Because of my mixed feelings in that respect, I laid the idea to rest for a while only to have it visit me again recently. It wouldn't go away and so I wrote down the idea that was in my head and, for better or for worse, this was what came out. Well, part of it anyway. You see, this particular story is Part One of a two part story. This part is told from Parker's point of view while the next part should be told from Taylor's point of view. The second part should be posted next week.
Now, I should warn all of you that it's obviously been a while since I've written any stories with these characters. I'm probably a bit rusty so I don't know if they come out sounding the same way as they did when I wrote the longer stories (another cause of serious mixed feelings I had when I was playing with the idea). But well...you have to figure that this is at least seven or so months since the last chapter of Divided We Fall so they've probably been through some changes anyway. I just hope you're not disappointed with the way the story turned out.
Well, I'll shut up now and let you all enjoy the first part of the new story!
It was a week before my sixteenth birthday and where was I? Well, not at my local Department of Motor Vehicles getting the New York State Driver’s Manual Gina insisted I memorize before I even attempted to get my permit, much less behind the wheel. I wasn’t celebrating with my friends even though for all my slightly older friends festivities had started weeks ahead of their actual birthdays. No, I wasn’t even out with my girlfriend celebrating my imminent rite of passage with dinner and a movie…probably because she didn’t exist.
Instead of these, instead of being out and about having fun with my friends, I was stuck in a traffic jam with my mother of all people. And I wasn’t even in the driver’s seat. Instead, I sat in the passenger seat, alternately listening to the unpleasant sounds of rush hour traffic around me and fiddling with the radio, risking Gina’s wrath as I switched the station from ones she liked to the stuff I preferred as I was generally known to do when restless in a car.
“I like that song, you know,” she said as I leaned over to change it for the millionth time.
“Gina, no one likes REO Speedwagon,” I mumbled, bypassing a Britney Spears song.
“I do,” she said.
“I rest my case,” I said, sitting back when I finally found a song I liked. “So where are we going anyway?”
“Samson’s,” she said. “You did say you wanted to go there for your birthday, right?”
“Well…yeah but that’s still a week away,” I said. “Why are we going now?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Early birthday present?” she suggested. “I needed to get you out of the house somehow, didn’t I? You’ve been moping around lately like it’s the end of the world as we know it.”
“I have not been moping,” I said.
“Okay, but you haven’t exactly been two tons of fun lately either. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t turning sixteen a bit of a milestone? Aren’t you supposed to be, you know, bouncing off the walls or something like that?”
“It’s a proven fact that bouncing off walls is one of the leading causes of serious head injuries,” I said, grinning when she rolled her eyes. “Besides, Julian just turned sixteen a week ago. I’m a bit partied out.”
“Parker, people like you don’t get partied out,” she said. “Something’s bothering you, so tell me what it is.”
“Nothing’s bothering me,” I said, surprised at her assumption. True, I wasn’t exactly the stereotypical fifteen-going-on-sixteen year old. At least not if my friends were your stereotypical fifteen-going-on-sixteen year olds. To be honest, I’m hesitant to call my friends stereotypical anything but even Theresa had been uncharacteristically hyper on and around her birthday a few months before. But just because I wasn’t, as Gina put it, bouncing off the walls didn’t have to mean something was wrong, did it?
“Then what’s with you lately?” she asked. “You’re not yourself. You’re...quiet.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said. “I don’t know. I guess it’s jut that after this past year turning sixteen is a bit anticlimactic.”
“I see,” she said uncertainly and there was a pause as I leaned over again to fiddle more with the radio. But it was all commercials, so I shut it off. Gina didn’t complain. Instead, she said casually, “So…hat’s Taylor doing for his birthday?”
I thought back to my last telephone conversation with my brother a few weeks before. I couldn’t remember what we had discussed, exactly, though I knew the phone call had lasted long enough to cost the Hansons a good chunk of money on their next phone bill. But I suppose that was an improvement over our first couple of phone conversations together shortly after I had left Tulsa for Rochester. A typical one of those sounded like:
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Good. And you?”
