Okay, I wondered what was next. It was Dad when he went online and ordered a DNA kit from the two different companies that Judith Wilkes had told him about. Now we had to wait until we got the kits. Then we’d use the kits, which the companies claimed was very simple. Then we’d wait again for them to be shipped back, tested, then the results mailed back to us. That would probably take weeks and weeks. Ugh.

I looked at Carson. He glanced at me and just shrugged his shoulders.

I looked across the table at Lynn. She had one of those smarmy grins that she was famous for. I glared at her. “What?”

She turned to Dad. “I told you that we should do a DNA test on David and Carson, didn’t I, Dad.”

“Yes you did, Lynn. You were right.”

“For once,” I mumbled to Carson under my breath, and he laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Lynn demanded.

“Nothing,” I replied sweetly.

“Yeah, like not nothing. You said something to Carson.”

I grinned. “It was one of those private personal things that one twin tells the other twin.”

Carson busted up laughing, then looked at me. “David, even if it turns out we’re not twins we still act just like twins, like you said.”

Like I said? Oh. Yeah. I did say something like that to him once. I think. Of course, if Lynn misunderstood and thought that’s what I whispered to Carson, so much the better.

“Alright, enough of this bickering,” Mom stated, taking control of the conversation. “We’re going to send for the test kits and then we’ll follow the instructions and have Carson and David’s DNA sent back for testing. When we get the results back we’ll tell everyone in the family at the same time. Until then I don’t want to hear anything more about twins, do you understand?”

I nodded, Carson said “Yes,” and so did Lynn and Barb. Mom turned to Dad and raised her eyebrows and Dad added his “Yes” to keep from getting yelled at. Well, Mom didn’t really yell at Dad, but he knew he’d better agree.

Mom told how she and Carson had gone to Riverview High and talked to Mr. Keith Overholdt, the Vice Principal of Administration about Carson being adopted and that he’s moved to our house.

“His immediate reaction was that Carson had to transfer to Hillcrest High School. He pulled out the paperwork and called his assistant to give him Carson’s records and to fill out the transfer paperwork while we waited. He hadn’t given me an opportunity to talk, so after his assistant left I told him I was disappointed that he wouldn’t allow Carson to complete this semester so he could take his semester end exams with the same teachers and be consistent with the classes he’s taking and exactly how far along they are in their textbooks. He said the district had no provision for allowing student to remain in a class beyond their residency. I pointed out that Carson has been in our district for over a month already, living in a foster facility because one of his foster parents was in the hospital. He told me that state law requires foster children to stay in the same school, but since he was adopted that rule didn’t apply. I told him that Carson was still a foster child, and the adoption process hadn’t started yet. He looked at Carson’s records, and said that as long as he’d been placed, even as a foster child, the rule didn’t apply. The rule only applied to foster facilities like Hathaway House.

“I told him that I wanted detailed records of Carson’s status in each of his classes, copies of all of his exams, a detailed list of all homework assignments and Carson’s grades on each assignment, and a letter from each of his teachers detailing where they were in the textbook used in the class and any ancillary books, to be provided within one calendar week of the transfer. He said that wouldn’t be possible, that teachers would be concentrating on preparing their students for semester finals. I told him that state law required that information to be provided within one week and that I would personally check with the Hillcrest High School staff to make sure that it had been received. He stared at me as I glared at him and I guess he decided that I knew that what I was saying was, in fact, state law. It is. So he gave up, and called in his assistant and told her to notify each of Carson’s teachers to provide Carson’s class status information by the end of the day Thursday so it could be mailed to the Hillcrest High School admissions office on Friday.

“Okay Carson, your turn.”

Carson had been grinning the entire time Mom was telling us what had happened.

“You should have seen Mom. She had old man Overholdt over a barrel and he knew it. Poor Ms. Stevens probably had to work overtime to get everything finished. He’s sort of a bully, wouldn’t you agree, Mom?”

“I’d say so. We’ll find out what the staff at Hillcrest High School is like tomorrow morning.”

