Twinfestation

I woke up with Silvia squirming in my arms. Her head was turned at just the angle to have light flooding into her eyes. While in the process of trying to shield them, she somehow ended up hitting me in the face.

"Hey babe."

The stirring body on my back alarmed me for a moment until Say spoke up in response. "Hey mom. When'd you get back?"

"A hour or two ago." She yawned before reaching around and kissing my forehead "Hey honey. Wake up."

I stretch out of my ball and sat Silvia on my lap, then looked back at Salem who was smiling at me from across the room. With his bag thrown across one shoulder and hair placed so perfectly askew, he looked anything but out of place. Our school had a loos dress code of khaki or jeans and polos or button-ups and it seemed to look good on everyone, even me. But he always made it look better somehow.

"You." I pointed to him. "You let me sleep all day! Do you know how much I missed!?"

Smiling, he pulled his bag off his shoulder and took out a few papers. "Yes. Not very much, I might add. Ms. Devile was too mad at Layla to give us any work and the rest of your teachers didn't seem like they did anything either."

"I hate you."

"Aw." He walked across the room and took me and Silvia in a hug so big it picked us up off the ground, but not so big as to squish Silvia, only make her laugh. "I know you do."

"Oh, I see how it is." Mom fake pouted. "I only shot you all out of my vagina, I don't deserve to be in the family hug."

"Ew," I said in fake disgust. "I don't want to be near her in case she shoots out any more vagina juice."

Say shuffled us over the few steps to mom and somehow his arms were long enough to wrap around her too. "You were covered in that vagina juice once, Silver, you should be used to it."

"Eeeewww!" I screamed while wiggling out of the hug, laughing. "That's disgusting! You nasty, nasty boy!"

"Hey!" He said with a big grin on his face. "That's what Hayden calls me!"

"Salem!" Mom hit him in the chest and removed his arm from her shoulder, laughing too. "Don't say that around me! I am your mother. You guys do your homework now and we'll go see if Rachael will let us in the kitchen. I've been craving cookies since I got home."

"Cookies!" Handing mom Ve, I grabbed the papers from Say and bounced down the hall to my room. "I hope they have chocolate chips."

A few problems into my math homework and I was ready to take a break. I didn't though, I had too much work to have time for a break. So instead I took out a manuscript that Mr. Daylen had gave me and worked on that while eating the last bit of caramel squares I had left.

The author was schizophrenic, I swear. One panel will be the happiest thing in the world then the next will have a doctor telling him she killed herself. I wasn't the greatest with manga translations even though I read a lot of manga, but I did like doing them. It just meant I got to read the story before it went out in English. I was better when it came to novel translations, it didn't matter as much if one word had a double meaning or if I wasn't sure, it somehow still made sense.

"Hey Silver." I looked up to see Say walking across my room and sit on the edge of the bed behind me. "Need any help?"

"Don't you have homework to do?" I asked, not trying to sound snooty.

"Yeah, I just wanted to see if you needed help first." Picking up the paper, he scrunched up his face while he looked it over. "Silver, you do know that when you times something by ten it's just that number with another zero at the end?"

"Yes, smart-ass." I said as I snatched the paper away. "Sixteen by ten is one hundred sixty. I'm not stupid."

Salem smiled one of those sympathetic cutesy smiles like he got when he sees Cali in the toilet or Ve looked down at the spoon she dropped. "Silver, that's sixty one, not sixteen."

"What?" I looked down at the paper where it clearly said...sixty one. "Why do I even have to take math anyway!? I'm a senior, I only need three math credits!"

Say patted my head and took the paper, sitting on the floor next to me and erasing some problems. "Because Ms. Jun was a bitter bitch who didn't like your hair and failed you."

I let out a little laugh as I leaned back and covered my eyes. "She was so short Say. So short."

"I wouldn't be talking if I were you."

"Fuck you."

"Please?"

"Ew!" I laughed as I rolled over on my stomach. "That's incest nichan! I'm pretty sure that's illegal."

"Eh, what do you know." He said in a far off voice, ignoring me and going back to my math homework.

"Square root of three seventy five." He eventually said, finally letting me do even a tinny bit of my homework. Of course, I ruined the chance to take it seriously.

"Sixty nine."

"Three by eighteen."

"Sixty nine."

"Three plus X divided by twenty eight."

"Sixty nine."

"Do you even know what sixty nineing is?" He eventually asked with a laugh.

"It's a way to get high or a drinki- nope, no idea." I admitted with a warming face.

He laughed at me then turned back to my work. Of course he didn't laugh at me in the mean way, but for some reason my heart still sunk like it did a lot of the time at school.

"Say, you should go do your own homework." I told him. "I can do mine."

"Why..." He said slowly. "When I've already finished yours?"

"Are you kidding?" Sitting up, I looked at the paper overtaken by numbers and signs that hurt my head. ".....What's wrong with you?"

"I'm just good at math." He said as he shrugged. "Do you have any other homework?"

"No." Scooting back to try and cover the pile of work next to me, I simultaneously tried to spin the pencil around in my hand like a drum stick to look cool but failed. "I did everything else."

