The Twinning Project Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  PART THREE

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  About the Author

  CLARION BOOKS

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2012 by Robert Lipsyte

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Lipsyte, Robert.

  The twinning project / by Robert Lipsyte.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Tom and Eddie, identical twins and mirror opposites living on two different Earths some fifty years apart, must switch places and identities to thwart the alien scientists who threaten their planets.

  ISBN 978-0-547-64571-1 (hardback)

  [1. Space and time—Fiction. 2. Middle schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Twins—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L67TW 2012

  eISBN 978-0-547-86757-1

  v1.1012

  To the newest star, Daniel Alex Nachumi

  PART ONE

  Bad Enough

  ONE

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  I DON’T fit in at school because I don’t do what I’m told if it’s stupid. I don’t keep my mouth shut when I have something to say. I don’t let bullies push me around. And I can’t just stand there and watch bullies pick on other kids. That’s how I got kicked out of my last middle school.

  I was in the cafeteria minding my own business but keeping my eyes unstuck, as usual. You have to stay alert. I was eating at one of the tables back near the trash cans. The zombies call kids who eat at those tables losers, dorks, orcs, humps, trolls, Goths, stoners—you know, because they can’t stand people who aren’t undead like them.

  I call us rebels.

  This was on a Friday before a football game, and there was a pep rally going on in the center of the cafeteria. I can’t understand why middle school kids play football. Jocks are dumb enough already. They don’t need their brains banged around more. The jocks yelled, their girlfriends danced, and the zombies clapped. At the rebel tables we pretended to ignore them.

  One of the jock bullies noticed that we weren’t clapping, so he walked over with that jock-bully walk, toes pointed in, shoulders rolling, and said, “Where’s your school spirit?”

  The rebels froze up and looked down.

  This is a problem. It takes a lot to get rebels to do something as a group. Rebels need leaders, but they have trouble following one. They’re rebels.

  The jock bully picked up a tray from our table and let the food slide down on a kid’s head. Spaghetti and chocolate pudding. The jocks and their girlfriends cheered, and the zombies clapped harder. The teachers pretended they were too busy on their BlackBerries to notice. Teachers let jocks get away with stuff. Maybe they’re afraid of them, too.

  I recognized the bully, a guy who was always slamming into kids’ shoulders in the hall. He wasn’t even a good football player. Typical.

  He picked up two more full trays and started strutting around the table, balancing them on his palms. He kept turning his head to make sure the jerks at the jock tables were watching. They whistled and pounded their feet as he circled my table deciding whom he would trash next.

  I waited until he was three steps away before I slipped out my TPT GreaseShot IV. It’s about as big as a pencil flashlight: the smallest cordless grease gun you can buy online. It has an electronic pulse and can be set for semi- or full automatic. I had only one chance and I’d never used the grease gun in combat before. I put it on full automatic.

  He was about a foot away when he turned his head again back toward the jock tables. That’s when I fired grease in front of his red LeBron X South Beach sneakers.

  The right sneaker hit the grease puddle, slid, and went up in the air.

  He went down in slow motion.

  It was funny. I was thinking, Too bad nobody’s shooting this.

  Too bad, somebody was.

  You can see it on YouTube.

  The two trays rose off his palms. He was howling like a dog as the veggie tacos, burgers, fries, and drinks avalanched onto his head. Then his left sneaker slid into the grease and he was lifted completely off the floor.

  Kids were screaming as he slammed down on his back, arms out. I’m not sure exactly what happened next because that part wasn’t on YouTube and I was moving out.

  I try not to hang around the scene of my paybacks. It’s a sure way to get caught—standing around looking like you’re waiting for applause.

  It didn’t matter. The YouTube clip shows that the person shooting the grease gun was wearing the same blue Bach Off! hoodie I was wearing that day.

  It was a zero-tolerance school.

  TWO

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  Zero tolerance?

  I have to explain everything to Eddie. It’s not because he’s slow or because he’s a jock, even though he is slow and he is a jock. It’s because, even though our planets are similar in most ways, there’s one big difference: His planet is at least fifty years behind Earth. He calls his planet Earth, too, which is confusing. I call his planet EarthTwo because it’s younger than my Earth.

  Eddie and I are identical twins, born a minute apart. I’m the older one, like my planet.

