The Midnight Twins

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  Mally was shocked.

  Unlike Aunt Thea and some of her other Catholic relatives, Grandma Gwenny didn’t go in for a lot of religious stuff. Gwenny was an action person. She had always referred to the Massenger women (her maiden name was Massenger) as “sturdy”—women who could pitch tents and clean their own fish. Thea, she always said, was the eldest of her four sisters and two brothers, but also the runt of the litter. She finished lacing up her Reeboks.

  “You ready to go home?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Mallory told her. Grandma reached out for Mallory and held her close in a tight hug. “I’m not ready. For anything.”

  “That’s why I suggested that you pray. Pray to feel it,” Gwenny said. “It could work.”

  “Do you think Merry and I are the runts of the litter, like Thea?”

  “I think that you are anything but. I think you are the warriors of the tribe, don’t you? Like Saint Joan.”

  “I don’t want to be,” Mally said, pulling herself away from her grandmother finally and looking deep into her eyes. “Would you want to be?”

  “No,” said Grandma Gwenny. “But it isn’t a choice you get to make.”

  That night as Merry was putting on her thirty-five kinds of face goop, Mally blurted out, “Okay, prove me wrong. Let’s watch him. Let’s watch where he goes.”

  “Mallory, no. I don’t want to fight about this anymore. It’s asking me to believe you can see the future before it happens. Which is already impossible. But even if I believed you, and I don’t, if a person we’ve known all our lives did such a horrible thing, he wouldn’t do it every day,” Merry said.

  In fact, she was showing more bravado than she really felt. Merry did believe in Mallory’s vision, more than she wanted Mallory to know. She hoped she was hiding it well enough.

  “Just one night, then,” Mally said. “Just this Saturday.”

  “You’re out of your mind! That’s such a really great idea! We’ll both wear ski masks and I’ll get Crystal’s dad’s motorcycle! Whee! No one will notice!” Merry snapped.

  She had a point. Thirteen-year-olds were dependent on someone else for every move they made. Even if David had a chip in his head that let them see his every move, how were they supposed to follow him?

  Briskly, Merry said, “Mally, you have to stop this. First of all, it’s disgusting and scary. Second of all, this is David we’re talking about, who is no more twisted than you or Kim. And third of all, what if David was the dog killer of Ridgeline? What would we do? Have Dad drive us around? Or Drew? Until we finally saw a dog murder?”

  It was a problem.

  “I really wouldn’t start riding around after him on my bike,” Mally said. “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, to start, you have to tell Kim about your crush,” Mally said suddenly. “That’s it. She already sort of knows. If you do, we’ll get some idea where he spends his time and who with.”

  “Uh, that would be a negative. I’m so sorry. I have to go back to earth now, Mal. I’ve never told her in so many words.” Merry thought back to the discomfort of seeing David sock Kim when Merry dreamed about his “garden.” She didn’t want to provoke anything else.

  But Mallory begged.

  “Please? For me? If I’m wrong I’ll never bring it up again. I’ll do your dishes for a month. I’ll make both our beds for a month.”

  “She’ll tell him,” Merry said through clenched teeth.

  “Say she can’t. Just get her to tell you where he’s going, so you can sort of casually show up there. Tell her you’ll know by seeing him with someone else if he really loves another girl. Tell her you want a chance to talk to David.”

  “She’s going to know that’s shady. I would never do that.”

  “No, she won’t.” Not if she’s anything like you, Mallory thought, before she caught herself. Even locked out of each other’s dreams, they could still clearly hear each other’s thoughts.

  “Kim isn’t stupid,” Meredith snapped.

  “I don’t think she’s stupid.”

  “You just did! I know you did. You thought that!”

  “Mer, let’s work together, please. I want to be wrong. I don’t want you spending every Saturday night sleeping over at a house where there’s a house-burning pet murderer.”

  “That’s all fine. But it’s impossible.”

  “So prove it. Help me figure it out.”

  “One night.”

  “Just one night.”

  “Promise me you’ll stop this then.”

  I can’t, Mallory thought, but knew that Meredith didn’t hear her. “I promise, promise, promise.”

