Surprise! A long one! You guys deserve it.
Chapter 9 - If I Love Again
Another day passed with no speaking. In Amsterdam, we arrived at the venue, did our listless waiting around while people set up, got through our soundcheck as though we were strangers. Worse than strangers. Sara didn't look at me once, and only spoke to me in the most perfunctory way, about tunings, about arrangements, technicalities.
I was terrified to go on stage. Terrified that it would be the same as last night, that the crowd would jeer, throw beer glasses. That I would tremble and be unable to stop the tears and Sara wouldn't know how to deal with her pain and so would be angry and hateful instead. But we went on and launched immediately into the first song and I felt like someone driving on a highway who suddenly snaps out of a trance and doesn't know how they covered those last few miles, doesn't remember a thing about them. I don't drive so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about but I've never felt so disconnected before. Someone else's fingers played those chords; someone else's tongue sang those songs, all the songs for Sara, dressed up in lies, now revealed.
I think it's all going to go to hell again like it did the first night in Hamburg, but Sara is different tonight. It surprises me. It scares me when Sara surprises me, because if Sara can surprise me then I guess it isn't possible to ever really know another person. And that idea makes me feel so alone that I don't think I can stand it. There's already too much unpredictability; I need Sara to be Sara. I need her to be the one thing I can rely on but now, nothing makes sense anymore. I let her lead and I just follow, until we get to the point in the set list where we should have played "Divided" and I just shake my head. Wordlessly, Sara skips it and moves on. Would it hurt her, too? I don't think my guts will be able to endure that song ever again.
A few songs later, someone in the audience shouts out, hot video! My heart lurches. It's starting again, I think. It's all over, fuck. . . it's all over. . . There are boos, hooting, and some confusion in the crowd and I feel ill but when I look over at Sara, her expression is just normal, just the same. She's tuning her guitar and after only a second or two she speaks.
"Oh, you saw that, did you?" Screams. Sara smirks, flips her hair out of her eyes. My knees are starting to shake; I look down to Jamie's spot and she isn't there. I close my eyes, regret flooding through me. My own words echo inside my head. You betrayed me. . . I never want to see you again. . . I feel sick all over again. And angry. And sorry. Sara is talking and I almost can't believe how calm she sounds, so aloof. "You saw the video where I, where Tegan and I, that is, my twin sister and I are, like, about to, apparently, have sex in a pile of hay in a barn?" Did she say it? Did she really? I grip the mic stand, headrush, the wind knocked out of me from her words. Would I fall? Would Shaun catch me? I want to turn around but I catch Ted's eye, over beyond Sara, and he gives me a gentle smile and I take a deep breath. The way Ted is looking at me, it makes me think he knows something.
In the end, I don't fall. I don't think I've ever heard such noise from the crowd. It isn't the same kind of noise that we usually hear, not entirely. There is some of that same hysteria that sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't. There are hoots and suggestive cheers as well. But there is also something angry in it, something hostile, like we'd heard in Hamburg. I'm afraid of what Sara is going to say and how they will respond. There are three security guards down front; will they be able to stop everyone if they decide to rush the stage? All together, could they flip our tour bus? I've never before felt so terrified by the hundreds of young faces looking up at me. Maybe I could just dive into the crowd and let them decide my fate.
"So, you saw that video of two people with brown hair and you, like, read the title and you believed that it was us? Come on," Sara scoffs, disapproving. Some people cheer. I hear a few shouts of no! Some shouts of yes! Someone shouts do it again! Sara laughs derisively, almost a sneer, shakes her head. My head is swimming; I watch Sara but I can't play her game. I wouldn't even know where to start. "Because that's what twins do, right? Twins fuck each other and it's okay because they're genetically identical? So it's basically just like masturbation," she says, and the roar is deafening. As soon as it starts to ebb, there is one sharp, angry cry from the audience.
"Fucking dyke!" There are, as you might expect, waves of hostile, angry cries in response to that. My eyes scan furtively over the crowd and I guess that it's about eighty percent lesbians. Probably more. I look over to Sara, who is scanning the crowd for the speaker.
"Yeah, I am a fucking dyke," she says, "and if you think that means I sleep with my sister, then you're the pervert, not me." Shrieks, cheers. "Can we get the house lights up?" she goes on. "I think we need to get that gentleman a refund. . ." The lights come on and for a split second, Sara looks over at me and the intensity of her look says, do something. Help me.
"So, who's the one who yelled fucking dyke at us, at our show, in a huge room full of like a million lesbians?" I hear myself say, half-amused, half-derisive. There are shouts, and amid some jostling in the crowd, many hands raise and point. It isn't clear at first which of the three or four young men with shaved heads it is, but one of them gives us two middle fingers and that helps clarify. "Is it this one? The one with his fingers raised?" I ask and there are nods, shouts of yes, more pointing. "Okay, well maybe security can help him find the exit and give him his money back. . ." Cheers, screaming. There are more scuffles between the offender and some of his neighbours but he doesn't put up much of a fight when security gets there.
