Think Forward - FOIL

Eudora is a relatively normal student at boarding school, until the unfoldings of a snowy day change her life. Genre should really be Magical Realism, Urban Fantasy if you stretch it. This is part of my "Think Forward" series.

           Winter had come to Wales, but it seemed to hit Monmouth the hardest. Every week brought a new little blizzard to cap the trees and lampposts in thick ice. The snow always melted after a few days but it was dangerous while it lasted. The café was bright and warm as the fresh buttered bread, a cozy safe haven on a cold early morning, but I couldn’t help but to stare outside as the snow fell. I counted the growing piles and noted the size of the wet flakes, and wondered how difficult it would be to walk back to school in knee-deep slush.

            My twin sister Jezebel had her own concerns and none of them involved the weather, unless it extended to prevent travel in two weeks time. Her flute recital was then, on the night before the end of Michaelmas term. She had a solo and the school always sent personal invitations to the parents of soloists. It would be the first time our parents had visited us at school since we were in primary, but I was sure Jezebel didn’t care so much about that as she did that the entire auditorium would be focused on her. Jezebel wasn’t terribly academic and music was the only thing she enjoyed, maybe for the attention it brought her. The recital was all she had been talking about for a straight week.

            “I think I should probably start wearing gloves that Sunday, so my fingers don’t stiffen,” Jezebel said, rubbing her hands together over our table. “It wouldn’t be such a problem if our room wasn’t so cold all the time.”

            “It isn’t so bad,” I told her, forcing my eyes from the window. The sky had grown at least three shades darker in the half hour that we had been sitting in the café, a sign that that the sun had wisely chosen to stay in bed.

            “Of course not, if your bed is situated over the heater.” She forgot things on purpose sometimes, such as that it was her decision to sleep on the side away from the vents.

            “We can switch sides that week, if you want,” I offered.

            “No, that wouldn’t be fair.” She sighed and took a bite of her croissant, the butter smearing across her top lip. “I’ll just wear my gloves at night.”

            I suspected she just wanted a reason to complain; a tale of woe to gracefully share with our family and friends when they admired her after the recital.

            “You’re such a martyr,” I said, sarcastic, but Jezebel smiled as if it were an honest compliment.

            The bell over the front door jingled and a boy in a navy Monmouth School jacket hurried in, shaking the snow from his long brown hair. It bounced off him in long wet drops, collecting at his feet in a grey puddle. Sometimes I thought there was nothing more disheartening than the dirty leftovers of snow.

            “I have to admit; I’m looking forward to the end of term,” Jezebel said, smiling as she looked up over her napkin.

            “That is unusual,” I replied absent-mindedly. I was only half listening; although I was facing my sister and even looking her in the eyes, my mind was focused on the boy at the counter.

            Jezebel narrowed her green eyes at me. “Eudora. You aren’t paying attention. Stop watching that boy.”

            “I’m not looking at him,” I said, holding my unwavering eye contact with her to prove it.

            “So?” She grinned sardonically; we both knew neither of us had to physically look at a person to see them.

            The two of us had been visiting that particular café since the start of Year 9, when girls are allowed to visit town unaccompanied. We were so busy during the week that our Sunday breakfast together became our chance to relax away from the noise of the dorms. Most of the other customers on Sunday mornings were regulars as well. The elderly couple in the corner, for example, were there so often that the girls behind the counter always had their coffee and scones ready by the time the couple arrived. The boy at the counter also came in quite often. Always alone, never staying to eat. He came in to get coffee and left as soon as it was in his hand. We had never spoken, but I had started to recognize him by the heavy aura he carried. There was some gloom about him, and not just because he rarely cracked his stony grimace. I could usually read a person’s brainwaves without halfway trying, but the boy kept himself blocked.

            “He obviously doesn’t want you reading him, Dora,” Jezebel told me, her typically expressive voice flat. “I don’t see why you keep trying.”

