Times Squared

by Julia DeVillers

  “Nice shot,” I told her admiringly.

  Emma grinned at me. And we both tossed beach balls to the other side of the pool.

  Eighteen

  THE HOTEL POOL

  “Hi-ya!” I punched a beach ball at the other team and lost my footing. Before I slipped under the water, I saw it bounce off a boy Panther’s head. Bull’s-eye!

  I held my breath underwater and regained my balance. I popped up through the surface, ready for my next victim. But something was weird. All of the sound around me was muffled, like someone had turned the volume down to low. Very low.

  “Payton!” I called. I located my twin and paddled over to her. “Payton.”

  “. . . ,” Payton said, looking at me.

  “I can’t hear you!” I told her. “I can’t hear anything! My ears are plugged up!”

  “. . .” Payton frowned. Her lips kept moving.

  “I’m going up to the room!” I said.

  My twin finally got it. She nodded and pointed up. She also pointed to Mrs. Nicely.

  “I’ll tell the chaperone,” I agreed. I got out of the pool, wrapped a towel around me, and tried to dry off my hair and the insides of my ears.

  Nothing. The whole pool area must have been noisy, but I couldn’t hear it. I went over to Mrs. Nicely and explained my situation. She gave me my room key card and pointed up. Then she said something to a lifeguard, and together we left the pool area.

  Squinch, squinch. My ears made sloshing sounds as Mrs. Nicely and I silently walked through the corridor on the way to the elevator.

  We reached the lobby elevators and stepped into an open one. While waiting for the doors to close, I spotted Nick coming in the hotel entrance.

  “!” His mouth was moving. He held up a minicamera and waved it around.

  The elevator doors shut. I had no idea what Nick was trying to tell me. The elevator went up to my floor. The doors opened. Mrs. Nicely and I walked down to my room.

  Squirch! There was a weird, echoing sound in my left ear. I tilted my head and jumped on my left foot, a trick my mother had taught me. A useless trick. Wee-oo-wee-ooh went my right ear.

  I felt a little dizzy. As I slid my room card in the swiper, I tilted over.

  A couple of eighth graders—Katelyn and Ava, I remembered—were walking down the hallway in my direction. They saw me hopping and swaying and started giggling. I couldn’t hear them, but I could definitely tell they were laughing at me.

  “I have vestibular issues, okay?” I yelled, just before I lost my balance and fell over.

  I lay sprawled at Mrs. Nicely’s feet. I looked up and noticed the red light blinking. I hadn’t gotten my door open either. Double humiliation.

  My library media specialist/chaperone pulled me up and got my card to work. I assured her I was fine and said good-bye as she left to go back down to the pool.

  I didn’t know if she’d said anything to me. But at least she was gone. I looked around my little room. Alone at last. Perfect time to study.

  I remembered my floating flash cards as I changed into a new white with blue stripes shorts and tee set. The flash cards were a total loss, I thought as I combed my wet hair in the bathroom. But my outfit was cute, I decided as I looked in the mirror.

  My mother had taken Payton and me shopping for this trip. My twin and I had picked out one casual outfit. Our mother . . . well, she’d insisted on buying us matching dresses. They were hideous.

  “No, Mom!” Payton and I had protested.

  “You may need them for a dressy occasion,” she had said firmly. “Besides, they’re sixty percent off!”

  Yeah, because no one would buy them.

  I finished drying off, thinking about the matching dresses tucked into the bottom of our suitcases. Which is where they would stay.

  Unlike my math books, which were out, all ready to be reread for the fiftieth time. I looked at the clock. Four thirty. Plenty of time to study before our next activity—dinner at six thirty. Yes!

  Squoish, my right ear gurgled. This was seriously annoying. I would have to ignore the water sloshing in my eustachian tubes in order to study for tomorrow’s competition.

  Tomorrow’s competition!

  “Aaaaaaah!” I yelled. (It sounded like “aaaaaaah” to me.)

  The competition! What if I couldn’t hear by then? What if my ears stayed clogged? I would be disqualified from competing! Sure, I could do the written part, but the lightning round was all oral. If I couldn’t hear the questioner, I couldn’t answer the questions!

