The Midnight Twins

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  “No! I feel all creepy, like I’m locked out of my own house.”

  “Ster, why don’t I feel that way?”

  “Maybe because you’re dumb!” Mallory shouted—so loudly that Tim Brynn called out something muffled about it being a school night. “Maybe because you don’t care about us the way I do.”

  “That’s a sleaze thing to say! Why would you say that?”

  “Maybe because it’s true!”

  “Mally! Are you crazy? You’re my sister. You’re, for God’s sake, you’re my best friend.”

  “Kim is your best friend. And Crystal and Sunny are your next best friends, and Alli and Erika after them! I don’t want to be your friend. Everything is ruined.”

  Meredith knew that something Mallory was saying was entirely true. She decided to ignore it.

  Instead, she struggled with what she had to find words for and finally blurted out, “You’re my heart!” She had heard her father say this once to her mother. It seemed to be what she meant. She didn’t know what else to say. And it didn’t seem enough.

  “Well, I didn’t tell you everything. The girl I dreamed in the woods with David? It was you.”

  Meredith tried to conceal her delight, but failed. “Was I older?”

  “I couldn’t tell. You weren’t taller! But you were running around like a little wood fairy and he was chasing you. You’d have loved it. It was totally stupid,” Mallory said. “He’s stupid!”

  “He is not!”

  “You don’t know because you don’t feel what I feel!”

  “I never did feel everything you felt!”

  “There’s a difference between having different opinions and thoughts and really feeling what the other person feels, Merry. On big stuff . . .”

  “I know.”

  “Then why don’t you care?”

  “Ster, it’s because . . .” Merry said slowly. “I don’t think we can fix it.”

  Mallory sat up and threw her bolster, hard, at Merry’s head. Merry threw it back. She whispered, “Mally, why are you mad at me for this?”

  “I’m not,” Mallory said, beginning to cry again. “I’m not mad at you! I’m just never going to feel normal again. And you will. I know it!”

  “I won’t if you don’t.”

  “You will,” Mallory insisted, “because you’ll try to. You’ll pretend you do until it’s almost the same as if you really do. You’ll just deny it.”

  “Why wouldn’t I do that? I mean really, why? Why wouldn’t I want to feel like I did before? Why wouldn’t I want to be happy if I could? But I don’t think it’s going to go back, either. Truthfully. I don’t think I’m going to feel the same.”

  Mally admitted, “Maybe you won’t. Ever.” She said then, “This wasn’t supposed to be part of growing up.”

  “No,” said Meredith. “This is like a bad joke.”

  But when she fell asleep, Merry dreamed of David, working in the same rock garden she’d seen in her hospital dream and the dream at Kim’s overnight.

  Then, just before she woke, she dreamed of an old woman, with a sweet apple-doll face, and both hands out in front of her with the palms out, as if to hold Merry back. The woman shook her head firmly.

  Merry woke up. Her head ached. She felt dizzy. She saw the old woman shake her head.

  Once and again.

  No.

  Merry got up and jumped into the shower before it was hot.

  She would not, would not, start having weird Mally posttraumatic flashback things.

  She had to get up earlier now, to get dressed, even earlier than the usual hour before Mallory did—because her hands were still clumsy, especially with small things such as earrings. But when she came out of the shower, she saw that Mally was asleep. Not even up for her run.

  She was fast asleep, and Meredith tried to jump into her twin’s thoughts. She couldn’t. She couldn’t follow Mallory there.

  The old lady. The old lady was real, but who was she? She wasn’t at all frightening. If this was seeing a ghost . . .

  Meredith wasn’t afraid of ghosts. For all she knew, her ancestors lived near her in this house. Sometimes she sensed presences, soft touches, the scent of lavender and lilies of the valley. She would not have been frightened of them if they came and sat on her bed. She had “seen” her mother’s lost car keys when she was small. She had “seen” Grandma dressing up to surprise Grandpa before Christmas dinner, so that when Merry came over, she knew where Grandma had dropped her earring. But she wasn’t even sure how she felt about life after death. It was something she’d never thought all the way through. Why not? She supposed that was what Mally would call “shallow.”