            The boy turned, gripping his Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand and adjusting his MS scarf with the other. I smiled at him as he walked past us toward the door. Faint waves pulsed against my head; I could nearly see the air around him ripple. But nothing was clear enough to read. The wall he had about his head was too strong, pushing my mind away. He glanced at our table as he opened the door, heavy eyes barely meeting mine. The corners of his lips, drawn thin, tipped up just slightly and then he ducked out into the snowstorm.

            I turned my smile onto Jezebel and she grunted.

            “I also don’t understand why he interests you in the first place. He’s only Aware.” Jezebel could be endearing and she could be infuriating, and the latter was much more prominent.

            “What does that have to do with anything?” I snapped at her.

            “He probably has never even been to the Telammunal World.”

            “Since when is that a problem?”

            Jezebel shrugged, her black braids shifting behind her shoulders. “It isn’t a problem so much as it is sad.”          

            “Sad” was not the word I would have chosen; it could only be described as natural, just the way things were. There were four Telabilities and only three could access the Telammunal World independently, and only Omnipotents could access it from their own minds. The Aware were not strange, they simply had different abilities.

            “We’re not doing this again,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

            “Look at what we are! Omnipotence is rare enough, but to develop in twins? That’s fate. We should be out there with others like us, learning to control the Telammunal World.”

            She was always parading her assurance that we, as Omnipotents, were far superior to everyone else. That was why Jezebel had so few friends at school – she didn’t bother spend much time on people without Telabilities. The other students gave up on her. Sometimes even I had trouble tolerating her. I blamed the other Omnipotents, the ones we had met on our first visit to the Telammunal World, where we had been greeted by their awe and apprehension. They were quick to tell us that all twins sharing a Telability were ruled by dualism; old and young, good and bad, wise and naïve, which was evident by the robes that all Omnipotents in the dream world appeared in. Mine were frayed and soft, a bit too snug in the arm holes, the gold fabric faded to a dull cream. Jezebel’s were pink and sleek, the buttons still shiny and the coat perhaps a bit too long on her if anything. The others tried to make us feel special and different, calling us rare and powerful. I thought it was a hook; I had always been cautious. Jezebel bought into the idol image that they gave her and never looked back.

            “Can we discuss this later?” I asked. “You said before that you’re looking forward to break, and that’s a first.”

            “Oh yes,” Jezebel said, eyes gleaming above her sly smile. “I’ve been talking to Hannah and Phillip, and they think they can visit us in Swansea before the holiday!”

            I rolled my eyes. “You want to lecture me on meeting real people when you’ve invited perfect strangers to our house?” Jezebel had met two other Omnipotents in the other world, and considered them to be her close friends. She had never seen them in person.

            “They aren’t strangers!” Jezebel bristled, her smile gone. “I meet them often, in a world that’s more honest than this one.”

            My twin had a strange view of the world that had developed with her Telability; she believed that the Telammunal World, where dreams were manifested and anomalies reigned, was where she belonged. Jezebel loved granting her own wishes and hiding in a living dream. The Telammunal World was certainly entertaining, but not as a permanent home. The logic of it was based on the idea that nothing had to be logical.

            “Yes, that makes them trustworthy and safe,” I mocked. “Please don’t tell them where we really live.”

            Jezebel folded her arms tightly and leaned back in her chair, her lips puckered as if from lemon juice.

            “Oh, you didn’t. Well, I hope we don’t go home to find they’ve murdered Mum and Dad.”

            “Big loss,” Jezebel said quietly. “How often do we see them anyway? Once every few years?”

            “Don’t talk like that,” I snapped at her, standing up to throw out my trash. “Let’s just get back to school. I have prep to do.”

