Average / kiran wheeler

Average

Our story begins with Mrs. Ellie Smith standing on the front stoop of her perfectly average house, which was surrounded by other perfectly average houses, creating an overwhelmingly average cul-de-sac in a repressively average neighborhood.

Ellie’s plain brown eyes were focused on something at the end of the court: a garishly yellow school bus, which had paused to regurgitate high schoolers onto the street. Even from this distance, it was easy for Ellie to tell which two kids belonged to her; Jack and Julia emerged from the bus walking right beside each other, their steps equidistant and perfectly timed, like a metronome.

Jack and Julia were twins, as anyone could see, though they were two different people, which was easy to forget. They had the same dark brown hair, lean frames, and, most extraordinary of all, light gray eyes, like sunlight filtered through a glass of water, or a chunk of quartz crystal. “How beautiful!” everyone always said. “Your kids are so lucky to have such incredible eyes!” Ellie would always smile politely and thank them, but she secretly hated her children’s eyes for the curious stares they elicited.

No one asked Jack and Julia what they thought of their eyes. Although, looking back on it, it’s perfectly possible that someone had indeed asked them, and had only received blank gray stares in response.

“Come on,” Ellie muttered, waving her hand in the universal motion for hurry up, but she knew it was useless. Jack and Julia didn’t hurry unless they wanted to; they didn’t do anything unless they wanted to.

They two of them reached the plain blue front door of their house and stepped inside to the foyer when they were hit with the sharp smell of cleaning products, different from the usual scent of nothing.

“Clorox,” Jack said immediately. “Mom’s been cleaning.”

“Someone important is coming to dinner,” agreed Julia.

Ellie had indeed been cleaning for more than usual; someone important was coming to dinner. “Someone important is coming for dinner,” she told her children, but, of course, they knew that already.

The twins dropped their identical backpacks beside the table, mechanically ate more food than an average person would have thought humanly possible, and

began on their homework. It really should’ve taken them a few minutes, but Jack and Julia knew that it took their peers hours, so they dragged it out. For them, it was painful. For Ellie, it was blissful.

At seven o’clock on the dot, the garage door opened with a growl, and Peter Smith walked into the kitchen. He placed his leather briefcase on the floor beside Jack’s plain black backpack. “Hello, love,” he greeted his wife, who was standing in front of the stove, stirring something that looked his children had identified as plain white rice. He greeted his kids: “Hello, Jack. Hello, Julia.”

“Rough day at work, Dad?” Julia asked. “I can tell that you didn’t get any of the doughnuts that you were eyeing in the break room.”

Jack’s cold gray eyes zoomed in on a spot of ink on Peter’s sleeve. “Oh, your pen exploded,” he noted, “and someone else was assigned to the project you wanted. Rough day indeed.”

Peter gave a tired sigh and turned away. He was used to receiving this type of reaction from his kids. It had been irritating at first, but he’d grown more accustomed to their oddness with time.

“When will our guest be here?” Peter asked his wife, removing his jacket and placing it on the back of his chair. Ellie placed the dish of rice on the table, which was set with everything in preparation for a pleasant, if plain, dinner.

“Any minute,” she said, smoothing down her hair as there was a staccato knock on the door.

Behind the door was a woman who was severe in every way: her eyes were a severe blue, staring severely at Ellie above severe, sharp cheekbones, her graystreaked hair pulled back into a severe bun. “Hello, Elliott,” she said.

“Pleasure to see you again.”

Ellie cringed. “Please, call me Ellie,” she replied, ushering the woman into the house. “Elliott is a boy’s name.”

“It’s an unusual name,” the woman noted.

“Exactly.”

The woman nodded and walked into the house, her severe high heels making severe sounds as they clicked against the hardwood floor. “Hello, twins,” she said, eyeing Jack and Julia with a cool, appraising stare. They returned it. “My,

how you’ve grown since I last saw you.” The woman made a breathy sound that the twins assumed was supposed to be a laugh. “Of course, that was sixteen years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Dr. Fiona Amber Waxwell,” Julia said, her voice completely neutral.

“PhDs in human and animal genetics and pathology, along with biological sciences.”

“Quite obsessed with her work,” Jack replied. “She’s single, never married. Lives alone, without so much as a cat. No friends; too busy with work, and her little ‘side projects.’”

“Us.”

“Of course,” Jack said, his shocking eyes never wavering from the doctor’s clever ones.

“Hm,” Dr. Waxwell said to Ellie and Peter, “I see what you meant about their oddness. You know, when I heard about your request, Ellie, I thought that there might be some repercussions. I mean, most parents ask for their children to be extraordinary, not painfully average.”

“I’ve had enough of the extraordinary for a lifetime,” Ellie replied. “Please, shall we sit?” She gestured towards the table, though Dr. Waxwell stared at the twins for another long moment before taking her seat.

“Peas?” asked Peter, handing the dish over to Fiona, who scooped some onto her plate and then handed it over to Julia, who dumped the rest of the peas onto her own plate and began shoveling them in.

The doctor stared for a moment before she blinked out of her stupor. “Are you doing well in school, Jack? Julia?”

Peter intercepted the question with the ease of the long-practiced. “They do just fine in school. Very average.”

“Yes, very average,” agreed Ellie.

“Very average,” repeated the doctor. “You two must be pleased.”

The twins’ parents looked at their children with identical expressions of affectionate exasperation on their average faces. “It hasn’t been perfect,” Ellie began cautiously, watching Jack shovel an chicken into his mouth as Julia looked on

with approval, a small smirk playing about her lips, “but we’ve gotten more than we bargained for.”

“You know,” said the doctor, “what you wanted, complete mediocrity, it’s impossible.” She fixed her flat eyes on Jack, who stared back, unblinking. She looked away. “Something has to give. I’m surprised the twins are even like this, to tell you the truth. Usually this sort of ordinariness implodes on itself to create something entirely extraordinary.”

“Listen to that. A veritable genius,” Julia said, flippancy coloring her voice.

“Not genius enough to ever truly figure it out,” Jack noted, looking back at his parents with the same expression of affectionate exasperation as they’d bestowed upon him just minutes earlier.

Fiona Waxwell continued to stare at the two of them with fascination. “Do you two know anything about something like what I’m talking about?” Julia drank her milk.

“Have you two had experiences that might attest to something odd? Surprising? Perpetually out of the ordinary?”

Jack ate his rice.

“I don’t know why you even bother,” Ellie told the doctor, shaking her head dejectedly. “They haven’t said a word their entire lives. Why would they answer you now?”