Pas De Deux

morgan spencer

I am sitting at my desk, my pencil between my forefinger and thumb. I stare out the window watching the sun start to lower in the sky. I drink a sip of water, an ache spreading through my head. 

In March of 2009, Gemma Houghton suddenly had the impulse to check on her twin sister who was in the bath. When she went into the bathroom she found her sister, Leanne, submerged in the water and was turning blue. Leanne is epileptic and had a seizure in the bath. Gemma managed to get her sister out of the water and performed CPR, saving her life. 

My mother told me that when we both cried, something was wrong. When only one of us cried, that one was being dramatic. 

Until I was seven years old, I didn’t spend more than an hour by myself. We were in first grade when the school split us up into different classes. Before then we had shared our school supplies in two backpacks. Keegan would carry the pencil sharpener and a notebook. I would carry the pens and crayons. We would swap the next day. I forgot a pencil sharpener the first day of first grade. I wrote with a dull lead. 

Twins have occurred throughout history; both scientists and artists have continued to be fascinated with the phenomenon of twins. In Greek mythology they were portrayed with Apollo and Artemis, Apollo being the god of the sun and Artemis the goddess of the moon.

When Keegan and I were eight our mother bought us a pink basketball and we took turns pretending to shoot a basket at the streetlamp. She would run to the brick wall of our backyard and throw the ball until the glass broke. My father used to pay to get it fixed. The same guy would come each time and I would hold the ladder as he put in new glass. His name was Robert. I would play defense, trying to jump up before she could shoot the ball. Robert stopped coming after she broke the lamp for the tenth time. I remember the glass breaking that last time. Unlike others it remained together, only a single piece fell to the ground. 

My mother then told her that she had to play for a team. She played for UPWARD. Her jersey is still somewhere in the garage, littered with green and purple stars, every accomplishment she was able to get with that team. I was told a few years later that a coach had told my father that she was a prodigy. 

Christmas and New Year’s became basketball tournaments. I didn’t see Keegan or my father for the majority of seventh and eighth grade. They were always driving to California. Keegan was too good to play at home. She was too good to play for the school team. She was too good for anyone. 

Despite having the same genetic makeup, identical twins have two distinct personalities. Life experiences affect the brain, creating differences in personality. Even raised in the same household, the same environment, they still develop differences over time. 

Keegan had a freckle on her nose for most of elementary school. It was right in the center and it was how most people would tell us apart. We never wore the same clothing. I would wear the red shirt and navy blue shorts on one day and Keegan the next. We had different shoes; I made sure we never had the same hairstyle. I wanted to be different from her.

I have never worked hard at something. My father tells me that Keegan is not only a natural at basketball, but works harder than everyone else. 

When I was eight I had thrown myself into dance. I took each class that was available, on the weekends I would stretch for an extra thirty minutes. My mother bought me a ballet barre for my room. I waited for my father to tell me I worked as hard as Keegan. I never wanted to do extra hours for dance. I never wanted a ballet barre in my room. I wanted to say I worked as hard as Keegan.

In seventh grade a kid in my class could never tell whether I was Keegan or me. He would squint his eyes at me and always guess Keegan. I knew him for three years and he never learned my name. I told him that I would start to call him Jack instead of James. I called him Jack for most of the seventh grade and my French teacher told me that it wasn’t nice to call someone not by their name. I told her he called me Keegan. She said that was different. 

In both The Parent Trap and Liv and Maddie, the identical twins are played by the same actress or actor. Instead of finding identical twins to play the roles, only one actress or actor will be both of the characters. In the TV show Liv and Maddie, Dove Cameron plays both of the identical twin girls. One of them is an artist and the other is a basketball player. 

Our father used to put on Jimmy Buffet while holding an array of steaks that he would grill. I would start to dance, jumping around in circles around the kitchen. My father would shake his head and say I looked ridiculous. I grabbed Keegan’s arms and pulled her out into the middle of the kitchen floor. I started to move her arms up and down, and kicked her feet so she would jump. She rolled her eyes at me but let me pretend that she was my partner. I twirled her into me and back out again and showed her how to do a double turn. Keegan will say that I never taught her to dance. I didn’t let her leave the kitchen floor.

