Archive of Our Own ^beta

I hate him. The boy who looks identical to me, but who isn’t me. Our parents’ favorite son—He fucking knows it too. I hate that his smug grin is the mirror image of mine. I hate that we’re alike in every single way, except in the one way that really matters. He’s the good one. The brilliant one. The perfect one. The one who isn’t bent over the toilet, dry-heaving.

I’m the other boy. The one in the en-suite bathroom with the door open, clutching the plastic seat, spitting into the porcelain bowl.

I lift my head to see if Isa has moved at all. He’s still at the desk in our bedroom, sitting in front of a laptop, clicking the refresh button on the browser in precise one-minute intervals. He’s got six windows open, each one logged into the application portal for a different college.

Isa doesn’t seem to notice my distress. Maybe he just doesn’t care. It’s the fifteenth of December. I’ve just been rejected from Yale, early decision. And from all of my early action schools. Columbia. Cornell. Dartmouth. Even NYU. I didn’t get into any of my top schools. What the fuck am I going to do now?

“Breathe, Izzy,” says Isa, his cheerful octave pitched slightly higher than my own. “There’s still hope for us.”

“Fuck you,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Literal potty mouth,” he chides. So uppity.

God, I want to push his face into the keyboard, hard enough that it leaves a waffled QWERTY indentation on his unblemished complexion.

He clicks to refresh. He gives a throaty gasp, mouth gaping, carp-like. “Come look!”

Isagani J. Machado, perfect little Isa, has been accepted into Ashford University, a private institution among the Ivy Plus—basically an Ivy, but not old enough or endowed enough to be in the same league. They’ve even awarded him a merit scholarship and a coveted seat in their highly selective honors college.

I hate you, Isa.

“No you don’t.”

Did I say that out loud? I must have.

Because I’m apparently a masochist, I scroll through Instagram. It’s blowing up with early decision and early action commitment posts from my high school’s senior class account. There’s Lucas, Isa’s boyfriend, holding up a blue and white rowing crew sweatshirt emblazoned with a college logo. I tap the heart icon even though I absolutely do not love this post. That fucker took my spot at Yale.

I hate you too, Lucas. Especially you.

Morning comes, and I grudgingly get dressed. I’m in no mood to face all of the people who have been accepted into their ED schools. I don’t know how I’m going to fake a smile and congratulate them while I seethe with jealousy.

Isa comes out of our bathroom dressed in the outfit that I was planning to wear. I can’t wear the same thing, but I also can’t not. I don’t want to be seen as the sloppy twin. The raggedy ass twin. Isa has set the bar so high, that competing with him compels me to put on a pale blue Brooks Brothers oxford cloth button-down. I tuck the shirt into flat-front J. Crew khakis. Chestnut leather loafers and a navy blue belt embroidered with white anchors finish the look.

“Should we wear a tie today?” Isa asks, holding up a red and navy rep stripe necktie.

I snort my answer. No thanks.

Who the fuck do we think we are? Kennedys? We are brown boys who attend public high school in a pumpkin-spice-latte, basic-bitch town. Isa calls his style sartorial affirmation. Dress for who you want to be, he says, even when it seems anachronistic. I call it preppy cosplay.

Dad has already left for work. It’s a surgery day, and he’s needed at the hospital early. I’ve been avoiding him. We haven’t talked since I failed to get into Yale. I don’t want to hear what he has to say about it. And I’m sure he will have a lot to say about it.

He went to a state school, then attended a little known medical college. I was supposed to fulfill the Ivy League dreams that he couldn’t afford to fulfill himself, having come from working class Filipino immigrant parents. Each generation is supposed to do better than the one before it. Isn’t that the American dream?

I know what Dad is going to say when we talk about me not getting into Yale. He’s going to say that he didn’t work his ass off to become a doctor and earn enough money to buy a house in a high-performing school district just so I can do just fine. He did it so that we could be in a position in which I could go to Yale.

We have to be exceptional, he’ll remind me, because, at first glance, white people will always see us as The Other. As low class. No matter how wealthy and successful we are, they will assume we are off-the-boat peasants, scrambling up the social ladder. We have to prove them wrong. We are not our grandparents or our great grandparents. We have ascended. By being exceptional, we honor and validate our ancestors’ struggle.

This is the burden that’s been on my shoulders since sixth grade.

Though I’m treated like a prodigal son compared to Isa, I have worked my ass off. Straight A’s. AP classes. SAT prep courses. College essay coaching. A well-rounded slate of extracurricular activities. A summer job at the local senior center to learn humility and empathy.

Yale should’ve been in the bag.

I slide into the driver’s seat of Mom’s Audi. She’s already in the car, sitting in the front passenger seat. She squints in the mirror behind the visor as she applies a muted mauve lipstick. I think she only wears a full face of makeup to work so that, when she puts on her lab coat, she isn’t mistaken for a nurse.

Her mom was a nurse. Lola Bickee worked nightshifts and doubles so that Mom could move from Manila to the States to complete a doctorate program in Biomedical Engineering. When Lola retired, Mom bought her a luxury condo in Florida. I think Lola Bickee would rather live with us, to be honest.

“You okay, Isa?” Mom says without looking away from her own mouth.

“I’m Izzy,” I correct her. I glance at Isa’s reflection in the rearview mirror. He’s sitting in the back, smirking. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“You were very upset last night,” she says.

