Dancing in September

Chapter 1

"BAS, TIME TO GET UP!" My twin brother Tristan yells from on top of me, knees pressing into my ribcage, "DUUUUUDE!"

I think he might sense I'm actually awake and just ignoring him based on what he does next.

He grabs the waist of my pajama pants and the elastic of my boxer briefs and slowly starts to slip them off. Or, at least, that was his plan.

Bam. Knee to the balls.

My brother Tristan mouths a profanity and shows me his favorite finger before slumping over in pain on top of me.

"Get off!" I exclaim as I shove him onto the floor. "If you're going to wallow in pain, do it away from me." I love my brother dearly - really I do - but sometimes he can be a little... obnoxious.

Aside from being almost exactly the same height, my twin and I look nothing alike.

His hair is sun-bleached blonde where my hair is dark, chocolate brown.

His eyes are hazel, one a shade lighter than the other. My eyes? Well, that depends on which side you're on. Right side, eyes are blue, light blue on the iris-sclera boundary and darkening as you move toward the pupil - deep and dark, almost as if the pupil itself is a further darkening of the iris. Specks of hazel also speckle the right iris, like autumn leaves that float in a pond in the fall, before capsizing or drifting to shore. Left side tells a different story. An oval of intense, Spanish green, encompassed by a thin band of gray separating the white from the green as a wall separates inside from out. This eye has a certain roughness to the sphincter muscle's color, like waves that distort the color of a lake. My doctor calls it heterochromia iridium. Which I'll admit, sounds pretty cool. I guess my doctor also seconds as an etymologist or something because he went on this tangent on what the words mean in their original Latin. He explained for ten minutes, I'll do it in three words, ready? Different colored eyes. Literally. Okay not quite, it's actually different colors of the rainbow but that doesn't specifically apply to eyes so I roughened the translation a bit, get over it. Tristan gets jealous sometimes but it technically isn't a good thing. It's a mutation of the genome responsible for eye color and in some cases can lead to problems. That's what I tell him despite the fact that in my case, no problems were led to.

His skin is kind of a mix of this rosy red and tanned Caucasian and is more or less spotless, blemish-less, and all-in-all, acne-free. I'm not so lucky. The color is nice; tan, but not too dark, not to mention that I don't think I have ever been sun burnt ever, but it vaguely resembles rolling hills if you were a very small person walking on my face. Red, bumpy hills. My acne has always been really bad and people at school tease me about it sometimes - but hey, not much I can do about it. I guess I get envious of him sometimes too.

Moving past the face, he's in general more developed than me. The hair on his legs and arms is coarser and darker, unlike the rest of the hair on his head, and he's starting to get hair on his chest. I just got armpit hair a couple weeks ago.

He's got a better body than me. Flat-out, point-blank, better. His muscles actually swell when he flexes his arm and he's starting to form a six-pack. I'm not exactly weak, but I don't have muscles that are anything to write home about.

Anyway time to shower. I'll spare you the details there.

* * *

Anyway, I get out of the bathroom and go downstairs. Normally the kitchen has the normal rustle and bustle of a busy family's kitchen; this morning was different, everyone is seated, silent. It's more than eerie. My brother looks like he doesn't quite understand what's going on which is a great combination with his overall hyperactivity. My father looks like he's trying to figure out how to not have the upcoming conversation. Mother has a look of sympathy in her eye. My sister Ruby looks the most troubled out of all of them. She looks much like my brother. She has the same eyes and her hair is blonde as well, but it's more of a Goldilocks blonde.

"Sebastian, we need to talk." My dad tells me apprehensively.

I hate when people call me Sebastian. "Yeah ok, what?"

"Bas..." he pauses, realizing his mistake, and unsure of what next to say, "there's no easy way to tell you this... You're... adopted."

I wish I could say I'm not surprised, why should I be? My brother and I look nothing alike, but to be honest I'm floored. All this time I've been told I'm Tristan's brother. "So this whole time... Did they know?" I nod in the directions of my 'siblings.'

"We told them yesterday. We thought it would make it easier having them already know when we told you, to give them time to process things," my mother responded soothingly. She always knows just what to say.

Meanwhile daddy dearest is still looking like he wishes he can fall through the floor.

"So you've been lying to me my whole life?!" I'm trying to stay calm but it isn't really working.

"Bas..." It's amazing how complicated one address can be. To someone who doesn't know Ruby very well, it may just seem like her way of implying for me to calm down. I know her better than that. I detect the subtle hint of detest that she elegantly wove into her response, "you're still our brother, you always have been. We still love you and while I don't particularly agree with our parents' decision, you have to understand that their intentions were pure."

"Okay well, I have to go to school," I say abruptly, "I'm already running late." I'm not.

"Bas-" you can hear the desperation in my mom's voice.

"Goodbye, Mom," I say coldly. I leave the room and walk out the front door, "Siri, play me... Any song!"

"xStep by djvi now..." her voice trails out as the song starts. I turn the volume up as high as it will go and walk down the bus stop and try not to start crying.