  The next day at early lunch, feeling like a fifth grader passing notes, Meredith pulled Kim out of the lunchroom. She’d first spent ten minutes in the washroom, rubbing her eyes with her fists and filling them with eyedrops until she looked distraught—or at least more messed up than she would ever have allowed herself to look in front of anyone but Mallory, except maybe for Drew or her brother.

  “I have to tell you,” she said, grabbing Kim’s hand.

  “What? What’s wrong, Mer?” Kim was nothing if not drippingly compassionate. She was drippy altogether, Meredith admitted. Mallory was right.

  But she was a good kind of drippy, she reminded herself. Mallory might be right, but Merry was loyal.

  “I . . . I love David,” Merry said, sounding, she realized, ever so slightly psychotic.

  “Aren’t you . . . that’s a big word, Mer.”

  “I’ve loved him all my life.”

  “Wow.”

  “Does he love Deirdre?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “See? This is what I can’t stand.”

  “What about Will?”

  “It’s a completely different thing. And it’s over.” That much was true. “I know I can’t be with David now, Kim. I just want to know if he is totally in love with someone else so I can try to get over him. You don’t understand. I knew you wouldn’t.”

  “Mer, I do! But I can’t just ask him. He’d tell me to stuff it.”

  “If I could see them together, I would know. Is that too much to ask?” Meredith burst into real tears—of fury, at her sister, who she could hear, clearly, enjoying this. Kim put her arms around Meredith. Huggy wuggies again, Merry heard her twin say.

  “Oh, poor baby! Listen . . . David is so not in love with her. She goes to Queen of Peace, and he always dates girls from other schools so he doesn’t have to see them after he gets bored with them after about a month!”

  “But Deirdre goes to Memorial,” Merry said.

  “Not anymore. She used to until her parents found out it was the second leading school in the area for underage drinking.”

  “It is?” Merry asked, so honestly surprised that she quit crying.

  “Yeah,” said Kim. “Half the kids are down every weekend.”

  “Wow, that sucks. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, but about David . . .”

  “Oh, yes!” Merry said, attempting to jump-start her tears but unable to pull it off. “So he only dates girls from Queen of Peace?”

  “And even other places. Deptford Consolidated,” Kim said.

  “He just plays the field. That much?”

  “I think girls get too serious for him too fast. Like, I overheard him fighting with Deirdre last week in the family room and she called him an effing crud.”

  “Because he was hooking up with someone else?”

  “I don’t know. But I bet it was.”

  “Kim, here’s the thing. Just once, I want to see them together and then talk to him alone.”

  “Why? You’re in eighth grade.”

  “So was Juliet.” That was inspired, Merry thought!

  “They didn’t have eighth grade then. And plus, she was a year older, and plus, you only lived to be about forty then.”

  “Look, I think he feels the same way about me.”

  “Mer, I thin
k David really likes you like a little sister.”

  “No, it’s more. And if it isn’t, if I see him with someone he loves, and have a chance to talk to him, alone, just once, I’ll forget about it. Not at your house. I just have to tell him.”

  “Well, I know where he buries those poor, sad animals now. And I know he brings flowers.”

  “You do?” Meredith asked, her flesh tightening, as it did when she narrowly missed falling or spraining an ankle at practice.

  “Well, he told me he buried Sunny Scavo’s dog. I just asked him where and he told me. I had to walk away this morning because I knew and I didn’t want her to see my face. Did you even know she was missing before today? She got hit by a car, the poor thing, and David found her. And he doesn’t want Sunny to know. He wants her to think some nice people found her and she has a new home. He’s like that.”

  “Where is . . . it?”

  “What?” Kim asked. She had popped open her cell and was reading a text. “Christian Allen is coming on to Caitlin. God! Caitlin is so hot. She can get a sophomore?”

  “The place he buries those poor animals.”

  “It’s up in the hills off Canada Road.”

