Knots

Chapter 1

LUCA

I don't know how I got 'weird', it just sort of happened. I wish it were as easy to explain as waking up with a mouth full of braces, a strange hairstyle and a taste for books about Biosafety-Level-4 viruses. Maybe it was the day my twin sister bleached her hair blonde, and everybody followed her. Maybe it was the day I dyed the tips of my hair red and began re-doing it every year. Or, maybe it was the day I had a fight with my sister and never figured out why she hated me. It doesn't matter anyway. Now, I'm the one who can part the sea of students in the high school hallway, I'm the one with a table to herself at lunch. I don't even think anyone knows my name, just my pathetic nickname. It's not that I'm resentful of my sister's role in the school either, or that I care about it. I'm okay with being the lonely one, it suits me better anyway. I just want-

"Wake up, retard. Mom wants us up, pronto" That's Alexa, my sister. She's throwing a pillow at my head from her spot on her bed across the room. Great. Wrenching the quilt over my head, I yell back:

"One second!" Alexa scoffs and turns the light on. I squint my eyes and get out of bed, ruffling my short hair. I look around, her side of the room is covered in posters of this band she likes, I don't even know their name. Her bed is perfectly made, pristine white sheets and turquoise comforter with green pillows are neat, and totally Alexa. The window is casting light on her bed, and on the bed is Alexa, lying like the angel she is with her head propped up by her hand. Her phone, resting in its golden case is in selfie-mode and she's ready to take a picture when I jump over and stick a few fingers under the lens. Alexa (lip gloss as gross as ever) looks over at me, mouth open wide like, 'How dare you!' I don't even bother trying to suppress a laugh.

"Get out of here!" She yells, and then takes about six billion photos. I turn back to my side of the room, which was lovingly adorned with black sheets, red bedspread and beige walls. My desk, of course, is full of miscellaneous clutter, homework, sheet music, drawings. I never clean it, which means it fills up with everything from guitar picks to fast food napkins. That's me and Alexa, polar opposites and somehow (kind of) coexisting in the same household. I saunter to the bathroom in my purple pajamas to brush my teeth and shut the door. Looking in the mirror, I poke at a bump on my skin that formed on my forehead overnight, surely about to become a pimple, and examine my manhole-sized pores, frowning deeply. Other than that I look okay, though my short hair is definitely going to need some fixing. It's sticking up at every possible angle, like one of those anime characters with gravity-defying hair. Grabbing the brush, I attempt to flatten my untamable mane. When I finally realize I'm getting nowhere, I settle for a baseball cap and a backup comb in my pocket instead. I'm just about to put my contacts in when an aggressive knock sounds on the door. I groan.

"Luca!" Alexa whines, "I forgot to do my eyeliner and today is the movie!" I don't let her in. I don't tell her that the 'movie' is just a class project either. Instead, I tell her to wait her turn. In some ways, I think I'm better off than Alexa, I'm able to leave the house without thinking about my eyeliner, or get dressed without wondering about the twenty million different skirts I have to wear, and which one was actually the right one.

"Please!" She says. She's pleading with me. Huh, she almost never stoops to that level.

"Fine!" I yell, not bearing to hear her annoying voice for too long. I unlock the door and it flies open. She rushes into the bathroom and pushes me out of the way. She's wearing a yellow-and-blue striped crop top sweater thing (I don't really understand those, it's too warm for a sweater and too cold for a crop top) with the zipper on her chest zipped almost all the way down and her faded blue jeans that are almost too tight for her thin body. As she looks in the mirror, she puts in her blue contacts that conceal her gray eyes and begins to poke at them. Unlike me, Alexa doesn't really need contacts, but she wears them anyway. She says that it makes her look better. I sigh and walk back into my room, her attitude is just stressing me out again. I look in my drawer and pull out a pair of jeans. When I put them on, they fall down immediately, but instead of taking them off, I just grab a studded belt and weave it through the loops in the black fabric. I pull on a tight brown shirt with neon paint all over it (no, I did not buy it that way) and tuck it in before grabbing my wireless headphones and head downstairs. Alexa is already downstairs, drinking her nasty protein shake. I wave sarcastically, which leads her to scowl at me. Welcome to a normal breakfast with the Woods family. I look in the pantry to find nothing but cereal bars and small containers of oatmeal, so I don't bother with eating the grossness that is my current pantry and take an apple from the bowl on the counter.