Author's Note: Will be a two-parter. Takes place after the events of #SorryNotSorry.
I don't own Degrassi.
"I'll never leave / I'll always stay / I swear on all / That I keep safe"
- "Tree To Grow", The Lone Bellow
OOO
As soon as people find out Frankie is a twin, their first question is always, "What's it like?"
It's a hard question to answer, because she's never know anything different. How do you explain being born with brown eyes or dark skin? How do you explain being born left-handed or with a lazy eye, or in the summer instead of fall?
Most people think it's like having a built-in best friend, someone you always have on your side. Like a sleepover that never ends. Many wonder if Frankie wished for an identical twin instead, so they could play tricks on people, like The Parent Trap or Mary-Kate and Ashley.
One thing most people don't think to call it is claustrophobic, and if Frankie thought she could explain it in a way that made sense, that's the word she would use. She would tell them that her brother's in her head, except that's not really it; at least, not in any psychic way. It's more like a radio frequency only she and Hunter are tuned into, like a buzz, or a hum, a static only they can understand, that keeps the two of them connected. It's an extension of herself that no one else seems to have or notice, but she can't imagine not having. It would feel like having only one eye, or not being able to taste.
She can't explain the sensation she has sometimes, when it comes to her twin. Their mother always said that when they were babies, Hunter would only sleep if they put him in Frankie's crib, so they could sleep next to each other. When they took tennis lessons as kids, Frankie always knew exactly where her brother was on the court without needing to look. If one of them fell off their bike or slammed their hand in a door, the other would cry out. Whenever they played hide-and-seek, it didn't matter how creative Frankie's hiding place was, Hunter always found her in a matter of minutes.
Miles always hated playing that game with them when they were younger. He complained that the twins peeked, except they never had to. They always managed to find each other's hiding places.
These days, the feeling she has isn't as strong as it was when they were little. But it's still there, natural as blood or a heartbeat. If Frankie has a stomach ache, Hunter will start complaining he feels sick. Hunter will say he has a headache, and Frankie's own skull will start to throb. When she turns her head, she knows where to find him; when she closes her eyes, she knows where he'll be. Like Marco Polo, except she doesn't need to shout to find him. She already knows.
Hunter has the same eerie sense, too. They've never really talked about it, and Frankie never gave it much thought, but it's always been there. Always been a part of them.
It's not just they're in each other's blood. They're in each other's nerves and minds; each other's DNA.
Their whole lives, they've been on each other's radars.
I.
She catches Miles with his car keys in hand as he's halfway out the door.
"Wait," Frankie says, startling him. "I'm coming, too."
Miles frowns. "Frankie –"
She gets right in his face and glares at him.
"I'm the only person in our family Hunter doesn't currently hate," she says. "You need me. I can't just sit on my ass and do nothing."
Miles still looks hesitant, so Frankie lowers her voice.
"He's your little brother," she says, "but he's my twin."
That settles it. Miles nods, hovering in the doorway as Frankie grabs her coat and boots. She follows her big brother to the car, and they head off into the night.
II.
"So Dad's at the police station?"
She sees Miles nod in the front seat. "Yeah. Mom said he's throwing his weight around. They've donated a ton of money to the police, so she thinks everyone will listen to him."
Frankie stares at the clock on the car stereo, blinking the time. Hunter's only been missing for half an hour, and it feels like he's been gone for days.
Her phone buzzes, startling her, and when she glances down at the screen her stomach lurches with the hope that it might be Hunter. Then she remembers he doesn't have it with him, and her heart sinks when she sees the text is just from Lola.
U think I would look hot with a belly button ring? Tiny thinks so =) Think it would hurt?
Frankie sighs. She's about to stuff her phone in her pocket when it buzzes again, this time from Shay.
OMG! Baz just texted me! He wants to get gelato tmrw afternoon! What do I say? 911 NEED BOY ADVICE!
Her finger hovers over the keyboard for a moment, about to type a quick sorry, can't talk now response to both of them. Instead, she shoves the phone deep into the pocket of her heavy winter coat.
On the very long list of things Frankie can't think about right now, Shay and Lola's boy-craziness issues aren't even on the page. She can't imagine telling them about what's going on:
Guys, sorry I can't deal with your crap right now. I just found out my missing brother bought a gun to school and might be a mass-murdering psychopath. Please direct your boy problems elsewhere.
It's too surreal to even think those thoughts; she can't even say them out loud to herself. Forget telling Shay and Lola. This is too big to talk about with anyone. It's too insane to get other people involved.
Besides, that life doesn't even feel real at the moment. Shay and Lola, Tiny and Baz, homework and classes and pop quizzes. Jonah, and whatever may or may not be happening between them lately, since the night of the Snow Ball.
It all seems so far away, like it belongs to someone else's life. Forget Degrassi; nothing exists right now except the car rolling forward, Miles at the wheel and her in the backseat, marooned on some frozen pitch-black island, trying to find Hunter in the endless ocean of darkness.
