Thumped (2 page)

MY TWIN IS EVERYWHERE, AND YET SHE’S NOWHERE TO BE
seen.

“She blinded me again,” Jondoe says with a sigh, a sigh with 180 pounds of perfectly sculpted musculature behind it. Not that his hot body is doing him a bit of good these days. He’s miserable, and it’s all because of my sister.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I told you she would.”

Harmony is the most determined person I’ve ever met. Eight and a half months ago, she made up her mind that returning to Goodside to deliver the twins was the “godly” thing to do. She hasn’t wavered in that decision, despite all our repeated attempts to woo her back to this side of the gates. Harmony insists on raising them with Ram, even though there’s zero chance that her husband is the true father.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to be here?” Jondoe asks. “Surrounded by girls who look
exactly
like her?”

The irony is, I’m Harmony’s identical twin and I’m not even one of the girls Jondoe is referring to. I scan the rowdy crowd from the safety of the one-way window wall of our second-story VIP room. There are a lot of girls who look just like her at a distance. It’s impossible to count just how many dyed blondes are dressed in Conception Couture knockoffs of Harmony’s green maternity gown.

Jondoe anxiously chews on his thumbnail. “Is it even safe for her to deliver in Goodside? Do they even have real doctors there?”

“Delivering is what they do best,” I say, taking Harmony’s
word for it because that’s all I have. I mean, Goodside midwives must know what they’re doing if they routinely deliver babies for teen newlyweds, right?

But before I can say anything else to reassure him, my agent, Lib, comes barreling toward us wearing the latest
TEAM HOTTIE
T-shirt under the pink and blue flashing lumina jacket that has become his iconic trademark. I hate that shirt. I especially hate that I’m wearing the same exact shirt in size XXXL Maternity.

“Your FANS are ready for YOU! Are YOU ready for THEM?”

“We’re ready.” I look to Jondoe for confirmation, but he’s too distracted to pay me or Lib or this party any mind.

Lib has no time for such self-indulgent melodrama, unless he’s the one being self-indulgently melodramatic. He pokes Jondoe in the ribs.

“Ow!” Jondoe says, rubbing the spot.

“You think you can interrupt your VERY IMPORTANT LIP POUTING long enough to fulfill your contractual obligations?”

Jondoe shrugs.

Lib shoots me a
he’s your problem
look, then takes off to welcome the incoming crowd.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Jondoe leans in.

“I can’t believe Harmony is really going to stay there with Ram.” His voice is on the verge of breaking. “You promised that she’d come around before she delivered.”

“I thought she would . . .”

I really did too.

“You told me this was how I could help her,” he says bitterly, more to himself than me. “That’s the only reason I’m still here . . .”

He silences himself as the room fills with fan clubbers, contest winners, and corporate muckety-mucks, all eager to have their fotos taken with us.

I believe Jondoe has sincere feelings for my sister. I mean, the guy can sell underwear like nobody’s business, but that pretty much pushes the limit of his skills as an actor. There’s no way that he could have faked the change I’ve seen in him for the past eight and a half months. I know it has sucked for Jondoe—I can relate all too well to wanting to be with someone you can’t have.

I bring my lips to his ear.

“She’s the reason I’m here too,” I say. “And there’s still time.”

But even as I say these words, I know that with each minute that goes by, they are that much closer to becoming more lies.

Our audience swoons over our whispered sweet nothings, the secrets shared by two gorgeous ReProductive Professionals who have done the unheard of:

We have fallen deeply and lustily in love.

At least that’s what we need everyone to believe they’re seeing.

I DID IT! IF I CAN RESIST JONDOE, I CAN DO ANYTHING. I’M
flush with a rush of energy like I haven’t felt since my second trimester.

With one hand I take hold of my long braid and extend it as far as it will go. With the other hand I open the shears. I place the thick golden plait inside the mouth of the scissors, close my eyes, and . . .

“What in Heaven are you
doing
?”

My husband has a knack for showing up precisely when he’s not wanted.

