The Cliche: Falling for your boyfriend's twin brother

The Anticliche: Falling for your boyfriend's twin sister

I'm the kind of girl that girls don't like

I'm the kind that boys fantasize

I'm the kind that your momma and your daddy were afraid you'd turn out to be like

I may seem unapproachable but that's only to the boys who don't have the

Right a approach or ride that makes a girl like me wanna hop in and roll

People think it's intimidating when a girl is cool with her sexuality I'm a 180 to the stereotype girls like staying home and being innocent.

Sexy Naughty Bitchy Me - Tata Young

Trish is everything Tony is not.

"Get out of my room, bitch," she drills out, coiled and cankaterous like a pregnant rattlesnake. The sky outside has the color and consistency of cough-syrup and congealing blood, corrugated by steel highrises.

You lean against the beige-papered hallway, the uninspired choice of wallpaint and the shortness of your dark denim miniskirt emphasizing the glow of your tanned, toned calves. "I'm not in your room, Trish."

"Come in, baby," Tony croons.

You press yourself against the doorframe, all beachbunny-oomph and orgasmic Maxim curves. Suck a manicured fingernail, rub one long, half-naked leg slowly, softly against the other. "That doesn't sound too exciting, Anthony. Wanna make it more... happening?"

"Threshold, whatever. Just get out of my eyesight," she hisses. Looks up briefly from a 3-D ball model of a carbon molecule. Bleugh. "And it's Beatrice to you."

"It's Tony," he chokes, his voice cracking in an effort to remain even. It warms the cockles of your cold little ol' heart to know you're still prime wet-dream material. "It's Tony to you."

You saunter in, hips swaying, Dior silk miniskirt purring as you kneel on his bed and crawl towards him. You never slip in quietly, not when there's a man in a room. "Is it?"

"You're really not cut out for the frigid ice-bitch act," you say dryly, slipping in. "Maybe you should leave that to Suzanne Vanquelin."

Fists clench, unclench, chewed-off nails digging bloody crescents into flesh. Grr, you're so cute when you're angry. "You leave Suzanne out of this!"

You bounce childishly on her mattress, scattering sheets of reactions and equations like autumn leaves. "What's wrong, Trish? I'm not allowed to sully the purity of her name with my blemished lips?"

"There are better things you can do with your lips," she says dismissively, standing up and walking away. "Like sucking my brother's dick. If life gives you a lemon, go make lemonade, right?" She curls up on the windowsill like a tensed spring, a virulent silhouette against a titanium and welt-red sky.

You roll up in a panda-shaped beanbag, sentimental and cutesy in a Daddy-won-this-at-the-carnival-for-me-when-I-was-seven way. It squelches under your weight, farts. "That's my way of doing community service," you say gravely. "If Vanquelin had her way, his dick would be-"

"What part of 'steady relationship' irks you, you glorified prostitute?" she bursts out. "They were voted Couple-Most-Likely-To-Get-Married last year! They've been together since they were twelve!" She whips around to face you. "Is that it? You can't stand to see someone else happy because you're so goddamn insecure, because you know you're nothing but a D-cup and a pair of shapely legs?"

"Hey," you say, impressed. "You think my legs are shapely."

And she's red. Like a bleeding tomato. Like at that Spanish festival people at (in the nude, inside hot-tubs filled with tomatos) and throw tomatoes at eachother and in general, carnage the year's bumper tomato crop to um... make tomato-juice? "It's the truth."

"How come Mark Pulsford thinks I put out for you, Anthony?"

He shifts books that he doesn't read and binders that he doesn't need in his locker. Books are props for parental appeasement when your (supremely cute) twin is on the honor roll. Blinks, frowns, pretends you're not there, rubs his crotch - all very masculine, very mature.

You grab his neck, sinking deep-red fingernails into his throat, drag him down to your level. "I don't like rumours being floated about me, OK? Just a friendly warning."

"You didn't put out for Will either," his voice is slow, measured, like a handsome little Hansel who's stumbled on a breadcrumb trail of clues. "Or Raleigh. Not Jeffrey either, no matter what he says in the changing room."

It had to come out someday. It comes out as easily as any endearment. "No, baby. I didn't."

"Are you a virgin?" There's the blankness of childlike incomprehension, glazed with disbelief, the edges frayed with something akin to horror.

You're still game enough for the last word, even though he isn't. "That's for me to know and for you to find out, Laterza."

"It's the truth."

"You broke my best friend's heart," she says, with the sombre sincerity of a child-judge passing a vendetta in a monochrome world . "You called me a dyke." And the words itching to be said, but unsaid, because she's just a fraction too grown-up for them - I'm not going to forget that.

"Honestly, I think it's better to be a dyke," you say earnestly. "Men are out for just one thing - a hole to stick their pole in."

She winces. She's out of her depth with people who say what they think and don't hide behind Wurtz-Fittick Reactions and pass intellectual shit on people from ivory towers. "So, lack of sexual gratification has caused you to turn to First Wave Feminism, illustrating a classic case of reverse psychosis?" she says, and you can see her (metaphorically) adjusting her spectacles. She wears contact lenses, but you bet she wishes she had a pair of thick-rimmed glasses in handy for occassions like this.

