Trading Faces

by Julia DeVillers

  No time to explain. I got up.

  “Down in front!” the annoying kid behind me hissed.

  I leaned down. And crawled out of the assembly as fast as I possibly could. And ran to the VOGS studio.

  Twenty-five

  STILL NINTH PERIOD

  “Yes! That’s right! I love science, too!” I said. “That’s me! Science fair . . . lover!”

  This was way awkward. Here I was, sitting on camera while Jazmine James interviewed me as Emma. Why, oh, why did they have to choose me as the first student spotlight? I didn’t know the answers to these questions.

  “So you have a twin sister, Payton,” Jazmine said.

  “Yes!” I nodded. “Payton is . . . great! She’s a great twin!”

  “And she must be so supportive of you,” Jazmine continued. “Because she’s here in the studio right now!”

  Jazmine pointed off camera. Emma! Emma was there?

  “Emma—Pay—?” I stammered. “I mean, Paytonmma! I mean . . . PAYTON! Hi, TWIN!”

  Okay, that was smooth.

  Emma was giving me looks. Looks that meant . . . I didn’t know what she was trying to tell me. Use your twin ESP, Emma! I don’t understand!

  “Why, they look like clones,” Jazmine said into the camera. I saw Emma’s face freeze as she was on-screen. Then the camera swung back to me. “Except that Emma’s nose is bigger.”

  No, actually my nose was bigger. But if this was going to be broadcast to the entire school, I guess I’d rather have that mixed up.

  “And now it’s time for our weather report! Adam, over to you!”

  Some guy’s face filled the screen on the camera, with a large map behind him. Whew. I was glad that was over.

  “Thanks for the interview, Emma,” Jazmine said. “Or wait, are you Payton? It’s so easy to get you two mixed up. Have you ever traded places?”

  Huh? I looked at Emma. She looked frozen.

  “No, I’m sure you would never do that,” Jazmine cooed. “That would be dishonest, wouldn’t it? Especially for Emma, an honors student who is likely hoping to represent the school in so many competitions?”

  Emma looked down at the floor.

  “Well! I’d better get ready for my next segment!” Jazmine said. She practically skipped away.

  “She knows!” Emma hissed at me. “Jazmine knows we switched places!”

  She knows?

  “And,” Emma continued, panicky, “she’s going to tell on us!”

  “Why would she do that?” I asked her.

  “Why? Why? Because I’m a threat to her! She knows I—I, Emma—am competition in the spelling bee! Mathletes! Science fairs!” Emma was in a panic now. “It’s her chance to take down the competition!”

  Oh. Yeah. That.

  “Somehow she got our switched schedule,” Emma kept going. “I still have my copy. How could she have gotten hold of the only other copy of the schedule?”

  ???

  ???

  Oh. She must have gotten it when I knocked into her and all our stuff got mixed up on the floor.

  “Um—,” I started to say, but Emma cut me off.

  “I give you one easy task—not to lose the schedule! How could you be so dumb?”

  Dumb? Did Emma just call me dumb?

  “Excuse me, Miss Brainiac,” I told her. “I know I’m not as smart as you are, but at least I can go on camera. And make you look good!”

  “Make me look good?” Emma said. “You just told everyone I won the spelling bee with the word ‘diarrhea’!”

  “I was helping you out!” I protested.

  “I sacrificed my crush so you could have your so-called friends,” Emma said. “Your superficial, shallow, clothes-obsessed popular people!”

  “Like your ‘we’re too smart to have any fun’ brainiac people are any better?” I shot back. “You’re so selfish!”

  “Selfish!” Emma practically screamed. “After everything I’ve done for you?!”

  She raised her hand. Was she going to . . . smack me?

  And all of a sudden I realized that the room had gone quiet. I looked down at my shirt. Oh, no. My microphone was still attached.

  I looked up at the VOGS monitor. Emma and I were on camera.

  We were on camera.

  “Emma,” I said, slowly. “Um.”

  I pointed.

  Emma looked over and saw herself on camera. Both of our faces, in total shock, were being broadcast to the entire student body.