III.
They stop at Winston's house, and he climbs in the passenger seat beside Miles. They haven't spoken since the night of the Snow Ball and Winston hardly glances at Frankie as he climbs in, but she doesn't care about her ex-boyfriend feeling awkward right now. She doesn't care about her ex-boyfriend, period.
"So, any ideas?" he asks. "Or do we just drive around in circles trying to find him?"
"You have a better plan?" Miles says, his voice tense. "Cause I'd love to hear it."
Winston sighs. "No, man, I don't. But he couldn't have gotten too far, right? I mean, he's on foot, he's not wearing a coat, he doesn't have any warm clothes on…doubt he'd make it as far as the school in this weather."
"Why would he go back to the school?" Frankie says.
Her voice comes out sharper than she meant it to, and Winston turns toward the backseat, scowling at her.
"Okay, Franks," he says. She winces a little at the use of her old nickname; it's never been said with so much dripping sarcasm before. "You're the expert. Where does a psychopath go when he has no friends?"
"Don't call my brother that," she snaps.
Winston's face turns red, his lip jutting out. "What the hell else am I supposed to call him?"
"His name is usually a good place to start," Frankie shoots back.
She glares back at him with as much fury as she can muster, but she finds she doesn't have much left.
Besides. If she knew the answer to his question, they wouldn't be driving all around the city looking for him on a snowy night, would they.
Winston is still waiting for her answer, his face narrowed in a pout, and she finds she can't be angry with him anymore.
"I don't know," she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut.
When she opens them, Winston is still looking at her, except now he looks a lot less pissed and way more worried. His arm is awkwardly half-raised, and for a moment Frankie wonders if he's going to reach over the console and take her hand.
Instead, he turns back to the front seat and turns to Miles, who is tapping his fingers against the steering wheel while the car idles at a red light.
"Did you check all your social media stuff? Winston asks. "Has anyone posted anything on Facerange that might help us?"
Frankie shakes her head. "And I've been looking at everybody I follow at school. Same with Twitter and Hastygram. Everything came up empty."
"You think we should post something about it?" Winston asks. "Like, I don't know, saying to call you or Frankie if they see Hunter?"
Miles rubs a hand over his jaw; it's a movement their dad does when he's thinking about something, and it startles Frankie to see the identical motion from her brother.
"I don't think it's a good idea to get other people involved," he says. "For now, we keep this between us."
"Dude, right now is the time we NEED to get other people involved." Winston argues. "What if someone gets hurt?"
Frankie doesn't understand the question – how could someone else get hurt by Hunter running around in a snowstorm wearing nothing but skinny jeans and a sweater? He doesn't even have his phone with him; it's not like he can call someone to pick him up. Who would he even call, anyway?
In the rearview, Frankie sees Miles shake his head. "He didn't take the gun. It's still locked in my dad's case."
Frankie's head spins.
The gun?
Where would Hunter –
Then it hits her.
Dad's gun. The gun Dad kept in his safe downstairs. The gun that she'd been told a million times as a little girl to never, ever, ever touch. Nobody but Dad was allowed to touch the gun, not even Mom; she never would anyway, because she hated guns and argued with Dad about keeping one in the house with three small children, but Dad always argued that he had the only key, so it wasn't as if Miles or the twins could get their hands on it and hurt themselves. He kept it in the downstairs office, the one that had been shut up and unused since the day he moved out.
That was what Hunter must have brought to the Snow Ball, Frankie realizes. Their father's gun.
How had she not connected the dots before? How else would Hunter get a loaded weapon?
She turns over the facts in her head, slow as sludge: her twin brother brought their father's gun to the Snow Ball. He brought it because he wanted to shoot people.
Because he wanted to kill people.
Her vision greys at the edges; for a second, she feels like she'll pass out, or throw up, or both at the same time.
From the front seat, the boys continue to talk, their voices barely heard over the roar of blood rushing straight to her head.
"Maybe we should call the people on…you know, that list?" she hears Winston suggests. "Maya, Tristan, Zig? I mean, Hunter's wanted to hurt them before."
Miles shakes his head. "No, no, bad idea. They wouldn't know where Hunter is anyway, and they'd wonder why THEY were being called. They know he hates them. And Maya's already pressing charges against him; if she thinks he's coming for her, she'll just freak out."
"She SHOULD freak out, dude," Winston says. "The person who trolled her and then brought a gun to school to shoot her is out there somewhere, and we don't know what he might do."
Miles doesn't respond to that. Frankie's vision swims again, and she has to grab onto the back of Winston's seat and take a couple of deep breaths to stop herself from being sick.
This can't be happening, this can't be happening, this can't be happening…
This is crazy. Her twin brother is not a murderer. He's not a freak who wants to gun down a bunch of people in the school hallway just because they pissed him off. Her brother can barely throw a punch. He doesn't want to really hurt people.
He isn't going to kill anyone.
He's…Hunter.
