Do you know what the lines on your palms are? They're roadmaps.
At least, that was what Jack Singer had thought since he had inspected his twin's muddy hands and compared them to his own. Despite possessing the same features, the lines on their palms were so different - this one was deeper and that one was longer and the one that curved around the thumb was knotted. It was enough to perplex a four-year-old whose identity was delicately intertwined with that of another human being, but those ties quickly unraveled when the lines were found to not match up. Ryan moved on impassively from this conundrum, but Jack dangled by a frayed rope, confused and curious.
Jack found the answers to his questions in a popular bookstore located in the inner city. The store boasted a Metaphysical section which held a concise book on palmistry so, after his aunt saw his face light up like a Christmas tree when he encountered it on a lower shelf, it was given to him as a gift on his 10th birthday. He read it cover to cover countless times, staring at his right hand, then his left hand, then his right hand again whenever he got the time. Ryan's hands were examined as well, as were his mother's. Interpretations were addressed to them both, sometimes in writing, sometimes in words accompanied with waving hands and wide smiles or sorrowful glances. No one could deny that Jack had a passion, but it was weirder than his twin's passion for cars and soccer.
Adolescence persuaded Jack that roadmaps are made to be followed. A heartbreak at fourteen was lessened after a quick consultation with Left's Heart Line, possible health issues were addressed by applying Right's Life Line to a fifteen-year-old body, and two incredibly long Head Lines assisted Jack with staying optimistic during his final school exams. He couldn't predict that his twin's Life Line wasn't meant to be thoroughly traveled, though, and no lines were willing to tell him where to go. The book was torn up, the soil upturned , the sorrowful glance returned and the casket lowered. They were both only twenty, yet Ryan was already leaving behind a six-month old daughter, a wife and a future in construction.
Palmistry was forgotten as Jack tried his best to live in his brother's name. He studied construction and took up an apprenticeship, and he was soon working on a few development sites. Jack remained on good terms with Ryan's wife Michelle and daughter Eloise, and they aged day by day in eyes that rarely lit up. Paths were forgotten in favour of the daily grind. Faces became even more lined than the maps which led the traveler off-course and lost forever from one half of his home.
Good men try to find their way and often come across forks in the road instead.
Michelle learnt this the hard way when she lost Ryan to the enticing lull that cocaine, heroin and crystal meth provided him. The stress of becoming a father at nineteen and not having the money that his family needed to rely upon led him down the path that killed him. Michelle was more than willing to find other avenues to make money, but Ryan saw no opportunities down that road and chose to avoid them instead.
Now she was seeing Jack experiencing a similar struggle. He had had a silly hobby when he was younger, but once he lost Ryan he gave it up and came to have nothing. He was now thirty-five and like a surrogate father to his fifteen-year-old niece, and though he tried to hold a smile for her sake, Michelle knew better. He was identical to Ryan, and despite being quite different in personality they had the same facial expressions. She could read those looks like the back of her hand.
She wanted to approach him and ask him how he was doing, but she feared a Ryan-esque meltdown. The thought played with her mind for a couple of months before she decided she couldn't hold off any longer. Jack was becoming more and more agitated and was beginning to snap at Eloise, and even ever-patient Michelle was ready to tell him to shut and go away.
It was a crisp Autumn evening when she finally managed to step up to the plate. Jack was sitting on the patio, flicking a half-smoked cigarette into a cigarette tray. She noticed that he was doing it routinely, perhaps even compulsively, and wouldn't raise the cigarette to his lips until he finished coughing. When he wasn't convulsing or sucking at the stick with nicotine-stained fingers, he would sit so still that he looked as if he was a part of the patio furniture. It was eerie.
Michelle sat in the chair across the small, circular steel table and coughed in an attempt to grasp his attention. He did nothing but grunt.
"Eloise is at Lisa's house," she said firmly, her voice wavering less than her willowy frame. "I think it's time for us to talk about how you're doing, Jack."
"I'm fine," he murmured, not taking his eyes from the horizon.
"Jack, Ryan and I were together for three years, so I can tell when you're not doing well."
His head whipped around, his face deadpan. "I'm sorry, but when did I become Ryan?!"
"You're not," she answered quickly, "But you're much not different-"
"We're very different, Michelle," he said loudly, squaring his shoulders. "He was perfect, and I never was. He's dead, and I'm stuck here, trying to be him for everyone's benefit."
Eyes wide, she squeaked, "Where is this coming from? I just wanted to see-"
"Oh, it's been on my mind since we were kids, Mrs. Singer," he boomed, the inflections in his voice when he mentioned her name making her shudder. "Ryan had everything. More love from our parents, athletic ability, even a wife! All of the things I didn't know I could have had. I was too busy chasing lines on my hands. And he threw it all aside for drugs!"
She flinched. "You're not being fair, Jack-"
"Nothing is fair," he said, leaning towards her. The flare in his nostrils and the frown in his brow issued a threat. She eyed off the muscles he built over a fourteen-year period in construction. If it came to violence, she doubted she would survive.
"I'm sorry to have bothered you," she breathed, gripping the arms of the chair as she went to stand up.
"No, stay," he said, and his voice was now menacing. "And I'll show you how nothing is fair."
Run. Run now.
Jack knew she had tried to flee, but did she really expect to be able to get away from him? She was so tiny, and he was colossal. Her dodging just placed her neck in his hands, and her squirming worsened the wounds. Goodbye, Michelle. Goodbye forever.
Finally heaving himself up from his chair, he took one long look at the woman that had tried to lead him down the other path of the fork. Now she could be with her precious husband and stop looking at him with such accusing eyes; eyes that had summed him up and found him lacking, day after dismal day.
As a last fuck you, he wiped both sides of his knife on her dress. Opening his right hand, he noticed blood had seeped into the lines on his palm, highlighting clear roads on the roadmap for him for the first time in fifteen years.
Grinning, he pocketed the knife and fled the scene that marked the end of his hesitation and the beginning of a new life: his own.
