Merry snorted. “Dad? Gambling? Now you’re hallucinating. Dad won’t spend a dollar on the $179 million Power Ball.”
They both heard Drew laying on the horn.
“I haven’t got my makeup on!” Merry cried.
“You may have noticed, you haven’t got your clothes on either. And I haven’t even had a shower,” said Mallory. “But it doesn’t matter. I have gym second hour.” Mallory pulled up the window and yelled, “Drewsky! Go ahead. We will grab a ride with my dad! The little princess doesn’t have her game face on yet! Tryouts today!”
Fifteen minutes later, Mallory had ducked in and out of the shower, and Meredith, with shaking hands, applied her “no-makeup makeup.” Even though it was tryouts day, she was so rattled that she pulled on the first white shirt she found in the closet over her jeans.
When they came down, Tim was zipping his windbreaker.
“We need a ride,” Mallory announced.
“You need a ride, what?” Tim asked.
“We need a ride to
school
,” Merry said. “Things were so nuts here this morning Drew had to leave without us.”
“You need a ride . . . please,” Tim said.
“Well, please, of course,” said Mallory. “And thanks for telling us you were about to break up or something. You made her smack her head!”
Tim looked at them. He thought they were kidding. “She smacked her own head!”
“Why’d you build the room like a danger pit?”
“Mallory, most people don’t spin around in their beds while they’re asleep!”
“Most people aren’t in danger of losing IQ points if they do! Your room is the size of the YMCA in Deptford. We can barely fit in ours!”
“That’s enough from you, young lady!”
“Fine!” Mallory snapped. She glanced up at her dad. “I’m sorry. I was rude.”
“Apology accepted. Mally and Meredith, your mom and I have had fights before, and you didn’t even notice. All parents have arguments. Listen, get in the car. We’ll talk on the way. Even though I’m not saving lives like Campbell, I do have a business to run. I’m going to be late.”
In the car, Mallory asked, “So what’s going on, Dad?”
Tim wondered if the twins had some weird hormonal condition Campbell would know about. Or maybe, as he’d told his wife, they really did sense what was going on. “Mom’s been a little off her feed,” Tim admitted. “She hasn’t been feeling well. She’s tired.”
“Off her feed? You mean, she won’t eat?”
I told you she had an ulcer
, Mally thought, extra loudly, to her sister, who nodded. “She eats! Crazy stuff like tea and chocolate milk shakes and steak sauce on salad! You keep making these vague statements, and it’s like she has cancer and you won’t tell us.”
“She’s just got a little bug,” Tim said cheerfully. “I said that.”
“Months ago! Flu doesn’t last that long, Dad,” Meredith said.
He doesn’t even care
, Mally thought. Thank God it wasn’t
him
. Every time her father had a cough, he treated it like it was leukemia.
“Dad, would you tell us if anything was really wrong?” Mally asked. “We need a really stable life right now.”
“Of course. Look, things are fine. Don’t worry, Mally. Merry, I’m sorry we argued in front of you, though, technically, you eavesdropped.”
Tim leaned over and gave each of them a kiss. “Good luck today at tryouts, Mer. By the way, Kim called you last night. I left a note under your door.”
“I didn’t see it because I was unconscious, Dad. Sorry.”
Tim made a huffing sound.
They headed into school. Suddenly, Merry put both hands on Mallory’s shoulders. “Stop for a second,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Mally asked.
“Maybe I did hurt my head. I was dizzy there for a minute. I’m fine now. It just
hurts
like crazy!”
“Are you sure you weren’t . . . passing out?”
“No,” Merry said. “Really fine, Ster!”
But it was Kim’s name that had done it, brought back what had really spun her around like a top in the bed before she ever heard her parents bickering. She’d dreamed of Kim, in a place that was nowhere that Merry recognized—somewhere outside in the dark with two guys, one with long dirty ropes of hair, one with no hair at all—her Halloween costume top ripped, her makeup smeared, staggering while the guys held her up, pretending to laugh.
But Kim wasn’t laughing. She was crying. Hard.
She had called Merry before this happened. But when?
SECOND TRY
H
ow could someone who looked just like you be as hard to find as a needle in a haystack?
