face to keep myself from getting offended. “No, we only switch places when we go to sleep.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.” She pauses. “Um…how come?”

I look over Maddy’s shoulder, out to the ocean. “There’s a device in our brain that controls it. We got it when we were two and diagnosed.”

“Got it.” Maddy walks to the left so the waves wash over her bare feet. “So tomorrow, I’ll pay extra close attention and see if I can tell the difference between you and Matt.”

I smile. That feels like progress.

Saturday, June 5

Matt

“Yesterday, Jim told me to do something.” Maddy dusts the crumbs off her fingers from her sugar cookie. We had made a quick trip to the buffet line for dessert and then retreated back to our private table. “He told me I should see if I could tell the difference between you and him.”

“And?” I take a bite of a chocolate chip cookie. “What do you think?”

Maddy looks unsure. I smile, thinking that Jim is a little unfair to put our fourteen-year-old cousin through a test like this when she hasn’t seen us in almost four years. But he loves it when people can tell us apart. If he had warned me, I could have played it up, trying to act super extroverted or impulsive or something. Of course, Jim wouldn’t want that. He’d want it to be natural.

“It’s OK,” I say to Maddy. “I know we look exactly alike, and—”

“Well, duh. Of course you look exactly alike—” She cocks her head as if something occurs to her. “But I guess you don’t have to, do you? Why don’t you style your hair differently or something?”

I shift on the rough wood bench. “I like my hair like this.” I know I sound stubborn. “I’m not going to change it just because Jim likes it, too.”

Maddy studies me.

“Anyway,” I go on, “people who know us well—like our parents or our best friend—they can tell we’re different, even though we have the same body. Promise.”

Maddy nods. But she still looks disbelieving.

“Here.” I put down my cookie and pull my wallet out of my back pocket. “Want to see my driver’s license? It’s just got my name on there, ‘Matthew Mickelsen.’” I hand it to her. “Jim has his own. Even according to the government, we’ve got our own identities. Even social security numbers.”

In the silence, we can hear a murmur of voices from the white canopy as Maddy studies my license. “But if you were driving and got pulled over and handed over Jim’s license, what would keep the cop from being fooled?”

“Nothing,” I admit. I pretend to get thoughtful. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea. I should always drive around with Jim’s license on me, just in case I do get pulled over. Great idea, Maddy! I’ll tell him you thought of it.”

Maddy’s jaw drops, and I laugh. “I’m kidding. You think I’d be able to get away with that? My parents would find out eventually. Then I’d have to kiss my license goodbye.”

Maddy studies me with narrowed eyes as she hands me my license back.

“Not to mention Jim would be pretty mad.” I put my wallet back in my pocket.

“What would he do?” Maddy starts idly twisting her paper napkin.

“If I got a ticket in his name?” I exhale. “Oh, I don’t know, probably hide the car keys from me or something.” I stop to consider. “Probably worse. Probably some mean prank. Mean enough that I’d do something back, and then he’d retaliate, and I would, too, and then…”

Maddy rolls her eyes.

I smile. “Yeah, a prank war seems to be the natural course of events that follows any disagreement between me and Jim.”

“A prank war?” Maddy now picks up two pine needles to twist. “Isn’t that a little immature?”

“Well, it’s not like we can talk it over and shake hands on it.” I let that sink in, watching the shifting spots of sunlight that shine through the wind in the trees, until she rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, duh, the shaking hands part I know,” she says. “But what do you mean you can’t talk it over?”

“Well, we can’t talk it over in real time. Which makes a big difference.”

“In real time?”

“Yeah. Like we’re doing now.” I gesture to the space between us. “You say something, I hear, and I respond right away. Jim and I don’t get that.”

Maddy nods thoughtfully. “But…you’re in the same body. Can’t you just…I don’t know, wake him up and talk with him inside your head for a second?”

I smile wryly. “No.”

“Not even at night?”

“Not an option. Jim and I can’t talk to each other, not even if we were both awake in our body at the same time.”

“Really?” Maddy’s surprised.

“Well, we can’t read each other’s minds or anything.”

“Wait.” Maddy snaps the brittle brown pine needles she’s been fidgeting with. “Your two minds occupy the same brain, and you can’t talk to each other mentally?”

I shrug.

“That seems kind of unfair.”

“Yeah.” I take a drink from my water bottle to wash down my cookie. “Go figure.”

Friday, June 4

Jim

“So, you don’t even have a desire to learn how to play the drums?” Maddy and I are now finishing Dan and Jill’s sandcastle. The six-year-old and eight-year-old lost interest and ran back into the waves with their dad. Maddy and I did all that work gathering the shells, and it seems like a waste not to use them.

