Phenomenological

Twin Paradox: A thought experiment involving two identical twins. One twin stays at home on Earth, the second journeys through space in an ultra-fast rocket. Upon returning home, the travelling twin finds that the twin left behind has considerably aged more.
Dave’s life is markedly different from his twin sister’s, but it takes filling her shoes and meeting a second pair of twins to understand the differences that matter, those that don’t, and the true meaning of synchronism.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Selfish vs. Selfless

Chapter Text

Summer 2011: Selfish vs. Selfless

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 8:11 --

TG: just going back to our last conversation
TG: you know
TG: if only to instil in you the recognition of how batshit crazy it all really was
TG: you want me to do a magical girl transformation and basically become amanda bynes in shes the man
TG: or maybe the heroine of a bad shoujo manga where i have to infiltrate an all boys school to play sports
TG: and then of course get found out by my love interest who is just oh so relieved he isnt batting for the wrong team after all
TG: this is just your desire to bring your tacky mangas to life isnt it
TT: I think we can both recognise that you were the one who was aware that such a thing was a popular trope in Japanese comics, and that I was sadly ignorant of such an intriguing fact.
TG: i think what we can recognise here rose is that ive got zero sportsman aspirations
TG: and that youre not asking me to attend an all girls school
TG: so when im found out no ones gonna be all that understanding as to why im sporting the knee high socks and plaid schoolgirl skirt instead of the boys uniform
TG: and thus youve made a terrible casting decision
TT: I am going to take an educated guess that you have yet to go to bed, and that you have instead taken all those hours since sundown to come up with this draft of a reason in an attempt to turn me down.
TT: Yet it was all in vain for I am not asking you to be Amanda Bynes, nor am I asking you to be one of those characters from those comics you love oh so much. Yes, you love them, or else you wouldn’t have used ‘magical girl transformation’ as imagery for your western reference.
TG: ok but thats totally unfair
TG: what kind of nineties kid would know zero magical girls
TG: youve got to be a childhoodless teenager to not know sailor moon
TG: she fights for love and justice
TT: So I take it you are accepting my proposition? I do believe you have higher chances of becoming a real sailor scout if you are portraying yourself as a teenage schoolgirl.
TG: look rose maybe if it was a weeklong deal but a yearlong ones a whole different story
TG: and to be super honest with you youve got to be seriously overestimating me if you think i can fool mom for that entire time
TG: i really dont know her well enough to pull this off
TT: And to be super honest with you, Dave, I think you’ve always underestimated yourself.
TT: In any case, I would suggest you hit your pillows. Despite what you think, your shades typically aren’t a good cover for your sleeplessness.
TG: i will but im telling you im not gonna switch with you
TT: We can discuss it further tonight when you come over. Well rested and with a clearer mind with which to make decisions.
TG: youre the one not seeing one hundred percent clearly if you think im gonna jump at the chance to pose as you for a year
TG: especially just so youll get to make eyes at your online gf in person for a whole god damned year
TG: its not the deal of the century
TG: but ill see you tonight

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 8:47 --

Dave drummed his fingers over the lid of the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket sitting on his lap. He was purposely drumming a beat different from the one playing on the car radio; the new Katy Perry song which had somehow managed to play every single time he’d gotten in the car with Dirk over the past few weeks. On any other Sunday, he would have been halfway through his rant regarding Dirk’s choice of food offering by now. And there was definitely something to be said today about bringing a bucket of chicken to Roxy’s weekly get-together dinner, the one also featuring candlesticks and carefully selected wine.

Instead, Dave’s mind was involved with putting together an inventory of every single piece of clothing he’d seen Rose adorn herself with, and putting it directly in comparison with his own wardrobe. The army green hoodie he was wearing now was so old it still wore the marks of his old sleeve chewing habit. His jeans weren’t much better either as they did not even put up a good attempt to reach his bony ankles. Rose, however, he’d never seen put on the same ensemble twice. Though he still shared her face, her voice, her height, her frame, he did not share her elegance and her poise. Wearing Rose’s shoes despite their identical looks, he knew, would not give off the image of Rose to either one of their parents.

Dave only stopped the obnoxious off-beat tapping of his fingers once Dirk addressed him. “Didn’t get much sleep, kid?”

He wrapped his arms around the bucket instead, at least grateful for its heat. He wasn’t quite grateful that the two of them showed up every Sunday with an order from whichever fast-food joint they’d last seen a commercial for, but Dirk must have thought it was casually cool, so there wasn’t much left for him to say on the matter. Dave didn’t particularly like being called ‘kid’, for him it was the closest his father ever came to taking up that role of a parent.

As far as he was concerned, it sort of rang as a sham. Sperm donors weren’t traditionally tricked into signing up for a parental role. Dave was born first, but there wasn’t supposed to be a born-first born-second dynamic in the first place. Thinking of dressing up as Rose, as the little baby girl his mother had decided she would be better fit at raising, actually sort of made Dave feel sick.

“No way, bro. I was in bed by nine.”

Sort of made him feel sick, but not too badly. Not enough to discourage him from adding some snark to his answer. So twins hadn’t been his mother’s plan. It wasn’t really all that bad, he was still an active part of her life. But the man raising him definitely had not signed up for it, despite being her best friend. And he definitely knew that there was no interchanging twins in this situation. No matter how many times Rose would ask him.

“By nine in the morning, yeah, I know.”

Dave sensed no sense of reprimanding in Dirk’s words, and so felt it acceptable to not put in an effort to deny the claim. They’d made the turn into the neighbourhood where the missing part of their family resided. As he had one hundred times before, Dave marvelled at the idea that such a different scenery could be found only a few minutes from his own neighbourhood. He understood what was the basis of that difference, however. Dirk lived in an area built and designed for bachelors, he hadn’t moved upon accepting Dave into his life. Roxy and Rose, on the other hand, lived on a street where Dirk had to slow the car down, only to make sure not to run any children over.

“You know. Roxy always asks us to bring the dessert. Do you think we should try one day, instead of hunting down the most suspicious looking piece of meat?” Dave mused aloud as they pulled into the house’s driveway. He figured he couldn’t seem all too lost in his thoughts. If he did end up caving in to Rose’s requests, he wasn’t all that positive their father would accept a year in Haiti if Dave was setting himself up to be pensive and withdrawn.

His guardian seemed all but unaffected though, as he unbuckled himself, and, instead of answering, told him: “Make sure to call her Mom in there.”

He didn’t have to be told. He knew to keep that up in front of both of the Lalondes, and even over pesterchum with Rose, he made the effort to refer to their mother as just that. He followed Dirk out of the car, up the hill of the driveway, and to the familiar front door. Of course, he kept the bucket in his own arms. When he’d been younger, he’d been scared that if he was the one to present himself with the bag from McDonald’s, it would simply seem as if it had been his idea of an appropriate element for their dinner. By now, he knew it was well established that he didn’t touch the food they brought over, and had thus made a valid case for his innocence.

Rose was the one to open the door, even before they’d stopped before it. Dave found himself averting his eyes, unwilling to compare the neatness of her white collar over her black dress to his own attire, as he’d already prepared himself to do back in the car earlier.

“Ah, yes, I see you’ve brought Colonel Sanders’ precious recipe.” That was her opening line as she ushered them inside, but he knew immediately that there was no malicious element to her comment. Dave’s lips lifted slightly, it was true that if he never touched the food he brought over, Rose was always the first to take some, in surprising contrast. Despite this not being his home, he felt welcome into it as if it truly were.

A few pleasantries were exchanged on the way to the dining room, and it seemed clear to Dave that the only reason Rose wasn’t leading him away from the crowd of four was that she knew dinner was ready to be served. Indeed, soon they were all seated. Dave faced Rose, serving himself spoonful after spoonful of the pearled couscous dish prepared by his mother, and Rose faced Dave, taking a generous portion from the bucket the Strider duo had brought in. Dave made sure to answer any question Roxy had for him with enthusiasm he never showed towards Dirk – not at home, anyway – in a continued attempt he’d been making his whole life to come off as someone who felt fulfilled and accomplished. As for Rose, she made sure to answer any question brought by Dirk as evasively as possible, with a smirk that Dave was only just now studying with worry. He probably couldn’t contort his face to imitate that expression faithfully.

The kicks he received in the shins from Rose as he scooped the food into his mouth at a languorous pace did little to motivate him to eat quicker. In fact, the expression on her face made it all worth it as he finally finished his plate, set his cutlery down, and immediately offered to take care of the dishes and the tables.

