• “Hey, Conner, are we going the right way?”

    “I dunno, Blake. Which way should we be going?”

    “Um… let’s try going this way.”

    “Okay!”

    Can someone please remind me how I managed to get suckered into baby-sitting these two idiots? I thought to myself, vainly hoping for a different answer to my pointless question, as I trudged along through the massive labyrinth of corn. I say ‘different’ because I wanted an answer that would leave my pride intact and ‘pointless’ because I knew that I wasn’t going to get a response. I knew very well what the real answer was, and it left my ego feeling bruised.



    I walked, unenthusiastically, along the sidewalk of a busy road on my way to my cousins’ house. It was the weekend, and, after enduring a long week, I had been looking forward to sleeping in that day in my one-bedroom apartment, but my blissful sleep had been interrupted by the annoying buzzing of my cell phone as my cousin Lexie called me.



    Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

    I groaned, rolling over and pulling the covers up over my head in an attempt to block out the sound of my cell phone as it buzzed on the shelf that was attached to the head of my bed. When it finally stopped buzzing, I sighed in relief, pushed the covers down off my head, and relaxed as I prepared to slip back into the blissful world of sleep. Of course, though, whatever higher power existed in this world didn't seem to be on my side because my phone started buzzing again.

    Why can't everyone leave me alone today and just let me sleep?! I whined in protest to the buzzing, pulled the covers back over my head, and tried to ignore the buzzing as I waited for it to stop. As is my luck, though, my attempt to ignore my phone was interrupted when something landed on my head with a sharp thud.

    “Ow...,” I moaned as I sat up to rub the side of my head. I looked down to see what it was that had hit me to find... my cell phone which, by that point, had quieted down again. Well, look at that! It buzzed itself right off the shelf and hit me on the head. I guess it doesn't want me to sleep in either.

    As if to answer my thoughts, it started buzzing again. I picked it up and contemplated throwing it against the opposite wall as hard as I could but decided against it and answered it instead.

    “What?” I growled at the person on the other end who dared to disturb my rest.

    “Hi! What's eating you?”

    “What do you want Lexie?” I said with and exasperated sigh. Of course it had to be Lexie. Who else would call me at 7:00 in the morning?

    “Can you come over? I have something I want to ask you, and I want to ask you in person.”

    “But-!”

    “Great! I'll see you soon then!” Click!

    I sat there gaping like a fish for a moment before I resigned myself to my fate and got ready to go.



    An hour later, I got into the piece of crap that was my car and started it up.

    Or I tried to, at least.

    It sputtered and then fell silent.

    I tried it again.

    “No. Don't tell me...!”

    I tried again.

    Same result.

    And again.

    Nothing.

    “Damn it!”

    I got out, locked the car, went back inside to put my car keys away, and left my home to begin the 2 mile trek to my cousins' home.



    So, there I was, at 8:30 in the morning, walking somewhere when I would rather be sleeping. The first half of my walk was filled with my grumbling about not being able to sleep in. Later on, though, my thoughts turned to questions that began to eat at me.

    What did she want to ask me, and why couldn’t she tell me over the phone? I pondered these questions as I rounded the corner onto Windy Hill Drive and was momentarily jolted from my inner thoughts by a sudden gust of wind.

    “No wonder it’s called ‘Windy Hill Drive’,” I muttered to no one in particular. I returned to my musing as I continued walking up the long street, dragging my feet more and more as I got closer to my destination.

    Talk about déjà vu. I feel like something like this has happened before. I just can't put my finger on it. What is it? I paused in my walking for a moment and growled in frustration before I violently shook my head repeatedly as if doing so would dislodge the answer from some dark corner of my mind. Of course, though, it didn't work. Ah! Why can't I figure it out?! I feel like I should know this already! I huffed in annoyance and decided to drop the subject for the time being before I could manage to give myself a headache.



    A few minutes later, I was staring at my destination. Sitting on the top of the hill, at the end of a long driveway, was an expansive, high-set Victorian era Queenslander house with a large, impressive veranda surrounding the front-half of the house. This house is one that I’ve known since… well… since as far back as I can remember. This is where I spent most of my days as a kid.



    My parents are mediators and ambassadors (so to speak) for the American portion of three large companies that had formed a joint partnership (with the other two being in England and Japan), and their work often took them out of state or overseas on business trips when I was a kid. My parents didn't want me to miss out on having friends and having as normal of a childhood as possible, so I lived here in this house with my aunt, uncle, and four cousins (Matt, Lexie, Blake, and Conner) while my parents were away.