I start up the car and shrug. “I’ll be okay.”

“You can stay home if you need to take a mental health break,” she says.

Now I’m the one decidedly not looking at her. I back out of the driveway a little too fast. Though I’m really not, I tell her I’m fine. “Anyway, I can’t afford to miss school. I still need to keep up my GPA. I have a calc test today.”

“You can make it up, Isa.”

I slam on the brakes, even though I’m in no danger of hitting the car in front of me. “Oh my god, Mom. Don’t you know your own son? I’m Izzy. Not Isa. For fuck’s sake, it’s not that hard.”

Mom gently chides me in Tagalog, mostly for swearing. But I can tell she feels guilty.

Isa says, “Mom can’t help it. I’m the default son and you’re clearly the other one.”

I glare daggers at him in the mirror.

It normally takes me ten minutes to drive Mom to the train station. Today it’ll take me five. I’m too mad to stay at the speed limit. Mom knows she’s close to breaching my breaking point and so she doesn’t nag me to slow down. When we reach the station, I pull into a parking spot, and the car idles while Mom finishes putting on her makeup.

“I love you, anak,” she says, smiling at me with only one eye dusted in shadow. “No matter what. I’m proud of you.”

Her words are just that. Words. I know how she really feels. Disappointment. She’ll go to her lab at the bio-medical research facility in the city and she won’t have any good news to share with her colleagues. She won’t be able to tell them that her son got into Yale. Maybe they’ll ask her about it. She’ll probably lie. No, he hasn’t heard back yet.

“Love you, Mommy!” Isa says. “Have a good day at work!”

“So proud of you, baby,” Mom replies, looking in the mirror as she applies shadow to the other eye, “Ashford is a great school. One of the best.”

I roll my eyes. Ugh. Those two. Still mommy and baby even though our eighteenth birthday is in a few days.

I keep my head down when I get to school and try to smile when friends greet me in the hall. I attempt sincerity when I congratulate them on their acceptances into college. Their weak responses make me worry that my chilliness comes off as stuck up.

And then I see him in the hallway. The boy I’ve been avoiding all day. The one who is going to Yale instead of me. Lucas.

He’s the only fellow student who greets me with an apology. “Sorry about Yale. I was really rooting for you.” He seems so goddamn sincere that I feel a slight tinge of guilt for hating him so much.

“It’s okay, man,” I mumble, toeing the linoleum with a polished loafer, “I don’t really care. It’s whatever.”

“Is it though?” He quirks a brow. Isa always says that he loves the expressiveness of Lucas’s eyebrows—so thick and arching, so starkly contrasting against his fair skin. I don’t like them. His eyebrows are judging me.

I shrug, dropping my gaze. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

He leans in and speaks quietly, almost conspiratorially, still with a tinge of apology in his deep voice. “It was supposed to be you and me, babe.”

Oh god. He thinks I’m Isa. Why the fuck does everyone think I’m Isa? Yeah, I know we’re identical, but our personalities are diametrically opposed. It hadn’t even occurred to me until then that Isa also didn’t get into Yale.

Lucas goes in for a hug and I flinch, taking a step back. “Whoa, dude. I’m not Isa.”

He hugs me anyway. “Same difference. Isa, Izzy. You need a hug. I can tell.”

I’m rigid in his arms. I don’t want to cause a scene by pushing him away, so I remain still and whisper, “Stop it, Lucas. People are going to start staring.”

“Let them stare,” he says, “Nobody’s going to think we’re gay if we hug. Bros hug.”

“Yeah, but we don’t,” I say, gently putting him at arm’s length.

“Don’t we?” There’s that all-knowing raised eyebrow again. And a secret that’s quirking the corner of his lovely—no, his stupid—mouth.

He gave me a hand job in ninth grade. That doesn’t make me gay. And that sure as hell doesn’t mean we hug.

“I don’t need your fucking sympathy, okay? Fact of the matter is, I should be the one going to Yale. You only got in because you’re a legacy brat. Your GPA isn’t that great.”

Fuck. Now people are staring.

Lucas’s judge-y eyebrows knit together. “Asshole.” He saunters away.

Maybe I should have stopped at the part about not needing his sympathy. The other stuff I said was a bit harsh. True, but harsh.

Lucas and I have the same free period. I volunteer at the school library, and he’s often there doing work. I find him hunched over a calculus textbook, likely studying for the test. I slide into a seat next to him.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

He doesn’t look up from the book. “Apology accepted. But you’re still an asshole.”

“Fair enough.”

He asks, deigning to glance up at me, “Is Isa coming to school today? I really need to talk to him.”

I shrug. “He should be here.” Where he is, exactly, I don’t know and don’t care enough to tell Lucas.

“I’ve been thinking.” He brushes a thumb along the edge of the book, scraping his nail against the stacked pages, making a zipper sound. “Maybe we should break up. It’s not working.”

“I wholeheartedly agree.” The truth is, I don’t give a shit if he and Isa stay together or not. But it’ll do Isa some good to have his heart broken. He has to learn sooner than later what it feels like to lose. To fail. To feel pain. Emotions other than sunshine and rainbows.

“It’s settled then,” he says, returning his gaze to the equations on the page. “Glad we could agree on something for once.”

