The Other Half of Me (18 page)

TWENTY-NINE

After Alexa charges past me in the hallway, I sit on the stairs in a slump, half furious and half defeated. How is it that everything I imagined she and I would share is so far from the truth? I glance upstairs and wonder if Alexa is brooding in my room or on the phone with Tate. I’m sick of wondering, tired of feeling left out. It seems crazy to me now that I thought Alexa could fill all the gaps in my life. Like people who have plastic surgery and suddenly expect things to be perfect. It isn’t like that. Just like with my blank canvases, I’m the one who has to hold the brush, the one who has to make things happen. Only now with my paintings missing and Tate’s disappearance, I realize that I’m going to have to start everything all over again.

From his study, Dad emerges decked out in his running gear. He puts his foot next to me on the stairs and ties his sneaker. I always watched him get ready to run when I was a kid. He’d check the weather, slide into shorts or sweats, or rain gear if necessary. He had been determined to move forward with his plan no matter what the elements had in store, and I’d feel as though I’d need much more than a Gore-Tex windbreaker to survive a run with him. I’d feel as though either way—if I ran with him or stayed behind—I’d wind up letting him down.

I shake my head at myself. Why do I make everything so complicated?

“What’s up?” Dad asks as he double-knots his other shoelaces.

“Want some company?” I ask him. The surprise registers right away, but he manages a nod. I run upstairs and change my clothes faster than I ever have just in case I back out—or he does.

I join him as he stretches in the driveway, and then we’re off.

“To what do I owe this honor?” Dad says, leading us around Mill’s Pond and over the road on his usual loop through our suburban enclave.

“Just a change of pace,” I say, not wanting to let him know I ran before with Tate. I want this to be special to him. “Hey, how about taking a detour into the woods?” Dad questions me with a look. “I know you like your routine, but—”

“Lead the way,” he says.

My body feels the same way it did the other day while jogging with Tate—free, released, and fluid. But I’m also wishing that my dad will sense my inner frenzy and offer to make it all better. It’s just a dream, but I still hold tight, like gripping a paintbrush.

“A couple of miles, maybe? Down the grassy path?” he asks.

“And then through the woods,” I add. “Blah. I sound like a Christmas carol.”

Dad smirks. “Nothing wrong with sounding quaint. Then again, it’s probably not your style.”

We keep running, with him kindly slowing down a bit so I can keep up. The street winds into the grassy path, behind houses with barbecues, lawns, and swing sets. “What is my style, exactly?” It’s not that I want to test him, I just want to see what he knows about me. Okay, maybe I’m testing him a little.

“Hmmm…” Dad’s shoes hit the grass softly, landing on the worn path where countless runs have taken place in the dusk. I feel glad to join their shadowy ranks. “I think you’re the person who can describe it best. And I’m not saying that to avoid the question. It’s just that I don’t want to define you.”

I breathe hard, heat gathering at my hairline and flushing my cheeks, and let Dad’s words sink in. All this time I’ve been thinking that’s exactly what he and the rest of my family have been doing—trying to define me. There’s one way to find out if he means what he says.

We come to the road and Dad jogs in place as a car goes by. He looks at me and takes my hand, the way he did when I was five and wanted to pick dandelions across the road. We cross and then start up the incline and into the shade of pines and evergreens. And then I go for broke.

“Dad?” I stop and pretend to tie my shoe while sucking in air.

“Yeah?” He jogs in place, the dark cool of the woods in the background. The edges of the trees look painted to me, all wavy lines of green and brown, like a van Gogh.

“How come you got rid of those watercolors I did in Montana?” Dad looks at me like I imagined them. “You know, the three-piece series.” I make an outline in the air with my finger to show the rectangular shape.

“Oh, those?” Dad brushes his thinning hair away from his forehead. He sighs and puts his hands on his hips. He probably trashed them when we got back from the trip, or threw them away during one of the attic cleanup sessions.

“It’s just that they’re not at the house,” I say, and stand up. “If you got rid of them—”

Dad cuts me off. “Of course I didn’t. They’re at my work office. I had them framed when we got back, and that took a few weeks, and then I brought them over.” He looks at me. “What? People like looking at peaceful images when they’re stressed, which they often are at mediation meetings.”

I smile and shake my head in awe.

