The Way the Light Bends Read online

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  lent me her

  sweater,

  lip gloss,

  boots.

  I didn’t want to go

  but I owed her—

  she’d helped me with my math all morning.

  Gabe & Holly

  held hands, giggled,

  played in the arcade

  beforehand.

  Max never looked my way,

  spent the whole time

  on his phone.

  On the way out of the movies,

  I tripped, spilled soda

  on the sweater, boots.

  Max just laughed.

  When I asked for his napkin,

  he told me to get one

  myself.

  Called me

  an idiot.

  When Mom asked

  what happened to the sweater,

  Holly did what she often did:

  ~~~lied~~~ for me.

  Said it was her fault, an accident.

  Later,

  we sat in her room,

  curled knees touching.

  She was so angry at Max,

  said we should get him back.

  Said she wasn’t going to let anyone ignore, tease

  me.

  My heart swelled

  with love for Holly.

  Once upon a time,

  we were

  princesses

  making deals

  casting spells

  facing the world

  together.

  Once upon a time.

  UNEVEN

  Dad comes home

  blue button-down shirt, rolled at the sleeve

  wrinkled around the collar

  glasses uneven.

  He leans his light arm

  on the navy chair in the den

  that no one ever sits in.

  In my mind,

  I take a photo

  of the colors

  contrasted,

  then switch them.

  Him blue,

  chair white.

  “Chemistry, huh?”

  he says,

  turns off the TV,

  asks if he can help.

  I look down at my notes,

  my drawings,

  shrug.

  “You hungry?

  How about an apple?

  Brain food,”

  he says.

  As he goes to the fridge,

  I text Holly.

  Dad’s home.

  She doesn’t text back but

  minutes later

  they appear together—

  Holly with a new outfit on.

  Stefano all smiles.

  VERTEBRAE TO VERTEBRAE

  An hour later,

  Stefano gone

  Holly out for a run

  Dad cooking,

  me still struggling with the same assignment.

  Mom enters—6:35 p.m. sharp.

  Hangs up her key

  on the hook labeled “Mom.”

  Walks to the sink.

  Washes her hands.

  Dad stirs soup, kisses her cheek.

  Holly walks in, sweaty,

  greets her in the kitchen.

  They open 3 seltzers

  pop

  pop

  pop.

  I close chemistry. Unfinished.

  Move on to math.

  I watch them all,

  listen in

  from my spot in the living room.

  Holly tells Mom

  she

  is running for student council

  got moved up to advanced math

  is trying for starting goalie.

  Mom tells Holly

  about work:

  “a particularly complex

  spinal surgery.”

  Reconnecting vertebrae to vertebrae.

  Dad smiles at them both.

  They don’t look anything alike

  Holly, black

  Mom, white

  but

  standing tall

  their backbones both

  link

  success

  to

  success

  to

  success.

  CALCULATIONS

  Mom yells to me from the kitchen:

  “Linc, honey, how was your day?”

  I look down.

  Instead of finding

  the surface area

  of a cylinder

  I’ve colored it in.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Any details you care to share?”

  Sure. I could tell her:

  I failed a pop quiz in chem.

  My history teacher’s the hardest one in the school.

  Ellery’s parents are letting her take an art elective.

  But before I can answer

  she sighs deeply

  mutters something

  and then she says louder:

  “Did you hear all of Holly’s exciting news?”

  So I erase the cylinder.

  Shade it back in.

  Listen to Mom & Holly calculate

  strategies for success.

  I

  fill.

  And

  then erase.

  COURAGE

  Once—

  in eighth grade,

  I got up the courage,

  asked Dad why

  Mom

  liked Holly better.

  He said, “Don’t be

  ridiculous.”

  But then

  he saw how

  upset I was.

  A siren wailed. A dog barked.

  He sat me down

  told me how

  when the adoption went through

  Mom read everything she could

  about how to be a good mother

  to an adopted child.

  She studied like she was

  in med school