“Well, my last day at Riverview was nice. I talked to each of my teachers before each class, except homeroom and we’re not graded on that anyway. Each of them wrote a personal note for me to give to the teacher for the same class at Hillcrest. I had a chance to say goodbye to my friends. The best of all was Coach Kerry, my tennis coach, gave me a letter of recommendation for Coach Kim, the tennis coach at Hillcrest. David set up a meeting after school today for the two of us with Coach Kim, and Mom drove me. The letter said that Coach Kerry had watched me play freshman tennis, and he’d talked to Coach McLaughlin at Foothill Middle School and learned what I’d done there, and that I would have been on the Riverview JV team this season.”

“Yeah,” I interrupted, “and don’t forget that Coach Kerry also said he was sure you’d have made varsity next year.”

Carson blushed, and continued.

“Maybe, depending on how I do on the JV team. Of course, having a great tennis player like David on our team should help us win the title this year.”

“What!?” That was Mom’s reaction to Carson’s announcement. She glared at me.

“Well, I wanted to get Carson to go out for the Hillcrest tennis team, and he said he would if I would. So I sort of got roped into it, and Coach Kim talked me into it. So I’m going to try, but since I’ve only been doing it for fun I might or might not make the team.”

Dad was grinning. “I think that’s a great idea. Thank you, Carson, for prodding Mr. Lazy Bones into doing something physical.”

“Hey! I do physical! I play intramural tennis, and that’s almost as intensive as JV tennis is going to be.”

“Calm down, David. I was just pulling your leg. I think it’s great to have our two younger sons going out for tennis together. You’ll be able to practice together because you live together instead of trying to find a teammate or a friend to practice with you.”

“You’re right, Dad,” Carson replied. “Having my brother to practice with is totally cool and will give us an edge.” He turned and looked at me. “As soon as I get my cast off, of course.”

“Oh, my God! I hadn’t thought of that, Carson. You’ve got like five and a half weeks left. That’s…. Hey, that’s perfect! You get your cast off just before Christmas and holiday break, which gives you almost two weeks more before we go back to school for semester finals. You’re golden, bro, you’re golden!”

I reached over and hugged him, being careful of his cast and sling. Carson’s expression was also golden, he was actually glowing.

Mom got us back on track. As usual. “Anything else, Carson?”

“My PE class is… was seventh period. Coach Kerry had all the guys on both the JV and varsity tennis teams line up on both sides of the hall. As I walked through they slapped me on the back and said they were sorry to see me leave. They wished me luck at Hillcrest except when we’d be playing against them. I thought that was very funny. And it made me very happy and very sad, all at the same time. These guys really liked me….”

Carson stopped talking. I knew he was close to tears. I reached over and squeezed his shoulder. He took a deep breath, and was okay.

“Well, David, how was your day?”

“It started when I went to Coach Kim’s office to make the appointment for Carson and me to see him after school. It ended when Coach Kim told me that I should go out for tennis because I could be a grea… a good player if I practiced. Anyway, I made the appointment. The rest of my day went as usual, except it really seemed to drag on and on. Finally AmLit was over and I met Carson and we met with Coach Kim, and Carson told you about that.

“When we got home Carson and I went over his schedule for the rest of this semester, and our schedules for next semester. I’ll have to switch classes so I can have PE seventh period, which means I’ll take Creative Writing third period. So, next semester we’ll have homeroom and three classes together. Those are Trigonometry, AP Human Geography, and PE. That’s going to be tennis until the season is over, then regular PE. And we’ll have our Health class once a month, too. Having Trig and Human Geography together means we’ll be able to study for those classes together.”

“Will Carson be eligible to take the Advanced Placement Human Geography class?” Dad asked.

“I don’t see why not,” I replied. “He said he has an A in his California History & Government class. That’s the prerequisite for AP Human Geography.

“I guess that’s it for today’s chapter of ‘The Life and Times of David Dempsey’ for today.”

