Why is it that when you’re waiting for something important that it seems to take forever for it to happen or to finish or to be delivered? That’s what the rest of the week was like for me and Carson. I don’t care if we said finding out if we were twins was not a big deal. The days just dragged and dragged.

On Thursday, Carson and I hung around with my friends at school during morning break and lunch, and that helped keep the time from seeming to drag as much. At lunch there was this big debate, mostly between Rob and Gary, about how it was easy to tell Carson and me apart, assuming that we didn’t look exactly like each other. On Monday Gary had told everyone there was a big difference between us, but now that they’d met Carson not one of them could figure out what it was. I kept shaking my head and smirking. I mean, it was so majorly obvious! Didn’t they have eyes in their heads? Gary and I just kept laughing at them. Carson was as clueless as my friends and I found that even funnier.

Finally, Jayden sat up straight and announced, “I know what it is!” and he sat back and grinned the way Gary and I were grinning. Suddenly Carson caught on to the difference as well, I could tell from his expression, but he didn’t say anything since he was the object of their inquiry.

Charlie looked into Carson’s eyes and then into mine. “Carson’s eyes are a little bit darker brown than David’s so that must be the difference.”

Gary shook his head. “Nope!”

“But you said we should use our eyes and that was a clue, now you say that isn’t the difference?” Charlie whined.

Gary sat back with a smirk and said, “Just keep guessing. Jayden figured it out, didn’t you, Jayden?”

“Yes I did. And that’s all I’m gonna say.” He scratched his stomach with his left arm then dropped it back to his side, and Carson, Gary, and I nodded to show that we knew he actually had figured it out.

Larry said, “I think it’s that Carson is heavier, you know, bigger than David.” Carson pretended that he was insulted.

Rob stood up and announced, “I know! Carson has bigger feet than David. And we all know what that means!” That made everyone bust up laughing, and Gary pounded on the table and said, “Funny, Mr. Hanley, but I know the difference and that’s not it.”

“And, Mr. Ross, how do you know? Maybe we need Carson and David to prove or disprove my contention.”

“That is not the difference” I responded, “and you’ll have to take my word for it. There will definitely not be a show-and-tell.”

Gary, Jayden, Carson, and I leaned back while everyone else continued to debate what the difference might be, including that Carson had six toes on each foot, or he had a tat and I didn’t, or that his belly button was an outie instead of an innie like I have, or that my butt is bigger, or that I farted more than he did, and it degraded into other suggestions that were a lot more obscene compared to these. While we were talking, Rob’s older sister Eleanor came by and said hi to us, and I introduced Carson. She looked at him and at me and said, “I’d think you guys were twins. It’s a good thing Carson has his arm in a cast otherwise I might confuse the two of you.”

Gary stood up and announced, “Okay, the contest is over. We have two winners, Jayden Locke and Eleanor Hanley, who both guessed the difference between David and Carson. His arm is in a freakin’ cast, as anyone with eyes can clearly see. Congrats to our winners!”

“Hey, what about me? I guessed the difference too!” Carson complained.

“Sorry, as one of the two objects of our derision you’re automatically disqualified from being a winner. So no prize for you.”

“Damn, I never win anything!” Carson groused.

Eleanor grinned. “So Jayden and I are winners? And we get prizes? What’s my prize?”

“Eleanor, you get to kiss Carson! Enjoy your prize!”

“Cool! That means I actually am a winner!” Carson said.

Eleanor wiggled her fingers to get Carson to stand up, and she kissed him demurely and very quickly on his lips. Everyone applauded, but I looked around to see if any of the teachers who were the cafeteria monitors during lunch today had noticed Eleanor kissing Carson. That was a detention act if it had been observed, but fortunately it hadn’t been.

“Alright, what’s my prize?” Jayden demanded.

“Why, the same thing, of course!”

“Eww, you want me to kiss Carson? Bogus! I should be able to kiss Eleanor!”

“Hey, what’s wrong with me? Eleanor seems to have enjoyed our kiss. Didn’t you, Eleanor?”