“What’d you think happened to them?” Dad asks. Then, as he watches my face, he gets it. “Oh, Jen, I’d never…Look, those are the first paintings you’ve ever given me.”

“And?” I want to tell him what I need to hear, but there’s only so much talking I can do.

“And I love them,” he says. Wind sweeps through the pines, scenting the air just enough to make me think of fall and even further to winter. I know my father well enough, I realize, to understand he’s not only talking about the paintings.

“So why didn’t you tell me?” I start off on the path slowly now and he follows.

He pauses and thinks for a moment. “Maybe I was afraid you’d think I was trying too hard. Or worse, that you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Dad wipes the sweat from his upper lip. “Because of all the pressure we put on you with the sports thing.” He looks at me from the side. “I didn’t want you think that any compliments were an attempt to—”

“Con me?”

“Right.” Dad’s feet pound the dirt path as he nods.

We run without saying anything for a while, dodging a few branches. I slip once on some rust-colored pine needles, but I don’t let the fall bring me down. Near the end of the run as we circle back toward the grassy path, Dad brings up Alexa and her visit. He doesn’t know about the Tate trouble, but maybe he suspects.

“So having Alexa here isn’t quite what you expected?” Dad guesses.

The endorphin release from the exercise is similar to the one I get when I finish a painting, and for the first time I actually get why people do this regularly. “Not really.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” As soon as he says this, he trips on a tree root. “Damn!” He stops and grabs his ankle, wincing in pain. I rush over to him.

“Are you okay?”

He shakes his head. “No.” He uses my shoulders for support and limps as I try to help him take the weight off his foot.

“I just need to rest for a while,” he says, pointing to a tree stump. He hobbles over and sits down on it. I squat down in front of him and look at him with concern. “I’ll be fine, really. I probably just sprained it.”

“Dad?” I say, gazing into his eyes. “What were you
really
afraid of when you found out about Alexa?”

Dad keeps looking forward. “I was there for your birth, Jenny. I helped Mom when she threw up every day all the way through the last trimester with you. But knowing that someone else created you and that you’d found someone who shared that connection, I don’t know. I felt so…”

“Insecure?” I say, thinking back to my argument with Alexa and what she said about Tate and me.

“Yes, definitely. I’d been feeling so detached from you lately, and when this happened, it just intensified.”

My feet on the grass-soft ground feel heavy, my muscles sore. Dad gets up, and when he walks, has a full-on limp. I stand up and start walking next to him. We’re pretty much silent until we get home. I’m thankful for my dad’s honesty, and glad I asked him these questions. But there’s still so much more to say.

When we get back to the house, Dad grabs a hiking pole from the boot room in the garage and uses it for balance. I line his sneakers up next to mine. We look at our feet next to one another’s.

I breathe hard, still out of breath from the jog, the damp air filling my lungs and just as quickly emptying. Right now everything that’s happened today is in the back of my mind, and only one thought is pushing to get out, so I let it go.

“Dad, all my life I felt like I was missing something. I hope you don’t take that the wrong way.” I sneak a look at him, but Dad’s still facing straight ahead. “Sometimes I’d look for my shoes and make sure I had them both on, or that I hadn’t left my pajamas on, or misplaced that bracelet I never take off.”

“The one I gave Mom when we first met?” Dad asks. His ankle is swelling, his sock white against the bruise.

I nod. “Yeah. But then, it wasn’t a physical thing missing. Like how you don’t know you need both your ankles until one—”

“Gets sprained?”

I nod. I think back to when my sibling search started—Tate showing me the article about the registry, how I debated logging on to the site, clicking on a message board posting, and finding her. That was just over a week ago. How is it possible to feel like I’m losing her already? “When I found out about the Donor Sibling Registry, it was as if I could have that missing part delivered to me.”

“Via FedEx, apparently,” Dad says. We both laugh. The shadows from the late-day light cast speckled sunlight onto my sneakers. “So even though we all act like it doesn’t make a difference, it does, doesn’t it?”

I get chills over my hot arms and look my dad straight in the eyes. “A little. I mean, you’re my dad, right? You have been and always will be. But sometimes I just wish I had a part of you. Like how Sierra and Sage have your nose, and Russ has your throwing arm.”

“But, Jenny, you’re more like me than anyone else in the family,” Dad says.

“I am?” I can’t help but look at him as if he just announced he was from another planet. A planet where I magically have his genes.

