Prologue:
As the 3rd period bell rang Lily, looking back at this moment, would never quite realize in it the start of something new. And yet, that moments still hold worlds is, in its way, a beginning.
"Lucien!" Lily exclaimed.
As Lily was walking to third period, she spotted her brother Lucien a couple of feet in front of her, walking towards her. He was to the left and slightly behind two guys she vaguely recognized but it looked like he was tangentially involved in the conversation at best. He seemed distracted and was staring past her, but at the sound of her call, he looked up and smiled quickly when he saw her. He tapped her on the head with a finger, as he had for years as he walked by her, and she shrugged it off in mock irritation, looking over her shoulder as she watched him go up the stairs. Her friends tittered like lovesick hyenas behind her. She glanced at them in annoyance and saw them all looking at her with mocking jealousy in their eyes.
"What?" she demanded, annoyed that they were making her ask. They smiled at each other and one of them asked, "The one who got away?" making doe eyes at her. She rolled her eyes in exasperation and lightly shoved them as they entered their English classroom. "He's my brother, don't be gross." But as she sat down she noticed that the tops of her ears felt uncomfortably hot. She shrugged it off and finished by mumbling, "It's nothing like that." But as the door closed, she wondered who it was she was really trying to convince.
It was the first day of the first semester of her senior year. The morning had passed in a blur as the new seniors, as was annual tradition, had been given free reign to terrorize the school during the first half of the day. The jitters of her last high school year had mostly subsided and yet she was nervous at the multitude of things that had yet to fall into place. But there was hope. Lucien was in one of her classes, she was one of the co-captains of a promising varsity swim team, and her dreams of attending a top-level undergraduate math program were shaping up. What would she make of this year?
She looked up as the bell rang and realized that the teacher had already been speaking for a few minutes. "Good morning class and welcome to the second semester of AP English Literature. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Ms. Hendrickson. I'm looking forward to teaching you the ways of literature and language but as to whether you'll learn it, well..." She smiled at the class and then walked to her desk to pick up a stack of papers. "I'll be coming around to talk to each of you and will be giving you a short assignment to complete by the end of the week." A groan that arose from fears halfway ancient rocked the class but Ms. Hendrickson told them to shut up and most of them obeyed. She was a slim, inordinately pretty woman of medium height with auburn hair and truly green eyes that looked out at you like emeralds shimmering at the bottom of a still pond. She was wearing a pencil skirt that seemingly bent the logic of the dress code and a buttoned blouse with the top few buttons open to allow her ample breasts room to breathe. In short, hot - fuck me on the desk right now hot - teacher.
"I'll be coming around to talk to each of you so I can get to know you as this is a relatively small class, so start working on your essays until I get around to all of you. The essay should be a one page description of somebody you know - a friend, family member, teacher, lover, both, all, whatever. The point is that I'll get to see your writing style as well as learn something about you from what you say about them. Get to it." She clapped her hands, the universal sign that a teacher has just said something and that you should probably have been paying attention.
Luckily, Lily had been switching between staring at Ms. Hendrickson's luminous eyes and her admittedly attention grabbing boobs so she had heard what was assigned for the most part. She was sitting in the middle of the left side of the room, near the window where she had had a picturesque view of empty rolling fields of grass. She assumed there would be a while before Ms. walking-restraining-order got to her, but in that unknowable way of teachers, she announced that she would be starting in the middle and weaved her way expertly and rather lasciviously through the desks directly towards her.
Lily blinked and steeled herself for whatever was coming. Ms. Hendrickson smiled disarmingly at her and asked, "You're Lily right? Lucien's brother?" Lily's inward groan rose in both pitch and intensity as she nodded. Ms. Hendrickson looked pleased with herself. "Even though your hair and eyes are quite different, the family resemblance isn't so easily buried." She leaned toward Lily unnecessarily, as if she was letting her in on some kind of secret, allowing Lily a prize-winning view of her cleavage and edge of a white lace bra. She felt a stirring somewhere she would rather ignore and shoved it back down as she looked at her English teacher's perfectly made up face. She was weird, but gods was she pretty. Her dark red lips curled inwards as she lowered her voice and went on, "And of course, quiet though he is, he never stopped talking about you whenever the subject came up. Or writing about you, at least." She looked at Lily as if expecting a response of some sort. Lily gave her what she hoped qualified as a sort of sickly half-grin and squeaked, "Oh. So you had my brother. That's... good?" Ms. Hendrickson looked slightly disappointed but then straightened herself and brushed off her skirt. "Yes, and he was perhaps the brightest soul this English department has ever seen, if perhaps a tad too lazy, so I'm expecting great things from you. Anyway, is there anything else you want to tell me about yourself? I believe I already know a great deal about you from Lucien's writing, but do you think there's anything he left out?"
