Free The Twinning Project by Robert Lipsyte

his mom’s business trips, about her tenant in the house. He just found out that your birth mom died.”
    â€œI knew that years ago.”
    â€œYou seemed ready. He didn’t.”
    â€œYou don’t think he’s scared?”
    â€œHe just shows it in a different way.”
    â€œHow am I going to learn all those machines?”
    â€œThey’re not hard. Every idiot on EarthOne has a phone stuck to his face. Every old lady in my nursing home is texting her grandkids. They’re on Facebook . . .”
    â€œWhat’s a facebook?” Eddie looked worried. “See? How can I make people think I’m Tom?”
    â€œDon’t worry. Just be yourself. People will believe you’ve turned into a different person because you’re taking special pills to help you lose your bad attitude.”
    â€œThey have pills like that?”
    â€œPeople here on EarthOne have been gobbling them by the handful for fifty years. Tom’s mom helps to sell them. They’re just starting to get big on EarthTwo.”
    â€œI don’t have to really take them, do I?”
    â€œNo. But you have to say you do. And here’s the good part. The cover story is that these pills have side effects. They give you amnesia for a while, so you forget names, where classrooms are, songs everybody’s listening to, TV shows. It’s so bad, you can’t even play the violin or use your computer.”
    â€œThat’ll be easy to prove.”
    Grandpa laughed. “Any problems, just come on over to the nursing home.”
    â€œYou’ll be with Tom, too, right? That means you’ll be in two places at the same time. Like the monitors.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œBut you were a scientist, you told me,” said Eddie.
    Grandpa nodded. “I’m glad you remembered. The head scientists decided that the Earths were unstable, that they could blow themselves up and wreck the universe. They wanted to destroy them. Your dad and I were part of the group that wanted to save the Earths.”
    â€œWas Dad a scientist, too?”
    â€œYour dad was a monitor,” said Grandpa. “We both became rebels against our own planet.”
    â€œAnd now Tom and me are rebels, too.”
    â€œWe’re counting on you boys.” Grandpa knuckled Eddie’s head. “Now go get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day.”
    He handed Eddie a key to the front door, got back on his bike, and pedaled away.

THIRTY-ONE
    NEARMONT, N.J.
    2011
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    E DDIE tiptoed up the stairs and into Tom’s room. He planned to look it over carefully, but once he sat down on Tom’s bed, he decided he needed to stretch out for a few minutes first. That was it. As usual, whenever he was worried, he fell right to sleep.
    He awoke early. Tom’s house was noisier than his, alarms and machines humming and clicking. Because it was a big old house, it made creaky, grinding sounds. The groaning of the refrigerator downstairs almost drowned out Keith’s snoring in the bedroom across the hall.
    Eddie had slept in the chinos and blue shirt he was wearing when he left EarthTwo. They were wrinkled and a little stinky, but he kept them on because he felt shy about wearing Tom’s clothes, which were mostly T-shirts with pictures and words on them and denim pants that looked more stylish than the dungarees he wore back home. He wasn’t allowed to wear dungarees to school.
    The kitchen was huge, like the kitchen in a restaurant, shiny metal and polished wood. He opened the refrigerator. It looked like a grocery store back home: boxes of berries, a cooked chicken in a plastic box, different kinds of milk and yogurt, bags of lettuce. There was a bag of green leaves marked “baby arugula.” What was that? Soda, beer, soy milk. What was soy milk? Were there soy cows?
    In the freezer there were various brands and flavors of ice cream, even cones and pops. Pizzas, Chinese food,