Dad sits down on the front porch, one long arm up into the sky, the other behind his back. “I never thought about it much before all this.” He sweeps his hands between us as if the gesture will convey everything that’s happened in the past couple of weeks. “But you are.”

“How?” I pull my hair out of its elastic, feeling the sweat on my scalp. The wind feels so good on my head and face.

“We’re both stubborn as hell.” Dad smirks and pats me on the head. “We don’t like surprises, and probably overthink to a fault. And we’re both artists, except I facilitate words instead of colors.”

When he says this, I actually feel fragments of gloom leave my chest, my heart lightens, and the smile comes out before I can curb it. “I like that. It kind of reminds me of that song—the one about van Gogh.”

“‘Starry, Starry Night’?” Dad nods at me. “I sang that to you when you were a baby.”

“I guess it worked,” I say.

I help him up, and we walk into the house in a jumbled heap, moving like one solid mass. “Jen, if you want to see difference, you always will.” He’s probably said this to countless clients over the years, but it makes sense.

“And if you want to see similarities?” I ask.

“You can find those, too.”

THIRTY

The next morning, I wake up late, wondering if I should give Alexa yet another chance. That’s what mature people do, after all, right? Besides, it’s just a giant drain on my psyche to have the weight of an argument on me. But then doubt lurches at me—when I think about her with Tate, the way she would casually touch his arm or look at him with her sleepy gaze, or how they always seem to be whispering, I feel ill. I’d like to think that a real sister wouldn’t go after my semiboyfriend, but maybe that’s what I get for jumping into this all so fast—on both fronts.

I sit up with my sheets pulled close to my chin, and what hits me first is how neat the room is. No piles of clothes, no wet bathing suits, no uneven blinds. And most important, no Alexa. I don’t panic at first, but after searching the bathroom, calling for her, and finding her suitcase gone, I start to freak out.

It’s as if I’m back at Downtown Studios, finding out that my paintings have gone missing. Which reminds me that I still haven’t figured out where they are.

I shout up the attic stairs. “Alexa?”

“She’s not here!” Russ yells.

I scramble down the stairs and find a note posted to the refrigerator underneath a strawberry-shaped magnet:

JF—

As fast as it started, it has to stop. At least for now. I’m taking a cab to the station. I’m sorry you got the wrong idea about me—about everything. Good luck with the show, and know that I’ll be thinking of you.

AMC

I sit down at the kitchen table and read the words, and suddenly the world feels very small. The morning air is cool coming in through the kitchen window. We’ve lost summer suddenly, and Alexa is gone without even a good-bye.

My mom comes up next to me and gives me a pat on the head, like Dad did last night. I show her the note as my lower lip trembles and my eyes fill with tears.

“I get the feeling you don’t want to tell me what happened,” Mom says with her eyebrows raised. She totally wants to know, but I don’t want to tangle her up in the drama. When I don’t respond, Mom changes the subject. “Your phone’s been buzzing since last night.”

“I didn’t know I left it down here,” I say, sniffling. I get up and swipe my phone from the mail table while Mom takes her keys from the blue ceramic bowl and goes outside. I dial into voice mail, assuming it’ll be Alexa with an apology. Or Tate with a heart as heavy as mine is.

“Hello, Jenny. I’m Jamaica Haas. I’m sorry, but…” There’s a pause and the sound of papers shuffling in the background. Maybe she has some information on my paintings. “Sid Sleethly no longer works here. We’ve had to let him go. And as a result, I’ve stepped in as director of the art showcase.”

My heart sinks. If my paintings hadn’t gone MIA, I would have had a shot with Jamaica in charge. I listen to the remainder of the message. “The good news is that one of your paintings turned up, and we’d like to put it on display for the show. Please give me a call at the following number and let us know the title for your piece. Thanks, and congratulations!”

My emotions go from bottom-rolling to top-of-the-heap jumping. Not only am I relieved that someone found one of my paintings, but I am so excited about the show that I shout to anyone who’ll listen in my house. “I’m in! I’m in the art show! It’s official!” And Sid Sleethly is out of my life for good!

I scream it, but no one yells back. Wasn’t Russ just upstairs? And my mother down in the hallway? Despite slightly improved family relations, I feel suspiciously like no one cares. Then I think if Alexa were here, she would, but she’s not, because of me.

