Delia

Now

Something was wrong, and I was so afraid to find out what it was, I felt out of breath. I needed to be out of that stuffy dorm room.

I didn’t really know where else to go, so I called a cab service and went to Anton’s studio to work. Since he’d given us full access to the space while we worked on the project, I didn’t feel at all bad about crashing the studio in the middle of the night.

Unlocking the heavy wooden door, I pushed it open and looked into the dark depths of the place. I dreaded someone would be there. Conversation was the last thing on my mind.

It was late enough that the space was silent, so I got to work setting up a station. The only problem was that I had no idea what I wanted to create. I stood in front of a white canvas placed on a high easel and wondered what colors I could mix. I stood for what felt like ages and nothing came to me. I squeezed a bit of yellow color from a tube and threw it in an undetermined pattern onto the white surface.

Nothing.

I grabbed the yellow paint can and splashed it on half the canvas.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I had. The mark of yellow paint had stretched and dried across the page into a perfectly zigzagged shape. I checked myself quickly into a mirror and got out from there.

I didn’t remember taking the particular turn that I did. I was halfway down the block before I stopped abruptly at seeing Oscar being shoved against a wall by a guy while another large man watched with a bored look on his face. Athletic or not, Oscar was half the guy’s size, and he was going to take a beating if he didn’t stop whatever it was he was trying to do. My lips parted, and my breath hitched as I started feeling my bag for my phone. When I looked up, Thug-Like Guy was tapping Goon-Guy on the shoulder, getting his attention before nodding in my direction.

Oscar’s face turned to me for a glimpse and then he did a double take as if he didn’t believe I was standing there. He exchanged what sounded like hushed threats with Goon-guy, and they parted with one final push-shove. I stood there, waiting for an explanation, and Oscar approached me, saying, “What do we have here?”

What the hell?

If I hadn’t been looking right at him and known it was Oscar then I wouldn’t have recognized his voice. He scratched his throat as he came to a stop in front of me. I looked down trying to decide whether to flee or stay. I snorted, seeing that in my frustration from the night before, I hadn’t realized I’d splattered some yellow paint onto my sneakers. I moved from the splash of color to his boots.

Wait, his boots? I lifted my eyes slowly, perusing his long legs, his narrow hips, his hands clasped on them in a questioning stance, his leather jacket. His leather jacket? I didn’t remember ever seeing him in something other than T-shirts and hoodies. But then again, how long had I really known him? My eyes reached his, and they looked weird too. The liquid gold was there, but there were also flecks of green. They were narrowed as he scowled at me as if I were the one who’d wronged him and not the other way around.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and again it was as if he was in disbelief he was actually seeing me. His hand rose, barely touching one of my curls, and then dropped back to his side. He bent his face toward mine, and I was sure there was one trajectory alone his lips could be after. I shifted out of his reach and glared.

Did his hair topple over his forehead quite like that yesterday?

Either I was going crazy or his hair was a tad longer.

“I worked here on something last night.”

“You sound upset.”

“Bet your ass I’m upset,” I whispered, his tone was gutting me.

His forehead leaned into mine. “You don’t deserve this.”

“Deserve what? Your mood swings? You’re right, I don’t.”

He sneered at me, at my hesitance, at my silence.

That smile . . .

It was all wrong.

My hands went to my chest, checking for a heartbeat. I was pretty sure you remained out of heartbeats when blood froze in your veins, right?

When I was younger, my dad had taught Corbin and I card tricks. He had a lot of them up his sleeve, a favorite past time on his long tours, and we’d soon mastered them. Then he taught us how to play poker, much to our mom’s dismay. Corbin had given up not long after, Dad always jesting about his heart on his sleeve. Me? Not so much. My dad said I had a poker face I could win gold with. I just thought he said it out of love.

Turned out, my poker face worked that day too. I fought the heavy feeling in my stomach and the sudden coldness that dribbled down my spine like a skeletal finger counting my vertebrae one by one.

I swallowed and just raised my eyebrows at the man standing in front of me.