There were five minutes left before sixth hour and Mallory was searching the lunchroom frantically for Merry. She’d already combed the gym and the library. Merry had to be somewhere!
Finally, she spotted her.
Calm down,
Mallory told herself.
It’s going to be fine
. As long as Merry had talked to Coach Everson, or left a note, all would be well. None of it will happen. Mallory tried to drag her tense shoulders down from around her ears. How could she have believed anything would ever be simple that involved them?
“Merry!” she called. “Wait up! I have to talk to you.”
“What?” Merry replied impatiently. “I’ve got a vocab quiz in French in five minutes. And then I have to concentrate and be centered. Can’t it wait?”
“No, it can’t. I have to be sure you left Coach Everson a note about how somebody might try to hurt somebody again at tryouts. You did, right?”
“No,” Merry said.
“Meredith! But I told you to!”
“And I thought about it. I decided that nobody would be stupid enough to try anything like that twice no matter what I saw in my dream.”
“But you saw it yourself!”
“It was just a warning.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was real.”
“Well, I think it was a warning. I have a brain.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Mallory said. “Listen. You can’t be limp about this. You promised you’d tell Coach Everson. You lied to me!”
“You’re overreacting, Mal. If I really thought there was a danger, don’t you think I’d have left her a note?”
“There really is a danger! You have to get in touch with her! Why don’t you get this?”
“Because I am not listening to you,” Merry said. She shifted her backpack and opened her voluminous yellow purse, pulling out a blue-and-brown scarf. She twisted it and made the “New York knot” around her neck. Merry’s scarf didn’t coordinate with anything she had on, except her big rubber jelly purse. Without meaning to, Mallory made a quizzical face.
“I’m updating my look,” said Merry. “Matchy-matchy is out. Your shoes aren’t supposed to go with your jewelry.”
“Thank heaven you told me,” Mallory said. “I was about to put on the wrong scarf myself. Listen, dumb girl, we don’t have time to talk about scarves. You have to listen. I have a strong feeling. Something really, really, really bad is going to happen unless you fix it. I counted on you.”
“Well, if you’re so sure, and you can’t count on little old me, you do it, then.” Merry slammed the door of her locker closed, which went unnoticed because of the flurry of activity, kids throwing away their yogurt containers and half-finished sandwiches and rushing to class. “If I talk to her, she’ll think I’m in on it.”
“Why? What about a note?”
“She’d know my handwriting! I can’t take that chance.”
“That’s what you really care about, Meredith. YOU! So it’s okay with you if somebody ends up in a coma?”
“What do you mean?”
“Meredith,” she said quietly. “I had a dream that was real.”
“And when did you have it?”
“Last hour.”
“You had study hall last hour.”
Mallory asked, “What do you do in study hall?” Meredith’s cheeks flushed. “Okay, well, sometimes I sleep too. And I saw. Meredith. Some. One. Is. Going. To. Get. Hurt. And this time it won’t be a ligament. I saw the ambulance lights. I saw a person on a stretcher in the Ridgeline uniform. Do you want something bad to happen to Alli or Erika or Caitlin or Kim?”
Merry paled. “If you’re such a real life-changing psychic, go do some wonder work, wonder girl.”
“Why are you so hostile?” Mallory shouted. This time heads did turn, and the whole south hall went quiet. Mallory lowered her voice. “I see now. You’re scared. That’s what it is! You’re scared you’ll make it happen. Why did I trust you? What if it was
your
uniform? I didn’t see the girl’s face.”
Meredith stopped and studied her twin’s face. “I wasn’t scared!” Merry, who was in fact terrified, lied. “Not until now. And worse, you’re going to think I didn’t do it because I didn’t care about another girl getting hurt.”
I did care,
Merry thought
. I cared about Kim
.
Oh, Kim, I should have called you back!
Mally said the girl was little. But any girl would look little on a stretcher! Was Kim going to be hurt?
Or was Kim going to hurt someone?
“I don’t really think that,” Mallory said softly. “I’m sorry I made fun of you. You’re not dumb. But what if it
was
you? It wouldn’t be worse, but it would be worse. For me.”
“Well, okay. I’ll do it. But not because I think you’re right. It was . . . how you look now. Weird. And I . . . I would have done something by the end of the day. Was the cheerleader . . . was she hurt . . . hurt?”