  again.

  Mom was determined

  to make up for the fact

  that her and Holly’s DNA

  didn’t match.

  That they would never

  look like each other.

  But it was different with me.

  I was her biological child.

  “So what about for me?

  What did she do when she found out about me?”

  Dad looked at me closely.

  A kid cried. A taxi honked.

  “She was very excited,”

  he said,

  and smiled.

  It didn’t really

  answer

  my question

  but I never had the courage to ask it

  again.

  TWO ROUTES

  I.

  We are twins

  (virtual ones)

  Holly only four months older,

  adopted from Ghana at six months old.

  Mom volunteered there

  after med school,

  doctoring orphaned children.

  She knew then

  as she bandaged

  and vaccinated

  she’d return someday

  to mother a Ghanaian child

  of her own.

  The adoption was already set

  when they found out:

  she was pregnant.

  II.

  Once I asked

  if I was an accident,

  Dad smiled, said no—

  a marvelous surprise.r />
  III.

  Holly & I

  used to pretend

  we were named after

  the New York tunnels

  Holland & Lincoln

  two routes to the same city.

  We would lie down

  /side by side/

  pretend

  to let the world

  rush through us,

  reach our arms overhead,

  tip our fingers

  to lightly touch,

  our point of convergence.

  IV.

  Now,

  when Mom’s disappointment in me

  stains our walls,

  when it drowns

  out the street noise,

  when it cracks

  over my skin,

  I want to remind her

  I’m the one

  she carried in her belly.

  OVERLAP

  Mom

  only sees Holly & me

  in opposition.

  Holly: hardworking.

  Linc: careless.

  Holly: bright.

  Linc: dim.

  She spits my name—

  Linc

  says hers

  pigeon-coo soft—

  Holly.

  And each time

  my stomach sinks

  wondering if I might ever

  be enough—

  whether Mom might ever

  see where we overlap—

  whether she might ever

  speak my name

  —gently—

  like hers.

  HOVERING

  From my room,

  I can hear Holly down the hall

  chatting with her best friend Maggs.

  Saying something about Stefano

  and Saturday.

  After she hangs up,

  like clockwork

  9:45 p.m.

  Mom comes into her room

  to go over the next day’s schedule.

  Ellery texts me an image:

  half her big toe

  hovering above a blue blanket.

  We play a game

  where we send

  drawings

  photos

  and the other person creates

  a caption for the image.

  So I write:

  Moon over water.

  She texts back a thumbs-up.

  My turn:

  On my wall, I sketch monster teeth

  on a cartoon bunny.

  Take a photo.

  Her turn to give my image a name.

  MORE/LESS

  Once Mom’s done with Holly,

  she enters my room,

  scans over all my homework,

  makes sure I’ve finished it all.

  She picks up my notebooks,

  without asking.

  Rubs her temples,

  leafs through notes for geometry,

  sighs at chemistry.

  “Linc, let’s try to start sophomore year off differently.

  More learning, less doodling, okay?

  You’ll need to work much harder to get off probation.”

  She lays my notebook down.

  Ellery texts back: Rabid rabbit.

  I can’t help but smile.

  Mom thinks I’m laughing at her.

  Her voice changes

  to the one Holly & I used to call

  “Mean Queen,” says:

  “There’s nothing funny about failure.”

  Closes the door

  behind her as she leaves.

  I never even got

  a chance to speak.

  ART FOR SCIENTISTS

  Lying on my bed, keep drawing on my wall.

  I fill in the bunny’s ears.

  Give him a field to play in.

  Then, lie back,

  remember how

  once upon a long time ago

  Mom was impressed

  by my art

  my creativity.

  She bought me

  my first set of

  watercolors, brushes.

  Used to laugh, say

  “how fascinating”

  she ended up with a child

  who was an artist

  when she could only draw

  stick figures.

  Sometimes, we’d all play school,

  me the art teacher,

  Holly teaching science,