“Mother, I have not seen Dave all week. Surely, I can steal him away from the two of you?” She was quicker to reply to Dave’s offer, by simply waving it down as she pushed her chair back and promptly stood up.

Dave put his hand to his chin instead, remaining seated and smiling. “I totally insist, it’s the least I can do. After all, we didn’t bring a dessert, for what has to be the thousandth time.”

Their mother laughed, sensing an unspoken battle between the two twins, but not too concerned in what that could be about. “I think Rose has missed you quite a bit this week, Dave. She’s been agitated all day long in anticipation.”

Rose had marched around the table as her mother had revealed that piece of information oh so sweetly, and had pulled Dave’s chair back for him. “That’s right, Dave. It’s been so lonely without you. Now, let’s go.”

Dave sent an alarmed look in his guardian’s direction, but Dirk did nothing more than shrug at the silent cry for help. Though those interactions had been lighthearted, as soon as he found himself alone with his twin, being dragged by the arm up the stairs, the sinking feeling he’d felt since waking up mid-afternoon was back with a vengeance.

Dave pointedly stared at the shape and appearance of Rose’s fingernails over the worn fabric of his hoodie as he repeatedly and subtly tried pulling his arm from her grasp. Admittedly, she wasn’t sporting any sort of manicure, though he’d definitely seen her wearing one in the past, but they had the allure of well presented nails. Dave? He would forget to clip his left nails, after completing the ones on his right hand, and would always make his hangnails worse. Rose’s hands gave the impression that she cared for her presentation; Dave’s hands gave the impression that he knew about being nervous. Having the same shape and size of hands didn’t change a thing about that.

He considered the things he was picking up on now, well, as easy to pick up on. All of the inadequacy he suffered through when putting himself up against his twin had absolutely nothing on the fact that their differences weren’t as invincible as they might appear to be upon first glance. Rose’s hand unwrapped from around his arm only once the door was shut behind them, inside her bedroom. He didn’t need to glance around to understand that Rose’s room would be hard for him to navigate. Rose would be escaping to another country, where it was expected that she could not recognise her surroundings, Dave however… Dave, however, only had the unmade bed as a point of reference and of similarity between their bedrooms.

“Well, take a seat.” Rose indicated the bed rapidly, heading towards her desk and retrieving a leather-bound notebook from the locked drawer of her desk. Dave knew she kept her fictional writings in a box under the bed, he knew because they’d spent a good number of summers laughing together as Dave made absurd notes and recommendations on the various chapters she’d start and abandon.

Dave thought that much was embarrassing, and yet it had never been embarrassing enough to keep under lock and key. The notebook she’d fetched and turned open to a given page just as she had repositioned her chair to face the bed had justified a higher level of confidentiality. Dave concentrated on the cracked leather of the cover instead of the difference in his and his twin’s posture. Their mother had only put Rose in ballet classes for a year, when she had been four, he certainly hadn’t thought that eleven years later she would still be sitting with her shoulders drawn back. He pushed his shoulders further forward, hoping Rose could start picking up on the impossibility of calling the two of them interchangeable, too.

Just as he opened his mouth, she drew a hand up, her palm flat and fingers spread out in a sign for him to not go any further with his thoughts, though her eyes were still drawn to the pages of her notebook. “Before you give me your final answer, I’d like it if we could go through a summary of the position we find ourselves in.”

Something about the way she had formulated her opening line hinted at the idea that she had rehearsed it beforehand, something Dave was familiar with, and something that softened his resolve enough to convince him not to put up too much of a fight yet. “I’m guessing it’s your version of the summary? Don’t really know how you’d feel about mine.”

The breath Rose took seemed charged. She did not offer any reply to Dave’s taunt, but rather put her index finger down on the first line, the first point of order, in a second sign that she’d meticulously planned out what she needed to say in order to appeal to Dave. He felt both empathetic and peeved. He couldn’t help but to put himself in that same position, fearful of rejection, but also couldn’t help but to get the feeling that her attempt was a clear one at manipulating him.

“So, the situation here is that my beloved friend, Kanaya Maryam, is a resident of Port-au-Prince, in Haiti.”

“You mean, your online girlfriend,” Dave stated blandly, not bothering to lower his voice as he tended to whenever he brought her up, though he did notice Rose’s eyes quickly dart towards her bedroom door.

“No, I mean my beloved friend. Who I happen to have met online. And who I might be interested in, yes, but who is not yet my girlfriend.” She interrupted herself to rub her forehead, seemingly in irritation, and Dave made a note he desperately hoped he wouldn’t need that Rose did that instead of scrunching up her face, like he tended to do. “Look, the point is to get to know her better. There’s only so far I can get with secret video chats. So, yes, I want to see her, because, yes, I like her.”

She moved her finger to the second line and Dave kept himself from commenting, counting on Rose to at least put in a good effort to plead her case. “So, yes, that was the second thing. Kanaya exists far away from here, and any hopes for a successful relationship will entail some time spent together, in person. And alright… Yes. The person keeping me from doing this is our mother.”

Dave again had the urge to interject, but decided against it. He could sense Rose’s rare frazzled state and he was unwilling to push too far. Instead, he busied himself by concentrating on the feeling of the bedcover under the palms of his hands. At home, all he had were sheets. He’d never even gotten a bed cover.

“As you know, she has a very stranger-danger mentality, and that is the main reason you are the only person who knows of Kanaya’s existence. So a simple vacation there is out of question. Though our family vacations are always great –and maybe I could play my cards right and make it our destination– as you know we never get time without the adults. As such, it would be a wasted trip…”

Her voice had picked up a slight tremble, the same one he could see in her hands. At this rate, he was going to say yes to anything she would ask of him. Oh, why couldn’t they have brought over a dessert? Just this once? At this time, they should have been eating a dessert, at the table downstairs, and Dave wouldn’t have had to face Rose’s request at all.

“So, this is what I’ve done. I’ve signed up for a humanitarian assistance program that has agreed to send me to Haiti for the next year. And it starts next week.”

The next week part was the new part for Dave, and it was just enough to convince him to say something, anything. “Then, ask to go? Tell mom this will be the best thing to add to your college applications. Tell her you care about people who are suffering. I don’t know? Tell her anything that’s less selfish than coming up with a plan where I have to pose as you for a year. Or like, just tell mom you’re going to practice your already flawless language skills. They speak french over there, don’t they?”

“French and Haitian Creole. But that’s besides the point, Dave…” She shut the notebook, but he noticed the tremble had gone away. She was swerving away from her prepared protocol, but it wasn’t out of desperation, it was out of boosted confidence. “That would work with dad. Which is what I’ll do. You don’t get that mom’s parenting style is… About as old-fashioned as they come. All she cares about is my perfect girl and student image. She wouldn’t let me go in a million years. If you asked dad? You’d go, no matter what.”

“Well, he’s not going to buy your act if you call him dad, that’s for sure,” Dave retorted, only feeling a tad bitter that she’d referred to Dirk as such so openly.

“Look, you don’t even have to worry about a thing. I’ve prepared and set everything up, you just have to live the good life. I promise.” She flipped her notebook open to a different page. “For example. I’ve been wearing the brown contacts for months now, no one will suspect a thing when you wear them too.”

Dave didn’t immediately have something to reply to that. He knew their distinctive difference was the colouring of their eyes, though neither one had escaped from the clutches of albinism. Violet still seemed less aggressive a colour than red was. A few months ago though, a new distinctive similarity he’d found between them was the fact that Rose had expressed her self-consciousness when it came to her eyes. That had been the reason she’d given for adopting coloured contact lenses. Dave felt strangely betrayed. Though he’d never said a word about his feelings towards his own eyes, he’d still counted that as an amazing thing to have in common with his twin.

“That was like, back in February? Why didn’t you say a word to me about it sooner?” He knew he felt grateful about her maintained silence though, he wouldn’t have wanted the sense of pressure he’d felt in the last week alone, drawn out for months on end. He still wasn’t feeling great about the eye thing though.

“And I haven’t practiced violin at home in months either. I’ve told mom I’ve stopped in order to better perform in school. So you won’t be expected to give live concerts nightly.”

Dave narrowed his eyes, unsure of how that reply could have qualified as a response rather than just a further suggestion that she could have alerted him half a year ago.

“And I’ve postponed our hair appointment as many times as possible so we can have hair long enough to actually be able to swap hairstyles!”

His mouth fell open at that. He hadn’t even really noticed how the appointment had kept being pushed back week after week. Granted, he’d always felt it a bit silly that he and Rose had to attend all those sorts of things together. Same dentist appointments, same medical appointments, and, yes, same hair appointments.