Ram is frozen in the door frame, his whole face etched with concern. I know this gentle giant cares about me, loves me even, just not in the way in he should. And yet, I cared enough about him to come back here because he needed me more than I needed him. It’s how my ma raised me, after all, to live in JOY:

Jesus first, Others next, Yourself last.

That’s the excuse I use anyway, whenever anyone asks why I gave up on my fresh start in Otherside before it even had a chance to begin. Yet, as far as I know, according to stolen conversations I’ve had with Melody, there’s really only
one
person who asks. But after everything that has happened, I don’t think I’ll ever be convinced that Jondoe needs me out there nearly as much as Melody says he does, and certainly not more than Ram needs me here. Jondoe has amassed a fortune making fools fall for his untruths. We
both
have, actually. But I won’t be
his
fool again.

Or anyone else’s.

Ram approaches me slowly, carefully, like I’m a rabid dog or something worth fearing.

“Your ma and your housesisters are waiting for you,” he says.

His hand is outstretched, hoping I’ll willingly give him the scissors without an argument. Praying that I will, against all odds, act like the subservient wife he’s never asked me to be. Instead, I take an even tighter grip on the handles, clamp down firmly one . . . two . . . three times until the braid comes away in my fist!

Ram and I take a moment to marvel at it, as if this length of hair were a rare and dangerous creature I had hunted down and caught with my bare hands.

I’m still staring at my quarry when I hear the high-pitched gasps.

“Oh my grace!”

Ma tries in vain to block my housesisters from getting a clear look at what I’ve just done. Hands flutter to mouths, cheeks, and eyes in disbelief.

“The Orders!” my housesisters cry out in unison. “She broke the Orders!”

I lock eyes with the woman who raised me. There’s no comfort to be found in her gaze, only sadness. I hope she knows this isn’t her fault. Ma treated all her daughters—by birth and by adoption, before me and after—the same. Forty-seven out of forty-eight of the children she raised were receptive to her teachings of the Word. I don’t know why I am the exception.

“I’m praying for you,” Ma says as she ushers Katie, Emily, and Laura out of the doorway. There’s a finality to the way she says it, as if she’s brushing me off like so much invisible dust on her apron.

The front door slams and Ram finally speaks. There’s a catch in his voice. He’s scared. And I am too.

“What
are
you doing, Harmony? What are
we
going to do?”

At eight and a half months along, I don’t have much time left for figuring out the answer. I rub the naked nape of my neck and do what I haven’t been able to do since I came back all those months ago: Tell the truth.

“I don’t know.”

“COME, EVERYONE,” LIB ANNOUNCES. “AND MEET THE HOTTEST
half of The Hotties!”

That’s me. One half of the Hot Twins Having Twins. When a series of focus groups thumbs-downed that label because it was too wordy for the MiNet, Harmony and I were officially rebranded The Hotties. Marketers find our story irresistible. Identical twin girls separated at birth, raised in drastically different environments, due to deliver sets of twin girls on the same day. This is the wildly anticipated event known as Double Double Due Date, or D4.

Harmony and I target two different types of consumers. Married to Ram and a devout member of the superstrict Church, Harmony appeals to conservative shoppers who believe the infertility crisis caused by the Virus is no excuse for committing the sin of premarital sex. And my coupling with Jondoe, the most famous ReProductive Professional on the planet, makes me the role model for liberal spenders who support the rights of Surrogettes and think it’s empowering for girls to get paid to breed on their behalf. Together, my sister and I are, according to Lib, a “next-generation synergistic multiplatform global marketing phenomenon.” And events like this are necessary if we hope to expand the brand right up to the moment Harmony’s water breaks.

It doesn’t matter if this if my first or fiftieth fan foto-op. The conversations are remarkably the same.

“You’re such a positive role model for my daughter,” says Quailey’s mom as she shoves a willowy, pillow-lipped, raven-haired thirteen-year-old in front of me. Quailey fills out the trademarked copy of my orange and black #15 Princeton Day Academy varsity soccer jersey better than I ever did. And that’s saying something.

“
Mommmm
,” she whines, reminding me just how young she really is.