I sat at a basketball tournament on December 31st instead of a New Year’s Party. I ate a bag of Sour Patch watermelon that I bought from the snack shop. My mother promised that tomorrow we would see a movie. She said we would go see The Grinch. I watched as the ball went from one end of the court to the other, my head resting on my hands. A father of a member of Keegan’s team came and sat next to us. “She your daughter?” he asked. He pointed with his finger to Keegan. 

“Yeah, that’s her,’’ my father smiled. 

“She really good,’’ the parent said. He looked over and noticed me. “Do you play basketball?” 

“No,’’ I said. He looked confused. “Aren’t you twins?”

“Yes,’’ I said. 

“Weird.’’ The parent stood up and walked away. I sat back on the bleachers. I finished my candy. I closed my eyes. Parents walked past us and stared, complimented Keegan, asked why I’m not like her. 

Most of the information about twin telepathy comes from identical twins. A few of the reports have said that a twin can physically feel a change or trauma that occurred in their twin brother or sister. Most scientists are skeptical to believe that telepathy does exist and instead believe it is merely coincidence. 

I used to imagine different scenarios of different parents walking up to Keegan at the end of a dance performance. They would smile at her, touch her shoulder and whisper in her ear how good her sister had been. Did she wish to be like her?

They said it was a grade three concussion. Affecting mostly her memory. She would never remember her early years.   

When we were seven our mother threw us a birthday party. It was a swimming pool party and we invited everyone in the first grade class. I didn’t like half of the people who were there and spent most of it swimming with my two friends and avoiding the rest of the classmates and their parents. Keegan was the center. 

I told my mother after that I didn’t want anymore birthday parties. I wanted a quiet sleepover with two friends. That next year Keegan had her own party at PUMP IT UP, and the year after at a waterpark. Once I was thirteen I hated the idea of our birthday. I didn’t like that for one day out of the year, it was supposed to be something different. Problems didn’t go away on a birthday—people just liked to pretend they did. It was Keegan’s day. It had always been Keegan’s day.

Jamal had been Keegan’s trainer since she had started playing. I could never understand why she liked him. He cared for her but it was always conditional. If she paid him enough money, if his daughter was on the court then he would throw Keegan under the bus to make his daughter look good. 

Keegan cannot decide things. She can never decide what she wants to eat, what movie or TV show to watch. She knows who she wants to be. She knows what she wants to do with her life. I know exactly what I want to eat and what movie I want to watch. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. 

My favorite sport is football. On Thanksgiving, I make everyone in my family play a game. I am on a team with our mother and Keegan is on a team with our father. Keegan will play for twenty minutes, my mother for five, and my father for ten. I make them play for thirty. I was asked why I like football so much. I told them that it was the only day of the year that I didn’t have to watch basketball. 

Keegan has switched teams six times. Each time it is for one of two reasons. One, the team members are jealous of how good she is and are mean to her because of it. Two, the basketball is not good enough for her but the people are nice. The better basketball is always what she seems to choose. Once she gets fed up with the other teammates she will move again. Either to a new school, or a new state, and the rest of us will follow her. 

To me, my father worries about Keegan more than he worries about anything. He makes sure that she has what she needs, has a ride to practice, and sits at every game. He coaches her through a meltdown, a bad play. When Keegan is playing, nothing else matters.

Clinical psychologist Kate Woods became interested in twins because she is the younger sister of identical twin sisters. “A lot of what goes on between the twins is implicit and unspoken; often they do know what the twin is feeling without having to ask or explain,” she said.

I close my eyes, shaking my head slightly. 

My mother told me that Keegan had hit her head five minutes after my head had started hurting, seven since I had the bad feeling. 

She said Keegan had fallen and the ref had called a foul on the other girl. 

She said that the girl had gotten angry and kicked Keegan in the head. 

She said the girl probably didn’t mean to hurt her. 

She said they didn’t know how serious it was. Keegan didn’t know what year it was. She didn’t know who my father was. 

My father brought her home. She was wearing a jacket and sunglasses over her eyes. She asked if I remembered when we had been born in the 1990’s.

Morgan Spencer is a sophomore at Interlochen Arts Academy. She has won several awards from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She likes to write about stories that take place in her hometown. She also enjoys writing creative nonfiction.