“You know what else I deserve? I deserve an explanation as to why you’re pretending to be Oscar.”

His head fell, his grimace the very face of sadness.

“Go home, Delia. Go home and talk to him, and then after you hear what he has to say, come see me.”

“Well, how do I find you?”

“He knows.”

***

It was dark inside Oscar’s dorm room when he opened the door, and he blinked at me like he hadn’t seen light in eons. I stepped inside the room, noted that Scott wasn’t there, and opened the curtains.

“Dellie, how are you?” He sounded like he hadn’t talked in eons either.

I stood in the middle of the room, hoping to convey my fury without speaking, because I didn’t know what kind of words would come out of my mouth given the circumstances. I just shook my head and stalked to the closet. The door banged against the wall from the force I pulled it open with, and I rummaged through the coats on hangers feverishly. Hoodies. Blazers. An overcoat. No leather.

“Can I at least know what you’re looking for?” he asked my back.

“Do you own a leather jacket?” I asked the closet.

“Fuck.”

That was it. That was all he said . . . all he gave me. Not an explanation, not a touch on my shoulder saying we were okay, we would be okay, we would be back to normal. I turned slowly, shuffling toward the door, trying my hardest to blink back the tears that were burning my eyes.

“Look at me,” he said in a barely there voice.

I did, and I saw him through a blur.

“So, Oscar, did you have a good time this morning with me? Was it as good for you as it was for me?” I pushed it, as I’d later find out, too far.

“What the hell are you talking about? No, please. Don’t say that. Not again!”

“Not again, what, Oscar?”

“You know!’

“What do I know, Oscar?”  I matched his scream, closing my stinging eyes, feeling two large blobs fall on my cheeks.

“You know . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked to the ceiling as if begging the skies for mercy. After a moment, he heaved out a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. “Come on, Dellie, let’s talk,” he said, touching my hand and urging me toward the window seat. I squeezed his hand, feeling a jolt that tightened my chest. How many years had I craved for the touch of a liar?

When we sat, he chose to sit opposite to me. Our knees were touching, and his eyes wandered down to the street. I let my head rest on the wall as he settled his forehead against the windowpane—his reflection the perfect mirror of his face and a reminder of his lie.

“I have an identical twin.”

I waited with bated breath the rest of his explanation. After a few beats, I mock-gasped.

“No, really?” I sounded more sarcastic than I intended to, but I didn’t care.

“I’m sorry you had to find out on your own, rather than me telling it to you straight. What happened?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking the questions?” I shot back.

He shrugged and sighed, fogging up his reflection and making it disappear for a few moments.

“I . . . I don’t understand why you lied to me,” I said, wanting to go on but stopping when his eyes confronted mine.

They were swimming with desperation.

“I didn’t.”

“Omission of truth is still a lie in my book.”

“How?” He was stock-still.

“What?”

“How did you know it wasn’t me this morning?” he asked, and I noticed he was holding his breath.

“I didn’t at first. But then it was the little things like his hair is the same but different, his eyes are the same but different, and his touch is the same but different.” His eyes snapped to mine and I was quick to clarify. “Nothing happened. I mean, I don’t think anything happened. I think the only time he kissed me was yesterday?” I hated that I didn’t actually know.

He nodded.

“No one, and I mean no one except our parents could tell us apart. Ever,” he said.

“That would make for some weird happenings,” I mused, and he scoffed. -

“Yeah.”

He resumed his looking at the street, telling his story to the reflection.

“I was born first, and my mother and father were surprised by Oswald. At the time, my dad was stationed in Haiti, and he somehow managed to get mother to live there. Their medical facility was not equipped with ultrasounds, so even though she was big early on, they didn’t assume anything. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I started to resent him. He was always clinging to me on the playground, at home, when we went shopping,” Oscar said.

I touched the tips of my toes to his, nudging him. He returned the touch in an almost shy manner that made me smile.

“Imagine what it’s like to always see another one of you everywhere you go. In school, in your bedroom, in every single place you go, and have that multiplied with every one saying they can’t tell the two of you apart.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “It was like I didn’t exist by myself. I couldn’t stand that!”