 

            Haberdasher’s Monmouth School for Girls was a fairly large establishment; the campus comprised of sixteen bulking red-brick buildings and a rolling green lawn. During warmer weather, students commonly sat in groups on the grass, scarlet skirts smoothed neatly over their knees and coal-grey blazers unbuttoned. I saw nobody in the silent winter land that day, except Jezebel as she trudged along beside me. Neither of us wore our uniforms, opting instead for thick pants and sweaters, but our sneakers soaked easily through.

            Twiston Davies, the boarder’s house for older girls, was located behind the main Reception Hall and a long row of naked trees. A few windows poured gold onto the falling snow, but many were still dark – it was still early morning, after all.

            Jezebel and I shared a room by ourselves, a blessing after sharing with two other girls for two previous years, but it meant that we were each others only company. On the days when Jezebel was on my toes in the way that sisters often are, all I could do was turn my back to her side of the room. That was my plan as I unlocked our pale wooden door where our names were taped in irritating purple cursive. We didn’t bother to wipe our feet on the doormat inside, but instead kicked off our dripping sneakers and peeled off our socks. The silence sat between us like a held breath as we changed into dry clothes, each of us stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the other. She fell onto her bunk with a sigh and a few bounces, squeaking the springs in the grinding way that she knew I hated, but I swallowed any commentary. I was sure that if I said something to Jezebel, it would come out as “You’re crazy.” She would probably accuse me of being uptight. We may both have been right, but I didn’t want to admit it. Instead, I sat down at my desk beneath my bunk and pulled out my Biology text.

 

            A knock on the door around mid-afternoon broke the quiet that had followed us all day. Jezebel answered it to reveal a small, somber face. Mrs. Foley was our housemistress, a short and squat woman with sagging cheeks but a smooth smile.

            “Afternoon, girls,” she greeted us briefly. “Mrs. Davis has called you to her office.”

            “On a Sunday?” I asked. Although the school never closed while term was in session, we rarely saw our teachers on weekends. Girls only visited the Mrs. Davis, headmistress, on Sunday if they had done something terrible and urgent.

            Mrs. Foley shrugged, her hands spread wide to face us in a gesture of uncertainty. “She’s just phoned me and asked me to send you over. Best put on your long coats; it’s awful outside.”

 

            The headmistress’s office was in the main hall, a building back through the trees and across a short road that we had crossed on our way back from town. It was a room of dark wood on the first floor, the wide windows overlooking the snowy lawn.

Mrs. Davis was a tall woman with a large pointed nose and suitably feathery hair. Neither Jezebel nor I had ever had reason to speak at any length with her before, at least not since we were admitted to the school. And we certainly had never seen her sitting on her desk in house slippers and a sweatshirt that looked suspiciously like a bathrobe. I sat in the low-backed leather seat and fought the urge to squirm.

            “I am going to be blunt with you,” Mrs. Davis said, her knuckles white against the dark wooden edges of her desk. “Because I simply have no idea what’s going on to be able to sugarcoat. We have been trying to reach your parents for two weeks in order to invite them to the winter recital. Our letters have been returned twice; the post says your parents have switched addresses.”

            It made no sense at all. We had lived at our Swansea address our whole lives. I tried to remember my last conversation with my parents – difficult to remember verbatim, as it had been well over a month ago, since before the last break. I was sure they had never mentioned moving.

            “We have tried emailing them at the accounts they provided for us, which have both been shut down. Their phones appear to be out of service.”

            “Are you sure the address is correct?” Jezebel asked, leaning forward.

            “We are quite positive it is,” Mrs. Davis nodded shortly. “I received a message this morning from our Bursar’s office, notifying me of a change in both of your payment plans that had been made at the start of last term. Your parents have paid for the remainder of your education, including Sixth Form, and have made arrangements for guardianship here in Monmouth.”

            Guardianship was what it was called when girls who couldn’t afford to go home during term breaks stayed with a local family or agency. Jezebel and I had always been able to get home easily enough when we needed to, though. And surely our parents would have mentioned that they were assigning us to live with strangers? I thought money must be the issue; our parents were suddenly poor, unable to even bring their daughters home, which was why they couldn’t answer phone calls or emails. But that didn’t explain how they had paid for four more years of boarding school for twins.