He likes comics and video games and weird music that doesn't even sound like music, just a lot of loud noise that gives her a headache. He had Thomas the Tank Engine bedsheets until he was eight. He hates the taste of bananas and has a pathological fear of large bodies of water. He used to crawl into bed with her when they were little, hiding from thunder and nightmares and their parents' arguments. He used to sense her like an extra limb; she used to understand his movements as well as she did her own.
He's not a killer. He can't be a killer.
After a few moments of tense silence, her brother replies, "you think he could be with one of the guys from Gamer Club?"
Winston shakes his head. "Doubtful."
"Well, it's the only lead we have right now, so maybe we should try."
"Yeah, and they were on that kill list, too. Meaning I don't think Hunter's exactly friends with them anymore."
An icy jolt lightnings down Frankie's spine. Just like that, the nausea vanishes and her vision clears.
"Can we please not call it that?" she tells Winston.
He turns around and scowls at her. "What else am I supposed to call it? He brought a gun to school, Frankie. He brought a gun to school and he had a list of people who pissed him off. What do you think Hunter was going to do?"
Frankie shakes her head, gritting her teeth. "Maybe he just wanted to scare them. You don't know. He didn't actually shoot anybody."
Winston shakes his head, looking at her like she's the stupidest person on earth.
"Okay," he says, "One, we don't know what Hunter would have done if Miles and I hadn't called the lockdown; two, that list was no joke, and three, how is knowing he was just carrying the gun around for show supposed to make us feel any better? When was the last time YOU brought a gun to school?"
"He's not a monster!" Frankie shouts. "You've known him all your life; he can't do this! He just…can't!"
"You act like Hunter's always been so normal," Winston scoffs. "Don't be naïve. If anyone's gonna shoot up a school, it's gonna be him. He's always been a psycho."
Suddenly, the car lurches to the shoulder and comes to a jolting stop. Winston and Frankie are thrown sideways by the flash of movement, and she smacks against the car door so hard her elbow digs into the door handle, shooting bolts of pain up and down her arm.
Miles whirls around and glares at both of them, his face red. Frankie and Winston stare at him, wide-eyed, waiting for an explosion. Her brother pants and gulps like he's been sprinting uphill, and his chin trembles like he's about to cry.
After a moment, Miles turns back to the front and stares out the windshield. Then he bangs his hands on the steering wheel over and over again, until Frankie can see his palms turning red.
"FUUUUUCCCCKKKK!"
Miles shouts the word to the car ceiling, dragging it out in one long, desperate scream. His hands smack the wheel again and again as he shouts, hitting the horn a few times. Somewhere, another car horn honks back in response, and Miles lays his hand on it, blasting the sound through the moonless night.
IV.
When Miles finally calms down – or maybe he's just run out of breath to scream anymore – he turns back around to Winston and Frankie, who have been silently waiting out the whole thing. When he faces them, his eyes are dry, but Frankie thinks her brother looks like he's aged ten years in the hour or so Hunter's been missing.
"We can try calling the gamer kids," Miles says. "Chewy's right, he's probably not with any of them, but we have to check. Frankie, do you have their numbers? I'm not friends with any of them."
Frankie blinks, trying to pay attention to his words. They're muffled and fuzzy, no lines or edges that she can grab onto and make sense of. The sensation reminds her of being underwater; hearing conversation around her, seeing the bouncing lights and figures moving past, but unable to make anything out from the space of her floating, muted world.
"I don't," she says, reaching into her pocket. "But I have Hunter's phone. Found it in his room."
"Does it still work?" Winston asks. "Your mom said she was cancelling the service."
She shakes her head. "No. The cover's smashed, but it still works fine. I already checked."
"Good." Miles says. "Call the Game Club guys. Make sure they know it's an emergency."
"Do you really think they'd lie for him?" Winston asks.
Miles shrugs. "I have no idea."
The snow is coming down again, blowing sideways. Miles has to put the windshield wipers on the highest setting to be able to see out the front.
She turns her brother's phone over in her hands, fingertips brushing against the cracks in the screen. It lights up in her palm, and through the shattered glass she can make out his screen background, a popular character from Realm of Doom.
Frankie's thumb hovers over the text message bank, stopping just shy of touching it and reading her brother's old messages. In the corner of the screen, she can see the Twitter app icon. She stares at it a moment, her fingers creating greasy fingerprints on the glass that hadn't shattered.
It's not like she's the first person he'd run to if he was having problems. Talking about feelings wasn't really Hunter's forte. And Frankie didn't take her problems to her twin, either, because what would he be able to do about them? Girl talk was for Shay and Lola; her brother didn't want to hear about boy drama and school gossip any more than she wanted to hear him rant about video games and mandatory intramural sports.
But this is different.
She's reminded of when they were little, and it seemed like they could feel what the other was feeling. They were never the type of twins who bled when the other got hurt, but if one of them was either really upset or really happy, the other would pick up on it, too. They didn't change moods with each other so much as felt it when the other twin experienced a shift.
