For my part, I wasn’t unhappy about the changes Haylee was making for herself daily. There was so much about her now that I didn’t want associated with me. I was hoping that our classmates, and especially our teachers, would see the differences and start thinking of us not as twins but instead as just two ordinary sisters. It got so that I wouldn’t smile when someone commented on how alike we were. “We’re really not,” I began to risk saying. Although Haylee didn’t believe it, especially now, I wanted to develop my own identity as much as, if not more than, she did. I was confident that anyone who spent any time with us would eventually see the differences in our changing personalities.
For one thing, Haylee was becoming more sarcastic and egotistical. The way she spoke to our teachers often got her reprimanded. When Mother was told about something Haylee had done or said, she would lecture us both, and when a punishment was levied, even now that we were older, we both still endured it. If she couldn’t go to a movie, I couldn’t. It was no good complaining about how it wasn’t fair. We were to look after each other, weren’t we? Reluctantly, I tried to do just that, but Haylee was no longer listening to me or was simply ridiculing my warnings in front of other girls.
Haylee didn’t work as hard on our schoolwork as I did, but I had to do what I could to help her keep up. If we had a reading assignment, I had to explain it to her before we stepped into class, and because we were still seated close to each other, we had developed ways to share answers on tests. I wanted to stop, but I was afraid of Mother’s reaction to Haylee falling so far behind me. Because I was doing well, she would blame it on me and see it as evidence that I wasn’t being a “special” sister.
Ironically, the luckiest thing to happen from Haylee’s point of view was my growing interest in Matt Tesler and his interest in me. Haylee was usually jealous of any attention boys gave me, even ones neither of us would ever want to date when we were finally permitted to date. Some of them called me to talk about schoolwork and, I knew, to see if that would lead to anything else. I didn’t encourage any of them until Matt began to call.
There was nothing glamorous about Matt Tesler. He was about an inch taller than we were, and although he dressed neatly and never looked sloppy, he wore plain, solid-colored shirts and dark blue jeans, clothes that Haylee called monotonous. She didn’t like his short, almost military haircut, either. At the time, he was one of the top five students in our class. He preferred exercising on his own, especially biking, and was well built but never went out for any school teams, even though the coaches tried to get him to do so.
It was easy to see why they wanted him. In gym class, he was as skilled as anyone else when it came to basketball fundamentals or soccer and baseball, but he was smart, too, and could easily be a team’s playmaker or captain. His lack of interest was annoying to other boys at school, but I liked his indifference, not only to the pursuit of personal glory on the sports stage but also to the social rejection. He seemed more mature, and that caused me to want to know more about him. Why wasn’t he like every other boy? What had happened in his life to make him the way he was?
Haylee wouldn’t give him the time of day, and every time she saw me talking to him, she complained as if it was hurting her reputation.
“He’s a few floors below nerd,” she said. “Who wants to talk about computers or the environment? He thinks Taylor Swift is some kind of cheese,” she added in front of other girls, who all laughed.
At first, I liked the fact that she wasn’t interested in Matt. If I had shown the slightest interest in any other boy at school, she was at him so aggressively that she usually turned him off both of us. After a while, I avoided saying anything nice about any of the boys, but Matt was different. I sensed that what some others, especially Haylee, viewed as snobbery was really his greater stability and self-confidence.
He had a sister in the fourth grade, and his parents were both professionals. His father was the head of radiology at Pennsylvania General, and his mother was vice president in charge of commercial loans at Stuyvesant National. The gate in the wall he put up between himself and most of the students at our school gradually opened wider when it came to me, especially this year. At first, we talked mostly about our schoolwork, but we were soon exchanging opinions about almost everything. I discovered he had eclectic interests in music, authors, and movies. He loved jazz and had recordings of the greats, and yet he could also talk about some new song that had attracted his interest. I knew some of the older teachers liked talking with him about music and classic movies.
Despite her opinion of him, I suspected that Haylee never really looked at Matt. She never realized how blue his eyes were. She never saw his smile the way I did. When she made up her mind about someone, she wouldn’t change it. I tried not to talk him up too much. If she saw how much I really liked him, she would do something to ruin our relationship for sure. But suddenly, as my interest in him became clearer, she realized how she could take advantage of it.
I knew she was plotting something when she came into my room to thank me for helping her with the math quiz. Usually, she treated whatever help I gave her with schoolwork as something expected, what Mother had early on described as “sisterly.” That Mother didn’t see how much Haylee took advantage of that surprised me. She was so keen and perceptive when it came to almost everything else about us.
“I know you really like Matt Tesler,” Haylee began, after she had flopped onto my bed. She liked walking around in just her bra and panties now, especially when Mother wasn’t around. “You’d love to have sex for the first time with him, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not thinking of it like that, Haylee.”
“Sure you are. I don’t blame you, and I wouldn’t tell Mother if you did,” she said. “Just like you wouldn’t tell if I did.” She looked sharply at me to see my reaction.
“We’re supposed to tell her if either of us is with a boy who might get us to do it,” I reminded her.
She sat up and pounded her thighs the way Mother would when she was displeased with something. “You’ve got to stop being such a goody-goody. Everyone is making fun of us because of how you are. No one wants to invite us to anything good because of you. They think you’ll tell on them, Kaylee. You probably would. You tell Mother every little thing as it is.”
“I only tell her what she wants to know. It makes things easier for us both.”
“She wants to know too much! Jesus,” she said, pouting. “Having you as a sister is like walking around with a bowling ball chained to my ankle. Maybe Mother doesn’t notice how ignorant you are when it comes to sex.”
“I am not.”
“You didn’t tell me you masturbated when I told you I did,” she charged. I was a little shocked that she assumed it to be true. “Well? Did you?”
“Yes, but not in so many words. You didn’t listen.”
“Well, if you did, you were too embarrassed about it to just say it. How was I to know you had turned it into a . . . a metaphor?”
I nodded, smiling. “At least you’re remembering our English literature lessons.”
“Very funny. So? Were you dreaming of Matt Tesler when you did it? Confess at least to me. I’m not telling Mother, Kaylee.”
“Maybe,” I admitted.
“Okay.” Suddenly, she calmed down and smiled, which to me sounded warning bells. “This is the deal. We’ll get Mother to finally let us go on a double date. You’ll go with Matt, and I’ll go with Jimmy Jackson. We’ll say we’re going to the movies, but we’ll go to Jimmy’s house. It’s all planned,” she added, as if that was that. She got up to leave.
“Matt hasn’t asked me to go on a date.”
“Well, get him to. When we discuss it with Mother, I’ll talk up how great he is, and you’ll talk up Jimmy.” She paused in the doorway. “If you don’t, I’ll tell Mother that Matt Tesler wanted me to do it with him and now he’s trying to get you to,” she threatened. “She won’t even let you talk to him on the phone.”
/> She smiled and left, her threat hanging in the air like a rotten odor. I sat back on my bed and folded my arms under my breasts. Ironically, Haylee was driving me to do something I had wanted to do anyway. Actually, I was wondering why Matt hadn’t been more aggressive about it. It was disappointing. Sometimes I had the sense that he was about to ask me to meet him somewhere, maybe at the mall or a movie, but he didn’t. Was he just shy, or didn’t he like me the way I hoped? He wasn’t pursuing any other girl. Could it be that he didn’t like girls?