    My aunt and uncle has since moved to Colorado for health reasons and left the house in my cousins' care. The doctor said that the oxygen level in my uncle's blood was too dense and that it would be wise for them to move to a higher elevation.

    Although there was a lot of sibling and sibling-like rivalry between us, there was also a lot of love in this house and there still is. On a related note, I think that I should clarify something: I am an only child; Matt and Lexie are siblings; Blake and Conner are brothers; they are all my cousins; Blake and Conner are Matt and Lexie's cousins. Blake and Conner are my cousins through Aunt Kathy and Uncle Scott who both died in a car wreck when Blake and Conner were very young. Aunt Karen and Uncle Ray (Matt and Lexie’s parents) adopted their orphaned nephews shortly after the fact. It could get a little loud sometimes due to the fact that there were two adults and four-five children living in the house.

    Despite that, though, living here really wasn't that bad at all considering that this house has eight bedrooms, five full bathrooms, and a three car garage.



    I approached the front door and rang the doorbell, but as soon as I pushed the little button I felt the feeling known as ‘dread’ making itself known in the pit of my stomach, and I knew that I would regret answering the phone that morning. Before I could think about it any further, I heard the clicking of the door being unlocked followed by said door being opened to reveal the almost-always-grinning face of my cousin, Lexie.

    “Hiya, Slinky!” she chirped.

    “Why do you call me that anyway?” I asked, slightly annoyed, as she let me in.

    “Because you’re always slinking around like you don’t want people to notice you.”

    “Hey, I just don’t like being dragged into other people’s issues, okay?”

    “Yeah, that and you’re just shy.”

    “I am not shy!”

    “Sure, whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes.

    As I opened my mouth to retort and try to regain some of my dignity that she had snatched away from me so easily, I was ambushed by two yelling black blurs. Suddenly, I found myself on the ground, breath knocked out of me, being squeezed in a bear hug by the two certain projectiles, named Blake and Conner, who had tackled me to the floor.

    “Hi Cousin Vinnie!” they said in stereo.

    “Get off me!” I managed to choke out. Blake listened and got off. Conner, however, decided to be stubborn and pretended not to hear me.

    “I can’t breathe!” I squeaked.

    Just when I thought I was about to pass out from a lack of oxygen, Blake decided to be the more sensible of the two (at least for the moment) and wrenched his twin off of me.

    I laid there for a moment, trying to catch my breath, before I sat up and glared at the twins who just grinned back at me. Both have the same messy black hair and the same goofy grins.



    Most twins become easier to tell apart over time as you get to know them, but that is not the case with these two because, aside from them looking exactly alike, they also have similar fashion sense (sometimes even wearing the exact same thing at the same time), and they even act the same. Hell, they are pretty much twins in terms of personality as well except for a few differences (e.g., Blake tends to be the more obedient and less stubborn of the two, and he has moments where he is helpful without being asked to be). Because of that, one will usually find it difficult to discern between the two of them from afar, but upon closer inspection you will find one key difference which can sometimes be the only way to tell them apart; one twin has green eyes and the other has blue eyes.

    The chances of identical twins having different eye colors is very small (less than 2%), and I am grateful (and relieved) that these two are one of those rare cases. All I have to do is look pull one over (though this isn’t always necessary) and look at their eyes; if I see green then I know I’m looking at Blake, and if I see blue then I’m looking at Conner.

    Also, now that you know that Blake and Conner are twins, I should tell you that our ages in order from oldest to youngest is Matt (23), me (21), Lexie (20), and Blake and Conner (both 15; Blake’s the older twin).



    Lexie, who was watching from the sidelines, was, I had to admit, making a very admirable effort to stifle her laughter, but wasn’t entirely successful.

    “That one looked like it had some momentum to it,” she said, unable to hold in a few giggles.

    Just a little,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. She could contain her mirth no more.

    “For a minute, you actually looked like a blowfish!” she said before breaking into a fit of laughter.

    “What do you mean I looked like a blowfish?!” I said indignantly, flushing in embarrassment.

    To answer me, she puffed out her cheeks and went bug-eyed in what I must say was a very accurate imitation of a blowfish and, apparently, me. That caused Blake and Conner (who, by that point, had both found their seats on the back of the couch) to fall off of their perches laughing, and it wasn’t long before Lexie returned to laughing as well.