Years later, when she was in grade eight science, she learned that there was such a thing called phantom pain. It was a pain experienced by people who had lost limbs; they swore they could feel actual pain in the sight where the limb was removed, except there was nothing there. They couldn't possibly feel anything, and yet they completely believed they could.
Learning that had creeped her out to no end. How could you feel something that couldn't be real? How could you prove that you were hurting in a place that didn't exist? How could you tell if the people who claimed to feel it were just making it all up, or if they were telling the truth? And if they were telling the truth, did that just make them crazy?
The day she was trapped in the fire, Hunter swore he knew she was in trouble before the fire alarms ever went off. He could feel it, before he smelled smoke or saw a single flame.
From across the restaurant booth they'd crammed into, Miles smirked.
"Your spidey senses were tingling, Hunter?"
Hunter scowled.
"Fuck off," he replied, but Frankie could tell he didn't really mean it. There was no venom in his voice.
Miles dunked a handful of French fries in ketchup. "So it was, what, a psychic connection? Like you have ESPN or something?"
Frankie arched her eyebrows. "Really, Brother? I almost die in a fire and you're still quoting Mean Girls?"
Miles shrugged, snagging a fry off her plate. "Not my fault Mean Girls is always relevant."
She made a face, swatting his hand away.
"Believe what you want," Hunter said, still scowling at Miles. "Doesn't change anything. I still knew something was up."
He turned to Frankie. "I could feel it. You know it's not crazy. You get those feelings, too."
She did, in the way that you look over an edge and feel your heart drop, picturing for the briefest moment the insanity of falling to the bottom. She'd had those feelings her entire life, but never wondered if Hunter did as well. They had never talked about them before.
But instead of agreeing with Hunter, she shrugged one shoulder. "It might be the stress of almost dying getting to me, but I don't think I can handle any more strangeness today. Twin variety or non."
Hunter frowned, disappointed.
Miles grinned at her. "At least if you get trapped down a well, Lassie can let us know."
"Do you ever shut up?" Hunter snapped, and that time they could all feel the temperature in the room drop a couple degrees at his tone.
They sat in silence a while, mulling over their food, while Frankie remembered being seven and knowing exactly when Hunter had fallen off his bike and hit his head on the sidewalk the moment before Miles came running around the corner, yelling for their mom. She'd been sitting in her room when all of a sudden there was a swoop in the pit of her stomach, like she'd missed a step down the stairs. She gasped, whether from pain or fear she couldn't tell. A half-second later, she heard Miles shouting that Hunter fell off his bike and his head was bleeding.
"Did you know he was behind the trolling?" she asks.
It's a beat before Miles replies. "Yeah. I found out the day of the Snow Ball."
Frankie leans her forehead against the freezing glass of the car window. She tries, but can't remember the last time she had a moment like the one Hunter was talking about in the restaurant on the day of the fire. The gut feeling that something wasn't right, that couldn't just be boiled down to coincidence or luck. It wasn't chance; it was certainty. It hummed through her bones, a kind of energy she couldn't explain and would sound crazy trying to.
She should have known.
How did everything get so crazy?
She doesn't realize she's said that out loud, but she must have, because Miles catches her eye in the rearview.
"I don't know, Frankenstein," he says tiredly.
V.
All of Hunter's friends from Gamer Club say the same thing – they had a falling out with Hunter after Simpson shut them down, no one has seen or talked to him since the day of the Snow Ball, and they have no idea where he might be. But if he turns up, they'll call her or Miles right away.
That Yael girl is the last person Frankie calls, and before they hang up Yael asks her quietly if Hunter is okay.
There's a pause on the other end of the line.
"He was my best friend," she says, her voice soft, and Frankie thinks she might be crying. "I miss talking to him. I know things got pretty bad between us, but –"
"Wait," Frankie cuts her off. "What do you mean? Bad, like how?"
She hears Yael take a breath. "He didn't tell you we had a fight?"
"The fight with the Game Club," Frankie says. "Yeah, I know about that. He was mad that Simpson cancelled it."
"That's all he said?"
Frankie's throat closes up. Her brother already brought a gun to school. What else could there possibly be that she doesn't know?
Her heart flip-flops as Yael keeps talking, her voice soft and sad.
"Hello? Frankie? Are you still there?"
"I'm here," she says hoarsely, and closes her eyes. If she keeps them shut, maybe the world will stop spinning and everything will go back to normal.
Another pause from the other end of the line, then Yael says, "If I see your brother, I'll let you know. But I don't think I want him around me anymore."
Frankie nods before remembering the other girl can't see her.
"Okay," she replies.
They hang up, and Frankie keeps staring at the blinking screen even after Yael's let her go.
Winston hears her sigh as she hangs up the call, and turns around to face her. "No luck with the Nerd Herd?"
Frankie shakes her head. "Guess we start on a Plan B."
Winston nods. "Where to now?"
She arches her eyebrows. "You're asking me?"
From the driver's seat, Miles says, "You know him the best out of all of us. Where do you think he would go?"