            “I have to admit,” Mrs. Davis slid to her feet, attempting a nervous laugh. “This has never happened in the history of the school, as far as I know. Parents change payment plans all the time, but to do it so furtively, and then to be unreachable…it is strange. I even called a Mrs. Avery, whom your mother had originally listed as an emergency contact.”

            Mrs. Avery was our neighbor, a young woman with two sons whom I minded while home on breaks. They were a small and polite bunch, but only about as close to our family as neighbors are without really being friends, and I knew my mother had considered them as contacts simply because we had no other family in Wales.

            “She couldn’t provide a new address for your parents either; only confirmed that they had moved earlier last month and thought it odd as well that we were not notified.”

            “They moved without telling us,” I said. I meant it as a question, because I could not comprehend it, but my voice fell too flat. Why had they not left the new address for us?

            “On the one hand, you are provided for,” Mrs. Davis said, her brittle voice raised at the good news. “Your financial standing with the school is not an issue, and with Guardianship, we can be assured that you will be cared for on term breaks.”

            “And on the other hand?” Jezebel asked, bent so far forward that her folded arms were trapped between her chest and her knees.

            The older woman’s tight smile wavered and faded like a candle flame reaching the base of the wick. “Well, your parents have left you with no legal guardians outside of the school. Should something happen to either of you, God forbid, we cannot assume that you are still covered by your parents’ insurance. Technically, you are considered wards of the state.”

            Hours earlier, I had believed that in two weeks I would be on my way home to Swansea, in the small house I had grown up in with my mother, father, and sister. It was as though my parents had died overnight, but knowing they were alive and choosing to abandon Jezebel and I made it feel criminal. I didn’t want to believe that they would so easily leave us, but at the same time, it made sense. Our parents had always been too carefree for twin girls. They had not spent a full term break with us for two years, choosing instead to travel. Jezebel and I could not hold their interest; that much we had known for a long time. I felt cold, numb, and vaguely aware of how heavy the air was while my stomach double knotted itself over and over.

            No one spoke for a few minutes. Perhaps Mrs. Davis was waiting for us to say something, but I was staring behind her to the window. The snow still fell, bits of white confetti in a slow cyclone. I could feel it behind my eyes as I watched, that steady downward spiral that somehow commanded silence. It burned against my eyelids.

            Mrs. Davis cleared her throat with a dry cough that made my ears hurt. “The school’s lawyer will be down next week with a social worker. There are just a few legalities to sort out, to ensure that you may stay at school and be taken care of.” She knelt down suddenly in front of us, her glassy brown eyes drooping. “I don’t want you to worry. Eudora, Jezebel…” She touched each of our hands, squeezing too hard. “We’re a family here and of course we’ll take care of you. And we’re going to try to locate your parents. After all, child abandonment is a serious crime.”

 

Our dorm room felt strange as we stepped back inside it, almost too normal to believe. Here were my belongings as they had been earlier, the family portrait on my side-table from when Jezebel and I were only seven, school work unfinished across my desk. Everything was as it had been left, the way it had been since we had moved into the room, the same things we had owned since we started at Haberdasher’s. But the familiar room was now the only familiar thing, and realizing that I was standing in what I could consider to be my actual home for the next few years made me feel hollow. 

            Jezebel stood beside me, looking out the window as I had earlier. Neither of us had been terribly close to our parents but she had been less so, although I knew she had always hoped, as I did, that they would take interest in her. I rarely perceived that Jezebel was younger than me, except for now as I realized that it was just the two of us anymore and I was the oldest. From here on out, we would have to be a closer team than before. But Jezebel’s shoulders tensed when I put an arm around them; she bristled and stepped out of my embrace.

