Since people have generally responded pretty well to Sadie Curtis, my OC from 'Arrogance and Aggression' who I've cast as Soda's twin, I decided to write a little (long) one-shot about their twinship. It starts in 1950 and ends in 2017, so there's a lot of stuff, both light and dark, that this piece covers. The piece makes sense without reading 'Arrogance and Aggression,' I think, but there are some spoilers for 'Impatience and Impulsivity.' That's what you get for writing non-temporally, I say to myself.
And … here we go!
Sodapop Curtis was two years old when he discovered that his twin sister Sadie was a girl, but somehow, Sadie had always known.
She wasn't sure if it was a real memory or something she'd simply dreamt up, but she often went back to the same place in her head. It was in the middle of the afternoon at Crutchfield Park, just after, she assumed, her second birthday. She and Soda were chasing each other around the jungle gym when another little boy, whom they never saw again, joined them. The boy's mother asked Mrs. Curtis if her two little ones were twins. When Mrs. Curtis said yes, they were, the other boy's mother smacked her hand over her heart and said, "Oh, you're so lucky! And what a beautiful little boy you have, too!"
A few minutes passed, and suddenly, Soda didn't want Sadie to play with him anymore. She cried harder than she ever had before. When they got back home from the park, Mrs. Curtis made Sadie and Soda sit together. She didn't know if they would understand what she needed them to—after all, they were only two years old. Of course, it didn't matter how old or young they were. They were just little people, and she and Darrel had resolved to talk to their children like people. Mrs. Curtis made sure her twins were looking right at each other when she spoke to them.
"Soda, look at Sadie," she said. "Sadie, look at Soda. You're brother and sister, but you're twins. That's what counts. You're both lucky. You've got a built-in best buddy no matter where you go. You're twins."
The little ones looked at each other, and Mrs. Curtis could see they were, already at the age of two, trying to understand what she meant—trying to understand each other. They had the same dark gold hair and smiling brown eyes, only from that day on, Sadie's eyes smiled a little less brightly. It wasn't anybody's fault. She'd just figured out why she always felt different from Soda, even when Mama and Daddy tried to tell them they were the same.
Why hadn't Mama and Daddy told Sadie she was a girl?
When Sadie and Soda were in the fourth grade, the school goofed up and put them in the same classroom. For all those years before, they had always been careful to put them in different classrooms to give them a break from each other—to avoid inevitable comparisons from sibling to sibling, too. But there was a mix-up when they got to fourth grade. After the first day of school, Sadie pulled Mom aside and asked her if there was any way she could meet with the principal to see if she could get switched to the other classroom. Soda, who still didn't quite understand why Sadie cared so much about being a girl, begged Mom not to say anything. He liked sitting next to Sadie in class. It went in order of the alphabet, and Sadie acted as an excellent barrier between Soda and Tommy Davison, who picked his nose without even realizing it.
"That's the only reason you wanna sit by me?" Sadie asked.
"Not the only reason," Soda said. "You're my buddy, too. Ain't ya?"
Sadie nodded, not surprised when Mom listened to Soda and didn't make a meeting with the principal about the class arrangements. Mom was real big on Sadie and Soda sitting together and getting along, so Sadie knew she'd have to put up with it.
It wasn't that she didn't love Soda. She did—she loved him an awful lot. Ponyboy thought he loved Soda best, but it was nothing compared to the way Sadie loved him. It never could be. Sadie discovered the world right next to Soda in a way that nobody else ever could have. She knew what he was thinking just by looking at him, and he could do the same with her. There was a whole side to the world that only Sadie and Soda could see. Neither could it explain it. They just knew it was there.
But that was only at home. At school, everyone did everything to make sure they understood that Sadie and Soda were different. Most of it rested on the fact that Sadie was a girl, though Soda was happily oblivious to the fact. It didn't seem to matter what either of them did. As the year went on, Sadie faded into obscurity, and Soda was the most popular boy in room 402. Sadie wished she could say she was surprised, but she wasn't—not even close.
It didn't seem to matter what she did. In November of that school year, Sadie was the only one in the class to get a perfect score on a spelling test, for which the teacher publicly commended her. No one seemed to care or even be momentarily impressed. Even Jane Randle, Sadie's one good girl friend, was too busy assuring Soda that it didn't matter he'd only gotten three words out of ten correct. Why was Soda always more important? Even when Sadie was good at something, it was more important that Soda wasn't?
She'd asked that question of Jane one day at lunchtime. After nervously chewing on her pencil for a moment (Jane always used lunchtime to pretend to finish up her math homework before class after the bell, when really, she was just writing down a series of arbitrary numbers based on which ones she most liked the look of.), Jane answered, "You know you're good at things. You get good marks, and you sure do run fast. Soda might not know what he's good at yet."
"But nobody ever tells me I'm good at anything," Sadie said.
"I don't really think they need to, do they?"
Of course they did—because on Valentine's Day in the fourth grade, all the girls clamored to give their little Valentine cards to Sodapop. It wasn't that Sadie wanted any Valentine cards for herself. It was that when the last girl in the class had given her card to Soda, a boy in class leaned forward and whispered something right into Sadie's ear.
"Looks like you're the ugly twin."
She didn't make a sound. She knew she couldn't afford that. Her dark eyes simply filled with tears, but she was careful not to let them fall too far down her pink cheeks. Of course, she should have known it wouldn't be any use. Soda tapped her on the arm, making her look right at him.
"Sadie?" he asked, his voice soft and curious. He hadn't heard anything. "Why're ya cryin'?"
