Chapter 1

There’s a gigantic hologram of a human colon sitting where the refrigerator once stood. I stare at it for a moment and lean my head back to appreciate the flickering image. With veins, without veins, with veins…it’s almost hypnotic, the tilting shift of images on the shiny board.

I’m not surprised to find it there. Most people would be confused if they came home from school to find a major kitchen appliance missing and a six-foot diagram of guts resting in its place. I am a little annoyed, I guess, but that’s only because I’m really hungry, and the refrigerator has been replaced by a detailed poster of a man’s lower intestine.

“I need to eat, please!” I call out—not too loudly (so as not to upset him), but loud enough to make my point.

There’s no answer at first, but I’m not worried. If I’m patient, he’ll eventually appear on his own. Worst comes to worst, I could try to find the refrigerator by myself (how far could he have dragged it?), but that wouldn’t be a healthy solution for either of us. “We have to teach Ethan to take responsibility for his actions,” my mother likes to tell me. “If we treat him like he’s different, he’ll never learn from his mistakes.”

She says stuff like that less often now but not because anything much has changed recently. I think she’s realized that for every mistake Ethan fixes, there are twenty fresh ones just waiting to pop out. Today is a perfect example of this. I’m used to finding pictures of unappetizing body parts taped to random places in our home. This is, however, the first time the refrigerator has gone missing.

“I need to eat!” I repeat, more insistently this time. “You have to help me find the refrigerator.”

This time there’s a vague rustle from the second floor and then a soft padding on the stairs. A moment later, my brother comes into view and without a word brushes past me and opens the side door. “Hello, Rain,” he says simply, his eyes fixed on a distant point. “I put it in the backyard.” Then, without further explanation, he turns around and moves to leave the room.

“Just a second,” I say, holding out my hand. I’m careful that my fingers do not touch him. No one touches Ethan without warning, not even me. “Can you tell me why you moved the fridge outside?”

The truth is, at that moment I’m too hungry to care about the answer. I’m just hoping the food in the fridge hasn’t spoiled because I really want a turkey sandwich. It’s been an exciting day, and I need a healthy dose of tryptophan to de-stress. But this is a “teaching opportunity,” according to my mother, and from force of habit, I need to get an explanation for this millionth bit of strangeness from my twin brother.

“It was making noise,” he states, his eyes still fixed on some point far behind me. “The sound was bothering me.”

“Efan,” I say. I still call him by the name I used when we were toddlers together. I’ve long outgrown that speech impediment, but he never outgrew his sister’s baby voice. I can never call him by his real name. “Efan,” I say again, louder, hoping he will take the cue and look at me.

It works this time. He starts suddenly, as if remembering an old lesson, and abruptly raises his eyes.

“Thank you.” I smile, more for me than for him. “Why didn’t you just unplug the fridge? Why drag it to the yard?”

I don’t bother asking why the noise bothered him so much that he felt the need to throw the refrigerator out of the house. That is Ethan’s number one rule. He gets overstimulated by loud noises, crowds, and strong smells. But asking why those things bother him would be like asking someone why the sound of nails on a chalkboard or a baby shrieking is disconcerting.

“If I left it in the house, it would leak all over the floor when the food in the freezer melted,” he tells me.

“Oh.” It’s hard to argue with that logic. “And the guts hologram?”

He shrugs. “There’s no more space in my room.”

“Well, you could always take down the eyeball dissection diagram,” I suggest as I step out into the backyard to rescue my thawing lunch. “That poster really freaks me out.”

He doesn’t reply. When I return to the kitchen, he’s standing in front of the hologram, completely engrossed.

“Would you like me to make you something?” I pull out the hospital antiseptic and roll up my sleeves. My skin stings as I rub the soapy sponge over my palms.

“Have you had your lunch yet?” I persist when he doesn’t respond.

It’s a silly question, and I know it. Ethan has lunch every day at 12:15. I prepare it for him and leave it on the counter before I go to school. He has dinner at 6:15. He’s shockingly flexible about the contents of the meal as long as I’ve performed the surgical hand scrub and then cooked every item from scratch. But he’s not flexible about time. It’s now three o’clock in the afternoon. Eating a meal at three o’clock would be madness, plain and simple. But I ask the question anyway because sometimes I say stuff just for the hell of it, to fake normal conversation.

He doesn’t call me on it, doesn’t even notice I’ve asked a silly question. “It’s three o’clock,” he tells me, simply, as if I’m new to his routine. “Dinner is at six fifteen.”

“I know it is,” I say indulgently. “I was just playing with you.”