  Mom & Dad, the students.

  No matter how hard Mom tried to draw a face,

  the features would come out

  //lopsided

  //uneven.

  No matter how hard Mom tried to instill in me

  her love of science and math, of school,

  fractions

  swirled &

  fell

  shapes

  overshadowed

  theories.

  Through colors & images I could always

  say more

  than with words & numbers.

  Once upon a long time ago

  she bought me

  my first set of

  watercolors, brushes.

  But now,

  my art is

  “just

  a distraction.”

  SPELL CASTING

  I.

  Freshman year

  Photo 1—

  Mom let me take

  an elective.

  I met a girl

  who wore a shirt

  with an embroidered fuchsia Pegasus.

  Her parents

  insisted she go to Ketchum

  after years of homeschooling

  even though she hated

  math & science

  (just like I did).

  She said she liked

  my lime-green boots.

  “I’m Ellery, by the way.”

  And in that first moment

  I couldn’t help but wonder—

  could we be the same?

  II.

  As the year went on,

  Ellery switched into 3D Art.

  I stuck with photography.

  Knew

  I was meant

  to do more than just

  capture a moment—

  I was meant to

  give the invisible visibility.

  I created my own reality

  in the digital darkroom

  (cutting, transforming, color adjusting, cropping, sharpening),

  watching my world come alive.

  THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN

  It turns out

  the differences

  between Ellery & me

  go beyond art preference:

  Her parents,

  owners of the Müller Gallery,

  let her take art again this year,

  they always //encourage// her to

  explore her creativity.

  She never seems to study,

  but she never

  seems to fail.

  My parents

  insist the reason

  my GPA slipped below 2.0

  last year

  was because of my obsession

  with my camera,

  with my art.

  That I did murals instead of math problems,

  compositions instead of calculations.

  Now,

  I have weekly meetings with my advisor,

  weekly reports from my teachers.

  Every adult

  holds me in their
focus,

  ready to capture

  a negative image

  of me.

  If only

  I were graded

  in photography

  on artistic merit

  I know I could be like Holly

  getting

  A’s.

  A’s.

  A’s.

  LOST TRACK

  Next morning, on the way to school,

  I snap photos

  a bird’s wing,

  an open window,

  feet walking.

  Holly is tense,

  cracks her neck, flicks her wrist,

  blinks her eyes too many times.

  “Did you vote for me?” she asks

  as we walk to the bus.

  A thunderbolt crashes into my gut.

  I consider lying.

  But maybe the truth doesn’t matter?

  Maybe she doesn’t really need my vote?

  “I forgot,” I admit.

  “I meant to

  but Ellery showed me her new art project—

  we totally lost track of time.”

  Holly’s lips move side to side

  then—

  she picks up the pace.

  To show she’s mad.

  Crash.

  Boom.

  SIDELINES

  Maggs is already at the bus stop.

  We board.

  Maggs, mixed race,

  her skin’s closer to Holly’s color

  than mine.

  Looking at us

  side by side by side,

  you’d see a rainbow.

  But—they are part of something

  I am not.

  They’re busy

  talking dresses

  for some athlete-scholar luncheon.

  Holly, an academic scholar.

  Linc, on academic probation.

  “You could wear that coral one,”

  I offer.

  Holly shoots me a look.

  “I outgrew it a long time ago.”

  I watch the park wind past me.

  They move on to soccer.

  Holly’s chances

  of playing starting goalie.

  I picture her

  in the goal zone

  making save

  after save

  after save.

  Holly, goal-oriented.

  Linc, without aim.

  Me, on the sidelines,

  taking pictures of the grass

  how it moves in the wind like waves.

  CARRIAGES

  The bus crosses east through Central Park.

  I look to the leaves

  snap shots of the tunnels

  the paths that lead

  back west—

  remember—

  when we were eight, Dad brought