007. Paper Thin
At Aquino High, a secret can destroy you.
The day passes so agonizingly slowly that I wonder if I skipped over a good night's sleep and my Thursday and Friday blended together. I stubbornly avoid everyone in my calculus class, including Cassidy, for the better half of the morning, and it isn't until my best friend confronts me in the cafeteria line that I realize my façade can't last forever.
"I've tried to say hi to you five times," she says in way of greeting as I shoulder past her to grab a napkin from the dispenser. "What's wrong?"
I grumble in acknowledgement and drop a plastic fork, knife, and spoon onto my tray. As much as I want to forget about what happened in calc class, I can't, because every time I try my face flushes all over again with the newly fresh memory.
"You can't be mad forever about calc, you know." She follows close behind me as I take a plate of grilled chicken, as if she's afraid I'll try to slip away.
When I finally turn to look at her, I see that her chocolate brown eyes are wide as she's staring at me. She's worried—and I owe it to my best friend not to take out my mood on her. "Sorry," I say softly, in case Allison is nearby. "I'm more angry at my sister than anything."
"You'll find a way to get back at her."
For some reason, that makes me think of the Post-It note system again: how everything at Aquino High is run based on ratings, revenge, and the clawing to the top of the hierarchy. Everything's out in the open and nothing can be hidden for long—because at Aquino High, a secret can destroy you.
Maybe it's a product of being part of the student body for so long, but it strikes me suddenly that Cassidy and I are just as bad as Allison, Celia, and all the rest. We all wear blinders as we stare at our classmates, judging them and evaluating them as if they're constantly under a microscope. It's considered the norm to gauge someone based solely on their Post-It ranking, as if a guy's rating defines you. And if you feel threatened by anyone, it's considered perfectly acceptable to scrape for any possible revenge.
And then, it hits me even harder: I don't really want to be a part of that anymore.
Someone bumps into me from behind me in line and I turn around to see Luke Horton mumbling an apology. Luke—the Star Wars nerd I so quickly dismissed when Spencer suggested he was my secret admirer. Now, I realize that he isn't so bad after all. Never someone I'd be attracted to, but that doesn't make him the enemy.
"Sorry." He apologizes again, straightening his beanie on his head. I realize I don't even know what his hair looks like under that permanent fixture.
I shift my tray in my hand, locking eyes with him for the first time I can remember. "It's no problem. My fault."
The side of his mouth lifts into a smile and I match his friendly gaze, and there's a moment of solidarity between us before Cassidy grabs me by the elbow and drags me to the checkout line.
Somehow, I feel better after the encounter with Luke, and by the time I sit down between Brynn and Cassidy I'm almost entirely cheered up. I can't let my sister's actions get under my skin—after all, that's exactly what she wants.
"Going to Taylor's party on Friday?" Brynn asks me as I steal a baked chip from her bag.
I chew, stalling, and she must realize my hesitation because she coaxes, "Come on. It'll be fun. You should definitely go, especially since you missed Liam's party on Monday."
Suddenly, I remember. "Did you see Spencer at that party?"
"No. He definitely wasn't there because Celia had to throw herself at some other random guy instead."
Mechanically, I grab another chip from the bag. Brynn's story lines up with Spencer's but not with Liam's, who insisted that Spencer was there and Celia was clinging to him all night. I wonder as I swallow why he felt the need to lie to me, and what was in it for him.
"So are you going Friday?" asks Cassidy.
Friday may be the only opportunity to find out what's really going on at these parties—and it's not like I'd miss out on homework, since I'll have all weekend. "Fine," I say, rolling my eyes lightly. "But don't expect me to get into the habit of this. I don't know how you guys party three or four times a week."
"Everything in moderation," simpers Brynn, mocking my school-in-balance-with-fun attitude. In response, I stick my tongue out at her, but not before I notice Liam catching my eye across the cafeteria.
"I'll be right back," I say.
Before my friends can respond, I scrape back my chair and weave through tables until I reach the senior guys. As always, Liam is seated next to Taylor and Spencer, laughing heartily. Today he's holding a math test with a large red D scribbled on top.
Since he's in the middle of a long-winded narrative about how he wrote total nonsense on his test and was surprised he didn't get an F, I stand behind his chair and wait patiently. He's at the part of his story when he's handing in his test when Taylor clears his throat and says, "I think Erika's trying to talk to you, Liam."
Liam stops abruptly and turns around—his grin is half-formed when I say shortly, "I need to talk to you."
The table falls dead silent, so that I can hear the guy two down from Liam chewing. After a few tense seconds, Liam stands, his chair mimicking the sound mine made only minutes before.