But Sadie just shook her head. There was no point in telling Soda. He couldn't do anything to make it better. Once, he'd punched another kid in the nose for calling Sadie a square, and Mom had gotten real testy with Soda after that. He couldn't just go around punching people, even if they weren't being nice to one of his siblings. But it wasn't just one of his siblings, he'd told her. It was his twin.
That didn't make a difference to Mom. If Soda was going to fight for Sadie, he was going to fight with his words. Sadie knew that wouldn't make any difference to Soda, even when Mom made him agree to what she said. She could see it in his eyes, sure as he could see her pain now. But she didn't want him to get into any more trouble, so she kept shaking her head. He couldn't go after anybody if he didn't know who to go after.
"I'm OK," she said. "Got somethin' in my eye."
"Both of 'em?"
"I said I'm fine."
Soda didn't press the issue after that. He knew better than to push Sadie when she was angry. She never threw a punch, but she could yell up a storm if she wanted to. It always hurt Soda's feelings when she yelled at him, though it didn't happen very often. When it did, she was usually yelling at somebody else. Soda was Sadie's safety net … her mirror, her reflection outside of herself that she could trust. Even at ten years old, he was happy he could be that for her.
It didn't make a difference whether or not Sadie told him why she was crying, and indeed, Soda knew she was crying. He knew Sadie so well that he could feel her pain. It took root in his chest and nearly doubled his little body over. If it hurt him this much, he couldn't imagine what Sadie must be feeling sitting next to him, trying so hard not to make a sound.
He picked up the Kit Kat bar that a dark-haired girl (something with an M—he wasn't good with names) and quietly slid it onto Sadie's desk. She felt the wrapper underneath her hand and looked at Soda, who looked back at her with pleading eyes. Sadie didn't need to tell him anything. She just needed to know that he was there, sitting next to her, not going anywhere.
If she hadn't been feeling so lousy, Sadie probably would have smiled at her twin. But when she really got a look at him, something surprised her. It was the first time she noticed her reflection in his eyes. Maybe Soda was a boy, but they sure did look alike.
At the end of the seventh grade, Soda and Sadie's English teacher called a meeting with the Curtis twins and their parents. While she recommended that Soda get tutored in English and writing over the summer (She'd even offered to help him out for free, which made Mom and Dad breathe easier.), she also recommended that Sadie skip eighth-grade English and go straight into the class for ninth graders. Flattered that someone was finally congratulating her (and not minimizing what she could do because they thought less of Soda than they should), Sadie accepted the teacher's offer. By late August, she was (for fifty-five minutes a day) a high-school student.
The night before her first high-school class, Sadie was frantic about which book she should bring to class and read before the bell rang. Maybe somebody would ask her about it, and she'd make a real, honest-to-goodness, high-school-aged friend. Darry suggested Island of the Blue Dolphins, which Sadie gently reminded him, was a kid's book. If she was going to make an impression in a ninth-grade English class, she was going to have to read something a little more sophisticated than that. Soda suggested the Archie comic she'd bought earlier that week, and Sadie reminded him that a ninth-grade English class wouldn't find that very sophisticated, either.
"It works for me," he laughed and took a drink of his Pepsi.
It worked for Sadie, too, but this was the first time in years she was going to distance herself from Sodapop. The kids in her ninth-grade English class weren't going to know him (at least not as well as the kids in their own grade), so they weren't going to bombard her with questions about Soda's latest date or whatever was on their minds about the most sought-after boy in their class. She would just get to be Sadie. She turned to Ponyboy, who, at the age of eleven, had a more sophisticated taste in books than even she did most of the time.
"Whaddya think, Pony?" she asked. "What'll make me seem smart?"
"Y'are smart," Ponyboy said. "That's why they let you skip a grade in English. But you should take this."
He walked over to the bookshelf in the living room and pulled out Darry's copy of The Catcher in the Rye for Sadie. Darry frowned when he saw his youngest brother's choice.
"What do you know about that book?" he asked. "You just made eleven last month."
"I know you read it," Ponyboy said, and that was enough for Darry. "Plus, I heard it's good."
"And it causes a lot of ruckus," Darry said, more to Sadie than to Ponyboy. "If you want to cause a ruckus in your class, that's the book ya bring."
Sadie smirked and tucked the book into her backpack. She did want to cause a ruckus, after all. Maybe she'd cause a ruckus with the right person.
Sure enough, the next afternoon in last-period ninth-grade English class, Sadie Curtis pulled out her copy of The Catcher in the Rye and started reading. She'd read it before when Darry was reading it, though her parents didn't know it. Most people walked past her, not giving a damn about anything but where they were going to sit. The last person to walk in the room before the teacher stopped in front of Sadie's desk, checking out the front cover.
"What're you reading?"
Sadie looked up from the pages and saw a short, pretty girl with long dark hair standing in front of her. Judging by her wardrobe, she wasn't a greaser, but she wasn't a Soc, either. She hadn't been in elementary school or junior high with Sadie, so she figured the girl must be new. Sadie set her book down and started talking.
"The Catcher in the Rye," Sadie said. "You ever read it?"
The new girl took her seat in the desk next to Sadie's. It felt almost like fate, like that girl was meant to be in the class and meant to sit next to Sadie. She tried not to get ahead of herself.
"Have I?" she asked. "It's a great book. My dad encouraged me to read it about a year ago when I was really going through it. I get angry sometimes."
The girl paused. Then:
"That's a little heavy for somebody whose name you don't even know yet," she said with a slight laugh. "Sorry about that. I'm Lucy."
Sadie felt herself grin from ear to ear. There was something about the way the new girl—Lucy—spoke that she just loved. She had such confidence. Sadie envied the hell out of that. After spending almost fourteen years in Soda's shadow (For a flicker of a moment, she remembered when she was the ugly twin.), she didn't have as much confidence as she would have liked. This girl did, and it was already brilliant. It wasn't even hard for Sadie to introduce herself.
