That’s when I hear it.
Thump. Thump. Thump-thump-thump.
I lean over the sink, peering out the window and through the dark outside to where the garage floodlight shines onto the driveway. There, my brother dribbles a basketball in lazy circles, pausing every now and then to try and swoosh it through the net.
My feet carry me out the side door, that constant, unseen thread between Owen and me pulled taut and slowly shortening. And I miss my brother. I’m used to daily jokes and shared glances. I’m used to so much more than this silence, this avoidance and doubt. The air is cool and damp against my face and arms, my tank top doing little to guard against the autumn chill. I walk slowly, my feet on the pebbled cement, my heart a rock in my throat.
Owen shoots the ball toward the basket and it bounces off the rim, rolling toward me over the ground. I stop it with my heel and slide it closer with my foot before I pick it up.
When I straighten, his eyes are already on me.
“Hey,” he says, so normal.
“Hey.”
“Can’t sleep?”
I shake my head.
“I had too much Mountain Dew at dinner,” he says, a sheepish smile on his face.
“Really? Too much caffeine is the only thing keeping you up?”
He sighs and tilts his head upward. There’s a blanket of clouds over the stars, making the whole sky blurry and fathomless.
“Alex is acting weird,” he says. “And Hannah . . . god, I don’t even know what’s happening.” He lowers his head to look me in the eye. “Can you believe all this?”
I shift the basketball from hand to hand, hating his tone, as though we’re the only two levelheaded people left on the earth and everyone else is full of shit. The ball’s tread is almost completely smoothed out, but there’s still enough for a bit of a grip. I tighten my fingers in place, plant my feet, and hurl the ball through the dark air. It hits the backboard with a bang and falls through the net.
“Nice shot,” he says.
“Yeah, well, I’ve always been better than you at basketball.”
He laughs and I swear there’s a hint of relief in the sound. He retrieves the ball, dribbling around me before sinking a shot from the hand-painted line on the driveway we long ago deemed the top of the key.
“Lucky shot,” I say.
After that, we fall into a rhythm. A too-easy rhythm. Too familiar, too natural, probably too good to be true. Summer nights, crickets chirping, barbecue smells drifting through the air while a brother and sister play horse. Because here, under the empty sky, he is just my brother. My twin who would never hurt me, whom I could never imagine hurting anyone. In between passes and dribbles, I find myself watching him, looking for signs that he’s not that lying boy from our family meeting earlier. Or that I imagined it all, conjured up some twin sense because I felt us slipping away, the him and me I’ve always known and counted on. Maybe that fear—?that I never really knew him at all—?was stronger than anything else.
Out here, maybe he’s not a liar. Maybe I just need to trust him. Trust us.
“So,” he says after a few more shots. “How’s Charlie?”
Her name brings everything back into sharp focus, the whole cluster fuck of this day—?everyone whispering at school, that sham of a family meeting. Everything is too bright and loud and rough.
Everything except Alex, his hand in mine as we ran through a neon galaxy.
“She’s fine,” I say, gesturing for the ball from Owen. My voice sounds dead, a bad actor spitting out badly written lines.
He frowns, pausing in midthrow, arms outstretched in front of him. “You still haven’t kissed and made up?”
“There’s nothing to make up about. We’re just . . . we’re fine.”
He tucks the ball under his arm. “Okay. Sure.”
“Don’t give me that.”
“Give you what?”
