Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

Before I was awake or aware, before my heart began to beat, Cairo was there. We curled around each other in the womb, so much so that the doctors had to pry our limbs apart to deliver us. Until we were four years old, neither of us spoke; we each understood the other without words, and nobody else was as important. There were Mom and Dad, of course, but they always recognized our bond.

He served as my one constant in a life led on four different continents (to date), where instead of schools and suburbs (until a year ago), we’d been taught by various tutors, sometimes Mom’s grad students, the different cities and cultures we lived in, or occasionally just books and our own curiosity. Last year, Mom took a visiting professorship at Georgetown, and for the first time in our lives, we were plunged into a “normal American high school”—the biggest culture shock of all. I adapted well enough; Cairo found it harder. We weren’t like other kids, something he reveled in and I tried to hide. But even as I made new friends and Cairo withdrew into the background, the bond between us never wavered. We were two parts of one whole. Inseparable, forever.

Maybe that was why I tried too hard to hide from the fact that Cairo was . . . changing. Why I denied this new truth until it was beyond denying. Until our first trip to Rome.

“Okay, so, seriously, I don’t get it.” My friend Audrey painted her toenails baby-pink by the gleam of her iPod’s flashlight app, so the chaperones wouldn’t see we were violating the lights-out rule. “Toilets come with seats. Always. So why does every single freakin’ restaurant and museum in Italy have toilets without seats? Do they, like, remove them just to be evil?”

Although the no-toilet-seats thing in Italy was annoying, I’d seen worse. My brother would’ve told Audrey so, explaining that we’d been to archaeological digs in Egypt and Syria where the only bathroom facilities were holes in the ground, and how different cultures look on different things as necessities or luxuries. I just said, “I know. It’s disgusting.”

And the truth was, Rome was kind of a disappointment.

Of all the places we’d lived and traveled, Cairo and I had never made it to Rome before. Strange, considering that Mom and Dad were archaeologists who specialized in the history of the ancient Roman Empire. But their work never took them, nor us, anywhere in Italy. Mom’s research concentrated on Roman settlements in the Middle East, and Dad long ago gave up digging in favor of writing books. He was as serious about history as Mom, but his books still became bestsellers thanks to their flashy titles (like his latest, Cleopatra: Eternal Temptress). So we grew up hearing about how glorious Rome was back in the day. When the school announced the summer trip for Rome, we both wanted to go, and our parents were thrilled we’d finally get to see the city.

But once we arrived, I realized that I knew too much to enjoy this the way my new friends did. The Forum would have been glorious 2,000 years ago; what I saw when we finally visited it was a ruin not unlike ones I’d seen my whole life. Tour guides acted like the Colosseum was just the world’s oldest sports stadium, instead of a place where thousands upon thousands of people and animals were slaughtered. Even the pizza wasn’t as good as it was at Vincenza’s in Falls Church. Instead of having some magnificent, enriching experience, I spent my days wondering which was hotter—Rome in July, or the surface of the sun.

A knock on the hotel room door startled us both. Audrey slid her iPod under the sheets. Mrs. Weaver called, “Ravenna? Are you awake?”

“Just a second.” I threw off the sheet to get out of bed while Audrey tucked herself in and tried to look like she was sleeping. Despite the darkness of the room, I could see her mouth the words What did you do?

Nothing, I mouthed back, as though I had no idea what was going on.

But I did. I knew. With my brother, I always knew.

I cracked open the door to find Mrs. Weaver standing there in a pink plaid bathrobe she couldn’t have wanted any of us to see. I said, “Is Cairo okay?”

She blinked, maybe in surprise that she didn’t have to tell me what was going on. But she didn’t ask any stupid questions. “He seems to have had . . . a nightmare or an upset of some sort. We’ve tried to calm him down, but—”

“He’ll be okay. Just let me talk to him.”

Mrs. Weaver led me down the long corridor of the hotel. Behind various doors, I could hear giggling or talking, everyone else breaking curfew to gossip or make out. As we reached the end of the hall, I saw Cairo’s roommate, Jon, a jock assigned to room with him at random. I used to think Jon was beautiful with his carved muscles and white-blond hair—until I got to know him.

As I reached the door, Jon muttered, “Shut that freak up, will you?”

“Go screw yourself.” Nobody got to call my brother a freak but me. Before Mrs. Weaver could scold us for that exchange, I went inside.

This hotel room looked just like mine, except that it h

ad been trashed. The covers were crumpled in one corner, the sheets in another, and the mattress had been flung up against one wall. Curled next to it, shaking, hands over his ears, drenched in sweat, was Cairo.

“It never stops,” he whispered without looking up. My brother always knew it was me. “I can’t sleep and I can’t think. It never, ever stops.”

“Shhhhh.” I sat next to him, careful to keep us from touching. My presence soothed him, though, just as his presence did for me. Maybe it reminded us of the time before our memories began, when we knew nothing of the world but each other.

We looked like negatives of each other: both thin to the point of being bony, with big, dark eyes and too much blue-black hair to control, but me with Dad’s pasty Irish complexion and Cairo with Mom’s deep Indian skin tone. The two of us shared accents nobody could ever place, fluency in five languages, a sense of belonging everywhere and yet nowhere, and our ridiculous names (Cairo’s for the place Mom and Dad met, mine for the city where they spent their honeymoon).