He was silent for a beat, but I said nothing back. My silence spurred him on. “Granted, our personalities have never been alike. I liked singing early on, and he was more into sports. I wanted to stay in my corner and sing, he wanted to exhibit us to the whole world. We were two ginger clones, can you imagine all the things kids said to our faces and behind our backs?” he asked me, and I cringed, remembering the first day I’d met him. “Oswald thought we were stronger together, I thought we were weaker. He pulled, and I pushed. We’re still doing that.”

I let my eyes linger on his strained figure, memorizing it.

“Don’t you love him?”

“It’s complicated.” His answer came immediately. “I love him, and I resent him. I don’t get him, yet, I can always tell what he’s thinking. Or at least, I thought I could. I just don’t know anymore.”

“Why not? He’s your brother, that should be the only reason you need to love him.”

“You don’t understand. When we were younger, he thought it was funny how no one could tell us apart. There was this one time when he told my piano teacher I was going to stop lessons with her because she had bad breath. He messed with the wrong boys on the playground and told them he was me. He broke a window and told them my name instead of his. Stuff like that.”

“Those things aren’t that bad,” I commented.

“He slept with my high school girlfriend,” he shot back to me. “And he stole you.”

“Whoa!” I said, my palms rising on their accord to block the absurdity posed by that assumption. “First of all, we really need to go back to that sleeping with your girlfriend story, and then we can move on.”

“We really don’t.”

Knowing he wasn’t going to budge, I moved on. “Fine, but he didn’t steal me. Had I known you had a twin, I wouldn’t have let him kiss me the other day.”

“You wrote to him,” he objected, and I felt frozen. That was why he seemed angry when I mentioned the letters. That was why he didn’t know about some things I had clearly told him before.

“Because I thought he was you!” I yelled, scrambling to get up, to put some space between us, but he clung to me, curling his arms around my waist and putting his forehead to my stomach.

“Please, don’t go,” he pleaded. “When we met in camp, you were the first person who was meeting only me. I had argued with Oswald and told him I didn’t want to see him, and that was why I kept rambling on about the similarity of tadpoles. You made me laugh, you made me feel special. I wanted you all for myself. When I got to that bus, I was the last kid there, and it broke my heart that you weren’t there to say goodbye. I was forcibly pushed into the bus, or else I would have come to your cabin. It wasn’t until years later—after Eliza slept with him—that I found your letters. I was going through his room.”

“Did you read them?”

“Only your last one. The one you ended with ‘Fuck you, Oscar.’”

“Fuck you very much, Oscar,” I corrected, trying to make light of the situation but stopping when he scowled at me.

“He stole everything from me, including you,” he said slowly.

“Oscar, he didn’t steal me. I thought I was talking to you. The only thing he said was he quit playing piano, probably because I was asking him technical questions,” I said and saw his eyes lighting. “We exchanged a couple of letters, really, and then he responded when it pleased him. After a while he just stopped responding. You should have read them.”

“It was too much for me,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet and moved to his desk. “I have them, though.”

A second later, he pulled out a stack of letters tied together with a slim ribbon. Just the letters, not in envelopes. You could see the writing on the top and the bottom of the stack. The paper looked worn.

“Why didn’t you tell me about him even now, Oscar? I thought we started from a blank page.”

He shook his head and drew in breath as if he was going under water.

“Do you know that I learned how to play piano when I was four? I just sat down, touched the keys, and went with the flow. Mother said I learned by ear, trying to reproduce what she played for me. I learned how to read music sheets at six. I could read it before I could read actual words. Music is my biggest love and my biggest wish, it has always consumed me. At least, it did until I saw you again standing in that hallway. Do you have any idea how it felt to find you again, all grown up? What it feels like to want something more than the one thing that has been the center of your universe throughout your life?”

I had a small idea, but I didn’t want to interrupt him.

