Page 42 of Never Never

“Yeah, obviously.” Sixty bucks’ worth of sugar. “Well, not Nana. But the two of us, yes.”

Wendy giggles. She studies the candy like she’s trying to optimize her first bite or something. I wasn’t sure what she’d like, so I tried to get at least a few options from all the major food groups: chocolate, gummy, sour, chewy, and hard. The only ones I skipped were Werther’s Originals and those weird little strawberry drop things, because those are old people candy. I still have a few hundred left from my bonus from Tito, too, so depending on what she likes, I can restock later.

Behind us, the kettle rattles some more. I’m legit hungry, I realize. Not that candy’s going to really help much, but still. I grab a long yellow package and drop onto the couch.

“Sour Vines?” Wendy says.

“Yep.” I peel open the wrapper. “These were always my favorite growing up.” Still are, actually. I chomp off the top of one and damn, but it hits. That fake apple flavoring that tastes green, and leaves your tongue the same color. “You want?” I extend the package.

“They’re pure sugar,” Wendy says. “They’re sugar dipped in sugar.”

“Well, yeah,” I say, around my mouthful of Sour Vine. “Which is why they’re the best.”

“Mike says sugar makes you hyper.”

Mike. Her brother. I don’t really want to touch that one. I swallow.

“Listen, when I was your age, the more energy I could get, the better.” I point at her with the package, offering it again. This time, she takes a vine, but doesn’t eat it.

“Kit said you guys were homeless when you were my age. Is that true?”

“Oh, we…” My mouth’s gone numb from the sour sugar. I swallow again. “Well, yeah, but, I mean, not always. We had homes for most of our growing up. Foster parents and stuff. It was just hard, because there were two of us. And people didn’t always want two kids. Especially with all the medical stuff⁠—”

“What medical stuff?”

I sink my teeth into my lip. I’m way overexplaining. And, truth be told, I don’t know that much about it. It was literally my whole life ago—our whole life ago—and it’s not like I’ve been to the doctor a whole lot since then.

“Uh…” I scratch the back of my head. “So you know how babies are made?”

“Ewww!” Wendy shrieks, and makes a gagging noise.

“God, no, I—” I shake my head. “I just mean, you know how they grow, and stuff. In the womb or whatever? From an egg?”

“Oh.” The disgusted look stays on her face. But she nods. “Sure.”

“So, me and Kit are identical twins, right? Which means we started as one egg, and then split apart. And sometimes when that happens, the babies don’t really grow at the same rate. One of them ends up getting bigger and kinda…sucking up all the nutrients and stuff. Not on purpose,” I add hastily. “Just sort of…bad luck, I guess. So it makes it a lot harder on the other one. The smaller one.”

I glance at Wendy. She’s got the sour vine stuck back in her mouth, but the gears are clearly turning behind her eyes.

“So…that was us,” I finish. “I hogged all the, uh, resources, and then when we were born Kit needed a lot of help.”

Twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Apparently, if it doesn’t get treated, the odds of both twins surviving are basically fifty-fifty. So, in that sense, we’re lucky.

Well, Kit’s lucky. I’m just…

“Where was your mom?” Wendy asks.

“Our mom?” I swallow a burning gulp of sour. “She, um…”

I don’t really know what to say. She didn’t exactly abandon us. I mean, I know she left the hospital while we were in the NICU, and we were in foster care right after that for a while, but she did come back. Or they tried to reunite us, anyway. We were three, maybe four, and she was clean, and somehow they found her and brought her in to see us. I remember they got us all dressed up in these little matching outfits I guess someone donated, combed our hair and everything, and had us wait in this room with a little table and all these coloring books. Half the pages were ripped out, but Kit didn’t care. I remember he was scribbling like crazy with the freaking tube in his nose, and I was kind of mad because he was being such a mess while I just sat in my little chair and tried to stay as still as possible, like the perfect kind of son.

But then she opened the door, and there was no big smile. Her eyes immediately went to Kit, to his goggle glasses and his oxygen, and I could read it on her face before she even said a word.

I don’t want a fuckin’ cripple baby.

That’s what she told the social worker.

That’s my first memory.