I squeeze a fistful of half-wet sand. “No. Just because Matt likes it doesn’t mean I do.” I pause and add—lest she think Matt’s the only one with musical talent—“I play the guitar.” Then I can’t help but say, “And soccer. Matt doesn’t play those.”

“Oh.” Maddy places a seashell above an archway. “And he doesn’t want to learn how to play either of those?”

I shrug. “I guess not.” I look down at the sand. We’re under the shade of the canopy, and looking outside at the bright sunlight makes me squint.

“He plays the drums, and you play guitar and soccer…don’t you guys do anything together?”

I look at Maddy, unamused. “Um, no. We can’t do anything together.” I’ll be really disappointed if that hasn’t sunk in.

Maddy rolls her eyes. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, if you guys worked together to learn the same skill or talent or something, wouldn’t it make it easier on you both?”

I shrug and push up a wall of sand.

“There’s not anything you both do?”

“Um…” I exhale. “We both play the piano. Or played. We don’t take lessons anymore. We both took swim lessons.”

She’s watching me expectantly.

“Oh. I got it. We learn the same viral dances.”

Maddy smiles.

I smile too. “But here’s the thing. Most of the time, it’s not like, ‘Hey, Matt, let’s learn to do this thing together!’ It’s more like, ‘Hey, Matt, I can do this better than you!’”

Maddy laughs. “You guys are competitive.”

“It comes naturally.” I sift through a mound of dry sand with my fingers. “But it’s not that weird that we like to do different things or use our body in different ways. We don’t always like the same foods.”

She’s surprised. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Even though you have the same taste buds?”

“Yeah, go figure.” In the distance the waves roar, and I can hear kids laughing. “We agree that corn dogs are gross, though.”

“And you both like learning dances.”

“And swimming,” I remind her.

Maddy smiles. “So, you have some things in common, some things not. You kind of sound like normal twin brothers.”

Maddy’s looking down at the sandcastle and not watching me, but I smile at her anyway. Does she know that’s one of my favorite things to hear?

“Anything else you and Matt have in common?” Maddy continues to decorate a wall of sand with white shells.

“Besides a body?”

She smiles.

I’m leaning on my left arm, but I sit up straight and dust off my hands. “We have the same best friend. We both like going to the gym. We have a favorite show. And yeah, we both like listening to the same music and playing the same music, though we play different instruments.” I pause. “We both like where we live.”

“Any other ways you’re different?”

“Well, yeah, but if I list them all, we’ll be here all day.”

Maddy smiles.

“Jim! Maddy!”

We both look up and squint at the sun. Dad’s joined Rick and the younger kids in the waves and beckons us over.

Maddy and I glance at each other, stand up, dust ourselves off, and head into the gulf. The water is warm, but it does feel refreshing as it washes off all the sand.

Out in the waves, I’m going over in my head what I’ll say to Matt when I leave a message for him tonight. I decide I’ll optimistically tell him that our extended family is beginning to understand us better. But as Rick calls me Jett and waves me over, I grimace. At least one family member is.

Saturday, June 5

Matt

Maddy and I finish our lunch and dessert, and her mom and my dad glance over at us. It’s probably time to quit avoiding everyone and head back so they can introduce us to all their aunts, uncles, cousins, and anyone else we’ve never met before.

“OK.” I sigh as I stand up, collecting my trash. “Time to face the inevitable.”

Maddy stands up, too. “Thanks for explaining you and Jim.”

We step off the concrete square around the picnic table and into the grass as we start to walk back together.

“Sure. Thanks for listening. He told me he talked to you about us yesterday, but that you might have some more questions.”

Maddy looks confused. “I thought you said you and Jim can’t talk to each other.”

I smile. “Not in our head.” I balance my trash-filled plate in one hand and pull my phone out of my pocket. “There are these amazing message-leaving devices called phones…”

Maddy hits me lightly on the arm, then her eyes get wide. “Oh! That’s who Jim was talking to last night!”

I raise one eyebrow at her as I pocket my phone, and we continue on.

“I didn’t mean to overhear,” she apologizes. “I was walking by the bathroom, and I heard Jim talking inside. At first, I thought he was talking to himself, and I was like, ‘That’s weird,’ but now I realize he was leaving something for you, wasn’t he?”

I smile to myself as we walk out from under the shade of the trees into the sun. Staying at our cousins’ house and sleeping on an air mattress in the living room means the bathroom is the most likely place where Jim and I can have some privacy as we send and watch each other’s video messages. I did the same thing.

“Is that something you do often?” Maddy asks.

“Every day.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure.” The murmur of voices by the canopy is getting louder. “It’s the only way we get to talk to each other. We’ll send video messages and other stuff, too—we text each other every day, and usually have a couple message threads about school for different topics.”

Maddy nods. We’re nearly at the white canopy.

