Page 31 of 16 Forever

“I could ask him out for you if you want.” You took your eyes off the road to wiggle your eyebrows at me.

“That won’t be necessary. Ever.”

“I gotta say,” you said, “it’s kind of amazing being twins with you. Getting to observe you up close in your natural habitat.”

“Yeah, it’s fun,” I lied. It wasn’t a complete lie—we’d had some great moments together that year. Mostly, though, I felt that becoming the same age had been a very bad thing for our relationship. The dynamic was all off, and you didn’t even seem to realize.

“Whoa,” you said. “It just occurred to me: If we figure out how to cure this thing and get me to seventeen, we’ll be twins forever.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, gripping the handle above the window. That could not happen. I could not allow that to happen. “I know I say this all the time, but I really am sorry you’re going through this.”

“Hey, thanks, Link,” you said. “It does suck very much. But, you know, not your fault.”

“Yeah. Well.”

I watched Scoops ’n’ Sprinkles move in and out of my view, which meant we were just two minutes from the Thai place.

“Does feel like I should try to make lemonade out of lemons, though, right?” you said. “Like, since I’m kind of famous for my condition, I should probably use that to make bank as an influencer or something, right?”

“You did that last year, actually. It didn’t go great.”

“For real? What happened?”

“You know, what you’d expect. You got tons of followers, and then there was a backlash. People saying you were lying about your condition, that you were just pretending to be sixteen over and over again for attention. And you got super anxious keeping track of what everyone was saying, and you could never be apart from your phone, so Mom and Dad had to confiscate it, and you were so pissed, et cetera et cetera.”

“Oh god. That sounds horrible.”

“It was.”

You were silent for a few seconds. “Maybe,” you finally said, “you were just jealous of all my followers.”

You poked your fingers into my rib cage, which made me laugh against my will because, as you know well, I’m very ticklish.

“Definitely not,” I said, pressing myself against the car door as I continued laughing. “And stop.”

“I don’t know if I can.” You tickled me even more intensely. “This is my responsibility as your brother.”

“Seriously, CT. Fucking stop!”

“All right, all right, geez—”

“STOP! STOP!”

Distracted by your moronic tickle attack, you drove straightthrough a red light. A car was coming at us from the left, but you slammed on the gas just in time to fly past it and instead crash into a streetlight approximately fifty feet from our destination.

The air bags came out, we both experienced some minor whiplash, and the front of Rex was demolished. The people at the auto repair shop told Mom and Dad it could be fixed, but it was going to be so expensive that they decided to just buy us another used car instead.

And that pretty much sums up the third loop.

Maggie

Shana and I are walking out of school through the main entrance, deep in a heated discussion about the set list for our first gig—she wants to open with “No, Thank You,” which I think is a horrible idea—when I see Carter. He’s hanging out with Bodhi, Robbie, and Amir near the big tree. They’re doing what they do: talking loudly, laughing even loudly-er, and radiating the overly confident, obviously insecure energy of peacocking teenage boys. I knew it was only a matter of time before Carter found his way back to Bodhi.

It definitely makes it easier to stay away. These first weeks back to school have felt infinitely better than those tragic days before the holidays. The distraction of Mom’s engagement to Ron turned out to be really helpful, both because it meant Mom was in the Best Mood of All Time and because it gave me something to bitch about that wasn’t Carter. Plus, Vivian being home generally makes everything better. So I came into January on good footing, and every time I’ve passed Carter in the hall has felt slightly less eventful than the time before; I don’t even look over anymore.

It’s impossible not to notice him right now, though. He is King Bonehead, doing over-the-top impressions of teachers and intentionally bad parkour moves off the tree trunk as he gets huge laughs from the hyenas. He is a funny person, but this obnoxious brand of comedy has always felt cheap to me.

Shana takes Carter in, I know she does, but she continues with our conversation, subtly shifting our path to the parking lot so we won’t pass as close to him. “Starting with a ballad is a bomb move,” she says. “You pull in the audience, make them lean forward to take in our tender melody, then hit ’em hard the next song with somerawk. Blow their faces off. And blow their minds too.”