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"Ugh, why do we have to go to this stupid wedding anyway, we barely know Aunt Mackenzie and we've never even seen Tom!" Alex, my dumbass twin brother, is hanging dramatically halfway off his top bunk, his head hanging over the edge and arms flailing down almost directly in my face as I'm trying to read. Not that he cares.
"Because Mom and Dad think it's important so we should be good little boys and girls and care too." I snark back. He knows this. I keep explaining it to him, he's just being wilfully obtuse at this point. I'd almost think he does it on purpose to annoy me. It is stupid though, I'll give him that. At our age, we could easily stay home together for two days, it's not like we would kill each other or anything. We're not twelve.
"Hey, just remember," I continue, "at least we get to wear fancy clothes and eat all the snacks!" Given Travis and Emily's wedding last year, that's the only good thing about weddings. The kissing is gross, the dancing is too hard, and everyone is too old or too boring to be any fun.
"As if," Alex snorts, "I'm only going for the snacks. I don't care about girl stuff like fashion."
"Oh shut up, Alex. You get to wear a suit and be cool! Everyone wears clothes, dumbass." Really, sometimes I wonder what's going on in that brain of his. I should cut his head open and see for myself sometime. That might sound a bit excessive, but it's for science! It's important research into the unsolved mysteries of the universe! This is as important as black holes! Maybe even more important.
I'll have to do it after Aunt Mackenzie's wedding though, I still need to see him be subjected to Grandpa Hitch after what he pulled last time.
"Suits are lameee!" I hear from above me. Oh right, we were talking about suits. "If you're gonna dress up, you might as well be pretty, and suits are not pretty. That's why only girls care about clothes," Alex says, uttering the dumbest sentence in the history of sentences.
"What are you on about?! Suits are super pretty!" Is he blind? "Have you even seen Ruby Rose?" I know he has: I showed him and I remember exactly how he reacted.
"Aubrey. That's just because Ruby Rose is pretty, not because of the suit, obviously." I can practically hear him roll his eyes at me. I scoff. He's not going to admit to any of this, he's too stubborn. I'll have to up my game to win this.
"Look," I counter, "if you don't wanna wear your suit I'll wear it for you. We're the same size anyway, you can wear my dress." That'll either shut him up or get him really really loud.
Silence descends over the room. There's no shout, no frantic movement of arms, no protest. Not even a rustle of sheets.
I guess it was shutting up.
I expected a scoff or at least some scathing comment, though. It's unlike Alex to be totally quiet. That's weird. I put away my book and hop off the bed to check on him. He's just kinda hanging there, staring at the wall.
"Dude, are you okay?" I try, "Did you die?"
No response.
I poke his face to check if he's dead.
He immediately recoils and shoots up. "Ow, dude! What the hell! I'm fine, I was just thinking. Can't a boy think in peace anymore?"
"Nope," I reply easily. I go up to my nightstand, grab the—pretty hilariously, if you ask me—oversized coin we found at a flea market at some point, and throw it onto his bed. "Penny for your thoughts."
Alex groans dramatically, "I never should have made that deal with you."
As an afterthought he adds: "And her name is Jennifer!"
I ignore him and climb up onto the top bunk. "Too late," I declare, "I'm here now. Spill." He can't chicken out when Penny is involved. He'd break the sacred unbreakable oath. And since the sacred unbreakable oath is, well, unbreakable, he can't break it. It's just not possible.
"No," he says, breaking the sacred apparently-breakable oath. "I- Nope."
"Are you saying you're breaking the sacred unbreakable oath?"
"You mean the blackmail you had on me when we were ten and have since lost because mom threw away every trace of whatever happened?" he deadpans. "We don't even know what that was about anymore," he says, failing to hide a small smile.
Well that's just not true, I know exactly what it was about. I even have a picture hidden away in a drawer somewhere still.
But that's not the point right now. I need to reveal that at the right time and right now is not the right time. I still have other options. "Okay, then I invoke the secret super sacred oath of Pretty Please, I Promise I Won't Laugh." I make a little pouty face and show him I'm not crossing my fingers to hammer the point home.
He snorts. Win. "Fine," he starts, "but you have to pinky promise not to laugh or think I'm weird."
"Dude, I always think you're weird," I roll my eyes with a smile. "But, I won't think you're any weirder than normal."
And so, with a joining of the pinkies, the secret super sacred oath is sealed. "So, spill. What's bothering you?"
His right hand fidgets with the blanket, left pinky still intwined in mine. He's clearly nervous, looking around at anything but me until he finds an especially interesting spot on the wall. He sighs, probably trying to find the right words to say.
Alex may say a lot of stuff without thinking, but the important things—to him, so dubiously important to the rest of us—take him a long time to say. Mom hates when he gets like that, but I think it's good! It means that he's thinking before he talks for once. If I had to rank them, those are honestly the moments I least want to cut open his brain.