"I'm Sadie."
When the bell rang and school let out that day, Lucy even walked out of the building with Sadie. Sadie was impressed. Apart from Jane and the other younger girls in the neighborhood, nobody had ever really taken an interest in her like this before. She walked alongside Lucy and listened to her talk. She had recently moved from Detroit to Tulsa because her dad was an English professor, and this was the first tenure-track job of his career. Sadie didn't really know what tenure-track meant, but it sounded like a big deal, so she nodded. Lucy loved to read, but her favorite writers were the women writers from a long time ago—Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Mary Shelley, and George Eliot. Sadie brushed when she said that George Eliot was a woman writer. Lucy smiled a little.
"Her real name was Mary Anne Evans," she said. "But you can't just be a woman and write in the nineteenth century, so you gotta become George."
Sadie nodded. Lucy, whom she soon learned was an only child, couldn't know how true that was.
When they got outside, they met up with Darry and Soda, who were hanging around Steve, Two-Bit (who'd gone to class that day, much to everyone's surprise) and Dally (who, after getting back from New York a couple of weeks earlier, hadn't bothered with school, much to no one's surprise). Sadie felt her heart sink, as she knew that as soon as Lucy saw Sodapop, she'd never be able to stop talking about him. It was one of those powers he didn't even know he had.
But when Sadie introduced Soda as her twin, Lucy just nodded and said it was nice to meet him. She didn't seem mesmerized at all. It was then that Sadie discovered that maybe she didn't need to share everything with Sodapop. Maybe some things, like new friends from your ninth-grade English class, could just be for you.
She looked over at Lucy, who was making what Sadie thought was her first mistake: squabbling with Dallas Winston. He'd asked her if it was as easy to get with a girl as it was to get away with murder in Detroit, and she was yelling at him.
"Who do you think you're talking to? You don't even know my name!"
"Don't need to, sweetheart. Don't make a difference."
Before Sadie could think much about how strange it was that Dally wouldn't fight back harder, Soda pulled her aside and asked her how her day went.
"Well," she said. "I made a friend."
"Guess ya did," he laughed. "I miss you."
Sadie nodded. She didn't know what else to say or do. She couldn't be honest with him. She couldn't just say that she hadn't missed him; that she was glad to venture out on her own and be Sadie, not "Sodapop Curtis's ugly twin sister." But it didn't matter. She didn't need to say a word. All she had to do was breathe a certain way, and Soda could hear what she was thinking. It was like looking in a mirror or hearing your own thoughts when you're all alone at night. Only Sadie and Soda weren't alone. No matter where they went, they could never quite separate.
When Mom and Dad died, Soda took it harder than he let on. In front of Darry and Ponyboy, he kept his spirits up, but Sadie knew better. They were artificially high. A few days after the funeral, Sadie confided in Lucy that she was worried about the way Soda was acting. She hadn't seen him cry; yet, she could feel it in her blood that he needed to. Lucy said, "Jacques Lacan would say that he's acting out because he knows he's ignorant to his own death," but Sadie didn't know who this Jacques Lacan guy was, so she swept that under the rug and asked Jane what she thought. Jane was too busy crying and feeling bad for Soda that she couldn't give a very good answer. Jane hadn't been too mature then.
One night, two months after the accident, the phone rang at about eight. Darry was working late, Soda was out with Sandy, Steve, and Evie, Ponyboy was sleeping (He fell asleep early in the evening now, to make up for the night terrors he was having.), and Sadie had Lucy over. She picked up the phone, thinking it was probably Darry telling her he was on his way home. It wasn't.
"Sadie?" a frantic voice on the other end asked.
"Sandy?"
"Yeah. Can you … can you make it over to the drive-in? Soda ain't … well, he ain't feelin' so good."
At first, Sadie thought nothing of it. People got sick all the time. Soda was all right. He had to be. There was nothing in her blood that told her anything different.
"Isn't Steve with you? Can't he take him home?"
"He won't talk to Steve. He won't even talk to me. He keeps askin' for you. Sometimes for your mom and dad, but he's really askin' for you."
Sadie's blood thickened. Soda wasn't just sick. She should have seen this coming, but she'd been so wrapped up in her own problems and her own grief that she hadn't been keyed in enough to his. She quickly hung up with Sandy, and Lucy drove her to the Dingo with no questions asked.
When she got there, she found Soda in between the men's room and the women's room, on his knees, throwing up like nobody's business. Sadie felt her stomach turn—not because the sight of vomit made her queasy but because she could always feel what Soda was feeling. She got down on her knees, too, and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.
"Hey, Pepsi Cola," she said. It was Dad's old nickname for him. Sadie knew it was the name he needed to hear.
He looked up and tried to manage a smile, but he couldn't. It didn't matter to Sadie. She could feel that he wanted to.
"You really here?" he asked her.
She nodded. "Looks like you been drinkin' more than just Pepsi Cola."
"Don't tell …"
"I won't."
"I ain't talkin' about Darry."
"I know."
He stared up at her in wonder. Maybe it was that he was drunk and sick, but he'd forgotten just how well Sadie knew him. Of course she knew he wanted to keep this a secret from Ponyboy. The twins had made a silent pact between the two of them not to worry the kid too much, and this would worry him. Soda had done such a great job at protecting Pony since the accident. It seemed only fair that Sadie try to protect him now.
Soda looked right into his twin's eyes, and for the first time since he was a little boy, he saw his reflection in her eyes. Maybe he was just drunk, but as far as he could see, he and Sadie really did look alike.
"What am I gonna do now?" he asked her, his voice cutting out at the end of his question.