  Please tell me our entire fight was not just broadcast to the entire school.

  I looked around and saw all the news reporters staring at us.

  Oh, no. It was.

  The camera turned, and Jazmine was back on-screen.

  “Wow!” Jazmine said, from behind the desk. “That was enlightening! We almost had that twin question answered, didn’t we: If one twin slaps the other in the face, will the other one feel it?”

  Emma slowly put her hand down. We looked at each other in horror.

  “Thanks, Emma and Payton—or should I say Payton and Emma?” Jazmine said, cheerfully. “What a fascinating inside look at twins! And that’s our show for the day.”

  She turned and smiled at us.

  Emma looked at me. I looked at Emma.

  “And, cut!” the producer said. “It’s over!”

  It was.

  It was over.

  For the Mills twins, that is.

  Twenty-six

  IN THE CAR

  Principal Patel had called our parents into school after the VOGS incident. Two long, humiliating hours later we were in the car on our way home.

  I was sitting in the middle seat. Payton was sitting in the back.

  “Grounded,” Dad said. “Both of you. For a month. No, two.”

  “I just don’t understand what you two were thinking,” Mom said. “Especially you, Emma. You’ve always had such a good head on your shoulders.”

  BRRRZPP!

  I had a text message. From Payton.

  And what’s mine? A bad head?

  I almost smiled at Payton’s text. But I stopped myself. I was still too mad at her to reply.

  “How is this going to look on your permanent records?” Mom said. “Detention!”

  I groaned. What college would want me now? Who would want such a troublemaker? All my hard work had been destroyed, all because Payton wanted to be popular!

  I texted Payton:

  This is all ur fault.

  There. Now I was never going to speak—or text—my sister again. I put my phone away.

  “And the manipulation, the deception . . . ,” my mother droned on.

  “The principal said it’s lucky you didn’t take any tests for each other, or you’d have been suspended for cheating,” Dad said. “Or even expelled!”

  Sheesh, it’s not like we broke the law or anything. I sneaked a look at Payton in the rearview mirror. She looked as miserable as I felt.

  “Both of you betrayed people,” my mother said. “You’ve disappointed us, and you’ve disappointed people at your new school. What are you going to do about it?”

  What are we going to do about it?

  “I know what I’m going to do about it,” Payton said. “I’m going into the witness protection program.”

  “Haven’t you had enough identity switching?” Mom asked.

  “Fine, then I’m switching schools,” Payton grumbled.

  “Young lady, you are not switching anything. You are going to face the consequences,” Dad said.

  “My future is over,” Payton sighed.

  Hmm. That gave me an idea. We couldn’t change the past, but maybe—just maybe—we could make things a little better at school.

  Last weekend we’d practiced becoming each other. Now we had to prepare for something else: being ourselves (our humbled, humiliated selves).

  I texted her.

  We need 2 do live apology on VOGS 2 the school.

  Payton’s head popped over the seat.
/>   “Seriously?” she whispered.

  I nodded. It was the only way I could think of to do damage control.

  “YOU want to go on camera?” Payton whispered.

  “No,” I whispered back, “I don’t. But logically, it’s the only reasonable solution. Plus, my phobia of being on camera was that I didn’t want to look stupid. I kind of blew that already.”

  “Are you listening to us, girls?” my father yelled from the driver’s seat.

  Payton disappeared.

  “Yes,” we both said.

  “You’d better listen, because blah blah blahbity blah . . .”

  Hmm. The plan was beginning to percolate in my mind. It would take some work. We’d be up really late tonight. We’d have to figure out what we wanted to say to everybody. As well as do the extra assignments that the principal had told our teachers to give us. But what else did we have to do? We were grounded. No TV. No computer. Aaugh!

  At least we’d be together. Like we were back in easier times. Before middle school, before Jazmine and Sydney and Ox.

