Twice the Talent

by Belle Payton

  Alex shook her head. It was getting harder to avoid the teacher’s direct line of questioning.

  “I copied from Alex’s paper!” Max suddenly blurted out. “She didn’t have anything to do with it and didn’t know about it, I swear. She left her social studies folder on a table in the library, and when she walked away, I copied the homework answers.”

  Mrs. Bridges nodded as if that was what she’d been waiting to hear. “Thank you, Max. Alex, you may leave the room.”

  Alex quickly got up and left. This time she didn’t linger outside the door—she didn’t want to embarrass Max more by eavesdropping on his punishment.

  Poor Max! she thought. But at least he had done the right thing and told the truth.

  She walked down the hallway, wondering if Corey was at the park, and if it would be weird if she went to see if he was there. As she passed the auditorium, she heard country music playing. For a moment, she panicked. Was she supposed to meet Chloe and the others for a Variety Show meeting? She quickly checked her phone and saw that the next meeting wasn’t until Thursday. It must just be an act using the auditorium for practice.

  Curious, she slipped inside—and saw Ava, with the rest of the Toe the Line dancers, practicing their routine.

  For a weird second, she wasn’t sure if it was actually Ava out there—or herself! Her twin was having a hard time keeping up with the other dancers, and twice she bumped into the tall boy standing on her left. Which was all very Alex, and not very Ava at all. Although to Ava’s credit, she wasn’t tripping over her feet, like Alex would have.

  What is up with her? Alex wondered, but the more she watched, the more she understood. It was a really complicated dance, more complicated than a cheerleading routine, even.

  Then Alex remembered when Ava had talked to her about it, on the bus, and she had seemed a little unsure of herself—as though she were convincing herself to do it. If Alex hadn’t been so wrapped up in all the Max and Lindsey drama, she might have given her sister some advice. Well, it was never too late. Alex waited until the practice was over.

  “Good effort, Ava,” Carly said, and Alex saw her sister cringe. She knew—and she knew that Ava knew—that “good effort” really meant, “You stink, but at least you’re trying.”

  Alex waved Ava over when she climbed off the stage.

  “Don’t tell me you saw that,” Ava said.

  “Most of it,” said Alex. “I can tell it’s not easy.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Ava said with a sigh.

  Then Alex had an idea. “Hey, you should ask Coach for help,” she said. “He’s a good dancer, and he grew up in Texas, so he probably knows how to line dance.”

  “That’s what Tommy said,” Ava told her.

  “If both of your siblings are giving you the same advice, you should probably take it,” Alex said.

  Ava sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it. I just wish I had never gotten into this in the first place!”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  The next day at school Alex looked around anxiously for Max. She had no idea what had happened after he’d made his confession. Had he been suspended?

  She finally saw him in the hallway on the way to social studies. His hair was a mess, there was a hole in the bottom of the T-shirt he was wearing, and his shoelaces were untied—so he looked pretty much the same as always. Alex couldn’t tell if something bad had happened or not.

  She wove through the crowd to talk to him, but Max saw her out of the corner of his eye and actually broke into a jog to avoid her. He obviously didn’t want to speak to her. He quickly darted into class. When Alex entered, she saw that he had his notebook open and was pretending to study something very intently.

  Alex tried to approach him again at lunchtime, as he walked out of the lunch line. But he made a sharp turn in the opposite direction, and Alex didn’t follow. He was clearly avoiding her, embarrassed by what had happened.

  But Alex really wanted to thank him. Copying her homework—that had been wrong. But telling the truth to keep Alex out of trouble—that was really brave. She didn’t want Max to walk around thinking she was angry with him.

  This is exactly like my Lindsey problem, Alex thought. Max won’t even talk to me! Things were getting pretty frustrating.

  Her twin noticed something was bothering Alex on the bus ride home.

  “You’ve got that look on your face,” Ava said. “And you’ve only told me three things that happened to you today, when normally at this point you would be up to ten things.”

  “Ha-ha,” Alex said drily.

  “You look like you’re trying to figure out a problem,” Ava said. “What’s bugging you? The Lindsey thing?”

  “Well, that, and then this thing happened with Max,” Alex said, and she told her sister the whole story.

  “Wow, Al, and you’re not mad at him?” Ava asked.

  Alex shook her head. “No. It was brave of him to tell the truth, and anyway, I think there’s a reason he’s cheating and it’s not because he’s lazy. Tommy thought there was something up with him too, when we gave him a ride home last week, and he thought I could figure it out. But I haven’t been able to.”