Am I a bad person for feeling delight at the thought of my twin’s despair? Maybe. But it sure does make me feel better about losing my slot at Yale.

Driving home from school, Isa is unusually quiet. I don’t need him to speak in order to know that Lucas has done it. He’s broken Isa’s heart.

“I loved him, you know,” says Isa.

“I know.” A smirk touches my lips.

“This is your fault,” he wines.

I turn away from the road momentarily to gape at Isa in the front passenger seat. “Excuse me?”

“You ruin everything,” he whimpers, crying softly.

“I had nothing to do with it. He told me things weren’t working between you two. I agreed. If he said it, obviously he felt it. Why would you want to stay in a relationship with a person who doesn’t feel good about it?”

“We could’ve found a way to make it work,” says Isa. “You drove him away because you’re mad he got into Yale and we didn’t.”

“You bet, I’m mad. We deserve it. He doesn’t.”

“You know I was going to suggest you go to Ashford with me. I thought it would do you some good. But now I don’t want you there with me.”

“If I wanted to go to Ashford, I’d go to Ashford. You don’t get to decide that.”

In an unusual show of force, he grabs my chin and turns my face to look at him, disregarding the fact that I’m driving. He grits his teeth. “Listen to me Iz. I don’t want you there. You always bring me down. You distract me. You always have, ever since middle school, and it’s only gotten worse in high school. It’s bad enough that we share a bedroom and I have to study with you breathing down my neck, but you’re in all of my AP classes, making it so much harder to do well. You will not follow me to college with your bad vibes and your negative energy.”

I wrench my face out of his startlingly strong grip. “You’re going to make us crash.” Fuck. Now I’m crying. “I hate you Isa. Do you know that? Do you know how much I fucking hate you?” I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles blanch.

“Which is why you can’t come with me. You don’t belong there. You don’t belong anywhere, really. Stay home, Izzy.”

He doesn’t get to fucking decide. I decide my own life. Does he honestly think he can stop me from going to Ashford? My fingers are aching to wrench the steering wheel to the right. We’re driving across an overpass. I could crash through the rickety barricade, and drive us over the side, onto the highway below. I could kill us both. Decision made—neither of us gets to go to college.

I stomp on the gas pedal.

#

I’m looking into my brother’s unblinking eyes. From a massive head wound above his left eyebrow, blood streaks down his ashen face. With shaking hands, I try to wipe away the blood, but all I manage to do is paint his forehead crimson.

I murmur unintelligible apologies even though I will never be forgiven for this. For killing Isa. Even if I say it was an accident, my parents won’t ever let me forget that I was behind the wheel when their darling Isa died. It will always be my fault. Of course, it is my fault. It’s what I wanted in that moment. But that doesn’t make the guilt weigh any less. It only makes the pain all the more unbearable. I have just killed my own flesh and blood.

Now that the light has gone from his eyes, I realize how much I did love him. I didn’t know that I could love somebody who I hated so much. Despite my own injuries and my own physical pain, I wriggle out of my seatbelt and put my arms around Isa, both of us trapped in the mangled wreckage of the Audi.

“I’m so sorry.”

His dead eyes slide in their bruised sockets to look directly at me. His blue lips move, and a hoarse voice comes out. I don’t know if it is his ghost talking—if his undead mouth is moving to deliver a final decree, or if a sliver of him is hanging on just to tell me something. Regardless, the words are clear.

“Live for us both.”

I press two fingers to his jugular. No pulse. I press my lips to his. “I will, brother.”

Later, in the emergency room of the hospital, Dad comes running in. He’s not an ER doc, but he barks orders at the other doctors and at the nurses.

I don’t realize the severity of my condition until Dad leans over me and says, “Son, just hang on. I’m going to make sure you pull through. Hang on for me, please, Isa.”

And then it dawns on me. Isa told me to live for us both. And so I will. If I get through this, I will live on as him. As Isa.

#

Some time later, perhaps hours, perhaps days, I find myself in a different hospital bed. I was concussed, I lost a lot of blood from my own head wound, fractured some bones, but I’m otherwise okay. I’m alive. I can walk. I’m coherent, if a bit hazy from opioid pain meds.

Mom is by my side. I reach out for her hand. She takes it. Smiles softly.

“Izzy’s dead,” I tell her.

She nods tearfully. “It’s alright, anak.”

“I’m sorry. I was driving, and. . .” I trail off, unsure of what lie to tell.

But I don’t have to lie. Isa has never had to lie. Because Mom and Dad have never been angry with him the way they’ve been angry with me. With Izzy.

“It’s for the best,” she says.

A heavy ache compresses my chest. It isn’t my injury. It’s the pain of knowing that my mother never really loved me. All of her love has gone toward Isa. Even though I will now be the eager recipient of that love, it still pains me to know how little I meant to her—how little Izzy meant to her.

“But Mom,” I wheeze, tears stinging my eyes. “Izzy’s gone. Forever. Don’t you care? I was the one driving. It’s my fault he’s gone.”

“Of course I care, anak. The important thing is that you’re alive.”

The other boy is gone. Her darling Isa is all that matters.

She pets my head, over the peach fuzz that has grown since my head was shaved and sutured, careful not to touch the still-tender wound above my right eyebrow. I’ll have a scar there. A mirror image of the gash above Isa’s left eyebrow. A permanent reminder of what I did to him.

