The Twinning Project Read Online Free Page A
Author: Robert Lipsyte
without Grandpaâs help. It was about a guy who goes back in time to fight knights and dragons. He defeats some bad guys by predicting an eclipse of the sun, which he knew was going to happen because he was from the future and had studied history and remembered the date. Mrs. Rupp would love that.
Grandpaâs number-one all-time favorite Mark Twain book was
The Mysterious Stranger.
In that book, the devil comes down to Earth and explains the human race to a couple of boys my age. Itâs almost like Mark Twain was on the devilâs side.
Grandpa and Dad always told me to use my imagination instead of just believing what I was told. They said that Twain made up stuff that was truer than most of what you learned in school.
It was during that summer hanging out with Grandpa after Dad disappeared that I started using my imagination to keep from feeling so bad. I came up with the idea of a twin brother.
In my fantasy, Eddie and I were separated at birth to save us from the aliens who secretly ran Earth. (We were truly separatedâwe had been connected at the butt!) Then I came up with a great story to explain it. These aliens were scientists who had created two Earths as an experiment. I stayed on the first Earth they had created, while Eddie was sent to the newer planet, EarthTwo, which is almost like Earth but fifty years younger. But the experiment wasnât working out because humans were messing up their planets, poisoning the water and the air, dropping bombs on each other, and letting kids die of diseases that could be wiped out. The aliens were thinking seriously about blowing up one or even both planets.
Sounds silly, I guess, but talking to Eddie always made me feel better when things were lousy, and I was lonely after Dad disappeared, especially whenever I got kicked out of school. Even though Eddie was a jock, he never said anything mean to me. He never made me feel bad. After I saw
Star Wars,
I decided that I was Eddieâs dark side.
I have a pink scar on my left butt cheek from an operation I had when I was a baby. Mom said it was a growth that had to be removed. I like to pretend itâs the scar from where Eddie and I were connected when we were born.
Whenever I had a mysterious pain, like a headache or a stomachache or what felt like a sudden twisted ankle even though I was just playing the violin, I would imagine that something had happened to Eddie. Maybe his ankle twisted coming down wrong after snagging a rebound. Besides being a quarterback, Eddie was point guard on his junior high school basketball team and a starting pitcher when he was wasnât playing the outfield on the baseball team. The pains never lasted long. They were like news flashes keeping me up to date on Eddie. The worst was a pain in my butt cheek one time, like someone had drilled me with a baseball.
Next time we talked, Eddie told me thatâs exactly what had happened. He had lost a game of Chinese handballâthe big game in his neighborhood. If you lose, you get Cans Up. You have to bend over and the winner gets to throw the ball at your butt. But this kid used a baseball instead of the soft pink rubber ball. I asked Eddie what he had done to get back at the kid and Eddie said,
NOTHING
.
I told him he was a wussy. You need to punish bullies right away; you need revenge, payback. Eddie said that you have to pick your spots, wait until you can get something out of all that, put points on the scoreboard.
WIN
. Made no sense to me, but that was Eddie. Whatever.
I didnât mind the pain because I loved the idea of having a twin brother, someone I could tell everything to, even if he
was
imaginary. I never had close friends because I changed schools a lot and because I donât like to share secrets. I donât even have too many Facebook friends, although Iâm on Facebook with a phony name, so I can spy on people and hack their accounts if theyâre bullies.
The summer that Dad disappeared,
Grandpaâs number-one all-time favorite Mark Twain book was
The Mysterious Stranger.
In that book, the devil comes down to Earth and explains the human race to a couple of boys my age. Itâs almost like Mark Twain was on the devilâs side.
Grandpa and Dad always told me to use my imagination instead of just believing what I was told. They said that Twain made up stuff that was truer than most of what you learned in school.
It was during that summer hanging out with Grandpa after Dad disappeared that I started using my imagination to keep from feeling so bad. I came up with the idea of a twin brother.
In my fantasy, Eddie and I were separated at birth to save us from the aliens who secretly ran Earth. (We were truly separatedâwe had been connected at the butt!) Then I came up with a great story to explain it. These aliens were scientists who had created two Earths as an experiment. I stayed on the first Earth they had created, while Eddie was sent to the newer planet, EarthTwo, which is almost like Earth but fifty years younger. But the experiment wasnât working out because humans were messing up their planets, poisoning the water and the air, dropping bombs on each other, and letting kids die of diseases that could be wiped out. The aliens were thinking seriously about blowing up one or even both planets.
Sounds silly, I guess, but talking to Eddie always made me feel better when things were lousy, and I was lonely after Dad disappeared, especially whenever I got kicked out of school. Even though Eddie was a jock, he never said anything mean to me. He never made me feel bad. After I saw
Star Wars,
I decided that I was Eddieâs dark side.
I have a pink scar on my left butt cheek from an operation I had when I was a baby. Mom said it was a growth that had to be removed. I like to pretend itâs the scar from where Eddie and I were connected when we were born.
Whenever I had a mysterious pain, like a headache or a stomachache or what felt like a sudden twisted ankle even though I was just playing the violin, I would imagine that something had happened to Eddie. Maybe his ankle twisted coming down wrong after snagging a rebound. Besides being a quarterback, Eddie was point guard on his junior high school basketball team and a starting pitcher when he was wasnât playing the outfield on the baseball team. The pains never lasted long. They were like news flashes keeping me up to date on Eddie. The worst was a pain in my butt cheek one time, like someone had drilled me with a baseball.
Next time we talked, Eddie told me thatâs exactly what had happened. He had lost a game of Chinese handballâthe big game in his neighborhood. If you lose, you get Cans Up. You have to bend over and the winner gets to throw the ball at your butt. But this kid used a baseball instead of the soft pink rubber ball. I asked Eddie what he had done to get back at the kid and Eddie said,
NOTHING
.
I told him he was a wussy. You need to punish bullies right away; you need revenge, payback. Eddie said that you have to pick your spots, wait until you can get something out of all that, put points on the scoreboard.
WIN
. Made no sense to me, but that was Eddie. Whatever.
I didnât mind the pain because I loved the idea of having a twin brother, someone I could tell everything to, even if he
was
imaginary. I never had close friends because I changed schools a lot and because I donât like to share secrets. I donât even have too many Facebook friends, although Iâm on Facebook with a phony name, so I can spy on people and hack their accounts if theyâre bullies.
The summer that Dad disappeared,
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