"I don't know," she says, and all of a sudden there are tears in her eyes. She wipes them away with the back of her gloved hand, scolding herself to keep it together. Crying isn't going to solve anything.
Winston shrugs. "Come on, Franks. You have to have some kind of idea. Something we haven't thought of. Being his twin has to mean something. You know, more than just a regular brother/sister bond. Don't you have, like twintuition or something?"
"I don't think we can rely on Frankie's spidey senses tingling, Chewy," Miles says, his voice half-amused, half exasperated.
Frankie blinks at his words; she flashes back to the day of the fire, crammed into that sweaty booth at the diner. Miles said the same thing that day, and Frankie didn't back Hunter up when he said he could feel she was in trouble before the smoke came.
And he found her.
"I don't have a psychic hotline into my brother's head," is her answer.
"Well obviously," Winston replies. "Or else you'd know he was crazy."
"Winston," Miles says, his voice colder than Frankie has ever heard it. "Shut up."
He turns to her. "Frankie, think. Do you have any idea where he might go? Anywhere we might have missed?"
She shakes her head.
Miles blows out a breath, hitting his hand against the back of the leather seat.
"Okay," he says after a beat. "We'll circle back to the places we already went. I don't think he could get much further than here on foot."
"Especially in the snow," Winston says. "Without any gear, he'd have to duck into someplace warm."
Miles nods. "Alright, then. New plan."
Frankie watches the snow outside her window. She can't stop thinking about the day of the fire, what Hunter said to her in that booth.
You know it's not crazy. You get those feelings, too.
Why had she lied and said she didn't? Why didn't she back her brother up?
It's what he would have done for her. It's what he's always done for her. She knows that as automatically as she knows how to breathe.
It's the same way her family knows that when Hunter is freaking out about something, Frankie is the only one who can get through to him. Their family's never discussed it or officially designated her as the person to handle Hunter's meltdowns because nobody ever had to.
It's the truth they've never shared in the Hollingsworth house, because everyone already knows: Hunter will always listen to Frankie.
Frankie wonders who she'll find when they find her brother. The Hunter who used to curl under the covers with a comic book and flashlight, whispering to her while their parents fought downstairs? The Hunter who fell asleep close enough for her to feel him breathing next to her as they shared the space of her mattress, spine to spine, a human zipper? The Hunter who told her that he had a sense that something was wrong the day of the fire and his twin needed help? The one who fell asleep on top of her bed that night still in his clothes, smelling like smoke and BO and French fry grease, and she gulped his smell in deep breaths with her eyes closed until it calmed her into sleep?
Would she find that brother? Or someone else? The person who wanted to kill people?
She opens her mouth to say something, then abruptly shuts it again. She stares down at the silent phone in her lap – no texts or calls, nothing on social media, not a peep from his own cell wedged in her pocket. Her twin might as well have walked off the face of the earth.
A few miles before the turnoff that would take them to the mall, Frankie says, "I can't believe you didn't tell me about the gun."
"You didn't tell me about the comics," he shoots back.
Frankie glares at the back of his seat. "That's different. Those were just drawings. A gun is a gun. As in shoot and kill people."
Silence from her brother. Winston, too, stays uncharacteristically quiet. No jokes or sarcastic remarks or suggestions about where her twin might be; he just sits in the passenger seat next to Miles, watching the snow fall
"How could you not tell Mom and Dad about the gun?"
Winston turns around to look at her. "Frankie –"
She ignores him and speaks directly to Miles. "You should have told them that night. Or you should have gone to the police. You should have done something."
After a moment, she adds, "Or were you too busy getting high?"
Miles jerks his head around. "At least I wasn't moping around like some spoiled drama queen."
"No, you were too busy getting wasted! Doing so many drugs you had no idea what you were on! Being stupid and getting high all the time and never coming home!" Her shrieks rattle the inside of the Mercedes. "That is SO much better!"
"So I'm a shitty brother!" Miles yells back. "Okay, fine. So what's your excuse? You're his fucking twin. But you're too wrapped up in your own little Frankie world to notice Hunter was in trouble!"
"Shut up!" she screams. Tears are pouring down her face hard she can't see straight. When did that happen? She doesn't remember starting to cry.
Winston looks between the two of them, silent and helpless.
From the front seat, she can hear Miles take a couple of deep breaths.
"Look, I know I fucked up, okay?" he says, his voice just skirting the edge of calm. "I've been a pretty terrible big brother. I just wanted to help him. Everything I did, it was for him. So I kept my mouth shut."
After a moment, he adds, "Hell, I stayed because of him."
Winston frowns. "What do you mean, you 'stayed' for him?"
Miles tilts the rearview down and looks at Frankie. She's still crying, and since she doesn't have any tissues to blow her nose with, she has to wipe her face and nose on the inside of her jacket. It leaves a disgusting trail of clear slime on the fleece, but at least she can breathe through her nose again.
