Sugar Stitched Hearts

001

The sun keeps shining down. I wish that there would be some clouds or a breeze. I've been at work since 6 o'clock this morning, and it's been blistering heat the whole time, my pale yellow hair half plastered to my forehead, though kept feeling like someone was watching me, which I wasn't unused to, as it was more than likely just my parents checking on me.

It's 2 o' clock in the afternoon when my mom came out to get me. We have a clock in the barn, so I can check to see what time it is, but I skipped breakfast and I'm trying to finish moving the hay into the barn before I go inside to eat lunch. I'm started feeling a little light-headed, and there's a steady throbbing in my head. My parents know the only time I get light headed and dizzy is when I don't eat a meal, and I don't think the weight of the hay and the heat of the sun is helping. My eyes look dull when I feel this way, and I slouch a little bit. But I know I need to get this done. Dad is coming out to have me go inside, but if he looks in my eyes, I know I'm in trouble. He's always warning me about not eating all three meals like I'm supposed to. He's trying to call me inside, and I'm acting like I can't hear him, but I can see him coming over.

"Leamon, I've been calling you for half an hour. Are you trying to skip lunch?" He asked, stopping me and making me set the bale down. "Leamon, are you feeling alright?" He asked, moving my head, though I pass out, faintly hearing my dad shout.

I open my eyes, and my mom is sitting next to me, fussing over me like she always would. "How's my little boy feeling?" She always calls me her 'Little boy' when I'm hurt or sick. I shift a bit, realizing I'm in my bed, feeling a cold cloth on my forehead. Mom is feeding me something that looks and tastes like chocolate pudding, but I can't tell exactly what it is. I try to sit up, but mom has me lay back down, even though I feel perfectly fine. "Leamon, why did you skip breakfast?" she's asking me, even though she already knows the answer.

"I guess I just wasn't hungry this morning," I replied with the same answer I say every time.

"You're hungry every morning, though. Did you eat anything before bed last night?" she asked, taking the rag off of my forehead and rinsing it out.

"All I ate last night was supper," Even though I had snuck downstairs for a bowl of caramel ice cream, though I wasn't about to let her know that, as she always gets after me about eating right before bed.

"That's all you had? Are you sure you didn't have anything else?" she's pressing me, and she knows that I don't like it. I'm not one to broach certain subjects, and epically not this subject. I start to raise my voice, though don't intentionally mean to.

"Yes. I'm sure that I only had dinner last night. I just wasn't hungry this morning. Now, will you stop nagging me about it?" Though that was enough to get dad in here.

"Leamon your mother is just trying to help." He says, trying to calm me down. "Well, maybe I don't want help. Not yours, not moms, not any ones!" I feel like a viper now, striking out in my defense as my dad walks over to the side of my bed.

"We aren't trying to make you upset, Leamon. We just want to know what happened." He remarked, a stern yet calm look in his eyes, one that always irritated me

I stand up and face him, still wearing my work clothes, which consist of a dirty, dark yellow flannel shirt and worn, dusty blue jeans. "Well, maybe I like to keep some things to myself. Did you ever think of that in the past 15 years of my life?" He puts his hand on my shoulder, and I retaliate. I knock his hand off my shoulder and punch at him, though he pushes me back. I dart out of the room and hear him shout at me. I don't hear what he says as I run into the bathroom, slam the door closed and lock it. I hear them talking between each other and sit down heavily against the door, feeling tears burning my face as I curl into myself. After about a half an hour, there's a knock on the door. I'm not crying anymore, but I'm still upset. "Go away." I weakly remark.

"No way, jackass." I blink, slowly standing. My parents would never swear a far as I know, and only one of my friends would talk straight to me like that, one of the licorice twins, which was what we called them since they'd always choose separate licorice flavors for a snack, would say such. Reed, who's the older of the two, who's always been rather brash and blunt. Blake, the younger of the two, is always cautious and gentle, always afraid of saying anything out of line when he spoke. However, Blake also has a crush on me but never asked me out. He's okay, but I'm not exactly 'out'. My parents want me to be the perfect 1920s straight man, but I'm not.