    “Shut up!” I yelled, jumping to my feet. All laughter stopped, and Lexie stared at me with a disapproving look.

    “Well, hello, Mr. Porcupine!” she said. “Geez, Vincent, I wish you wouldn’t get so prickly all the time, especially when people are just poking a little fun at you. Lighten up a little, will ya?”

    She’s right. “Sorry….”

    “Thank you. Now you’re probably wondering why I –”

    Suddenly, we heard a startled yelp and a loud thud from upstairs. Next to be heard was a moaning of “Owww…” and muffled incoherent muttering (cursing, I assumed).

    Lexie, I noticed, looked a bit thrown off by the sudden commotion.

    “Wait… Matt’s still home?” she asked, looking at the twins.

    “Yep, sounds like it,” Blake said as another loud thud was heard upstairs.

    “Funny. I thought he had left over an hour ago,” said Lexie.

    “Oh, that?” said Blake, “That was just me running to the store to get some more milk and a few other things that we were out of.”

    “I don’t remember hearing the door open again.”

    “You were in the shower when I got back.”

    “Oh. Did you two know that he hadn't gotten up yet?” she asked, looking at the twins.

    Their answers came simultaneously.

    “Nope,” said Blake.

    “Yep,” said Conner.

    We all turned to look at Conner.

    “So let me get this straight. You knew he was still in bed, and, even though he made it very clear last night that he had to wake up early this morning, you didn’t even bother to wake him up?” Lexie said.

    Conner shook his head. Blake then proceeded to hit him in the head. “Ow! Hey! I didn’t know he had to go into work today! I just knew that he had wanted to get up at 8:00 this morning, that’s all!”

    “You should have woken him up then!" she shrieked, causing all of us to flinch.

    The conversation ended as the racket upstairs continued with yet another thud. This was followed by a rather colorful stream of curses, more thuds, bonks, clattering, banging, crashing, and even more curses.

    “Someone’s gonna be late again!” Conner said in a sing-song voice and giggled. His smile vanished instantly as we all glared daggers at him.

    Pretty soon, the cause of all the commotion, A.K.A., Matt, came hurdling down the stairs, his uniform thrown on haphazardly, and he was still tidying himself up. Blake (who had, at some point, slipped off to the kitchen without me noticing to get Matt something to eat) set out a napkin package containing two pieces of toast, already spread with butter and jam, onto the counter of open. Matt snatched it up with a quick “thank you” as he passed by, then grabbed a few of his other belongings, and ran into the living room, his verbal tangent continuing as he sprinted passed the other three of us and out the door.

    “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! I’m so, so late! Third time this week! My boss is going to kill me! Sorry, Vince! No time to say hello! Goodbye!”

    Conner followed Matt out the door to the front porch and yelled after him. “Hey, White Rabbit, you forgot to say, ‘I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!’”

    Matt’s response echoed from down the street. “Shut up!” he yelled, and then he was gone.

    “Well, that was interesting,” I said.

    Lexie, Blake, and Connor both giggled in agreement. Blake then returned into the kitchen to clean up the small mess he had made while throwing together something to eat for Matt.

    A realization suddenly hit me. “Wait, why is he walking or, in this case, running to work? Where's his car?” I asked.

    “Well, Blake and Connor had a field trip on Wednesday to the Natural History museum. Matt ended up having to go pick them up afterward-”

    “What’d they do this time?”

    “I wasn’t finished yet,” she chided. “Anyway, Matt ended up having to go pick them up afterward because the bus driver couldn’t get the bus to start. They could have waited for another bus to come pick the students up, but it would have taken two hours for another bus to come pick the students up, and the museum was closing early at five that day. Also, as you most likely know, it was raining quite hard that day, and the teachers didn’t want the students to have to stand out in the rain after the museum closed, so they just had the students call their parents.”

    “The museum staff wouldn’t let them wait inside?”

    “Nope. They were hosting a charity event later that night, and they had to start getting ready. Anyway, Matt got there and met Blake and Connor at the entrance with some umbrellas. As they were walking to the car… well…,” she paused for a second with a weird look on her face, “Matt’s car was hit by a truck.”

    “Seriously?”

    She nodded. “Some guy was texting a driving at the same time. The stupid moron ended up T-boning Matt's car. It was banged up pretty bad but not totaled, so it’s in the repair shop now. ”

    “The car went crunch!” Blake yelled from the kitchen.