  I banged the sides of my head desperately. No change. This was a disaster! I flopped down on my bed with a yelp of frustration.

  There had to be a way to fix this! Maybe sign language? Okay, I didn’t know sign language. What was I going to do???

  Zzzzzzz . . . I fell asleep.

  Pop! Poppity—pop-pop!

  I woke up when the inside of my skull exploded. (Or was that part of my dream?) I opened my eyes and saw Payton looking down at me.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “Okay.” I yawned and looked at the clock. It was 4:50. Nice, little nap . . .

  “Hey!” I jumped up. “I heard you! Payton, I can hear!” The popping must have been my ears draining.

  “Talk to me, Pay!” I exclaimed. “I want to hear your voice! Wait, I can hear my own voice now, which is identical to your voice. So never mind, you don’t need to say anything.”

  Payton talked anyway. “Emma, did we get any calls? Or texts?”

  “Um,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  My twin looked sad for a moment. Then she picked up her cell phone from the side table.

  “I’ve got five new messages!” she said. “And you have four!” she added, picking up mine.

  “Oh,” I realized. “I was so worried about not being able to hear, I forgot to check.”

  “Nick!” Payton said, realization dawning. “Tess, Mom, and Nick again!”

  I scrolled down mine. Mom, Ox, and Nick?

  I skipped over my mom and opened Ox’s.

  Em- did you get Nick’s msg? CU soon! Ox

  I opened Nick’s message.

  “It says Nick wants us to meet in the conference room on the first floor,” I read.

  “I know, I know,” my twin said. “I got the same text. And it says it’s a secret meeting. What the heck is this all about?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “But we’re supposed to be there at five. That’s in exactly five minutes.”

  “Five minutes?” Payton shrieked. She grabbed her suitcase and dragged it into the bathroom with her. I was surprised they both fit.

  I used the time to text Ox and Nick that we’d be there. Then I texted my mother back that we were great, everything was great, and that we’d call her later.

  That took four minutes.

  “I’m ready!” Payton opened the bathroom door. She’d changed into her cute new outfit (cream shirt and pink leggings). “That was the fastest I’ve ever gotten ready.”

  “Congratulations on your new world record,” I told her. “But your hair is still damp.”

  “So is yours,” Payton pointed out. “And it’s sticking out funny in the back.”

  Erg! Poolhead plus bedhead. I grabbed a hair band and tied my hair back into a ponytail.

  “Better,” my twin said. “Now let’s go find out what this mystery meeting is all about.”

  We took the elevator to floor one and followed a sign to the conference room.

  “If this clandestine meeting gets us in trouble, I’m going to say you made me come,” I told my sister. “We are supposed to be resting in our rooms.”

  “What?” Payton looked at me like, Are you crazy?

  I can’t afford to get disqualified tomorrow,” I explained. We reached the conference room. Nick was at the door.

  “Come on in,” he said quietly.

  We stepped into the room.

  “Well, if we get caught, you’re not the only mathlete g
oing down,” Payton murmured.

  Wow.

  The conference room was large and brightly lit. There was a rectangular table in the center with a huge flower arrangement on it. A sign sticking out from the flowers read, Welcome, Matsumo Motor Company!

  “The Matsumo Company plane had mechanical trouble, so they were stuck in Tokyo,” Nick said. “So we get the room instead.”

  Nick moved the flowers, and my jaw dropped. Seated around the conference table were—Tess, Ox, Jazmine, and Hector!

  “Five of us plus twins equals all of us,” Nick announced. “We’re all here.”

  “Wow, you should’ve been a mathlete,” Tess teased.

  Payton walked over and sat down next to Tess.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Should we be in here?”

  “It’s okay,” Nick said. “Quinton—the limo driver who brought me back from the theater—is married to this hotel’s assistant manager. He hooked me up with this room because it’s for a good cause.”

  I sat down next to Payton.

  “What cause?” I whispered to my twin. “The Ashlynn Fan Club Foundation?”

  Payton kicked me under the table. Ow.

  Ox leaned across the table.

