Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 21:56:00 -0600 From: Karla Schulz Subject: Carrots and Celery Appendix One: A Day in the Life... I was not. Joking that is. At least not about the appendices. And possibly some of the other stuff. In the future, the past has occurred. (translation: time will tell) Oh. Explanation. This is about the twins. The title gives important details concerning it's content away. There will be others. Be afraid. --- For as long as we can remember, when we wake up, it's gone something like this: "Hit the alarm." "You hit the alarm." "Don't make me come over there." "The alarm is closer." "Shut up." "You shut up." "You still haven't turned off the alarm." "Neither have you." "You suck." "Please, we both know YOU'RE the one who sucks." "I beg to differ." "Fine. Differ -- just turn off the alarm." "Fine." Crash. "Damnit." "Ha." "Laugh it up. It'll be you tomorrow." "OR WILL IT????" "Yes. It will." "We'll see." "Yes. We will." And then, the morning's first eye contact. Glares slowly dissolving into smiles. "I love you." "I love you too." "Which is why it doesn't matter..." "That our parents are too busy to notice us," "That our older brothers forget about us," "That our little sister has pretty much quit the family, and even we're getting too old and involved in ourselves to pay attention." These are the familiar ones, around for months and years, they come after the other without pause, but there's a new one, and one of us has to say it. New and hardest to deal with and understand. "That our best friend is in love with us." Which is when we hug, and then that's done and we can go back to being mach tough guys and there are showers to take and clothes to put on and breakfasts to eat. Carrots is half asleep at the table, wearing his lost puppy face, which is better than his sullen `the world hates me and the feeling is mutual' face. We nod hellos but otherwise avoid him, because it saves time, as he would most likely ignore us anyway. Not that we're bitter. Mom and dad are gone already, it must be Tuesday, but there is a note on the fridge expressing cheerful morning greetings and a request that someone please make dinner tonight, they'll be working late. We look at each other, and two fingers hook together briefly and we think about one of our secret jokes `remember the womb', which isn't funny, but always makes us feel better. Kara is a blur of green and brown for about 30 seconds in the back kitchen doorway, and she doesn't even bother saying, `I'm going to Sue's' before she's gone. Carrots is oblivious to this, and when Kyle arrives hot on her heels he offers only a vague, "Was that Kara who just left so quickly?" Before searching for food in cupboards and not even waiting for his question to be answered. We don't bother to announce our departure either, but do hear the beginnings of a good bye shout from Kyle when we're half way out the front door. We discuss our current dilemma as we approach his house. "It's possible he was joking." "No, I don't think he was." "It's still possible." "Anything is possible." "Not as comforting as I'd hoped." "You know better than to try and comfort me with something that doesn't comfort you." We smile. We remember the womb. We walk for awhile, our index fingers hooked together. "I say we blame Kyle. He's the one who gave people the idea that straight Vasskez's are easily swayed by the male form." "I can see that as a contributing factor, but it must be mostly due to our incredible good looks and general brilliance." "Naturally." "And I suppose, it's even understandable why he's unable to choose between us." Flashes grin, "Who could?" Our love is god. Let's go get Slushies. Carrots isn't the only one who watches movies. "Anyway, I think we forgot one this morning." "Things could not possibly get worse." "Jeremy Proctor?" "A delightful addition to any part of our day!" "Love the veiled comments about brotherly love." "Love em!" "Love the bruises from getting slammed against lockers in soccer practice." "Can't get enough of them." "Love the way Jackie Collins always likes to comfort me after." "Hate her." Squeeze fingers. For one block we walk in silence. "Any solutions, brother mine?" "Braden needs a proper love interest -- we should encourage him to spend more time with Terry Michaels." "Subtly of course." "Of course." "Jeremy Proctor needs to get his ass kicked." "Which will shut him up for about a week." "Always my favourite week of the month." "Jackie?" "Jackie can keep her hands to herself if she can't accept that Jon Vasskez is not in the market for a serious girlfriend." "But he hopes she can, because he does enjoy a little groping now and again." "Show me a 15 and a half year old male who doesn't?" "Can't." "Course not. Seriously, Terry? We think that'll work?" "We do." We've arrived at Braden's door. He answers the doorbell less promptly than normal. His welcoming grin is embarrassed, and we attempt comforting smiles. "Do I have any chance of convincing you guys I was joking?" He was crying when he told us, laughing, but also crying. Drunk, but serious. "No." "Damn." "Don't worry about it." "Don't worry about it?" Incredulous. "Yeah, it's not like you're REALLY in love with us. You just think you are." He shakes his head. "Glad that's settled." "Come on Bray, you can't be in love with us because -- it's an US. Two people. Despite popular belief, we're not ACTUALLY one person." He snorts. "Right." Which is the problem with him knowing us so well. Braden, as our best friend of near Celery proportions, knows us best. And what that affords him is