“So you’re telling me, you want us to switch this Friday? That’s sort of fucking soon, you know?”

“I did tell you it was a week from now,” Rose answered briefly, turning to store her notebook back into its rightful spot, and proceeding to joining Dave on the bed soon after. “Friday, yes. I’ve booked my flight for Saturday, I’ve set it up so you have the least time possible filling in for me. Happy?”

“No,” was his automatic answer. “No, I’m not. I mean, you’re basically telling me I have to be the one to file in the request to go off to some weird-ass charity adventure. ‘Cause like, I’m sorry, but no matter how much everyone is convinced that Dirk doesn’t give a single fuck about me, I still think he won’t be that lenient if I ask him to go off to some exotic half-island for the next year, the day right before it happens.”

“Dave. Has he ever turned you down in the past?”

He pressed his lips together. Rose had taken a seat immediately next to him on the bed. Their elbows were brushing one against the other, and even though both of them were wearing sleeves, he knew that their exposed skin would once again tell the difference between them. His elbows were in a constant scraped state from doing planks on his building’s concrete rooftop, upon request from his parental figure. Rose’s elbows didn’t tell that story, and Rose’s elbows would never tell that story.

He answered, dully, “No,” knowing full well the reason why that was the only answer that could ring true. He didn’t want to ask too much of his father, and as such he rarely asked anything at all. It wasn’t as if Dirk had asked for a baby in the first place, it was just that there had been one too many. And the one too many was Dave.

“And he has no reason at all to say no to this. You haven’t attended school a day in your life, you can do a year of homeschooling anywhere in the world. You’re agreeing with all of this, right?” She was losing her sense of composure, and it didn’t bid too well for Dave. It meant she already knew of her victory; she knew that where Dave was afraid to be told ‘no’, he was just as afraid to give that final ‘no’.

“Not really? You’re like what, the highest performing student of your year? And your school is what, the most prestigious one in the city? Doesn’t really make sense that you think I’ll be pulling a convincing Rose when, as you said, I haven’t attended school a day in my life.”

It made sense, he knew he was making sense. How Rose was finding sense in her position was beyond him. But she typically tended towards reasonable, logical thought processes, so this development could only mean she wanted this just badly enough to convince herself that what she was constructing with her words was something it wasn’t.

“Maybe not, but we’ll do something about it once we get there. For now, I feel safe knowing that we both have the same head on our shoulders, and that you can pull off anything I have in the past.”

Dave quickly tried to run through the information he’d been given thus far, only to conclude that the unknown unknowns were greater than the known unknowns. The uncertainty of the situation was pushing him closer to a great emotional vulnerability, and he could only wish that it would be limited to a few seconds.

“Well, I like to think we’re not the same person, sometimes,” he confessed almost bitterly. Though it was true he often regarded Rose as the better one, and never the other way around, he still felt worse about the idea that he was utterly interchangeable. Being interchangeable with a better version of oneself was not ideal, he did not believe so.

“Dave, come on! I would do this for you in a heartbeat, I wouldn’t hesitate. Besides, I’m the one making a gamble in this situation. I’ll be scoring perfect marks at your end of the year ministry exams, but I’m the one whose marks will most likely suffer. Why are you being so difficult?”

That’s when Dave fully understood that he wasn’t the only one pushed towards vulnerability. Maybe the cause was uncertainty for Rose, too; uncertainty about what Dave’s answer would turn out to be. He was sensing, however, that it must have been a desperate wish to bring her plan to fruition. She wanted to meet this girl badly enough to show some emotion in her request.

Dave didn’t care about school things. In fact, all he ever knew from his ministry exams was if he’d gotten a pass or a fail. It wasn’t the big bonus Rose was promising it would be, because he really didn’t care all that much about that stuff. He cared about being himself. He cared that he was able to spend entire days getting lost in a new interest, he cared that he had all of the time in the world to learn and to discover things that seemed intriguing. That was the freedom he’d always received, and the freedom he would be unable to maintain in the following year.

He turned to hop off of the bed, taking a single moment to consider turning his twin sister down. If this is what she wanted, she could go for it herself. That’s how it had always worked in his life, and there was no reason for hers to be any different. Instead, he took a deep breath, facing her bedroom wall and her framed award certificates, as he gave his final answer.

“You better put that dumb notebook of yours to work then. I’m not entering this blind. I want you to write down really clear schedules for me. And your feelings on this and on that. I don’t even know, I’m just going to need more than your looks, I need convincing information. They might not peg me as me if I slip up, but they might peg you as having some personal problems if your personality takes a drastic twist.”

That was something he knew was bound to happen, regardless. Maybe they were bound by blood, but vacations away from the country were the only times where he spent entire days with her. He couldn’t predict her every reaction, but he knew he was going to have to improve on that, and quite quickly too.

Indeed, he didn’t predict that she would follow him off the side of the bed, would wrap her arms around his middle, and would hug him tightly to her front. She didn’t tend to hand out free hugs. Dave deflated a bit, wondering if maybe she knew him better than he knew her. She’d given him the best sort of hug, where it wasn’t expected and in fact was impossible for him to reciprocate.

“Thank you. I’ll bring in my homework Friday, at our appointment.” Though she tried to laugh it off, Dave considered that maybe she’d hugged him in that manner for another benefit too. It was the best way to disguise any tears that Dave’s answer might have brought to her eyes.

He felt too weak to voice an answer to that. It had sounded as if he’d accepted the task willingly, and he certainly had meant for it to come out that way, and yet… Yet, he was still unsure he could do it. He supposed he could only take it one day at a time, after all he’d soon be doing just that for an entire year.

They stayed in the half-embrace for some time, until, finally, Dave found the strength of his voice again, the voice that would soon be considered to be Rose’s. “Maybe we should head down, huh? Would seem pretty suspicious if we spend too much time together, and present ourselves as emotional wrecks right after.”

So it was agreed that Rose would lead Dave back downstairs and that the night would come to an end soon. Though that did not keep Rose from whispering a few more words of thanks on the way down the stairs. Dave said nothing, but he soon wished he had.

Their parents were in the living room now, Roxy speaking excitedly, Dirk nodding enthusiastically, the portrait of the best friends they’d always been. Dave could testify that Rose had shown him some photo albums which featured their parents behaving in the same way at an age much lesser. He could make the guess that only such close friends could stand such a weirdly broken-up family unit.

“Back so soon?” Dirk was the one to cut off Roxy’s flow to alert her of the twins’ arrival. And before Dave could think of any sort of reply, Rose had stepped forward, and had successfully pushed Dave closer to past the point of no return.

“Yes. Dave told me that there’s something he’s nervous to tell you, and I suggested you two could retire home early, so he could tell you and ease his thoughts.”

She spoke with confidence, with none of the emotional frailness she’d portrayed just up the stairs. Dave didn’t rule it out as an act, he could tell her genuineness. But he could tell that now, she was making sure he held his end of the bargain. He had to ask about leaving the country for her, and she was making sure he was going to get to it soon.

“Ease your thoughts? What’s going on, Dave?” Roxy exclaimed immediately, an overly exaggerated sense of worry displayed on her features.

Dave dully glanced from one parent to the other. Of course, Dirk seemed totally unaffected, but his longtime best friend had tensed up right away. Maybe Rose had had a point with who would turn her down, and who wouldn’t. And it seemed now as she had successfully pegged Dave down as someone who was completely unable to turn her down.

“Mother, I can tell you tonight. We probably should let them get home though.”

“Looks like we’re getting kicked out, kid,” his guardian voiced the same impression Dave had been getting, and motioned for him to follow.

As they stepped out of the living room, Dave pictured how terribly it would go if ever he were to escape Rose’s bedroom in the middle of the night in order to get a glass of water. He’d never be able to navigate himself throughout this layout in the darkness of the night, he’d probably walk right into those luxurious, Victorian styled sofas, and fall to a deadly concussion. Or he could hope that Rose was one to turn on the lights when guiding herself during nighttime. He realised, though he couldn’t put a stop to it, that he was starting to freak out about little details that no one was likely to pick up on.

Soon, he was seated in the passenger seat of the night blue 2000 Hyundai Accent, hoping as he often did, that the motor wouldn’t start up and that they could swap the model in for something as alluring as the brand new Mercedes model Rose got driven around in. He’d asked for his guardian to unlock the car before giving his goodbyes to the other half of his family. He decided to shut his eyes rather than to observe the goodbyes that were easily exchanged even with him safely away in the car. The night had taken over the skies already, the radio would probably come up with that new Katy Perry song as soon as it would be turned on, and he was supposed to find some graceful way to ask for something that didn’t really hold any meaning for him.