“Well, short and sweet as usual, David,” Mom joked. I usually talked the most about my day, and I usually got razzed about it. Hey, I’m a motor mouth and I’m proud of it!

“Now, Lynn, how was your day?” Mom asked.

“Well, except for homeroom and lunch, I still don’t have any classes with David. And now the class scheduling gremlins set it up so I don’t have any with Carson, either. Otherwise, everything was same-as same-as.” 

The discussion about our days went from Lynn to Barb to Mom. Then we got down to eating our pizzas, all pretty good except two of them had anchovies.I hate anchovies. I kept glancing at Carson’s plate and holding back a chuckle each time. He’d find an anchovie and didn’t want to spit it out, so he'd take a big bite of salad to sort of wash it down with. Based on our apparent mutual ‘unlove’ of anchovies, maybe we were twins after all!

After dinner Carson and I went upstairs. I had homework, he didn’t.

“What do you have for homework, David?”

“Algebra 2, of course. And I still have that California History and Government report to finish. I have to study for a snap quiz tomorrow in Chemistry, and I have to start reading a short story for a discussion in AmLit but that’s not due until Friday.”

“Uh, David, I have a question. How do you study for a snap quiz? I thought a snap quiz was a surprise quiz, not something you knew about and could study for.”

“Mr. Benjamin always gives us a snap quiz on Tuesdays. I know where we were in the textbook when we had the last snap quiz, and where we are in the book now, so the snap quiz is going to be on whatever is on those pages in between. Get it?”

“Probably. I get it enough that I’m so glad that I’m not taking Chemistry!”

I worked on my homework while Carson looked through my Chemistry textbook.

“David, how do you manage to carry this book around with you all the time?” Carson flipped to the back of the book and found the last page. “There are 2,368 pages in this sucker. It must weigh three or four pounds.”

“Add the weight of my eight other textbooks and look at how big the stack is, and you’ll see why I want my books on a Kindle or an iPad. Thank God I don’t have to carry all of them to and from school. Just my AmLit book, the Algebra 2 workbook, my Spanish 3 workbook, and that’s it. The rest I just keep at home and read what’s been assigned. It would be a killer to haul around that Chemistry book every day. It weighs almost six pounds, probably because it’s all in color. We only need the book for our homework that we do at home and studying for tests and our not-really-snap snap quizzes.”

“Yeah, that’s the same for me at Riverview. I mean, that was the same for me.”

“Carson, you sound sad when you talk about leaving Riverview.”

“I guess I am. I do have a lot of friends there, and I’ll miss some of them.” He smiled. “But I’m sure I’ll make a lot of friends at Hillcrest, and you’ll be there in a couple of my classes and that will help.”

“Not only that, you’ll see my friends that you met at our birthday party on Saturday, and you’ll meet the rest of my friends at school and become friends with them. And we’ll have lunch with them every day. Of course, you’ll make your own friends, too.”

“Yeah, that’ll be great.”

Carson went back to reading a short story in my AmLit book, and I went back to reading the chapter in my Chemistry book for this week’s snap quiz. When I finished with that Carson and I worked separately on the problems for my Algebra 2 assignment. When we were finished we compared our answers, and they were the same. Then I started on my California History and Government project, and Carson listened as I talked about what I was going to write and drafted an outline for my paper.

I finished my homework and stretched.

“Want to watch some TV, Carson?”

“Okay, but first I’d like us to look at those forms Coach Kim told us we had to fill out with our parents and turn in.”

“Okay, let’s take a look. I remember he said it was on the Hillcrest High website under Athletics.” I brought up the page and looked at the list of forms.

1. Registration Information, Submit Electronically Only
2. Ejection Policy, Submit Electronically Only
3. Conditions of Participation, Submit Electronically Only
4. Athletic Rules and Regulations, Submit Electronically Only
5. Athletic Clearance Form PRINT THIS PAGE, have Physician complete information and sign, then turn in to the Admissions Office.
6. Registration Summary, PRINT THIS PAGE, have parents or guardians sign, then turn in to the Admissions Office.
7. Include $270.00 Athletic Participation Fee for each sport with the Online Registration Summary.