"You are so cute," you gush, and the back of her neck and the tips of her delicate little ears turn red as she looks away.

If you're Birningham High's undisputed Queen Bee, then River Faulkner is Events' Manager. Heck, even her sleepovers are The Shit. They're a case study in everything the average red-blooded hetrosexual American male expects of a girl's slumber-party - braless cheerleaders in tiny boyshorts bouncing on mattresses, discussing Victoria's Secret and Top Ten Tips for Orgasms, makeovering eachother, baking cookies and having pillow-fights.

Maybe River's making money selling tapes of everyone's semi-intoxicated shenigans to the guys.

"You are God," Annika says solemnly. "I thought nobody would be able to break up Tony and that Vanquelin bitch. The way they cooed over eachother-"

"Like turtledoves," says Christa, who loves Victorian literature.

"-Yeah, whatever, well it made me feel all barfy. And the way she used to flaunt him in our faces, just like Oh Look At Me, I Have a Unibrow But One Of The Hottest Guys At School is My Boyfriend, Take That, Bitches."

Everyone nods in agreement, except Naomi Nixon who's pissed because she set her cap for Anthony last year and had Suzanne and the rest of her wonky Computer Club laugh at her for her efforts. "Congrats, babe," she says smoothly. "But have you considered the fact that your new sister-in-law is a dyke?"

"Trish is nice," you say defensively. "She's a sweet kid."

"True," Christa supplements, flipping a perfumed wave of ash-blond hair over her shoulder. "She's the best lab partner I've ever had."

"Yeah, maybe she wanted to go cooking in your lab," quips Naomi's inner nerd.

"I'd rather take a sweet, puppy-love dyke sister-in-law than a puppy-love, please-fuck-me despo brother-in-law," River says suddenly. "I mean, dykes come in two flavors, right?" She's pooling her limited knowledge of the word 'homosexual', forehead screwed in concentration. Urbandictionary authority-stamped, Hollywood-glamorized, estosterone-fuelled wet-dreams of the hot chick whose fetish is other chicks. Lipstick lesbians and bull dykes. "The Ellen DeGeneres flavor and the Portia de Rossi."

"Mmmhmm," you say cooperatively and River beams, like a little kid awarded a golden star-sticker by her teacher for doing all her sums correctly. "And we all know men come in only one flavor."

"Why are you here anyway?"

"To talk."

"Talk then. And get lost when you're done."

The sky is streaked with lines of pale gold and ink-black, as though fingerpainted by a toddler's stubbly little fingers. "It's beautiful," you say softly, winding a curl of your own blond hair around your hair. A pale, refined gold like preserved sunshine or the discreet gleam of heavy ingots - beautiful, just like everything else about you. Sometimes your own beauty leaves you breathless.

"It's because of the Tyndall Effect," the Chemistry Geek retorts snarkily, reducing beauty to the plane of explanation. Or elevating explanations to the plane of beauty? She poses on the windowsill like a yogi on a bed of nails. You slouch, drape your legs across the beanie-bag, your skirt hightailing a few more crucial inches up your thigh. She averts her eyes. "Try to be decent if you can."

"We're both girls aren't we? Where does 'decency' come in?"

"The part where you attempt to solicit sexual favors by unwarranted and provocative exposure." And your princess is the type who labels her photo-albums after lines of obscure (and high-brow) doggerels and conducts super-secret conversations with her buddies in pig-Latin. The awwwwh factor is enough to make you smile - a soft, gentle smile that you're willing to bet she's never seen on your face. This smile is not part of the repertoire of smirks and sneers you dish out to the world in general.

To the world in general. Not to somebody special.

"Talk then." Trish fiddles restlessly - with her hair, her hands, her earrings.

"Suzanne wasn't your best friend. She wasn't your friend at all."

"She was! We've been friends since-"

"-You've just been scrounging up excuses to hate me so that you don't have to admit that you have a crush on me." You snap your fingers in triumph. "They call it, uh, reverse psychosis?"

And she's up, up in arms and fists and a caricature scowl of caricatured hatred. "How dare you?"

"-You don't have to be such a bitch, Suzanne."

Suzanne Vanquelin surveys Beatrice Laterza. Fat books are to nerds what makeup is to cheerleaders - indispensable accessories. She props one against her well-padded, fleshy hips. "Excuse me, Trish?"

"I just can't stand the way you always start dissing them-"

"I diss people who deserve to be dissed," Suzanne says primly. "There's no way her chest can stick out that much unless she doesn't stuff her pom-poms down her sweater whenever she's practising."

"Would you like to repeat that for me, Vanquelin?" You saunter out of the toilet stall.

Suzanne's cheeks color blotchily. Trish fiddles with her hair, her hands, her earrings. "Ditched the retinue?"

"I asked you a question, Vanquelin. Would you like to repeat what you said for me?"

"I don't need this crap," Suzanne mutters, grabbing Trish's arm. "Come on, Trish."

