Stan And Ford, When They Were Young, Reveled In Being Identical. It Was An Genetically Gifted, Built-in

Stan and Ford, when they were young, reveled in being identical. It was an genetically gifted, built-in prank, an innate friend, a second half of the same heart and brain. They dressed the same, acted the same, even made sure they sounded the same. The days when even their father couldn't tell them apart were counted as a success--- the ultimate joke, and they were pulling it off every week. (their mother could always tell them apart. It was uncanny; her only real psychic ability.)

Then, around seven or eight, Stan broke his glasses. Mom and dad couldn't afford a new pair, so they stopped having the same face. It got harder for him to read without them, and he stopped getting as good of grades, and got moved from the advance reading group to the average reading group in class. Ford got a nice jacket for his birthday, and suddenly they stopped dressing alike. That was OK, Stan reasoned: they still sounded the same, and were the same height, and still got up to all sorts of high-jinks together.

In middle school, they got put in a few different classes, so they couldn't fool their teachers; they had the same lunch block, though, so the lunch lady never knew what hit her! And they had the Stan o' War to work on, so they always had about the same level of sunburn.

Then Ford started to join clubs without Stan. They got different jobs in high school, and Stan got slapped with an acne curse and a propensity to forget to do his laundry that led to them looking distinctly different. Ford met friends that didn't like Stan, and Stan met friends who called Ford a nerd and lame, and Stan didn't always have it in him to call them out.

It was alright, though--- they were still twins. Stan looked at Ford and didn't see his exact mirror image, but he still saw himself--- in the brows, the nose, the mischievous gleam in his eyes, their matching sea glass bracelets Stan made them when they were 11. Ford was still unmistakably his brother, Stan reassured himself; they would always be fun-house mirrors of each other, not perfectly symmetrical but with the same roots. He told himself that when they got called to the principal's office, he told himself that when Ford stopped working on the boat so he could work on his perpetual motion machine, he told himself that when Ford said he was going away to West Coast Tech, no if, and, or but about it. They were twins.

But when Stan called out to Ford from the sidewalk, duffel laying half-abandoned by his car, he saw no mirror, no brother, and certainly no twin. The man who stood in the window--- the man who turned away from Stan instead of helping him--- no, Stan didn't recognize that man at all.