How the twins were (finally) allowed to skidoo to school

I probably don’t have to tell you that the Big Top Talent Time Tween Challenge Trophy Cup was the final contest for the tween circuit season, and the twins had won it every year that they had competed. This was the last year they were eligible, and if they won it meant they would be the only act ever to win every year that they competed. In the 1970s a guy had won four times, but he’d gone on to the Olympics or something. So there was quite a lot of excitement about the upcoming show, and the potential record the twins would set. It wouldn’t have meant very much to the twins, because no one had ever beat them on the tween circuit until that very year.  So then you can see why the newspaper review bothered them so much.

The twins looked at each other, as if trying to read one another’s thoughts. 

This topic brought up uncomfortable feelings that the twins had never before experienced. It felt a little like the shame you might feel from tripping in public. It also felt like that dread when you forgot a class assignment was due and everyone else begins taking out their papers and your mouth goes dry and your mind races because the teacher is about to call you out to read something and you have to admit to failure. The twins didn’t quite know what to do about this feeling except to call it by name. The name of their shame and dread was Debbie Willard.

Debbie Willard’s family had moved to Carrick just that year and she had hit the tween circuit like a locomotive. Her dad was an anthropologist or something, and the family had been living, for many years, in Polynesia. It was there that Debbie had learned the dances that she was now using to wow the crowds of Carrick and environs. “Polynesian Fancy Dance” the twins, and some others on the tween circuit, called it disparagingly.

But in fact no one had ever seen anything quite like it before, and truth be told, everyone loved the colour, the cheer, and the flavour of the exotic that Debbie brought to the stage. Her and the twins had been in a kind of cold war détente for tween circuit supremacy for the entire season, and now coming up to Sunday and Big Top Talent Time they were neck and neck for the front runner position. 

The twins had never lost anything before, and they didn't quite know what to make of it. All they knew was that their once perfect lives had been thrown into a kind of disarray by Debbie Willard and everything she represented. 

The twins looked at their parents with their most serious faces, wiling them to see the turmoil they felt in their hearts. Turmoil their parents could solve with just one word. The word yes.

Their parents conferred and in the end decided that as long as they promised not to fight over who got to drive, then they could take the skidoo to school in the winter, because it was, after all, on the other side of town.  So the twins just had to focus on the upcoming Big Top Talent Time Tween Challenge Trophy Cup, and then fix their class schedules, and life would go back to being perfect. 

How the twins weren't even in high school yet and it was already causing problems

The twins spoke softly as they got prepared for an important performance in Kitchener Ontario. Only a curtain separated them from masses of their fans in the out door arena in Victoria Park. On the stage, a girl was tap dancing to Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s get Physical”.

Sunshine and Rain looked at each other and smiled. They nodded in sync as the tap dancer finished and it was their turn. 

They stepped onto the stage to the applause of the crowd. They walked to the center of the stage, both of their hands a little sweaty in the others’. Rain began her drone, but for the first time ever Sunshine wasn’t sure which song her twin had in mind. She looked at her, but Rain was lost in the power of the music. Sunshine mentally flipped a coin between the Ballad of Lugh Mcfee and Amazing Grace, she went with Amazing Grace and suddenly their two voices were blending harmoniously into musical perfection and the moment of anxiety passed. 

Afterwards, they were interviewed by the paper.

The twins loved being interviewed, but boy were surprised when they saw the paper the next day.

How the twins were gracious and never let their fame go to their heads

After their fame was established, they were requested to do many performances. They were in demand, and began to tour on the tween competition circuit where they were considered the sure-fire winners of the ultimate tween prize—the Tween Talent Time Trophy Cup!

 Around town the other kids talked about nothing except Rain and Sunshine’s fame. Rain, being 5 minutes younger than her sister and therefore more sensitive, wanted to make sure that the other kids never felt that her and her sister were looking down on them.

At their junior high school the twins answered everyone’s questions honestly and with the same professionalism they brought to the stage.

Everyone was picking classes for high school and was very excited. The twins were especially excited about the music classes they could do, and drama which could help them improve their performances. The only strange thing was that Rain wanted to take art and Sunshine didn’t.

And on that note they settled things and they both took Outdoor Ed. To learn to canoe. See the twins had never been apart before and had never even tried to do anything on their own. Even if they were on opposite sides of the room it felt like standing naked with everyone staring at you. 

So both of them had been very anxious that, their first year of high school anyways, they took the same classes. Hence they were very surprised when they got their class schedules in the mail.