1. Miles
One
Miles
The thing about living with your brothers is that nothing is ever yours.
Not the last beer in the fridge. Not the television remote.
Not the quiet I need when I'm trying to run a trace on an encrypted server at eleven o'clock on a Sunday night while three other people exist loudly around me. I love my brothers, I’d kill for them, and hack anything for them.
But God, sometimes I wish I could have a space of my own, to think.
I mean, it’s not so much me having a girl over here, hell they’ve seen me leave a girl in the middle of the night because Cain calls me to do something, and then I have to explain where I’ve been.
I can't tell them the truth, so I have to lie, and that ends up with a slap, which my brothers have seen one too many times. Mason is the biggest manwhore I know. I don’t think there’s anything new I can do compared to that freak.
Being twins sometimes doesn’t help me when a girl thinks I’m him and I get the fucking slap he deserves.
I learned then that I needed something to differentiate us from each other.
I don’t need to wear glasses, but it’s enough to make us look slightly different and it means I don’t get slapped for something he did or didn’t do.
"You're doing that thing with your face again," I hear Mason say.
I don't look up from my laptop. "I have a face, Mason. It does things. That's how faces work."
"The ‘delete-all-of-you’ thing." That’s another thing about having a twin: the man knows everything about me. He practically knows what I’m thinking before I even say it, or if I’m thinking about a girl who looks interesting, the fucker always knows.
I mean, I know it about him too, but it gets annoying.
"That's just my face,” I snap at him.
"So, you're always thinking about deleting us?" Mason jokes.
"Baseline setting, yeah."
Declan snorts from the armchair. Trixie doesn't look up from her sketchbook, but the corner of her mouth twitches, which from Trixie is essentially a standing ovation. One day she’s going to have a full conversation with us; I just have no idea when that day will happen.
Hayden’s on the floor with his back against the sofa, Olivia's legs draped across his lap, and he's been doing that thing for the last forty minutes where he watches the front door every time a shadow passes the window. He has no idea he's doing it. Olivia definitely does. She keeps glancing sideways. I have no idea why he’s doing it; we aren’t in any danger, so I have no idea what he’s watching out for.
I look back at my screen and get back to doing anything fun to pass the time. Until Cain wants to stop being so fucking stubborn and let us back into the family business, I can get back to what I do best.
"Last night of freedom, gentlemen." Mason raises his bottle at the ceiling like he's making a toast at a state dinner. "And lady," he adds, because Trixie is already looking at him with one eyebrow up. "Tomorrow it all begins. A brand new college year. New campus energy. New…"
"New lectures I'm going to sleep through," I say.
"New opportunities to humiliate ourselves," Declan offers.
Trixie holds up her sketchbook. She's written speak for yourselves in black marker across the top of a half-finished drawing. Declan kisses the side of her head without looking away from the television.
Mason points his bottle at me with his full jury summons energy. "I want it on record," he starts. "That I’m predicting, formally predicting that Miles Crawford goes the entire first semester without speaking to a single girl who is not already in this room."
"I speak to girls." I look at him. I have no idea what he’s talking about.
"You speak near girls, never to them. Technically, while looking at a screen." Hayden chimes in with his thoughts. Since when has this turned into a gang-up on me night?
"I’m multitasking,” I tell them both.
"Avoidance." Mason can be a dick when he wants to be.
"Those aren't mutually exclusive." I don’t plan on settling down anytime soon. Declan got pinned down with Trixie senior year of high school, and Hayden finally got his girl. I’m not planning on anything just yet. I just want to have some fun first.
"Name one girl," Mason says. "One, from last year, who you actually spoke to on purpose."
I open my mouth.
"On purpose, Miles. Not because she asked you for directions or you needed to borrow a pen."
I close my mouth.
Declan is full on laughing now, trying to hide it behind his fist. He’s failing.
Okay, maybe I don’t really talk to girls that much, but I’ve never had an empty bed, and as far as I’m concerned that’s all that matters.
"This is a hate crime," I say.
"This is an intervention." Mason gestures broadly at the room. "We're all here. We all love you. But you’re a dating disaster."