            “I’m going to bed,” she mumbled, climbing onto her bunk and slipping under her covers without even taking her shoes off. Her voice bounced against the walls and the silence found me, heavier and louder than actual noise. I stood in the middle of the room for a moment, entranced by the way the dark light from the snowy sky made my skin blue, until I also crawled onto my bed and lay unblinking as I waited for sleep.

 

            Monday came the way it usually it did, with a collective groan throughout the dorm that classes were starting again. Neither Jezebel nor I spoke as we put on our uniforms and made our beds, nor as we shuffled into the cafeteria with the other girls, as we ate muffins and hot chocolate with marshmallows.

I did my best to glue myself to Jezebel’s sleeve wherever we went. Our classmates had taken on an unfamiliar appearance overnight. I hardly recognized Anna, a younger girl who had always been friendly to me, when she stopped by my breakfast table to say hello. Her face looked strange, all sharp angles and small eyes. Perhaps she had always looked that way and I had just never noticed before. But everyone looked different. Jezebel was the only person who looked the same and maybe only because she looked like me.

“Will you get off of me?” Jezebel shook free of my arm. Her voice was small in the din of the crowded cafeteria.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I feel a little off today.”

“Just don’t smother me, okay?”

But Jezebel’s rebuke didn’t stop me from sidling up beside her later, as we walked to first class, our skirts swishing against each other. I almost made the mistake of following her into her mathematics class while I was supposed to continue down to English class.

“What are you doing?” she asked, gently pushing me back. “You can’t follow me all day.”

“I know. I just forgot where I was going, that’s all.” I felt a bit foolish being lectured by my sister as other girls slid past us.

“English, down the hall,” Jezebel said, pointing vaguely. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Not enough sleep, I suppose.” It was the truth; I had been in bed since the afternoon until my alarm went off in the morning, but I hadn’t slept more than two hours.

“Well, brighten up.” Jezebel gave me a forced smile that was almost too big for her round face. “We’re orphans now and we can’t be slacking off.”

            I blinked, unsure of what to say. “Orphan” was a blunt word; it was such a simple term that it didn’t seem to make sense. We weren’t really orphans anyway, were we? Orphans lost their parents through death, they were young and helpless. Oliver Twist was an orphan. There was a difference because our parents weren’t dead, they were just missing. I shook my head and Jezebel smiled wider.

 “Well, what do you want to call us? Abandoned, forgotten, unimportant –”

“Stop that!” I glanced behind Jezebel; some girls stared at their desks, almost as if determined to, but others gawked at us.

“I think orphan is actually a kind word, when you consider that our parents had to wait fifteen years before realizing that they really didn’t like us enough to keep us.” Jezebel turned on her heel and marched into the classroom, the students snapping their attention away from her to the teacher up front.

 

“Two detentions in two days?” I asked Jezebel as we walked down the hall. She was gliding along with her nose in the air, hands clasped innocently behind her back. “This is unacceptable. You have to stop fighting with our teachers.”

Classes had ended for the day and we were on our way back to our room. I was trying to be responsible enough for me and my sister, determined to make sure everything was alright. Why couldn’t life be normal? In all honesty, losing our parents didn’t change much in our day to day life. The nightmare of suddenly being alone in the world, no parents to run to, still gave me insomnia. But the days were getting easier as I followed my old routine, comforted by how unchanged it was. I was starting to accept that nobody looked the same anymore, their faces permanently distorted and blurred.

“I didn’t fight with them,” Jezebel said coolly. “I just didn’t feel like doing the work and when they tried to force me to, I resisted.”

“You’re going to get kicked out if you keep that up.” It wasn’t my intention to lecture, but Jezebel had become wild in the past couple of days. She mixed her home clothes with her uniform as she saw fit, matching a grey t-shirt with the red skirt or instead ripped jeans with the white blouse. She was skipping classes, and I knew she was spending those extra hours in the Telammunal World.

