"You know" Declan drawled lazily without looking up from his physics assignment, "you're essentially useless to me."
Fiona looked up, startled, from her paper (the same assignment as his) and wrinkled her delicate nose. "Gee, I love you too, Declan." She pouted "what did I do?"
Declan spared her a glance before putting his book on the glass table between them and then leaning back against the leather sofa he was sitting on. With his hands behind his head, his crispy white shirt, untucked from school, drew up a few centimeters, allowing a small view of what all the girls in their gym class continually giggled over. It was a decent view—even she had to admit.
"It's really more what you didn't do, actually" he rolled his eyes as though almost disgusted with the world…or her. "And it's actually ruined my life."
She was used to Declan talking in sly riddles. And normally she caught on quite quickly. But she couldn't think of a single thing she hadn't done that could have gotten him so upset with her. Searching through her memories one last time, she gave up and frowned. "Well, I am truly sorry for whatever I…didn't do. I can make it up to you if you'd like." She offered softly, with a worried look in her eye.
He fought back a smile. Only Fiona would get so upset about displeasing him in some way. It was quite cute actually, seeing her so worried. "No, you can't, Fiona. You really can't. Unless you want to figure out a way to back in time and make one of your X chromosomes a Y…you can't do a thing for me."
The face his sister made was hysterical. "WHAT?"
"I'm just saying, Fi, that as a girl you are totally and completely useless to me. For example, you know this physics crap a thousand times better than I do, yet I'm the one who has to take it first. If you were a boy, we could just switch periods." He chuckled, "that's all I was saying."
It took Fiona a few minutes to get her jaw working again before she spoke. "Declan, if I'm useless to you, then you might as well not even exist in relation to all my problems!"
He laughed along with her. "So now we can't double date and switch dates half the way through."
"And we can't share a wardrobe"
"And we can't use each other for mirrors"
"And we can't psyche our friends out by constantly pretending to be each other"
"Yeah we could, they'd just think we were mental. And what friends?"
Fiona sighed playfully, gathered her books and stood up from her spot on the plush rug. "Oh Declan, another aspect we cannot share." She gave him a condescending pat on the head but then a kiss on the cheek as she glided out of the room. "We can't switch lives, even though I know how jealous you are of mine."
He grinned at her retreating back, only to frown at how short her skirt was. Did she always wear it that short? Is that why that kid in grade 12 was whistling? He scowled. Alas, a plus of being fraternal twins? Easy excuse for rivalry with male contemporaries.