I look under the door and see a pair of red shoes and a pair of black shoes. They're both here, which is strange. The only time they both come is when they're told I'm upset. Reed's outfits always consist of red, mahogany and crimson, while Blake's clothes consist of black, ash white, and many different shades of gray, though he'd never read the book. I unlock the door, but only open it a crack to look outside. And sure enough, Reed is standing there with a gallon bag of mixed sweets, and Blake with two different two-liter sodas.

"We can have fun, or we can be difficult. Which do you choose?" It's typical of Reed to give me a choice, even if he has a predetermined answer. He gives the snacks to Blake and tells him to set them in my room and grab an outfit that he likes to see me in, two which I feel my heart skip a bit, Blake's cheeks burning as he scampered off to my room.

"Screw off..." I mutter and go to close the door, but Reed stops me.

"Leamon, you know what will happen if you close the door. Do you want to do that?" He asks me. I try to shove the door closed, but he uses his weight to push the door open and knocks me backward, falling on my butt. I stand up and face him.

"I don't want to fight," I remark, feeling my heart race.

"Too bad, because I do," he darts forward and punches me in the stomach. I almost double over, though recover quickly and I twist his arm, elbow him in the back, and slam him against the bathroom wall. I see a flame of anger in his eyes as he breaks free and grabs my throat, tightly squeezing. That's when Blake comes out of my room with an outfit, but when he sees what's going on, he runs over, trying to pull his brother off of me. Reed turns around and punches Blake, tensing when he realizes what he had done. Blake put his fingers to his nose, staining his fingers in the crimson liquid streaming into his mouth. All he could do is look at Reed, who only stares back at him in stunned silence, having always promised to keep his twin from being hurt. Reed always fought to protect Blake, who always got picked on when we were younger. I sit up as Reed goes over to Blake, trying to calm his younger brother down, but Blake only pushes Reed away. Blake darted to my room before Reed could try and get closer again, and I follow him with some tissues. I ignore the clothes that were dropped in the hall, worried more about my friend.

"Here, let me help..." I softly say, and carefully put a tissue to his nose, slowly wiping the blood off of his face. He only mumbled faint 'thanks' in response. "You know he didn't mean to, right...?" I ask, keeping the tissue held to his nose.

"I-I know, but..." He started with a slight stammer, still upset, which I wouldn't blame him for. Anyone would be after being socked in the nose.

"But what?" I ask trying to calm him down the best I can.

"Nothing." He turned away from me, I still trying to stifle the flow of red down his pale, freckled skin.

"Come on, Blake... Talk to me..." I said, but when he didn't reply, I gave up. "I'm going to go get cleaned up... You'll have to talk to Reed if you want anything..." I lament, and passed Reed in the hallway, telling him to watch over Blake while I took a bath to calm down and clean up.

"After what happened...? I highly doubt he'd want to be by me..." He remarked, glancing toward his twin.

"Just keep an eye on him... even if you two have to go outside..." I said, grabbing the clothes on the way to the bathroom, closing the door behind myself and starting the water, getting undressed as the bath started to fill up, though at half full I mix in some vanilla and cinnamon scented bath salt since they help me relax. I turned the water off and got in the tub when it was full, slowly shaving my legs with my dad's old barber's blade, since I've never enjoyed feeling like a hairy ape, and ended up giving myself a small yet decent cut on my leg.

Dad got the razor from great-grandpa Versonti, so it's old and beat up, but it's in good enough shape to not have any rust on it. I just wiped the cut with a clean rag since I'd just gotten all my shots last week, which was something mom and dad always made sure of due to the fact of living on a farm and try to ignore the small amount of blood dripping into the bathwater since I know that it'll stop bleeding after a while. I rested in the water and was close to dozing off after a good while, my thoughts drifting to what had happened between Reed and Blake.