  “Hi, Emma,” he said. “Sorry I missed you at the pool. I got there late because I was helping Coach Babbitt carry some math stuff up to his room, and Mason and Jason kept punching all the buttons on the elevator.”

  Ox smiled at me. He didn’t seem mad or anything. Yay, me! I smiled back and felt my face turn red.

  “Okay,” Jazmine said. “Enough chitchat. I need to get back to studying. What is so important that you brought us down here?”

  “Yeah,” Hector said, echoing his leader. “What?”

  “This is what,” Nick said. Suddenly the lights dimmed and a big screen came down, covering one wall. “I’ve hooked my minicam up to the projector so we can all see this.”

  “This” was Ashlynn’s face, huge on-screen and smiling.

  “Told you,” I whispered to Payton.

  “Hi! I’m Ashlynn, star of the off-Broadway musical Fairytale Mash-up! Nick has asked me to tape a little segment for all you Gecko Hick-o’s!”

  “Did she just call us hicks?” Tess said.

  “So here we are in the dressing room that I share with another actress, um . . .”

  “Liz,” said an older girl. The camera turned toward her for a moment. I recognized her from the play rehearsal.

  “So after we finish your—whatch’callit—HOGS cast?”

  “VOGS cast,” Nick said, correcting her. We could only hear his voice because he was behind the camera.

  Pause.

  “This is where I set up my tripod stand and put my camera in it, aiming at Ashlynn,” off-screen, real-life Nick said. “That’s important to know, considering what comes next.”

  “What comes next?” Tess, Payton, and I all said at the same time.

  “And why should we care?” grumbled Jazmine.

  “Just watch,” Nick told us. Unpause.

  “So after you film this, Nicky, do you want to go do something fun?” Ashlynn batted her eyelashes. Which looked gigantic on the screen.

  “Um, oh, I’ve got to get back to the hotel,” Nick’s voice replied.

  “Just a little dinner . . . and maybe a stroll or something romantic?” Ashlynn persisted.

  “No, thank you,” Nick’s voice said more firmly. “Now, would you mind telling me how you got your part in this production?”

  “Yes, I mind!” Ashlynn’s face suddenly turned mean. “And I need to rehearse in private. So get out!”

  “Wait, I just need . . .” Nick’s voice said.

  “I said out!” Ashlynn got up, and we all heard a door slam. Pause.

  Our conference room was silent as Nick pressed “pause” on the camera again and said, “I just wanted to get my camera. But it stayed in there with her—still filming. And I wasn’t sure at that point what I was supposed to do. Leave? I didn’t even know how I was getting back to the hotel. So I waited down the hall a ways. After a little while Ashlynn and Liz left the room and went the opposite way from me. So I ran in and grabbed my camera and tripod. Then I went to the front of the theater, where I found Quinton, who was supposed to drive me back here.

  “And on the ride home, I watched the footage of what happened after I left,” Nick said. “She’d given me permission to film, and I thought I could find something to use in the VOGS cast. I found something all right. This.”

  He pressed a button on the camera.

  “Gah, he wasn’t that cute anyway.” Ashlynn sat back down by Liz. She was half off-camera, but we could hear her loud and clear.

  “Can you believe that bunch of Hick-o’s today?” Ashlynn snorted. “Their so-called actors were so lame, complete amateurs.”

  “I’m not sure they were all drama kids,” Liz said.

  “Oh yeah, the math nerds.” Ashlynn rolled her eyes. “They’re even worse than, like, band geeks.”

  “Hey!” Hector spoke up. “I am an elite mathlete and an accomplished cellist. Who does she think she is?”

  “Oh, who cares?” Jazmine said. “Calm down.”

  “And that Wicked Witch girl?” Ashlynn laughed. “Worst. Acting. Ever. She had absolutely no stage presence.”

  “She did not just say that,” Jazmine said, her voice turning deadly. “She wants to see me do wicked? I’ll give her evil so bad she’ll run screaming off the stage, crying for her mommy.”

  Pause.

  We all looked at Jazmine.

  “What?” She glared at us. “Can we finish this up?”

  “It’s almost done,” Nick said. “But I want to warn you. It’s kind of hard to watch. I had no idea she’d get so mad at me when I turned her down.”