“She looked unconscious. She wasn’t moving.”
“Was it the same thing? Shoe tape?”
“I didn’t see anything like that. But she was little. A flyer. So you or Erika or Caitlin. Or Neely. Except I think . . .”
“That Neely’s behind it.”
“I guess I do but I don’t have any reason to think that except she’s such a jerk.”
“She’s not really, Ster. She puts it on. But I don’t know why.”
“Look,” Mallory said. “I’ll do it. It’s important. I don’t want you to change your mind. I actually go past Coach Everson’s office now on the way to choir. I’ll do it. But what exactly will I say?”
For a moment, Mallory had forgotten that she had a new schedule now. Two weeks before, she’d dropped her second study hall and joined choir. Mallory had no idea why singing suddenly had such a big appeal for her. The tastes she thought she’d have forever were cartwheeling. But she absolutely loved singing the old French traditional songs with their complex unison harmonies and the traditional American gospel and old pop songs. They made her feel the way she felt as a little girl when she first heard “The Moonlight Sonata
,
” happy and tearful at the same time.
Merry thought for a moment. “Just say . . . anything that doesn’t sound like me. I can’t think. I’ll catch up with you between classes because we’re already going to be late.”
The bell pealed.
“Well,” Merry said with a huff, “at least we can take our time now. We both have to go get passes. I’ll figure out what to write, and you can drop it off now. Another great benefit of being a medium or whatever we are. So many late passes you get a detention.”
The twins were suddenly alone in the hall.
Or so they thought.
“I don’t want to interrupt you,” Eden said softly. She had appeared beside them without a sound. Like . . . a cat. “I just have a letter for you, Mal. I didn’t think you’d want to wait until Friday night for it.”
“A letter?” Merry asked. “Who wrote Mallory a letter? Do you have some pen pal?”
“It’s a relative of Eden’s I met,” Mallory said quickly. “It’s an athlete.”
“It’s a guy,” Merry said, her smile a bow that unwrapped and widened and widened into a ribbon. “You like a guy.”
“Merry!” Mally scolded her. “Don’t start now of all times!” The three girls stood in the deserted hallway. Now all three of them needed to go for passes. But the larger question of the envelope in Mallory’s hand vibrated in the space between them.
Eden said, “I thought you’d have told your sister.”
“Told me what? What? What?” Merry asked, the thought of
Mallory
with a crush blotting all other thoughts from her consciousness. She shifted her huge bag and her books and dropped the purse, and a glittering array of things went flying, from wrist bangles to tubes of lip gloss to spare pairs of shoelaces. All three of them scattered to gather Merry’s things, which had rolled under lockers and against closed classroom doors.
“We might as well get Mrs. Dettweiler to include this in the daily announcements tomorrow before the National Anthem,” Mally said. “My sister has a mouth bigger than her purse.”
“I’m sorry, Mal,” Eden said. “I assumed you told her everything.”
“Everything?” Mallory exclaimed, widening her eyes significantly.
“I mean, about stuff like this.”
“Mallory Arness Brynn,” said Merry. “Who is he? Where does he go to school?”
“Boston,” Mallory said.
“He’s in
college
?”
“No. Prep school.”
“Prep school? A preppie? You mean it’s . . .”
“Meredith, he’s my brother, Cooper. My younger brother. He goes to Boston Flanders.”
“I knew it was him! Why didn’t you tell me? This is why you walk around the house like a sick cat all the time and don’t eat anymore! Cooper! It was at the powwow, right? I’ll never ask again if you tell me right now. Even Edie thinks you should tell me.”
They’d made their way, walking almost in a moving circle, to the Commons, and the attendance secretary, Mrs. Flecker, was motioning to them from the glassed-in wall of the principal’s office.
“Nothing. We walked. And we just talked,” Mallory said.
“You made out!”
“No! Not like that!”
“Okay, not like that! But you did something. Dad will throttle you until you are dead.”
“But he’ll never know because I’ll throttle you until you’re dead if he does,” Mallory said evenly. “Plus, I can’t go out with him even if I wanted to.”
“He told me that my grandmother gave you an Indian name after all,” Eden said.