After a while, he turns away from me further and deflects more, like a coward. "It's not really bothering me, per se. I- it's..." he pauses for a second to take a deep breath, "it's stupid anyway, never mind."
He tries to let go of my pinky. I don't let him and only squeeze tighter. "Dude, we sealed a secret super pact, you can't back out now." I'm not letting him get away with it this time.
He snaps his head around and irritation is clearly flashing over his face. "Fine," he spits, "asshole. I was thinking. If you... I-" as his irritation wears off, so does his confidence. He trails off and I almost decide to poke him in the ribs before he speaks: "Look, I'll wear the fucking dress, okay? But I'll only do it if you'll wear my suit. Then we'll both look dumb."
Well that explains why he was being such a coward... but this is perfect! I get to look cool as hell in a suit and I get to see Alex look silly in a dress! I don't think he thought this through very much because it is a solid win-win for me. "Deal!"
He tilts his head a little in confusion. "Wuh- what?" he mutters. Very well-worded, if I do say so myself.
"I said, deal. You can wear the dress if I can wear the suit. That's what you asked, right?"
"Uhh, yeah, it is. I just didn't expect you to say yes!" he says, a little louder than necessary.
"Well, I did, okay?"
A still slightly dumbfounded pause. "Okay."
"Great, I'll go get the suit!" I retrieve the goods from Alex's wardrobe and make my way over to my side of the divider we have set up to give the barest bit of privacy while we're changing. If we stand on our tippy toes we can look over it nowadays, so we don't do that. Either way, from the top of Alex's bed there's no hiding anywhere in the room. Luckily, he's not a creep so it's not a problem, but we should probably ask Dad for a better divider at some point.
I shimmy myself into the suit, and—as I predicted—it fits pretty well! Alex and I have started to grow into different shapes a bit in the past two years, but we're still similar enough that it's no problem for sizing.
I step out in front of the mirror to check myself out and... holy shit I look good. I mean I look good in anything but oh my god this thing is awesome. "See? Told you suits are pretty." I say, turning to Alex to see his reaction.
He is staring. One of those kind of pathetic mouth-half-open wide-eyed stares from movies. Except he's just doing it in real life for some reason. "Dude, wake up," I snap a finger in front of his face, "I don't look that good!"
That snaps him back to reality. His brows furrow, "you look better than me in it! That's no fair, you can't just one up me like that!"
I lean in with a smug smile on my face and boop his nose: "Suits are pretty. You also look fine in it, you're just blind."
He turns away, grumbling, "whatever, just give me the damn dress."
He hides behind the divider and presumably starts to change. Now, I'm not the fastest at changing, I'll be the first to concede. I like being thorough and getting things right immediately—and maybe I get a little distracted along the way sometimes but who's keeping track. However! The one person who will always, always take longer to change than me is Alex. I don't know how he does it, but he has to be really bad at it to take as long as he does. If I wanted to speculate, I could. However, I would really like to not speculate about this.
Anyway, after an actual eternity, he finally emerges from behind the divider, stepping out to look at himself in the mirror. He looks, and I hate to admit this, fucking gorgeous. I was expecting him to look a bit silly and to laugh about it together but apparently Alex absolutely rocks a dress! The red looks great on him, and with a bit of makeup he'd look just like one of those lesbians from one of Kylie's mags.
Alex seems to have something of the same thought process, because he is just staring at himself, looking almost enchanted. It'd be a big day for staring in the Alex fandom—if he had one. Unfortunately for him, he will never be as big as Twilight.
I walk up behind him and look at him in the mirror. "See?" I state proudly, "you look great! Told you fashion wasn't just girl stuff."
Whatever spell he was under breaks, and his eyes snap to mine, wide, almost panicking, for only a moment. That's probably not good. His attention turns back to himself, this time more active, searching. His face is unreadable, but it doesn't look positive. That's definitely not good. I almost go to ask what's wrong before—
Alex says "I think I'm going to throw up."
Oh, he's just being dramatic. Typical. "Dude, it's just a dress, it's not that tight. Just wait 'till you're wearing a corset or a bra under it, those suck."
But his pained expression doesn't turn to annoyance. "No, I genuinely- I can't- I can't-" he's frantically looking around now, trying to grab onto the dress and pull it up. "Help me get out of this- help!" He's panicking now, hyperventilating while trying and failing to take it off.
"Woah, woah," I try, "careful, I'll help." I take his hands and still them above his head, handling the dress myself and starting to pull it up. "Just don't tear it, please. I'd never heard the end of it from Mom," I chuckle. It's meant as a joke, but I don't think it quite lands. It doesn't with me, anyway. Alex is still looking panicked as I pull the dress over his head, but at least now he's looking at me.
He slumps down to the floor and leans back against the divider as soon as he is free. While I'm putting the dress away on its hanger, I hear a strange but unmistakable sound coming from Alex.
He's crying.
This is a serious matter.
Alex never cries.