    “It was awesome!” Connor yelled as he headed up the stairs.

    “Oh, I'm sure it was,” I muttered.

    “Now, as I was saying before Matt made that scene,” Lexie said, “I asked you to come over because I was wondering if you could hang out with Blake and Conner today. They want to have a fun day, but I can’t drive them around because I have to help finish setting up for the haunted house at the community center.”

    “And you couldn’t tell me this over the phone because why?”

    “Because I knew that if I did you wouldn’t come,” she said, with a Cheshire Cat grin that caused something in my mind to click into place. It wasn’t just perkiness I had noticed in her voice this morning, but also mischief.

    Mischief! Why didn’t I immediately recognize the difference in her voice before?! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

    “What do you mean I wouldn’t have come?” I said going into defensive mode.

    “Don’t play dumb, Vincent. I know you don’t like being left in charge of them by yourself. Just admit it.”

    “What…? I don’t… I wouldn’t… but-but they’re… I mean… I-I… um…,” I sputtered, struggling to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make me seem like a complete idiot/jerk.

    My efforts were put to an end, however, when Lexie gave me a look that clearly said, ‘Shut up. You know I’m right.’

    I saw a glimmer of hope again, however, when I remembered something.

    “How am I supposed to drive them around? My car’s dead again!”

    “No worries. You can use my car.” She punctuated this by tossing me her car keys. I barely caught them.

    “Then how…?”

    “A friend of mine from the committee is coming to pick me up.”

    “Oh.” Bye-bye glimmer of hope.

    “So, will you please hang out with them today?”

    “Can’t… can’t they just go off and entertain themselves?”

    “You know what happens when they’re left to their own devices.”

    “It still happens when someone is watching them!” I said, my voice going up a few octaves in frustration.

    “I know, but at least then someone’s there to rein them in when it does happen. Besides, you owe me for taking over your shift at work last week so you could go with your friends to that concert that you had really been wanting to see.”

    Instead of answering right away, I simply glared at her, and she glared back. And so began the contest of will as we tried to stare each other down. As usual, though, it didn’t last too long before I gave in under her withering gaze.

    “Fine…. I’ll watch them.” Damn it.

    “Great!” she smiled.

    As I was about ready to retreat to a corner of the room (that would serve as my “Emo Corner” as I like to call it) to mope, Conner came down the stairs holding a video camera and giggling.

    “Where’d you get that?” Lexie asked.

    “From Matt’s room,” he replied.

    “Matt doesn’t keep his video camera in his room.”

    “I know. This,” he indicated the camera in his hands, “is my camera.”

    “Why was your camera in Matt’s room?”

    “I set it up a couple hours ago so we could see what exactly happens when he wakes up late!” he declared proudly. “He got tangled up in his sheets and fell down! Twice! Then he fell down trying to get his shirt off!”

    Poor Matt. He never has had a good center of gravity, especially when he’s panicked. Same thing goes for untangling himself; he only seems to make it worse when he’s in a hurry.

    Conner let out a laugh. “I’m so posting this to YouTube!” There was a sharp thwack as Blake hit him upside the head again. “Owie!”

    “You idiot,” Lexie giggled.

    “Brat,” I muttered under my breath.



    Remember how I said before that Blake and Conner have extremely similar personalities? I know, it may not seem that way so far, but that’s because you haven’t seen them when they’re having fun yet. Under normal circumstances, Blake is usually the more sensible of the two, but when he and Conner decide to have some fun, all bets are off.

    I find these two to very interesting yet also very frustrating individuals; they are both very intelligent, and yet they do very stupid things on a regular basis. It’s almost like, “We know that jumping into a pool from on top of the house is dangerous and there’s a good chance of us getting hurt, but we’re gonna do it anyway!”

    They actually did it once….

    They scared the crap out of the other three of us….

    We told them not to do it ever again….

    They haven't done it since….

    Still, I’m not quite sure they got the message.



    So, as agreed, I hung out with the two morons for the day. First stop was a stand at the nearby park for ice cream. As usual, the twins ordered some crazy giant ice cream cones while I just ordered simple vanilla. How they managed to finish before me without getting brain freeze, I have no clue. As I had just finished my ice cream, I noticed that the twins had already gone into dum-dum mode; they started trying to tackle the pigeons for the bread crumbs….

    “Ow!!!” they both whined as I dragged them away by their ears.


    Next stop was the mall where they tried to go up the wrong escalators, and I was left waiting for them to get to the top for the next few minutes.