  Well, now she would think. She would concentrate.

  This old woman was supposed to have a message for Merry. Stop. But stop what?

  Meredith glanced down at her sister. She reached out and touched the single pearl stud in Mally’s ear. Mally twitched, but didn’t waken.

  Now she was upset! It never failed. Mally got into a thing . . . It was stupid to be so upset. After all, they were alive. The little kids were unhurt. Full function would return to Merry’s hand. The doctor predicted she’d have no nerve damage, just some stiffness she’d work out in physical therapy. The scar on her palm would last forever, but grow fainter each year. Maybe this . . . distance would go away, too.

  But what Mallory had said was true: She and her sister would never again have the same handprint.

  And Mally blamed herself for all of it. Merry knew that.

  She tried to think of something pleasant. Like the smell of David’s leather jacket.

  She went to the kitchen. Campbell was making pancakes.

  “Why are you even up, Mom?” Merry asked. Campbell worked from five p.m. to five a.m., ten days straight, did an hour on the treadmill or outside, and hit the sack. At the end of the ten days, she got two straight weeks off. This was the end of the past ten days—Campbell’s hard-earned mini-vacation.

  “I don’t know,” Campbell said honestly. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You love to sleep.”

  “So do you,” Campbell said.

  “Well, I have stuff going on.”

  “I heard Mallory yelling. What’s up?”

  “We had a fight.”

  “A regular fight?” Campbell asked.

  “We don’t have regular fights anymore,” Merry admitted. “It’s all so . . . intense with her.” She asked, “Can I have some coffee?”

  “No,” Campbell replied automatically.

  “Maybe we should get separate rooms,” Merry said then.

  “Now that would really work out,” Campbell replied, shaking her head. “Your dad would knock out a wall, and I’d kill myself painting, and then you’d both sleep in the same room anyhow.”

  “Right now, I’d live in a different country,” Merry told her.

  “So it was a serious and also abnormal fight.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does Mallory feel guilty about your hand?” Campbell asked.

  “Yes.” Merry puffed out her lips. “Sort of. Were you eavesdropping on us?”

  “No, you were screaming. Please. These walls are thick, but not that thick. So it’s more than just regular guilt,” Campbell went on, setting a short stack down in front of Meredith. Campbell’s sister, Amy, sent them syrup from Vermont, where Amy had a summerhouse. Merry knew she was inhaling carbs, but couldn’t resist. Campbell sat down with her and took a plate of three cakes, too. “She feels a debt. It’s a pretty common psychological thing. People get mad at someone when they owe them more than they can ever pay back.”

  “You said it was posttraumatic stress before.”

  “Maybe it was, before. Anyhow, do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  “You wouldn’t get it, Mom.”

  “I wouldn’t get it as a twin, but I’d get it as a mother.”

  “But not all of it.”

  “Look, fine, then. All I’m saying is . . .
my mother used to tell me nothing ever got worse by talking about it. You don’t have to.”

  “What’s the point? You would never know how I feel.”

  “That’s what Gwenny said.”

  “What’s Grandma got to do with this?” Merry asked.

  “Just, when you were born, she said there would be things about you I would never understand, even more than other mothers and kids. Maybe she would get it. She’s a twin.”

  “She’s not a twin.”

  “She is. Or was. Her twin sister died when they were kids your age.”

  “Really?” Merry said, her eyes widening. “Grandma never said.”

  “It still hurts her. That’s probably why. But you could still try to explain it,” Campbell said. “When someone is part of you, you don’t like to see her this way. When someone is part of your own body, you hurt for her.”

  “Maybe you do get it,” Meredith said, glancing up. She had been slicing her pancakes into strips of eight, then cutting them into smaller strips of sixteen. “That is how we feel.”

  Campbell said sadly, “Merry, I meant you and me. I meant Mally and you and me. That you girls are part of me.”

