An Excerpt From Something I Worked On Over The Summer. There's No Title. Tell Me What You Think, Yea?

Ellis Glass presses her forehead to the glass of the window. How funny it is—a beginning. To think a day ago she was in New York singing along to the tune streaming from her crackly radio is absolutely strange to think. The sky still grey and uncertain about giving into summer but morbidly heavy with humidity. It’s strange to think that now, however, she’s pressing her forehead to the glass of the museum’s hallway, watching cars pace along the 101 under the clear blue California sky. From this height, they’re so small. With all their mass and makeup, from this height, Ellis could imagine herself picking one up and rubbing it between her fingers. The view of Los Angeles is better from outside, but from here she likes to imagine herself suspended. The glass makes it easy to do that in a way the cement terrace cannot. She feels like she’s floating out there, above the 101. Above the hills. And it’s a free feeling like none else.
“We need to go meet up with the group, Ellie.” McKenna pulls Ellis away from the window roughly, the way she does absolutely everything in life. In this light, McKenna’s hair doesn’t look as dark as it actually is—a halo of red dye pin-pointing her frizz, the rest of her hair a lighter brown than usual. She sweeps her leather jacket off her shoulders—as they make their way down the winding, modern staircase—wrapping it around her cigarette-thin waist before they are smacked in the face by the California summer heat. Ellis feels sweat begin to form on her forehead, down her spine, under her armpits. She pulls the neck of her top out in hopes that a breeze will pass and fill it out with cool air.
The group is out by the fountain. Tinsley Glass has her tan, lean legs spread in the splits atop the marble bench that encloses the fountain. A group of guys from their class are gaping at her. “You get a lot of practice at that, Tinsley?” one of them remarks. Tinsley sneers and piles her spindly legs back together and crosses them modestly. “At least I get some,” she says with a quick flick of her sharp, practiced tongue. Her words are met with lots of snickers and flushed cheeks. Not much different from what Tinsley is always met with—snickers and flushed cheeks.
Mrs. Pine glares at Tinsley and the guys, trying to pretend she didn’t hear what she just did and glances at her clipboard. “I’m going to just do a quick headcount before we get lunch.” She ticks off the list in alphabetical order, the guys getting restless and starting to goof off. One of them with overly gelled, dark hair belches everyone’s name after Mrs. Pine states it. “The Glass girls,” Mrs. Pine says, which absolutely makes Ellis cringe.
“Present,” Tinsley says, brightly and then tosses a look at her twin with a flick of her dimpled chin, the reflection of Ellis’s own.
“Here,” Ellis mumbles, begrudgingly. McKenna nudges her, playfully and laughs a raspy, smoker’s laugh. “Didn’t know you were a duo, Ellie.” Ellis rolls her eyes and drowns out Mrs. Pine calling out the other names, ignoring the fact that she doesn’t group together the other set of sisters the way she did with Ellis and Tinsley.
“It’s hot. How there’s two of you,” Belcher remarks, snaking an arm around Tinsley’s shoulders and rubbing her left one. She instantly stiffens, Ellis notices, and breaks out in her classic, crescent-moon smile.
“There is only one Tinsley Glass. I can assure you of that. And I can also assure you that you could not possibly handle two if two did, in fact, exist,” Tinsley says, flickering her eyebrows up and down in this way that seems to keep everyone interested. Like the flicker of a flame, drawing the moths to her unstill light. For whatever reason it reminds Ellis of when they were younger and Tinsley would pluck out a ghost story telling it over the eerie glow of a flashlight in the dark. The light picked up only parts of her face, hiding the rest. And the parts it did show were tainted with the effect the flashlight would leave, making her look unrecognizable to Ellis. That may have been what was so scary. Not the flicker of Tinsley’s eyebrows as she recited her story in a way that always baffled Ellis. It made her wonder what corner of her mind the story existed—one that was plucking pieces together as she spoke or if it was plucked from a dusty corner, from recollection of some TV show she shouldn’t have been watching. Either way, Ellis would sit there, chills running up her back from the flush of light on her sister’s unrecognizable face and the way her mouth churned out the most terrifying things, leaving her suspended until the story wrapped up and they tucked themselves back into bed.