His eyes only opened once he heard the car’s door shut. Rose had gone back inside from the looks of it, maybe already online to tell her pseudo girlfriend that the coast was clear for their plan, but Roxy had remained outside. Her arms were crossed, and he soon found himself avoiding her gaze. She liked to play the part of the concerned parent, but he was never going to buy that act.

Katy Perry’s new hit about a night full of regrettable moments was not the first song to play, nor was it the second, but it was the third one to play on their journey back home. Which meant that it would be cut in half, as a trip between the two homes, without detours, equated as much as two and a half bad pop songs.

The break in music is all that it takes for Dave’s sneakers to hit the pavement of the underground parking of the complex facing theirs. An apartment building without indoor parking hadn’t been a problem for his father until it had been, but it had definitely become a problem before Dave’s existence had been one. He wondered why they hadn’t yet moved across the street, but it wasn’t anything worthy of mention or of question.

“So, what’s got you nervous, Dave?”

That had been the whole reason why the cessation of the radio’s sounds was bright enough of a green light for him to hit the ground running. Instead, he simply shut the door quietly behind him, and waited for his father to join him on their way up the stairs to answer.

“Nothing I can’t text you about later when I’m busy not sleeping.” He figured that was an easier lie to swallow for Dirk. He was used to dealing with his teenaged boy who preferred communicating over text when only a room away, and who could find any excuse to avoid sleeping through the night. He wasn’t used to a teenaged boy who wanted to go make a difference in the world overseas, and Dave severely doubted there was anything of him he’d be able to recognise in the upcoming request.

He supposed if Dirk turned him down, then he’d be free from this whole deal.

He supposed if he let Dirk turn him down, he’d be failing Rose. He’d be failing Rose’s only wish she’d directed towards him so far.

So he kept both his pesterchum account and his bedroom door shut for the remaining hours of the night. He pretended and even tried to convince himself that he was cleaning up his room, when he knew very well that he was making some sort of inventory, taking everything into account that he would be missing from his life in a very close future. Rose too would go without her usual possessions. He could be as strong as she was, somewhere within him there was the potential for that; and even if that too was a lie, he could repeat it as a mantra regardless.

Rose would have confronted Dirk face-to-face. Maybe it was reassuring that he was able to tell which actions Rose might take, but it wasn’t all that reassuring that he wasn’t able to execute them for himself. Instead, he’d reasoned with himself that his best chance was to contact him via pestering, somewhere just past four in the morning.

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 4:13 --

TG: so
TG: what do you reckon is angelina jolies best work to date
TT: I think Tomb Raider goes without saying, but surely what you’ve got in mind is something like Girl Interrupted.
TG: no clue what that one is about
TG: but ill just safely assume thats an insult
TT: Suit yourself.
TG: but what about beyond borders
TG: it was a few years ago
TG: or quite a bit ago
TG: do you know what im talking about give me a sign youre alive
TT: Sorry, trying to survive the trailer for this godawful movie rec you’ve just given me.
TG: yeah i admit i couldnt get through it either earlier when i looked it up
TG: but thats the first name google spat out when i asked for movies that dealt with humanitarian work
TG: i thought it was good enough to deliver the message
TT: What message would that be, exactly?
TG: nothing really
TG: but i signed up for humanitarian work
TG: i guess?
TG: and the flight is booked for saturday
TG: and its a year long deal
TG: and thats the whole thing that needed to be said
TT: Well, geez, Dave. I’m awfully touched I was included in your decision process.
TG: no problem dude
TG: feel free to go catch your zs now that you know
TG: i know thats why you were still up
TT: Don’t think we’re not talking about this tomorrow.
TG: but i get to go right
TT: Sounds to me like you’ve made that decision, yeah.
TG: thanks bro

-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 4:47 --

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 4:58 –-

TG: i asked the big man
TG: or more like i told the big man i guess
TG: or told him over text
TG: this is my preferred method of communication for future reference
TG: i guess thats pretty convenient for you huh
TG: no awkward and stiff video chats for you only but the sweet texting palooza
TG: though i guess you could always go with the ive got no internet access route
TG: i wouldnt rec that though cause i know i need to talk to you anyway
TG: and your mom listens in on convos right
TG: dont want her thinking youve developed the habit of speaking to yourself
TG: thats obviously my turf
TG: seeing as im doing it right fucking now
TG: i hear the birds chirping so ill take that as my cue to take a bow
TG: just dont forget to find me as much info as possible ok
TG: still dont think this is all as easy as you make it out to be
TG: i want you to feel like you can count on me though
TG: maybe thats the late night crazy talk speaking though
TG: ill catch you on the flipside
TG: on friday
TG: love you or whatever

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 5:12 –-

He’d stayed off of his account until that fated Friday. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d hoped to achieve in doing so, however if it was to escape eventually feeling overwhelmed, it had spectacularly backfired. He figured, on that Friday morning, as he’d finally logged on and addressed the tsunami of purple text that had awaited him that perhaps smaller, irregular waves and splashes of purple words over the course of the week might have been easier to manage.

He’d always believed himself to be more of an expert when it came to wordy and transparent messages left in his sibling’s absence and addressed to his sibling. Rose, perhaps, was more accustomed to leaving a brief and composed request for Dave to contact her back. Her avalanche of messages was unprecedented, and as expected, heavy and condensed with information for which Dave actually did need to consider carefully and to read attentively.

In fact, he almost hadn’t been able to make his eleven in the morning appointment, as he’d been busy completing the reading and completing what preparations the message advised him to make. In the end he’d rushed out of the apartment without so much as an effort to tie his shoelaces, or even an effort to type out a single line of reply. He was ready to bet that was going to set Rose off; he hadn’t been oblivious to the growing anxiety in Rose’s tone throughout the days of the week pesterchum had indicated at interval. He had half the mind to feel guilty, and half the mind to recognise the fact that she could have called him up at any point in time, which she hadn’t.

Being close to late might have been the incentive he hadn’t known he’d needed to get through the day, to get through the switch. He’d forgotten all about his mind’s obsession with the infinite amount of traits and of details that didn’t match up between the two of them by the time he’d arrived at the hair salon, a small quiet chime of a bell announcing his entrance. He was much busier toning down his eagerness to see just how agitated Rose would look than he was remembering the heavy feelings of inadequacy he refused to admit had always haunted him to some extent.

Rose did not look agitated. Clearly, the week had only ruffled Dave’s feathers, and Rose had remained even featherless, so to speak. She hadn’t even turned for the chime of the bell, but rather had remained invested in her conversation with the person he knew must have been the one she had booked for the appointment. He could make out the sketches over the surface of his work station. She’d brought sketches of the hairstyles she wanted, for the both of them. If the switch was anything like a wedding; then Rose was not the bride who would fret over every worry, but rather the calm and collected wedding planner. Dave? Dave was bound to be the guy who gets cold feet, he could sense it now.

Just as he sensed it, he moved to turn on his heel and to take that long walk back home, but always with that same quality he’d perceived in his sister and her would-be flawless planning of both a wedding and of this terrible situation, Rose took control just as he’d been about to give up his. He thought it a bit unfair that she had yet to turn her eyes and to see him, yet, he knew, had still known before he had that he was about to bolt and to give up.

“Dave, come here.” She’d only just put her hand up to entice him to do so. But that alone was enough. Just that dainty line of her wrist reminded him that his body followed the same line, though it was often hidden behind the tension he carried.

The idea that the shape of his bones was the same shape as Rose’s bones shouldn’t have been convincing enough, shouldn’t even have rung all that true with him in the first place, but nothing more had to be said or done to get him to cross the salon and to take a seat at whoever’s workstation was adjacent to the one belonging to the man who allegedly could work enough magic on both of their heads of short and pale hair. It wasn’t even their usual hairdresser, in fact, he was under the impression that none of the salon’s other hairdressers were even around at all. He couldn’t help but to feel that what they were about to try to pull off wasn’t very close at all to the epitome of ethical, and that the emptiness of the room was reflecting just that. He would pick ‘wrong’ over ‘secretive’ to describe the ordeal at any hour of the day.

“I don’t know about this, Rose…” Rose’s conversation hadn’t stopped once Dave had taken his seat, but now that he’d broken his stunned silence, both she and the nameless hairdresser had paused.