"You're gonna start by gettin' up," Sadie said, "and you're gonna get cleaned up 'cause you smell fuckin' gross."
He tried to laugh, but it came out like a sorry deflation. Sadie held out her arms before Soda even knew he wanted to try standing up. Fifteen years of being a twin, and still, it was amazing how well she reflected what he needed.
"I'm gonna take you home now," Sadie said, her voice quiet and gentle.
"That'd be nice. Hey, Sadie Lou?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you."
Sadie smiled a little sadly. They hardly ever had to tell each other that. If Soda was telling her he loved her, he must really need to hear it.
"I love you, too."
They didn't exchange those words again for almost a year. They never needed to. They were twins, after all.
In the early spring of 1968, two things happened: Sadie Lou Curtis got a different name but kept her initials, and Sodapop's number was up—at least, his number out of that little plastic capsule at the U.S. government.
The night before he had to go, he split his time. Half the night, he spent with Jane, who was scared out of her mind because Steve was already in the war, and though she heard from him, she spent every second terrified that one day, the letters might just stop cold. It was hell on her nerves to add Soda to the list. Soda didn't even need to ask Sadie to keep an eye on Jane while he was gone. She just knew.
He spent the other half of the night with his brothers and his twin. Lucy Bennet came by with Elenore, Sadie and Soda's goddaughter (which was good and confusing, since everyone was pretty sure you normally chose godparents as a couple, not a couple of twins), a little while later. She'd also given him a copy of poems by some guy named Sassoon, which he found it hard not to laugh at just a little bit.
"Not the cheeriest fellow," she said. "But he might keep you company. He gets it." To balance out the heavy gift she'd given him, Lucy let him bounce Elenore, who was a year old at the time, on his knee for much longer than she usually would have.
A few hours of distraction passed. Lucy took Elenore home to put her to bed, and Soda bawled harder than the baby herself once she was out of his sight. This, of course, made Ponyboy cry, and after awhile, Johnny and Darry both suggested it was a good idea to give the twins a minute to themselves.
Everyone cleared out and left Sadie and Soda alone. He sat on the couch and she on the chair across the room. It felt like an ocean already. They said nothing, hearing and feeling everything they needed to already. Finally, Sadie spoke.
"You're gonna be fine," she said. "You gotta be. You hear me?"
Soda tried to crack a smile, but it was awfully hard.
"If you say so, guess I gotta," he said.
"Damn straight, kid."
"How come you get to call me kid?"
"Because I'm five minutes older, and I'm never gonna stop bragging about it."
"Not as long as I live?"
"Not as long as we live."
Soda noticed the difference in Sadie's speech. He got up from the couch and walked over to her, kneeling at her feet to talk to her. But they didn't talk. Their throats hurt too much.
There was a song on the radio that neither of them had ever heard before. It didn't sound like a man or a woman singing, but they both noticed that the voice sounded sad and tired, just like they did. It wasn't anything they normally would have listened to, but the words jumped out at them.
I'll be your mirror / reflect what you are / in case you don't know…
They looked at each other for a long time. Neither needed to comment on the lyrics. They spoke for themselves.
"You're gonna be fine," Sadie repeated. "I said so."
"You always were bossy."
"I was the only girl. Either I could have been bossy, or I could have gotten squashed."
This time, Soda really laughed. Sadie laughed, too. He almost thought about telling her that he was taking four pictures with him tomorrow when he went – one of the family with Mom and Dad, one of Jane, one with him and Elenore on the day after she was born and Lucy told him he was the godfather, and one … one that was just Sadie. He'd need it, he thought. He wasn't sure he'd be seeing much of his own reflection while he was gone, and looking at Sadie was almost the same thing … only more hopeful.
He decided he wouldn't tell her. He could feel that it would make her even more upset, and she was already struggling to hold it together for him.
"I miss you," Soda said.
"Me too."
Sadie noticed Soda's use of the present tense (I miss you.), but she never stopped to figure out what he meant. She didn't have the time.
A little more than a year passed when Soda came back with a bullet in a jar that had been in his leg. He walked a little slower now. His goddaughter, Elenore, who was now a couple months over two, giggled when she saw him for the first time to her memory.
"Ya walk funny," she said.
Lucy scooped her up from the ground and apologized to Soda profusely. Before the war, she knew Soda would have laughed it off, but now, she didn't know what he'd do. But he was smiling. He hadn't stopped smiling since he walked back in the door. It felt … wrong.
"Aww, Lucy, she's just little," he said, his voice sounding much younger than anyone in the room ever remembered it. He looked at Elenore and winked.
"Elenore, you can call me your penguin."
At two years old, animals were all the rage for Elenore, so she clapped her hands a few times in excitement. Then, Soda looked at Lucy and asked where Sadie was. He'd been shocked that she wasn't with Jane, Ponyboy, and Darry when they came to pick him up.
"She's on her way," Lucy said, fighting to keep Elenore still in her arms. "You know, she's a little slow moving these days. It's hard at first. Hell, it's hard at second."
She glanced down at the two-year-old in her grasp. Elenore was still kicking in her mother's arms, begging to be let down so she could play. As Lucy tried to reason with her, Dally came in from the backyard, smelling like smoke (He'd quit a little more than two years earlier, but when he was especially stressed, as seeing Soda made him, he'd smoke one cigarette.). Lucy turned to him, her eyes exhausted and angry at the same time.
"Hey, Bennet," he said, sidling up next to her and kissing her cheek. She frowned, and he noticed Elenore fighting. He smirked a little and lifted the kid out of Lucy's arms and into his own without a word. To Soda's surprise, she calmed down immediately. Elenore was the only baby in the world who calmed down in front of Dallas Winston. She must have known where she came from. Dally balanced the kid on his hip and stuck out his hand for Soda, who looked at his old friend in confusion and awe before he took it. He knew Dally had changed a lot since he turned eighteen, but this … Dally with a kid who liked him on his hip … that was almost as strange as Sadie not being there to pick him up.