"I was gonna go away to boarding school this semester," Miles says finally. "Mom and I had it all planned out. I needed a fresh start, and she thought it was a good idea to get away from Degrassi. All the…bad influences, and everything. To help me stay sober. Then I found out what Hunter did, and after that…I couldn't leave. Not now. He needed someone to keep an eye on him, and make sure he didn't…you know. Try anything."
Winston shakes his head. "You mean, pull a Columbine on Degrassi?"
"I didn't know if he'd need me again," Miles says, his voice sharp, and Winston shrinks back from the tone. For a second, the angry edge to his tone reminds her so much of her twin, it's almost like Hunter said the words himself.
When did her brothers' voices start to sound so similar?
"I told him that I'd be here. That he'd always have me. What was I supposed to do, turn around and go, 'alrighty, I'm going away to boarding school, see you in six months'? I couldn't do that."
It's quiet in the car as they continue to drive through the snow. The storm has picked up its pace; snow is falling so fast and thick outside her window she can barely see the lane next to her.
They sit in complete silence for so long that when Miles whispers it sounds like a shout, making her and Winston both jump.
"I promised him," is all her brother says, and then he's quiet as he maneuvers their little car through the dazzling fury of white.
VI.
Who knows how much later, the realization strikes Frankie:
Miles didn't stay at Degrassi to protect Hunter.
He did it to protect people from Hunter.
It hits her right in the chest, sudden as a gunshot.
She just barely gets the message across; Miles pulls over on the shoulder of the road, and she has just enough time to fling the car door open and stumble into the freezing wind before gagging into the fresh white snow.
There's nothing in her stomach; all that comes up is the acidic dread that's settled deep inside her, burning her all the way through.
VII.
Even though Frankie insists she won't be sick again, Miles still insists on stopping at the next gas station. The car needs gas, and he has to scrape off the windshield so he can actually see the road ahead.
They pull into a station and all climb out, stretching their limbs like they've been crammed in the car for days instead of just an hour or so. But they've been sitting on the edge of their seats the entire time, tense as a coiled spring, and Frankie's whole body feels limp with exhaustion.
The cold slices her like a blade, even with her layers. She thinks about Hunter, running out the back door in only a sweater and jeans. No coat, no boots, not even gloves, in the middle of this black and white world of icy darkness.
Winston heads inside to grab a soda, and Miles starts filling up the tank. Frankie follows Winston into the convenience store, and on impulse asks the cashier if he's seen Hunter. She shows him a picture on her phone; he says no, and she can't help but be disappointed even though she didn't expect anything else.
Defeated, she slumps off to use the washroom. The door clicks behind her, and she stands in a dingy, dimly-lit single bathroom. The sink is filled with wet paper towels clinging to the edge of the porcelain, and the mirror above it is speckled with bits of rust and grime and God knows what else she'd rather not think about. She peers down at the toilet paper dispenser; nothing there, and no extra rolls in sight. Good thing she doesn't actually have to use it.
Instead she stares at herself in the mirror, her reflection smeared by the rusty stains patterned on the glass. Her hair is wild from the wind, cheeks red, lips chapped and peeling. There's snow in her hair and on her shoulders; she brushes it off, and some of it melts into her hasty ponytail, loose bits of hair flying in front of her face. It looks like she followed her brother out into the snow, running into the stormy night.
At least she has a coat.
Believe what you want. Doesn't change anything. I still knew something was up. Because I could feel it.
You know it's not crazy. You get those feelings, too.
Frankie blinks, feeling sick again, and makes herself suck in a deep breath. It smells of bleach and generic hand soap and pee. It doesn't exactly help her stomach or her pounding head, but she can't be sick in this disgusting washroom, while her brother is somewhere she can't find.
She stares at her reflection, like maybe it will tell her something important. It doesn't, of course, so instead Frankie looks at herself and tries to find pieces of her brother in her own face. Maybe if she can find parts of Hunter she knows as well as she knows herself, it will spark whatever mysterious twin-dar they used to have. It's crazy and stupid and probably all made up in her scared, stressed-out head, but it's better than feeling helpless.
Frankie stares at herself until her eyes tear from not blinking. Mirror-Frankie does the same. She thinks about how Miles looked older to her somehow, like worry and fear had aged him. If anything, Frankie thinks she looks younger. Like a scared little girl who wants her mother, needing someone to take her hand and kiss her skinned knee and make it all better.
Except when she was little, it was never her mother that she ran to when she was scared. The first person Frankie went to whenever she needed someone – after a bad dream, a bad day of school, a particularly bad fight between her parents when they either thought the kids were asleep or didn't care that they could hear the yelling – was always Hunter.
They never needed to need to ask. Someone would just slip through the cracks of the bedroom door in the middle of the night, silent as a shadow, and the other would move aside to make room on the mattress. When they were little, they'd huddle under the covers and share a flashlight, reading comic books until their eyes were too tired to stay open. If that didn't work, Frankie would get Hunter to talk. It didn't matter about what; as long as he kept talking, he'd eventually tire himself out enough to sleep. And when he was asleep, it was easier for her to follow suit. Hunter was always a light sleeper, and it had always been harder for him to drift off. He used to tell their parents it felt like he had bugs crawling in his brain; thoughts and ideas were skittering across his mind so fast, he couldn't turn them off.