He gives me a quizzical look and then a little smile dawns. “There are eleven cranial nerves!” he states triumphantly.

Well, okay, then.

I stare at him. Non sequiturs are a part of everyday conversation with Ethan. Sometimes it feels like he’s talking next to me, rather than to me. At least he’s making eye contact today.

He looks disappointed by my nonreaction. “Only eleven?” he prompts, and raises his eyebrows, or the part of his forehead where his eyebrows are supposed to be. He’s so blond that his brows are hard to see, and the effect is just a general wrinkling of very fair skin.

“Whatever you say, bro.”

It’s not the answer he’s hoping for, obviously. His shoulders slump, and he sighs loudly. “I was playing with you,” he says. “There are actually twelve cranial nerves.”

I nod, understanding suddenly. He’d been trying to make me laugh, had tried to joke with me, as I’d just joked with him. I’m generally the only person who understands him, and even so, I miss the mark quite often. I force an amused chuckle and watch as the shadow lifts from his light blue eyes. Sometimes, it takes so little to make him glow.

“Actually, some scientists think that there are really thirteen cranial nerves,” he continues eagerly, encouraged by my little laugh. “Cranial nerve zero was discovered in 1913, but no one really knows what it does. But I just read a theory—”

I nod again, halfheartedly, and let my attention wander. I have my own news to think about today, and there’s no need to listen to my brother now. Ethan has launched into a lecture about his favorite topic, human anatomy, and he won’t stop until he’s exhausted himself. I don’t have the energy to redirect him today. Besides, my brother’s reedy, monotone voice is a nice background to my own thoughts, and I’m happy to indulge him. He’ll never notice that I’ve stopped listening. He can’t pick up on those cues like other people can. As long as I’m still physically in the room, in his eyes, I am his captive audience.

I can’t help wondering how Ethan would react if he heard my news, even though I know I can’t share it with him. I’ve never even told him about my crush on Liam. Would he care at all if I did tell him? Would he just stare blankly at me before going off on some irrelevant tangent about fallopian tubes? Or would he freak out completely, terrified at the thought of sharing his twin with some stranger? Ethan doesn’t deal well with change. But if I introduced Liam very, very gradually, could my brother get used to the idea of my first boyfriend? I really have no idea. It’s not like it’s ever come up before.

I glance absentmindedly at my watch and take a bite of my sandwich. I’m expecting my best friend, Hope, at any minute. She texted she was coming by after I sent her an emoji-splattered, all caps message. We were having a meeting in my room to discuss unprecedented developments in my love life. Top secret.

Only problem is, Ethan is still firmly planted on the kitchen stool opposite me, and he’s barely finished with the fifth cranial nerve. (There’s seven more to go, right?) I have to get him to wrap it up and head back to his room before she comes. It’s not that I’m embarrassed by him or anything. The way I see it, if my friends can’t handle my brother, then they can’t handle me either. We’re a package deal. Besides, Hope has known Ethan for a couple of years, so I don’t have to explain his quirks to her; she’s used to him by now.

But lately Hope has been getting very weird around my brother. And by weird, I mean hopelessly in love. If he’s in the kitchen when she comes, she’s not going to want to send him away. In fact, she’ll probably try to include him in the conversation. Hope has this crazy idea that my autistic brother is trapped in some kind of mental tower, like a male Sleeping Beauty, and that all he needs is a spark of love to melt his heart and free him from his “sleep.”

Her crush on Ethan is a pretty recent development, and it’s freaking me out a bit. She used to just give him a friendly wave (which he ignored) and then forget about him. But a few weeks after her breakup with Grayson, her douchey boyfriend, I noticed a change in my best friend. At first there was this creeping shyness I couldn’t understand, then a strange insistence on meeting at my house, and finally such obvious attempts at flirting that even Ethan picked up on it. He didn’t respond, of course, unless hiding in his room could be counted as a response.

So, to spare both of their feelings, I’ve been trying to keep them far apart from each other. I even bought a giant box of graham crackers to try to smack down her hormones a little.

(From the blog: In the early 1800s, the Reverend Graham urged his congregants to eat dense crackers and whole grains, as a remedy to suppress sexual urges. His preaching inspired the modern day graham cracker.)

I haven’t had a chance to test this out on Hope because she just said no thanks, heavy carbs make her bloat. Maybe I should find a less passive-aggressive way to tell her to give up and find another project, but the crackers were the best idea I had. I generally prefer subtle food manipulation to actual verbal confrontation. If I try to discourage her directly, I’ll just end up hurting her feelings.