"Hey, man," Dally said.
"Hey, Dally."
"Good to have ya back."
It hardly sounded like Dally, even the Dally he'd known before he went away, but Soda (a notorious softie who was looking for something, anything, to be soft about now) couldn't help but like it.
Dally took Elenore to the back of the house to get her to sleep, and Lucy told Soda that they'd been using his bedroom as a makeshift bedroom for the babies while he was gone. She hoped he didn't mind, and he said he didn't, though a large part of him did. Did he have no room now? Was he allowed to stay with Darry? Would he move in with Jane? They hadn't even talked this stuff over. They'd just come to get him when Uncle Sam told him he wasn't any good anymore. That wasn't how they'd phrased it, but it hardly made a difference. It was what they meant.
But then Lucy told him that the new baby always seemed to stare at his picture, and his heart softened, still looking for something to be soft about. He was going to tell Lucy what his favorite poem by that Sassoon guy was, but Jane shouted from the dining room, where she was setting the table for dinner.
"It's Sadie!"
Soda couldn't focus on much else. Lucy opened the door, and slowly, Sadie came in. She looked tired, from both what her body had just been through and feeling for Soda. They stood parallel to one another for a long time. They didn't move. They didn't say anything. Then, at the very same moment, they ran at each other, meeting directly in the middle and hugging more tightly than, perhaps, they ever had.
"Zeno's paradox be damned," Lucy chuckled; then headed into Soda's room to check on Elenore (but really more to check on Dally).
They held each other a little further apart so they could get a look at each other's faces. Both of them were crying a little bit. They were looking at each other's reflections, all right, but there was something distinctly different about their eyes. Though they could still see themselves in the other's irises, there was something different there. Oddly enough, both of them welcomed the change, and when they did, they smiled.
"I know what you're gonna say," she said. "I look tired."
"Only a little."
"Ya wanna meet him?"
"Only a lot."
A few minutes later, Johnny came in, carrying the baby in little boy blue. He was tiny—only a few weeks old. The second Sadie pushed her son out she felt the worst pain of her life, worse than Lucy ever said it would feel. A few hours later, they found out that Soda had been shot. A little while after that, Sadie did the math, and though she couldn't be certain, she was fairly sure that her son had been born at the exact moment Soda had fallen down. As Ponyboy had pointed out, it wasn't exactly poetic, but that was a good thing. If it had been exactly poetic, they wouldn't have been going to pick up Soda.
Soda took the baby in his arms—his first nephew, Sadie's son—and smiled down at him. Sadie knew that his smile was just for show, and in a few hours, he'd be lost. But in that moment, she didn't give a damn. Her twin was here, and she felt whole for the first time in more than a year. He was here, he was smiling, and for just an hour or two longer, she could pretend that he would be all right for the rest of their lives.
"Hey, Michael," he said. "Nice to meet ya."
"We flipped a coin when it came down to namin' him," Sadie explained. "Johnny called out heads, and he won. If I'd won, I'd have named him Patrick."
"Naw. He's a Michael. Look at him. He's been tryin' to get a look at the bookshelf since he came in. Kid like that's gotta be named after Pony."
Michael Cade stared up at his uncle, and Soda finally noticed what was so familiar about the kid. It was the strangest thing. When he pictured Michael on his way back home, he thought he'd look just like Johnny. With striking features like that, how could he not? For the most part, he'd been right. The kid looked like Johnny, but his eyes … those were Sadie's. Those were theirs. And with Sadie's eyes, the kid was set for life.
In the summer of 1983, the whole country was shocked to hear that Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker were twins—everyone, that was, except for Sadie and Soda.
They'd gone to see the new Star Wars movie on account of Elenore, who was in town with her parents to visit Dr. and Mrs. Bennet. None of their kids really liked Star Wars much (Michael, Rosemary, and Billy thought they were too cool for space movies; all of Soda and Jane's girls were too little for movies that long), but if Elenore wanted it on her visit, she got it. It was the godparents' job. At sixteen, Elenore was just as madly obsessed with Star Wars as she had been when she was ten, and the twins saw no use in discouraging their goddaughter from the thing she loved. Besides, her dad had only gone with her to see the movie once on account of hating the way it ended, and once wasn't going to be enough.
"What I wanna know," Soda asked on their way out of the movie theater, "is why everybody gasped when Space Pony found out that the princess is his twin sister." He knew Luke Skywalker's name, but it was too funny to call him "Space Pony." At least Pony agreed.
"Because it's shocking," Elenore said. "I mean, I never thought Luke was gonna really fall in love with Princess Leia, but I never thought they were gonna be twins, either."
"Really?" Sadie asked. "Didn't ya see the end of the movie before this one? I know ya did—I went with you to see that one, too."
"When she kissed him on the cheek after they got him back on the Falcon?"
Soda shook his head for Sadie and answered for her, too.
"When he was hanging out in the middle of the sky, and the princess knew where he was, just by thinkin' about him. You can only do that if you're a twin."
"You mean to say that you guys can do stuff like that? Hear each other's thoughts even when you're far away?"
Sadie and Soda looked back and forth at one another, finally shrugging in unison and answering, "Yeah."
Elenore laughed to herself, wishing, for once in her life, her parents hadn't made her an only child. Sadie and Soda were always so connected, even when they were miles away from each other. Even when Soda's oldest daughter, Tuesday, had been born during a trip to Texas to see Steve and Evie back in '75, he hadn't needed to call Sadie and tell her. She just showed up at the right hospital, just like magic. It must have been nice, Elenore thought, to have someone like that in your life—who could see you every thought and predict your every move.
