Peregrine Lyons, District Five

( N A M E ) Peregrine Mariphoxia Lyons
( N I C K N A M E S ) Pere
( A G E ) Fourteen
( G E N D E R ) Female
( D I S T R I C T / A R E A ) District Five

( H I S T O R Y )

There's an old saying about being "attached at the hip." I don't find it very funny. Papa used to joke about it when Lulah and I were little and back then we grinned and giggled with him, because we didn't know any better. Our house was so big we never had to leave it and so it wasn't until we started school that we saw what the world was really like on the other side of our windows. Other people's eyes didn't see us the same as our family did, didn't see us as their lovely daughters or siblings. Instead we were what made everyone take a step back and drop their eyes, because the "sharing is caring" lesson in kindergarten was never meant to apply to our bones.

We worked so hard, Lulah and I, to make them like us. Singing and dancing, we put on whirling shows until our curls swung out around us like tawny halos, and learned to play every instrument our family could afford — which was all of them. The other kids liked our music and found something worth watching in us when we smiled so bright, but sooner or later silence would always return to tap them on the shoulder and direct their eyes back to our more "unnatural" attributes.

They gave us new names that sound nothing like our real ones (Freak, Monster, Devilchild), said with voices that are the opposite of friendship, and they made me hate Lulah just a little whenever I'd lie awake at night because she was sound asleep and I couldn't move enough to get comfortable, for fear of waking her up. I started thinking to myself: Doesn't she feel it too? When my heart hurts, doesn't its thrum still echo in her veins?

( P E R S O N A L I T Y )

These kinds of thoughts make me feel like the most horrible of people whenever I quit my selfish mindset long enough to pay attention to Lulah's accompanying awkwardness. Of course she feels it too; isn't that the real reason it bothers me so much? That I'd be willing to sacrifice our literal connection, risking both our lives, just for the idea of having a moment that was purely and wholly mine — that tears Lulah apart more than any surgeon's scalpel ever could. I can't tell if I resent or pity her for that or if having those kinds of feelings toward my twin sister means I feel that way toward myself as well. When you're fused to your sister's body, unable to take so much as a step without her, people get confused as to whether they ought to treat you as two people or one. One and a half? Then which of us is the half and which is the whole? Lulah doesn't seem to think she'd be whole without me, but I —

I'm also confused about whether we're individuals or if we really are so inseparable that we're something less than two. I don't know what I am without Lulah, if I'm anything without her, and maybe that's really the worst of it. Would I bother to make music without her, to put so much effort into the way we present ourselves, always putting on a show? What if nothing we do is because of ourselves, but is all part of our effort to find acceptance in the world. There's something truly, inexplicably awful about being so uncertain as to who you are. There must be some piece of me that belongs solely to me, just one fragment that is all Peregrine and not one bit Tallulah. I want to find it. I'll die crazy if I go my entire life without anything to make me feel like I'm my own person.

Maybe I'm asking for the wrong thing; Lulah seems to think so. It's as though Lulah's convinced that she is the thing that belongs to me, that piece of us I'm meant to hold onto oh-so-tightly. If that's true though, then I've circled back around to defining myself by another person and not by myself. There's no such thing as being by myself. Yet, that certainly is what sets us apart: never being alone, always having a shoulder right there to lean my head on when I'm tired, someone to talk to in the dark of night when nightmares try to creep under the covers to snap at our toes. Even I can't deny that as exciting as the idea of being alone for once is... it's also utterly terrifying.

( A P P E A R A N C E )

Alone is just an idea, however, like a really difficult word whose definition refuses to stick quite right in my mind, making certain I always fail that question on my vocabulary tests. Only, Lulah always peeks at my quizzes — when you're joined at the hip to someone, they can't exactly separate you for that either — and corrects my answers when our teacher isn't looking. It's funny how teachers don't question how we so often give exactly the same answer, but I suppose since everything about us looks identical, then they assume our minds must be identical too. "Oh yes, the Lyons twins: brown eyes, curly brown hair, answer of B on question five."

The doctor's told us that even though the same blood circulates through both our bodies, we still have our own hearts, lungs, and stomachs. We are two, fully complete people. I have my very own set of arms and legs and Tallulah has hers; we can't control each other, we just work together. That's all. That's why I can frown while she smiles or laugh as she cries. We are different, even if it's not a difference other people can see. Just because we appear to have the same thin lips and stubby noses, it doesn't mean we can't use them differently — enjoying tastes and smells that the other hates. It really shouldn't be so hard to understand. We have our own minds, with separate, sometimes opposing, thoughts, even if sometimes we feel like we know exactly what the other is thinking.

We're different.

I'm different.



( C O D E W O R D ) Odair
( F A C E C L A I M ) Daisy Hilton

( C O M M E N T S / O T H E R )

The sister of Zion, Seville, Denali, Rio, and Tallulah Lyons. Also prolly some more Lyons, because I have ALL THE MUSE for this family.

Conjoined at the hip to Tallulah — Peregrine is their left side. They share blood circulation, but no major organs.

( O T H E R ) 2A2A42
( O T H E R S P E A K I N G / T A L L U L A H ) 372E3A
( T E X T ) 603A45
( T H I N K I N G ) 7E433E
( S P E A K I N G ) 883735