  “Oh,” Meredith said. Now she had hurt her mom. “It’s not like we don’t love you, Mom.”

  “I know that,” Campbell answered. “You’re wasting that food. I made it from scratch, not a mix. Why don’t you try eating a bite?” Merry did. It was cold. “So?” Campbell prompted her.

  “Well, we dream the same things.”

  “I know that. You used to sleepwalk and talk about them.”

  “We did?”

  “When you were two or three.”

  “Now we don’t anymore.”

  “Don’t sleepwalk?”

  “Don’t have the same dreams at the same time.”

  “Ah, well. Maybe it’s just a temporary thing. Does it bother you? Does Mally mind more than you?”

  “She minds more than I do, but I would mind more if I let myself think about it,” Merry said. “It used to be like being in the same . . . mmm . . . airplane. Like, you could look out the windows and talk to other people, but you were always going the same place and you could always see where the other one was.”

  “And now you can’t.”

  “Not when we’re asleep.”

  “But you sleep when you’re asleep,” Campbell said helplessly.

  “Although I have to say, part of why I stayed up is that you look like you haven’t been sleeping that much.”

  “Do I look gross?” Merry asked, nearly dropping her fork.

  “No! Just tired.”

  “You know the old joke. When people say you look good, they mean you lost weight. When they say you look tired, they mean you look like . . .”

  “Like crap,” said Campbell. “I know the joke.”

  Tim came into the kitchen, poured his coffee, kissed Merry’s and Campbell’s heads, and wandered out to the car.

  “I never know how Dad gets to work when he’s basically still asleep,” Merry said.

  “Me either. Thank God for seat belts,” Campbell said. “So this dreaming thing . . .”

  “It’s not just dreaming now, but when we’re not—”

  They both looked up, as if they’d heard a crash, an impact of silence. Mallory stood in the doorway, dressed for school, her face linen white, her eyes shadowy.

  “Laybite,” she told Merry softly.

  Merry got up.

  “Mommy, Drew’s honking!” Meredith said, her face pinched with fear and anxiety.

  “Girls, wait . . . I’ll drive you both in.”

  “No, Mom. I have a test first hour,” Mallory said, and was out the door.

  Merry shrugged and followed.

  Campbell noticed that Merry had left her cheerleading bag, her prized green-and-white JV Ridgeline duffel, on the floor, for the first time since she had earned it, a year before. She stood up to run after her, but Drew was already passing their house on the way down the road toward school. Mallory sat in front, not speaking, staring straight ahead. Merry was in back, her head against the seat, her eyes closed.

  As soon as they were out of sight of the house, Drew glanced at Mally. “Put your belt on, Brynn,” he said, longing to touch her hand. You didn’t do that with Mallory, though. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Didn’t sleep.”

  “How come?”

  “Storm kept me up,” she said.

  There wasn’t a drop on Drew’s car. The old grooved places in the sidewalks were dry. “I slept right through it. Must have been a bad one, to wake you up,” he said.

  Merry answered, without opening her eyes, “It was.”

  MEETING PLACES

  With Caitlin Andersen in her proper place behind her, Mer-edith took her stance for “No More Take Backs,” their cheer dance at the Big Twist Junior Invitational.

  It had gotten them this far.

  Ridgeline was third in the competition, on the second day. All the parents had come along and spent the evening in the restaurant of the fancy hotel next to the conference center in Donovan, a ritzy town two hours upstate. Merry and Mallory had been up half the night, ordering room-service Caesar salads and riding the elevators with the other cheerleaders, twenty-five teams from all over New York. For once, Mally forgave her sister for being a fake athlete and joined in the craziness. She didn’t even seem to mind the choruses of “I’m so sure” and “I was like . . . so what?”

  They’d probably stayed up too late, Merry thought.

  She was tired. Her reactions were probably slower than they should have been. But adrenaline was a beautiful thing. And she’d had two cups of strong tea with lunch.