"Hayden doesn't think I'm a disaster."
"Hayden is on the floor cuddling his girlfriend and hasn't heard a word we've said for twenty minutes.
" Mason points out, and I want to punch him in the face. Maybe I can and say it was an accident. I mean no one is really going to say anything about punching Mason. We’ve all thought about it at least once a day.
Hayden still doesn't look up. "I can hear everything." He takes a bite of his pizza.
"And?" Mason says.
"And nothing. Miles is fine." He turns to Mason. "You're deflecting."
"I'm not deflecting, I'm observing…"
"You've been observing since August. Which is interesting, Mason, because I don't actually remember you setting the world on fire last year either; you spent more time on the sixth floor than anywhere else."
Mason opens his mouth.
"Wait, I'm trying to remember." Declan taps his chin. "There was that girl from the law building. What was her name?"
"We're not doing this." Mason quickly snaps at Declan which makes me laugh.
"Katie. No… Kelly."
"We are genuinely not doing this." Mason tries to fight everyone now that the table has turned on him.
"She lasted what, two weeks?"
"One week," I say.
Mason points at me. "You stay out of it."
"Three days," Hayden says, still not looking up.
"It was a mutual…" Mason starts.
Trixie holds up the sketchbook. She's written, she blocked you.
The room absolutely loses it. Mason sits back and drags a hand down his face, and for a second, he looks like he's going to argue but doesn’t. He takes a long drink of his beer instead, shaking his head slowly.
"I hate all of you," he says.
"No, you don't," Declan says.
There’s a beat and then Mason looks at the ceiling.
"No," he says. "I don't."
That’s the thing about us: we can say things over and over again; we can make each other feel like shit, but we will always know, no matter what, that the other is joking.
***
The campus on the first day back is exactly what I expected and somehow still worse. It's the freshers that do it. You can spot them instantly: they look like they are trying too hard and don’t know where anything is. They also walk in groups of four and five like there's safety in numbers.
"Don't," Mason says beside me.
I look at him. "I didn't say anything." Asshole.
"You were about to." He doesn't even glance at me, he just keeps walking with his hands in his pockets like he owns the sidewalk. We’ve been here long enough, and a lot of students know who we are and stay away from us, while others like to be around us.
"I was about to get my class schedule."
"You were about to say something about the lanyards."
I look back at the group ahead of us. There are three of them. Their lanyards are swinging, and one of them has their campus map unfolded to full size.
"They're wearing lanyards, Mason."
Mason shoulders through the main doors and I follow him into the building, which is somehow louder inside than it was outside.
The administration corridor is already backed up.
There’s a long, loose queue of students clutching acceptance letters and laptop bags, shuffling forward like penguins in a queue toward the timetable desk at the far end.
The woman behind the desk looks like someone who’s already made peace with her day being terrible, which makes me smile.
I join the back of the queue. Mason slots in beside me. A guy directly in front of us drops his entire folder and every single page fans out across the floor in different directions like confetti at the world's most stressful party.
He makes a sound like he's been personally wounded.
I crouch down and help him collect them, stacking pages roughly back into order. He takes them with both hands, and his ears turn pink.
"Fresher?" I ask.
He looks about sixteen. "Is it that obvious?"
"Little bit." I hand back the last page. "It gets better."
He looks around at the queue, the noise, and the woman at the desk who is now dealing with someone arguing about a timetable clash with the energy of a person who’s been personally wronged by God. "Does it?"
I don’t answer him, because I have a feeling this guy in front of me isn’t a student who will have the same amount of fun I have. He seems like he’ll be in his dorm studying and stressing his whole college life.
We both look around and I shake my head.
"Or," I say, turning to Mason. "I could just hack the system and pull our timetables right now."
Mason turns to look at me slowly and I press my lips together to stop myself smiling. The expression on his face is the one he gets when an idea is put forward which he didn't think of first and isn't sure whether to be annoyed about that.
"How long would that take?"