He's dropped himself from branches and shrugged it off; he's gotten picked on and later just cursed out whoever did it; hell, he's taken the brunt of one of Mom's outbursts and never shed a tear.
And now he's sitting on the floor in his underwear, crying.
Luckily, I've read enough girl mags to know what to do in this situation!
I rush to the kitchen to fill a big mug with water, as fast as I can without getting noticed. While I'm there, I sneak a piece of chocolate that I'd hidden behind some cans yesterday, outside the crunchy wrapper. I was intending to eat it all when Mom and Dad are gone Saturday night, but this is an emergency. When I come back, I tap our secret code—two long, four short—on the door before coming in. On the floor is Alex, still crying, still woefully underdressed, now also looking up at me in fear.
Oh right, I didn't tell him what I was going to do. Massive blunder on my part.
"Don't worry," I soothe, "I just got you some water and chocolate." His fear seems to subside a bit at that, thank god.
I set the stolen treasure down beside him and grab the comforter off my bed, wrapping it around both of us as I sit down beside him.
Then, I wrap an arm around his shoulder and hold him until the shaking stops.
It takes a while, and honestly at the end I'm really tempted to move and pick up my book again, but I hold strong. Unfortunately, I care about Alex more than my book, so he gets to keep my attention. It wasn't that interesting of a book anyway, something about black holes.
Eventually, the chocolate is enough to calm him down—told you the mags were magic—and he just sits there, still half pressed against me, looking down at the floor.
"Hey," I ask, "you okay?" I mean obviously not, but I have to start somewhere.
He makes a little so-so movement with his hand. Good start.
I venture further. "You wanna talk?"
He finally turns to me at that, and gives me a small nod. Okay, I'll have to give him some time. He opens his mouth to speak a few times, but seems to think better of it at the last minute every time. Finally, he puts his hand on my hand (the one that's still on his shoulder) and begins to speak:
"I... just... I c- can we secret super pact again?" he holds out his pinky for me to hold.
Of course, I take it.
He looks at me again. "Don't tell anyone about this."
"The pact is sealed," I state.
He lets out a small chuckle and starts talking. "I looked... in the mirror. And at first, I thought I saw a girl? Like, it was me b-but I looked so different. She looked so different... Pretty..." He lets out a shaky breath, and continues. "She looked a bit like you... But then, I-I looked again, and I looked awful, and... like me. In a dress. Y'know. Why don't you have that with the suit?"
"I don't know," I reply honestly. "Do you have that with the suit?"
He thinks for a moment, "No... I don't think I do. I don't like the suit, but at least I'm supposed to wear that one. That's a normal don't like it."
There's a lot of opinions and thoughts swimming through my mind, but one question pops out at the top, for some reason. "Alex, if you could choose, hypothetically. Would you rather be a girl?"
He stares at me like I've grown a second head. Maybe I have, I haven't checked. "Uh, no? Girls are dumb."
This is one of those instances where Alex doesn't think before he speaks. I'll have to remedy that somehow. And I have the perfect solution: "Well yeah, that's true, but you're also dumb. So, y'know, it fits."
As expected, my perfect logic stupefies him more and forces him to consider his words before they come out of their mouth. "What- you're- Aubrey. That's not how that works. I can't just do that."
Baby steps. "I don't know, somebody must have tried it! Just decided that he wants to be a girl. Doesn't seem that hard, I do it all the time!"
He sighs a bit, exasperatedly, "Bree, just because someone tried it doesn't mean it's possible, just that someone was dumb enough to try something impossible."
"No, no, I'm serious." I retort. "Kylie has these magazines and we were reading through them and they talked about uhh- what was it-" I try to remember the words they used. Transylvania? No that's the vampire one. Trendsetter? No, why would it be that? Uhhhh- "Oh! Transgender! It's like when a guy is actually a girl or the other way around. Like the gay thing, but different."
"Aubrey," he says, morosely, "being gay is a sin. It's bad. Like bad bad. Kylie might be a bad influence on you."
He's right. "I-" don't care, I want to say, but the words die on my tongue. Fuck sin, I want to say, if it's making you miserable. I can't say that. But there is one thing I know for sure. One thing I can say:
"I'd still love you if you were bad."
There's a pause a bit too long to be smooth and then Alex scoffs a little. "Thanks," he says, and it sounds like he'll follow it up with a 'dumbass', but it never comes.
Instead, as he's getting up from his spot by my side, he says, "I don't know." Simple as that. "I'm gonna take a shower." He extends his arm and pulls me up when I take his hand, and then he's off to grab his clothes and flee the room.
Oh I so 100% read him for Filth! He is an open book and I read him like it was nothing! A2 reading level punk! I'm right and he doesn't want to admit it. I have- oh.
I might have a sister. Hm. I've never had a sister before. But if it's Alex, I'm sure that'll be alright. I hope. Kinda weird.
Anyway, for now, none of that is important. The question I need to be asking myself right now is: how long until he figures it out, and how am I going to rub it in his face when I predict it exactly right?