Chapter 129: Clingy Twin

Chapter 129: Clingy Twin CLARK POV: Okay, so I wasn’t really worried about Clare. Rather, I pitied Jason. Clare’s a big girl—and more importantly, she’s insane. That’s why she got to deal with the jerkass who played her, while I stuck to what I’m good at: keeping our academic lives from going up in flames. It’s a perfect twin combo—she throws the punches, I solve the equations. Thirty minutes later, after I’d iced my black eye and disinfected my lip, I heard it—the distant, unmistakable roar of her bike. I knew the sound by heart, and I also knew that she always killed the engine a street away and pushed it the rest of the way so Mom wouldn’t wake up. Especially today, since Dad was out on a business trip and Mom had gone to bed early, mumbling something about a "very important event" tomorrow. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, her bedroom door creaked open. She stepped inside like some kind of victorious warrior—bruised knuckles, scraped palms, and holding what remained of her baseball bat, which now looked more like firewood than a sporting tool. I stared at the broken bat, then at her. "Tell me he’s alive," I said, not even sure if I wanted to know the truth. She shrugged. "He won’t be playing football in the next match." "Clare..." I groaned, rubbing my temples. "Did anyone see you?" She plopped down beside me, looking all pleased with herself like she’d just run an errand, not committed probable assault. "If anyone asks, you were punching me for ratting you out," I said quickly, already moving into crisis control mode. "Mom already knows we’re not on speaking terms." Clare smiled that devilish smile of hers. "Come on, Clark. Who would believe a small, petite, innocent girl like me could take down a whole football player?" She even fluttered her lashes. That was her usual defense—the innocent act. It worked on most adults. Teachers, counselors, even a few cops, once. But it was getting old. She was racking up too many close calls. One day, the innocent act wouldn’t cut it. "Where did you find him?" I asked, ignoring her fake sweet smile. Her cheerfulness meant she wasn’t mad at me anymore, so I could at least breathe easy about that. "Why?" she replied as she reached over and gave me her bruised fists. Trust Clare to throw punches with no regard for the aftermath. Her knuckles were red, slightly swollen, and definitely sore. "I need to know if I have to delete CCTV footage. You know, do the usual cleanup." She chuckled, the way she always did when she thought I was being overly dramatic. "What about the witnesses, genius? Gonna wipe their memories too?" "You’re joking, right? Please tell me you cornered him in some dark, quiet alley, or at least a blind spot." Her smirk didn’t help my nerves. "Relax. I had my helmet on." "Helm—wait... You were in gear?!" "I always wear my helmet," she said proudly, like she deserved a trophy for basic safety. "And for your information, it was outside Bull’s Eye Club." I choked. "Bull’s Eye? Clare, that place has more security cameras than a bank! It’s like assaulting someone in Times Square!" "Geez, Clark, calm down. I was careful. I didn’t start the fight—I finished it." "You didn’t have to start anything at all!" "He made me look like an idiot." I sighed, grabbing the first aid kit and gently applying disinfectant to her knuckles. She winced but didn’t pull away. We both fell quiet for a second. "Okay," I muttered. "I’ll find the footage. I’ll tamper with it. I’ll... I don’t know, give you a manly silhouette or something." She laughed. And just like that, the cold war between us ended. All the tension, all the awkward silence, the slammed doors and ignored texts—it was gone. Replaced by something familiar. Something that was just... us. "Guess Jason kissing someone else wasn’t such a bad idea after all," I said, trying not to smile too obviously. She leaned back against the wall and shrugged, satisfied. "Guess not." I shook my head. Clare might be reckless and impulsive, but she was my reckless and impulsive. And for all her chaos, I’d still have her back. Always. Even if that meant cleaning up her messes from behind a computer screen. Again. The only problem with Clare is that once we patch things up, she becomes clingy. Not the regular kind of clingy either—the full-on shadow-you-everywhere kind. Like, annoyingly, unnecessarily, in-your-personal-space clingy. It’s her weird way of showing affection, I guess. And trust me, after being in a cold war with her for a couple days, I should have expected it. So, after patching up her bruised knuckles and getting over the whole Jason situation, I left her in her room with the peace-offering snacks I brought—ice cream, her favorite biscuits—and went back to my space. I had work to do anyway. Namely, hacking into a public CCTV feed and subtly tweaking it to give Clare a manly outline, just in case anyone decided to investigate what went down outside Bull’s Eye Club. You know. Just twin things. I figured she’d retreat to bed and maybe sleep off the fury that had driven her to beat Jason like a