the knowledge that privately, no one believes we're one more than us. It's simple really. We don't buy into that `two halves of the same soul' business. We're not soul mates in some cosmic sense, we're just one person never meant to be made into two that got ripped in half in birth. We're supposed to exist together, thinking one thought and feeling as one. And Braden knows. "It'll be okay." He smiles falsely, but it's not supposed to be convincing. "Of course it will. Eventually one of you will die, and then I'll cease my chance." "Wonderful. Hold onto that hope." "Allow me to now make an awkward and abrupt topic change cause I can't stand talking about this even if we're joking just now, and ask -- how's everything at home base?" Braden isn't a better person than us, he's just less bitter, so he still cares a lot about our family. Not that we don't of course. It's just, come on. Being resentful is fun. "Carrots is still living the life of a Dashboard Confessional song, Kara is still practically living at Sue's, the rents are never home and Jonas is likely to have a nervous breakdown concerning his parents at any moment." The bit about Jonas is delivered in a slightly different tone. The effort he makes seems like much more, simply because he's not literally our brother, and besides, he's a twin. We can't even imagine the pain of the loss he's suffered, but what we can understand is that he needs to feel some of that twiny closeness sometimes, and we're happy to share that with him. "Any word from Celery?" "No." And of course, that hurts in totally non we're bitter and it's so much fun ways. We love our brothers, and that includes Celery. Even when he's being a dick. "Gonna beat some Proctor ass today?" Another topic change for the love of avoiding painful topics. "Yep. Should be good times." "I'll be right behind you, except, you know... further back." Carrots doesn't know it, but his ranting about the joys of Buffy had a profound impact on Braden's pop culture education. "And we thank you for that." Much in this style, we make our way from Braden's to school, and wander around the halls aimlessly until class starts. At one point, we bump into Colin, who we actually kind of like although we'd never admit it in public, and he grins at us and moonwalks away. The reason we like him is `cause we've realized he acts especially spastic and jerk like around us cause he suspects. Over lunch we find and dispatch Jeremy with ease, not so much due to the fact that there are two of us and one of him or that we're master fighters, but because we always know exactly where the other is going to be, what they are about to do, and what needs to be done so that we keep each other protected. Once he's stumbled away, we attend to each other's minor war wounds and go back to where Braden was supporting us from one floor up. Braden greets us with a congratulatory grin and goofy thumbs up, which we tolerate because we sort of love him. Just not in anyway that will be helpful to his current problem. There's some unpleasantness when Jackie turns out to not be down with the fooling around no emotional commitment thing, but we manage to detach with love. Well, no blood loss. Back at the base, Carrots is listening to scream-o that isn't quite muffled by his closed door and Jonas and Kyle may or may not be having sex in Kyle's room. We did not stick around outside his apartment door long enough to find out. We do our homework sprawled out on the floor, then take a nap. Napping is seriously underrated by the general teenage population. Following this exciting event (no sarcasm, that's mostly Carrots's scene) we decide to not give a damn about anyone else, make sandwiches for ourselves for dinner and spend a relaxing hour blowing stuff up on our ps2. We take a bike ride around the block and check in on Braden, who yells at us when we knock on his bedroom door and refuses to let us in. We engage in a highly unpleasant conversation through said door, which gets so bad at points that we're actually looking at each other and trying to figure out if we could somehow manage to draw straws and have at least one of us have some amount of sex with him so he'll get over this unfortunate desperately wanting our business... business. We eventually conclude that not only will this not happen, it wouldn't help anyway. We try to sell him on the merits of continuing to be a platonic trio, but he's over his anger and just sad at this point, so when he asks us in a muffled voice to just please leave, we comply. We walk our bikes home, too depressed to ride, and have a conversation consisting of a variety of heavy sighs as we sit on our beds upon arriving home. Too upset to sleep and unable to focus on anything else, we go downstairs and watch TV. Jonas joins us for the duration of the second half of an episode of C.S.I but his alarmed comments about the actor playing Nik looking like he was shrunk somehow fail to makes us smile. Getting it without understanding anything, Jonas dispenses hugs we stiffly return and apologizes for sucking recently. We forgive him, but still our moods don't lift. After an episode of Law and Order (the old ones) we're finally numbed enough to crave nothing but sleep, so we drag ourselves up to our room. Mumbled, thick with tiredness, we exchange our shared thoughts as we crawl into our perspective beds. "How much did this day suck?" "A lot. In many varied, near constant ways." "Which doesn't matter right, because..." "You love me and I love you," "And in the end, if we're all we've got--" "We're still going to be okay." "Night man." "Hoosha."