movie premiere, and he was Vince Chase from Entourage. People were fighting to talk to him and ask him questions. Girls were tugging at his clothes and asking for his autograph. Guys were calling out to him with weird nicknames they’d come up with between Gatorade spits on the football field. Everyone was happy to see him.

I could only imagine how guys like… oh, say, Johnny Frackas, would react to me showing up at a party of Swiss girls and adding to the sausage fest. Or how Sean O’Connor would feel if a random nerd showed up to drink one of his precious cans of dented beer. Or how hard they would laugh if they ever saw me try to do a kegstand (Luke made me do a kegstand once when our parents were away, and I’d since been convinced you have to be a Romanian gymnast to perform one). It wasn’t that I didn’t like Swiss girls or horror movies. And it wasn’t like I didn’t like Luke. I liked Luke, but I didn’t want to hang out with those other St. Luke’s assholes.

I would never ever tell Luke that I was worried his friends would be mean to me. First of all, my brother never worried about social interactions, and he wouldn’t understand. Second, Luke took everything literally and might tell people, “Don’t be mean to my brother.” Which would, of course, have the opposite effect.

So sometimes I would give my brother a legitimate excuse, like, “I’m sick of hanging out with the guys from school.”

Sometimes I would go a little more ridiculous and tell Luke very seriously, “Oh, I can’t drink that beer. I’m really scared of botulism.”

Or, about the movie: “I heard that Disney Channel girl is actually a transvestite.”

Or, about the party: “Too bad all the girls in Sweden take vows of celibacy till they’re twenty-five. No, I read it, the government makes them.”

But Luke did not fear botulism, gender confusion, or the challenge of state-enforced abstinence. So off he went and I sat home while other guys racked up months of sexual experience. Every Monday, those guys would come to school looking all disheveled, like they were exhausted from rounding the bases. And every Monday, Johnny Frackas asked me, “Score any ass this weekend, Fagbar?”

Did I snap back with a clever response? Did I use my wit and mastery of words to craft the mother of all Your-Mom jokes? Did I take advantage of the fact that Johnny “Freckles” Frackas was such an easy target? No. Never. Never once. In fact, I never even answered him. I sat there like a wuss, shrugged my skinny wuss shoulders, or pretended to be really interested in my chemistry textbook all of a sudden. I never said a thing. And I really regret it.

So I was obviously glad to leave St. Luke’s and move to New York. It was definitely an ideal time for a transformation—but New York itself didn’t turn me into a vampire.

Maybe the whole transformation started in New York, with that girl on the train. She spotted me the second I got on and beelined for the seat next to mine. Although she was reading a thick paperback book, she was sneaking sideways glances at me every other paragraph. Her eyes took in the raised red patches on my hands and the bandages on my arms. Then she told me she knew what was wrong with me. And she seemed so certain, so understanding, that I agreed with her. Maybe that’s when I decided my life needed to change.

Or maybe the need for transformation started fifteen years and nine months ago, with the fertilization of two very different eggs by two very different sperm. Sorry to bring up my parents’ sex life, but that’s how Luke and I started. My mother released one egg with her enthusiasm and energy, and another with her social anxieties and cheesy sentimentality. My dad released one sperm with his sports skills and his mild likability, and one with his tendency to hole up in his room for an entire weekend. The cool sperm found the cool egg and they hung out together in the cool part of the uterus. The wallflowers got together by default and made me.

The doctors told my mother she was expecting dizygotic twins, more commonly called fraternal twins. Two different sets of genes. Two different kids. One absorbed all of the nutrition and grew round and healthy. The other was malnourished but too sleepy