Only once was Sadie ever blindsided about something that happened to Soda.
It was 1985, and after ten years of girls, girls, and nothing but girls, Soda and Jane finally had a son. They named him Troy, which Ponyboy naturally and pretentiously assumed was after the city in Ancient Greek mythology. Neither Soda nor Jane had the heart to break it to him that they just liked that name. But after Troy was born, Jane started to act … very much not like Jane. She slept all the time, even through the baby's crying. She forgot to feed him for hours at a time. She wasn't paying attention to any of the girls. Soda was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to play himself and Jane at the same time. Unfortunately, he was terrible at playing Jane, and packed Tuesday and Tigerlily (his second oldest) sandwiches with just bread in them for lunch. It took a full two weeks for the girls to say anything out of fear they might hurt dear old Dad's feelings. If only they knew how much they could never do that.
He tried to talk to Jane, but he couldn't get more than a few words out of her at a time. He didn't know what the hell this was, so he called Steve in Texas to ask him if Jane was ever like this when they were growing up. Steve said no, even when their parents turned them away; Jane kept a good attitude about her. He tried to call Sadie, but Rosemary answered and told him that Mom and Dad were out grocery shopping. She'd call him back. When he called Lucy, she picked up right away and told him it was probably something called postpartum depression, which she concisely explained.
"But she didn't have it with any of the girls," Soda said.
"Doesn't matter. It picks and chooses. She didn't ask for it. It just happened."
Soda thought about it and wondered if Jane knew about postpartum depression. He heard the water running in the bathroom and went in to ask her if she knew, but he couldn't. The water had been running for much longer than he realized, and Jane was trying to take herself with it.
He grabbed her out of the bathtub and was relieved (beyond relieved) to see that she was still alive. He didn't know who to call first, 911 or Sadie. In that moment, he was sixteen again, and his instinct sounded just like Darry.
Get her real help, little man.
He scrambled to the phone and called 911 for what felt like the umpteenth time in his life. The only thing keeping him from giving up and screaming was that he could feel Jane breathing little by little. The ambulance came to pick her up, and the girls were sobbing.
How could she have tried to do a thing like this while they were in the house?
He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. They didn't matter. None of it mattered. What mattered was that Jane was breathing, and the paramedics said she'd make it out fine. Of course, she wouldn't be fine. You don't just wake up fine after something like this. Soda knew better than anyone. Most of his dreams ended with him getting shot in the leg, after all.
Tuesday chased her father around the house, begging to know why he was carrying Mom like that, why she was so wet and so limp, but he couldn't answer. He almost couldn't even hear her. He could only hear his name in his head, over and over, in a voice that was almost like his own but not quite.
Seconds later, Sadie burst through the open front door with Johnny trailing behind her. The paramedics took Jane, and when they did, Sadie took Soda. He nearly collapsed into her arms, but she held him up. The twins heard Johnny softly explain to the girls that he and Aunt Sadie were going to take them for the night, and it would be real nice if Tuesday could grab the baby and his car seat before they went. They shuffled off, and then it was just Sadie and Soda, too scared to go out into the ambulance with Jane.
"They told me she's gonna pull through," Soda finally said. "They knew right away. But, Sadie Lou, I …"
Sadie grabbed her brother again and held him closer. She wanted to break down and sob, too (Jane was her first friend in the whole world besides her brothers.), and Soda knew that. He could feel her tremble and shake like a leaf. He was also thankful that she didn't break down because he needed her in a way no one else could understand, and it wouldn't work if she were crying as hard as he was.
"I'm sorry I couldn't answer the phone when you called," Sadie whispered. "I didn't know …"
"You couldn't have known."
"Don't be dumb, Soda. I always know. When it's you, I always know."
They were quiet for a little while, still staring at each other, still parallel. It was as though it didn't matter how close they stood to each other. They would never meet. Sadie reached out her hand to touch Soda's face, but she couldn't make herself do it. There was distance. For the first time in their lives, including that year Soda was in the war; there was distance between the Curtis twins. And all because Sadie hadn't been there to pick up the phone when her brother called. It seemed small, but it wasn't.
Soda said that thing again—that thing he hadn't said in almost twenty years that still haunted Sadie whenever they came up on the anniversary of that night before he left for Vietnam.
"I miss you."
Why did he keep using the present tense? Where had she gone that he missed her? She just went out to buy the groceries… what the hell else could he mean?
And yet, Sadie knew exactly what he meant. She couldn't narrate it, like she couldn't narrate how much she loved all three of her kids or how she felt when she finally walked across the stage at her graduation from community college two years before. But it was there. It was something she understood without even thinking—easy as breathing and twice as harsh.
"I know," she said. "Me too."
The nineties were a much happier time for the family. In 1998, the twins turned fifty, and their kids threw them a surprise party. The biggest surprise, of course, was that everyone was there. Even Steve and Evie, Lucy and Dally, and Pony and Carrie Shepard (who wasn't Shepard anymore, but would always be Shepard in their hearts) had made it in. The kids were there. The grandkids were there. Never in their lives had the twins seen something so beautiful.
Elenore Winston, esquire, had paid for part of the venue all on her own—a Mason Hall not too far from where their folks had all grown up. It meant a lot to her that she could do that for her godparents, so even when the other kids tried to take it off her plate, she wouldn't let them. The others came up with the second half together. They'd managed to keep it a secret from Sadie and Soda but also from Jane, who wouldn't have been able to keep a secret for the life of her.