“Yes, if I’m lucky.” Jezebel tilted her head back even higher, a slight smile on her pink mouth. She was taunting me, ignoring my authority. “And stop trying to be Mum,” she said, stifling a yawn. “It’s so exhausting.”

I grabbed a handful of her dark hair and yanked back until she was facing me, ignoring the screech that followed. Jezebel’s green eyes burnt into mine as she massaged the back of her head. We hadn’t done the hair-pulling, skin-twisting bit since we were around five years old and it felt like a cheap weapon, but I had her attention.

“We are in a very serious situation and I don’t understand why you’re acting so immature.” My grip had gone from her hair to her forearm, but for once Jezebel wasn’t pulling away. “Do you want to get pulled out of school and sent to foster care, possibly separately?”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Jezebel said with a sigh, but I continued over her.

“The social worker is coming down on Monday, so let’s please try to be mature and calm until then at least.”

“Why does it matter how we act?” Jezebel asked. “I know what’s going to happen. There’s going to be a long talk about how bad this all is, and what we’re going to have to do to provide for ourselves, and who is in charge of us, and then they’ll leave us alone until we turn eighteen. If it were up to me, I’d say to keep my half of the payment and just leave. I don’t care if I stay here or not. Why is it so important to you?”

I didn’t know how to explain what I was afraid of. The possibility seemed too real to me, almost inevitable, that we would be taken from school and divided forever. Surviving without our parents was one thing, but to be without the sister I had shared my entire life with would be too much. I wondered how to tell Jezebel that we needed to stick together, how to tell her that she kept me sane even when she was acting like a toddler. Why was it important to me that we act grown up and stay in school together? I needed a base and Jezebel was it.

I chewed on my lips too long as I debated what to say and Jezebel tossed her head and continued down the hall.

 

That night as I studied, Jezebel reclined on her bed and stared at the ceiling until, after hours of being in a trance, she sat up straight and smiled.

“I’m going to do it,” she announced.

“Do what?” I asked, not looking up.

“Leave school. I’m just going to go, before they tell me that I have to stay or go where they say. Why not now?”

My heart slowed and I lost my focus on the text book in my cold hands. Jezebel jumped to the floor and leaned against my desk, flashing white teeth and glowing cheeks.

“I’ve been talking to Hannah and Phillip, and they’ve offered to let me stay with them in Cardiff,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm.

“What about the recital? You have the flute solo!”

“I don’t think I can wait that long.” She shook her head and glanced at me sideways, her loose hair hiding half her face. “I was considering just staying until the end of term, but I don’t want to.”

“But term ends next week,” I said faintly. “Why not just wait?”

“Why wait?” Jezebel floated across the room and pulled a suitcase out from beneath her bed. She began to pack quickly, only what she considered essential; her clothes, a few books, a hairbrush and her toiletries. She ignored the sentimental; a stuffed bunny from infancy that matched one I had in a different color, pictures of family and friends. Without a word she passed the cell phone we shared onto my bed.

“No.” I stood up and faced her. “I won’t let you.”

Jezebel turned to me slowly, skeptical. “Oh no?”

“I’m responsible for you and I say you have to stay at school. Are you really going to give up your future just because Mum and Dad left us?”

“Dora, that’s just what made this decision so easy. All I want to do is work in the Telammunal World, and I’m not learning that here.”

I couldn’t believe that her life goal was to stay in a dream world. What did she expect to do for food, shelter? Her physical body needed to be taken care of. “You’re an idiot! Do you realize that we could have been left without education paid for, without guardianship? We’d be living with other families and you wouldn’t even have the option of leaving. This is a gift! Why do you want to get away from this?” I have to admit that it felt personal. I tried to look at it from Jezebel’s point of view and nothing seemed bad enough to run away from. It was free food, free board, free everything. All that and a nagging older sister. “I’m sorry if I bother you. Really, I don’t mean to always be on your back about school and your behavior. This is hard, I know, it’s hard for me too.” I was practically begging. Jezebel just stared at me, eyes wide, maybe feeling sorry for me. Maybe angry at me. Her face had suddenly smeared too much for me to tell. “Let’s just stay and get through it together, okay?”