I pull out my phone. "Thirty seconds. Maybe less. Their admin system is embarrassingly basic. I looked at it last year for something else and nearly felt sorry for them."
Mason looks around and the new students and smiles. "Do it," he says.
"I'm not actually going to do it."
He closes his eyes briefly. "Miles."
"I'd leave fingerprints all over their server. It's not worth it for a timetable."
"Then why did you suggest it?"
"To see how fast you'd say yes." I pocket my phone, laughing. "Very fast, for the record, barely a pause."
Mason turns back to the queue with the expression of a man exercising enormous patience. "You're genuinely the most irritating person I know."
"We live with Declan."
Mason sighs. "Second most irritating then."
Somewhere near the front, someone is having a full administrative crisis involving what sounds like a double-booked seminar, and the woman behind the desk has the look of someone mentally composing her resignation letter in real time.
"Although," Mason says, after a moment.
I glance at him.
He has his thinking face on. The one that means something mildly unreasonable is coming. "If you were going to hack the system…"
"I'm not."
"Hypothetically."
"Mason."
"You could pull the full intake list." He keeps his voice low, conversational, like he's discussing the weather. "New students. Names, courses, campus addresses." A pause. "Photos from their registration files."
I look at him, and he looks back at me with complete innocence. The man has no limits to finding pussy to fuck. I mean, it’s not the worst idea he’s come up with.
"You want me to illegally access the university's student database," I say, "so that you can browse the new intake like a catalogue." My words make him laugh, and I can’t help laughing myself. It’s actually the best idea he’s ever had.
"I want you to illegally access the university's student database," he says. "So that we can browse the new intake like a catalogue. This is a shared endeavor."
"It is absolutely not a shared endeavor."
Mason looks at me.
I look at the queue, before replying to him.
"It's a terrible idea.”
"Absolutely," Mason agrees.
A pause.
"Their registration system pulls a photo on intake," I say, keeping my voice completely neutral.
Mason says nothing. He’s very good at saying nothing.
The queue moves approximately one person forward. The woman at the desk has now called a second colleague over to help with whatever crisis is unfolding at the front.
"Reconnaissance," Mason says quietly.
"Don't push it."
I pull out my phone and open a browser. I have to navigate three layers deep into a back channel I found last year when I was looking for something else entirely and clocked how badly protected the university's admin system was. Cain would physically wince if I described how unprotected it is.
It takes me thirty seconds, maybe less.
The full intake list sits on my screen. Names, courses, and photos. Every new face on campus this year, is right there, before any of them have any idea I exist.
I tilt the phone slightly so Mason can see.
He looks at it for a long moment. Then he exhales through his nose slowly. "I take back everything I said about you this morning."
"You said I was reasonably good-looking."
"I meant it as a compliment."
"It wasn't, and we’re identical twins, you idiot.”
I'm already scrolling, not particularly looking for anything specific, just looking. The faces and names move past under my thumb, the new intake sorting itself into types the way people always do when you see enough of them. The ones who came here to disappear. The ones who came here to be found.
Then I stop scrolling.
I don't decide to stop. My thumb just, stops.
The photo is a registration shot, the ones nobody looks good in, flat lighting, a plain background and the mild expression of someone who didn't know what to do with their face when the camera pointed at them. It should be unremarkable. Every photo on this list is unremarkable.
This one isn't.
She's not doing anything. She's just looking at the camera. But there's something in her face, some quality I don't have an immediate word for that makes me feel like she is looking back at me.
Sadie.
I stare at her name for longer than I should, clicking on her profile to see which course she is taking, her hometown, everything the college has for her.
I read all of it, and I remember it all.
I look at the photo again.
She's a freshman. She doesn't know this campus yet, doesn't know where anything is, is probably right now in a dormitory room working out which way is north. She doesn't know my name; she doesn't even know I exist.
By the end of the week, I'll know everything about her.
I lock my phone.
"You've gone quiet," Mason says.
"I'm always quiet."
"A different quiet." He glances at me sideways. "Find something interesting?"
I pocket my phone.
"No," I say.
And that is the first lie I tell him about Sadie. I know it won't be the last.