The Twinning Project by Robert Lipsyte Page A

school. I’m not a touchy-feely kind of guy.
    I was glad that Eddie was so popular, but I was a little jealous. All this friendship was about him, not me. I wondered how he was doing. I hoped Alessa was helping him. Where was this guy Ronnie?
    The kids cleared space so I could sit down near the front. I was holding my violin backpack, but no one asked me what was in it. They probably thought it was filled with sports equipment. They crowded around. Everybody wanted to ask about what happened. I tried to act like Eddie would, humble and patient. “I wish I could remember. Honest. The doctor said I have amnesia.”
    â€œAmnesia? I forgot what that means,” shouted a skinny kid who wormed his way through the crowd in the aisle. He nodded and grinned at the laugh he got. He looked like he could be the class clown. He had wild, messy hair and a small sharp face, a little dirty but almost too pretty for a boy. He was wearing a ratty old yellow sweater-shirt and skinny black pants. Scuffed boots. This had to be Ronnie.
    â€œRonnie?”
    â€œYou were expecting Elvis?” He started singing something about forgetting to remember.
    This is the guy I’m supposed to depend on—Eddie’s sidekick?
    He looked ten years old. But I put on my sincere face. “Ronnie, I’m really going to need your help today,” I said. “You’ve got to remind me of everything. Show me where to go.”
    â€œYou got it.” He looked eager and excited. “I’m your sidekick.”
    â€œRight. Like Han Solo and Chewbacca,” I said.
    â€œWho?”
    Whoops, no
Star Wars
yet. “Like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.”
    â€œBetter believe it, kemo sabe,” he said.

THIRTY-EIGHT
    NEARMONT, N.J.
    1957
    Â 
    T HE bus pulled up at school. It looked like a couple of the middle schools I’d been to, only newer. It had the same fountain out front I remembered from the Nearmont Middle School on EarthOne.
    Teachers patted me in the hall, told me they had been worried sick.
    Ronnie was my shadow. He gave me nudges and signals where to go. At homeroom, kids clapped and the teacher gave me a kiss on the cheek. Back home, a teacher might get arrested for that. Not that I would know; no teacher had ever kissed
me
before. Still hadn’t. She thought she was kissing Eddie. That helped me get used to it. It was Eddie that everyone thought they were touching. It wasn’t so bad.
    Bells rang and everyone stood up for the Pledge of Allegiance. The flag looked different to me. It took me a while to figure it out. It only had forty-eight stars. That’s why Hawaii and Alaska weren’t on that map. They weren’t states yet! When were they made states?
I need some dates, Mrs. Rupp.
    On the wall where most classrooms had a picture of the president was a photo of a smiling old white man.
    I nudged Ronnie. “Who’s that?”
    â€œI like Ike,” he said.
    â€œIke?”
    â€œThe president,” said Ronnie. “Dwight D. Eisen­hower.”
    I clicked through the list of presidents in my head. Dad and I used to quiz each other on presidents, state capitals, and planets the way other kids and dads did batting averages and Super Bowl winners. Probably like Eddie and Dad.
    â€œEisenhower was president fifty years ago.”
    When Ronnie looked at me like I was crazy, I remembered that Hawaii and Alaska were the last two territories to be made states.
    I scanned the room until I found the calendar. It was open to October 1957.
Wish I could Google 1957, find out what’s happening.
I thought about Mrs. Rupp’s timeline. Didn’t we talk about some big technology thing in 1957? Space . . . Russians . . . My mind was still a little shook up from the slip trip.
    Everything seemed slower here. Teachers dawdled, as if they were in no hurry to get us ready to take tests. They wore suits and ties or dresses. Maybe this was Dress-up Day. No jeans anywhere.