Race Across the Sky by Derek Sherman

casually as if they had known each other for years. Behind them, Kevin, Leigh, and Alice bustled around with dustpan and broom. Seventies reggae played from the old plastic boom box on the floor, as the sun streamed through the dusty windows.
    June’s voice fluttered through the air and landed on him like a kiss.
    â€œCaley, look. Your brother’s here.”
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    Shane looked different.
    His round face, his bright eyes, his short black hair were unchanged. But a new thin line stretched across his forehead like the impression left by a Halloween mask. The skin under his eyes seemed to have taken on a slight shadow.
    Shane stood up and Caleb hugged him; his body felt thick, like a good tree. But Caleb knew by the way he pulled away and stared that the feel of his own body had proven startling. Suddenly Caleb felt embarrassed, by his letter, his need, his body. He glanced nervously at June, but she did not seem to share his anxiousness; she was gazing at them both from the floor, her pale eyes wide and happy.
    â€œHow was your trip?” Caleb asked quietly.
    â€œEasy.”
    In truth, Shane was feeling a little shaky. His drive from the Denver airport had taken him along a harrowing mountain road, with a sheer drop just a few yards to his right. Initially, the lack of a guardrail had exhilarated him. But suddenly a sense of consequence washed over him, of leaving his unborn son fatherless, and Janelle a single mother, and he had felt a sharp and vicious fear. He had slowed to a cautious thirty-five miles an hour. By the time Shane arrived at the old wood house, he understood that something had left him on that road that would not be so easy to get back.
    When he found the isolated dirt driveway, the door had been opened by a thin woman with pale skin and an explosion of marigold freckles. Shane recognized the face of a hardcore athlete—a complete absence of body fat accentuated every muscle. Even her hair seemed poached, like a horse’s mane. Her lips were thin, her mouth small, and her nose had a tiny, turned-up way that made him think of money. But her eyes were enormous and they seemed to live completely apart from the hard face that encircled them. They were the eyes, he thought, of a softer soul.
    June had led Shane to the middle of the room and sat now on the wood floor with him. Through the windows he could see the bark of forest firs. People of all ages walked barefoot around them, sweeping the floor, leaving for and returning from runs. They came over and introduced themselves in a friendly manner that struck him as wholly genuine. One would never know, looking at them, what their bodies could accomplish.
    And then Caleb had walked in from the back of the house. Of course, Shane thought, he would not come through the door that he expected.
    Standing, Shane had to remind himself that this was his brother. Close up, his face was that of a much older man than he had seen in online photos of race winners. There were lines, his teeth had darkened, he seemed whittled down to his basic self. Bones and will.
    Suddenly, June announced, “I see it.”
    They both turned to her.
    â€œYou guys have the same mouths. That’s where you’re brothers.”
    Shane blinked.
Where they were brothers was in their shared fear of their father Fred playing endless Tony Bennett eight-tracks in the station wagon, in being guinea pigs for their mother’s sporadic attempts at starting a catering company, in their uncountable shared miles jogging as a family through the winding roads of Issaquah. Where they were brothers was in the fact that each of their molecules shared chemical proteins built from recombinant DNA that was 99.9 percent identical. It was a lot more, he wanted to tell her, than their mouths.
    â€œSo”—Shane spread his arms wide—“we’re having a