  Oh, Ox. It had been so great to be myself with a boy, even if he’d thought I was somebody else. Well, life wasn’t a fairy tale. I didn’t get to magically switch places, destroy the evil witch(es), win the prince’s heart, and live happily ever after. Reality was that Sydney and Jazmine and Ox would still be at school tomorrow. And we would have to face them all. As ourselves. Our true selves.

  Twenty-seven

  WEDNESDAY, HOMEROOM

  The next morning, Emma and I convinced Dad to drive us in early. We went straight to Mrs. Burkle’s classroom and explained what we wanted to do. She checked with Principal Patel. And our plan was put into action.

  “At least that went well,” Emma said as we walked out into the hallway. “At least she agreed we could do our own live VOGS special report. She didn’t even sound mad at us.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s probably the only one who isn’t. It’s going to be way hard to face everyone today.”

  “So we have five minutes at the end of the day to redeem ourselves,” Emma said.

  “It’s going to be a long day until then,” I said.

  We reached our lockers.

  “Well, Mrs. Burkle did say it was the most exciting live journalism she’d seen in a long time,” Emma said.

  “And the most embarrassing,” I added. I opened my locker and started getting out my books.

  Emma was looking at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Your tote bag.” She pointed inside.

  “I organized a little last night,” I shrugged. Okay, maybe a lot. I’d gotten a few ideas from being Emma. “I put my books in order of my class schedule. And I’m going to use different color file folders like you do. For now, blue is Language Arts . . . and red is Social Studies. I’ll have to buy the other colors when we’re not grounded. Do you think yellow should be Art or—?”

  “Whatever works for you,” Emma said. “It’s your system. Wow, you have an organizational system! I’m impressed.”

  I smiled. It was nice to impress Emma.

  Emma reached into her backpack and got some things out. Including something blue and shiny that she was sticking up on her locker door.

  “Hey, what’s that?” I asked her.

  “Nothing,” Emma said.

  “Yeah, if nothing equals cute locker decorations,” I said. I peered in. Emma had just put up a locker-sized collage of blue and silver.

  “That’s really cute,” I said.

  “I borrowed some of Mom’s scrapbooking stuff late last night. I couldn’t sleep,” Emma said. I watched as she put up some math symbol magnets—and a mirror. She checked her lip gloss and closed her locker.

  “You are so Pay-tified!” I said. “I love it!”

  “Well. Okay. Thanks,” Emma said, looking a little embarrassed. “I’m going to homeroom. I can get some extra study time.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Good luck today.”

  I held up my hand for the twin handslap. And we went off our separate ways.

  I walked down the hall. I put my hands in my hoodie pockets, and in one I found a little blue sticky note.

  It’s great to be Emma,

  but I’m “gray”-tful you’re Payton!

  :)

  Aw. I smiled.

  “Hey, it’s one of those psycho twins,” a boy said as he passed me.

  My smile faded. I walked faster, my head down.

  “Blah blah blah twins . . . blah blah hilarious . . . blah blah . . .” I tried to block out everybody’s voice, and somehow I made it to homeroom.

  The room got quiet as I walked in.

  I kept my head down and walked quickly to my seat. Sydney was in her seat, and I avoided eye contact.

  “Mills, Payton?” Mrs. Galbreath called out.

  “Here,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” I heard Sydney whisper. “Maybe it’s Emma Mills.”

  I cringed. The homeroom teacher kept on with her attendance.

  I stared straight ahead. Unfortunately, the view was Sydney’s shiny, perfect hair. I thought back to how badly I’d wanted to be friends with her. In a way, that had kind of started all of this.

  “This is all because you wanted to be popular,” Emma had hissed at me. Well, wait. She wanted to be popular too. It wasn’t just me! We’d both wanted to be popular.

  Sydney tossed a note to the girl sitting across from her. The girl read the note and glanced at me. Then she laughed nervously.

  Okay. I don’t want to be that kind of popular. I was over scrubbing bathrooms and slaving for clothes, and I was over being nervous around Sydney, I decided. What I really wanted was some good friends.

  Well. At least I had one true friend: Emma.

  “Class, I need to step out for a minute,” Mrs. Galbreath said. “Please study quietly at your desks.”