“Not so bad….Nice weather.”
“Yeah? Down here, too.”
“Cool. Well…I gotta go walk to the dog.”
“I have to go feed the fish.”
“Talk to you later.”
“Okay. Bye.”
The weird thing about that is that neither of us had pets. I don’t know why, but despite how much better we had gotten to know each other in Tulsa, we just didn’t seem to have a lot to say to each other during those conversations. One time in desperation he had even put Annie on the phone with me but that had been nothing but a big long pause and then the dial tone when I couldn’t stand it anymore.
Oddly, it wasn’t until we saw each other in person again that the awkwardness went away. He had traveled with his mom, dad, Isaac and Zac to New York to testify in a certain trial against a certain ex-boyfriend of Gina’s whose name we dare not utter for good reason. Despite the circumstances, we seemed to connect again which scared me a little because I was beginning to think that every time we saw each other now, we’d have to work to connect again like we had in Tulsa and even in Rochester the first time he was there with us. But the phone calls since then had reassured me that that wasn’t the way it was going to be.
“I think he said he was just staying home,” I said finally.
“No big parties?” she asked.
“Guess not,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
It was odd to think about, really. I had known for most of my life that I had a twin brother and often wondered on our birthday what he was doing but now that I actually knew it just felt weird. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice finally knowing for sure that he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere. But part of me was still angry. I guess because even though he finally knew I existed and I finally knew who and where he was, he was still half a country away.
There. I said it. Satisfied?
Eventually we shook the traffic and arrived at the restaurant. They seated us in a booth near the window and I spent my time staring out it as the cars outside sped by. I only looked up when the waiter came to take our drink order.
“I’d like a Pepsi,” I told him.
“Is Coke okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” I said.
“I’d like the um…rasp…uh...raspberry iced tea,” Gina said, pointing to the menu as she tripped over her words. He nodded and walked away.
“Not many restaurants serve the um…rasp…uh…raspberry iced tea anymore, you know,” I said. “You must be lucky. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had to put in a special order for that.”
“Shut up,” she said, blushing and trying to hide behind her menu.
“You like him,” I teased in a sing-song voice. “Gina and the waiter sitting in a tree…”
“You know, on second thought, I like you better when you’re quiet,” she said.
I shrugged. “Hey, it’s your taste in the opposite sex, not mine,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think he had a booger hanging out of his nose.”
“He did not!”
“I think he did,” I said, sing-songing again.
She opened her mouth to argue but the waiter came back with our drinks and took our orders. When he had walked off again, silence fell upon us.
“So,” I said when I couldn’t stand it anymore, “any new boyfriend material I should know about?”
She smiled a little. But it was more like one of those smiles Danny Tanner gave one of his daughters on Full House just as the audience was going, “Awwww” rather than an answer to my question.
“Nope,” she said.
“Not even Lee at work?” I said, referring to the new guy Rose Mayfield wouldn’t stop talking about.
“Not even Lee,” s he said.
“I thought you said he was cute,” I said.
“He is,” she said back.
“Is he single?”
“According to Rose he is,” she replied.
“So why haven’t you asked him out yet?” I asked.
“Parker, are you my girl friend or my son?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I resent that,” I said. “I’ve seen your girl friends so I resent that big time.”
“Yeah, but you’ve also seen the daughters of my girlfriends so you can’t resent that too much. One of them is going to be your future mother-in-law you know. Mark my words,” I said.
I shrugged, not denying it only because over time it had proven useless to do so. Gina had been teasing me about wedding plans between myself and Theresa Mayfield since before I hit puberty. While I wasn’t quite as opposed to the idea now as I had been at nine (or even at fourteen), I wasn’t about to give in that easily.
“Or Zac’s mother-in-law,” I said, referring to Taylor’s brother’s crush on Theresa. For a thirteen year old, the kid was slick. “So what about Lee?” I asked, knowing she had turned the tables on purpose.