He recognised something hesitant in Rose’s gaze, and it was soon confirmed with her spoken words. “We were just going over the plan while waiting for you. Jim said he’s ecstatic to help us pull off our first prank on our parents. Unbelievable how we’ve never pretended to be each other before, huh? But it’s a normal twin thing, Dave, no need to look so guilty.”

So, that’s what they were playing at. They were playing it off as normal childish twins with normal predictable parents trying to pull off a normal boring prank. Of course, they weren’t going to bring in any fucked up family dynamics, or any plans to escape the country to see a girl Rose had met online barely a year ago. It was just some normal twin switching fun.

“Not guilty. Just nervous about ruining my hair over a dumb prank. You’ll go under the scissors first though, right?”

He’d decided to play along, but he was blatant in his lack of commitment and of mischief. He was aware it was some last resort tactic. He could play up his terrible acting skills, and convince Rose to jump ship before it was too late. Rose chose to disengage from that trick though, instead slipping her two sketches into the famous secret notebook he’d failed to notice before.

“Sure thing, brother. Wait until you see what I do to your head.” She’d stood up, ready to march over to the stations where hair was washed before cuts, and had handed the notebook over to Dave.

“Just call me sister,” Dave mumbled distractedly, fishing out the two sketches from Rose’s notebook of secret plans. He’d gotten the message though; this was his to keep. This was Rose’s version of analytical homework, and Dave wasn’t going to complain about it. If Rose thought everything he needed to know could be found in such a compact document, then he could only believe as much.

The truth was that Dave couldn’t tell which hairstyle was meant for him. As there were no names on the sketches, and as both were different from the styles the both of them typically wore, he was a bit at a loss. He hadn’t thought it was urgent enough to follow after Rose like a lost sheep, but in the end he found himself walking over, both sketches in one hand, notebook safely kept in his left one. He only approached as close as needed for his voice to carry, watching the line of Rose’s throat, her head leaned back into the basin in use. Wondering, if his own throat still had as clean of a line as hers did.

“Whose is whose? Our haircuts right now are way more obvious…” He definitely couldn’t manage to figure out which hairstyle would be most suited atop a girl’s head, the same applied to a boy’s head, really.

“I’m giving you an undercut. And by you, I mean my current hair.” Dave glanced at the two smalls squares of paper. “There’s this senior at my school, her hair’s bleached and part of her hair is shaved. Both those things are against the dress code, they’ve let her keep the dye but she has to wear this bandana as a headband to cover it up. It really looks great though, this is pretty much my one chance to get one as a teenager.”

Dave shrugged, ready to march back to his perch, but stopping himself once he’d observed his own sketch a little longer. He glanced suspiciously at the hairdresser, who hadn’t seemed to pick up why it would be problematic for Rose to get a hairstyle banned from her school just in order to pull off a little joke, before asking a second question.

“What about mine?”

“Yours?” Her disembodied voice once again rose from where her head rested.

“Yeah, my hair.”

“A pixie cut? One a bit like the one Emma Watson’s been wearing recently. Did you know, she chopped her hair in relation to a new chapter of her life commencing? It could be symbolic for you too.”

He scrunched up his face, instead of rubbing his forehead, like he knew Rose would do instead. There was a heavy implication in her tone that a new chapter of his life was needed. Why it was that she had decided that for him, he didn’t really care about. He didn’t like it, and that’s all he bothered addressing in his thoughts. She had no need to make such an implication.

“Yeah, but I don’t have ten years of child acting in a magical school to make up for.”

“It’s feminine, but boyish, as well as something I could see on myself. What more do you want me to say, Dave?” She’d sat back up before replying, seeming to sense the flow of the hairdresser’s movements, and acting before his guidance and instructions. With the wet hair framing her face, she looked more like him, like when he’d catch his reflection in a mirror after a shower. He wondered if, perhaps, she’d look even more like him once the hair would be shorter, though from the looks of the sketches he would still end up with the shortest hair of the two. Well, in comparison to the top of Rose’s hair, anyway.

There wasn’t more he wanted to hear, in fact, there wasn’t more he wanted to say either. He let the duo walk past him again, determined to seem unaffected. It was hard. He ended up standing, eyes lost in the fog of his mind, both notebook and drawings useless in his hold. He knew he wasn’t going home tonight. He knew he wouldn’t be using his bed in quite some time, as long as Rose’s plan worked in any case. And he knew Rose’s bed covers were something he only hoped for before, and yet he did not feel enthused with the knowledge that he would be resting underneath them for a long period of time.

Eventually, when he did sit back down, he didn’t offer a moment of his time to use his eyes to witness Rose’s first phase of transformation. He’d stored their planned hairstyles away, and had cracked the notebook open to the first page. It was merely the table of contents, but it was enough to draw him in. Schedules, things she would absolutely turn down, things she would absolutely never turn down, her most frequent lexicon, her stances on controversial issues, topics in which she’d keep pushing, topics in which she’d back down… It was a lot to absorb, and maybe it would have been less to take in had he taken it one page at a time. But he remained stuck to the first page alone.

He didn’t even feel much like looking away once it was announced that Rose’s hair had been completed. Figuring they were already acting suspicious enough, he did look her straight in the eye as she walked up to him. She still looked like herself, she still looked like Rose. Perhaps, it had given her an alternative edge which had barely scraped away at her classical veneer, but it was something different. He figured that, once she took out the contact lenses she didn’t need at all in the first place, both her intense eye colour and cool haircut would surely just make her all that much more attractive to her soon-to-be girlfriend. He pursed his lips together. Ironically enough, thoughts that led him to believing Rose to be selfish only made him feel a shade more selfish himself.

“Dave is that you?” He was supposed to pronounce those words mockingly, but they rung with something much more negative, something that did not ring as a good omen for his role in the plan.

Instead of getting lost in that feeling, as he often did with most feelings really, he concentrated his energy on guessing their hairdresser’s movements, as Rose had. It felt unnatural, but then again… It didn’t feel much different from how Dave usually held himself. He almost got lost in a different feeling then, as he sat down and leaned his head back, notebook clutched tightly between both of his hands, the feeling that maybe he wasn’t entirely himself on a daily basis either. It wasn’t worth thinking of.

He wasn’t scared to get his hair cut. Just as he’d sensed when he’d first seen the drawings, their styles wouldn’t necessarily look bad on one another. It didn’t seem to mark a definite swap in Dave’s mind. He wouldn’t be ashamed of walking home with that sort of haircut, in fact, he was looking forward to it. Not that he’d ever tell Rose that a new chapter in his life wasn’t the worst idea he’d heard. Rose too, clearly looked comfortable with the cuttingly different style. Maybe it was that trust and comfort he felt in the change that made him confident enough to read through some pages of the notebook during the cut. It did not matter that strands of his hair fell onto the pages. It did not matter that the hairdresser, the one named Jim or so he believed to remember, could have stolen a glance of the sentences that made it very clear that this wasn’t an afternoon’s worth of a prank. It did not matter that he could see Rose fiddling with her left earlobe in his peripheral vision, a habit she had when nervous that Dave would soon be copying. What mattered was that with each snip of the scissors, Dave felt slightly better. He didn’t feel unwell, despite the extreme change coming up in his life.

And when the notebook was shut, haircut complete with fancy hair products and the likes, and he could raise his eyes to meet his reflection; he still looked like himself. He looked like himself, but at the same time, he looked like he was someone able to do this. He passed a hand through his shortened hair, and his lips tugged only once upwards.

“Looks great,” Rose told him, both hands resting over his shoulders as she appeared in the reflection as well. Their eyes met in the mirror, and this time Dave’s smile was a full one.

“You look good too. That Kanaya girl won’t know what’s hit her.”

His smile included teeth only once Rose’s facade cracked enough to force her to put a hand up over her face to dissimilate some of the embarrassment playing over it. He knew how it was. Everyone believed him to need more positive reinforcement than his sister did, and though the rate at which he received it was inconsistent, it always seemed a bit more forced when it was directed towards him. Rose was different, but Rose certainly would notice honest compliments coming from Dave, because there were very few.

The moment at the cash register passed painfully slowly, slowed further down with the plain obviousness of something a bit more malicious going on than a harmless ‘haha we swapped’ gag hanging in the air. It was followed by more awkward shuffling into the sole bathroom of the salon, tension badly concealed with nervous laughter.

“We can still back out.” Those were the only words Rose offered after a good moment of silence had passed.

“Just teach me how to put in those contacts.”