piñata. Nope. Ten minutes in, I was deep into code—trying to shift pixels without flagging any security protocols—when the door creaked open behind me. I didn’t need to turn around. I knew it was her. "Seriously?" I asked, not looking up. She walked in with zero shame, holding a snack in one hand and her big, worn-out pillow in the other—the one she swears gives her ’sweet dreams’. It’s this old, lumpy thing with a faded cartoon on it that she’s had since we were like, six. It’s got faded stars on it and a faint lavender scent from some spray she uses. A pillow that looks like it survived the apocalypse. And she treats it like a VIP guest. And yes, this was her way of announcing a sleepover. Yup. That’s Clare for you. "I brought cookies," she said like she was doing me a favor. Then plopped herself right on my bed like she owned the place. I sighed. "You’re invading my sanctuary." She shrugged and took a loud bite of her cookie. "Your sanctuary has better Wi-Fi." "It’s the same Wi-Fi, Clare. We live in the same house." "Still feels faster in here." I rolled my eyes and went back to my keyboard. This was what I meant when I said she gets clingy. Not just physical space—she needs emotional reassurance too, even if she’ll never say it out loud. After a fight, even a short one, she kind of sticks to me like Velcro for a few days. Sleeps in my room, follows me around like a lost puppy, and insists on sharing snacks I didn’t ask for. And honestly? I complain. A lot. But... I don’t really mind. I think part of her is scared that one day I’ll just stop patching things up, stop chasing after her, stop cleaning up the messes. She’d never admit it, but I think she needs that constant proof that someone’s always got her back—even when she’s a chaotic menace., I glanced at her from the corner of my eye as I continue working on the CCTV footage. She flopped onto my bed like she owned the place, stretching out dramatically and munching her snack like we were watching a late-night movie instead of trying to cover up a borderline felony. I sighed again. "You know this is my room, right?" She looked at me innocently. "I thought we were cool now?" "We’re cool. But cool doesn’t mean you take over my bed and eat chips on it." "These aren’t chips. They’re crackers," she said with a mouth full, like that somehow justified the crumbs I could already see scattering on my blanket. I turned my attention back to the screen. My current project? Reworking the CCTV footage from outside Bull’s Eye Club. The goal was to give her a manly silhouette and enough digital ambiguity that, in case anything came up, no one would pin the beatdown on "a petite girl with a bat and rage issues." It wasn’t easy. The footage was grainy, the angle sucked, and it was hard to make out details—but I had my tricks. I started overlaying a taller, bulkier frame over hers. The helmet helped. It always did. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her shift and curl up with her pillow, still watching me with those half-lidded, mischievous eyes. "Seriously though," I said, not looking away from the monitor. "Don’t you think this whole thing is getting... I don’t know—risky? One day you’re gonna push too far, and no amount of genius-level hacking is gonna save you." She didn’t answer at first, and for a moment, I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep. Then her voice came, softer this time. "He deserved it." "I’m not saying he didn’t," I replied quickly. "I’m just saying maybe we should think things through before swinging baseball bats at people." Another pause. Then she mumbled, "You had a black eye, Clark." I stopped typing for a second. That was it, wasn’t it? I had walked in with a busted lip and a swollen eye, and that had flipped her switch. Clare wasn’t big on words. But her fists? They spoke volumes. "Yeah, well," I said, returning to the keyboard. "Still not a good reason to catch a criminal record." "I wore my helmet." "Not the point." She chuckled, pulling the blanket over herself like she hadn’t just gone full vigilante half an hour ago. "You worry too much." "And you don’t worry at all." "That’s why we work, bro," she said with a yawn, already halfway to dreamland. "You carry the brain, I carry the bat." I rolled my eyes, but I smiled too. That was Clare. She was impulsive, reckless, and had the emotional range of a grenade—but she was also fiercely loyal. And weirdly adorable when she was curled up with her apocalypse pillow and drooling on my sheets. As she drifted off, I kept working on the footage. She might drive me insane, but I’d always cover for her. Because underneath all the chaos, that was our silent promise: I keep her out of jail, she keeps me from becoming a boring genius with no life. Fair trade, right? Most siblings argue over remotes and who ate the last slice of pizza. We deal with blackmail-level crime scenes. I finally turned to look at her. "At least tell me you washed your hands before sticking them in the chips bag." She gave me a mischievous grin, wiped her hands on her pants, and said, "Define ’washed’." God help me.