“Yes, I certainly did. I highly recommend kissing Carson, Jayden. You should accept your prize and enjoy the moment.”

Jayden blushed and it was very obvious, even through his dark black skin. Then he took a deep, very audible breath. “Okay, Carson, I accept my prize,” he looked around the cafeteria, “but I don’t want to do it here. Let’s meet somewhere more private so we can linger and enjoy my prize together.” Carson’s eyes opened wide, then Jayden grinned at him. “You’ve never been kissed by anyone as good as Jayden Locke!”

That was met by sounds of retching and insults from Charlie, Larry, Phil, Rob, Todd, and several others. Then Rob looked at Jayden and announced, “Jayden, that is so gay!”

“Excuse me!” Jayden exclaimed. “Rob, that is so not an appropriate thing to say. If a teacher or admin person had overheard you that’a a detention offense! And besides, what’s wrong with kissing Carson? Eleanor highly recommended it. And I’m an equal opportunity kisser.” He turned to Carson, “So, I’ll see you later and I’ll fulfill my commitment and exercise the wonderful prize that I’ve won. I’ll text you when I get home from school.”

I was sitting next to Carson so I saw Jayden quickly wink at him. But I had to wonder, he actually sounded like he thought kissing Carson was a cool idea. I’d have to talk to Carson about it later. Anyway, what Jayden had said and how he’d said it led to laughter by everyone, including Jayden, Carson, Eleanor, and me.

The rest of my classes on Thursday were stupefying. That’s a great word. It sounds just like what it means, dull and monotonous and senseless and sleep-inducing. Finally seventh period AmLit was over and it was time to escape.

Mom had made an appointment for Carson to see the sports doctor to examine his left arm today after school. Why they figured that would be meaningful after just a little over one week since he broke his arm I didn’t know. But he went and because I wanted a ride home, and I was curious about what the doctor would do to his arm, I went along.

While we waited for Mom, I had an opportunity to talk to Carson.

“So, did you and Jayden get together so you could reward him with his prize?”

“Sorry, I’m not the kind of boy who kisses and tells.” He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows.

“Aww, come on, I’m your brother! I’ll keep your secret.”

“Okay. Yes.”

“Oh, man! Was it as good a kiss as Eleanor’s?”

“Much better. That boy has great lips, lemme tell you.”

“Is he a better kisser than me?” I asked, somewhat petulantly.

Just then Mom drove up and we had to leave. I’d have to remember to get him to tell me more about how Jayden kisses and how his compares to mine.

Mom drove us to Moorland Orthopedics at the east end of town. We went up to the third floor where the doctors’ offices are located and Mom went to the desk where she checked Carson in for his appointment. Then we sat and waited.

There were a lot of magazines and copies of today’s newspapers in the waiting room so I wandered around looking for something interesting to read. There was a Sports Illustrated with an article about what college teams might make it to the playoffs, so I grabbed that and opened it to the article. I didn’t really follow college football very closely so I didn’t know much about most of the schools the article talked about. The only bad thing is that Cal (that’s the University of California at Berkeley) wasn’t listed. They didn’t have a very good team this year, but I’m still a Cal fan, just like Dad. We’d gone to a couple of the home games, and they won both, so that was pretty exciting. We also got to see where construction on the new stadium had already started. There’s a big earthquake fault, the Hayward Fault, which runs right under Memorial Stadium and through other parts of the campus. The stadium is being rebuilt so it won’t collapse if there’s a big earthquake. They keep saying there’ll be a really big earthquake on the Hayward Fault sometime in the next thirty years. I hope that doesn’t happen until after I get my degree in computer science from Cal.

A nurse called Carson’s name and took him to get an x-ray of his arm. When she brought him back we all went into the exam room. Talk about a tiny space! The nurse laughed and looked at me, then she said she wasn’t sure if there would be room for the doctor. But she let me stay anyway, and I knew she was joking. The doctor came in and looked at the x-ray on a computer screen that was mounted on the wall. He told Carson his break had started to heal, and that he could have the cast off in four to five weeks. He told mom to make an appointment at the desk in the waiting room, and that he’d send Coach Kim his report. He gave Carson a list of simple, easy exercises he should start doing to build up the muscles in his left arm. That was it. Mom made Carson’s return appointment for the sixth of January, which was in exactly five weeks.