And that alone proved to be a frustration filled challenge. Dave wasn’t quite sure once he met his eyes in the mirror that all of that blinking, tearing up, and hisses of pain were worth the possibility of passing off as a person with plain eyes. He vaguely wondered if anyone would think his hair was bleached what with those dark eyes, and if they’d make him dye his hair based off the dress code Rose had mentioned earlier. He remembered that he was supposed to be Rose a few seconds later, and remembered the staff must have known of the albinism issue already.

He understood what was truly bothering him once Rose had removed her own contacts and had picked up his shades. The shades he’d bought for himself on his thirteenth birthday, once worn by Ben Stiller, and the ones he’d counted on to create his own trademark. It’s not that he had come up with any specific reasons to not want to be like his guardian… But he definitely wanted to become someone different, no matter how many little steps that took. He didn’t exactly want Rose walking away with his shades. They’d probably remain packed up for most of her trip, seeing as she would have no need to pretend to be anyone she wasn’t.

He turned his back to her, loosely crossing his arms. “Alright… I guess you should direct this clothes swap thing, ‘cause there’s no way I want to see you butt-naked.”

“I can’t imagine it would be much different from seeing yourself butt-naked,” she replied, though she also imitated Dave’s stance and put her back to his. “I suppose we have to deal with underwear first off.”

“We just keep our own underwear, seems straightforward to me.”

“And in which universe would it not be obvious that you are wearing boxer shorts under a pencil skirt?”

“The universe where I don’t want to put on underwear that was pressed to your crotch a second ago.”

She sighed, but it was not a sigh of irritation, perhaps more a sigh of impatience. As she had pulled out the contacts of her purse earlier, she now pulled out a different pair of underwear from it.

“I didn’t think so, Dave, who do you take me for? I brought you a pair, and I’ll keep mine on beneath your jeans, that way there’s no need for either one of us to wear fabric warmed by the other’s genitalia. I wouldn’t want that either, shocking, I know.”

Dave looked over his shoulder, then turned to face Rose and the stupid light blue colour of what she’d pulled out of her purse. “Are you sure anyone would even notice if my underwear line was any different anyway?”

“You’re not bringing any of your possessions at my house, and that’s that. You’ll just have to make do with what can be provided by my own closet, which is a lot, so stop fretting.”

He fixed his eyes on the dumb darker blue bow centred in the front of the panties he was expected to put on as he unbuttoned his own dark jeans, the ones that were ripped at the knees, by wear and not by fashion. There were worse things, he reminded himself, Rose really could have demanded to switch their current underwear. And though Rose did put a hand over her lips to stifle a giggle when his jeans dropped, he still figured he could have made a sillier choice than his underwear featuring South Park characters.

He handed the jeans over to Rose and she stepped out of the small heeled shoes she was wearing in order to step into the presented piece. He was impressed with her manoeuvring, managing to put the jeans on without removing her skirt, only removing that article of clothing once the jeans were zipped up. She handed the skirt over expectantly and Dave merely stared at it once it was in his own hands.

“Now you,” she urged him softly. “Put it on over your cartoon underwear, then take that off and I’ll make it disappear, and put on the right underwear, like I did.”

Dave crossed his feet self-consciously, still staring at the skirt he’d been offered. “I can do that. But you’re still turning around.”

He expected another sigh from his sister, but when none came and she simply turned around, he was quick to smile and to get to work. It did feel like work, he was betting he would manage to rip the skirt apart before ever managing to attempt putting it on.

“You need new jeans, you know that? These ones are too loose around the waist, don’t reach your ankles, and also, as you may have noticed, are torn at the knees.”

Dave shrugged, struggling now to switch underwear without feeling too squeamish about the whole thing. “I like them a lot. I can just pull them up when they start coming down. And, I wear these high-ankled Chuck Taylors when I have them on. And, so many people pay extra money to have this exact same torn up fashion. It’s no big deal.”

He ran his hands over the front of the skirt, trying to smooth it down. He sure as hell didn’t like wearing something that wouldn’t allow for him to throw a kick were Dirk to propose a katana fight, but he figured that if he saw through their gimmicks tonight and recognised Dave, he would simply beat the shit out of Dave instead of even proposing a fight. He took a calming breath, but the image of that outcome wouldn’t leave his mind.

“Ok. Stay turned around, I’m passing you my hoodie.”

He zipped it down, quickly removed it, and turned around as soon as Rose accepted it. He frowned at the wall as he waited. Rose was wearing a white blouse today, and he’d worn his black hoodie that would zip up. Surely that was symbolic in some manner, that he was switching from the darkness to the light. It made him feel a tad better, but not at all better enough to react well when Rose tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the blouse over, complete with a second item of clothing.

“Oh, hell no, Rose. I’m not wearing your training bra. You’re as flat as I am, like hell this is necessary.”

Rose eyebrows lowered, and Dave made note of that too, as he already had made note of many of her facial reactions. “We’re fifteen, Dave. I’d be expected to wear one even if my chest was concave.”

“No one’s going to notice.”

“You’re wrong. A lot of people will notice. It’ll fit you as well as it fits me anyway, don’t be childish.”

Despite her warning, he did end up feeling very much like a child as she had to coach him on how to actually put the bra on. It wasn’t a lesson he’d expected to be taught in his lifetime. Neither did he expect Rose fixing the blouse for him and tucking it into the skirt.

“Seriously? You told me not to be childish, now you’re dressing me?”

“I dress well, Dave. I just have to fix a few things,” she said it naturally, as if it bore no insult.

He thought though that it was a bit insulting that zipping up his jeans, and then zipping up his hoodie, was all she needed to compare to him.

He’d almost walked out of there with his untied Converse on his feet, but she soon reminded him, and soon he was the one with the slight edge of height on Rose with the small heel of the formal black shoes.

She adjusted her shades in the mirror, but he’d decided he didn’t really want to meet his reflection just yet. Though, finally, he could pick on something of Rose as she pulled her sleeves up with determination.

“Hey, no. I seriously always wear sleeves, you can’t pull them up like that.”

She was fast to pull them back down, but there was something in the moment that gave Dave a bad feeling. That small feeling and warning that he might just miss being himself. He didn’t word it, he simply kept following as Rose lead him out of the small bathroom. He breathed in deeply once out of there. Rose called out to the hairdresser as Dave licked his lips, wondering if they needed to be a shade darker for his presence to be even the slightest bit feminine.

“Will it work, Jim?” She simply asked the worker, keeping a passive expression as she stood tall next to Dave. He’d have to correct her on that once it was just the two of them again, he didn’t stand straight. Well, he did by himself, if only for his back to feel better, but around people? The slouch was mandatory. He made sure to stand up straight himself now that he remembered such a detail.

The hairdresser cracked a smile. “I say, so far, it’s a success.”

More was exchanged between Rose and Jim, but Dave became distracted by the reflection he caught from far away, from one of the workstations. He felt like someone had coloured him in. He still didn’t see Rose in himself, but he definitely didn’t see the pale presence he imagined himself to have. He passed a hand nervously through his shortened hair, and promised himself not to do it again. Rose would curl a strand of her hair with a single finger of hers; she wouldn’t move her entire hand through the entire length of her hair.

He was going to follow Rose out of the store, but in the end, he decided to cut her off and to open the door for her instead. She seemed to understand right away, and without Dave ever needing to tell her what he’d kept in mind earlier, her posture slouched a bit more, and her hands disappeared within the confines of the hoodie’s pockets.

Their mother was throwing a goodbye dinner for Dave, now Rose, tonight. And that was the plan. For the two twins to be present, and to be convincing in their behaviour and presentation. And then, on the next day, the plan was for Dave to keep it together and to say his goodbyes to Rose at the airport. Beyond that, Dave just needed to play the game by himself. Nothing too complicated.

But it seemed a bit more complicated on their long walk home as Rose reiterated all of the advice she had typed up for Dave over the course of the week. Dave would have much rather have stopped on a bench somewhere, and have pulled out the notebook from the purse he was now the one carrying. He would much rather face the entirety of the information he needed right now, rather than taking Rose’s advice bit by bit.

“Don’t forget, and this is a dead giveaway. Do not look up when the name ‘Dave’ is called, make sure you look up when the name ‘Rose’ is called. Not just tonight, at school too. Your name is supposed to be the most attention grabbing word for your mind, so don’t forget it.”