"Coward." You pour out a meticulously-manufactured sentence victoriously. "C'est une lâche."

Trish disengages herself, scowling. "I can make my own decisions, Suzanne." She looks straight at you with a child's eyes - bright, candid and absolutely adorable. Like evening stars and the lyrics to pop preteen songs. They are like her brother's eyes, but whereas Tony's are laughter-brimmed, sportive, mocking, Trish's are luminous with understanding, trusting. Tony may be hot, but you like to think, that, contrary to popular opinion, the better-looking of the Laterza twins is the sister, not the brother.

"She said you stuff your pompoms down your sweater when you're not practising," she reports duly, word-for-word like a little girl. "She called Naomi Nixon a slut and said you act like the madam of a bordello, the way you hook-up all your underlings with jocks." The Nixon-wants-Laterza fiasco still hasn't blown up and perhaps Suzanne is justified in calling Naomi - who tried her best to get her manicured claws into Tony's hide for the last few months - a slut.

But that doesn't give anyone the right to call you names.

"Thanks Trish," you offer mildly.

"Oh," she adds as an afterword, "Suzanne isn't a coward." She tosses silky black tresses over one svelte shoulder and looks up at you with eyes sparking with defiance, like ignited gasoline, and... and something else too.

Something you've seen in many boys' eyes.

You smile sweetly, candy-and-vinegar toxic sweetness for childlike, snowflake-white malice. "Let her prove it then."

"You let Tony have all the dark chocolates in the box Aunt Isabella sends every Christmas, but you're possessive about the ones with dried fruits in them." You prattle on blithely. Blithely. Such a pretty word. "You never use conditioner, because your hair tends to get very greasy. You think Animal Welfare Organisations are lame. So do I." Shadows hatch and cross-hatch on the floor and she stares pop-mouthed at you. Blink. Blink. Blink. "White is your favorite color and you rarely wear black because it makes you feel like dirty. Your hair used to be waist-length when you were six and you're waiting for it to grow back again, even though you cut it every three months. You want to study Chemical Engineering at Columbia. I think you'll get in."

"You are..."

"Yes, I know," you assure her chirpily. "Stalkerish. Be proud, Trish, this is a side of my character not many have a privilege to know."

"Because you're more often the stalked and not the stalker?" she asks dryly. "The world works in mysterious ways."

"Honey, if you haven't had a Brazilian bikini wax, you're not exactly in a position to say that."

You trace your fingers up and down his spine, in elaborate loops and curls, your fingers soft, nails barely scratching flesh. The back of his half-opened shirt pools on your thighs. He moans happily and you grin, wondering if he ever got any action with Vanquelin.

From the look of things, most likely not.

"You check the Horoscope everyday, even before the Sports Page," you say conversationally. "You wish you were a badass gangster but leather and you don't have a working relationship. You like drawing pictures of topless Anime girls in jeans. Lime green is your favorite color."

"Um. You're so-"

"Stalkerish?"

He laughs sheepishly, uneasily. "Uh no, I meant to say direct." Pushy, aggressive, stalkerish, genre-savvy, crazy, hot-monkey-sex-goddess bitch.

You wrap your arms around his stomach, from the back, and smile into his shoulder when he shivers. "Tell me all about your sister," you purr.

You push yourself out off the squashy bean-bag and slide onto the windowsill. She's sitting with her head cocked slightly to the left - you make a mental note of that fact -, arms clasped around her knees. She's a lissome silhouette in the shadows, a sliver of bare skin. "Beats me how you found out."

You shrug modestly. "I'm Captain of the Dance Team. I come with my own unique set of abilities. The glare of intolerable sexiness. Snarkiness. The ability to formulate choreographic flow-charts in my head. And..." you pause suggestively.

She looks up at you expectantly, a hint of a smile teasing at the corners of her chapped pink lips.

You swallow, lean in. Simultaneously, she leans in too, so close that your heads bump together softly, the space between your noses tracing a crooked heart in the air. "I'm also a great kisser."

Tony is rough, hard, demanding, one hand snapping at her bra like a piranha on flesh, like all the boys you've had. He crowds in on you, hems you in, one hand pressed hard, insistently on your thigh, like a hammer on glass ready to shatter at the slightest touch. You're frightened. You want out. You whimper into the lips that come crashing down on her, writhing under his hold, all to no avail.

He's just too strong.

Trish... Trish is soft like flower petals and sandalwood soap and soft little hands cupping your chin, tracing the curve of your cheek. She pulls back shyly, lashes resting on her glowing cheeks like butterfly wings. Bats a strand of her hair from her forehead, smiles tentatively at you. You smile back, your smile equally shy, gentle.

With him, it just feels so wrong.

With her, it feels just so right.

A/N: Random Fact of The Day I: That was the first slashy thing I ever wrote. Random Fact of The Day II: In the training of fighter pilots during WWII, the best students of all were made flight instructors. They generally were not sent to fight, because it was found that highly skilled pilots were more predictable and thus easier to shut down than someone who's slipping and skidding all over the sky.