“Well, all are here,” Mrs. Pine claps her hands together, “so let’s go grab lunch, gang.” The group follows her down the marble steps to the lower terrace. A sloping, green knoll rings itself outside the terrace and makes Ellis dream of rolling around in it. She steps in line between McKenna and Calvin, a lanky blonde guy that used to follow Tinsley around in middle school, relentlessly. Ellis remembers picking up the phone to his crackly voice calling out Tinsley’s name in a desperate tone, wondering what he ever did to make her so resistant to his affections. He turns around, now, and searches for a spot on Ellis for his eyes to land. She notes that they do, in fact, graze her chest for a second. He finally chooses a spot. “Nice shoes,” he fumbles, finally, eyes nearly burning a hole in her unseasonable moccasin boots.
The thing people mistake is Ellis and Tinsley for being the same person. That’s what Calvin seems to be doing now. She can’t blame him. A tenth of what makes up a person is the physical entity of the person. But then there’s all those hidden things, all the corners and facets of them. The quirk of their smile or way their fingers fidget around their hair when they get nervous. The expression on their eyes, the way they walk, the heights and depths of their laughter. All and everything that ultimately makes up their personality. That would probably make up ninety percent of who the person is. But at first glance, Ellis could be Tinsley. Maybe a corner of the eye glance. Because the thing is once someone like Calvin’s eyes fell on Ellis long enough he’d catch the soft form of Ellis’s mouth instead of the sharp edge of Tinsley’s. He’d catch the way her face sometimes falls while Tinsley’s never seems to falter with expression. He’d catch the tilt of her shoulders, not pushed far back, held up by some sort of strings in the sky like Tinsley’s. He’d catch the way he can read her in a way he could never read Tinsley. But, yes, in a corner of the eye sort of glance, he could think she was Tinsley. All he’d see is that mass of Aurelia-colored hair.
“Thanks, Calvin,” Ellis says, meeting his nervous eyes and smiling in a way that her sister would never allow to cross that mouth of hers. “What are we waiting in line for?”
“Sandwiches,” he says, sounding bored. He turns back around, realizing Ellis is definitely no Tinsley. It wouldn’t be the first time. The line falters.
Eventually they’re up there, winding their way through the small shop, quickly, picking up their sandwiches and drinks and exchanging them for money in what seems just like one quick gulp. It almost makes Ellis wonder why they were waiting in line for so long.
McKenna and Ellis wind themselves down another set of marble staircases and down along a dirt path. Some dirt kicks up behind McKenna as she leads Ellis. McKenna tosses herself down on the grassy knoll and inhales. “Nothing like a California summer, huh?”
“This would be the first,” Ellis reminds her friend, setting herself down on the grass next to her. She unwraps her sandwich from the cellophane wrap and takes a bite realizing just how hungry she’d been. The sun beats down on the top of her head, making her wonder how the Californians do it.
“Well, I am just so glad we are here,” McKenna says, inhaling again like she’s never had a breath of air before in her seventeen years of life. “This is living, I tell ya.” She rolls over onto her stomach and rolls out her sandwich, setting it onto the cellophane wrap to create a barrier between the sandwich and the grass. She takes a bite.
“This is living,” Ellis repeats because she doesn’t really know what else to say. She takes another bite of her sandwich and tries not to think too much about it—why she gets the gnawing feeling that there’s so much more. That if this is living—settling herself down on the grass and eating a sandwich—what’s not living? Would it be back home in New York flipping between channels, picking at leftover Chinese while her mom went to the movies with her long-term boyfriend, Paul, and while Tinsley was out being Tinsley, whatever that means? Because really the only difference between that and this is the setting and the absence of the TV. Ellis chews and uncaps a bottle of SmartWater. She takes a swig. She does acknowledge what California has to offer, though. She acknowledges this as she takes another bite and takes another swig, watching a couple embark on a journey through the maze across the way. Ellis gazes out into the center of the maze at the man-made waterfall, the enclosure of water, visible from the knoll and visible from the start of the maze. Maybe that’s life. The destination is right before one’s very eyes but few people really care to notice or care to act like they notice anyway. Because that couple begins going through the maze as if they don’t know where they’ll end up, when it’s laid out right before them.
McKenna unties the leather jacket from her waist and sets it atop her mane of deep auburn hair to solve the sun problem. She’s already done with her sandwich, having scarfed it down in two bites. “Why don’t they have more outdoor museums like this back home?”