It was at this particular tip that Dave had to voice at least some of his feelings. Maybe it was the way she had worded things, worded it so imperatively, as if Dave’s name truly needed to be Rose. He got it, of course, it was exactly how he should be holding himself in order to avoid complications, he couldn’t hold that against Rose. Yet…

“I feel a little strange, Rose… I don’t know. You get to be yourself as soon as the wheels of your plane take off. Sure, like, you’ll have to be me whenever you call home, or anything, but overall… Dunno. I won’t be getting a break from being Rose. I don’t really know how I’m going to pull it off.”

He saw Rose tilt her chin up, but he wasn’t yet able to recognise what sort of emotion such a gesture was born from. It would be useful to know, but for right now, he was more interested in the answer she could give him.

“You’re still Dave on the inside. Only the Dave I know would do this for me.” She stopped herself from going on, but he could tell she decided to go with her initial wording in the end. “I know I said I’d do the same for you, but I’m not sure I truly would. I mean, Dave, you’re the most selfless person I’ve met.”

He hung his head. He knew Rose wouldn’t. But he figured that he could just play the part once they walked through Rose’s front door. For now, this was the only way he knew how to reply to such a compliment, well, any compliments really. There was a strong urge to prove her wrong, to show her how selfish he really could be, but instead, he let the warmth in his chest spread to his stomach. Though it wasn’t a compliment he believed he deserved, it was a strong compliment just the same.

Their mother wasn’t around when they arrived home, or rather, the place Rose had always called home, and the place Dave would now need to call home. It suited them well to hide out in Rose’s room. Dave read Rose’s catalogued advice as he sat on her bed, instructed by his sister on just how to keep his knees and ankles together to achieve the ladylikeness he wasn’t so sure Rose was really even about in the first place. Rose chatted away over pesterchum with Kanaya, Dave had instructed her to rest on her back, knees drawn up, and to rest the laptop over her stomach and propped up against her thighs. At least, he knew he was really about that stance.

He knew Rose didn’t need much advice to sell herself as Dave Strider for a sole night, but it gave him the distinctive impression that they were on the same level if he could answer her advice with some of his own.

They did not exchange many words at all. And Dave wondered, though he was plagued with worries related to how he would survive the year, and though his twin was sure to be plagued with worries of meeting the girl she was currently communicating with, if Rose was at all preoccupied with missing him. They were surely some of the most distant twins when it came down to it. They hadn’t lived in the same home a day of their lives, the longest continuous period of time they’d spent side by side was in the womb, but… But when he looked over at her, though she had borrowed his stance, though she was wearing his shades and clothes, he was taken with the fear of spending an entire year without having her physically close to him.

They both heard Roxy Lalonde come home, and they both remained quiet about it. In fact, it was only about half an hour after her arrival that she came knocking at Rose’s bedroom door. The knock was gentle, and she pushed the door open in a motion Dave thought to be almost delicate.

“You two kids were so quiet up here, I didn’t even know—” She interrupted herself and Dave suddenly worried that maybe he’d done wrong to stare at the door before she’d come in. That had seemed to be alike Rose, his twin always seemed to sense happenings in advance… Rose, however, had kept her eyes glued to her chat client, and Dave wondered strongly if he should be imitating that.

He couldn’t seem to look away though, even when his mother’s lips shaped up a perfect form of ‘o’. It seemed they’d been found out before anything could happen. That was probably a good thing, Dave told himself.

“You two look so fabulous! I have to tell Dirk, I have to get the camera…” She looked as if she was about to step away from the door, but quickly she steeled herself in the frame of the door.

He noticed Rose’s quick smirk and her even quicker syllable of a ‘thanks’ which finally prompted him to do something, do something he could safely bet on Rose doing in the first place.

“A symbol for the start of a new chapter in Dave’s life. And mine too, it will be very different not having him around.” He caught Rose looking at him, and he smiled as caring and as malicious as her smiles always ended up being in his eyes.

She must have known that this was him as Dave communicating how much he was going to miss her as Rose being around for him.

“Oh, yes… Dave. I’ve made all of your favourites for tonight, or I will be making.” She checked the elegant watch adorning her elegant wrist, an elegance Rose had but that Dave would need to strive for. “So little time… But I’m taking a picture of you two before eating, it’s an important night.”

She’d shut the door before even bringing her full sentence to an end. He crossed his arms over his knees, almost glowering at the door as he thought. It had less seemed as if she’d hurried away because of time constraints, but rather had rushed away because of emotion. She was upset he was supposedly leaving?

He should have felt bitter, he thought to himself, his absence couldn’t be so marked if she hadn’t kept him for a day in his life. Rose’s absence would be marked, his presence was secondary to hers.

“Can’t believe I’ll have to pretend to love all of your favourites,” Rose muttered eventually.

Dave was surprised at her voice, and for a moment stared at her a bit bewilderedly. She’d said it in a tone that could have easily passed as his, and dressed up in such a way, leaning back in such a way, he’d believed it for a second. Soon, she cracked up at his face, and it appeared clearly to Dave that she’d sensed his mood and had attempted to lighten it up with such an offhanded comment.

“Look, they’ll be so blinded by our new sense of hair fashion that they won’t have any time at all to pick up on any weirdness between the two of us. So, relax.”

“You’re right,” Dave admitted, deciding once again to restrain himself from sharing the whole truth. Rose believed he was only stressed about the mission at hand, which, he must have been to some extent, but she didn’t know and didn’t have to know about his uglier feelings. She was incredibly perceptive, and Dave wasn’t against letting her believe she was more perceptive than that already incredible amount.

He steered himself away from feelings, he knew, could never amount to anything. He was the only one behaving in an unfair manner by holding such resentment. He concentrated on his posture, on his pose, and on Rose’s written words. It was his second reading of what she’d prepared for him. It was exhaustive in a way, and lacking in so many other ways.

Supper, to his great surprise, was fine. Roxy had fished out the sort of camera Dave would have liked for himself, and he’d gotten to smile at the lens, though it wasn’t much more honest than Rose’s slight smirk, he still enjoyed impersonating Rose’s usual, natural, snake-like smile. He watched, with only a shade of negative feelings, Dirk ruffle Rose’s new hair, and joined in when he’d started telling her it gave her a bit of a ‘douchey’ edge. Dave insisted over and over again that he was being gracious by taking second portions, appreciating the meal despite it being lined up with Dave’s tastes, and not his own. And finally he was the one to call for the night’s closing hour as he brought up Dave’s sure to be unmade suitcase. He only nodded in approval when Rose played along and confirmed that she’d pack up on the following morning.

In the end, all he found to say to Rose was, “I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.” He understood when she did not reply. But he did not understand the feeling in his chest as he saw her climb into the aged car with their father.

He longed to be the one going home. He longed for the feeling at the end of the day, when he escaped to his bedroom. He did not need to long for such a thing, what Rose had had always been better than what he had. And he was the one to take that life now. He jolted when Roxy’s hand touched his shoulder. If that wasn’t bad enough, he was sure the look he gave her was worse. Luckily, she was still looking down the street, where the car had disappeared into the darkness.

“I know, I’m worried too.”

At those words, Dave noticeably gulped. She’d sensed his worry, but she’d failed to identify the real source of worry. With that in mind, he had to ask himself just what it was worrying his mother.

“About Dave?” he asked her, knowing that must have been it, but fiercely denying it.

She stepped back inside of the house, and shut the door once Dave followed in as well. There was surreal air to the moment as Dave considered that, usually, the door shut on him, it wasn’t the other way around at the end of the night, it never had been.

“Would you like some tea before bed?”

Dave paused. He knew the answer because he’d read Rose’s notes three times in full. He knew, when a day finished and both Rose and Roxy were on good terms about it, they would indulge in some tea together before going upstairs to bed. Most nights, Rose turned it down in favour of spending more time online. Tonight, terms were good, but…

“Just talking is fine,” Dave answered. He could pass it as selfless; he was doing it because it seemed like she needed someone to talk to. But he knew the core of it was selfish. He wanted to know what it felt like to talk, just him and his mother. He wanted a talk that wasn’t limited by the length of time it took to drain a cup of tea.

And so he found himself, in the salon, seated with his knees and ankles pressing together hard enough to leave reddish marks that would be visible once he would stand. His mother didn’t seem to have her eyes on him though. It matched well with supper time, where most questions had been directed towards Rose. It had been some sort of a predictable blessing; of course everyone would have their attention focused on Rose, everyone wanted to speak to the person who would be leaving for an entire year. It made it easy enough for Dave to fly under the radar, but he knew that wasn’t bound to last.

“What do you think, honey? Will it be good for him? You’ve been telling me so all week, but…” But, Dave had no idea what he’d supposedly said on the matter, because Dave hadn’t read anything about it in the notes that had been left for him. “But he really needs something that will be good for him. Maybe I’m just worried he won’t come back happier than he is.”