  “Wait a minute. You know where he lives?” Ava asked.

  Alex nodded. “Yes.”

  “So go over there and talk to him,” Ava suggested. “He probably doesn’t want to talk about it in school, where everybody can listen.”

  “Ave, that’s a great idea!” Alex said. “He’s in Magnolia Terrace. It’s not that far. I’m going to ride my bike over there as soon as we get home. Thank you. That’s great advice.”

  “Well, I owe you one,” Ava said. “You and Tommy.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex asked.

  “I’m finally going to take your advice,” Ava said. “I told Coach I needed help.”

  “You know, sometimes I wonder how people manage who don’t have a twin,” Alex remarked. “I mean, look at us. We’re solving each other’s problems!”

  The bus came to a stop near the Sacketts’ house.

  “Not all our problems are solved yet!” Ava reminded her.

  They got off the bus. Alex stuck with Ava’s slow pace as they walked to the house, but as soon as they got inside, she bolted upstairs. She quickly changed out of the plaid skirt and white blouse she was wearing and into a T-shirt, leggings, and hoodie. Much better for bike riding.

  Then she took her bike and helmet out of the garage, hopped on, and headed to Magnolia Terrace.

  She didn’t remember the house number, but she knew she just had to look for the white house with the overgrown grass. When she found it, she parked her bicycle by the front steps. Then she walked up and pressed the doorbell.

  Through the door, she could hear the loud wailing of a baby. Then a woman’s voice yelled, “Max! Please get that!”

  A minute passed, and nobody came to the door. Alex thought about pressing the doorbell again, but she felt bad. Things sounded pretty hectic inside.

  Then there was the sound of feet, and the door opened. Max looked surprised to see her.

  “Alex?” he asked.

  “Um, can I please come in?” she asked. “I need to talk to you.”

  Max was too surprised to say no. He motioned for her to come in.

  The sound of the baby’s wails grew louder. Alex looked around and saw that the living room was a mess. There was a baby’s playpen in the middle of the room and toys strewn about all over the floor. A basket of laundry spilled out onto the carpet.

  A woman came out of the kitchen, talking into a phone. Her hair was swept up in a messy ponytail, she had a rag draped over her shoulder, and Alex could see the dark circles under her eyes from across the room. She didn’t seem to notice Alex was there.

  “Steven, you need to come home and help me with this, please,” she was saying. “I can’t find her bottle, and she won’t stop crying!”

  Max nodded toward the staircase. “Downstairs. It’s quieter.”


  He led her down a short flight of stairs into the family room. It was just as messy as the living room, but only a little quieter. Alex was starting to figure out why Max was always tired in school.

  “Max, I just wanted to thank you,” Alex blurted out. “For telling the truth. I understand why you didn’t at first, but I’m really glad you did. And I hope you’re not in too much trouble.”

  “I don’t know yet,” Max said. “I haven’t gotten probation, but I think I might.”

  “Do your parents know?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Max said. “My dad is so busy that he never reads the e-mails from the school. And my stepmom hasn’t said anything either.”

  “That’s why you had to cheat, right?” Alex asked. “Because it’s so chaotic here?”

  A weary look swept over Max’s face. “It’s been crazy ever since the baby was born,” he said. “Dad and Karen are like, freaking out, like they don’t know what to do. The baby screams all night and I don’t get any sleep. And when I ask Dad or Karen for help with homework, or to go to the library, they’re always too busy.”

  “But I bet if they knew you were having trouble in school, they wouldn’t be,” Alex said. “I bet you got good grades before this, right?”

  Max nodded. “How did you know?”

  “Because you’re smart,” Alex told him. “You knew what the Fifth Amendment was without having to look it up, and you have an impressive vocabulary.”

  “Well, I have one of those word-a-day calendars,” Max admitted.

  “Me too!” said Alex, and they smiled at each other.

  “You know, you should talk to your parents and teachers about what’s going on,” she said. “I’m sure they would understand.”

  “I probably should have done that already,” Max said. “I just didn’t want to make anything worse. But you’re right—I don’t want to fail out of middle school either! I’m just so tired, I’m not thinking straight.”

  Alex thought about how Ava had helped her solve this problem.

  “Sometimes you just need a little help,” she told him.

  Ava sat perched on the couch at home, getting up every few minutes to see if Coach’s car was pulling into the driveway. He was overseeing weight training at the high school this afternoon, and she couldn’t wait for him to get home.

  “So, you didn’t say. What’s this urgent problem you need my help with?” Coach asked when he finally walked in the door.

  “Do you know how to line dance?” Ava asked.