  Ahead of them were the Donovan Eagles from a richie prep school out on Long Island. In first were the girls Merry had to admit were better—the girls from PS 15, in Spanish Harlem. They were not only better, they were better-looking, too. The Donovan Eagles were almost neck and neck with the PS 15 Rockets in school cheers and quad routines. And when it came to dance, the girls from PS 15 blew both Merry’s squad and the preps out of the water. Solid tumblers all, Merry’s squad needed a rhythm transfusion. Plus, there were three or four girls on Ridgeline’s team who were . . . well, Merry would never say gross, but a little thick. Like, couldn’t get a thigh boot on to save their lives. The long-haired girls from the city made Merry feel like some kind of black-haired leprechaun, in her cheesy green-and-white uniform that was new about a year before Merry was born. The Donovan girls had probably snipped the tags off their teal-and-gray sweaters that morning before the first round.

  She would have to pull off something amazing.

  She knew what it was.

  Anyone could do a mount to a lib if she had speed and balance, but hardly anyone could do a front flip dismount. Merry could. She and Kellen, with Caitlin and Kim as spotters, had practiced it in secret before winter break. But could she do it in competition after two months off, when she’d been back in action for only a few weeks?

  She and the others sprinted out onto the floor.

  As they took their places for practice before the music began, Merry looked up and, in the stands, she saw David. Had he driven all the way from Ridgeline to this big convention hotel two hours from their house just to see Kim compete?

  Or to see her?

  To see her?

  Merry’s heart thudded, the way her mother once described it—like a bird in the cage of her ribs.

  “Can you do it?” she asked Kim and Kellen as they warmed up for the morning finals. “Just like we practiced? After the catch you put me into a stand, and I know I can land it.”

  “I’m not doing it unless we tell the others,” Sunday Scavo spoke up. “Because we could all get kicked off.”

  “Not if we win.”

  “Duh. If we win, and you get hurt . . . it’s all of our butts,” Sunday said. She waved at her parents. Merry couldn’t understand how Sunday could even speak to her parents, who had named her Sunday
River Scavo after the ski resort where they were when she was conceived—my God! It was disgusting. She wondered what her name would be: Juneberry? Sugar Maple? You only had to count backward to figure out her parents had been at the family camp one spring weekend, at one of the cabins, which were all named for New England trees, when they got the idea that resulted in her and her sister. Campbell and Tim didn’t go for weekends to the cabin camp anymore, not since Tim bought the store.

  But they always went in summer! And Adam—come to think of it, which she did not want to, Adam was born in April, nine months after their July vacation. At least she didn’t have to think about her parents doing it more than once a year.

  The first-place team was performing to “Beautiful, Beautiful Girl,” letter perfect, every move crisp as a flag in a stiff breeze. Left hurkey. Right hurkey. Huge, huge kicks. Big synchronized jumps. Sexy, sexy contortion moves. Double backovers, endlessly. Merry watched in agony. The one thing they lacked was a super flyer—and Merry’s team lacked one, too.

  They lacked Merry.

  “Listen, Kim, Sunny, Crystal, Caitlin, Mimi! All you guys. Kellen and I have to do this! They’re gonna take this away! We’ve worked for this for two years! This is our last year before high school!” She looked from face to face. “We all want to get moved up to varsity as freshmen! Don’t we? I can do this. Full forward pike after the catch. We just don’t do the final stand. We do this instead.”

  She planned a dismount so daring it would either wow the judges or get her squad disqualified. What Merry had going for her was how much more cheerleaders were getting away with in competition now—from uniforms with strings of lights built into the see-through tops to purple faux-hawks and navel rings. What she had against her was tradition. Either way, she thought, they might as well go down in glory, and walk away with the chops if not the trophy. She would perform the stunt just the way she and Kellen and Kim had in their little after-practice practice sessions.

  After she did her stand on top of the pyramid, one leg extended, then dropped into the basket, Kellen and Sunny would go into a lunge and lift her onto their knees. From their shoulders she would do a forward flip—like a dismount from a balance beam—and land (well, hopefully) on the gym floor.