suddenly I thought of all these things to comfort her, like some vague compliment Jason Burke had said that week, or the fact that the Irish author Gareth actually seemed semi-intrigued by Jenny, and he’d glanced at her a few times during his reading.
But what she’d said, she’d said so matter-of-factly, like it was normal. “I just wanted to be someone else.” And, I guess, it was normal. Why else would I have given a sex speech in my English class and beat up a bully? Those weren’t Finbar-esque actions. Why else would I have become a vampire?
It seemed so simple now. Somehow quirky little Jenny had simplified it. She wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be someone else. And we couldn’t be the only ones, either. I bet even Luke wanted to be someone else, sometimes—someone who could pass math or sit still through a test. And even Kate, Kate had wanted…
No. I was still angry about Kate. I couldn’t think about her yet.
“Come on,” Jenny called from ahead of me on the sidewalk. “We’re just in time for the express train if you hurry up.”
chapter 17
It took me a full week to notice that Luke was actually pretty depressed. Ever since the house party in New Rochelle, he had been so down that he didn’t even throw things at the ceiling at night. He would just sigh, roll over, and go to sleep. While Luke habitually treated our stairwells and house siding like a playground, he only climbed through the second-story window once that week. And we legitimately needed his help to unlock the door.
“So how’s, uh, Math B going?” I asked him one day when he was studying at my desk (his was, as usual, covered in sweaty clothes). Usually Luke wasn’t really attentive when he was studying. I was impressed with his concentration today. He wasn’t studying, but he had been doing a rubber-pencil trick for, like, fifteen minutes straight.
“Fine,” he said, and shrugged.
I probed, pushed, and prodded sensitive points to find out why he was upset. This technique I’ve learned from my mother.
“Are you gonna fail?” I asked.
“Doubt it,” Luke said. “I got a B on the last test.”
“Luke! That’s crazy good!”
“Yeah.” And then he sighed again. What was this sigh? I’d never heard Luke sigh. Then a thought occurred to me. Luke was acting calmer.
“Did you go back on meds?” I asked him suddenly.
He turned around in my wooden desk chair and raised an eyebrow. Then he shook his head. “No.”
Twin brothers are kind of like seesaws. When one of us goes down, the other automatically goes up. I don’t mean that I was happy to see Luke upset. Rather, when I observed that he was upset, I became more upbeat in order to cheer him up. Or became more annoying in order to distract him.
“Hey,” I called to him from my bed. “You got a little beard growing there?”
Was my brother really too depressed to shave? What was this?
I stood up and walked over to Luke. Indeed, he had kind of a beard. He had a quarter-inch of stubble.
“Ooh, sexy beard,” I told him. “It’s kind of… red.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
Luke’s hair was a lighter brown than mine. But his beard was kind of reddish-brown.
“You’ve got your Irish side showing,” I told him. “Very nice. Can I touch it?”
“Nah,” Luke said. “Don’t touch it.”
I reached out for his cheek. He slapped my hand away with those cheetah reflexes that have made so many high school football rivals cry. I reached again, quicker, and he missed.
“Ooh, sexy,” I said, rubbing my brother’s face.
See? I get pretty silly when Luke’s not Luke. One of us has to be crazy at all times to justify my mother’s paranoia.
“Sexy like a cactus.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Luke said. “Let me do this math stuff.”
“C’mon, Luke,” I said. “What’s up with you?”
He turned this mournful, hound-dog-like face to me.
“All right, here it is,” he said, lifting my desk chair. He turned the chair around and sat back down for the big reveal.
“I’m in love,” Luke said.
I burst out laughing. “No, you’re not. You’re drugged up!”
“I’m in love,” Luke repeated mournfully.
“You’re pissed off because you’re in love?” I asked him. “What are you, that little kid from Love Actually?”
Luke looked like himself for a minute.
“You really watch too many movies with Mom,” he told me.
“Who’s this girl?” I asked him. “Was she at the football party?”
Luke nodded.
“Was she the girl who was grinding so hard on