1 Meet the Zugars

Bam! There went Herak slamming his bedroom door again. Herak may have been Cate's twin brother, born only six minutes before her, but their personalities couldn't be any less alike. Cate didn't understand Herak's temper, but in this situation, she could give him a pass for making her heart jump out of her chest from fright. They had just turned thirteen in June and were supposed to return to their middle school for eighth grade in a few weeks, but their parents just informed them that they were being sent to a small, local private school instead.

There were two main reasons that this news was upsetting to not only Herak but to Cate as well, and the first reason was that Cate felt her brother's anger as she could feel most of his feelings. Herak was the most popular guy at their small town middle school and well on his way to being a high school football star. He had dozens of friends and just as many girls crushing on him with his shaggy blonde hair. The twins were actually both born with golden red hair and the doctor swore up and down to their parents that it would lighten as they got older. But that only happened for one of them and Cate was stuck as the outcast, carrot-haired twin.

The second reason Cate was so upset about this private school was because their parents were only sending them there to please their creepy grandparents. Their grandparents on their mother's side had always been eccentric and somewhat distanced from their family, so the twins didn't really know them all that well. Cate couldn't understand why their parents were uprooting their entire lives to try and make these people happy when they'd never bothered to get to know them in the past. Even if she and her brother hadn't done anything notable by their standards, she believed their grandparents should be interested enough to want to know their favorite subjects in school or Herak's record-breaking number of receiving yards the past football season or that Cate volunteered twice a week at the local animal shelter.

To be honest, though, Cate didn't have much to lose from this life-changing switch. She had been dreaming about going away to a boarding school for the past two years just to get away from her small town school and all the kids that picked on her for being quiet and different. Even though she longed to fit in, she was never willing to change who she was just for the possibility of popularity. This private school was too close to their hometown in Pennsylvania, though, and a lot smaller than she would prefer. But there was always hope that anything was better than returning to her old middle school.

"Hecate, I'm talking to you!" Cate's dad's voice suddenly burst through her thoughts. Cate hadn't even realized she had completely spaced out, staring at the light above the kitchen island.

"Dad! I asked you not to call me that," Cate grumbled, breaking out of her trance to look at her dad sitting across the kitchen table from her. Mr. Zugar wasn't plain and dorky like most other dads seemed to be. He still played guitar in a local rock band and still rocked the long, dark hair and baggy clothes to look the part. He kept a laid back and cool attitude with his children more often than not.

"I didn't fight with your mother for nine months for you and your brother to have beautiful, unique names just so I can call you Cate," Mr. Zugar scoffed playfully.

"I wanted to name you Amy," Cate's mom piped up from across the kitchen, defending herself casually as both Cate and her dad made horrified looks of disgust at the name that didn't match Cate's personality or the way she looked. Mrs. Zugar was the complete opposite of her husband, being super uptight and, quite frankly, boring. She never went to any of her husband's shows and the two of them didn't seem to have much in common to talk about, other than Herak and Hecate.

Truth be told, even at thirteen, Cate felt sorry for her parents. She could see that they weren't in love and that they seemed to lead totally separate lives with her and her brother at the center of both. They fought all the time, which was absolutely traumatizing to grow up around, but played a huge role in Herak and Cate being as close as they were. The twins needed each other to lean on and keep their heads on right when their parents threatened divorce every other week. They may have kept their distance from each other at school because of how different they were, but they were best friends at home.

"I don't mind giving this private school a chance," Cate finally answered her father's question, "but I totally think you're being unfair to Herak."

"We considered that," Mrs. Zugar admitted calmly and quietly as she walked over to stand next to her husband.

"But the school insisted that we not separate siblings," Cate's dad told her, more blunt than her mom had been. Cate's eyes narrowed, thinking that sounded an awful lot like an excuse just to get more students in their door.

"Let me go talk to him," Cate said solemnly before finally standing up from the kitchen table.

Cate walked slowly up the stairs and down the dark hallway to her brother's bedroom. Knowing how upset Herak was, she tried thinking of what she could possibly say to him, but she was coming up blank. Nothing she could say would possibly make him feel better about losing his friends and potentially throwing away his football career. The only ammunition that she had was that neither of them really had a choice in the matter and they would at least be together at the school.

As Cate stood outside of Herak's closed bedroom door, biding her time before facing his wrath, she could hear that he was playing his football video game, which usually helped to calm him down. Cate knocked once, but Herak couldn't hear it over how loud he had his television volume, so she just let herself into the room. Herak was sitting on his dark blue carpeted floor with his back against his twin-sized bed. He didn't look up from his game as Cate entered the room and stood by the bottom corner of his bed, which was pushed against the wall in the corner of the room and dressed with Philadelphia Eagles sheets, pillows, and blankets. Every time Cate looked at his bed, she remembered how resistant their mom had been to let Herak get the green-themed bed-set because it didn't go with the blue carpet already in his room.

Cate loved that Herak had football. He was certainly built like a football player with his height and broad shoulders. And it didn't hurt that he worked out in the school gym before and after every football practice. Other than football, he had also dabbled in wrestling, hockey, and basketball. But football was where his heart truly lied.

"Are you going to be okay?" Cate asked her twin brother cautiously, taking a seat on the edge of the bed near him so that he would know she was there.

"No!" Herak grunted, smashing the buttons of his Playstation controller. "This whole thing is bogus!"

"It's not really up to us, so maybe we can find a way to make the most of it," Cate suggested then braced herself for a violent reaction from Herak.

"And how do you propose we do that?" he shot at her. He finally threw his controller to the floor after losing his game and turned slightly toward his sister.

"It's still just a school and you're still Herak, so you're still going to be Mr. Popular, even if they don't have a football team. And I'm sure you can start one, if they don't."

"I guess. I just don't understand why we're doing this for THEM of all people. I don't think we've even seen them in three years."

"I agree. Something's definitely fishy about that. Maybe we can use this school year to figure out how they're involved with all of this."

Herak nodded then handed his twin sister his second game controller as a peace offering. The two of them played video games for the next two hours while they talked about how much they disliked their mother's parents and speculated as to what kind of weird stuff they could be into that kept them away from the family more often than not. Talk of hippies, gypsies, and even witchcraft had them laughing, but their favorite idea was that their grandparents were vampires and could only be seen on a full moon, once every couple of years. They agreed that nothing else could explain how strange and reserved from the family they were.