When we got home we worked on our homework, and Carson showed me the list of audio lessons that Mr. Rodriquez had given him. They were on the school’s online Blackboard system, so Carson logged in and was able to access them.

“You’ll need headphones that have a microphone. Let me loan you mine.” I pulled them out of my desk drawer and handed them to Carson. “Make sure they work okay with your laptop.”

“Thanks, David.” He plugged them in and they worked fine after he ran the setup routine. “I’m going into Alan’s room with the bathroom doors closed so I don’t disturb you. See you later.”

“First, it’s your room, not Alan’s room. Second, thanks for going to your room to do the lessons. I’m going to work on finishing my project and having you blathering broken Spanish in the background would disturb me. I’d have to tie you down and gag you.”

“First, I don’t blather or speak broken Spanish. My accent is pitch-perfect. Second, there’s no way you’re strong enough to tie me down and gag me. I’m much stronger than you are, with all of the tennis I’ve been playing.”

“Oh, so you think I didn’t get some muscles from playing tennis? I’ll take what you just said as a personal challenge that I’ll be very happy to resolve in my favor sometime in the near future when your broken wing is patched up.”

“Yeah, in your favor like not, braggart boy!”

“Braggart boy? I’ll show you braggart boy, Carson! Prepare to be tickled!”

Carson ran into the bathroom and locked the door. I ran out my bedroom door and down the hall but he was faster than me and he’d gotten to his bedroom door first and locked it.

“I’ll get you, someday, Carson Ryan Dempsey! Just beware because you’ll never know when it’s going to happen!”

“Ha!” was all I heard him say, so I went back to my bedroom thinking how much fun it is to have Carson as my brother.

The worst thing that happened on Friday was that nothing happened on Friday. Carson and I talked about it all the way home from school, but when we got there we discovered that no package from the DNA testing lab had arrived. I was frustrated and not very pleasant to the rest of the family. I growled at Lynn, gave a dirty look to Barb, and was snippy to Mom. Carson wasn’t much better. At least we weren’t pissed at each other. Finally Mom had it, and sent us up to our bedrooms and told us that when we could find our pleasant personalities then we could come back downstairs. I felt like chewing on the edge of my desk.

“I don’t get it. Mom shipped the package next day air on Wednesday morning so it was supposed to be there on Thursday morning. They did the test, and were supposed to send back the results right away, which means they should have been here today,” I told Carson, as if he didn’t already know.

“I know, I know! What if the package got lost, or was delayed?”

“I guess it got delayed. That sucks, doesn’t it.”

“Yeah. I’m sure that the instructions said we’d get the results back in a day.”

I thought for a few seconds. “Hey, the instructions are still in Dad’s office. Why don’t we go down and read exactly what it says?”

“Good plan, David, good plan!”

We snuck downstairs so we wouldn’t have to go through the whole wrath-of-mom-apology-we’ll-be-pleasant-from-now-on-we-promise bit, and went into Dad’s office. The instruction sheet and a copy of the forms he’d filled out were on his desk.

“Shit!” I whispered. “It says that from the time the kit is shipped back the results should be received within one week. That sucks.”

“Wait a minute, David. Notice there’s a checkbox on the submission form. It says ‘Check here to receive an email message with preliminary results within 24 hours of receipt of your samples.’ Dad checked it and filled in his email address.”

“Oh my god! That means there may be an email tonight!”

“Yeah!” Carson forgot to whisper. Mom heard us.

“I can hear you. Where are you?”

“Uh... we’re in Dad’s office looking at the forms for the DNA test.”

“You come in here right now, both of you!”

Mom sounded upset. “Carson, we have to apologize. Are you ready?” I whispered to him.

“Yes,” he said without whispering.

