Page 81 of Twice as Twisted

We do, and each time we step into another empty room, I need a drink more than the last one. Finally, I admit she’s right. We’ve covered every inch of the house, and the body’s not here.

“He couldn’t have,” I say, slumping across the table from her again when we return to our starting place.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Of course I’m not sure,” I grumble. “We were in my room together for at least twenty-four hours after you came home with us. And he stays up all hours of the night. You know what he’s like. I just assumed he was with Jane or on his computer.”

“The question is, why would he do that?” she asks.

“To get rid of it for us,” I say. “To operate or experiment on… I don’t even know anymore.”

“You’re his twin.”

“I fucking know that,” I snap, and I reach to pull out my flask, because I really need a drink now. But it’s empty, and it clatters hollowly on the table when I toss it down. “Got anything stronger than Cherry Coke?”

She goes to the cabinet and starts rooting around. When she comes up with a half a bottle of vodka and a glass, though, I decide I don’t trust her enough to let her make my drink. I join her at the counter, and she studies me a long moment, like she knows what I’m doing, though neither of us will accuse the other.

“You’re different,” she says, going to the refrigerator.

“Yeah,” I say, opening the bottle and taking a shot. “So are you. Oh fuck, what is this shit? Vanilla?”

“You know why I’m different,” she says, ignoring my disgust at the liquor her aunt owns. “You changed me. What you did. You tore apart the molecules of Mabel, the formula that made me who I was. When I put myself back together, I combined the elements in a different sequence, created something entirely different out of the same building blocks.”

“Molecules of Mabel,” I say. “Cool band name.”

She sets a container of orange juice on the counter. “What happened to you?”

“You still don’t fuck around, do you?” I ask, busying myself with the drink. “That hasn’t changed.”

“What changed y’all?” she presses.

“Maybe your leaving changed us.”

“Did it?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, because Mabel won’t stop asking until I answer. She won’t be distracted by jokes or flirting like other girls might. “It was probably part of it. But not everyone has it as easy as you. I can’t point to one thing. It was everything. You leaving, and Crystal leaving, and King leaving, and Baron leaving. It was what happened to Royal, and what we did, and what Dad did. All of it.”

I could tell her that Dad dying probably changed me the most, but I don’t. She wouldn’t understand how I could still love him, how I could mourn him, after all he did. Even Baron doesn’t understand, though he loved him too. He wasn’t there. He didn’t stand there and make the choice not to save him, to let him burn to death. Everyone who did, we share some fucked up bond. And for once, Baron isn’t part of it.

“When did Baron leave?” Mabel asks, drawing me from my morbid thoughts.

I realize she doesn’t know this part, and that eases my mind a little. Maybe they weren’t plotting so much behind my back after all. We sit across the table from each other, drinks in front of us. I forgot how unnerving her stare was, how direct she was, how it always felt like she could see through every lie, through everything, even when she couldn’t. She didn’t, but it felt that way. Like she always knew when we were plotting against her, always knew when it was me and when it was Baron. But she didn’t. She’s no more special than me.

“Before Christmas,” I say, taking a gulp of my drink. “He tracked you, and he’s been watching you ever since.”

She takes this in, her grey-blue eyes unwavering, and then nods. I can see her calculating in her head, the numbers swirling, some formula that contains only her and Baron. I am a variable, a remainder.

“I thought so,” she says at last. “I knew someone was watching. And then when the men started dying… But I didn’t realize you’d split up. I never thought you’d leave each other.”

“He didn’t leave me,” I say, scowling at her. “I mean, he did, but we talked all the time. He wouldn’t ditch his brother like you did. I knew what he was doing, why he left. I knew what you were doing too. Not just him.”

She sits there sipping her drink, her expression contemplative, and I want to bend her over the table and shove a whole handful of Alice up her ass, make her stop thinking about Baron without me, considering that an option in a way she hasn’t done since the beginning. Remind her that he’s not the only one who can make her scream.

“Let’s go home,” I say, standing abruptly. “Baron will be back soon. We should be there when he does.”

“I am home,” she says. “My aunt left. She said I could have the house. She’s not coming back.”

I imagine it, moving out of the rental and into her place. I picture us sitting on the deck, sipping white wine, her smiling across the table at me and thanking me for picking up lobster. I picture her walking along the shoreline in the morning, picking up seashells at the water’s edge, bare feet dotted with droplets of saltwater, toes sprinkled with sand. I hear her shriek of surprise when I grab her around the waist and pick her up, toss her into the frothing, frigid water and dive in after her. I would go under and then come up with my cheeks ballooned, make a little whale spout like Dad used to do on vacation when we stayed at our beach house. I picture dragging our sleeping bags out under the stars, staring up at them like I did with Colt at the quarry that night.

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