The Twinning Project (11 page)

We went inside the house, through a living room where the furniture was covered with see-through plastic. There was a painting over the fireplace: Eddie wearing a Cub Scout uniform, with Dad on one side and Grandpa on the other.

“Would you like a sandwich?”

My stomach reminded me how hungry I was. “Sure. Unless you have pizza.”

Grandpa looked at his watch. “Kinda late. Sal's is closed.”

“Domino online is pretty quick.” I stopped when I saw him staring at me. “Frozen is okay.” Another stare.

“This is 1957.”

“Sorry. Since I hit my head . . .”

“That's good,” said Grandpa. “You always were a quick study.”

“How about peanut butter and mustard?” I said.

“You, too?” Grandpa rolled his eyes but made me the sandwich, on white bread. The dog kept growling until I gave him a little piece. He managed to nip my finger.

“Buddy was really worried about you, Eddie. He just sat at the door and cried the whole time you were gone.”

“He knows, doesn't he?”

“But he can't talk. You'd better get to bed. Slipping takes a lot out of you.”

I followed him upstairs. Eddie's room was smaller than mine, and neater. There were maps on the wall and posters of Mickey Mantle and two other guys—Paul Hornung and Bob Cousy. Mantle was the only one I'd heard of. The biggest map was of the United States. I noticed that Hawaii and Alaska weren't on it.

I went into the bathroom down the hall. It was so pink, I could only pee. And I was thinking about all the questions I had for Grandpa.

When I came out, Grandpa was waiting in the hall. “I know you've got a ton of questions, but get a good night's sleep first. You'll need it.”

“Just one question?”

When he nodded, I said, “What was Dad like?”

“He was terrific. Smart like you and nice like your brother. And when you grow up, both of you are going to be like him. Now to bed.”

I got into bed with my clothes on. I was exhausted. I tried to think about Hawaii and Alaska, but I fell right asleep.

NEARMONT, N.J.

1957

 

I
WAS
swarmed when I got on the school bus. Kids cheered and patted me, and gave me little shoulder punches. Girls hugged me. Even the bus driver gave me a thumbs-up. It made me uncomfortable. I wasn't used to that kind of attention, and I'd never been touched so much by kids in school. I'm not a touchy-feely kind of guy.

I was glad that Eddie was so popular, but I was a little jealous. All this friendship was about him, not me. I wondered how he was doing. I hoped Alessa was helping him. Where was this guy Ronnie?

The kids cleared space so I could sit down near the front. I was holding my violin backpack, but no one asked me what was in it. They probably thought it was filled with sports equipment. They crowded around. Everybody wanted to ask about what happened. I tried to act like Eddie would, humble and patient. “I wish I could remember. Honest. The doctor said I have amnesia.”

“Amnesia? I forgot what that means,” shouted a skinny kid who wormed his way through the crowd in the aisle. He nodded and grinned at the laugh he got. He looked like he could be the class clown. He had wild, messy hair and a small sharp face, a little dirty but almost too pretty for a boy. He was wearing a ratty old yellow sweater-shirt and skinny black pants. Scuffed boots. This had to be Ronnie.

“Ronnie?”

“You were expecting Elvis?” He started singing something about forgetting to remember.

This is the guy I'm supposed to depend on—Eddie's sidekick?

He looked ten years old. But I put on my sincere face. “Ronnie, I'm really going to need your help today,” I said. “You've got to remind me of everything. Show me where to go.”

“You got it.” He looked eager and excited. “I'm your sidekick.”

“Right. Like Han Solo and Chewbacca,” I said.

“Who?”

Whoops, no
Star Wars
yet. “Like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.”

“Better believe it, kemo sabe,” he said.

NEARMONT, N.J.

1957

 

T
HE
bus pulled up at school. It looked like a couple of the middle schools I'd been to, only newer. It had the same fountain out front I remembered from the Nearmont Middle School on EarthOne.

Teachers patted me in the hall, told me they had been worried sick.