She eventually laughed, the sort of laugh Dave recognised to be a weak attempt to conceal feelings that had been laid out too obviously in previous statements. He did it too whenever it came to hard conversations.

“He seems plenty happy as it is, if you ask me.” He was thankful she wasn’t attentive enough to catch on to his very casual tone, which was quite unlike Rose’s. It was short from telling her for himself that he wasn’t unhappy at all, but that would do.

She seemed to hesitate in answering though, and Dave still feared he might not have been cutting it after all. However, she simply told him, in what he found to be an enigmatic way: “Both your father and I have had our moments battling sadness. We’re a little better when it comes to picking up on it.”

He surprised himself in thinking of Dirk before he did his mother. When had he been sad? Had Dave been around when that was happening? Had he failed to be of any help? Maybe it could be the reason he seemed so distant at times? Most of all, he asked himself, had he been too absorbed with himself to be the support his guardian had needed?

Quickly, he reasoned with himself, Dirk and Roxy were childhood friends. The pictures from the year they’d first met looked straight out of a different era. They’d gone through adolescence together, and there was no greater bearer of sadness than the teen years, so Dave heard. There was no use in assuming Dave had failed something here, if he’d failed Roxy’s lifelong best friend, well… Then, surely, Roxy would not be worried for Dave’s happiness.

Again, he couldn’t keep himself from jolting when Roxy put an arm around his shoulders, though her reaction to the startled movement was simply the offer of a gentle smile.

“It’s a good thing to not yet be able to recognise sadness in others. Goodness, I don’t know what I’d do with myself if both of my children were sad.”

He should have rejoiced in the fact that she’d referred to him as her child too in the sanctity of her home. It surely wasn’t a big show she put on for him, unless she’d already figured him out and knew who it was hiding beneath Rose’s clothes; but he strongly doubted as much. But instead of feeling touched, he felt a bit scared.

“How do you know?”

He didn’t agree, though the assumption made him want to slip through the floorboards and disappear. He didn’t agree, but he wanted to know more.

“Because a mother knows,” she answered simply. He did his best to act normally as she placed a few strands of his short hair back into place, with all the care the movement could possibly carry. “He might be away from me, but I can tell when something’s off. Your father can, too. But maybe he’ll find what he’s looking for with some time away, right?”

“Right,” he answered with a sound that rung dull even in his own ears.

He wasn’t going to agree on being sad, but… He could agree to feeling off. More often than not, he felt like he was the world’s first attempt at Rose, and Rose had been the finished product. In that sense, he definitely could admit to feeling off. Somehow, even put so simplistically, it was incredibly nice to know that his parents, or so it seemed, did want something better for him than simply that off sensation.

“If it gets worse.”

She didn’t follow that thought with anything. But again, he felt something akin to fright. It was strange for him to recognise that he’d been too unaware to realise he had been in anyone’s thoughts or had been the one receiving others’ worry.

“He’s got a good family, so. So that’s what matters.” He finally told her.

She thanked him, but he recognised the way she acted after those words. It was the same way she’d acted previously upstairs, before dinner, when she’d felt too emotional to stay at the scene. And thus, he was the one to excuse himself and to walk up the stairs first. He followed the night routine Rose had written into the notebook, and in no time he was set under the bed’s covers and sheets, ready to turn out the last light on the bedside table. He’d adorned some of the more boyish of Rose’s nightwear looks. A set of white tank top and white shorts, and had left the clothes he’d swapped with Rose in the dirty laundry basket in the bathroom, as her notes had instructed for him to do.

Nothing felt extremely foreign. Everything felt extremely overwhelming. He picked up Rose’s laptop, which she’d left on the floor by her bed. Thankfully, the credentials to access her account had been left behind for him too.

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 11:24 --

TG: psst hows it going over there
TG: went well here
TG: just slipping under the covers as we speak
TG: its going pretty great
TG: looks like youre totally replaceable rose
TG: so its good for now i guess
TG: but like
TG: this is day one of a million
TG: or something closer to three hundred sixty five
TG: its still a fucking lot
TG: im sure rent could make a song to that and highlight every feeling that could be captured in a years timeframe but
TG: point is
TG: you know
TG: what if i get like
TG: leg hair
TG: really bad leg hair
TG: or anywhere hair
TG: its gonna be a dead giveaway
TG: holy shit i hadnt thought of it but what about face hair
TG: that would be even worse rose
TG: what if i sprout out an anaconda sized dick this year
TG: none of these cute white pjs are gonna do a good job at keeping that contained
TT: You will not be sprouting an anaconda sized dick. I suppose I have to be the bearer of bad news.
TG: what if my voice drops hard what then
TT: As it is, we are late bloomers. You won’t have to waste away personal hygiene products in an attempt to reproduce my yet to come menstrual cycle, and I won’t have to put a razor to my face tomorrow morning to shave away your imaginary beard.
TT: Could puberty strike in the coming year? Possibly. Do I think it will? I do not. So far, there have been no warning signs, and I accept that. If they start turning up, we will deal with them as they come.
TG: so this is going to work huh
TT: I am positive that it is working.
TG: cool but
TG: hey
TG: so mom was worried about me huh
TT: Quite. You do see why it couldn’t be me asking to go now, right?
TG: i guess
TG: were you the one to tell her i was leaving
TT: Precisely. I also told her you used my credit card to make payment of your flight ticket, because you weren’t ready to tell our father at the time.
TG: you think everything through
TT: It is what I am aiming for, yes.
TG: thanks rose
TT: No, thank you. You have a long morning ahead of you, though. Do not forget to dress sharply. I also need to get to bed, seeing as you’ve cursed me to prepare my things, well your things, at the very last moment possible.
TG: thats what brothers are for
TG: ill see you at the airport tomorrow
TG: dont forget i go to bed late though
TG: at least try to be convincing

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 11:55 --

He sort of hated how those skinny jeans and that dark red sweater looked on Rose. Maybe because he knew it had taken her a few seconds to complete the look, whereas he’d wrestled with Rose’s closet for the better part of the morning. He’d been close to ripping the dress’ zipper out; how was anyone supposed to contort themselves well enough to put on those sorts of dresses by themselves? He’d thrown on a black cardigan, just in case he’d missed something when it came to closing up the back of the dress. And that was without mentioning the battle he’d gone through with his hair. He’d liked the style when he’d first seen it, but he hadn’t liked what the pillows had done to it throughout the night. Rose’s hair? As good as yesterday.

He sort of hated the attention she was receiving, but that was fair. And better for concealing his flaws in impersonation. He just wasn’t quite sure that he’d received that many hugs from his parents before, and to think he was missing out on them because he was busy being the sibling who typically received the most was a little frustrating.

Most of all, he hated that Rose was leaving him behind. But he said nothing of it when he was the one to hold her in his arms, right in front of the gates leading to security checks. He squeezed her tightly, and there was a lot to silently exchange then, a lot to make sure of. Did Rose still have her own passport? Did they succeed in switching all other pieces of identification they had, or had they forgotten one? Was her leaving with her passport while her name was still on the school roster going to drag in some problems eventually?

They didn’t say a word to one another. And just like that, she was gone, collected despite emotions Dave could only guess at. Maybe anticipation? Anxiety? Excitement?

But they stood, both Dave and his parents, in front of the gates for quite a while longer.

“We could go out for ice cream,” Dave finally proposed, still sensing that it wasn’t quite what Rose would have said in his place, but feeling it was light enough and happy enough to do some good rather than harm.

“Thanks, kiddo. Think I’ll be heading home though.”

Dave didn’t have much of an occasion to stare at the man who’d kept him for his entire life, but what he caught in that moment was anything but stabilising. He realised, in the presence of it, that Dirk’s sadness was very palpable and very obvious. Roxy said nothing about his exit then, though it came with no farewell at all.

Again, she was the one to wrap an arm around Dave’s shoulders to bring him comfort.

“It’ll just take some getting used to.”

Dave had to remind himself that it was a good thing that everyone’s attention was concentrated on Rose again, even though he was the one taking Rose’s place now. It was a good thing, it left him more room for mistake.

He would be too busy to worry about who was paying attention to him and who wasn’t soon enough anyway. School would be more demanding than wearing Rose’s clothes, or putting in contact lenses, or taming down his hair in the morning. He at least knew his mother to some extent. He didn’t know anything about the school environment he would be spending large portions of his time in.

He did finally go get ice cream with his mother, but it tasted too sweet.

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