“Whoa, that’s a lot of forms, David.”

“Yeah, but it’s what’s required so we have to do this with our folks.”

“Would we have to have separate forms for each sport, if we were going out for more than one?”

“No. It has space for two sports to be entered.”

“Do we each have to have our own set of forms?”

“Looks like it. Each form has places for one student’s name and each parent or guardian to sign.”

“What if you only have one parent or guardian?”

“Then I guess you enter ‘N/A’ for Not Applicable or ‘Deceased’ or something like that. There’s an instruction sheet and it should be explained there.”

“I guess I can’t do anything with my forms until I’ve registered. The forms all require my student ID number, and I won’t have one until tomorrow.”

“Since you’ll have your student ID number tomorrow, filling out the forms tonight means all you have to do is add your student ID and you’re good to go.”

When we were finished looking at the forms, we went downstairs to see if there was anything interesting on TV. Our folks were sitting reading, and Lynn was somewhere else, probably in the kitchen doing her homework. She preferred to work at the kitchen table. We channel surfed for about fifteen minutes until we found a rerun of “CSI Miami” and watched that.

“That is so bogus. A lot of what they show is science fiction, and a lot happens much sooner than in reality,” Carson groused during a commercial break.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve read about it. I’d like to be a CSI technician, like the guys in the lab but doing everything the real way with no science fiction equipment, and where it takes at least a week or even longer to get DNA results back instead of instantly online.”

“That’d be a cool job.”

We watched the rest of the show and I started yawning.

“I think I’m ready to go to bed. I’m tired.”

“Yeah, me too.”

We said good night to Barb, Dad, and Mom. Mom stopped Carson to ask him a question.

“Carson, can you make me copies of the letters your teachers gave you today?”

“Sure. I assume this is for me registering at Hillcrest High tomorrow. I’ll also bring two copies of the schedules David made up for me for the rest of this semester and next semester, and copies of his as well. Once I’m registered we’ll need to fill out the forms on the Hillcrest website so I can participate in a sport. We checked and four of them are filed electronically, and two of them have to be printed and turned in to the office. One is for my doctor to sign that I’ve had my physical exam, and I had that done by Doctor Breir at the end of last month. Then you have to pay a participation fee for me to be on the tennis team. It’s $270. I know that’s a lot of money, but they require that fee for each sport. Coach Kim said everything’s on the Hillcrest High website under Athletics.”

“Alright, we’ll fill out the forms and pay the participation fee tomorrow night.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You’re welcome, Carson.”

“Oh, and Mom,” I said, “I have to have the same forms and I need to have a physical exam and have the form signed by the doctor, and the $270 fee to be on the tennis team, just like Carson.”

“Alright, we’ll also fill out a set for you and pay your fee, David.”

We headed upstairs.

“You know, you’re going to go to PE tomorrow so you need the official Hillcrest T and shorts. I assume you already have a couple of jockstraps, right?”

“Yup. I thought I could just wear my Riverview T and shorts until I can get some of my own.”

“Bad idea, bad idea! You don’t want to walk in as someone still thinking they’re part of the tennis team from one of our competitors. I got enough to loan you a few sets until you get your own.”

I went to my dresser and pulled out three sets, all Hillcrest gray with maroon piping, and handed them to Carson.

“There you go. You’re all set.”

“What about a lock for my gym locker?”

Coach Kim will assign you a locker. They’re just like the hall lockers, the combination lock is built in. You’ll just have to remember two combinations now.”

“That’s the same as what we had at Riverview, except we had to have our own combination lock for gym.” He yawned. “Man, I’m so tired for some reason.”

“Well, tomorrow is going to be a big day for you. Let’s go to bed.”

The next day was going to be a big day and an exciting day for Carson. And I have to admit, for me, too.