I finish my recovery at home, where I do my school work online and catch up with the help of a private tutor on Zoom. Ashford University Honors College needs to see that Isa isn’t slacking just because he got accepted early. Yes, I’m going to Ashford after all. My guidance counselor, or rather, Isa’s counselor (same difference) sends the university an email which explains my extenuating circumstances, and how they might affect my second semester grades.

It’s March when I return to school. Even though I was physically well enough to return a month ago, Mom thought I needed to take more time to heal emotionally.

“You’ve suffered from a great trauma,” she said, obviously talking about the death of my twin.

“And what about you and Dad? Haven’t you suffered that trauma too?”

“We’re fine. We’re here for you?”

Wow. They still don’t care that Izzy is dead. That I’m dead. Did they even have a funeral? Maybe they held it while I was unconscious for those few days. They probably didn’t want their darling Isa to be further traumatized by having to watch the other one being lowered into the ground.

On my first day back, there’s a lot of gentle hugging and a lot of I’m glad you’re okay, Isa. Nobody wants to talk about Izzy. Except Lucas. He has never shied away from any elephant in the room, and always has time to talk trash about me.

He goes in for the hug. I flinch, but only slightly. As Isa, I’m no longer entitled to my gay panic. I’m only entitled to my pain as the ex boyfriend.

“Izzy’s really gone, huh?” he asks.

I nod.

“I’m glad you’re the one who survived.”

I want to be indignant, but he nuzzles his nose against my too-short hair. He’s taller than me. I can fit my face into the crook of his neck. He smells of cedar and sweat. I imagine that Isa would have liked the way Lucas smells—like an indiscretion in the forest on a summer night. I melt into his arms. I’m not gay. But this feels really nice. To be appreciated like this. To be wanted like this.

“I miss you,” I say, because it’s what Isa would have said.

“Missed you too. More than you’ll ever know,” says Lucas. “Can we start over? Please?”

I exhale against him. “Fuck yes.” It isn’t what Isa would say. It’s what Izzy would say. I want to see if he’ll notice.

“Language, Isagani,” he teases, his deep voice rattling with a soft laugh. “That head wound really got you good, huh?”

He takes me to his house after school. His parents are at work. His sister is at soccer practice. We’re alone together. Instead of silently panicking, a thrill rises within me.

I’m going to kiss your ex boyfriend, Isa. I’m going to kiss him, just to hurt you. I’m not the one who is easily replaced. You are.

We’re kicking back on his bed with our shoes off, flipping through Instagram. Just a couple of dudes hanging out. And then he puts his phone down on the bedside table. Shit. Does he want to make out? Now?

“We need to talk.”

Oh, thank god. “Yeah, sure.” I slip my phone into my bag on the floor. “What about?”

“About the car accident.” He hesitates. He pushes himself up to a sitting position and his arm muscles gently swell beneath his tee shirt. “It wasn’t really an accident. Was it?” He says it more like a statement than a question.

I shake my head slowly.

He looks away and tears roll down his fair cheeks. His expressive eyebrows crease woefully. “I should have been there. . . for you. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened. But then again, I’m kind of glad it did, because now. . . he’s gone.”

I sit up and hug my knees to my chest. I mumble, “You really hated Izzy that much?”

“He messed you up so bad, babe. It was to the point that I couldn’t be with you anymore. Now that he’s gone, you must see that now. Don’t you? How much he got between us?”

I really don’t see it, but it makes me realize that I was more important to Isa than I thought. I don’t understand how I messed him up, but whatever. That’s in the past.

Lucas goes on. “Maybe now we can try to have a real relationship. Like, out in the open.”

Was it a secret? That’s news to me.

“I don’t know, Luc. We’re both leaving for college in a few months. Maybe a full on relationship isn’t the best idea.”

Lucas looks forlorn, dropping his blue-eyed gaze to his broad hands. He sighs. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But I still want to be here for you. I don’t want you to relapse.”

“Relapse?”

“You know. Depression and anxiety and stuff.”

Again, news to me. I had no idea that sunshine-and-rainbows Isa was ever sad a single day in his gilded life.

“I think we can still be friends,” I offer, then add with a little nudge, “with benefits.” I want him to kiss me. Not because I’m horny and he’s admittedly very handsome. This is about spite.

We kiss. It isn’t horrible. In fact, it is so not horrible that I forget I’m supposed to be spiting my twin. It is so the opposite of horrible that we end up having sex. I learn that Isa is a top. I would not have guessed, had Lucas not bent over for me.

Fuck a dude once, and you’re bi-curious. Fuck a dude twice, and, well. . . I still don’t think I’m bisexual. It’s not like I’m fucking other dudes. I’m fucking Lucas because he’s Isa’s boyfriend. Apparently, Isa had been fucking Lucas since the beginning of junior year. I’ve been fucking Lucas since last Monday.

Over the weekend, I relented and gave up on our friends-with-benefits arrangement. We’re boyfriends now. I like the security of being in a committed monogamous relationship—the power and social clout it gives me. I like walking around school with a hot, Yale-bound, varsity rowing crew bro by my side, doting on me like I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Because I’ve only ever been the worst thing that has happened to people. To my parents. To my brother.