Ronnie was my shadow. He gave me nudges and signals where to go. At homeroom, kids clapped and the teacher gave me a kiss on the cheek. Back home, a teacher might get arrested for that. Not that I would know; no teacher had ever kissed
me
before. Still hadn't. She thought she was kissing Eddie. That helped me get used to it. It was Eddie that everyone thought they were touching. It wasn't so bad.

Bells rang and everyone stood up for the Pledge of Allegiance. The flag looked different to me. It took me a while to figure it out. It only had forty-eight stars. That's why Hawaii and Alaska weren't on that map. They weren't states yet! When were they made states?
I need some dates, Mrs. Rupp.

On the wall where most classrooms had a picture of the president was a photo of a smiling old white man.

I nudged Ronnie. “Who's that?”

“I like Ike,” he said.

“Ike?”

“The president,” said Ronnie. “Dwight D. Eisen­hower.”

I clicked through the list of presidents in my head. Dad and I used to quiz each other on presidents, state capitals, and planets the way other kids and dads did batting averages and Super Bowl winners. Probably like Eddie and Dad.

“Eisenhower was president fifty years ago.”

When Ronnie looked at me like I was crazy, I remembered that Hawaii and Alaska were the last two territories to be made states.

I scanned the room until I found the calendar. It was open to October 1957.
Wish I could Google 1957, find out what's happening.
I thought about Mrs. Rupp's timeline. Didn't we talk about some big technology thing in 1957? Space . . . Russians . . . My mind was still a little shook up from the slip trip.

Everything seemed slower here. Teachers dawdled, as if they were in no hurry to get us ready to take tests. They wore suits and ties or dresses. Maybe this was Dress-up Day. No jeans anywhere. Kids took their time in the halls. Even the big round clocks on the walls seemed to be ticking off lazy seconds. Through my first two classes, math and Spanish, my legs jiggled under my desk, which happens when I'm nervous or bored. I was both. How can you be both? Math was easy, and Spanish sounded like a baby talking French, the language I was taking back home.

I was uncomfortable in the clothes that Grandpa had laid out for me. Sand-colored desert boots, brown corduroy pants, and a yellow and black shirt. Everything itched, especially the pants. I hadn't worn corduroy since I was a little kid. It gets damp between your thighs and makes your underwear crawl up into your crack. In science, I was squirming around in my seat trying to rub the underwear out.

“Edward, did you want to answer this question?”

I hadn't been paying attention, and I didn't react to the name until Ronnie kicked me. I looked up. The teacher was standing in front of a big roll-down chart of the solar system. No PowerPoint here.

I said, “I'm sorry. I forgot the question.”

“What are the planets of our solar system?”

That was easy. “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.”

“You forgot one, Edward.”

“That's it,” I said.

The teacher shook her head. “Merlyn?”

It was her! The same long black hair covering her face. What was she doing here? She said, “Pluto.”

“Very good,” said the teacher.

“Pluto's not a planet,” I said. “It's a star.”

“Where did you hear that?” said the teacher.

A little warning bell rang in my head, but I couldn't stop myself. “Pluto's too small to be a planet. It's a dwarf planet, all ice and rock.”

“Pluto is a planet on this planet,” said Merlyn, smiling at me. “Maybe not on whatever planet you come from.”

The class grumbled at her. I guess it didn't like anyone making fun of its hero, Eddie.

“Amnesia,” said Ronnie. “Anything can happen after a knock on the head. And Eddie's had two, one in football and one at Scout camp.”

“That's true,” said the teacher. She frowned. “How do you feel, Edward?”

“I'm fine,” I said.

The teacher came over and put her hand on my forehead. She smelled of talcum powder. “No fever.”

The bell rang.

“Have you been to your doctor?” asked the teacher.

I nodded.

“No need,” said Merlyn. “I have a new trick to examine his brain at the lunchtime talent show.”

Outside in the hallway, I said to Ronnie, “What's with that Merlyn?”

“Search me. She's new.”

NEARMONT, N.J.

1957

 

T
HE
cafeteria was a crummy hole. The floor was yellow linoleum with black scabs. Kids sat on gray metal benches at long gray metal picnic tables, like in the old black-and-white prison movies I watched on Turner Classic. I wasn't hungry anyway.

