The World's A Better Place When It's Upside Down

When my parents told me that our family was moving to a private island, I envisioned sandy beaches in the Caribbean. Instead, I got fog, cold, and Maine.

The town was tiny. There was one restaurant. One tiny grocery store. Ten streets. And the walk around the island was only two miles long.

Now, I was sitting in my tiny bedroom that I had to share with my twin sister, staring at the ceiling while she hung up posters.

“This place sucks.” I sighed.

She nodded in agreement. “There are what, five hundred people on the entire island?”

“Five hundred and sixty.” I corrected her, looking down at the guidebook I had left propped open next to me.

“We’re going to die.” And with that, she flopped down on the floor and shut her eyes. “Wake me up in fifteen minutes.”

“Aren’t you going to sleep on your bed?” I said, looking doubtfully at the wooden floor.

“Shut up.” She said, and rolled on her side.

My sister and I aren’t exactly alike. Although we’re identical twins, the way we present ourselves is completely different. Emma is more of a rebel- she has a short and jagged haircut, dyed a reddish color, and she wears a lot of black. She also has a lip ring. I’m more of a mainstream person. My hair is dirty blond, down to my shoulders, kind of curly. I’m run track, Emma… doesn’t. Do anything athletic.

But even though we look different, we still like a lot of the same things. It can be annoying to have to spend so much time with your twin, but there’s no one else that will do the crazy things I feel like doing. In our school, we were the people most often in detention for the strangest things. We were always going to get the senior superlative “Craziest.” Of course, then we had to move to Maine the summer before our senior year.

I stood up and kicked her. “You want to see what’s in the basement?”

“Whatever Madi. You go. See if something is cool.” Then she stood up and threw herself down on her bed, burying her head in the pillow.

I walked down the creaky stairs to the basement. It was large, with windows on one side. Since our house was on a hill, the windows were all on one side, at ground level. There was junk everywhere- bicycles, boxes of papers, a giant rubber band ball that came up to my waist. I kicked it, and it knocked over a wagon. Yes, a little red wagon, just like the one I always wanted as a kid. I picked it up and lugged it up the stairs. “Emma, come on!” She came down the stairs, putting on a belt as she came down. “You’re wearing three belts again?”

She didn’t even reply, just gave me a cutting look and helped me get the wagon out of the door. Our mom, who was unpacking things in the kitchen, didn’t even ask- she was used to us by now. Our dad looked at us a little funny, then shook his head, and went back on his computer. Probably working on “business.”

“This is fun.” I said sarcastically as we towed our German shepherd, Spot (I know, lame, but I always loved this one movie with a dog named Spot, so that’s what we named him.). Then we found the hill. We were standing at the top. People were out and about- watering their lawns, cutting the grass, the normal things to be doing at the end of May. I grinned, and pushed Spot out of the wagon, sitting down in it. “Push.” I said.

Now, if my sister were anyone else, she would probably say, “Are you sure?” But instead, she shoved the wagon as hard as she could, and I went barreling down the hill, screaming at the top of my lungs.

I kept going faster and faster, and panicked when I realized that the road ended at someone’s driveway. But I couldn’t stop now, because if I tried to jump I’d probably really bust myself up. So I ducked down as far into the wagon as I could, and curled into a fetal position, still screaming as loud as I could.

I closed my eyes and slammed into the flimsy garage doors, going straight through them, and hitting the car inside, causing the car alarm to go off. Surprisingly, I wasn’t hurt much, except for the fact that my cheek was bleeding where a piece of garage-door had hit it.
I stood up unsteadily. A guy about my age came running out of the house into the garage. “What the hell did you just do?”

Maybe he was concerned about my safety. But I think it could have had something to do with the fact that I was standing in the wreckage of his garage, having just seriously damaged the trunk of his car. I didn’t stick around to find out- I ran out of there as fast as I could, which was pretty fast, if I do say so myself. I grabbed Emma’s arm and pulled her with me, almost knocking her down, because she had been running towards me the whole time.

“Oh my God! She panted as she tried to keep up with me. “That was Brendon Urie’s garage!”

I didn’t have a clue who that was, so I just concentrated on keeping Spot with us as we ran.

When we finally got to our house, we piled in and slammed the door behind us.

“Didn’t you guys have a wagon when you left?” My dad asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I gave him a blank look, and Emma and I went up to our room.