"Let's head outside," he says.
We make it just outside the door before I turn to him and demand, "Why did you lie to me about your party? You said Spencer was there but he wasn't."
"Chill, babe." The easy grin is back, fully formed this time. "Why are you making such a big deal out it?"
It's true—usually I'd just dismiss it as him being stupid or trying to play a joke on me. Today, though, on top of everything that's already happened, I have no tolerance for nonsense.
"Don't 'babe' me," I snap. "Why'd you lie?"
"To be completely honest, I was trying to make you want Spencer more." He extends his arms above his head, stretching as if this is the most carefree conversation he's had all day. "I figured if you knew Celia was after him you'd try harder to get him, so you'd need me more."
"So you were being a selfish coward?"
He clears his throat. "Basically."
I let him bask in the uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before I say, "I think I'm going to break up with you."
"Break up with me? You can't dump your fake boyfriend!"
Our gazes meet, two pairs of intense eyes boring into each other. At first my glare is deadly, but slowly it softens until I realize I'm trying too hard not to laugh. One side of my mouth twitches, and before I know if a smirk is plastered where a frown was only seconds before.
"You do know how stupid that sounded, right?" he asks, matching my grin. "You can't break up with someone you're not even dating."
"Watch me."
I mean for it to sound dangerous but I almost start laughing, and I lose it completely when Liam quirks up an eyebrow and says, "I will."
Somehow, I can never stay mad at Liam Alvarado for long.
*
The weather seems to match my increasingly good mood. The clouds of the early morning are replaced by a timid sun by the time I've parked my car in my driveway after school, and the nip in the air bites my nose as I head up to the front porch. I've just cracked open the door when I realize there's hammering inside the house.
"Dad?" I ask, poking my head inside the foyer. "Is that you?"
"Yeah!" The hammering stops, only to be resumed a few seconds later. "Can you come into the living room?"
I kick off my boots and shut the door gingerly behind me before making my way over to him. He's sitting amid several cardboard boxes, securing a family picture onto the wall above the fireplace. I recognize it easily—it was taken when Allison and I were three, at the beach. Mom's in the picture, too, and I realize as I stare into her eyes how strikingly like me she looks.
"Why are you hanging that?" I ask.
He peers down at me from the ladder, his blue eyes sparkling like mine. "I figured we might as well put up some more memories of your mom," he says. "Especially since I'm trying to clear the clutter out of this house. These boxes are all stuff I'm going to get rid of—there's more junk in the attic that I still need to clean out."
"Do you need any help?"
"That'd be great, honey." Another strike with the hammer. "Can you go rifle through the attic? Throw out anything that's old or that we won't use anymore."
I want to ask why he's suddenly decided to declutter his life, but he's already gone back to hammering. Throwing my backpack down on the couch, I trek up the two flights of stairs to the attic. Allison isn't home yet, and I pass her empty room with the relief that I only associate with her absence.
The attic is exactly as I remember it from the few occasions I've been inside: dusty, filled with boxes splitting at the seams, and so dark I can barely see where I'm walking. I shuffle my way over to the window and creak it open, admitting a bleak stream of light from outside. It illuminates a set of boxes in the center of the room and I figure I might as well start there.
Working in the attic is therapeutic. Even though I have a pile of homework waiting for me back downstairs, something about the peace and quiet makes me want to stay isolated for a few hours. Here it's just me, working steadily through the piles of junk my family hasn't touched in years. Every time I toss something into the big black trash bag, I feel like I'm relieving a little bit of my stress.
I shove a box of Dad's old baseball trophies over to one side of the attic and begin positioning them on a shelf, where I'm sure he'd want them on display instead of tucked away. There are a lot of them, and it takes about twenty minutes to sort them by year and ranking. The gentle breeze from outside tickles the back of my neck as I work, almost wishing I never had to go back to the pressure cooker that's Aquino High.
After the trophies, I pull out another random box and begin sorting through it. This one has old baby mementos from Allison and my childhood, and as I pull out photo album after photo album the glaze of memories takes over. I stack the albums, sorting them by year, and then reach into the bottom of the box for the small stack of papers carelessly thrown there.
They're all covered with a faint layer of dust, and I brush them against my blue jeans until most of the film is gone. Then I flip through them, sorting them by relevance. There are a few medical records for me and Allison, which I figure should be in a completely different box, and then a large envelope at the very bottom.
Biting down at my lip, I run my finger under the flap to tear the tape. The paper is crisp like it hasn't left the envelope in a long time. When I shake it out and it flutters to the ground, I realize it's a certificate.