“We can say something to him now if you want,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

We reach a trash can and drop our plates and napkins inside. On my phone, I open Vimer, stand next to Maddy, point the phone at our faces, and tap record.

“Hey, Jim! Just here at the mega family reunion with Maddy.”

Maddy goes along like a natural. She smiles and waves. “Hi, Jim!”

“It’s been lame, but the food was good. Maddy ate, like, five cookies.”

She smacks my shoulder.

I laugh. “Anyway, you’re lucky you were spared the torture. Now we’re off to be introduced to a ton of extended family members we’ve never met before.” Maddy and I make exaggeratedly fearful faces, then I tap to end the message.

“Just like that? That’s what you do every day?”

“Every day.” I put my phone away. Some kids are running for the trash can with hands full of garbage, so I step out of the way. “Usually, we leave a few short videos throughout the day, and then one longer recap at night.”

Maddy and I face each other. She smiles. “Like a digital pen pal.”

I force a laugh. Yeah, a pen pal I’m separated from by time, not space. A pen pal I have never and will never meet. A pen pal I share a ridiculous amount in common with. A pen pal who happens to be my brother.

Maybe Maddy sees through my fake laugh because her smile fades. “I guess that’s actually kind of hard, huh?”

“Oh, yeah?” I act casual. “Why’s that?”

“Well, I had thought that you might—well, the way you would feel about Jim—” Maddy gestures with her hands as she struggles for words. “I mean, since your condition is so, um…”

“Crappy?”

Maddy looks down. “Um, yeah. But hearing the way you talk to each other, it seems like you’re actually…”

“Friends?”

She smiles apologetically.

I look down at the weedy grass we’re standing on as I consider how to answer the “How is it that you and Jim are friends?” question this time. Our mom made us that way? Life would be even more miserable if we hated each other? It makes sense because we have a lot in common? He’s actually an OK guy?

I end up shrugging and using the same answer I gave her earlier. “Yeah. Go figure.”

Maddy smiles, but before she can say anything, we’re interrupted by a call.

“Madison!” Her mom waves at us from where she’s sitting at a long folding table.

“Matt!” Dad waves, too. “Come over here. I have some people I want you to meet!”

I take a breath. Maddy and I look at each other.

“My introductions are worse,” I point out. “It took me and Jim two days to fully explain ourselves to you. I’ve got to do that like twenty more times with people I’ve never met before.”

“Matt!” Dad calls again. I turn toward him and sigh.

Maddy pats my shoulder. “Poor Matt.”

***

The introductions are awkward. I try to change the subject away from me and Jim as often as I can. The easiest way is to ask lots of questions about whoever I’m talking to. Maddy and I spent quite a bit of time at our secluded picnic table, so the giant Mickelsen family reunion ends soon. I get into the rental car with Mom and Dad so we can drive back to Rick and Michelle’s house.

“Whew.” I lean against the headrest in the back seat as I buckle in.

Mom turns around and smiles at me. “You survived.”

I pretend to be so weak I can only manage a halfhearted smile and a thumbs-up.

“Thanks a ton, Matt.” Dad pulls the car out of its parking space, and we wait with the cars lined up to get out of the parking lot. The afternoon sun has heated up the car, and he turns the AC on high. “It means a lot to me to be here.”

“Sure, Dad. But Jim owes me one. He would have hated that.”

Mom smiles. “He would have been fine. Like he was yesterday.”

“He told me Rick was annoying.” I get more comfortable in the back seat and watch the trees pass by as we pull onto the main road. “Even if Maddy was nicer.”

“Seems like you’ve both gotten along well with Maddy.” Dad’s trying not to sound too pleased with himself.

“Yeah.” I try to sound disinterested. “I guess she’s cool.” I don’t miss Mom and Dad trying to hide smiles as they look at each other.

Matt—Mon, Jun 7, 7:52 AM

so hey look at that
we survived the trip to rick and michelle’s

Jim—Tue, Jun 8, 7:02 AM

yeah
it would have been worse without maddy
she was pretty cool right? at least there was someone there who tried to understand us and tell us apart

Matt—Wed, Jun 9, 7:04 AM

what do you mean? everyone could tell us apart. they all told me so on my days

that i was the cooler more awesome more fun one

also better looking
they just didn’t want to hurt your feelings

Jim—Thu, Jun 10, 7:03 AM

hardy har har
i still think it would have helped if you had worn the hat

Matt—Fri, Jun 11, 7:11 AM

i’ll only wear one of these

get me an authentic one of those next christmas instead of a baseball cap and i’ll wear it all you want

Jim—Sat, Jun 12, 7:02 AM

watch out i’ll take you up on that

Matt—Sun, Jun 13, 10:02 AM

oh but only if I have the mustache to match

Jim—Mon, Jun 14, 7:05 AM

like we could grow one anyway