“Music is more than a way of expressing myself to me—it’s like air. Imagine what it feels like the day you discover there’s something more precious than air, and that something is what you can’t possibly have.”

“But you can have me,” I interrupted.

He declined, shaking his head almost violently.

“No. That wasn’t what I thought when I saw you again. For all I knew, Oswald was who you wanted since you’d been talking to him for all those years. I was sort of figuring out if you liked me for me or for him.”

“I didn’t know about him, to be able to decide that.” That came out wrong. “I mean, I only had one of you I was interested in!”

He gave me a sad smile. “I know that now. But then, I just needed to figure it out. I needed to figure out us, and I wanted to do it without him,” he said, head bent low. “Then he showed up and I didn’t know what to do. He keeps calling me to meet with him, and I keep putting it off. He’s staying at a shady hostel called Echo or something.”

I was only half-listening. I had dozens of thoughts swirling around my mind, making my stomach queasy and my limbs numb. All the words in his song made full sense then.

Are you even mine?

The desperation in his chorus, the tempest of his hands on the keyboard. I got it. I wanted to hug him, but I wasn’t ready yet.

“For what it’s worth, I think he is in trouble or at least hanging with the wrong crowd,” I said.

“Yeah, sounds like Oswald. Mother used to say I was the light to his darkness. The yang to his yin. It always made him go out and do even more stupid stuff. You know those tales about the evil twin?” he asked in a joking tone.

“No, Oscar. I don’t know. Can you try to explain to me what happened between the two of you, to make you reject him so?”

“I . . .” He paused, sighed an anguished exhale. “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me to explain it.”

“Well, I’m asking. Try.”

He hesitated for a beat.

“At school, we were the ‘Os’. At some point, nobody made an effort to make a difference between us anymore. It made Oswald super giddy because he could prank people. He found it amusing, but I found it insulting and I declined taking part in it. You were my first found friend who didn’t have a reason to call me Os, and I enjoyed that. Don’t look so sad, I wasn’t a loner. I started growing into my skinny body during high-school and then the girls started paying more attention—”

“Whoa. Are you really trying to make me jealous while we’re having a fight?”

“Are we? Having a fight?” he asked me good-naturedly.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what this is, but it’s weird. I’m still struggling to understand everything.”

“What are you struggling with?”

“When I met you in the street and you were jogging in Greenwich—it was actually Oswald. When we accidentally met on the street after classes the other day, it was actually Oswald who kissed me? And then Leigh saw him with some woman,” I recapped, scrunching my nose and counting the meetings on my fingers. He nodded in agreement. “And then this morning, it was Oswald again. The other times, it was all you.” His feet squeezed mine and we let another small silence reign between us.

“That’s why you changed moods faster than socks?” I teased, which made him scowl. “You could have talked to me about it. No . . . you should have talked to me about it.”

“God, I wish you knew how much I wanted to. Do you know what he did the other day when he met you in Greenwich? He texted me and said the he just run into you and how great you looked. That was it. No other explanation. Do you know what that did to me? I saw red! He has this power on me. He takes everything lightly, I don’t!”

“You two are brothers!” I just couldn’t understand the lack of love that ran so deep between those two, not with all the lucky examples I’d seen during my teens, not with the bond I had with Corbin.

“So were Cain and Abel,” he retorted.

“That’s an awful comparison,” I whispered, staring at him. I didn’t get him.

“Dellie—”

“Do not Dellie me!” I cut him off. “It’s been a dick move from both of you not to mention something as colossal as having a clone walking around the town. You both new I was meeting the two of you and that you were sending me confusing signals. But since I don’t know him, it’s been more of a dick move from you. I don’t know why you don’t see that.”

When silence crept up on us and minutes turned into centuries, I broke the silence again.

“I need to go.”

“Please, Delia,” he asked.

“I need to go,” I told him again, more firmly. “I feel like my head is spinning from not knowing things. I need to be able to hear my own thoughts. And then, maybe, I will come back.”

He nodded and let go of my hands, accepting.

If I could paint the trembling air between us any color, I’d have chosen black. The color of mourning and loss.