It's not just any ordinary certificate, though. As I squint so that I can read the fading print, I can make out the bold font that reads "Adoption Certificate" across the front.
My heart pounds, and suddenly all I can think of is the fact that I look so much like my mom used to look, and I can't possibly be adopted. My vision is blurred for a fraction of a second before I'm able to continue reading. When my eyes flicker down to the name, my breath stops.
The certificate isn't for me. It's for Allison.
My blonde-haired, blue-eyed twin, who looks nothing like either of my parents, isn't really my sister after all. I read the words on the certificate over and over before I notice something: her birth name is Allison Cunningham.
She's not my twin. She's Taylor's.
In a trance, I throw the stack of photo albums and the medical records back in the box before pushing it into its original position. The adoption certificate is still in my hand, and it feels like it weighs a ton even though it's paper thin.
I think back to how I felt at lunch today, how eager I was to turn a fresh leaf and stop participating in the politics of Aquino High. All I wanted then was the simplicity that would come with no longer being involved in the drama. But to be uninvolved would mean to slip away from everything I know—from my friends, from Spencer, and from my status at school. And as I hold that adoption certificate in my hand, I realize I'm not quite ready to let all of that go.
I'm silent as a cat in my socks as I creep down from the attic to the living room. Dad's moved on to a different room, but the portrait is now hung straight on the wall and the hammer is set nonchalantly on the coffee table. I don't think I hear him anywhere nearby.
As quick as I possibly can, I run the zipper to my backpack across its track, wincing at the sound it makes, and drop the adoption certificate in between my calculus and physics folders. Just as Dad's footsteps approach me, I zip my bag shut and turn around to face him.
Instead of Dad I'm greeted by Allison. Instantly, my cheeks flame up as if she intuitively knows what I have in my backpack.
"Where's Dad?" she asks. Her eyes roam over the newly hung picture above the mantle and settle on our mother's face before she adds, "Did he just hang that?"
"Yeah." Both of our tones are icy, reserved. I'm still angry with her for what she did to me in calculus. Part of me knows that it's that hatred that pushed me to steal the certificate, that maybe I'll regret it later. But all I can see now is a path, an opportunity that I'll be stupid not to take. I can get back at her. I can win, once and for all.
She's still staring at the portrait, running her fingers absentmindedly through her long blonde ringlets. I study her for a second, taking note of every difference in our physique, before I swing my backpack over my shoulder and head up to my room. Even though I know what I have to do, the guilt that's gnawing at me means I can't even look at her.
When I get up to my room I pull out my calculus just so I have something to concentrate on. The certificate is still haunting me, so I stuff it into my English folder so I don't have to look at it any more. As much as I try to reason with myself that Cunningham is a common last name, that maybe Allison and Taylor aren't at all related, I can't help but assume that they are. But how? Why keep one twin and put the other up for adoption?
My brain hurts, so I pull out my calculator and punch in some numbers instead. I want to be able to go to Taylor for answers, just like I tried to do about the Post-Its on my locker. Something tells me, though, that he won't know anything more about this than I do. Maybe he knows even less.
"Taylor told me you're making him feel guilty about Brynn again."
I jump away from my backpack and look up instinctively to see Allison standing in my doorway. She's leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed, clothed in athletic shorts even though it's thirty degrees outside.
"So you two are talking," I say.
She's back to playing with her hair again, something she must have started doing only recently. "You shouldn't be angry about what happened anymore. Why can't you just let it go?"
"You haven't let it go, either."
Her gaze lowers. The fact that neither of us are willing to coexist proves, beyond a doubt, that neither of us have forgotten about what happened last summer.
"I'm only not forgetting it because you're being ridiculous about it," she says finally. Her eyes meet mine again, and now they're a shade cooler. Ice blue, like Spencer's when he's staring at me as I explain a math problem. "Please stop bothering Taylor about Brynn. You're only making him feel worse about himself."
Good, I want to say, but I stop myself. Instead I think back to that certificate, which could prove that Allison and Taylor are related. If that won't ruin her, I don't know what will.
"I'll think about it," I say instead, turning back to my math. Even as I work on the problem set I should have done in class today I feel like I have authority over her. The certificate in my backpack is leverage, something that shifts the scale in my favor. I realize that me feeling superior is a change—and now, I don't think I ever want to let it go.
"If you don't have anything else to say you can leave," I add, scribbling down an equation.
She disappears so quickly that the only evidence is the door shutting behind her. As I circle my answer and move on to problem two, I can't help but bask the feeling of finally being back in my zone. It's only because of the adoption certificate I stole, but if that's what it takes then I'm willing. She won't stop at anything to beat me, and neither should I.