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Chapter Five: Duelling Duo

It was finally the boys’ first day of school. The day began with the synchronized ticking of a clock—a morning routine Rosemary had executed with military precision. From the perfectly pressed uniforms to the carefully packed lunches, every detail was accounted for. However, even the most rigorous plans can be thwarted by a simple administrative oversight.

The tension didn’t mount until they arrived at the school’s bustling entrance. Rosemary led the boys toward the main bulletin board where the class lists were posted, her hand resting protectively on Joshua’s shoulder. As she scanned the neatly typed columns, her heart sank.

“Joshua Ascott… Room 102,” she whispered to herself, her finger trailing down the page. Then, her eyes shifted to the second list. “Caleb Ascott… Room 105.”

Rosemary processed the twins’ different room numbers on the bulletin board before her protective instincts overrode her surprise. To her, this wasn’t just a clerical error; it was an organizational failure that threatened her sons’ first foray into the outside world. They were a unit, a “double-barrelled” force, and she had no intention of letting a bureaucracy split them apart.

She immediately set about “correcting” the situation with the same efficiency she applied to a bug in a software program. Ignoring the flow of other parents, she marched the boys straight to the administrative wing.

“I need to speak with the principal immediately,” Rosemary pronounced, her voice landing with the heavy, resonant thud of a judge’s gavel as she addressed the receptionist.

Within minutes, she was ushered into the principal’s office. A firm but polite discussion followed, though Rosemary made it clear that “polite” did not mean “flexible.”

“Separating them now, without warning, is entirely inappropriate for their development,” Rosemary delivered the sentence with a terrifyingly quiet composure, her eyes locked onto the principal’s. “They are each other’s support system. They stay in the same classroom, or they don’t stay at all.”

Faced with Rosemary’s unyielding finality, the principal relented. The matter was settled: Joshua and Caleb were reassigned to the same class under the supervision of Mrs. Loretta Green.

However, Rosemary was nothing if not pragmatic. She recognized that placing two identical boys in one room was a recipe for chaos for the staff. To assist the already harried teachers in telling them apart, she reached into her bag and revealed her final masterstroke. She had anticipated the confusion weeks ago and had embroidered their names in bright red thread across their white shirt pockets.

“Joshua is the one with the blemish on his temple,” she explained to Mrs. Green, “but if he’s moving too fast to see it, just look at the pocket.”

With the correction complete and the visual aid provided, Rosemary finally felt the situation was under her control.

With the administrative battle won and the boys finally settled into the same room, the time came for Rosemary to make her exit.

In a sudden, synchronized shift, the normally well-behaved boys launched into a performance worthy of an Oscar. The transition was jarring; Joshua’s face crumpled first, followed instantly by Caleb’s, as if they were operating on the same emotional circuit. They lunged forward, their small hands gripping the fabric of Rosemary’s professional skirt with a desperate, white-knuckled intensity.

They wailed as if she weren’t merely walking to the parking lot, but abandoning them to some trackless, predator-filled wilderness.

Rosemary felt the collective gaze of the other parents and the sympathetic wince of Mrs. Green, the teacher. Her heart gave a painful throb—the “Rose” in her wanted to scoop them up and retreat to the safety of their living room—but the “Princess” knew that to yield now would be a defeat for their future.

She knelt, gently but firmly prying their fingers from her clothes so she could look them in the eye.

“Listen to me,” Rosemary delivered the sentence with a terrifyingly quiet composure, her words as sharp as a winter frost, yet tempered by a mother’s hidden ache. “You are not being abandoned. You are Ascotts, and this is your training. You will go in there, you will look after each other, and I will be at this exact door the moment the bell rings this afternoon.”

She stood up, her face a mask of calm resolve that gave no hint of the guilt churning in her stomach. With a final, encouraging nod to Mrs. Green, she turned and walked away. She didn’t look back, even as their cries echoed down the hallway. She needed to “high-tail it” to the car, where she could finally take a trembling breath before heading to the orderly, predictable world of Luxor IT Designs.

The first week of school was relatively quiet until “The Incident.”

The twins’ reputation for being “Terrible” was cemented during their first month of school, sparked by a boy named Jacob. He was a head taller than the twins and had already established himself as the playground’s self-appointed tax collector.

The conflict erupted when Jacob cornered Caleb near the lockers, his hand darting out to snatch Caleb’s lunch bag. It was a tactical error. Jacob had assumed he was dealing with a solitary target; he hadn’t accounted for the fact that Joshua was never more than ten feet away.

Before Jacob could even tuck the stolen lunch under his arm, the twins unleashed an uncoordinated but relentless whirlwind of four fists. They attacked with a synchronized fury that left Jacob completely overwhelmed. Joshua and Caleb worked in a blur of lefts and rights, a “double-barrelled” assault for which the bully had no defence. To the onlookers, it looked less like a playground scuffle and more like a swarm of bees.

The melee was short-lived. A teacher intervened, and all three boys—Jacob, tearful and the twins defiant—were promptly marched to the principal’s office.