  The Brynn family camp was off a dirt path at the end of Canada Road, about a mile up into the hills near Crying Woman Ridge. About to slather a french fry with mustard (a habit that nauseated even her father, who put M&M’s in his popcorn), Mally felt Meredith’s shoulders tighten. A chill spread from Mally’s fingers up her arm into her belly. She thought she might throw up. She put down the french fry and held her water bottle to her forehead.

  Caitlin Andersen, sitting across from Mallory, asked, “Cramps?”

  Mally said, “Yeah. Hate it.”

  “Work out. Helps.”

  “I do.”

  “Reverse crunches. Want a Motrin?”

  Mally said, “Sure.”

  Across the room, Merry was slumped against the cold concrete wall, with its coating of baby-poop green paint. Spots bobbed in front of her eyes like small squids. She clearly saw David spading up dirt, kicking the furry white-and-black bundle into the hole, but gently . . . I mean, who would want to touch a dead dog? Kim was telling the truth. But burying a poor, dead dog didn’t mean you killed it! He choked it. He hanged it, she heard her sister think. Mally, Merry thought. Laybite. Leave me alone! She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, her round-toed lavender suede boot wavering in front of her eyes. Her mouth went dry.

  “Can I have some of your water, Kim?” Kim detached the Nalgene bottle clipped to the bottom of her backpack and thrust it into Merry’s hands. For an instant, sounds of the screams and clinks from the lunchroom ramped up to deafening; then the world went black, as if someone had switched off the lights in a theater. She sat on the floor, with Kim crouched next to her, her arms around her knees. Sweat ran cold down both sides of Merry’s neck.

  “Mer! Mer! What’s wrong, Mer?”

  “Cramps,” Merry said.

  “Oh. Do you need anything?”

  “No. I’ll be fine. It’s the first day is all.”

  “Look, you are totally upset about this. I’ll find out where he’s going this weekend. Okay? Can you stay over Saturday?”

  “Absolutely,” Merry said. She inched her way back up the wall, still unsure of her balance. Then she hugged Kim. “You are the best, best friend always.” But in fact, she wanted to scrub herself hard in a hot shower.

  She let go before Kim did.

  SICK SENSE

  “All it proves,” Meredith began that night as they lay awake in the dark, “is what we already know. That he’s a soft- hearted guy.”

  “What if that was true?” Mally asked. “Wouldn’t this still be kind of a morbid hobby?”

  “You could look at it like that. Maybe he wants to be a doctor. Or a vet.”

  “Maybe he wants to be an undertaker. Admit it, Mer. It gave you the creeps. Tell me exactly what you saw.”

  “No.” Meredith didn’t want to talk about Canada Road. Next thing, Mallory would have them hiking up there to dig up every dead cat in Cole County.

  “Just tell me. Tell me what you saw when Kim was talking. What did she say? I felt how it hit you. You almost passed out, like I did.”

  “She just said that about the dog. That Sunday Scavo’s dog got hit by a car. And then I saw him burying the dog. Very nicely! Not like a monster.”

  “Is there a nice way? You think?”

  “Come on,” Merry pleaded.

  “Wait,” Mallory whispered, gnawing the inside of her cheek, a habit Campbell constantly told her would end up giving her mouth cancer. “You saw David and the dog . . . but it had already happened.”

  “And?”

  “I saw David before it happened.”

  “So?”

  “MEREDITH! It’s obvious. I see things before. I saw the fire before. I saw the dog before.”

  “You think seeing things is like wee-ooo wee-ooo? Come on. When I was little, I used to be able to think about where the Easter eggs were. I believed everybody could. . . .”

  “No, no! That was little. Now it’s big. And the thing about it is, we both see, but you see it after and I see it before. And you see what’s all nice and I see what’s . . . not nice. You saw the cemetery, so you think David is just a nice guy who buries poor road-killed pets. You saw him bury the dog, after the dog was dead. I saw the . . . the death, before it happened. And sure, I used to have little thoughts about little stuff, too. And I used to think everybody could. But everybody couldn’t.”

  “And then it stopped, Mal.”

  “Why did it stop?”

  “I don’t know. I never thought about it.”

  “Do you ever think about anything?” Mallory asked.