  “It’s not Nick she’s mad at,” I whispered to Payton. “It’s you. Us.”

  “I know,” Payton whispered back.

  “Dude, don’t blame yourself,” Ox told Nick. “She asked me out too.”

  What? Excuse me???

  “I said no, of course,” Ox said. He was looking at me. He was looking at me!

  I smiled back at him and gave him a thumbs-up. He grinned back. Yes!

  Unpause.

  “A school of losers,” Ashlynn kept babbling. “Especially those twins. Did you see the one wannabe in last month’s fashions and the other one in sweatpants?” She cracked up.

  “They’re yoga pants,” I protested.

  “Shhh . . .” Everyone shushed me.

  “Well, they haven’t seen anything yet.” Ashlynn laughed. “Tomorrow’s show is audience participation, and I’m going to embarrass those Gecko Hick-o’s even more. I’m talking Total. Public. Humiliation.”

  There was a background noise, and then three of the floofiest dogs I’d ever seen raced in and started jumping on Ashlynn.

  “Get down!” Ashlynn shrieked. “You’ll get my skirt all muddy.”

  And she pushed—pushed—one dog off her lap. We couldn’t see it hit the floor, but we heard a sad, hurt whimper.

  The screen went black.

  And we all just sat there.

  Nineteen

  STILL IN THE HOTEL CONFERENCE ROOM

  Everyone was silent.

  “Well, that was exceptionally harsh,” Tess said. “What did we ever do to her?”

  “I know some people might think you two boys are attractive,” Jazmine said, looking at Ox and Nick, “but is that enough for public humiliation?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  “Yes, I believe it is!” Emma said suddenly. “Um . . . think of it this way. Say I happened to like either Nick or Ox—”

  “You like Nick and Ox?!” Hector said. “I knew it! That explains the whole Ferris wheel thing.”

  Nick and Ox both turned red.

  “No, no!” Emma shouted. “I was speaking hypothetically. I do not like Nick and Ox. Well, not Nick. I mean—I’m just saying, for example, if I were Ashlynn and asked out
Nick and Ox and they turned me down, I might get a little upset.”

  “That wasn’t upset,” Hector said. “She’s talking total annihilation of all of us.”

  “Well, Ox is really special,” Emma babbled on. “I mean Nick and Ox are . . .”

  I knew she was trying to save me. I appreciated it. But I didn’t want her to have to go any further.

  I knew what I needed to do.

  “Emma, it’s okay!” I said, cutting her off. I stood up and looked at everyone. “I have a confession to make.”

  Everyone looked back at me, confused. Except Emma, who gave me a look like, was I sure I wanted to do this?

  “The reason Ashlynn hates us is . . .” I took a deep breath. “Me. Ashlynn and I went to summer camp together.”

  Everyone was like “What?!”

  “I should have said something right away,” I said. “But I was so shocked. And then I thought she didn’t recognize me so I thought I could stay under the radar.”

  “Why is that a big deal?” Jazmine asked. “You could have said hi and gone on with your lives.”

  I glanced at Emma.

  “Let’s just say Ashlynn and Payton didn’t get along at camp,” Emma said. “And leave it at that.”

  “What the heck did you do to her?” Hector asked.

  “Nothing!” Emma and I both said.

  “It’s what I did for her,” I said softly.

  “Payton, you don’t have to say anything else,” Emma said. She tilted her head toward Jazmine and Hector. Then at Tess. And . . . Nick.

  And I realized that was exactly why I wanted to say what I said next.

  “I want to be honest,” I said. “I don’t want Ashlynn to have anything to hold over me anymore.”

  I told them the whole story. How I was Summer Slave to Ashlynn for her trendy clothes. The humiliating things I’d had to do.

  “Why did you do all that?” Jazmine asked. “That sounds just demeaning.”

  “I wanted to start school with really cool new clothes,” I said miserably. “And, honestly, I think I hoped some ‘Ashlynn’ would rub off too.”

  “Why would you want that girl to rub off on you?” Tess asked. “She was so mean to you and is going to be mean to us. And plus, she kicked a puppy!”

  I might as well get it all out.