"Probably," Lily muttered, but she told Ms. Hendrickson it was all good and held her breath until she moved on to the next student. Then she let it out in a large sigh and looked out the window, rubbing her forehead. She had little idea of what had just happened, but knew that she was once again walking in Lucien's shadow.
She sighed and looked down at her paper, wondering what she should write about Lucien. It would obviously be about him. Who else was there?
What do I say about Lucien? How do I use words to convey who he is and what he means to me? I've never had that easy, flowing manner with words that he possesses. It's always a battle between my hand and my brain. I think too much. So does he. But I think, given the subject matter, I can manage something. My twin brother Lucien likes to claim he's my older brother, but 3 minutes leaves little room for interpretation. People say we look alike, but I think other than in bone structure, we look nothing alike. He's tall, about 6 feet, and slender - not thin like a runner (though he does run a lot) but more like a dancer or like how I imagine assassins used to be built back in the days when assassins existed I guess. He has a sort of fluid grace to his movements that I imagine they would have had. He has thick black hair that he keeps somewhat long. His hair occupies that odd phantom space between curly and wavy - I guess one could say his hair hangs in regimented waves, but that would imply order, and his hair becomes nigh untameable without some sort of product which he rarely thinks to use. He has startlingly dark eyes, eyes that most people would call black despite the fact that I don't think that's possible. They're the kind of eyes that can look at you and you see yourself reflected in them. It's hard to penetrate the depths of what goes through his mind, even for me. He's popular enough I guess, by which I mean not a complete recluse, but with our mom being who she is and the school not being that big I don't know if that says much. He's a little odd these days. Well it's always been there. I don't know. It's hard and kind of confusing to write all this down. I'll probably change this to something more vanilla before turning it in but I guess it is sort of interesting to get these thoughts out. I think he wants to be a poet or a writer or something, but he doesn't talk about it much. I don't know. He's complicated. We all are. But I love him. He's my big brother. He's always been there for me, and without my father in the picture, has really been the only guiding male figure in my life. He means more to me than I can convey with words. He could probably do it, but then, this is about him. Yeah. Whatever. I'm not turning this dog turd in.
She sighed again and set down her pencil, hoping class was almost over. Glancing surreptitiously at the clock however, she was pained and not entirely surprised to see that only five minutes had passed. It was going to be a long, long day with 3 more classes and practice to look forward to before she could get back home. Various thoughts about lunch and life lurched through her mind as she stared out the window, wondering what Lucien was up to right now.
Lucien was currently getting fucked in the ass by a limit. He didn't consider himself a poor math student by any means, but his strong suit, if such a thing could be claimed, was wallowing in words and general ruminations on the misery of meaning. As a result, Mr. Wahlberg and his post-break pre-calc check-up quiz weren't occupying the most positive aspects of Lucien's psyche. He wished for the umpteenth time that he had some of Lily's mathematical abilities - she had finished the multivariable version of this class the year before, somehow putting her two years ahead of him in the math track and squarely within the adoring gaze of the entire department faculty.
"Time's up class, pencils down. Pass the quizzes forward, and then you're free to do whatever for the last 20 minutes of class," Mr. Wahlberg said.
Lucien sat in the back of the class, gazing out the window. He remembered that he'd encountered Lily briefly earlier in the day. They were supposed to have a class together this semester, but the class hadn't met today so he hadn't seen her since their chance encounter. He'd been thinking about her as they bumped into each other, an observation made less surprising by the fact that both the siblings' thoughts tended to revolve inwards towards the other when times were difficult. Lily was true. She was honest. She hated disingenuity in anybody including herself, and sought the most genuine life of anyone Lucien knew. He envied her for that. Respected her. Wished that he had the spark within him to care enough about something like that, to carry out a philosophy about life. He'd felt so empty and numb for so long, a passenger in his own life with only Lily to anchor him. It was always her. Lily.
He shook his head. Too much introspection. The bell was ringing and people were already leaving class. This is why he tried not to get in his own head too much. Not that it ever stopped him. He stooped down and slung his bag over one shoulder and walked out in the direction of the gymnasium. This was the last year of high school. He had to make something of it, didn't he?
They bumped into each other near the girls locker rooms. Lily pulled Lucien away from the entrance towards a corner where they could talk in some privacy. Lucien immediately slid down the wall and sat with his back against it, arms dangling over his knees.
"Hey, I have to go to practice in a minute or two, what's up?" Lily said as she tied her hair back
"Just sit down with me, you can wait a few minutes."
"Fine." she said, sitting down cross legged an arms length from him.