Do you see that, Isa? I’ve taken your identity. I’ve taken your slot at Ashford. And now, I’ve taken your boyfriend. You used to have it all. And soon, it will all be mine.

#

It is with great trepidation, that I take Isa’s place at Ashford University. Because he had to declare his intended major upon applying to the honors program, I’ve found myself on the Communications and Journalism track. Fuck. Me.

Isa was always destined to be a writer. A political pundit. I was destined to follow in my parents’ footsteps. I’m a hard science person. Not a fucking political science person. With a second minor in American History? Fuck me! What did you do to us, Isa?

After my first day of classes, I return to the dorm and proceed to have a panic attack. I call Lucas. Maybe his voice will calm me down. Even just the sound of his outgoing message on his voice mail might be enough to ground me.

He answers on the second ring. “Hey babe!”

I try to sound normal. Calm. Maybe if I don’t use a lot of words, he won’t be able to tell I’m falling apart. “How’s Yale?”

“It’s… okay. It’s whatever.” He’s being modest. He doesn’t want me to feel bad because I’m not there with him. “How’s Ashford? Is it like the best freaking place ever? God, I wish I was some place sunny. I bet it’s still warm in D.C. It’s so rainy in New Haven.”

“It’s… hard. Harder than I expected.”

“Well, obviously. It’s Ashford. But you can handle it, Isa. I know you. You were made for this. You’re in your element. You’re in our nation’s freaking capital! In the room where it happens! I’m so proud of you, bro.”

I have nothing to say to him. This was Isa’s dream. Not mine. Maybe there was a time, way back in middle school, when I thought I wanted this. Isa and I had recorded our own podcast on national politics. I knew there was no money in podcasting or political reporting. So I focused on becoming a doctor or a medical researcher.

To get Lucas off the phone, because he’s not helping the way I’d hoped, I say, “Just wanted to check in. I have so much work to do.”

“Okay. Text you later,” he says. He has no idea that I’m silently freaking out.

“Love you,” I say, because it’s what Isa would say. I don’t love Lucas. I love having sex with Lucas. But I don’t love him. I don’t even care when he doesn’t say I love you back to me.

“Kisses. Bye.”

A little while later, I’m curled up in a ball on the floor of the shower, cold water trickling on my back, hoping it’ll shock me out of my downward spiral. A voice comes up from the drain, faint and echoing.

“You’re going to make yourself sick. Is that what you want? To waste your first semester in the infirmary with pneumonia? Did you not waste enough time in bed after the accident? Do you need to waste even more time? Don’t even get me started on wasted tuition. You will not squander away my scholarship, Izzy.”

I jolt away from the drain, standing up so fast my head spins. “Isa?” I whisper.

“Meet me in the library. At the end of the stacks, find a desk against the windows, away from other people.”

I turn the cold water on blast and violently scrub at my face, my head. My scar is tender when I scrape across it with my palm. I’m imagining this. I must be. There is no way that my dead brother is talking to me from the shower drain.

Just so I can prove to myself that my subconscious is generating Isa’s voice, I do what the voice has told me, expecting nothing to come of it. I find an isolated desk in the library. It’s dark out, and I see a face reflected in the window more than I see Washington through the glass.

It’s him. It’s Isa. Reflected back at me. He doesn’t haunt me like a revenge-hungry ghost haunts his murderer. Instead, he instructs me.

“You have an essay due at the beginning of next week. Listen to me, and you’ll ace it.” He tells me what search queries to enter into the library catalogue, which books and academic journals to check out. He reads them with me, indicating the important passages. He dictates notes and I type them into my laptop.

This is how it goes for weeks. Months. Isa’s ghost is basically using me to attend his dream school. And I’m using him to get through my classes. If I didn’t already have a passing interest in politics, it would be outright torture. I’d be Isa’s puppet. But I find, more and more each day, that I’m engaged with the material.

I draw the line at Isa using me for anything but school. This isn’t that movie with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. I will not have sex with men so Isa can enjoy himself vicariously. I tell him as much when he informs me that I am to meet up with some people from the Queer Student Union.

“You owe me this, Izzy,” says Isa, as I’m in the shower one morning. “You stole my boyfriend.”

“And you want me to do what? Cheat on your boyfriend? Sabotage my relationship?”

“You don’t have to hook up with anyone,” says Isa, his voice reverberating through the pipes, “Just meet them. I chatted with them on Instagram before the accident. They’re nice people. You need friends. An affirming community.”

“I have nothing to affirm,” I tell him.

“Yeah, okay, Izzy,” he says sarcastically. “You just really like to put your dick in other men. But you’re not gay.”

“I’m not!”

“Straight guys don’t suck cock. You sucked Lucas’s dick on the regular with the fervor of someone doing it for Only Fans. You love it.”

“I do not!” Although, I really kind of do. . .

One of my suitemates comes into the bathroom. “Dude. Are you on a call in the shower?”

“My ear buds are waterproof,” I lie.

Despite myself, I meet up with the people from the Queer Student Union. They turn out to be pretty cool. We hang out a few times, and they even convince me to attend a queer political event, a social event here and there too. A lanky sophomore named Kai asks me to hang out separately from the group. He’s Japanese American, wears voluminous monochromatic clothes like a minimalist skater boy, but I think we could connect as fellow Asian Americans.

“Not like a date, right?” I clarify.

“Not if you don’t want it to be,” he says.