Their parents laughed. They told Hunter to stop watching so much TV before bed.
It had been years since the last time they'd crawled into each other's beds – they'd stopped when they were eight or nine, Frankie thinks – but even now there were times Hunter would fall asleep in her room. Some nights, they'd be up late doing homework, and he'd fall asleep with his laptop open and homework spread out around him, curled on the rug at the foot of her bed. After she moved his school things out of the way, she'd cover him with a blanket and let him stay there until morning, when her alarm woke the both of them.
It was never something he asked, or anything she thought about. It was just the way things were.
Back in grade eight, Hunter asked to move his bedroom from the one across the hall from Miles to the room right off the garage, on the first floor of the house. It was almost twice the size of the room he had, and it had more hook-ups for all of his electronics. He reasoned that if he was farther away from the rest of the family, he could make as much noise as he wanted, and nobody would be kept awake by his midnight gaming.
"The garage is the coldest room in the house," Dad argued. "You're going to be freezing ninety percent of the time."
"So I'll get blankets," Hunter replied, jutting his chin out. Frankie knew that stubborn look; he wasn't going to budge. "And a couple extra space heaters."
"It's so dark in there," Mom said, like that wasn't one of the main reasons Hunter wanted that room all to himself.
He scowled at her. "Then I'll get some extra lamps, too! Why does it matter to you how dark it is if I'm the only one using it?"
"Watch that tone," Mom replied, eyes narrowed.
Frankie watched Hunter bite the inside of his cheek, trying not to shout. Instead, he clenched his hands into fists at his side, knuckles white.
"We aren't even using that room," he said through gritted teeth. "Miles is always keeping me awake. I can never sleep because he makes so much noise. Plus, he and Frankie hog the bathroom every single morning and I never get any privacy!"
"Hey," Frankie argued. "Miles is a way bigger bathroom hog than me."
Hunter ignored her.
"The room off the garage has its own bathroom, so I'd never have to wait," he said. "I'm not gonna be running behind in the morning because Miles wastes so much time on his stupid hair, or Frankie takes an hour-long shower and I don't have any time! Nobody would be fighting over it anymore if I just had my own! Or at least, let those two idiots fight it out, because I wouldn't care anymore."
"Can you just give him the room?" Frankie scowled at her twin. "Then I won't have to deal with his mess anymore."
"Least I don't take up the entire counter with all my make-up crap," he snapped.
"No, you don't, Mr. I-Always-Leave-My-Dirty-Clothes-And-Soaking-Wet-Towels-On-The-Floor. You know how many times I trip over all your stuff because you're too lazy to pick it up? You leave your dirty socks and underwear all over! It's disgusting!"
He'd gotten the room in the end – Frankie suspected Hunter's stubbornness wore down Mom and Dad – and Hunter's old room was turned into a guest room, refurnished by an interior decorator their mother hired. But even with new furniture, Frankie could still make out the indents in the carpet that her brother's bed had made, as if Hunter's older bedroom and younger self were still clinging to the room somehow.
Up until today, it had been months since she'd been in his new room – and she still referred to it as the "new room", even though Hunter had moved downstairs almost three years ago. The last time she had been inside was the afternoon she and Winston found the zombie cheerleader comics. Before that, Frankie can't remember the last time she'd gone in. Hunter forbade everyone from going into his room, but even without the giant HAZARD sign taped to the door, Frankie won't go in without a good reason.
It always creeps her out.
It's not just because the place smells like gross socks, or because there are empty potato chip bags everywhere because both her brothers are complete slobs. She always feels it, the moment she steps inside – the springing tension, the thin edge of something sharp and angry, just barely contained.
Being in her twin's room is like being sucked into a black funnel cloud. There's a current thrumming through that place that always makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, like the stillness that comes right before a major thunderstorm.
She can be in that room and feel like she has no idea who sleeps here. Like there's some dark stranger lurking in the corners of her home. A name caught on the tip of her tongue, a flicker of movement just outside her range of vision. Something that she occasionally catches glimpses of, and even though she knows it's there, seeing it in front of her makes her feel like she's seeing the inside of a whole new world. One that's stripped and twisted and ugly, like walking into a nightmare.
VIII.
"Maybe we should go back," Winston says, but his tone is doubtful. He's watching Miles, the way her brother's jaw is grinding back and forth as he focuses on the road ahead. "I mean, knowing your dad, he's got the entire police force of Ontario looking for Hunter. And it's not like we have any real leads."
Miles shakes his head.
"I'm not just giving up on him, Chewy," he says. "He's my brother, and I already failed him enough. I can't go home now."