  I beamed a thought at him:

  Zero tolerance means one strike and you’re out. You’re toast. Forked. Expelled.

  Not fair, Tommy. People deserve second chances. You had a good reason. You were protecting other kids.

  Tell it to the principal.


  Maybe I will. When I come to visit.

  Eddie says things like that to tease me. Well, the truth is I put words like that in his mouth to tease myself. It’s one thing to stand in the backyard having an imaginary conversation with your imaginary twin on an imaginary planet. It’s another thing to imagine the two of you together for real. How great would that be? A best friend who’s your twin brother? That’s not imagination. That’s being insane.

  So what’s up, pup?

  Eddie’s always coming up with these bizarro old-fashioned expressions. Sometimes I Google them. They’re always expressions that were cool in the twentieth century.

  No big deal, Eddie. I’ve been expelled before. I get to stay home for a few days, read, run some games, play my violin.

  It’s so groovy you can do stuff like that. I’d just practice my jump shot.

  I don’t even have a jump shot.

  I’ll show you. It’s easy, not like playing the violin or reading. So, what happens after a few days?

  Mom comes up with a new school for me, and I go back to the land of the undead.

  Think positive, Tommy. I know you’ll find a school that appreciates you. You are one special cat.

  Dad always said, “Nobody’s special.”

  Yeah, but Dad always said, “Everybody’s special.”

  I miss him.

  Me, too. That’s why we’ve got to keep remembering him.

  The back door slammed. “Who’s out there?”

  It was the Lump, Mom’s tenant. He acts like it’s his house.

  I must have been talking out loud again. Eddie and I usually talk inside my head, but sometimes I get carried away and treat Eddie like he’s real.

  Gotta go, bro. It’s the Lump.

  Give him a chance. Find the good in him. Get him on your team.

  That’s Eddie. A good guy. My opposite.

  THREE

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  FROM the first day at my next new middle school, I could tell that the psychologist, Dr. Traum, was out to get me. It was hate at first sight. He looked at me so hard, I could feel the nasty rays off his big green eyes. He leaned across his desk and waved papers in my face.

  “This is your third middle school, Thomas. Third. What makes you think you’ll fit in here?”

  I shrugged. How should I know? And why would I want to fit into your stupid zombie school?

  “Look at these test scores. Obviously, you are smart. Very smart. So why do you keep disappointing people?”

  They love that word, “disappoint.” It’s supposed to make you feel bad.

  I never feel bad.

  I am bad.

  As if he was reading my mind, Dr. Traum sighed. It sounded like a bus sneezing when it lowers itself for disabled people. I’d been through this kind of conversation before. Next he’ll tell me he’s going to give me a chance.

  “I am going to give you a chance, Thomas.”

  Against his better judgment.

  “It’s against my better judgment, of course. But I think there’s good in you, Thomas, and we’ll find it together.”

  I looked right into his eyes. “I won’t disappoint you,” I lied.

  He leaned back in his chair and stared at me. He was wearing jeans and running shoes without laces and a T-shirt with some old-time rock band’s name on it. The Clash. Old guys who dress like kids are the worst phonies in the world. And they’re sneaky. They want you to think that because they dress like you, they’re on your side. And that you can trust them.

  You can never trust them.

  Dr. Traum lowered his voice. “Did you ever consider that the boy who fell in the cafeteria because of you could have been seriously hurt?”

  “No,” I said.

  It was true. I hadn’t thought about it. I didn’t care. He was a bully. He deserved whatever happened to him.

  “Was that because it just never occurred to you or because you didn’t care?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He didn’t react to my not answering him. He was acting cool.

  “One more thing.” He waved a paper. “Says here you blow a wicked fiddle.”

  I hate it when old guys try to sound hip. I nodded. “I played first violin in my last school.”

  “It remains to be seen if you are good enough for Nearmont Middle School. Just so happens, I run the orchestra here.”

  Groovy.

  FOUR

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  ALESSA was nervous when the new school psychologist called her into his office. She thought she was finished seeing shrinks. Mom and Dad had promised. As long as she stayed on her diet and practiced cello every day, there would be no more sessions and no more pills.

  “Alessa!” He didn’t look like any shrink she’d ever seen: a short, skinny white man in jeans and a T-shirt. A ponytail. He looked happy to see her, his big green eyes sparkling. “Thank you for coming. I’m Dr. Traum.”