My parents told me I was supposed to have a twin, but that they died during the delivery. I was the slightly older twin, and they were surprised that I had survived. They told me that my twin would have had cinnamon brown hair and dark chocolate brown eyes, which would have matched my mom more than my dad. At night I sometimes lay awake and think about what activities we would have played. I like to draw, and I'm active and hard working. I wonder if they would have been the same as me. I've met other twins that can't stand each other, and some twins even getting into fights with each other. I can't say that I would never fight with my twin, but I would make sure to avoid it as much as I could. But of course, I can't promise that. 

I breathed in to smell cinnamon, vanilla, and candy floss, and blink. 'Candy floss?' I think to myself. 'I didn't put anything like that in.' I slowly opened my eyes only to practically jump out of my skin when I saw a thin, pale, figure with soft, baby blue eyes and hair pale and fluffy enough to look like candy floss staring at me. They wore clothes that were clearly too small, clinging to their bony frame and near stretching over it, though after a few moments, I realized that they were once my old clothes, ones that I'd thrown out due to having tears and holes and being well worn. Their gaze on me was fearful and forlorn, almost like that of a dog that is caught in a shack during a storm, being told that the owners would be right back. They sat just outside of the tub hugging their knees to their chest. That's when I noticed the searing pain in my leg. "Ah!" I lifted my leg out of the water, the bath salt having aggravated the slight wound from the razor, and bit my lip at the throbbing pain, the figure jumping in startled fear at my exclamation and took a rag, started trying to clean the wound as I watched them. I could only look at them in confusion and surprise for a while before speaking. "W-Who are you?" I half stammer. "H-How did you get in here? I would have noticed someone come in."

The figure stopped what he was doing and looked at me in silence for a few moments as if contemplating his words. "To answer the first question," he softly said, "I'm your b-" they momentarily stopped themselves before resigning to a different word, "sibling. Your twin, to be exact. And I do not exactly know the answer the second question." Their voice was like honey, smooth and sweet.

In blink in startled surprise. "But my sibling- my twin has been dead since birth."

"I know that mother and father told you that, and yet I'm still here Leamon. I've always been here." They said in a calm, factual voice. "It's just that mother and father didn't want you to know about me. Didn't want anyone to know..." They still had that scared, innocent look in their eyes as they glanced toward the window.

"Why wouldn't they want me to know about my twin?" I retort, pulling my leg away.

"They thought that if they told everyone I was dead, you wouldn't ask questions about me, and they wouldn't have to deal with me." He faintly said. "The reason our mother had us at home..." She hummed.

"Wait, wait. At home? Mom gave birth to me- us at the hospital." I remark, only to see the boy shake his head.

He shook his head again. "If that were true, other people would know about me..." He hummed.

I sighed, giving up for now. "Well, what's your name?" I asked, figuring it was a simple enough question as I tilted my head, thinking that our parents wouldn't be so callous as to not give him something so basic as a name.

They looked down a bit, quiet for a few moments. "Th-They call me Pest..." They faintly hummed, and I felt my heart sink. "M-Mother and father said I could earn a-a better name if I behave..." They remarked, a faint gleam of faded hope in their eyes.

"You... Y-You, don't earn a name... You're given one with a purpose..." I remark, and I saw the fragile gaze he held ripple slightly. "Wait, wouldn't I have noticed you at some point?" I asked, thinking I had him trapped, though he looked back at me.

"Mother and father make me stay in the basement... I-It's a bit small, b-but it's better than outside..." They hummed. That's when I realized that the candy floss scent was coming from them. I knew that certain people could have oddly natural scents, heck, I've had people tell me that I've smelled like fresh-cut lemons before, so it wasn't absolutely strange.

Though I also noticed all the scars and bruises along his body, and I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. "Who beat you up?" I softly asked, quickly adding, "y-you don't have to tell me if you don't want..."

"Mother and father always say I'm bad..." They murmur. "Th-That they need to teach me to be good..." They faintly remarked, and I felt a bit of rage bubbling up inside of my chest, though force myself to calm down.