I close my eyes and inhale deeply, trying not to say something I’ll regret. “What’s not fair, Clem, is that we had a plan.”
“You keep saying, but you had a plan, Waylon. It’s always been your plan. We were supposed to go to Austin Community College to figure out who we wanted to be and what we wanted to do. But I know those things already. I want to go to engineering school, and I got in. Dad has spent his whole life building and fixing things and now I want to learn how all those things work. I want to know the science and reasoning behind it all. Isn’t that great? I know what I want to do and someone is going to let me do it. Can’t you be happy for me?”
My shoulders sink. “Honestly? I’m having a really hard time with that. I’m not sad that you know what you want to do.” Except . . . maybe I am. Maybe Clem knowing what she wants not only makes me feel like a failure, but also deeply lonely. “You could have told me this months ago and I would still have had time to make other plans or at least process this. We’ve been connected at the hip for eighteen years, Clem. If you’re going to pull the rug out from under me, you could at least give me a little more warning. Were you just going to leave one day and call me from the road?”
She scoots down the bed toward me, and begins to undo her braids, which is code for you can play with my hair. “I love being your twin. It’s one of the most important things I am, but we can’t always be Waylon and Clem. Sometimes you have to be just Waylon and I have to be just Clem. Didn’t you ever wonder what your plan would be if it weren’t something that had to work for both of us?”
My eyes well with tears. “No, actually, I hadn’t. I just. I thought it would always be the two of us.”
Her expression softens at the sight of me letting my guard down. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I was scared. It was wrong. Everyone told me so, even Hannah.” She grimaces. “I was so scared you would hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I mutter. “I wish I could. That would be way easier. Instead my stupid, stone-cold heart only cares about a few people and you happen to be one of them. I build up walls, Clem, I know that. But it makes it so much harder when someone inside the wall hurts me, because I’m not in the business of letting people in.”
“Oh, I know all about your walls,” she says with a sympathetic frown.
I sigh so hard my lips sputter. “And now I don’t know where I’m going or who I want to be and I made that stupid video and what if that’s all anyone ever knows me for? What if I’m always that fat gay kid with the embarrassing video who ran for prom queen?”
She loops her arm through mine and leans her head on my shoulder. “You’re Waylon. Before the video. After the video. With me. Without me.”
I was so ready to live our lives out in Austin, but the thought of being there without my Clementine makes me feel like I’m trying to find my footing in a pit of quicksand. “And God, why Georgia?”
She smiles sheepishly, and I immediately know she’s about to drop another bomb. “Well, I was wait-listed at UT, but I also got into the University of North Texas, and then a few others. One in Florida and another in Arizona, but, um, Hannah actually has a full ride at the Savannah College of Art and Design. We’d still be four hours away, but—”
“Oh.” I want to snap back with something pithy, but this hurts a little too much for me to come up with a venomous response. She’s just twisted the knife. It’s not that she’s going somewhere else on her own. She’s going somewhere with someone else. A someone else she chose over me. “What happens if . . . what if y’all . . .”
“What if we break up?” she asks smartly, and it’s one of those moments when I can perfectly see the features that make us twins. The pointed nose. The sharp line of our brows. The freckles that won’t quit. “I