  She stepped out of the class. One second later the spitballs started flying. A crowd of groupies flocked to Sydney’s desk.

  I pretended to be fascinated with my math book. La, la, la, not listening to them.

  “So. Payton.”

  Oh, no. Sydney had turned around and was facing me. As were the other girls, including Quinn.

  “I feel so betrayed, Payton,” Sydney said. “I was being a good friend to you, and you weren’t even you. That is so wrong.”

  Everyone around her was like, Yeah, so wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” I said miserably. “I was just—”

  “And I can’t believe you thought that I would actually fall for it!” Sydney said. “Puh-lease. I knew all along.”

  What?

  “Yeah,” some girl echoed. “I mean, that Emma is in my science class, and she’s a freaky brainiac.”

  “I know, right?” Sydney said. “Total geek. I mean, have you seen her sweatpants?”

  “But you have to admit, your shirt is so way cute,” Quinn said. “Emma did good there.”

  Huh?

  “Um, what?” The words popped out of my mouth.

  “You—I mean, Emma—picked out that shirt Sydney’s wearing, when we went to the mall,” Quinn said to me. “The saleslady was all like, ‘Wow, Emma has mad cool taste.’ ”

  Emma? My twin?

  “And this!” Quinn continued, pointing to her necklace. “Isn’t this cute? And all of Emma’s new clothes when she was pretending to be you. Didn’t Emma tell you that?”

  Um, no. I thought back. I had assumed Sydney had picked out all the new clothes.

  Emma did?

  “Quinn! Jeesh! Shut it!” Sydney said, giving her a dirty look. “That is so not important.”

  Quinn’s face fell.

  “What is important,” Sydney announced loudly, “is that Emma is a loser. And Payton is a poser.”

  Everyone looked at me. I felt like the whole world was looking at me. I felt my face turn bright red. I felt my heart pounding in my chest.

  “Class!” The homeroom teacher walked back in. “People are ou
t of their seats! I’m shocked! Return to your seats immediately!”

  Sydney’s friends scattered back to their desks. Sydney flipped her hair and turned back around facing front. But not before mouthing one word at me:

  Poser.

  I shrank down in my seat. My brain was a whirl. What would Emma do?

  Doesn’t matter. I’m Payton. What would Payton do? Payton would hide. As soon as homeroom was over, I walked quickly out of the classroom. And straight to the nurse’s office.

  “Name?” the nurse asked me.

  “Payton Mills,” I said.

  “Have you been here before?” she asked, looking me up on her computer.

  Um. Sort of. Under a different name.

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “Problem?”

  “I’m just—sick,” I said.

  “Your face is beet-red and flushed,” the nurse announced. “And very sweaty. Likely a fever. Go lie down on the cot.”

  “Um, can you tell me when it’s eighth period?” I asked. “I . . . I’ll feel better by then.”

  “You know when you’re going to feel better?” The nurse eyed me suspiciously.

  Uh.

  “Nurse! Nurse!” A teacher came running in, dragging a boy with her. “A student cut his finger!”

  “It’s just a paper cut,” the kid said. “Jeez.”

  “We have a bleeder! We have a bleeder!” the nurse announced dramatically. “Everyone to a cot!”

  The kid looked embarrassed but otherwise fine. I, on the other hand, was embarrassed and not fine. But at least I was forgotten. I took my sweaty red self over to the cot and lay down. I pulled the blanket over my face. I was just going to hide out here until it was time for our VOGS apology.

  I wiggled around until I got more comfortable.

  Mmmm . . . I had to admit that these capris I was wearing—which Emma had picked out at the mall—were pretty soft and comfy. Trendy and comfy. No more uncomfortable Summer Slave clothes, I decided.

  Well, except for the yellow cami—that was really cute. Oh, and the gray sweater was a little itchy, but totally worth it. And when my feet grew a little bigger, I was definitely going to wear those platforms, and—

  Zzzzz

  Zzzzzzz

  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  Twenty-eight

  NINTH PERIOD