That night was the happiest the twins had been since they were sixteen. For a few hours, they were able to forget about the accident, Soda's leg (and everything above it, when he thought on it for too long), Jane in the bathroom all those years ago… all forgotten just for that one night only. Lucy played DJ for a quick moment, and the twins broke into slow, simultaneous smiles when they heard the song: Jay and Americans, "Come a Little Closer," which was playing on the radio the first time they drove together on their sixteenth birthday.
"Can you believe we listened to shit like this?" Sadie asked.
"It was on the radio," Soda said.
"Yeah, but we liked it. And we didn't even realize it was a little bit racist."
"A little bit? Sadie Lou, this is probably a hate crime in California."
"I gave a guest lecture at Berkeley last year, and I can confirm this is true," Lucy said.
Nonetheless, the twins got up and danced together, just as they had when they were sixteen and learning to drive without hitting the curb. They still hit a lot of curbs, but every year, it was fewer and fewer.
Things had changed for the twins, as they would. Now, at fifty, they had eight grown (or almost grown) kids between them. They had jobs that kept them occupied and spouses they adored. They still lived near each other, but they didn't always have time to spend together. They were lucky if they got in three visits a month these days. It wasn't like it was when they were kids, and they knew it never would be again. But as Soda grabbed Sadie's hands and twirled her around, just as he had when Mom and Dad were teaching the kids to dance when they were still very small, it was like nothing had changed. They knew it was hokey, but it was theirs.
"You're my best friend, ya know?" Soda said. "Just don't go tellin' Steve. I think after fifty years, he'd get real jealous."
"I won't tell Steve if you don't tell Lucy."
"Sounds fair. Still wanna milk that 'five minutes older' thing?"
"Not so much. Still wanna milk that 'pretty twin' thing?"
"Huh?"
Sadie laughed a little. It had been forty years, and she'd never told him about the boy who leaned forward and called her the ugly twin. That night, as they danced to a song they no longer liked or even tolerated, she told him. He frowned. It was his one frown of the night.
"Soda, it's been forty years," Sadie said. "I don't even know the kid's name anymore."
"Still don't like it."
"Well, neither do I, but it doesn't matter anymore, does it? I mean, look around."
Just to amuse her, he did. Still, he couldn't help but nearly cry. All the love that was in that room was enough to power a whole nation, he thought. It was hokey, but it was theirs.
"Have you ever seen so many beautiful things all at once in your whole life?" Sadie's voice cut into his thoughts.
Soda shook his head. He'd seen a lot of beauty before, but all of it together like this … it really took the cake (which Darry, per tradition, still baked for the party that night). When they blew out their candles, Soda asked Sadie what she had wished for. And though she'd never tell him, she wished for more and more birthdays between the two of them. But she couldn't just up and tell Soda about it. After all, it was the only thing she really wanted.
Sadie's wish came true, but like anything, it was finite. She and Soda shared eighteen more birthdays between the two of them. Then, in December 2016, Sadie got a hysterical phone call from Jane. It was two days after Christmas.
The strangest thing, Sadie thought, was that people used the word stroke to describe something that was good. She remembered years earlier, when Ponyboy sold his first book, the reviewers said he must have had a stroke of genius. When Lucy was hired at NYU after she finished her doctorate, they said she had a stroke of good fortune. But when the doctors told Jane Curtis that her husband had had a stroke, they meant nothing good. They meant that they were sorry. They meant that he was dead.
Sadie was at the funeral, she gave a eulogy, but she didn't remember it once it was done. Her body had been there, but her mind was somewhere else—probably in that casket with Soda. A part of her always knew that he'd be the first of the Curtis kids to kick it. Yet, she'd always revised that thought, thinking, "Well, we're exactly the same age. Maybe he won't have to go alone. Maybe I won't have to go alone."
But Soda had gone. He'd gone and left Sadie behind, and she hated him for it. She hated that when they were both in the ground, their headstones would only say the same date on the left side. She hated it. She hated him. When did he forget they were supposed to share everything?
The only moment from the funeral that she could remember (at least she thought she could remember it) was when she stepped down after giving the eulogy. She saw her face reflected in the casket, and she wanted to throw herself onto it—into it, even. But she didn't. Everyone was watching, and it was her responsibility to carry on. She caught a glimpse of herself in the casket. It felt wrong. When she looked into the mirror, she was supposed to see him. Now, all she saw was herself, and she looked so old.
I miss you.
She felt rather like a vampire for a whole year afterward. Whenever Pony would ask her how she was doing, that was what she'd tell him. He'd always ask her why. She'd say, "Because I have no reflection." There was always silence on Pony's end of the phone call after that. For as smart as he was, he never could quite get it. Then again, Soda was only his hero. He was Sadie's equal. Now, she was walking around unbalanced. Old and unbalanced. She hated it, and she couldn't even call the most optimistic person she knew because he didn't exist anymore. She was alone.
Fleetwood Mac was on the radio when she drove to the cemetery. How apropos, she thought. It was the last thing she needed to hear, like God was playing a trick on her or something.
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills…
It was too much. She made Johnny change the station, but they were playing that stupid Jay and the Americans song. How? Fleetwood Mac made sense. They got tons of airplay, even now. Jay and the Americans was a random choice, chosen by Satan in hell to torture her on this, the day she lost her sight. She swatted the radio off. This was enough. This was more than enough.
