Why aren't you like your brother, retard?

Jack, try and concentrate in class. You need to pay attention, like Kyle does.

Moron! You need to hit the ball, not sit there like a stupid goal-post!

Back in the office, Jack? Mrs. Madison tells me you can't get any of your work in.

Being your brother's coach, son, is an honor. I keep hoping you'll grow up to be like him, but then I remember you're the same age and there's no chance of you catching up at your rate.

He talks to himself. I heard him one time when I was going to get the ball. He was sitting in the grass and talking to himself! He's so weird.

"Honey, your teachers say you're spending too much time staring out the window and not enough on your school work . . . Jack? Do you hear me?"

Jack Kemper looked up from the tabletop, where his eyes had been completely locked. For a moment, he gazed blankly at his mother. She was washing the dinner dishes in the sink. The sound of running tap water was what had made his mind wander. He usually didn't care if it wandered, except when it trickled toward the comments others had said about him, comments he wished he'd never heard but that were now stuck in his tender brain always and forever.

His mother turned off the faucet. She wiped her hands on a towel, sighed, sat down across from Jack. "Listen. Your father and I have been over this with you a hundred times. You're getting older, and you have to learn to be more responsible for your education. Eighth grade is old enough to know you need to pay attention in class."

Jack turned his eyes back to the tabletop. His dark-colored bangs hung in his view. A frown came over his face. He didn't know what to say to his mother. He hated this conversation.

Her tone more worried than angry, his mother added, "We're trying as hard as we can not to be too concerned about your lack of effort. You know what Mr. Matthis has asked us to do . . . but your father and I don't want you tested. We know you're fine, honey. You just have to prove it to your teachers! If your grades don't pick up, I don't know how we'll be able to convince them you don't need help." Her voice got hard, more serious. "You can't pretend that school doesn't matter. You're growing up, Jack, and you have got to take things more seriously. Now, I want you to get out any homework you have and do it. All right?" She saw he wasn't going to answer. Knew her son well enough to know he was too upset to talk. Felt almost too upset herself.

When his mother got up from the table, Jack swallowed the dry lump that had formed in his throat. He loved his mother something awful, but he didn't love when she talked to him about school. He felt ashamed enough without her sounding like another one of his teachers or classmates.

Maybe there was something strange about him. He'd been told by a teacher as early as first grade that he probably had ADD. He hadn't known what that was at the time, but by now, by the time he was thirteen and a half, he understood that that meant he couldn't pay attention in class. But Jack still found that teacher's idea ridiculous. Of course he paid attention in class—just not to the things that other people wanted him to pay attention to. Jack was always thinking. Thinking more than any other student, including his brother Kyle. But he was thinking about things that interested him. Things that he understood. He didn't often care about numbers and letters, past wars and what a hypothesis was. So many other things were on his mind that he rarely had time for what everybody else was talking about.

That didn't mean there was something wrong with him, he thought. Oh, he was different, he knew that. But in a way that was good. Not in the way his teachers or other kids thought. Whatever made Jack Kemper strange compared to most thirteen-year-olds, it was not a lack of attention. That, he was sure of.

Sliding out of his chair, Jack left the kitchen and his mother and made his way into the front room, which was where the television and comfortable sofas were. He liked that room. The windows were big and looked right out on the yard, where three big trees grew. In the winter, his dad lit fires in the fireplace and they watched the snow fall. Because they lived in New England, and snow always fell in the winter. Usually it fell before the winter and also after it, too.

His book-bag was on the floor by the television. So was his brother, Kyle.

Jack thought it was funny to have Kyle for a twin brother. Even though they looked exactly the same, like mirror images of each other with their dark shaggy hair, large brown eyes, light freckles, and slender forms, they were more different than day and night. Kyle Kemper liked sports more than air. He played three of them: soccer in the fall, baseball in the spring, and basketball in the winter. He even swam on a team in the summer. He was good enough in school to get A's and B's and occasional C's. He paid attention and played games with the other kids during recess. He was funny and likable, talked a lot about things and was friends with everybody in the class. He was normal, Jack had heard other students say, and he knew that by that, they meant normal compared to him. Because Kyle was everything Jack wasn't, and Jack was everything that Kyle wasn't. Besides their appearances, their ages, and their parents, they had absolutely nothing in common.

Neither one of them cared, though. Jack loved Kyle fiercely, and Kyle loved his twin well enough, although he never showed it in school. Thirteen was a strange age. It was strange, because during it, all you cared about was everything you acted like you didn't care about.

"What are you watching?" Jack asked his brother upon entering the room.

"A show," was what Kyle replied. He was lying on the carpet on his stomach, his head cocked back and staring at the glowing television screen, his socked feet up in the air and his hands under his chin. He didn't even turn around.

Jack went to gather his schoolwork, trying not to make too much noise.

"Mom give you that talk again?" Kyle asked, still not turning.

Not wanting to answer, Jack chewed on his tongue for a minute.

"That's what I thought," said Kyle. "You need help with your math? I'm finished already." He finally looked back at his brother.

Sighing, Jack shook his head. "No. I can do it."

"Ok," Kyle replied. Then he went back to watching television.

The hallway had started to turn gloomy with the oncoming evening as Jack went down it and to the stairs. He'd go to his room to do his homework. He could do it. In fact, he usually did do his homework. It was really what he was supposed to do during class that he didn't pay attention to. At home, he felt calm and comfortable. He could sit on his bed and think about what he'd had for dinner and actually look at what his teachers had asked him to do. Homework was ok, most of the time. When he tried, he did fine on it. It wasn't what he liked to do with his time, but since his mother had given him the talk again, he figured he'd better try a bit harder, for her sake.

When he reached his bedroom door, Jack paused. Nobody had turned on the lights upstairs yet. It was dim and shadowy in his room. More often than usual, when the sun was in the midst of going down or coming up, in those strange moments when the world wasn't sure whether it should be night or day, Jack saw weird shapes and movements. Things that followed him because they knew he saw, knew he could sense them. Things that never spoke—sometimes whispered indecipherably, but never spoke real words. And once in a while, they scared him. Not always. Jack didn't quite understand them. He could never see them quite clearly enough or focus on them for a long while. They were there and gone and moving quickly, like vapors. Jack pretended that he didn't see them during dawn or dusk. He didn't like the ones that came at those times. During the day, there were lovelier things. Things he trusted and liked. But in the minutes between the gates of pure sunlight and black darkness, the shadows' intentions were questionable.

He saw them now, shimmering on the edges of his vision. Dark spots near his bed, until he looked directly there. On his dresser, unless he tried to focus on them. They were always at the fringes of his sight. In corners, under his bookshelf. Patches of gloom that moved with his gaze.

Jack didn't want to see them now. Not when he had work to get done. Sometimes, he let them stay there, but right now, he needed to do his math. So, raising a trembling hand to his light-switch, he flicked it on, and the shadows slunk out the window, moved off into the deepening inkiness outside. Whether they were annoyed to have been forced out, Jack didn't know. All he knew was that he had to get started on his homework.

Flopping onto his bed, the boy unzipped his book-bag, pulled out his math folder, retrieved a worksheet and pencil, and began working.