He suggests we go for bubble tea just outside campus. I want to say no, because it’s the most gay and most Asian thing we could do, but I remember how much I like bubble tea. Liking bubble tea doesn’t mean I’m gay.

But when Kai smiles, the way my heart flutters in my chest suggests otherwise.

Isa’s voice is faint in my head, making some blithe comment about enjoying the sensation of balls in my mouth. Voicelessly, I tell him to fuck off.

Once inside the bubble tea shop, I’m honest with Kai. “Look, bro. I don’t know if I’m gay.”

“You’re questioning,” he nods sagely, then puts his lips around the wide boba straw. The way his mouth puckers, sends a flood of warmth up my neck all the way to my cheeks.

“I sort of have a boyfriend,” I confess.

“You’re experimenting.”

“Is it possible that I’m only gay for my boyfriend, but straight for everyone else?”

Kai chuckles. It’s not condescending. It’s fucking charming. Oh god.

He says, “There’s a lot to unpack in that question.” Turns out, Kai is a Sociology major, minoring in Gender Studies.

We talk for hours, with an ease I haven’t enjoyed with anyone else in a very long time. After we finish our iced boba, we switch to hot tea and order sticky rice cakes. Beyond unpacking my statement on sexuality and identity, we talk about a myriad other things.

I learn that he and I listen to some of the same podcasts on politics. He and I both have a baffling obsession with TV shows about royal families. We lament about missing the food our parents make, and gripe about the absence of steamed rice in the campus dining halls. This pilaf shit isn’t cutting it. We agonize over the trend of hyper-sexualizing and fetishizing Asian men in media, particularly in porn, and ponder whether this is progress from the media of our parents’ generation, in which Asian men were veritably emasculated. Don’t get us started on Long Duc Dong.

Kai is thoughtful, engaging, cheeky at times, and I enjoy talking with him. Nothing I say upsets him, and nothing he says upsets me, even when we vehemently disagree.

The bubble tea shop is closing, and we take our time walking to campus.

He circles back to the beginning of our long conversation and says, “Does it really matter how you identify? Gay? Straight? Asexual? Demisexual? Just do what brings you joy. You’re eighteen. Your identity is still malleable. College is where you go to find yourself. Try on new hats. Make glorious mistakes. Experience new things.” He chuckles and adds, “If you’re not a sexual person, find other ways to connect. If you are a sexual person, sleep with different kinds of people.”

Later that night, I call Lucas. He doesn’t answer. I text him:. I think we should see other people. I still love you, though.

The message remains unread.

I text Kai: I want to experience something new.

Kai texts back immediately: Like what?

Like you, I tell him.

This is definitely going to be a glorious mistake. We hook up in his dorm room. For someone who identifies as straight, I enjoy Kai’s body entirely too much.

When I extricate myself from his lithe arms, I find several missed calls and text messages from Lucas.

Where is this coming from?

Did you cheat on me?

Call me please. Let’s discuss this.

I find that I really don’t want to discuss this. Lucas wasn’t really mine to begin with. I shouldn’t feel beholden to him. I shouldn’t feel guilty for sleeping with somebody else. It’s close to midnight when I step outside the dorms and I force myself to call him, hoping that he’s already gone to bed. But he answers.

“Let’s just break up,” he says. From his gravely voice, I know he’s been crying. “If you can’t be loyal to me after all that I’ve been through with you, then I can’t be with you. You know, I only got back together with you after the accident because I was afraid you’d hurt yourself again.”

Again? This is news to me. Had Isa hurt himself? Was he that depressed? And if so . . .

“I didn’t need your sympathy,” I say, “I didn’t need you to pity fuck me.”

“This is what I was afraid of,” says Lucas, “This isn’t you, Isa. This sounds like Izzy.”

I’m so startled that I nearly drop the phone.

“Izzy’s gone,” I say.

“Yeah, I thought so too. But apparently he’s not.”

Fuck. Does he suspect I’m not Isa? I say nothing. I end the call.

Oh god. He knows I killed Isa.

It’s late, but I hop in the shower, forgetting to grab my towel from my room. I turn on the hot water and scrub away the traces of Kai’s touch, the memory of his kiss, the lingering streaks of sweat and semen. I scrub Lucas away too.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” says Isa from the drain. “You were never going to stay with Lucas forever. I knew that. He knew that. You knew it from the start.”

“That all may be true,” I whisper hysterically, “but it doesn’t matter anymore. What matters now is that Lucas knows. He knows I’m not you. Which means he knows what I did to you.”

“So?”

“So?” I hiss, “He might tell someone!”

“He won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that, actually. Because Lucas doesn’t want to sound like a crazy person. Think about it, Iz. What would that police report look like? Lucas Spinel, 18, believes that his ex boyfriend, Isagani Machado, 18, was murdered in a car crash by his twin, Izzy Machado, 18, who then took his brother’s identity.”

“It’s true, though.”

“It’s true and it’s crazy!” Isa insists, and I can imagine him gesturing sharply with his hands. “Because, you, dear brother, are crazy!”

I press my forehead against the tile. It hurts more than it should because my scar has not yet healed entirely. It may never heal entirely.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut, tapping my head on the tile.