With one hand, Say placed it on the small of my back and scooted me up, making friction with the carpet and causing my pants to ride up into my crotch. "So I'm to assume you used invisible ink on these?"

"Why, Say" I gasped and placed a hand on my chest. "are you accusing me of lying?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing." He smiled.

"Oh. Well then." Quickly, I picked up my papers and darted out of the door. Unfortunately Say has about the same speed as me due to his long legs and caught me before I even reached the end of the hall.

"Let me see them." He demanded.

"I can do it! I can do it!" I insisted, referring more to my efforts of wiggling out of his grasp than my unfinished homework. But trying to wiggle out of his grasp wasn't going too well considering the muscle in one of his arms is probably more than the muscle in most of my body.

"I know you can, but let me help!" He laughed against me. "Come one, you can work on your stuff for Mr. Day."

Finally giving up on the fight that I never win, I wiggled around so I was facing him and shoved my papers against his chest. "Fine, just let go of me. You crotch is closer to mine than I ever wanted it to be."

His smile froze for a second, but looked like it'd changed to maybe something else for a moment. He let go of me and started laughing before I could figure out what had happened. "Let's hurry up before mom eats all the cookie stuff."

"Yeah." I said with a forced little laugh. These awkward moments come along every once in awhile so I never paid much mind to them. But for some reason, this one seemed different. I couldn't tell how, but it was somehow a little more of a.....pleasant after taste.



"Come on Ray." Mom pleaded. "Let us use the kitchen."

"No!" Rachael stood in the only entry way to our mothers kitchen, her arms cross and legs spread, looking oddly commanding for someone five foot even. I didn't only like her for her cooking but also for the fact that I can look down to her. "Go use the boy's kitchen, you're not messing up mine again."

"Rachael McCar, let me in my kitchen right now or your fired!" Mom demanded, hands on her hips and head up.

"No." Unfazed, Rachael drew the word out and smiled smugly.

".......Salem, get 'er!"

With the amount of kicking and screaming you would think we were murdering someone instead of trying to get into the kitchen. Sitting Silvia in the high chair mom had me drag in, we wondered around the kitchen trying to find the right ingredients, Rachael of no help, bitter about being beat.

"What kind of cookies do we plan on making anyway?" Say asked.

"Chocolate chip!" I yelped.

Ve banged on the tray demanding something incomprehensibly in her eight-month voice.

"Or..." Mom began bringing out the sugar jar and a bag of chocolate chips from the fridge. "we could make chocolate chip sugar."

"Mom," Say said as I began to celebrate by dancing around the kitchen. "be careful, you might overload him. All you're missing is caramel."

"We have caramel!?" I squealed before turning to hide my embarrassed face.

Laughing, mom started to pull out bowls. "Not for the cookies. But I did stop by Conner's Candy and pick up those caramel squares you like."

"Really!? where are they?" I turned back around, excitedly.

"In the fridge, don't eat to many or you won't want to eat the cookies. Oh, and dinner, we have to eat that later, too."

Running to the fridge, I found the green paper bag with the clear covered caramel squares. They went for two fifty a pound at the candy store that Connor's parents owned. They named the store after him because they established it the year he was born. When his brother, Seamus, was born they decided to name every possible thing they could inside the store after him to compensate for the name. Once they moved to the states, they moved the store with them and it became the only candy store in town. It was a mystery what most of the stuff was before you bought it because all of it was in unmarked wrappings, but the candy inside was always amazing and soled at a unbelievably low price.

I sat on a stool next to Ve, resting my elbows on the island where mom and Say were piling up the ingredients. Popping a caramel square into my mouth, I gave one to Ve and watched as she licked it with a serious look on her face. With that look, there was no doubt she was my mother's kid.

With the biggest green eyes and amazing cheek bones pared with a soft jaw line and thin lips, mom was anything but intimidating in looks. But she pulled it off quite well with Salem and especially me, her being almost six foot and hovering over me like everyone else I knew. She had the long, black, curly, natural hair that most women would kill for pulled up in a bun half the time, the ends bleached as white as mine.

Once, when I was little, I asked her why she painted her hair white. She told me that since she had something on the outside to show that Salem was hers she wanted something to show that I was hers too. Ever since I can remember, when she got haircuts (which was very seldom) she would make sure to bleach the ends right after. The hair made her look a little rebellious and nothing like a doctor, much less a brain surgeon.

"Salem!" Mom yelled as he somehow got flower everywhere but the ceiling and the bowl. "Why are you even over here!? Go, shoo! You can't cook!"

"But this isn't cooking." He insisted as he laughed through his clean up. "It's baking!"

"Well you can't do that either! Didn't Silvester ban you from the kitchen anyway?"

"Only the stove, oven, and microwave."

"Yeah, the kitchen." Pushing Salem away, she pushed me out of my chair and sat him down. "Come on Silver, you're helping me bake. And you." She said, pointing a wooden spoon at Say. "You're not to touch anything unless me or Silvester says it's okay. Got that young man?"

"Yes ma'am." He said with his hands in the air and a smile on his face. Though, it didn't look completely happy to me when he looked my way. "I understand."