"Okay, well, if anyone else wants to shout any homophobic slurs at us, do it now while the lights are up," Sara says. "Like, maybe you didn't know we were gay, or someone just dragged you along to the show and now you know and now you want to shout dyke at us in a room full of queers. Well now's your chance! Get it out of your system!" The cheering and shouting sounds, to my amazement, mostly as enthusiastic and supportive as it ever does. Maybe they believe Sara? Could they? "Does anyone else have any questions or comments about the ridiculous video? May as well get it all out of the way. . ."
"TEGAN, WHO WAS ON TOP?" someone shouts, but I can't see who. So many faces that they all start to blur. So many eyes staring at me, through me. Someone shouts Sara! and there is laughter, cheering. I shake my head.
"Come on, I'm not telling you her name," I say. "A girl I dated. A bad idea."
"IT LOOKS LIKE SARA!" comes another loud shout from the middle of the floor, and I somehow manage to laugh while my insides twist painfully.
"Yeah, she kind of did look like Sara," I joke. "What can I say? Sara's hot. She looks just like me. Who wouldn't date someone who looked like me?" Sara laughs too, but doesn't look at me. The crowd goes insane. Laughing, cheering, shrieking inappropriate things. We carry on. Things are weird, tense. Sara tries to make jokes but she is tense too and the jokes become angry, confrontational, defiant. I'm just afraid so I keep as quiet as I can. I am afraid of what Sara will say. I am afraid of the undercurrent of hostility in the crowd. I am afraid of everything falling apart. Everything is falling apart.
I feel like this show will never end. There are three songs left on the set list when a huge, full beer glass crashes on stage next to Sara. There are shrieks in the crowd; someone shouts something mockingly at us in German that we don't need to understand to feel. Sara jumps, startled. The glass smashes, splashing her with beer as she jumps back, pulling her guitar cable out of the wet mess on the stage and, without a word or a glance at me or any of the guys, she takes her guitar off, drops it on the stage and walks off. I stand there for a minute, stunned, half-expecting her to come back on with a different guitar but as the crowd's roar gets louder, and longer, it's obvious that she's just gone. For a moment I think maybe I'll have to carry on without her, and then another glass hits the stage, this time closer to Ted. The security guards start making their way into the centre of the floor, where things are getting violent. Nick is onstage, suddenly, taking my arm and leading me off and that was it.
When we get backstage, Sara is already gone.
"Holy shit," Ted says, sinking down into the sofa.
"Is it going to be like this everywhere we go? From now on?" I ask in a high-pitched voice, the anxiety and hysteria building in my chest. Last night, in Hamburg, I'd run off stage and thrown up, and when I could raise my head again, I saw my sister lying in the stairwell and I thought, for a second, that she was dead, and it all converged on me and I didn't want to be alive anymore. But here we are in Amsterdam and Nick stands there with his clipboard, looking shaken. I've never seen the boys look so shocked, so worried. The noise from the floor is pounding, throbbing through the walls around us. It's a monster and we are already inside its stomach and it is too late.
"We'll figure it out. We'll make an announcement, let everyone know that it's a hoax and that it's - what's the name of the girl?"
"Casey," I say quickly and Nick makes a note on his clipboard.
"Casey. We'll do a press release and it will blow over. It will be fine. It's a sex tape. Who hasn't had one of those? Does anyone even remember Tommy Lee and Pamela's sex tape?" he says, trying to be encouraging.
"Does anyone remember Tommy Lee and Pamela?" Shaun asks, and Johnny laughs nervously.
"That's not very reassuring," Ted says, trying to laugh too, giving me a sympathetic smile. "It's going to be okay. Tegan, okay? Take it easy." I guess he sees it in my face because I feel the tightening in my chest: panic.
"It is Casey, isn't it, Tegan?" Johnny says lightly, zipping up his backpack and glancing over at me. I feel dizzy.
"Johnny," Ted says quickly, tensely, and he gives me a quick look. God. Is this really happening? The guys are among the last people that I have. Had. I don't even know anymore. My knees start to give out and I sit shakily on the arm of a nearby sofa as Ted answers. "It's Casey. Of course it is! How can you even ask that?"
"I'd like to hear Tegan say it, that's all," Johnny goes on, and my stomach lurches.
"It's Casey," I choke out, and the pain of Johnny's doubt, totally justified, I manage to channel into anger the way that Sara does. "And if you don't believe me, maybe you want to quit? Do you? Because. . . what kind of fucking animal do you think I am?" I hear my own indignation, and it shames me. It's all ending. Everything. I stare back at Johnny. He's not an aggressive guy. Will he try to stare me down? He's a good person. Doesn't drink. Doesn't gamble. Doesn't even swear. And he's working for a pair of perverse deviants and he's just starting to know it.