“I will not shut up. You need me. Hold it together, Izzy. Turn on the cold water and snap out of it. Oh, and, just so you know, you can’t wash away the gay, so don’t scrub too hard. You have work to do. We have work to do. Papers to write. Exams to study for. The semester is almost over. Do not let Lucas take this away from us.”

“The way he took Yale away from us,” I say, finishing his thought.

“Whatever you need to tell yourself to get through the semester,” says Isa.

And I do get through the semester. I ace all my classes, thanks to him.

Before traveling home for winter break, I meet Kai for a quick coffee.

“Maybe we can hook up when we get back,” I tell him. We’ve hooked up a few times since the first.

“But I’m no longer a new experience,” he says, his slender eyes smiling, his grin suggestively wry.

I lean across the tiny café table. My voice drops an octave when I speak softly at his ear. “You will be if I let you fuck me.”

His breathy giggle ghosts my neck. “Adventurous. I like it.”

I’m already stiffening in my khakis just thinking about it. If I end up enjoying it, I can probably confidently say I’m not straight. However, I’m still not ready to say I’m gay. It’s been so long since I’ve been with a girl, that I can’t remember if I liked it. Now that I’m free of the confines of monogamy, maybe I can explore women too.

“What do you have against being gay?” Isa asks me. I’m on the Bolt Bus with my ear buds in, listening to an NPR podcast. I hear Isa’s voice as if he’s co-hosting with Terry Gross.

I speak into my phone, pretending to be on a call. “Who says I’m against it?”

“You’re so resistant to admitting that’s what you are,” says Isa.

“I just want to be sure. I don’t want to appropriate a gay identity if that’s not who I am. It’s like being a super hero. With such power comes great responsibility,” I say flippantly, hoping he’ll leave me alone.

“That’s not a thing. Being gay is not a super power.”

“You better check your internalized homophobia, brother,” I say.

The girl sitting next to me on the bus, a fellow Ashford student who is otherwise a stranger to me, gives me an encouraging nod.

Isa responds, “Says the one with so much internalized homophobia that he can’t admit he’s gay.”

“I blame our Catholic upbringing”

“We haven’t gone to church since we were confirmed.”

“I blame our parents.”

“Mom would be totally fine with it. Dad. . . might take some work. But not impossible.”

“Wait. . . Did Mom and Dad not know about you?”

“Duh.”

I’m dumbfounded. Did I pay such little attention to Isa’s relationship with Mom and Dad that I failed to recognize that he was hiding his sexuality from them? I mean, it makes sense. We’ve had an unspoken (no pun intended) don’t-ask-don’t-tell understanding with our parents. They don’t want to know about their offspring having sex with boys, or girls for that matter, and we don’t want to tell them.

I take an Uber from the bus depot to my house. Mom and Dad are working. I’ve been away for so long that the empty house seems different. Familiar, yet strange. Like walking into the home of a distant relative. As I make my way to my bedroom, I pass through the hall where family pictures are hung. It is then that I notice that all of my photos are gone. Only pictures of Isa remain. I’m absent even from the group photos. My parents have erased my existence.

The hole that this truth has gouged into my chest, fills with molten fury, burning away the ache until only anger remains. With a sweeping motion I knock the pictures off the wall. Glass, wood, and metal create a marvelous cacophony as the frames hit the floor.

I throw myself on my bed and I cry like a lost little boy. No, not like a little boy. I cry like I always have. Because I’ve known nothing but pain in this house. Nothing but disappointment and frustration and rejection. No love, no praise, no pride has ever been wasted on me. It all went to Isa. Perfect Isa.

My parents return home together. Dad must have picked up Mom from the train. I hear them in the hall, startled by the broken glass and pictures on the floor. They come into my room. Mom sits on the bed beside me, Dad perches at the foot. Mom rakes her fingers through my hair. It’s grown back. It is only now that I realize today’s date. It’s the sixteenth of December. A year from the day of the accident.

“What’s this about, anak?” Mom asks gently.

“You got rid of all traces of him,” I say, my voice hitching as I sob. “Of Izzy. You took all of his pictures away. You even got rid of his bed. Did you care for him so little, that you were eager to throw away anything that reminded you of him?”

“What are you talking about, Isa?” asks Dad, not as gently as Mom would have.

“The photos,” I wail, “Izzy’s gone from all the photos.”

“What do you mean, anak? You’re there,” says Mom, brushing the fringe from my forehead.

I slap her hand away. “It isn’t me, Mom. I lied. I’m Izzy. Isa died in the accident.”

Dad shoots up from the bed, “I’m calling Dr. Cortez. He’s having a relapse.” He dashes out of my bedroom, phone in hand.

“Listen to me!” I yell. My mother tries to hold me, but I wiggle out of her arms. “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not Isa. I’m Izzy.”

Mom takes my face firmly in her hands. “No, you listen to me. There is no Izzy. There is only Isagani. You are Isagani. Isa is my only son.”

I just want to take Mom by the shoulders and shake her, but instead I clench my fingers in my hair and cry, my voice pitched to a high, frustrated octave, “You’re not listening! I’m Izzy. Isa’s dead. I killed him. I murdered him. I murdered your favorite son. Your darling boy. I’m the other one. Your other son.”

Mom holds my head so firmly that I can’t look away from her uncharacteristically stern expression and asserts, “I have no other son. I only have you. Isa.”

