I kind of expect it to feel like a hospital with the curtains, but instead it feels more like a tent. He’s attached band posters to some of them too. It’s a small space with only a bed, two nightstands, a dresser with bookshelves covered in books and trophies, and a small rack of clothes. The rack used to hold his suit, but he was buried in that.
My stomach rolls and I sit down on his bed.
For a while I just sit there, looking around. This is where Adam used to spend his time. Where he used to sleep. This room is all we have left of him.
On one of the shelves there’s a framed photograph of Adam, Audrey, and me, taken about seven years ago, when Adam was in grade six and Audrey and I were in grade three. Every year on the first day of school, Mom took a picture of us at the front door. In the photograph Adam is standing in the middle with an arm around each of us. His sandy hair is long, and he’s smiling with his mouth closed to hide his braces.
It’s too painful to look at, so I tear my eyes away to where his phone is lying on his nightstand. The police found it in his pocket and gave it to us in a plastic bag, along with his wallet. It took my parents days to crack the code on his phone, but they were determined, as if it held some last piece of evidence, some small glimmer into his last moments on earth.
The code was 2021, for the two dates in May when Audrey and I were born.
They downloaded all his photos and saved them in a folder on the family computer to look at once they could handle it. Then they put the phone back in his room. For me to find.
I roll across the bed to grab it. Of course it’s dead, so I have to plug it into the charging station on his desk and wait a few seconds before the apple icon flashes, followed by the home screen: a photo of Adam and Dahlia, both of them smiling, Adam’s arm around Dahlia’s shoulders. Yuck.
I never really liked Dahlia. She always talked down to us like we were little kids, and they spent most of their time in the basement, which kind of meant we weren’t allowed down here. I blamed that on her. I hated hearing her voice when she called on the landline—which she only did when she was desperate. Usually they were having a fight or they hadn’t talked in a mere hour because he was in the shower or something. She was annoying.
I open Adam’s photos. At first glance most of them are of skateboarding. After dinner Adam and his friends would ride rails, aka the handrails of the elementary school. Our old principal hated skateboarders and put up signs all over the premises saying NO SKATEBOARDING. The first picture I open is of Cody skating the handrail at the front entrance. Next: Akish skating the rail directly above the sign, flashing a hang ten.
Watching Adam and his friends growing up, I was always kind of jealous of the boys. They had it so much easier than us. They yelled like maniacs on field-trip buses; they acted dumb on purpose; they got dirty on purpose. No one expected them to be anything but wild, dirty idiots. Boys will be boys, the teachers said. It seemed so free. I’d get on my bike and ride past the school, catching glimpses of Adam flying off the rail and landing perfectly before coasting to a stop. His friends would cheer, holding up their phones to film it.
I pick and choose pictures to open, skipping over the repetitive skateboarding ones. Drunken group shot in a field, looks to have been taken in the spring. Cody riding a large blow-up zebra in a pool and howling, a beer held high above his head. Dark photos taken at night: groups of guys and girls with their arms around each other looking half-cut, Adam kissing Dahlia’s cheek while she holds up his phone to snap a picture. It’s a good thing the ’rents haven’t seen these.
Next I scroll through the album of videos: Adam skating rails, his buddies skating rails, stupid Dahlia roller-skating down the street, Adam and stupid Dahlia cheering at a concert . . . Until I see one of just Dahlia. It looks like she’s wearing one of his collared work shirts and that’s all.
I hit play.
The video was taken in this room. I recognize his bookshelf in the background, against the curtains. Dahlia is standing on top of Adam on the bed. He must be lying on his back against his pillows, because from this angle, her bare legs stretch sky-high. As I watch, she begins to unbutton her shirt. My breath catches and then I’m holding it, waiting. She’s moving slowly, teasing him, and my heart begins to pound, and I can feel sweat gathering under my armpits and a strange tingle at the back of my neck. I know what’s going to happen next. I know I should turn the video off, that it’s wrong to keep watching, but I don’t/do.
Adam laughs low and tells her she’s sexy. Her eyes narrow on him seductively, her tongue tracing the top of her lip . . .
I watch the entire thing. She undresses until she’s only wearing a pair of black panties. She’s thin with large boobs.
Adam starts breathing faster.
“Do you like what you see?” Dahlia asks, swaying on the spot.
His arm whips out and grabs her. There’s a squeal as the phone bounces on the bed before the video freezes on the play button.
I hit it again.
This time I lie back on the bed against the pillows and hold the phone up, the way Adam must have done. I don’t want to watch as Adam’s little sister this time. I want to watch like Adam.
I pretend I’m Adam and my girlfriend’s stripping for me. I hold the phone up and imagine she is right in front of me, dancing and stripping, and that at the end of the video I’ll reach out and grab her and pull her to me.
They’ve taken a lot of videos and I find them all. I make a new folder called skateboard decks and move them there so he’ll never get caught.
In one she’s completely naked with a bandanna around her eyes.
“You better not be filming this!” she giggles. “I’m going to check your phone later.”
“You won’t find a thing.”
“You’re a pervert.”
“That’s what you love about me.”
Then the video ends, and I’m left sitting there with the phone in my hand, all alone in the dark.
Audrey
Clare doesn’t want to be twins. (Not anymore.)
In grade six she told me, We weren’t even supposed to be twins. Adam told me that Mom really wanted a girl so they did IVF.
What’s IVF?
In vitro fertilization. They picked two female embryos and both of us implanted. We’re petri-dish babies.
How do you grow babies in a petri dish?
Clare made her frustrated noise. Never mind. The point is, it wasn’t natural. We’re like GMO twins.
The next day at school she told her new best friend, Sharon.
It must make you feel better, Sharon said to Clare. It would make me feel better.
Why?
Sharon looked at me like she was surprised I’d asked. Because you’re weird.
Clare said, What the hell, Sharon.
I said, What makes me weird?
The fact that you don’t know you’re weird.
That was very confusing. For the rest of the day I wondered why I was weird and not Sharon.
When Mom picked us up from school, Mrs. Crawford came running over. She was gasping like a fish out of water. Her white arms were spotted with red marks when she leaned them on the open window. I was sitting right beside Mom, and Clare was still talking to the girls at the front door. Her friend Charlotte was putting lipstick on over and over again.
I wondered what had happened to Lip Smackers. Those tasted good and you didn’t have to worry about missing your lips the way Charlotte did.