"Okay, Tegan. I'm sorry. I just needed to know," he explains. I leave without saying anything.
A short time later, I am back on the little bus, alone, quiet. We won't be on the road again for three more hours and I'd gotten a text from Ted asking if I wanted to go out for a drink. I'd allowed him to convince me to go out and am just killing time, waiting for him, when the bus door opens. At first I assume it's him, so when I see Sara come in with a blue Ikea bag over her shoulder, it gives me a start. I sit up and look at her.
"I need clothes," she says flatly, passing me and going into the bedroom at the back. I get up and followed her. I watch her open her closet and start tossing her clothes into the plastic bag without giving me a look. It's so heavy, the feeling, the sight of the tension in her face as she grabs her stuff from the closet and tries to pretend I'm not there. But Sara, I want to scream, you can't pretend I don't exist. There's never been a single second of your existence that didn't include mine. I was you from the very first cell. I am you down inside your carbon atoms. I've been you since we were space dust.
"It would be easier if you just stayed," I quietly say to her at last, and for a few long seconds I think she won't even respond to me.
"Easier how? For whom?" she asks, her voice laced with anger because that's easier, too.
"What's the point of this? Why are you angry with me?" I ask her desperately. "Is it my fault the video leaked?" It's a good question and I see her hands stop, for a moment, hesitate over it.
"No," she says, and continues gathering her stuff, a pile of skinny jeans, three hoodies.
"Well then? You don't even look at me now and it's, like. . ." No fucking crying now. No. Hold it together, Tegan. . . "This just doesn't make sense to me." She sighs, a sigh that always makes me feel a little bit stupid.
"I'm not. . . angry with you, Tegan," she says, stopping for a second, on the other side of the bed, to look at me. I look back at her.
"Then what? We're both. . . this is happening to both of us. Right? We're both. . . fucked. Why do we have to do it alone?" I ask her, and her lips twitch, almost imperceptibly. Frowning, she thinks about it, while my heart starts aching in preparation for her answer.
"Because. . ." she says at length. "We can't. . . it's like, we can't just. . . be. . . if we're around each other, we'll just. . ." She doesn't want to say it but I want her to.
"We'll what?"
"You know. When we're alone, we can't. . . help ourselves," she says, her face reddening. I nod because it's true.
"You're ashamed of that," I say quietly.
"Aren't you?" she asks sharply, looking up at me as her eyes flash.
"Yeah," I say, looking away, hating that it's true still and afraid that it always will be.
"Well isn't that the answer, then? We're fucked up. We have to face it, Tegan! The fact is, we're. . . sick and it's wrong and. . . there is no solution except. . . staying away from each other. Or at least never being alone together." Her words, God, they're red hot coals in my palms.
"Nobody can see us! We'll be safe on this bus. . ."
"Tegan, if it wasn't the video it would be something else. Someone would see us, come on the bus or. . . find us in some other place where we. . . we, like, fucking can't keep off of each other and then we'd be really fucked, perhaps even worse than now. . . if that's possible." Her voice trails off to a tense murmur at the end.
"Can you. . . stand that?" I force myself to ask her as my chest tightens painfully. She feels it too, I can tell by her face, but she'll just smother it and be angry.
"It doesn't matter if I can or I can't! We don't have a fucking choice! Tegan, for fuck's sake. . . you're. . . my sister!" She presses her hands against her temples, her eyes shut tight. Will she cry? Scream? Run away again?
"I need you," I say, my voice thickening and cracking, and her eyes flicker, a little, and then fill up. "And you need me too," I go on, steadying myself at the sight of some emotion from her, anything. "Sure, we're fucked up but that's just. . . that's just how we are and we have to live with it!" She closes her eyes, her face red, and just stands there, immobile, for long enough for me to walk around to her side of the bed, but when she feels my hand on her arm, she jerks back, away, shrugging my hand off of her.
"Tegan, no!" she cries, her face now all anger as she backs away from me, as though I were attacking, her hands out in front of her. My heart drops and aches painfully to see her face, her eyes, looking at me that way. I stay where I am and watch her take a breath. Some of the anger ebbs away, but there is still an intensity about her that scares me. Where is the Sara whose fingertips traced over the tree on my arm on a dark German highway? How can I find her, pull her out, drag her back to me?
"This. . . what you're doing. . . it hurts more than everything else that's happening," I say to her, my throat starting to close again. She blinks.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly. I shake my head.
"It's hurting you too. Stop pretending!" She sighs, looks up at the skylight for a moment.