My shoulders slump and I sob, ugly sloppy, tears. “You can’t just do that, Mom. You can’t erase people out of existence.”

“Yes I can. Because Izzy does not exist. Izzy never existed.”

I try to shake my head, but Mom holds me tight. The fight has drained out of me. Still, I argue weakly, “No. That’s not true.”

Dad comes back into the room. He hands me my senior year book. Mom releases my face. Flanked by my parents, I flip the glossy pages of the book until I reach the senior portraits.

There is only one boy who looks like me. Isagani J. Machado.

#

I’m in my bathroom. Mom and Dad have insisted that I leave the door open, but they’ve given me privacy to clean myself up. I’m staring at myself in the mirror. At my double-lidded eyes, swollen from tears. At the tired lines at the creases. At the scar above my right eye, above my reflection’s left eye.

“Who are you?” I ask my reflection.

My reflection replies, “I’m Isa.”

“Who am I?” I ask my reflection.

My reflection replies, “You’re Isa.”

“Then, who is Izzy?” I ask.

My reflection answers, “Izzy was born of self doubt and despair, out of unattainable goals, expectations set too high, and tremendous pressure. Izzy is who you became in middle school when you began pushing yourself too hard, determined to follow in your parents’ footsteps.

“Izzy is who you became when you would not come to terms with your sexuality. When you developed a crush on a boy and couldn’t handle the implications of that boy returning your affection.

“Izzy took the wheel and drove you off an overpass after all of your dreams were crushed. But it was not your dream to go to Yale. It was what you thought would make Dad proud. It was not your goal to become a doctor. You believed that your parents wanted you to choose a practical, lucrative path, not the path toward your own fulfillment.

“When you left for college, you tried to leave behind all of your anxiety and your self-doubt. But it followed you. As did your fear of your authentic self—your internalized homophobia.”

“And the voice in the shower drain? The face in the library window?” I ask.

“That was you.”

“The boy who had a crush on Lucas in ninth grade?”

“You.”

“The boy who lost his virginity to Lucas at seventeen?”

“Also you.”

“The boy who went to prom with Lucas?”

“Take a wild guess.”

“But. . . How did Lucas not know?”

“Who said he didn’t know? Of course he knew. Lucas knows you better than anyone else. He knows that you become Izzy when you’re at your worst. And he’s tried to love you through it all.”

It all makes sense now. The way Lucas spoke of Izzy. He said he always got between us. He said he hated Izzy. After the accident, he thought Izzy was gone. He was so hopeful, that he wanted to start over with Isa. With me.

I call Lucas. I don’t expect him to answer. But he does.

“What?” Lucas says sharply.

“I know who I am now,” I say.

“And who is that?” he asks cautiously.

“I’m Isa. I’ve always been Isa. Izzy does not exist.”

“So you’re finally rid of him.” It’s a statement. Not a question.

“For good,” I say.

I hear Lucas take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thank god.” He doesn’t sound relieved. He’s beyond that now. He sounds tired. So very tired. Tired of dealing with me for years. Tired of watching the person he once loved destroy himself. “Now, I can let you go,” he says, “Now, I can figure out who I am without you.”

“I loved you, Lucas,” I say, “I truly did. I think I still do. At least, a part of me still does.”

“Which part?” he asks dryly, “Isa or Izzy?”

“All of me,” I say, “A small part of all of me still loves you.” Now that it’s out of my mouth, I feel that it’s true.

Lucas is quiet for a while. I know he hasn’t ended the call, because I can hear him sniffling. My chest aches. I’ve already hurt him so much. I don’t mean to hurt him now.

“Sometimes I wish you hadn’t loved me,” he says, voice cracking in soft anguish, “You made it so hard to love you back. But I’m glad that you did. Because I think I gave you something to fight for. Something to live for. You couldn’t battle your demons, couldn’t battle Izzy, on your own.”

"It was Izzy, alone, in constant battle against the whole world. You were the only one who fought back. I think you did it for me.” I add, barely above a whisper, “I think you did love me.”

“I did. . . I do.”

I smile, just a little. “Can we still be friends?”

He sniffles, collecting himself. “I think so.”

“With benefits?” I tease.

“Don’t push it, Machado,” he jibes in return.

I spend my winter break taking it easy, being gentle on myself. I start seeing a new clinical psychologist, start taking my meds again, and I chat with a therapist online several times a week. I don’t see Lucas. I’m not ready for that. Neither is he.

I text Kai on New Year’s Eve. He sends me a kiss by way of a puckered-lipped selfie, and then a photo of him kissing a girl at the party he’s attending. I’m not jealous. Only a little sad that it’s not me.

When I return to D.C., to Ashford, I still consult with my reflection in the library window to complete my papers. But now I know I’m checking in with myself. I’ve embraced my dream of becoming a journalist and political pundit. I dress in OCBD’s and khakis and rep ties, because this is who I am. Sartorial affirmation by way of preppy cosplay.

Kai meets me at the bubble tea place.

Before I even say hello, I ask him, “Guess what?” And before he has a chance to voice any speculations, I answer, “I’m gay.”

“Nice to meet you, gay,” he jokes, extending a hand for me to shake, “I’m non-monogamous pansexual. Wanna fuck?” He’s being cheeky. But he means it.

“Only if you buy me an iced green tea with extra boba.”

He does.

And we do.