He was quiet. He had dark eyes that he usually kept aimed at the floor. E was tall and had dark hair. He glimpsed up at Peyton as he stood in the doorway and saw the obvious similarities. They had the same eyes. They had the same nose and face structure. They really did look like twins. And as she really looked at his hair, she could see a little bit of yellow poking up from the tops. He had blonde roots. They had the same hair too. But he died his.
Peyton thought about all the times she had wanted to die her hair. It was always when she was really depressed. Upset that her hair looked bright and sunny when it wasn't how she felt on the inside. Pissed off that people assumed that she was happy and peppy and dumb just because of how she looked on the outside. She even asked her dad if she could die it once. Not black or anything that dramatic. Just a nice shade of brown. How would it feel to be a brunette for once?
Then Brooke made her join cheerleading. Sure she had done it when she was little, but that was different. It was one thing to see a little girl jumping around with a short skirt and her midriff showing, waving pompoms around. It was cute. It was another to see a high school girl do. That was slutty. But Brooke signed her up anyway. And then she already had the whole dumb, slutty cheerleader thing going on. What difference did the color of her hair make?
She tried saying a few words to him, but he was too monosyllabic for her to really understand anything he was saying. Her father got him settled in the spare room and closed the door. How would her father feel about him? Would he think of him as a son? Technically, it was the brother of his daughter. That did kind of make him his son, right? But did that even matter? Her father was leaving again. As soon as he could, he'd be gone again.
He was going to stick around until Revelin "started to feel more comfortable." But that just basically meant that he wasn't going to leave his daughter in the house with some strange boy that neither of them knew until he was convinced that he wasn't a psycho murderer. That was fine by Peyton. She knew her dad cared, but he was gone so often that it was nice when he let his protective side show through for her.
Her father said that he had been really quiet entire ride. Answered all his questions with yes, no, or a shrug. Apparently he knew he had a sister though he didn't know how. He liked music although he wasn't sure what kinds. He had seen mountains before though not sure where. Full of answers, her father joked. She hoped her dad would like him. She hoped that he would like her
Her father went off to bed, exhausted from the long car ride and convinced Peyton that that was just what Revelin was doing after she freaked out about him hiding in his room the second he walked in the door. She went to her own room and turned on some music. Music seemed to be the only thing that could ever really calm her. Music and art. So she began to draw a little bit too. Until her cell phone rang.
"Hey Peyt. Is he there?" It was Lucas. When her dad was Virginia looking for her long lost brother and Brooke was out trying to hook with some guy, Peyton needed to talk. So she called Lucas.
"Hey. Yeah. He's here." She knew that Lucas would able to tell that she wasn't so happy by the sound of her voice. Lucas was good at things like that.
"You have to give something like this time, Peyton." And so the comforting began.
She hung up with Lucas an hour later and started to draw again when she saw a figure walk past her room.
It was Revelin. She knew it. Her father had louder footsteps. If she hadn't seen the shadow pass her door, she would have never known he was even awake. He didn't make a sound. He was probably going to the bathroom. Peyton's dad had been sure to show him where everything was before letting him get settled in his new room. When he passed by again, Peyton called out to him.
He looked startled and a little upset. Like he really had been hoping to be able to sneak by without her noticing. Maybe he had been used to sneaking by without people noticing him. He stopped anyway and faced her bedroom; he glanced up a couple of times but kept his head down for the most part.
"Can't sleep?" Maybe he just needed to get someone to get him started. Then maybe he would talk.
Peyton's hope was crushed by the awkward silence that broke out after his simple nod. Peyton tried to give it a little time before saying anything else to see if he would ever answer. He didn't until she opened her mouth to ask him if he liked his room.
"I usually can't sleep my first night in a new place." Peyton looked up at her brother and studied him. She stared at his dark brown hair that fell about an inch above his eyes. She wondered if anyone else noticed the sliver of blonde peeking out from the part in his hair. He was about Lucas' height, just with a little more muscle. He was wearing a dark blue t-shirt and black sweatpants. Now that he started looking around her room, she could see just how much his face resembled hers. She wondered if people she hadn't told him about would notice.
He started to turn uncomfortable under her gaze so she invited him in. He stalled for a second and she prayed that he wouldn't reject her. It was sort of a fork in the road kind of thing. He could either go back to bed and keep himself closed off, or he could go into her room and they could actually start their long over due relationship.
Luckily, he chose the later.
"Did you do this?" He was looking at the painting she had been working on earlier. It was a copy of a picture she had found in a book of a park in New York. It had a John Lennon mural in on a wall.
"Yeah. I love to paint. My… our mom was really artistic too." She wondered if Elle had gone to see him too. If she had, then why didn't she stay? Why didn't she take him away from the crappy life he had been living?
"Really? So you knew her?" He sat down on her bed. She was near ecstatic that she was having her first conversation with her twin brother.
"For a little bit. A couple of months she came around. I didn't even know that I was adopted and she's all, 'I'm your mom!' It totally freaked me out."
"So she just showed up one day? You never even heard from her before that?"
"Nope. Did you ever hear from her?" Had he? Had she gone to see him when his life was a mess? Did she not try to contact Peyton for the sole reason that she had a good life? That didn't really seem fair.
"No. I heard some stuff about a woman looking for me a couple months ago. Said she was my mom so they gave her all my information. They said as soon as she found out that I wasn't where she put me, she just walked out. Didn't say anything else. Never came back."
"Wow. That's weird. But I could see Elle doing that. She was eccentric, you know? Spontaneous."
"Do you still see her a lot?" That was like a slap in the face for Peyton. Not only did it bring back the few bad memories that involved her birth mother, but now she had to tell her brother, who was probably thinking that he could finally meet his real mother, that she was dead.
"Um. No. Not really."
"Oh." He sounded disappointed. Of course he was disappointed! How could he not be?
"She actually died a few weeks ago." There. Just throw all the kid's childhood hopes and dreams of having a real mother out the window with one sentence. "She had cancer."
"Oh."
"I'm sorry. I thought you knew." All she could do was hope that he wouldn't crawl back into his shell. They were really talking! Like real twins!
"That's alright. I mean, I feel bad for you. You actually knew her." He looked at her with his green eyes – her green eyes – and saw sincerity.
"Yeah." There was more silence. But this time, it wasn't awkward.
Author's Note: Lucas and Peyton are really good friends. All the crap between them and Brooke happened and now they're all over it except for some sexual tension between Brooke and Lucas. Nothing too bad though.