    I decided that maybe using the escalators wasn’t a good idea today, so we used the elevators instead. That didn’t turn out well either.

    At one point, we got on to an elevator go from the third floor to the first floor, and as other people got on, the two idjits started growling at them like dogs. I told them to knock it off (which they did), and when the elevator started to descend they yelled, “Chutes away!”

    The next time we were on an elevator they meowed occasionally which earned them some funny looks from other people.

    “They’re not brain damaged,” I said to them. They looked skeptical. “Really, they’re not!” They all shrugged and turned back around to face the elevator doors.

    I think the twins have recently been looking up ways to annoy people.


    Later, they wandered off. After frantically searching for a good fifteen minutes, I finally found them in the food court. My relief, though, quickly melted into horror. They were running up to random strangers and hugging them saying, “I love you!” Then they would run off to their next victim. As I stood there dumbfounded, a couple of security guards ran over to the twins and intercepted them. I was about to walk over, but I stopped as a thought came to mind.

    Maybe I should just let the two of them suffer the consequences. Yes, I think I’ll do that.

    My decision was quickly wiped from my mind, however, when I saw that the twins quickly went from being happy-go-lucky to looking like kicked puppies. I sighed and walked over.

    “Vince!” the twins cried.

    “Sir, do you know these kids?” the chubbier of the two guards asked me.

    “Yes. They’re my cousins,” I said.

    “Well, we stopped these two because-”

    “I know. I’m sorry about these two knuckle-heads. They managed to slip away from me when I wasn’t looking, and I’ve been looking for them for the past fifteen minutes or so. I just got here, and I saw them hugging random people.”

    I paused for a moment as I saw a crowd of people off to the side. All, of which, didn’t look very happy. They’re victims, I assume.

    “It’s actually because of things like this that they need to have a chaperone with them. They don’t have any disabilities or anything like that. They just like to do stupid things. I can reassure you, though, that these two were just looking to have some fun and didn’t mean any harm.”

    “Alright… I guess we can let them go,” the taller security guard said.

    “Thank you. Are those people the complainants?” I said pointing over to the group of people I noticed a minute ago.

    “Yes.”

    I then dragged the twins over to the group of people and made them apologize to the people.


    After that, we went to the food court to eat. After we were done, I let the twins go play in the arcade after they promised that they would behave. At about 5:00, I decided that we should get going.

    I hollered at them: “Hey, Thing One!” Blake looked over at me. “Thing Two!” Now Conner looked at me. “Let’s go!” And we left. Next stop: corn maze.



    “Are we going the right way?”

    “I dunno. Which way should we be going?”

    How about towards home?

    “Let’s try going this way.”

    “Nah. Let’s go this way.”

    Last time we went your way, Blake got lost!

    “Okay!”

    Fine….

    This was beginning to strongly remind me of the scene from The Jungle Book where the vultures are saying, ‘So what are we gonna do?’ and, ‘I dunno. What’cha wanna do?’ I felt like the one that would say, ‘Hey, now don’t start that again!’ However, I kept my mouth shut and continued to play Follow the Leader. After another half-hour or so of mindless wandering through the maze and Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum wondering if we were going the right way, I finally decided that enough was enough.


    “Are we going the right way?”

    “I dunno. Which way should we be going?”

    “You know what?” I piped up. They both paused and looked at me with tilted heads like dogs that had just heard their owner say their one favorite word: 'walk'. “Screw it! We’re going through the wall!”

    The response I received was one that I had been expecting, but it still made me start.

    “Okay!” they both chirped excitedly (and a little too loudly for my liking). Just when they looked ready to take off charging off again, they stopped, looked back at me, and, as usual, spoke in stereo. “Which way do we go?”

    I really wanted to smack them both over the backs of their heads at that moment, but resisted the urge to do so and, instead, looked around for the look-out platform that I had seen on the way into the maze. When I spotted it, I pointed it out for them. “We’re going that way,” I said.

    They turned in the direction I pointed them in as I sighed, still trying to resist the very tempting urge to throttle them. After a few moments, I finally managed to calm down. All of my effort, however, was undone in but an instant.

    “Charge!” Conner yelled, causing me to jerk in surprise. They then took off through the wall of corn, and I could only try to keep up with them all the while hoping that what ever those two idiots had that made them act that way wasn’t contagious. Thankfully, though, this day was almost over.

    Lexie is so going to have hell to pay for this!
    END