Jezebel shook her head slowly, never taking her eyes off mine. “No. I’m sorry. This isn’t about you or even our parents. I have the chance to do what I want now and I’m going to take it.”

But it was about me, because I wasn’t me without her. I grabbed a handful of her packed clothes and dragged them across her bed. “You can’t go.”

“Sure I can,” Jezebel said, picking up the clothes and repacking them. She was oddly calm, confident. “I’m going to go join the other Omnipotents and finally be satisfied with my life.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“No. You want a real life in this world; stay. Be the good twin.” She said it in a mocking sort of way as she zipped her suitcase, but I wondered at the title. In the dream world, the good twin was also the older twin, the supposedly worldly and mature twin. But if that was true, then why was I carrying on like a child while Jezebel quietly put on her coat and handled herself in a sophisticated fashion? I hadn’t believed the good twin/bad twin bit, but maybe that was because I was bad twin.

“If you leave, I won’t have anyone,” I whispered. It was more to myself than her, but she heard me and laughed.

“Now, you know that’s not true,” Jezebel said. “Are you going to come see me off? I won’t leave until after everyone is asleep.”

            There were so many more things I could have done to try and stop her. The urge to run for the headmistress stirred in my muscles, my feet perpetually halfway to the door. But whenever I made up my mind to run from the room, screaming for help, I remembered that Jezebel wasn’t just my twin sister; she was an Omnipotent, an expert wielder of the mind and limitless in the Telammunal World. Whether I forced her to stay or not, we would continue to grow into mental opposites until our positions were clearly defined. We could be each other’s foil now or later.

            “I’ll walk you downstairs.”

 

            Lights-out had long since passed when I accompanied Jezebel down to the outer door. The doors were locked from the outside but were not rigged with alarms, something Jezebel had never appreciated more. Dressed in thick winter clothes, a knitted hat and scarf shielding most of her face, Jezebel looked like her six-year-old counterpart from the days when we used to build snowmen.

            “I’m just going to run back behind the school until I hit the town. Then I’ll catch the train in the morning for Cardiff.” Jezebel was outlining her plan for my sake, so I wouldn’t lecture her on where to go or what to do. She tugged the scarf below her mouth, looked at me and waited for my approval before she slipped out of Haberdasher’s for good. I hugged her quickly, my nose pressed into the scarf that still smelled like our mother’s cedar chest.

            “Good,” I said quietly, afraid that if I spoke too loud I would start screaming for someone to help me restrain her. “Will you call me when you get there?”

            “Oh, I’ll get a hold of you somehow.” Jezebel grinned and playfully poked my forehead, a strong hint of her intentions to meet me in the Telammunal World. I had hoped for something more solid, such a phone call, but I could accept her methods so long as we stayed connected.

            “Be careful, Bel. Don’t forget that you can come back if you want to.”

            Jezebel picked up her suitcase and pushed open the door. A breath of winter night swept in, picking up our hair and ruffling my nightgown. As the wind curled around in the stairwell and made its way back out the door, Jezebel flashed one last smile and then bravely stepped outside. The thick glass door swung slowly shut, cutting the air off and everything returned to being frozen quiet. I peeked outside into the blackness in time to see Jezebel stepping high and proud through the snow, not about to look back.

 

            I sat alone in the café where, a week earlier, Jezebel and I had discussed our upcoming break. The crowd was the same; the old couple in the corner, the chipper girls behind the counter, me with my back to the wall. My mind was reaching slowly around the room, feeling everyone out. The feedback consisted of the same details I always got; age, gender, physiological sensations. I could feel the hot bagel in the old woman’s hand, the way the edges cracked and crumbled from being cooked too near the side of the toaster. I could piece together her face from what I felt, and what I remembered, but when I turned my eyes on her all that greeted me were stripes and lines. Enormous wrinkles composed her whole face like a grid. 