“Because it’s not perpetually summertime in New York like it is here,” Ellis responds, flipping her sunglasses from their perch atop her head to a new perch above her nose. At just that moment Tinsley makes her way down the dirt path, a mini entourage of guys and her small pack of girls following her like she’s some sort of celebrity. Tinsley doesn’t seem aware of the way other’s people’s orbits try to interlope with hers. Tinsley’s in her own orbit and it’s making her way up the grassy knoll, carefully brushing past Ellis’s. She begins to do cartwheels down the knoll, her long legs like scissors carefully scratching the clear sky. Tinsley lands on her butt with a thud, but even so looks as if she meant to. Tinsley’s friends all settle themselves around her like stars pause themselves in the midst of the galaxy. The guys pull a Frisbee out of a nowhere and start playing, trying to impress Tinsley. But Tinsley doesn’t get impressed, easily. Especially not by a flying piece of plastic. She rolls on her stomach and pulls her tank top up to expose her toned tummy. The glitter of her belly button ring catches light.
“You two are so different,” McKenna says, laughing.
“Clearly noted,” Ellis says, glancing back at her sister once and then purging the memory of the belly button ring and the stars marking the boundaries of her galaxy.
“But it’s weird because you guys are like identical, dude. Like I swear—there is like no difference, looks-wise. I’m sure there’s probably something. Like a birthmark or whatever. But generally speaking, there is no difference.” This is nothing new. McKenna’s brought this up before. Everyone on the planet Earth has brought this up before. Ellis just rolls her eyes invisibly under her sunglasses and sticks her legs out in front of her to catch some sun. It’d be pretty impossible not to.
“There are physical differences,” Ellis says, already exhausted with the words before she even exhausts her lungs with the breath she must give them. She points out the angel kiss on the line of her sharp jaw and pulls the neck of her shirt down a little to show her the matching one on the skin of her collarbone. She sticks a foot out of her too-warm moccasin boots. A slightly warm breeze passes and makes her wonder why she wore the boots in the first place. “I have a scar here.” She points to the mark along the side of her foot. She almost winces at the touch that evokes the memory. The shards of glass on the rain-littered, dark pavement. The pounding of her head matching the hammer of her heart. The sticky feel of blood on her feet as she emerged instinctually from the wreck before she could put her shoes back on. How she’s such a huge ****-up sometimes. Never mind—at all times. She shakes herself out of the memory and back out into the grass here with McKenna.
“Well, like I said—subtle differences. But basically, you guys look the same. Like ******* clones. You’d think you’d have at least one thing in common,” McKenna says rubbing her fingers over her tattoo of fingers crossing over each other on her forearm. It could really be taken two ways—fingers crossed for good luck or if she pressed her arm behind her back she could have that tattoo’s fingers crossed in a lie. Ellis never thought to ask and doesn’t think McKenna would give her an honest answer if she did. She’d realize the double-edge to her tattoo and answer cheekily, instead, with a wry flick of her red-painted mouth.
“Well, besides having the same mom. Same dad. Same place of birth. Not to mention same day of birth. Oh, and same—”
“You don’t have to get all smart-*** with me. You know what I meant.” McKenna rolls her eyes and glances over in Tinsley’s direction again. Ellis doesn’t bother. “What’s it like living with her?”
Ellis bites her tongue. If McKenna weren’t her best friend she would tell her that she’s really sick of everyone treating Tinsley like some far-cast planet, too bright and too many light years away to know. That Ellis is as close as they’ll ever come. So through Ellis they must learn of Tinsley. Like Ellis is a reflection in a glass, a portal to her sister. She’s exhausted of being a detour to Tinsley. She’s always the detour to Tinsley. She’s never the destination. Anyway, she would never spit those words out to McKenna. She wouldn’t press some sort of guilt on McKenna for years of unjust detouring, when it’s really everyone else’s fault for making it impossible for her to not twist a simple question into a detour. Because usually a question like that is a detour to catch an icy spark from the comet that is Tinsley. “Like living with my twin sister. I don’t know.”
“Cool.” McKenna seems fascinated in that direction and again, Ellis can’t blame her. Sometimes Ellis finds herself fascinated with Tinsley, too. And it’s like being fascinated with a reflection in the mirror only to find it changed somehow. The smile a little wonky. The eyes expressed a little differently. The image speaking back in a different pitched tone than one’s own voice and then reach out hand to hand, real flesh. It’s an odd thing to be fascinated with.