“Surrogetting is just starting to catch on in our neck of the woods,” Quailey’s mom continues. “I’ve gotten a lot of grief from the other PTO moms, believe you me.” She pats the complicated updo that’s popular among women her age. “They don’t see the big-picture stuff, so they’re content to just let their daughters get knocked up by their down-market boyfriends.”

Jondoe mutters something unintelligible, which immediately attracts eyeballs because he’s been staring sullenly at his feet throughout the meet and greet so far. You’d think his depressed expression would be a turnoff. But his sadness only makes him more mysterious and magnetic than ever . . . if you’re into that sort of thing. Quailey finds him unlookawayable and is desperate to know what he just said.

“What was that?” She’s bouncing up and down on her toes. “What?
WHAT?
”

I don’t know what he said, but I
do
know how unhinged Jondoe is feeling right now, and I’m afraid of what he’ll do.

Fortunately, Quailey’s mom is all business. “We admire what UGenXX has done for you,” she says, searching around the room. “Is your agent taking on any more clients?”

“Mommmm. For serious. You’re so neggy. I’m going to terminate with embarrassment.”

I cringe. Did I sound that brainwashed before?

“I’ll be happy to give you his password,” I lie, just so I can end this conversation.

“Fertilicious!” she says. “It’s our dream to see Quailey bump with someone as reproaesthetical as you, Jondoe! It’s an investment in her future!”

Jondoe blows out his cheeks with an annoyed
pfffffft
and I swear Quailey is about to peak with pleasure.

“That’s the worst advice I’ve ever heard,” he says calmly, looking right at Quailey, who looks like she’s about to pass out from the attention.

Quailey’s mom assumes she’s misunderstood him. “What did you say?”

“When you bond with someone in a heart and soul sort of way, you
should
be able to bond physically too. It’s like, the most beautiful, most profound experience.” He closes his eyes and tilts his head to the ceiling, as if he were basking in an invisible sunbeam. “And once you have it, you never want to settle for anything less. Waiting five minutes to be with someone you love can feel like five years! And waiting five years can feel like . . . forever!”

We all freeze. He’s waxed all poetic about Harmony to me privately, but never, ever in public. For Jondoe to go manifesto like this is the equivalent to Harmony carving a pentagram into her forehead and declaring her allegiance to Mephistopheles. I think quickly.

“Which is why it was so awesome that we were contracted to bump together!”

Jondoe looks exhausted from his rant. He lowers his head, opens his eyes, looks at me.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Then he walks away from us and out of the room.

“Oh my God!” Quailey chirps. “Did you just, like, break up?” Her eyes are already rolling in their sockets so she can spread this gossip on the MiNet.

“Um . . . he’s just . . .” How do I explain what just happened here? I’m getting all panicky now, trying to think of something I can say to put a positive spin on this situation when the door opens and I lose all interest in feigning politeness.

“Zen!”

I’m not the only one who has noticed his arrival. Every head turns as he cuts through the crowd.

“Omigod! He’s even breedier than Jondoe!” Quailey gushes, clutching her soccer jersey.

I resent her for being able to say what I cannot.

Zen heads straight for me. I’m all ready to vent to him about Jondoe’s latest meltdown over Harmony when I realize that I’m just so off-the-spring happy to see him. Jondoe and Harmony are
not
the kept-apart couple I care about right now.

Zen tries to give me a hug, but we can’t get any closer than an arm’s length from each other.

“It looks like something has come between us,” he says wryly.

We both look down at my massive midsection. It’s an old joke, one I’ve always thought was too true to laugh at, but I smile anyway because Zen makes me smile whether I want to or not.

“Not for much longer,” I say, more for my sake than his. “Harmony is thirty-five weeks along.”

Zen presses his palm to the parabolic curve of my belly. “And you too.”

I’ve been at it for more than eight months now. And yet it’s the littlest slips of my tongue that remind me how difficult it will be to see this commitment through to the very end.

“Right,” I say, recklessly placing my hand on top of his, out in the open, where Quailey and her mom and anyone else can see us. A current of electricity passes between us, just enough of a jolt to remind me why I need to take my hand away. “Me too.”