“Be right there, Mom.”

We sat down at the kitchen table, and Mom stood at the end of the table looking down at the two of us. We were smiling our pleasant smiles, and she could tell something had changed to make us stop being the dickheads we were earlier.

“Well?”

I stood up. “We’re sorry, Mom,” I told her. “We’ve been on edge about getting the results back from the DNA tests.” I hurried on because it looked like she was going to interrupt me. “And we know that we’re brothers whether we turn out to be twins or not, but all of the things we’ve gone through, like Uncle Phil taking our blood samples, Dad talking about how quick we’d have results back, and you taking them Wednesday morning to be shipped next day air, and we expected the answer to be here today. But it wasn’t. We got confused by what was on the form thinking that there’d be a package back right away, today. But we just found out that they’ll send an email within 24 hours, and the package comes back about a week after they receive our blood samples.”

Mom looked at me. Carson got up and stood right next to me, his right arm pressed against my left arm. Mom started to laugh.

“At least you two haven’t both turned on your ‘puppy dog eyes’ look. All right, I forgive your insolence. This time! How about you two set the table for dinner? But wash your hands first!”

“Okay, Mom,” Carson replied as he grabbed my left arm and pulled me toward the bathroom. After we washed our hands we set the table for dinner. I was still very nervous waiting for Dad to get home so we could find out if the DNA lab sent him an email with the preliminary results.

“David! Watch what you’re doing. You put two knives over there and two forks over here.”

I looked at Carson. “I’m sorry, I just can’t concentrate.”

“Well, we’re finished setting the table, so let’s go watch TV until Dad gets home,” Carson said.

“I’d rather read. That’ll distract me more than the TV. I’m going upstairs until Dad gets home.”

“Okay. I’d rather just watch TV. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything I read,” Carson told me. “I’m going to stay in the family room and watch something no-brainer like ‘Friends.’”

I went upstairs. I just couldn’t stop thinking about the DNA results and what would happen if they said we weren’t related. There was a book we were supposed to read for AmLit so I picked it up. It’s ‘The Eternal Boy’ by Owen Johnson about kids who go to a posh prep school way back in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s or some period like that. It’s not my cuppa, as my friend Rob likes to say when he’s pretending he’s from England. He’s actually from Vancouver, Canada, and he says they don’t say ‘cuppa’ there and that’s why he says it. Rob is weird, which is one of the reasons I like him.

The book isn’t short, but it isn’t as long as you’d think from the number of pages it has, 356 of them! Thing is, what is printed on each page is like really short. I took speed reading in middle school and got an A in the class, so I’m a fast reader with good comprehension. Not to be patting myself on the back, but that explains why I was able to read almost 100 pages in a little over an hour. I still had plenty of time to read the rest of the story over the weekend and write my book report to turn in on Monday.

I set the book aside and turned to my Algebra 2 workbook. The problems we were to have for Monday were tough. Mr. Glendon worked through the first two in class, showing the steps and the logic he used to solve them, and how he proved that his answers were correct. Then he assigned the next eight for Monday. I started on number two, trying to remember back to second period and how he solved this problem. I went slow and walked through the steps and when I got to the end I compared my answer to what I’d copied down from class. Yes! Same answer. I went to problem number three, the first one where I had no clue what the answer was in advance. I went through the same steps and logic for coming up with a solution, and when I got my answer I followed his steps to prove it was correct and it was. I think. Now problem number four. That’s when I heard the garage door opening. Dad’s home!

I knew Mom would yell at me for running downstairs, but this was too important to worry about getting yelled at.

I got down to the kitchen and Carson was there already, and the three of us, Carson, Mom, and I, stood there waiting for Dad to come in from the garage. He walked in and did a double-take.

“What’s this, an inquisition?” He grinned, knowing exactly what we were waiting for.

There was silence for about ten seconds. Ten awful, horrible, long seconds.

“Daaad!” That was Lynn. I hadn’t heard her and Barb come into the kitchen, but they did and they were standing behind me. “Don’t be mean! What’d you find out?”