With my brain on overload, Dad decides now’s the time to reshoot the family portrait.

“Everyone in a huddle,” he commands from his perch on the patio wall. The photographer is ready to go. I slink outside with my stained purple shirt, bunched up in front, trying to hide the paint streaks. Of course, Sierra and Sage’s tiny tees are perfect, Russ’s might have a wrinkle or two but is basically fine, and Mom looks like she’s on the cover of a department store catalog.

“Jenny?” Mom waves me over and I stand next to her. Dad looks down at me, noticing how I’ve rolled my shirt into a mush.

“Straighten it out, Jen.”

“It’s fine the way it is,” I say.
Same old, same old
, is what I think. Then Dad jumps down from the wall and pulls the shirt down so it hangs once again past my waist.

“Not the best fit, eh?” He studies it. I watch his face change when he sees the paint marks.

“Yeah, it’s kind of big,” I reply.

“Maybe in my mind you’re taller or something,” he says. His voice is gentle, not angry like I thought it would be. “I see you took it upon yourself to decorate the shirt.” He sighs.

I shrug. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to. I just thought we were done with it.”

“It’s better than that twisty thing you had going on before,” Russ says, grinning.

“Now you just look like you,” Sierra adds. It’s not mean, just honest. And she’s correct. I turn to face the camera, giving a normal, not overdone, smile.

“Ready?” The photographer clicks away, capturing us in the moment.

Yes
, I think.
I am.

But for what, I’m still not sure.

The town center is jammed with cars, all vying for a space close to the high school. Carnival Day is a townwide event. I’m still planning on going, even though I haven’t seen or heard from Tate in a bit and it feels weird knowing our “relationship” might be over because of what happened with Alexa. I tried calling her, tried calling her mothers’ phone, but got no answer. If it weren’t for the art show, I would have locked myself in my room for a few days until Faye came back, but at least there is something to look forward to and take pride in, regardless of all the losses I’ve had.

I weave through people doing back-to-school shopping and head toward Downtown. Relieved that I won’t have to deal with Sid, I find the back door locked, not propped open as it usually is, and have to go around to the front. Inside, the calmness takes over and I feel a sense of homecoming. Even better than that, actually, because Sid is no longer here, although I’m dying to know why.

“What do you think?” Jamaica is dressed all in violet and standing in the doorway. “You’re on this wall.”

Nerves and excitement bristle up and down my arms and spine. I turn and see the orange painting with overlapping circles, each one blending into the next. The unfinished edges draw attention to the painting, even though it’s not the biggest one out there, not by a long shot. Still, I feel as though I have accomplished something huge. “I love it!” I go over and shake her hand enthusiastically. “Thank you so much!”

“It’s a pleasure,” she says. “Now, if you can tell me what you’d like to call it. Sid had the list of titles, you see, and, well, he was asked to leave rather quickly.” She gives me a look. “Conflict of personalities. I’m sure you understand.”

I nod to tell her that of course I get it—who didn’t conflict with Sid? But suddenly I realize that my other paintings are still nowhere to be found. “Have you seen any other paintings of mine?” My brow tightens and my throat becomes dry. “They look similar to this one, with unfinished edges.”

Jamaica shakes her head. “No. I’m sorry, I haven’t. Sid left this here, leaning on the wall, which meant we were to include it in the show.”

“You mean, he liked it?” I can’t fight my smile. I figured he thought it was horrible.

“Yes, yes he did…. For all his pretensions, he got this right. He liked it—and so do I.”

She doesn’t elaborate on what happened to Sid and where he’s gone, but waits for me to give her a title. I think with my hands resting on my hips while I stare at the painting. It shouldn’t be hard to name something, should it? I think hard about Alexa, her sleepy gaze, how much I wanted her to be my own twin, and how part of that was just a cover for wanting to feel attached and important to my own life.

“I know,” I say to Jamaica. She has her pen poised on the clipboard and waits for my answer. A feeling of peace settles into the already full palette of my life, and thoughts of new beginnings start.
“The Other Half of Me.”

She nods. “Great fit.”