  He waved her to a couch along one wall and sat down on a hard chair next to it. She started to wedge herself into a corner of the couch, the way she did for the shrinks, then stopped herself and plopped down on her butt.

  Oh, Lessi, she thought, this is so uncool.

  Dr. Traum just looked at her, smiling, until she blurted out, “What did I do wrong?”

  Even uncool-er.

  He frowned. “Oh, no. Nothing wrong at all. I need your help.”

  “Me? Help you?”

  “If you would. There’s a new student in school. I want to be sure he gets off on the right foot here. I’d like you to be his mentor, his guide. His name is Thomas Canty.”

  “The YouTube guy?”

  “He’s had problems in other schools, to be sure. He’s an excellent violinist. I’d like you to make him feel at home in the orchestra, too.”

  Alessa wanted to say, You’ve got the wrong girl, Doc. I’ve got enough problems guiding myself. But the chance to help somebody interested her. Nobody had ever asked her to do that before.

  “What should I do?”

  “Just be his friend. And if anything seems, well, odd to you, let me know so I can help him.”

  “What kind of odd?”

  Dr. Traum got closer. His face was very smooth. No wrinkles for such an old dude. Botox, like Mom? “This has to be between just us, Alessa . . . Thomas’s father died several years ago. It was very difficult for him. Sometimes he thinks he hears voices. I want to know about it.”

  “You want me to spy on him?”

  “I want you to help me help him. You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him because we didn’t reach out, would you?” Dr. Traum stood up. “Can I count on you, Alessa?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I ask. Thanks so much. You may go back to class.”

  Alessa had to heave herself up from the soft couch. I’ve got to do those exercises, she thought.

  Outside the office, she wondered if Dr. Traum should have told her all that stuff about Thomas Canty. Wasn’t that private? But she was excited about being a mentor, a guide. Maybe even a friend.

  FIVE

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  BY the time I had filled out all the papers, it was lunchtime. I wasn’t sure where to sit after I got my food. You have to be careful where you start off sitting because you can get stuck there.

  I was pretending I knew where I was going while I scoped the tables. It was the usual: jocks . . . fashion girls . . . thugs . . . brainiacs—you know. I spotted the rebel tables just as a big fat girl stood up at one of them and waved at me. Next to her was a guy with black eye makeup and a girl with green hair, both wearing big “Save the Earth” buttons. I could get into that environmental stuff if the tree huggers weren’t such know-it-all spazzes.

  I walked over slowly, checking out the big girl who had waved at me. She’d been reading on her laptop. When I got closer, I could see it was something about Twilight. Not even the stupid vampire book itself, but so
mething about it. Like it was so important you needed to study it.

  It’s major to get the first words in. “Bad enough to read that toxic waste, but to read about it?”

  Her head jerked a little, like I’d jabbed her. Then she said, “You’ve got to know your enemy.”

  That was something my dad would say, so I was interested. “Vampires are your enemy?”

  “They don’t exist.”

  “So why are you reading about them?”

  “Because the idea of them exists. People believe in them.”

  “Stupid people,” I snapped.

  “Exactly,” she said. “You’ve got to understand what stupid people believe so you can understand the world we live in.”

  I dug her right away. She was no dummy. But I stayed cool. “I might be able to get behind that.”

  Then she said, “So what did that kid on YouTube actually do to you?”

  “Actually,” I said, mocking her serious tone of voice, “nothing.”

  Everybody at the table was looking at me. I don’t think they believed me.

  “So why did you do it?” She was intense.

  “He was a bully,” I said.

  “But he wasn’t your bully,” she said.

  “Every bully,” I said, “is your bully.”

  The way she looked at me, I was afraid she was going to hug me. The other kids at the table all looked at each other with these dorky looks, rolling their eyes, lifting a corner of their lips. But I could tell they liked what I said. Not that I cared.

  “I’m Alessa,” she said. “I can show you around the school.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’m Tom.”

  SIX

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2011

  AFTER Dr. Traum heard me play, he patted my shoulder and put me in with the first violins. He said if I did everything he told me, I’d get to play a solo at the winter concert. I thought, Big whoop. That’s an Eddie expression.