Winston looks at Frankie for help, but she just stares back. They can't turn back. Not now. Not until they find her twin and bring him home without the police. They have to be the ones to find him, because they let him be lost.
He shakes his and sighs, turning away from her.
She hates to admit it, but Winston does kind of have a point. Their dad probably has every cop in Canada looking for her twin. Whatever she thinks of her dad, one thing he's always been able to do was get his way. She's never heard him admit defeat or failure or ever say he's wrong. She's always known that, just like she's always known her family never lacked anything. When a Hollingsworth wanted something, they got it, no matter what it was.
Or what it would cost.
She remembers becoming aware her family had more money than most people. She must have been about seven or eight.
"Are we rich?"
She'd asked her dad from the backseat of his car. It was just the two of them, a rare occurrence for any of the Hollingsworth kids. Frankie can't remember why she brought it up; if it was apropos of something her father had said, or if she was repeating something she heard at school, or if she'd just been thinking about it on her own and came to that conclusion herself.
Her dad turned around to face her.
"That's a question you never want to ask people, Frankie," he'd told her. "It's considered rude, and a lot of people will be offended if you do. You shouldn't go around saying you're rich, or asking people how much money they have."
"So we are?"
He sighed. "Yes, we are."
"How rich? How much money do we have?"
"Did you hear what I just told you?" Her dad had The Tone, and she'd heard it enough times to know that asking more questions would end with her getting punished, like Miles always was when he backtalked. "Don't ask people about money. It's disrespectful. Yes, we have a lot of money and people call us rich. But you can't say that to other people, okay? They'll think you have no manners."
She knew better than to reply, but that conversation stayed in her head long after her dad shut it down. It was the first time she'd really been aware that she and her brothers were different from the other kids at school, and not every family lived like theirs.
Other families didn't have private jets and four cars. Other families didn't have housekeepers and swimming pools and groundskeepers and interior decorators. Other families didn't own a villa in France, spend summers running around Paris, London, Venice, Barcelona. Other families didn't teach their children to swim on a private beach in Thailand, in the shadow of an exclusive resort.
Frankie remembers that part so well, she wonders if it's an actual memory, or if she's just heard her family tell the stories so many times that her imagination is coloring in the blanks for her. She doesn't think so, because she knows for a fact that Hunter hated swimming and fought their parents every time they tried to get him to go into the ocean, so eventually they just gave up and let him play on the beach with his bucket of army men, setting up battle fields in the dunes.
Dad was disappointed in him, Frankie remembered. Hunter had always had a weird fear of water, and would have a meltdown every time someone suggested he go for a swim. All three kids had been signed up for swimming lessons at their dad's country club when they were young, and while it was a struggle to get Miles and Frankie out of the water once they were in, Hunter would kick and flail and (once) bite anyone who tried to force him into the shallow end. Even now, he avoided the pool and begged Mom and Dad to let him stay with Grandma instead of going on a family vacation to the beach. They never let him stay behind, so he always spent their vacations in the hotel room using the resort's Wi-Fi, while Frankie and Miles raced each other in the tides.
Dad always praised Frankie for being a natural swimmer – "just like a mermaid", he'd say, smiling when she beat the other kids in races at the country club pool. Then he'd tell Miles that if he would quit being so lazy and try to accomplish something for once in his life, he might actually beat his little sister someday. She remembers when Dad told her that Frankie was the only one of his kids who inherited his natural athleticism.
"Unlike some people," he'd say, looking at her older brother with that sideways glance that he never threw Frankie or Hunter, but still made her feel two inches tall. "Your sister could teach you a thing or two, Miles."
She couldn't imagine how much smaller Miles must feel whenever that look was aimed his way. Then again, that was how their dad usually looked at Miles, so maybe he was just used to it.
Up until the day of the fire, her dad had always kept the demarcation lines in their family clear. Miles on one side, the twins on the other. Miles was disrespectful, disobedient, a troublemaker, lazy, unreliable, a failure. The twins were quiet, polite, hardworking and successful. Miles yelled back, and the twins kept their mouths shut. Miles went out of his way to make trouble, and the twins kept their heads down. Miles got angry, and the twins got out of the way.
They never talked about it. Just like they never talked about Dad's affairs, or Mom's cocktails before two in the afternoon, or Miles disappearing for days at a time.
The day of the fire was the first time all three of them had ever really been on the same page. The first time that Miles, Frankie and Hunter all acknowledged yeah, their family was pretty fucked-up, but a lot of it wasn't their fault. And anyway, they had each other.
After all these months of her parents hovering in their weird maybe-divorce limbo, Frankie wonders if her dad wonders why things turned out this way. Why she and Frankie sided with Miles for once, instead of listening to him. Why she listened to Hunter when he told her Dad hit Miles. Why they broke the unspoken rules of their family and finally spoke up.
Why she stepped back in between her brothers, and the three of them walked away, leaving their father standing on the sidewalk, alone.
Dad hadn't understood that, the day of the fire. Frankie thinks he doesn't understand it now.