  “Shut your fat mouth. Actually, I didn’t like it. It was fun when I was really little, but then . . . Mallory, I don’t really remember, but I think I got tired of knowing what my Christmas presents were. I wanted to believe in Santa Claus. It was a drag to know so much. It stopped when I told Mom about it. Right before I got lost in the woods.”

  “So you put it out of your mind. Like the fire.”

  “I guess. I quit trying.”

  “So it used to be a thing you had to try to do,” Mallory said.

  “Wasn’t it for you?”

  “Yeah. Was hearing me ever anything you had to try to do?”

  “No. That isn’t like seeing something outside us.”

  “That’s just being us. But why did seeing other stuff go away for me? I never told Mom about it. I guess I didn’t like it, either. It wasn’t like me thinking your math test for you. . . .”

  “Or you being unable to punctuate a simple sentence without me thinking it for you. . . .”

  “It was that I didn’t feel like the other kids.”

  “I felt . . .”

  “Like . . . old.”

  “Me too,” Merry said.

  “Like an adult,” Mally continued. “I hated it. Even knowing I was getting an Easy-Bake Oven. Or that a card from Great-Grandpa was coming with a five-dollar bill in it. This is bigger, and I hate it more.”

  “Look, Mallory, don’t go off. You’re not sure this is all that big. Kim saw David save cats’ lives lots of times. Stray cats that got hurt.”

  “Cats have nine lives! They get better! Who knows why they got . . . messed up? What if precious David was the one who tortured them in the first place?” Mallory hissed.

  “You are so nuts.”

  “You are so dim.”

  It was a variation of the same thing they had been saying to each other all their lives. Neither of them loved the other less for it.

  “Okay, listen,” Merry finally told her twin. “I’m staying at Kim’s Saturday. If he leaves, I’ll . . . I’ll call you and you can come and follow him.”

  “Okay. How?”

  “Ride your bike,” Meredith advised her, with a sneer she was glad Mally couldn’t see.

  “It’s March, M
eredith! I said even I’m not such a fruitcake that I ride my bike in the dark on slippery roads! And even though you like to make me sound like I’m six years old, I hardly ever use my bike anymore except for exercise.”

  “Bull. You ride it to school. You did last year.”

  “Once!” Mallory snapped.

  “No, it was at least five times.”

  “Well, I’m not afraid to sweat. I don’t know how you can be a cheerleader, because you have to sweat, Meredith. Why don’t you have your sweat glands removed so you can be sure you’ll never smell?” Mallory asked.

  “Get Drew to drive you,” Meredith suggested then.

  “How can I do that?”

  “Uh. Well, okay. Tell him you like David.” Mallory made gagging sounds.

  “I’d rather have my tongue cut,” Mally said.

  “You made me,” Meredith went on.

  “You do like David. Plus, Drew and I are going to a movie. With some of my four hundred free passes that Aunt Kate gave me.”

  “Like a date?” Meredith was dumbstruck.

  “Like with Eden and her sister, Raina, and whoever else can fit into Drew’s car. We’re going to the Star Wars marathon.”

  “Well, so bring your cell.”

  “It starts at four o’clock. What am I going to do, jump up at nine o’clock if David leaves the house and convince Drew to run out of the theater and follow him?”

  “If he leaves, I’ll text you ODD.”

  “ODD?”

  “Operation David Detective.”

  “Oh, please. Can you be more fifth grade? Why not just ‘David left the house’?”

  “Because Kim might see it, duh. ODD looks like a text word but it isn’t. Do you have a better idea?”

  Well, Merry wasn’t that dumb.

  Mallory didn’t have a better idea.

  She would have to tell Drew she liked David Jellico. The very notion made her want to curl up and sleep until Tuesday. But spying on him had been her big hairy idea. Merry wasn’t responsible.

  Mally sighed. “Okay,” she said.

  Through the interminable passage of what was, for everyone else, an ordinary Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, Mallory gave herself over to the full-time hell of ceaseless anxiety. She went to bed at seven o’clock, the minute her homework was finished, expecting—almost hoping—David would do something crazy that would not force her to involve Drew at all.