Darren Lemke - Gemini Man

Danny turned to see Junior—ahem, Jackson—coming toward them with some friends, a guy and two young women. The other three seemed to be on their way to somewhere else; they paused and had a quick discussion, probably about where they’d meet up later. The utter normalcy of it made Henry’s throat tighten and his eyes start to fill. He didn’t care to talk about his emotions but he sure had a lot of them lately. Most were good but even those weren’t always easy to cope with.

When they were especially intense, the memory of flailing his arms and kicking his legs in the deep end of the pool would suddenly pop into his head. His father had thrown him in because water was simple and simple was all his father knew. If the man had been immersed in what Henry was feeling, he’d have drowned.

Junior—no, Jackson , Henry had to remember he was Jackson now—told his friends he’d see them later and waved goodbye as he came toward Henry and Danny. As soon as Henry got to his feet, the kid wrapped him up in a big, enthusiastic hug, then did the same to Danny, his movements easy and casual without any awkwardness at all. Henry waited till he was done hugging, then held up the manila envelope.

“What’s this?” Jackson asked.

“‘This’ is you,” Henry told him. “Birth certificate, Social Security card, passport. Also, your credit report. Turns out you’ve got a pretty good credit rating. And I like the name you chose.”

“Thanks. Jackson was my mom’s name,” the kid informed him, as if he didn’t know.

“I’ll have you know she was my mom first,” Henry retorted.

The kid rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

Henry puffed himself up in faux outrage. “Don’t you ‘yeah, yeah’ me, young man. Not when I’m about to show you a great place for lunch.” He began to usher them in the direction of his favorite deli. “Only half a block off-campus; you’ll love it.”

The newly minted Jackson Verris felt as if his head was spinning. Going on missions was easy compared to this. It seemed like he had to juggle a hundred different things in his mind—he had to remember where to meet his friends later, how to sign up for the classes he wanted, where all his classes were on campus, what days, and what time, where he had put the list of textbooks he had to buy, and now he had a manila envelope full of information all about himself.

How did people keep track of everything? Maybe that’s what they did with their phones; they put all the stuff they had to think about on them, which was why they were always looking at them. But how did they remember to carry their phones around with them in the first place or remember where they put them? He wasn’t sure he would ever get the hang of this so-called normal life. Sometimes it was all he could do to remember his own name was Jackson Verris now, not Junior.

“So,” Danny said, nudging his ribs with her elbow, “have you settled on a major yet?”

At last, a question he could answer. “I’m leaning toward engineering.”

“Engineering?” Danny looked at him as if she’d never heard of anything so crazy.

“I know, right?” Henry said, then turned to him with the same look. “ Listen to her. If I were you—which I am, sort of—I’d do computer science.”

“Oh, hell no,” Danny said, doing her best impression of Henry. “Save that for grad school. You want to start in the humanities—”

“No, wait—don’t listen to her ,” Henry said.

“No, don’t listen to him ,” Danny said quickly. “You need a grounding in the classics—”

This was getting out of hand. “Uh, guys…” he said.

“Excuse me ,” Henry said to Danny. “I’m trying to talk to myself here—”

“Yeah, you’re talking to yourself, all right,” Danny replied. “But you’re sure not talking to him— ”

“ Guys ,” he tried again.

“I made a lot of mistakes when I was young,” Henry was saying.

“And now you need to let him make his own mistakes,” Danny said evenly.

Jackson stopped where he was. It took a couple of seconds before either Danny or Henry noticed. They turned to look at him, bewildered.

“Everyone chill the hell out!” he ordered them. Their expressions said they hadn’t seen that coming. “I’m going to be okay,” he added, a bit more quietly.

A broad grin spread across Henry’s face. “Well, if you’re okay, I’m okay.”

Danny made the ‘okay’ sign with both hands and they all laughed. But even as he was laughing, he wanted to hug Henry, tell him he’d just said the one thing he wanted— needed —to hear and he hadn’t known it until that very moment.

How had Henry managed that? Maybe it was just because he and Henry were so much a part of each other. But it could also have been because they were family. A family consisted of people who cared about each other, helped each other—not because one of them wanted something but because people needed to care for each other, to help each other, love each other.

For a moment, he had an almost irresistible urge to tell Henry all of this and how Henry had given him everything he’d always wanted before he had even known what that was. But he knew Henry wasn’t comfortable talking about emotions, not because he was repressed or shut down but simply because he was Henry. Talking about his feelings just wasn’t his thing and never would be. Not in so many words, anyway.

But that was all right. Recent events had convinced him to be wary of anyone who constantly had to tell you how much they loved you. There really was such a thing as protesting too much.

Now he smiled at Henry, then sighed and shook his head.

“What?” Henry asked him.

He sighed again. “I can’t believe that in thirty years I’m going to look like—” he gestured at Henry. “ You. ”

“Are you kidding ?” Henry stuck his fists on his hips in mock indignation. “You should be so lucky, young man! You should be so lucky !”

All three of them cracked up as they started walking again.

“Now, first of all,” Henry said in an exaggerated, lecturing tone. “I work out every day— every day. Yeah, go ahead and laugh—wait till you’re fifty and we’ll see if you’re dragging your lazy ass around the track—”

“You mean fifty-one,” Danny put in.

“Don’t interrupt, young lady, or you’ll be grounded,” Henry said, shaking a finger at her. “Okay, secondly—and pay attention, this is extremely important—I brush, I floss, I rinse, and my teeth are spotless. Seriously, I got zero cavities, baby. Zero. ”

Yeah, Jackson Verris thought, this new life was going to take some getting used to but he had no doubt at all it would be worth it.

TITANBOOKS

GEMINI MAN – THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION