Chapter 16

Several weeks passed and Tom and Lynette found themselves drawn into more and more school social and extra-curricular events. Tom was running with the cross-country team and their first race date was approaching. Their chorus class was rehearsing for a concert and Lynette had a brief solo in one of the numbers. Their friendship with Roberta and Simon was burgeoning and one day at lunch, Roberta asked Lynette about dating.

“Lynette, Simon and I’ve noticed that you don’t seem interested in boys. Hell, every boy who’s asked you out, I’ve seen you politely shoot them down. The only boy you really pay attention to is your brother. I’d like to invite you to go on some of our gang’s group dates or parties, but...”

Lynette stopped her. “Yeah, Roberta, I know. And I can’t believe that no one’s asked me, or Tom either, about why we don’t date. Until you did now. Tom and I don’t date for a reason. Last year in school, when I refused dates, I kinda got a rep that I was frigid or a lezzie...”

“The Avery Program taught us not to label...” Roberta started.

“Yeah, I know that. It’s kinda amazing, actually. There’s no bullying here, no put-downs. Let me see ... I’ll ask Tom when he gets here if he wants to get together with you and Simon to talk about it ... oh here they come. Can we get together with you after school?”

Roberta nodded, “Sure.”

Simon and Tom arrived at their table and sat.

Lynette leaned over and whispered, “Tom, how about us getting together with Roberta and Simon after school?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

Lynette asked Roberta, “Where should we meet? Is today okay?”

Roberta looked at Simon. “Sweetie, we’re gonna meet up with them after school. How ‘bout Romano’s? Right after school?”

Simon nodded, “Yeah, sounds good.” He looked at Tom. “They’re not close but they have the best pizza, don’t they,” he grinned.

After the lunch period ended and they were headed to class, Lynette told Tom about her conversation with Roberta.

“So I think we need to tell them a little about us, sweetie,” she finished.

“Is that a good idea? I mean, if the word gets out...”

“We’ll sound them out. I think what they learned in the Avery Program about spreading stories and being sensitive about others will help them keep quiet. You’ve noticed that there’s no bullying and rot like that here?”

Tom looked dubious. “Yeah ... well, maybe.”

After school they were delayed a few minutes by their chorus teacher; then they rode their bikes the dozen blocks to the pizza place. When they walked in, they noticed Simon at a table in the far corner, and went there.

“Roberta nipped off to the ... oh, here she comes,” Simon said. “The menu’s on the wall. Order at the counter. We’ve already ordered.”

Lynette whispered her choice to Tom, who went to order.

“Sorry we were delayed,” she told them. “Our chorus teacher kept us a little longer to tell us that the drama department is planning to do a musical for the Christmas performance and they wanted singers from our class. And they wanted ME! I have a solo in a chorus number and the drama teacher heard me.”

Tom rejoined them. “Yeah, Lynette has a sweet voice. They asked her to be in the musical; it’s ‘The Mikado,’ you know, Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“Oi, we heard they were doing that,” Roberta said. “One of the lead roles is gonna be Amelia Hadad, you know, the girl who’s the youngest person to be knighted.”

“Yes, she came in with the drama teacher. She’s playing Yum-Yum. And they want me to do Pitti-Sing; she’s something like Yum-Yum’s sister, I think. There are seven songs where I’d have a solo and some chorus singing too. Half the chorus class signed up. Tom did too!”

Tom looked sour. “Yeah. They made me sign up. I have a deeper bass-baritone voice. But I’m not auditioning for any named roles; I’ll tell you that! Amelia told Lynette that she didn’t have to audition; her lower soprano voice was perfect for the role. What’s it called? Mezzo-soprano.”

Roberta looked at Tom. “Are there a lot of male roles in it that need a deep voice?”

Tom nodded. “Apparently. Um, three? Four? Lynnie, do you remember?”

“Well, they said the emperor and two nobles, at least,” Lynette mused. “Tom agreed to be in the chorus. I think they already have the male leads picked out.”

“Well, if Amelia is in it, it should be good. She was in a play last year that had the newspaper critics in an uproar. She got rave reviews and for something like two or three weeks, there were agents hounding her to sign up with them,” Simon offered.

“Wow,” Lynette mused, “she seemed so ... demure? when she was speaking to the chorus class. Quiet, but I could feel her projecting her passion for her acting.”

Tom nodded. “She was magnetic. Did you see her eyes? Even though she spoke quietly, I noticed that her eyes were flashing and she had the total attention of everyone in the room.”

Roberta smiled. “She’s quite a person. Everyone who meets her loves her. Her boyfriend’s quite a hunk too. Those two have a real history here. When they tried to start the Program here last year, I saw him deck three big blokes who were trying to strip her...”

“Wait, what? I heard something about that happening!” Tom exclaimed. “That was Amelia?”

“Yeah, Jeremy and Amelia,” Simon agreed. “Word is that they were the ones who got our school out of having to run the Naked in School Program. Along with Amelia’s guardians, that is. That’s how she got into helping with the Avery Program and she got knighted for, um ... she helped with some research that showed that continuing the Program would cost the government millions of quid. And then they—she and her guardians—showed another way—um, a better way to get kids to relate to each other than by being naked, anyway. That’s the Avery Program.”

“Don’t forget Jeremy the hunk, honey,” Roberta giggled. “Rumor’s that he was doing that blog that exposed a lot of the Program’s problems. That got the tabloids involved and turned people’s opinions against the Program.”

“Well, I can’t disagree with you about how bad the Program was,” Lynette remarked. “Remember, I told you this summer that we saw it happening at our old school but happily, I didn’t get picked. Then Tom and I transferred here to avoid it.”

Roberta grimaced. “Yeah, I remember those stories you told last summer. Brrrr. About what you heard from the kids at that other school on the north side. That was horrid. I wonder how things are there now...”

Lynette frowned. “Oh right. I did hear from one of the girls, Sarah, she’s the one who was in that year nine sex demonstration class. She emailed me with some news right around when school began. They kept the Program going there ‘cause her school was getting government money for it, but nobody’s being forced to do it now. She told me that they’re gonna have a super hard time getting anyone to volunteer, though, ‘cause anyone who was okay being naked has already done it. And oh yeah, Liz—the girl whose cousin Rita was raped—told her that the rapists had been identified and arrested and not only were they to be tried as adults, they were also subject to more severe penalties because they assaulted a Program participant. The school’s head teacher was sacked and the governors were replaced. She said that Rita’s doing fairly well, it seems she’s very resilient, and her family’s lawsuit against the local education people—the LEA, I think she said—is moving ahead now. All good news on that front—well, as good as stuff about that naked crap can be.”

“Nice to hear good news like that,” Roberta smiled. “But I’m curious about something you and Tom did—and I’m conflicted about asking, ‘cause we’ve been taught not to be nosey about other people’s affairs. So if it would bother you to talk about it, forget I asked, but you’ve never mentioned why you both dropped out of your Avery class. When it happened, the kids in that class were talking about how you and Tom had walked out and never came back, but then everybody got quiet about it and no one mentions it anymore. I know that the Avery Program teaches us not to spread rumors or tell tales about others, but...”

Lynette interrupted, “But that’s why we wanted to see you two now; you’ve become our closest friends. Tom and Simon are cross-country teammates too. Then at lunch, you asked me why I don’t date—why I don’t even hang out with any boys.” She looked at Tom.

Tom said, “And I don’t hang with any girls either. It’s related to why I dropped out of the Avery class and why Lynette supported me. But the reason’s terribly sensitive—we like you both and don’t want to mislead you or tell you lies.”

Lynette continued, “It’s very simple. We trust you and hope you won’t spread our story. It’s that Tom and I are committed to each other.”

Simon and Roberta gasped. “But...” Roberta began.

“But we’re brother and sister?” Tom asked. Roberta nodded. “That’s true in a legal sense but actually we’re not related at all in any biological way.”

“Sorry...?” Simon began, but Roberta said, “Oi! Different sets of parents, right?”

“Exactly!” Lynette agreed. “When my mom met Tom’s dad, Tom and I met too, and we fell in love all the way back then. We didn’t know it was love then, but we soon found that we were soulmates in every way. Our parents got married back then and that made us step-siblings. Look, turn it around. My mom pointed this out to me when we discussed my relationship with Tom. What if Tom and I had met first, fallen in love, and maybe gotten engaged—and then our parents had met and gotten married? People would have thought, ‘Oh, how cool is that?’ But flip the timing around; they married first, so society’s taboo on intimacy between siblings, even unrelated step-siblings, rears its head. But our situation is no different than if Tom and I had gotten together first. So that’s why we have to be very careful and keep our relationship quiet.”

“And that’s mostly why I couldn’t do the Avery stuff,” Tom said. “Lynnie and I had been doing stuff exactly like those bonding exercises from when we were what? ten years old?—so my doing the exact same things with another girl felt so wrong. It wasn’t like I was cheating Lynnie, actually, but it was more like cheating myself. I couldn’t make myself do something with another girl that I only wanted to do with her.”

Roberta and Simon stared at him, then Lynette, both openmouthed and speechless.

Lynette giggled. “I did some reading on babies and pet animals. According to those articles, what happened is that I imprinted on Tom. Doing that bonding stuff with someone else went against his psyche.”

Roberta sighed and leaned back. She was unaware that she had been holding her breath.

“Oh crikey,” she breathed. “Oi, I can see a little how you felt! Simon and I were pretty close before we did the Avery Program and when I was in it—when we got separated to work with other partners, it felt awkward at first, like I was being unfaithful.”

“Hell, it sure did!” Simon chimed in. “After every session, Roberta would come to me, tears in her eyes, to ask me if I still loved her. But we stuck it out and after a couple of days, my pain when I saw her with another bloke became bearable and then something clicked; we found that we could love more than one person, and then doing the exercises was awesome.”

“Yes, but the love we felt for the others was a different kind of love, sweetie,” Roberta agreed. “Our teachers told us that the different loves could be parental love, sibling love, romantic love, friend love, and that a person can love all kinds of ways without being unfaithful.”

Tom put his hands up. “Stop. You just said it right then. What Lynette and I experienced together was all those loves at once. Well, not parental, obviously. We were at first, absolute best friends and siblings too, then that quickly became romantic love. We bonded on all of those levels and for me, Lynette probably became an exclusive object of my love.”

“Can you see how Tom must have felt with trying to do those bonding things, Roberta, after your initial Avery experience?” Lynette asked. “If you were uncomfortable with the first few bonding sessions, how do you think Tom was affected? And me, as well?”

“Oh shit, you’re right,” Roberta breathed. “Simon and I love each other and we’re certain that it’s for the long term. But school romances don’t always last, we’ve been told. We hope ours will last.”

“I sure do,” Simon interrupted. “What I found out about myself during the Avery Program was that I could have intimate connections between me and a number of girls where we could snog with each other but still return to our chosen partner. Roberta and I have a real connection, but I also feel pretty close to many of the other girls in our group.”

Roberta nodded her agreement with his comment, and added, “I feel the same way. Our teacher told us ‘Love does not divide, it multiplies’ and said it was a quote from a famous science fiction writer—don’t recall the writer’s name. We learned about plural marriages and group families as being an extreme example of this kind of love. But I could never be romantically in love with more than one boy, even after the Avery Program.”

“But do you feel any discomfort seeing Simon kissing and almost groping another girl like we saw you guys doing last summer?” Lynette pressed.

“Hmmm. Well. You gotta realize that...” Roberta started. “Whew. Cripes, that’s a fair question. Let me get my thoughts in order. There’s a lot of emotional rubbish and other rot that answering that question brings up. Okay, during our Avery sessions, we all got really, really intimate with each other. We spilled our souls doing the role-playing, and whilst in the massage sessions we touched and caressed each other—especially when the teacher wasn’t paying attention, anyway—as we were learning how touch brings pleasure. So the, um, groping you saw was just more of doing what we had gotten used to doing. I couldn’t do that touching with a random bloke, even if it was a kid from another Avery group, I’m sure. And no, I wasn’t uncomfortable doing it, since both Simon and I did those things in our Avery sessions. That’s why we loved the naked hiking we all did, too. Is that what you mean?”

Lynette shuddered. “Yeah. But hearing that now, I’m really so glad I pulled out, but Tom...”

“Yeah, I’d of never made it,” Tom affirmed. His face was pale. “Simon, how did you feel seeing your honey doing crap with other boys?”

Simon shrugged. “It’s just what Roberta said. At first I duffed through the motions, just following along. I saw she wasn’t into any of it at first too, but then things began to change.”

Lynette muttered, “Brainwashing...”

“Sorry...?” Simon asked.

Lynette looked at him. “I just got this random thought. I noticed that the teachers’ instructions in the classes seemed mildly hypnotic and there was lots of repetition. I’m wondering whether the Avery Program uses, intentionally or deliberately, elements of psychological conditioning to make you guys more accepting of what they’re doing?”

Roberta looked thoughtful. “Oi, that’s a really wild idea, Lynette. A lot of us in that program have discussed our feelings and Simon and I are the only ones who reacted the way I described to you. Even Julie and Harry, the ones who became mentors and were pretty committed to each other before the Avery Program, were right on board with it from the beginning.”

Tom laughed, “Say, maybe that’s why the two of you clicked with Lynnie and me; we all kinda felt weirded out by the Avery Program at first.”

They all laughed.

Roberta continued, “So I can see those two, Julie and Harry, liking it ‘cause they’re both so empathetic. Why they got to be mentors. I guess that makes them feel close to lots of other people and not feel threatened about losing their partner’s affections.”

“That’s awfully perceptive, Roberta,” Lynette remarked. “But are there any other kids who were couples before the Avery Program?”

“Hmmm, I don’t think so. Simon, honey, anyone you remember?”

“Well, a few of the blokes were dating before, but I can’t think of any serious romances. Harry and Julie, sure. And us, of course.”

Tom asked, “How long have you two been an item, if I may ask?”

Roberta giggled. “We live ‘cross the street from each other all our lives, actually. We hung in our little group whilst growing up, and then when he found out that girls didn’t give the boys cooties, he began asking me to do ‘dates’ with him.”

“Oh how cute,” Lynette smiled. “Two more soulmates.”

“Yeah, and we’re both the only child in our families,” Simon mentioned. “That made our relationship closer, I guess. Someone our own age to talk about clobber.”

Lynette sighed and looked at Simon, then Roberta. “Well, back to our own revelation. Tom and I don’t date ‘cause we’re already an item. But we can’t come out of the closet on this; you can certainly see why. So how can we handle it in school?”

Roberta shrugged. “It might sound crazy but I think that if the two of you came to social events together, it wouldn’t really matter. Almost every year eleven’s been through Avery so there’ll be little or no gossip. I don’t think anyone will push you for details. As well, many of the kids don’t know you so they don’t know you’re related. Honey, what do you think?”

“Same, I guess. We’ve been taught not to label people or their relationships. I think all the blokes I know won’t question Tom about dating and if they find out that Lynette’s his stepsister, I don’t think that they’d care.”

Soon the couples finished talking and left for their homes. On the way home, Tom thought about their conversation, but was paying attention to the traffic so he didn’t speak to Lynette. When they arrived home, he had made a decision.

“So sweetie,” he said, “let’s do what they said; we’ll act like a couple but cool it on any romantic displays. You think that would work?”

Lynette smiled at him. “I had the same thoughts, darling. Isn’t it weird that they had the same initial reaction as us when they started their Avery Program?”

“Yah. Sure is. I get nice vibes from them too, and Simon is a really straight guy. He and Roberta make a cute couple. This year is so much better than last; I’ve made several friends already.”

“Great. Do you ever want to go out with your new friends for a boys-only play date?” she grinned.

“Ah, well...”

“Oh, don’t think you have to spend all of your time with me,” Lynette assured him. “I’d like to have time to go do girlie stuff with my new friends, too, you know.”

“Oh. Sure. It’s just ... well, I never had friends like I do now. This is a whole new experience. I won’t ever ignore you, though, Lynnie.”

She hugged him. “Oh, I know you won’t, darling. You do need to spread your wings and get some social experience.”

She kissed him and he wrapped his arms around her in a passionate embrace.

The next day, Lynette and Tom got notes in home room that gave them the rehearsal schedule for “The Mikado.” The notes told them to pick up a copy of the script in the Music Department office; the packet included the libretto, score, and stage notes. Also, the siblings’ chorus performance was to take place the following evening.