June 30, 1968
Dear Sadie Lou,
Well I guess I should be writing you a letter now huh? Whats it like back at home? Just like home? Maybe thats a dumb questoin but I was never too good at coming up with smart questoins. That was always your thing. I miss you. I know I told you that before I left but it was true even then. We dont see each other like we did when we were kids and that makes me want to cry. And I dont mean we never run into each other. I mean I'm scared we dont see each other. You're smarter than me so I know you can put this into better words and that you know what I mean. I hate the idea of not seeing you like I did when we were little like when you cried in fourth grade and I was the only one who could see it. I dont want to stop seeing you like in the way a twin can see another twin. Mom always said we were lucky we were twins beacause we had a built in best buddy and I want her to be right. When I see you its always like I'm looking in a mirror beacause you know me like nobody else could. Not Darry or Pony or Steve or even Jane. Youre like my reflection or something. Like we have the same eyes. I dont ever want to not see things through your eyes too.
I'm gonna be alright because you made me promise. You and Jane. Tell Jane I love her OK? Being away from you two is the hardest. I miss you.
- Sodapop Curtis
Sadie didn't want to see the new Star Wars movie, regardless of whether or not the Winstons were in town. It was the first anniversary of Soda's death (and of Carrie Fisher's, as she'd learned from Elenore's daughter, Veronica), and in truth, Sadie was a little resentful of Dally. All those years of running around reckless and wild and smoking and drinking like it was nothing … and he was still kicking? And Soda was the one who had to die first?
She shared her resentments with Lucy, and Lucy, in spite of being his wife, promised she wouldn't let him come to the movie. Dally was keen on that. He was seventy, he had already sat through the long-ass movie with Elenore once, and he didn't need to do it again. So, after some deliberation, Sadie decided she would go.
Everything was fine until the end. The good guys were at their lowest point when all of a sudden, Luke Skywalker in his Jedi robes and new haircut came strutting in. He walked right up to Princess Leia—his twin sister—and they had their moment. They had what would be their last moment.
Sadie's eyes misted the whole time as she thought back to her last moment with Soda. It was the day after Christmas, and he was complaining about the sweater Tuesday got for him because it made him seem old. Sadie gently reminded him that they were old, and in Canada, they called this Boxing Day so he could box up anything he wanted to return. He said he ought to box up Tuesday for buying him an old man's sweater, and then Sadie laughed, told him goodbye, and she would call him tomorrow. In their sixties, they made a point to call each other everyday.
But when Luke Skywalker looked at Princess Leia and told her, "No one's ever really gone," Sadie wept. She wept for the first time since she heard about her brother. She hadn't even cried at his funeral, but she was crying now in the middle of a silly little space movie with her best friend's family. After all these years, she finally understood what in the hell Ponyboy meant when he tried to say that a movie was never just a movie. Like any good book, it had to help you do something about you.
She was a mess until the credits wrapped. Lucy was holding her hand and telling her that she was OK, and she was so proud of her for getting it out now. If Sadie had been in her right mind, she might have told Lucy she was proud of her for finally giving up on that coldness of hers, but she didn't. She could hardly even hear herself think. When she finally felt ready to leave, Lucy helped her out of her seat and held her hand all the way to the car. For the first time since Soda died, Sadie didn't feel old. She couldn't explain it, but she felt it.
They got in the car, not saying anything to one another. Sadie and Lucy took the backseat while Elenore took the driver's seat. Veronica, from the passenger's seat, asked her mother if she could plug in her phone for some music. Maybe it would distract Great Aunt Sadie. Elenore looked at Sadie from the rearview mirror, and Sadie nodded.
"Go on," she said. "Nothing too new, though. It gives Grandma a headache."
"I can't help that music is bad now," Lucy said. "The last good song they ever made was in '97, and it was that Peace Lady band."
"Our Lady Peace was the end of music for you, Mom?"
"I don't make the rules."
"Oh, yeah? Where was this attitude when I wanted to stay out past midnight in high school?"
"Living in Manhattan, that's where."
If she had been feeling better, Sadie may have laughed. Her kids were dispersed all over the country now, and she hardly got this anymore. It felt like home.
"I'll turn on this playlist," Veronica said. "It's called 'Grandpa Approves.'"
"You have a playlist for Grandpa?" Elenore asked.
"He made it himself. Well, he told me what to put on it. You and I both know he won't touch anything unless he can see the wires coming out of it. I added some stuff, but only stuff I thought he might like. Hope you don't mind it plays in a random order."
"Just play the music, Veronica. Jeez."
Veronica grumbled something and played the music. Sadie's heart stopped when she heard the first song. There were those familiar vocals—neither masculine nor feminine, whispering the lyrics she'd sung to herself for a whole year back in the 60s. Random order her ass. Someone was controlling this. They just couldn't see him.
I'll be your mirror / reflect what you are / in case you don't know.
But Sadie did know. He was there. He never stopped being there. On her way to the cemetery a year earlier, that hadn't been just anyone choosing the music in the car radio. It was him. And he wasn't doing it to torture her, either. He was doing it so that she knew she wasn't alone. How didn't she see it then? She was older and blinder then. She could see again.
When she saw her reflection in the car windows, she wasn't there alone. She was a twin in her eyes.
I miss you.
And if she really listened carefully, she could hear him say it back.
And… thank you! This was a joy to write, despite not being as frothy as I normally go for. There are some frothy/cheesy parts (because it wouldn't be my fic if there weren't), but I hope I balanced them out all right. I'm so interested in the relationships between twins in fiction, which is why I decided to give Soda a twin in my little 'verse rather than tack on a youngest sister like I did when I was little.
But if you stuck with this treatise on twinship and mirroring until the end, bless you. I don't own The Outsiders (Hinton does) or Star Wars, which I mention a lot (Disney does). The song referenced in the title and quoted twice here is "I'll Be Your Mirror" by The Velvet Underground and Nico, which I don't own, either. I most definitely don't own "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay and the Americans. Same with "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac. No ownership. I also reference Jacques Lacan's second seminar The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, which I don't own, but as a psychoanalytic critic, I do have a very marked-up copy of the book. That doesn't count for much.