By the high school, the tall circle of the Ferris wheel is visible from far away. Last year, and all the years before, I ran into the carnival searching for cotton candy, soaking up the smells of fried dough, bumping into people from school, feeling like a tiny dot amid a huge splattering of colors and faces. This year I decide to forgo the actual games and rides for a while and take a seat on the sun-warmed bleachers. The pinpricks of anticipation for the show are constant, as is a sense of exhilaration from making it in.

From a distance the sway of the pirate ship ride; the crazy whirl of the Loop; the shrieks from kids; the cheerleaders with too much makeup, their hair in high ponytails—it all seems harmonious. I can almost allow myself to forget that somewhere in that mass of sights and sounds Tate is chucking pies at people or winning cute girls in color-coordinated outfits prizes of fluffy snakes. Or maybe Tate isn’t there, but at home and online with Alexa. Maybe they’ve officially paired off. The thought makes me so crazed I want to scream, but instead I tilt my face to the sky and admit I just need to find him and confront him.

The steps behind me rattle with footsteps. It’s funny, I realize, to even be sitting here in the sports zone. It’s not my typical place during the school year. Then again, who knows what this year will bring.

A tap on my shoulder produces a heavenly hot Tate in a plain gray T-shirt, green shorts, a wide grin, and penetrating eyes that make me instantly aware of how much I liked him—still like him—no matter what happened with him and Alexa. But I won’t be
that
girl, the one who gets cheated on and sucks it up.

“I got you this,” he says, and holds out a Sno-Kone. “I thought you’d like the colors.” I accept the offering and look at the mound of crushed ice—swirls of red, yellow, and blue wash across the top, and I put it to my mouth, enjoying the sweetness and glad that it hides my lips, just in case they give away how much I want him to kiss me. Then I banish the thought.

“Thanks. Don’t you want one?”

Tate shakes his head. He stands with his back to the sun, so his hair looks golden-edged, his skin glowing. “Nah, that’s okay. I can share yours, right?” He looks at me, wondering.

“Sure.” I take a cold bite and hand it to him. Then I come right out with it. “So, you know Alexa’s gone, right?” I figure his reaction to this news will show how much she means to him—either he won’t mind or he’ll be hurt.

Tate’s hand freezes on its way to his mouth. The Sno-Kone drips there in midair. “She’s what?” His voice says it all—he’s upset.

“Gone,” I say. “As in, she vacated and took the train back into the city.”

“But, she and I…” He stops himself. Hearing the two of them paired by his words makes me crumble inside. He likes her. I feel as though I will always be that girl who is cast aside, the one in the corner, painting the scene rather than being in it. “Why? What happened?” He offers the cone back to me and I shake my head.

“Oh, I think we both know what happened.” I look at him and back at the fairgrounds. Two days from now, the art show will be finished, the Ferris wheel deconstructed, and school back in session. That so-called magic of summer will evaporate.

“Oh,” Tate says, and licks the cone again. “So you know, then?”

Fury runs through me. “So it’s true?” I bark.

Tate looks confused. “Whoa, wait a sec. What are
you
talking about?”

I stomp my foot on the metal steps and the sound registers louder than I meant it to. “You and Alexa. Together!”

Tate talks fast. “No, no, no. You’re wrong, Fitz. How could you think that I…” He points to his chest. A chest I hugged. Who knows what Alexa did to it? “Hooked up with Alexa?”

His words surprise me. Here I thought he had the perfect breakup scenario: carnival, friends waiting for him by the balloon arcade, Sno-Kone as consolation prize, and a clean break before school starts. “You didn’t?” My eyebrows are raised so high they practically touch my scalp.

“No way! She’s your sister. Why would I do that to you?”

“I know, but you guys were always whispering, and talking, and you called her or she called you or whatever, and it was like…”

Tate looks at me and then sits down next to me. “Like we had a secret?”

It’s my turn to stand up. “Yes. Exactly.” When something big is about to happen, everything appears clearer—the sky bright blue, the outlines of objects crisp, each word vivid.

“Well, we did.” Tate looks up at me, his legs stretched out enough that if I were to move one inch to the left I’d touch his calf. “We still do.”

I don’t do him the favor of sticking around. I don’t need him to tell me what I already know. I move quickly down the bleachers, sure that Tate will follow—isn’t that the way it always is in movies? The guy chasing after the girl to tell her the truth? To say he still cares about her? But when I look back, Tate isn’t even there—he’s running down the other side of the steps and disappearing into the polka-dot crowd of the carnival.