“Aw, big tough football player afraid of a little girly wax,” Amber cooed, making us both giggle.
“Give me a concussion any day. Right, my man?” Luke asked, looking to Anthony for support.
Anthony shrugged. “It’s not all that bad,” he admitted sheepishly.
Amber’s eyes lit up with merriment. “You wax?” She chortled. “Where?” she asked, tugging on his shorts for a peek.
Anthony’s face flushed bright red like he wished he’d kept his mouth closed.
“Gotta be the legs,” I guessed, ducking under the table to check them out for myself.
“No, not my legs,” Anthony answered, looking more uncomfortable by the second.
Amber and I exchanged an amused look. “You don’t mean your boys, do you?”
“Say it isn’t so,” Luke said, shaking with laughter.
“Come on, man. You know there’s no way hot wax is going anywhere near a guy’s precious cargo,” he choked out. “It’s my pecs,” he finally admitted.
“Your pecs?” Amber asked, raising an eyebrow. “You have hairy pecs?”
“It’s not like I was Bigfoot or anything. I lifeguard over the summer and I like looking good.” He blushed again, much to our amusement. “Now you know and we can change the subject.”
“Not on your life,” Amber teased. “We wanna see for ourselves.”
“Absolutely,” I added. “Show us the hairless wonder.”
The halls were buzzing with activity as everyone scrambled to get to class before the fifth-period bell rang. “I’ll meet you at the library after practice,” Luke said, giving me a chaste kiss. “By the way, you look better today.”
“I feel better. It was just a migraine. You know I get them sometimes.”
“You study too hard.”
“One of us has to,” I teased, trying to take the focus off my head.
“Ouch, I’m wounded,” he said, clutching his heart, making me giggle as he headed off to his afternoon classes.
Still smiling, I watched him leave. Today was a good day. My headache from the night before was long forgotten.
I was once again me.
A typical, normal teenager.
The twin who’d been left behind.
I was six years old when Leah disappeared from our front yard. I went inside to fetch us the cherry ice pops we both liked, and when I returned, she was gone without a trace. We were identical in every way, including our tastes in food. Where one of us ended, the other began. She was the other half of me, until in one instant, she wasn’t. She was gone, along with my life as I knew it. Nothing was ever the same after she disappeared. How could it be? You keep doing the everyday things that make you a person—eating, breathing, moving. Some days you even kid yourself and pretend everything is okay, but deep inside your soul, you stop living the moment you lose the other half of yourself.
For t
he past ten years my family has pretty much gone through the motions at home. Holidays, birthdays—they basically come and go without any real hoopla. School has been my only solace. It provides sanity, purpose, an identity. At school I’m just Mia Klein. Not Mia Klein, the girl whose twin sister disappeared. To my friends, I stopped being that person long ago. The world moved on at school, while at home we remained shackled by the past.
2
LEAH
EVEN WITH my eyes closed I could tell the lights were on. I could hear the soft familiar hum of the fluorescent fixture hanging on the ceiling above my head. I wasn’t ready to wake up yet. Not after the dream I’d had. The sun warming my skin. Gentle, flower-scented breeze playing with my hair. I missed it already.
As badly as I wanted to stay in bed, I knew I had to move quickly. She was already coming down the stairs and if she found me with my eyes closed, the day would start off bumpy. For now, the last remnants of my dreamtime escape would have to be tucked away in the back of my mind to be savored later. In one swift movement, I swung my legs off the small twin bed and jerked myself upright just as she entered the room. That was close. A second more and she would have freaked.