The Twinning Project by Robert Lipsyte

football season. When he asked Alessa about the school’s football team and she said the team was disbanded last year because there wasn’t enough interest, he felt let down.
    Eddie got something called a wrap with turkey and cheese inside. He remembered that Grandpa had given Tom a wrap for the slip trip. Back home, most kids brought their own sandwiches to school. Grandpa always packed Eddie monster sandwiches—roast beef, chicken, meat loaf—enough to share with Ronnie. Eddie would buy containers of milk and cupcakes for both of them.
    He followed Alessa to a table at the far corner of the cafeteria near the garbage barrels, which was interesting, because he could see what was going on at all the other tables. Back home, he sat with the team that was in season—football in fall, basketball in winter, and baseball in spring—usually in the middle of the cafeteria near the social kids and the politicians. The other kids watched
them.
    At Alessa’s table, Eddie was the only one wearing a shirt with a collar except for one freaky-looking boy who was wearing a black tuxedo and a black bow tie. He had black makeup around his eyes, which made him look like a raccoon. Eddie figured he was in a school play. Back home, he’d better be in a school play or he’d get beaten up for looking like that.
    Actually, most of the kids at his table would have gotten run out of his junior high school. There was a girl with green hair and a boy whose head was shaved except for the hairy letters RU1? on both sides. And their clothes were like costumes: funny plaids, torn pants, pants hanging real low. Back home, everybody dressed pretty much the same—skirts and blouses for the girls, chinos and checked shirts or blue button-downs for the boys.
    â€œThis is kooky,” whispered Eddie.
    Alessa nodded and sighed. She sighed a lot for a kid. Maybe she had trouble breathing. “I feel like we’re living in a reality show.”
    He almost had to bite his tongue so he wouldn’t ask her what a reality show was. Maybe a reality show was like a variety show. Like the
Ed Sullivan Show.
    Britzky, the kid with the bad forehead, was sitting at a table of jocks—but at the end, like he was the last man on the bench. Eddie had that on his Earth, too, where the worst jock bully was usually a guy who barely made the team, a guy who needed to show off so he could feel like part of the group.
Keep that in mind when you deal with Britzky,
he told himself.
    â€œYou really going to run for president, Tom?” asked the girl with green hair.
    Eddie shrugged. His mouth was full of the wrapped turkey and cheese, which he liked.
    â€œBetter lose those preppy duds,” said the kid with eye makeup. He was pointing at Eddie.
    â€œPreppy’s back,” said Alessa. “It’ll be a new look for a new Tom. A leader, not a troublemaker.”
    â€œWe need troublemakers,” said the green-haired girl. “Don’t you think, Tom?”
    Eddie had no idea what to say, so he said, “I really like your hair.” Lying was getting so easy, he thought.
    â€œGreen is for the environment,” she said. “If we don’t stand up for the environment, the corporations are going to wreck it, just to make money.”
    â€œI agree,” said Eddie. He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he wanted to start making friends. “We have to think of the whole planet, not just us.” Where had he heard that? Merlyn. The canned-goods drive for starving kids.
    There was a sudden silence at the table, and then everyone was smiling and trying to fist-bump him and telling him their names.
    â€œMy name’s Hannah,” said the green-haired girl, “and what you said is just so right on.”
    Alessa and Hannah got into a discussion about the class president election campaign. They talked about slogans and posters, which Eddie understood, and about podcasts and text blasts, which he