"I'm not pretending anything," she says back to me.
"Two days ago. . ." I start, strangely bold in the face of her coldness, even while I start to feel spasms in my chest and am sure I will cry at any moment. "Two days ago, my tongue was inside of you, and now you talk to me like I'm one of the road crew!" She closes her eyes, her face flushing more deeply in response to my words, and then, to my surprise, she quickly moves in close to me, so quickly I raise my hands to block her because I think she might hit me and when I do, she takes hold of my wrists in both of her hands and steps in close to me, so that we are face to face. When she releases my wrists and takes my face between her hands, I freeze, her touch making me dizzy, her anger scaring me. But then, suddenly, the anger is pushed down and replaced with something else when I meet her eyes.
"Tegan, listen to me. I'm not. . . I don't want to have this conversation ever again, okay? So I want you to just listen to me, okay?" she asks, her voice low and intense. I swallow.
"Okay," I say. She takes a breath. I feel the warmth from her body and just wish she'd put her arms around me and I feel the pinpricks of tears in my eyes caused by the ache of that thought. I watch her eyes because she is holding my face, and I wait for her words, which I am terrified to hear.
"Okay. I love you more than. . . I can even. . . explain. Okay? I'm never going to love anyone else like this, like you. It just isn't possible. But we can't. . . be like this. We'll destroy our career. . . and our family, our friends. . . each other. . ." She pauses to take another deep breath. Her voice is shaking, and I can't open my mouth because if I do, the screaming will never stop. "Have you spoken to mom since the video leaked?" she asks me, and I don't even blink. "No," she answers for me. "When you do, what will you say? Will you tell her it's Casey? She'll know, Tegan! She'll know you're lying. She knows us. And she knows you. You've never been able to lie. Her heart will break. Do you want that?" I can feel her hands trembling against my cheeks and although I don't make a sound, the tears spill over anyway. "Do you?" I say nothing. My vision is blurry through the tears but I keep my eyes on hers, on everything I can see in them, including myself. "So we might. . . not ever be happy, ever again. . . but we can't let our. . . this. . . sickness. . . ruin everything, destroy our mother. . . horrify and disillusion all of our young fans who like. . . look up to us. . ." Her eyes are shiny but don't spill over. My breaths are becoming more and more painful and erratic as I try not to sob. Her hands still on my face, Sara uses her thumbs to wipe the wetness from my cheeks. "So that's the way it has to be. From now on, we are sisters, and that's it. Okay? Okay, Tegan?" she murmurs, and her voice has an edge of desperation to it, like she needs me to agree with her but I can't, could never. I shake my head. No. Not okay. "And I want you to be happy-" she goes on.
"If you want me to be happy, stay with me!" I blurt, and her tears spill over, too, at last.
"Tegan, call Jamie. She loves you. . . she knows and she still loves you!" Sara says to me, pleading, as her self-control starts to crumble.
"Why are you saying that to me?" I sob, as her twisting, gouging words twist and gouge away at my heart.
"Because. . . I don't want you. . . to be. . . alone," she forces out of herself through shaky breaths. I try to put my hands around her waist, but she takes my wrists and lifts them up, in front of me again, pressing them to my chest.
"If you don't want me to be alone, then don't leave me alone!" I hear myself wail, as her hands tremble against my wrists and I search her eyes for recognition of my truth. She is blocking me, even though she's crying, her face twisting in pain, the way my guts feel. She shakes her head, and I desperately struggle, try to extract my wrists from her grip because maybe if I can hold her, she will change her mind. I have to change her mind, this can't happen! It can't! "What about you, Sara? Who will you run to?" I cry. She shakes her head again.
"You let me worry about that," she says.
"You can't do this!" I say, panic pulling the last remnants of control away from me as I sob even harder, can't breathe. She releases my wrists and catches my face between her hands again, her red, wet eyes on mine. And for a second I am too surprised to do anything when she comes closer and her lips are suddenly on mine, and I don't breathe as she kisses me in a way that rips my heart to shreds because it is every kiss, all the tenderness I've ever known packed into five seconds, and because I can hear her words in my head before she even says them, a moment later, after she moves her face away from mine. "That's our last kiss, Tegan," she says to me, incredibly, as the Earth implodes. "The last one. No more. Never again."
She releases me and grabs her blue bag. I reach for her, desperate, but she pulls away, again, and leaves quickly and I am frozen. But when I hear the door click closed at the front of the bus, my knees give way and I fall to the carpet, kneeling next to the bed. Stunned, I stay there for a moment, and then drag myself up and onto the edge of the bed, where I sit as waves of disbelief and shock wash over me and I'm stupefied, for another few seconds. And then it rises up, the terror, the absolute black, gnawing terror that her words are true and my soul has just died. The scream I hear comes from outside of me.