Grandpa had made me a great breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon, hot buttered toast, cold orange juice, and milk. It was delicious. I wasn't used to eating so much for breakfast.

“You sit over there,” said Ronnie, pointing to a table in the center of the cafeteria.

You could tell it was a hotshot table: student government types in chinos and blue button-down shirts, jocks in team jerseys, and girls wearing skirts and two matching sweaters. Around us were thug tables and freak tables and rebel tables. Not much had changed over the years. Except the shoes. Kids were wearing dorky-looking shoes, a lot of brown leather and desert boots. I guess Nike and Skechers hadn't been invented yet.

Ronnie started to slink away.

“Where you going?”

He pointed his chin toward a table in the corner packed with fat kids, goofy-looking kids, boys with pens, pencils, and little rulers in plastic holders in their shirt pockets.

I grabbed his skinny arm and pulled him toward the hot table. “You're staying with me.”

“They won't let me,” he said.

“Let 'em stop us.”

No one said anything as I climbed over the bench and made room for Ronnie and my violin bag. He didn't look happy, but I needed him close. I could tell that the kids at the table weren't happy, either, but Eddie got his way in this school.
I wish I had spent more time with him
. On EarthOne we would have called him a people person.

Grandpa had packed me a huge roast beef sandwich on a roll, an apple, and cookies. Ronnie had a slice of bologna and a slice of cheese on white bread. He stuffed his sandwich in his pocket and started to get up. “I gotta go, Eddie.”

I pulled him down and gave him half my roast beef sandwich. The way he ate it, I wondered if he had had any breakfast.

One of the jocks pointed at my violin bag. “What's in there?”

“My violin,” I said.

Kids at the table started laughing like I had cracked a great joke.

“Gonna play for us?” a girl said.

“If you're lucky.”

“In the talent show?” She pointed at Merlyn, who was fussing with her little folding table and collapsible top hat. “Miss Conceited thinks she's going to win.”

Merlyn was definitely the girl from the park. How had she gotten here? The same way I got here?

Then I remembered Grandpa had said that Dr. Traum was probably a monitor because he could be two places at the same time. So Merlyn was probably a monitor.
I'd better be careful with her.

The PA system started crackling, and some kid announced the seventh grade lunchtime open talent show. Teachers went around shushing people.

At one side of the cafeteria, a little band set up and three girls climbed up on a table with a microphone and sang a sappy song about “Tammy.” They were terrible, but they must have been popular because they got a lot of applause. Then a kid tap-danced. Then a girl in a ballet outfit danced. A guy sang “All Shook Up,” and kids screamed when he did a little wiggle with it. Ronnie was singing along with him.

Suddenly, there was a drum roll from the band and Merlyn climbed up on the table. She was wearing the black top hat. She set up her little table on top of the big table.

Merlyn was as good as I remembered her. Just like a real magician on TV, she kept talking so you couldn't concentrate on what she was doing—juggling four red balls, pulling a rabbit doll out of her hat, doing card tricks. Kids came up and she plucked coins out of their ears. Then she said, “I know some of you think I made Eddie Tudor disappear. We're all so glad he's back, even if he's lost his memory. So come on up, Eddie. Do a trick with me.”

I stood up.

Ronnie grabbed my arm. “Cool your jets. Don't do it.”

Everybody was looking at me. I couldn't wimp out. I picked up my pack and walked across the cafeteria, slow, like a gunfighter, and climbed up on the table next to Merlyn.

“I see you brought your violin,” she said. Everybody laughed.

She pulled the red scarf out of her hat and started pretending to push it into one of my ears. Only this time it really felt like something was going into my head. How did she do that? Could aliens do things like that? It was creepy, but I didn't pull away. Then she reached around my head and pulled the red scarf out of my other ear. What a strange feeling.

“Just as I thought,” said Merlyn. “Eddie's head is still empty.”

Teachers were laughing. Everybody was laughing except Ronnie. His head was lowered.