I look up from my lunch and smile brightly at my brother. He’s so animated now, so obviously eager to tell me about the many wonders of the trigeminal nerve that I feel almost sorry interrupting him midsentence “—and it’s actually the mandibular branch that controls chewing, or mastication of that sandwich you’re eating—”

“Efan—”

He responds by picking up speed. “—and allows you to feel the food on your gums and teeth, but it has nothing to do with taste, that’s actually the seventh and the ninth nerve, so if you were bleeding in your mouth, you would feel the blood with the fifth nerve but taste the blood with the seventh—”

“Gross, Efan! Please stop.”

He looks hurt and pauses to draw a ragged breath before concluding. “And maybe you would taste the blood with the ninth nerve—if you swallowed it—”

“Secret Rule!” I call out desperately. “Secret Rule.”

He halts abruptly, like a record player hitting a scratch. There’s a brief pause as he bites his lip to halt the flow of words. “What can I do?” he whispers finally.

“Please stop talking about drinking blood, okay?” I plead. “I really don’t think Hope is going to want to listen to that when she comes over.”

I try not to invoke the Secret Rule if I don’t have to, but the topic today is making my stomach turn. Also I needed to warn him that my best friend is coming. I’m praying the mention of her name will make Ethan flee the room. But before he can respond, Hope appears behind me like a summoned genie (who apparently doesn’t believe in knocking).

“I don’t mind hearing about it, Ethan, if you want to talk about it,” she says generously, addressing him in her quiet voice, a voice she reserves for him only. “Why were we talking about drinking blood?”

I turn to stare at her. She’s sidled up beside me and slipped onto a nearby kitchen stool. I note that she was careful not to approach my brother too quickly; she’s long ago given up her attempts to hug him or even touch him.

He appears momentarily stunned and then shoots me an accusing look. “You didn’t tell me she was coming.”

I pass over the bit of rudeness; it isn’t his fault. I’ve just violated one of Ethan’s rules. My brother needs to be warned hours in advance of any change to his routine. Some changes (haircuts, doctor’s visits) need days of preparation. I can’t spring Hope on him like this. “It’s okay,” I tell him in a soothing voice. “We’re going to be in my room. You don’t even have to see her. She’s not staying for dinner.”

Ethan puts his hand to his nose and begins to back away. Strangely enough, Hope doesn’t seem offended. She slides off her chair and moves a step closer to him; he tenses suddenly and stares at the floor. “Is Rain’s turkey bothering you?” she asks him, pointing to my plate. “It is pretty pungent stuff.”

“No, it’s you,” Ethan tells her bluntly. “I’m doing an experiment.”

“An experiment?” She shoots me a baffled look over her shoulder.

“No experiments today!” I say, ignoring her look. “Hope and I are going to my room now.” I try to link my arm through hers, but she slips past me and takes a step closer to my brother.

“I was hoping that you’d hang out with us a little too,” she tells him softly. “If you’re not too busy.”

His eyes flicker over her, and he swallows loudly. One hand tightens around his nose, the other clenches at his side. Watching him now, teetering on the edge of panic, nearly undone by a simple question from my harmless friend, I wonder again why Hope wants him to stay. Maybe sixteen years of being Ethan’s interpreter, therapist, and nurse has warped me a little. When I look at him, I don’t see a tall, handsome young man with waves of white-gold hair and large, deep-set blue eyes. That’s Hope’s vision of my brother. All I see is the boy that sat stonily mute for years, who shrieked his frustration in wordless howls until I finally learned to speak for him, who rocked and bit and tore himself to pieces until I learned the magic charm to quiet him. The way I see it, despite all the progress he’s made, he’s still a hiccup away from a total breakdown, and I’m always hovering by his side, ready to pick up the pieces when he shatters. I need to stop this meltdown before it starts. “Ethan, why don’t you boil up a pot of chamomile tea for Mom?” I suggest firmly, taking my friend by the arm and steering her away from him. “She’s been stressed recently, and I’m sure she’d appreciate it. At four o’clock, you and I will go out for our run. Then I’ll make dinner while Mom calls the fridge repairman.”

The precise instructions and the confident tone with which I dictate them seem to calm my brother. I see the tension in his shoulders ease; the worried pucker in his forehead relaxes.

(Idea for the blog: Special Spices Edition—Harness the calming power of herbs to season your entire household with serenity! Spotlight: lavender, chamomile, and linden.)

“I thought you forgot about our run,” he says in a relieved voice.

“Of course not. I never forget about you,” I reply.

I mean it too. I can never forget Ethan.

Not for a second.