            An empty chair stared back at me and my cold coffee. It couldn’t be called cathartic to be in the place where Jezebel had always sat across from me, but it was better than the dorm. The room was too empty for me, too dark even when all the lights were on. With no roommate to talk to or waste time with, I had finished all my prep before the weekend began and was resigned to being bored and lonely. The other students were avoiding me, surely under the impression that I was depressed and needed to be left alone, to heal. I had never been alone before.

            The boy from Monmouth School walked in as usual; dry this time since the sun was bright on the snow. His eyes were sunken and muddy, their shadow stretching all the way down to his chin. I watched the blurry wake he left on his way up to place his order only out of habit, instead wondering if I should get another coffee for the walk home just to keep my hands warm. Jezebel had planned to start wearing her gloves today in preparation for the concert.

            “Where’s your sister today?” The boy had appeared in front of me, contemplating Jezebel’s empty seat as if it was important.

            “She’s not at school here anymore,” I said, stiffening. It wasn’t exactly polite conversation for perfect strangers. Etiquette was a required course in Seventh Year and I had gotten top marks. I held out my hand. “I’m Eudora Powell.”

            “Rho Anwell,” the boy said, grasping my hand. His face vaguely resembled a water stain on a photo, but through the fuzz I could see a clean white smile. “Is it alright if I sit with you?”

            “Oh, of course.” I pulled my mug closer to me as Rho sat down even though there was plenty of room on the table

            “So you’re the nice twin,” Rho said bluntly. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I always felt that your sister was pushing me away.”

            I blushed; nobody had ever referred to me as the nice twin. “She’s somewhat of an elitist. I don’t share her views.”

            “Is that why she left school?”

            “No, not quite. Actually, not at all. She probably would have stayed on, except last week, well…” I wasn’t sure what I was doing, explaining my situation to the boy as if he was my psychologist. His Telability comforted me, the Awareness reacting warmly with my own Omnipotence. 

I told him about my parents and how Jezebel ran away to live with other Omnipotents instead of with me. Thinking about it was all I had done for the past week and it wore me out. My brain felt heavy from all the worrying, all the sleepless nights, and all the tears I had somehow managed to beat down.

“So she left, just like that?” Rho asked skeptically.

“Well, she was unhappy,” I said, staring down at my mug.

“And you’re not?”

Of course I wasn’t happy. In the course of a week I had been literally abandoned by my entire family, piece by piece. There was a reason for all of it, and probably a very good one, if only I could find it. Why else would I have ended up by myself? In the dream world, you could comfort yourself with the fact that every backwards, impossible thing that happened there had some reason behind it. Everything was created and controlled as the manipulator saw fit. I thought I could understand, at least a little, why Jezebel preferred its strange logic to reality.

Rho was nodding even though I hadn’t spoken. The lines of his face had become more solid, his high cheekbones glowing under dark eyes. “I was in your place once,” he said. “Sometimes it’s still not okay. Just don’t let it ride you down.”

Easier said than done, I thought, but when I looked up, Rho’s face was clear. No fuzzy lines or holes for eyes; he was a real person. My mind reached again and found his, unblocked, but I simply brushed against it and saved reading it for another time.

“See you next Sunday?” Rho picked up his coffee as he stood, smiling, and left the café.

Reviews

[Tim H]

Well done story. Perfect for teens and tweens market. I really liked the characterization and the dialogue. I thought this was an exceptional simile -The silence sat between us like a held breath - . My only concern is that the girls seem very accepting of their abandonment. If it was such a unanticipated event wouldn't they want to look for them? Ask them why? Suspect they were victims of a crime. If the parents are not important to the story perhaps you could drop hints of the discontentment with their daughters.