Over her mom’s shoulder, Olivia saw her dad emerge from the living room.
“Nice girl, Ivy,” he said matter-of-factly, “but who died?”
Olivia rolled her eyes and started to explain, again.
Chapter 3
Standing on the front steps of Franklin Grove Middle School, Ivy flipped open her fuzzy black spider watch and tapped it with a black fingernail. If it was really 8:10 on Wednesday morning, where were all the people? The steps should have been packed. What if my watch is wrong and I’m late for class? she thought.
As Ivy rushed toward the huge oak doors, she could hear a commotion inside. Stepping out of the cold December sunshine, she found herself engulfed in a chattering crowd of people.
Looking around, Ivy realized she was at the end of a huge, disorganized line that led to the tables where the school newspaper was distributed. A pimply sixth-grader, who was coming the other way, walked right into her, his eyes glued to the front page of the paper in his hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Then, glancing up, his mouth dropped open. “It’s you!” he cried. “Or is it her?” he added suspiciously.
Ivy looked down at the paper he was holding and saw the towering headline, LONG-LOST TWINS FIND EACH OTHER! over huge, side-by-side photographs of Ivy and Olivia’s faces. So much for no one reading the article, she thought with a grimace.
She put her head down, letting a curtain of dark hair conceal her face, and started elbowing her way through the crowd. Being the center of attention was hazardous to Ivy’s health; it was like lying out in a bikini without any sunblock.
Luckily Ivy succeeded in plunging through the fray without anybody else recognizing her. Emerging at the edge of the crowd, she noticed another throng of people squeezing into a classroom up ahead. She skulked over and, balancing on the tips of her steel-toed boots, peered over everyone’s heads.
Olivia was trapped in front of the whiteboard, still in her coat. She was flanked by Toby Decker, who had written the article for the school paper, and her friend Camilla Edmunson who was wearing a blue hoodie that said THE PAST WAS THE FUTURE on it. Camilla was seriously into sci-fi.
People were shouting questions.
“Can you read each other’s minds?”
“Were you surgically separated at birth?”
“Have you ever met the Olsen twins?” Olivia was trying to answer, but people kept interrupting.
“Did you always know you had a twin?” a girl in a red beret shouted.
Sort of, Ivy thought. Looking back, she had always felt like something was missing in her life, but she had never known what it was until the day she found Olivia.
In the middle of the classroom, greasy-haired Garrick Stephens, probably the lamest vampire in the whole school, got up on top of a desk. “Does anybody have any questions about when I climbed out of a coffin during a funeral?” he called. Garrick and his boneheaded friends—aka the Beasts—had recently sparked a witch hunt on national TV that had almost revealed the existence of vampires. Now he was clearly jealous that someone else was getting all the attention. Somebody threw an eraser at his head, and he lost his balance and fell off the desk. Ivy couldn’t keep from laughing, and a girl in front of her looked around and gasped.
“It’s Ivy! The twin!” she gasped.
The words “Ivy” and “twin” rippled through the crowd. People turned their heads to look. Uh-oh, thought Ivy.
“When one of you gets hurt, does the other one feel it?”
“Why don’t you have the same color eyes?”
“Do you have any matching birthmarks?” Soon everyone was shouting and talking and crowding around Ivy as well as Olivia. Instead of attempting to answer anyone’s question, Ivy focused on trying not to fall over in the stampede. Suddenly an earsplitting whistle rang out.
Immediately, the crowd hushed. At the front of the room, Camilla was standing with one hand in the air authoritatively, the other to her lips. She looked like a traffic cop.
“Everyone stand still!” she commanded. Then Camilla jumped off the desk and pushed through the crowd. Grabbing Ivy’s hand, she dragged her back to stand next to Olivia.
The sisters exchanged nervous looks. “You said nobody was going to read the article!” Ivy whispered.
“Oops.” Olivia shrugged.
The room lit up with flashes from camera phones as people took pictures of the sisters side by side. “Ivy and Olivia can only answer one question at a time!” Camilla announced. “If you have a question, raise your hand.” Scores of hands shot into the air.
Camilla was about to choose one, when a familiar high-pitched voice screeched, “Get out of my way!” The crowd parted, and Charlotte Brown—neighbor, nemesis, and cheerleading captain—shoved her way to the front. She looked from Ivy to Olivia with narrowed eyes. As her sidekicks, Katie and Allison, appeared behind her, she nodded.
“This explains a lot,” Charlotte told her friends, as if Ivy and Olivia couldn’t hear her from five feet away.
Then Charlotte plastered an insincere look of sympathy on her face. “Don’t worry, Olivia,” she said loudly, “the cheerleading squad will stand by you no matter what.”
All at once, Ivy’s embarrassment gave way to annoyance. She trained her death squint on Charlotte Brown and was about to unleash an acid comeback when the bell rang.
Charlotte spun on her heel and headed for the door, her minions in tow. The rest of the crowd also started pouring out of the room.
Toby Decker, clearly delighted with the attention his story was receiving, patted Olivia and Ivy encouragingly on their backs as he squeezed past. “Maybe we shouldn’t have told anyone,” Ivy said under her breath to her sister.