“He’s gay,” she said.
“You’re just saying that so I’ll shut up,” I said.
“I’m serious,” she said.
“Sure,” I said, unconvinced.
We only avoided an argument narrowly. Another interruption by the waiter, this time with our food, kept us from going on with it. Soon we were too busy eating our food to pick it up where we had left off. Besides, I knew it was useless. Gina hadn’t been out on a date since that certain ex-boyfriend whose name I dare not utter had been sent to jail. I just don’t think she was ready yet and she wouldn’t appreciate my trying to push her into things.
As I ate, Gina reached for her purse and began digging around in it. Before long, she extracted a plain white envelope and slid it across the table to me.
“Uh-oh,” I said, taking it up carefully. “What’s this?”
“Open it,” she said.
“I’m not sure if I should,” I said. Seeing the envelope had given me a strong sense of déjà vu. Last year on my birthday, Gina had handed me a white envelope containing a photograph of myself and my then long lost twin brother. It had been a herald of things to come, not all of them pleasant and while it still sat on my dresser, next to a more recent one of the two of us at a picnic, it still disturbed to think of the way it had seemed to foreshadow so much.
I didn’t think I could take more foreshadowing from Gina no matter how unconscious any of it was.
“Just open it,” she said, throwing a french fry at me.
Cautiously, I set my fork down on the plate and began tearing the seal on the envelope, watching her reaction suspiciously. Gina rarely handed out envelopes on special occasions. She didn’t believe in Hallmark or gift certificates, which was unfortunate considering her taste in gifts sometimes. This was an unusual occurrence made even more unusual by the fact that this was the second year in a row that this had happened.
Carefully, I pulled out what the envelope contained and turned the two objects over, examining them closely. It took a minute for the lightbulb in my head (which is admittedly usually out of order anyway) to click on.
“Two tickets,” I said blankly.
“Plane tickets,” she said. “For March thirteenth. To Tulsa, Oklahoma.”
Oh. Oh!
For a minute, I didn’t know what to say. When I opened my mouth to thank her, nothing came out except a few ecstatically grateful noises. I was suddenly overwhelmingly happy that Gina had more insight into my gloomy moods than I had. Still speechless, I reached over the table to hug her and she started laughing, glad to see me happy again, I suppose.
When I sat back, she began to explain.
“I figured since we’re leaving the day before your birthday, we’d do the restaurant thing a week early so I could give you those,” she said, taking the tickets from me and replacing them in her purse for safekeeping. “It was Walker and Diana’s idea. They actually paid for the tickets and everything, which was really nice of them, I must say.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Does Taylor know about this?”
“No,” she said. “And I’m told that we have to keep it that way, so no letting the cat out of the bag if he calls you between now and then. It’s supposed to be a surprise for him. According to Diana, he’s as eager to see you as you seem to be to see him.
“Thank you so much,” I said, hugging her again.
“No getting mushy on me,” she said even as she hugged me back. “Or this will be the last time I try to do something interesting for you for your birthday!”
“Sorry, it’s just that I’m…completely overwhelmed,” I said.
“I can tell,” she said. “Anyway, we knew it would mean a lot to you, too. And I figure I haven’t seen Oklahoma in a while, so it’ll be an interesting trip for both of us.”
“You’re coming?” I asked, surprised for some reason. I guess I was more than a little slow on the uptake that night.
“Of course,” she said. “Who’d you think the other ticket was for?”
“Oh, well…yeah, I guess,” I said. “What about Annie, though?”
“What about her?” she said.
“Well…are you going to be comfortable around her?” I asked.
“Are you?” she asked back.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, let’s not think about that for now,” she said, putting a hand on mine. “Let’s think about how you’re finally going to get your wish to spend your birthday with your twin brother.”
God, she was right.
Suddenly my sixteenth birthday couldn’t come fast enough.