Rosemary received the call at Luxor IT Designs. When she arrived at the school, her heels clicked with a lethal cadence against the linoleum floors. In the office, the principal explained that because all three had been involved in the physical altercation, all three would receive equal punishments: a week of lost recess.

“I understand the policy regarding fisticuffs,” Rosemary pronounced, her voice landing with the heavy, resonant thud of a judge’s gavel as she looked from the principal to the bruised Jacob. “However, I trust it is also understood that my sons were defending their property from a thief.”

She didn’t argue the punishment—she was too disciplined for that—but she fixed Jacob with a look so chillingly objective that the boy shrank back into his chair. As they left the office, the message was clear to every student watching in the hallway: the Ascott twins were not to be trifled with, and their mother was not a woman to be crossed.

Two weeks later, the school sent its first official complaint. The boys had discovered that many of their classmates were squeamish about insects and reptiles. Seizing the opportunity, they caught three lizards at home and smuggled them into the classroom. When their teacher, Mrs. Loretta Green, stepped out to the library, the boys released their “dragons.”

The classroom descended into anarchy. Most of the girls were screaming and standing on their desks, while many of the boys found the spectacle hilarious. The resulting cacophony disturbed several neighbouring classes.

Rosemary was furious at their irresponsible behaviour, but the reaction at home was mixed.

“Oh, Rose, leave them be,” Cally murmured with an indulgent chuckle, her eyes twinkling with a mix of mischief and maternal warmth. “Boys will be boys.”

Bruce and Timothy, however, had a good chuckle, finding the reptilian raid quite witty. The boys offered a sheepish apology, though secretly, they felt the chaos had been well worth the trouble.

The twins’ penchant for mischief reached a peak the following Saturday. While out shopping, Caleb spotted a toy store in the arcade while Rosemary was busy haggling over the price of a skirt. The boys ducked inside to scrutinize the inventory.

“Check this out,” Joshua hissed in a low, conspiratorial rasp, his eyes widening with devious excitement as he tugged at Caleb’s sleeve. “We could put these to good use.

Using their pocket money, they purchased two of the foul-smelling novelties. As they exited the store, they ran right into their mother. Seeing their guilty, sheepish grins, she demanded to know what they were up to. They offered a “white lie” about looking at puzzles, which she readily accepted at the time.

The rest of the week, the boys plotted. Following the shopping trip, a peculiar silence settled over the Ascott household. Rosemary, ever observant, noticed that the twins’ usual boisterous competition had been replaced by a hushed, unified front. They were too quiet, their heads bent together in whispered conferences that seized the moment she entered the room.

For the remainder of the week, Joshua and Caleb operated like a miniature cell of covert operatives. They spent their afternoons in the far corner of the garden, debating the optimal theatre for their newly acquired arsenal.

“What about Sunday School?” Caleb hissed in a low, conspiratorial rasp, his eyes darting toward the kitchen window to ensure their mother wasn’t eavesdropping. Joshua shook his head vigorously. “No way. We can’t do it at church.” They were “The Terrible Twins,” but they weren’t foolish enough to invite divine judgment—or worse, a lecture from the Reverend that would last well past dinner. Church and Sunday school were ruled out as inappropriate for both spiritual and practical reasons.

A family gathering was also discarded; the “theatre of operations” was too small, and the risk of immediate detection by Rosemary’s sharp nose was far too high.

Eventually, they settled on the school grounds. It was the perfect target: a high-density population, plenty of targets to witness the chaos, and enough moving bodies to allow them to vanish into the crowd. They decided to release the “foul-smelling plague” during the height of the Friday lunch break.

While they were the natural suspects, there was no concrete evidence pointing towards the twins. They seemed to have escaped the consequences—until Rosemary’s maternal instincts kicked in. She replayed the Saturday shopping trip in her mind, remembering those grins as they exited the gift shop.

The following Saturday, she took them back to that very store.

“Do you recognize these two?” Rosemary inquired, her voice dropping to a dangerously calm register as she fixed the shop assistant with an expectant, steely look.

“How could I forget?” the man blurted out. “It’s not often that twins come in here. I remember them well.”

“Do you remember what they bought?”

“Without hesitation,” the assistant replied. “They bought two stink bombs.”

Rosemary, the Mother, instantly became Rosemary the Judge, Jury, and Executioner. The boys sat in heavy, contemplative silence in the back of the car on the way home, dreading the sentence that was to come.

Their seventh birthday was approaching, and Rosemary had promised them two new computer games.

“Because of your dishonesty and the trouble you caused at school,” Rosemary said, her eyes catching theirs in the rearview mirror with a searing intensity that brooked no argument. “There will be no computer games. In fact, there will be no toys for this birthday at all.”

The punishment sent shockwaves through the house. Bruce and Timothy felt the sentence was far too harsh for what they termed a “minor misdemeanour,” but Rosemary remained unmoved. She was determined to nip their “Terrible Twin” reputation in the bud before it grew into something she couldn’t control. to her absence, but after her third trip, they settled into this new routine. She also missed them terribly when she went on these trips, and every departure was a bit of agony for her.

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