The Other Half of Me Read Online Free Page A

close the door. “But think about tennis. It could be fun. You and Russ could take on the twins.” She pauses to see if I’ll take the family-bonding bait. No chance. “Food’s almost ready.”
    It’s not that I lack the guts to stand up for myself, because I could. I could stand here, hands on my hips in arguing mode, and try to convince her that painting is my passion, that I will succeed. But I acknowledge that perhaps I’d be suffering from the Shakespearean “The lady doth protest too much” syndrome—if I have to be so vehement about my feelings, maybe I’m just in denial about what’s real. Maybe one of the reasons I don’t express myself as well as I want to is because inside, shoved way down into an unseen pit, I’m not sure of what I want.
    Left in the steam with my own reflection, I allow myself to wonder about what I wouldn’t vocalize to my parents back in the kitchen. The twins look like Mom, and Russet is my dad’s mini self. Maybe I have a little of my mother’s cheeks, and the freckles could be hers. But the artistic side? My hair that’s unlike anyone’s? The ring of green in my otherwise blue eyes?
    They could be from him.
    Mom and Dad were open from the beginning. They figured letting me (as well as Sage, Sierra, and Russ) all know about him would be better than our stumbling onto the fact of him later in life.
    The fact being that my biological dad is Donor 142.
    Mom had me back when she was super work-focused and single and thought she’d be alone forever. Of course, she got pregnant (after choosing 142 from the other donors), met my actual dad, and had me. They got married when I was one, and he legally adopted me and raised me, and here we all are. The Fitzgeralds. Russ shrugged when the early incarnation of Team Fitzgerald (me, Mom, Dad) told him. He was four at the time, and I don’t even know if it made sense to him. “Who cares?” he said while he bounced a rubber ball off the wall in his room. “We’re all the same.”
    All the same. It’s pretty much what anyone says when they find out, although it’s not something I advertise. Regardless, no one in my family really seems to make the connection between this fact and how I’m different from them. But I do. I can’t help it.
    I wonder about my genes and if they direct me toward paints and palettes rather than field kicks and playing center forward. Somehow, imagining who could be out there, where I could have come from, and how my DNA will play itself out makes me feel less alone. I love my family, of course I do. Only, I’m not totally connected to them. Like that circle I was painting today, kind of off to the side, almost falling off the canvas. When I think of where I came from, I imagine strings connecting me to someone else. And maybe it’s that wondering that will pull the sliding circle from the side of the canvas to the center.
    “Jenny!” Russ shouts from downstairs.
    I open the bathroom door and step into the hallway, the steam wafting behind me. “Just a second!” I hang up my damp towel, slide into flip-flops, a white tank top, and old jeans (the ones that fit so well I refuse to chuck them even though they are threadbare in places and hang a little low). They remind me of summer and beaches and feel cozy. Two weeks until school starts. Two weeks until the art show at Downtown Studios. Two weeks for me to cough up something real on the canvas and real in my life so this summer is memorable.
    I look out the upstairs window to where my dad is juggling lemons while my mom runs sprint races from the patio to the edge of the unfinished area of our backyard with Sierra and Sage. They stop at the line of dirt and pile of gravel near the wooded area, then race back to the limestone patio and wooden deck. Dad is always meaning to finish the landscaping job, but with work and summer sports, I guess he hasn’t found the time. I half-expect to find Russ talking to Faye, my best friend, while he kicks at some