  Coach’s green eyes started to twinkle. “Line dancing? That’s your urgent problem?”

  “It is!” Ava assured him. “I’m taking over for Kylie in this dance group. We’re performing a big act at the Variety Show. I thought it would be easy, but I just can’t get it—I’m dancing like Alex!”

  Coach nodded gravely. “Okay, that is a problem. But you’ve come to the right man. I don’t talk about it much, but I could do a mean line dance back in the day.”

  Ava handed him the sheet with the dance steps. “Do you know how to do all these?”

  Coach took the sheet from her and grinned. “Of course I do! Tell you what. Give me a minute and we’ll get right on it. Do you have the song?”

  “I can play it on my phone,” Ava said.

  “Then set up your phone in the speaker and we’ll get started,” Coach said. “First we’ll go over the steps, and then we’ll try them to the music.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” Ava said, hugging him.

  Coach left the living room and returned wearing a cowboy hat. “Can’t dance without the hat,” he explained. Then he looked at the dance steps.

  “All right, let’s start with a grapevine,” he said. “We’ll start real slow. For a grapevine right, you step your right foot to the right.”

  He demonstrated, and Ava copied.

  “Then you cross your left foot behind your right one,” Coach instructed, making the move. Ava did the same.

  “Then your right foot steps to the right, and your left foot meets the left side of the right foot,” Coach explained, as he slowly did the steps.

  “So that’s how you do it!” Ava cried as she copied him. “Everyone does it so fast that I could never figure out how to do the ending.”

  “Let’s do it a few more times,” Coach suggested.

  They practiced the grapevine right until Ava got the hang of it. Then Coach repeated the process with the rest of the moves: the heel dig, the pivot turn, the triple step, and the weave.

  Once Ava had practiced each move, Coach pushed the coffee table out of the way to give them more space and told her to put the music on.

  “Okay, now let’s turn these moves into a dance!” he cried. “I’ll call them out.”

  Ava nodded and took a breath. For the first time, she thought she might be able to do the dance after all. The strains of the song began.

  “Walk forward!” Coach called out. “Grapevine right! Grapevine left! Step, tap! Step, tap! Pivot right!”

  “Hey, I’m doing it!” Ava cried.

  Just then Uncle Scott walked in the door. His face lit up when he saw what was going on in the living room.

  “What, have you guys been line dancing in secret without me this whole time?” he asked. Without missing a beat, he stepped in line next to Coach and began to do the moves as Coach called them out.

  “Heel dig, and clap!”

  “Uncle Scott, you can line dance too?” Ava called out over the music.

  “Hey, I’ve lived in Texas longer than your dad has,” her uncle reminded her.

  “Keep up, guys! Triple step!” Coach yelled.

  The song ended, and Uncle Scott high-fived Ava. “Not bad, little lady,” he said.

  “I need to be better than not bad,” Ava said. “I need to be great. Can we do it again?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Coach said. “Set us up, Ava?”

  Mrs. Sackett walked into the house, holding a bag of groceries. “Set up what?”

  “We’re teaching Ava how to line dance for the Variety Show,” Coach replied.

  “Hey, I want in on that!” Mrs. Sackett said. “Let me just get these groceries in the refrigerator.”

  “Is that what this is for? The Variety Show?” Uncle Scott asked.

  Ava nodded. “Yes. It’s next week.”

  “Good for you, Ava,” Uncle Scott said. “I’m glad to see you’re not letting your ankle get you down.”

  Ava looked down at her brace. She had been having so much fun that she had forgotten she was wearing it!

  Mrs. Sackett rushed in. “Okay, let’s do this!”

  Ava was confused. “Mom, you’re not from Texas.”

  “Your dad was big into line dancing when we met in college,” she explained. “He used to take me to this country-and-western bar, and he taught me there. I think it was the only country-and-western bar in Massachusetts!”

  Ava played the song again, and her mom lined up with her behind Coach and Uncle Scott. Coach called out the moves again. This time Ava felt like she knew what moves were coming next before Coach even called them out. It was finally getting easier!

  Up from a nap, Moxy bounded into the living room and began to circle the dancers. At that moment, another Sackett got home—Alex, who had just returned from seeing Max.

  She stopped cold when she saw the living room line dancing.

  “Come join us, Alex!” Uncle Scott called out.

  Alex shook her head. “No way. You don’t know who you’re asking.”

  When the song ended, everybody clapped.

  “That was fun!” said Mrs. Sackett.

  “I don’t know what’s happening to this family,” Alex said. “Everyone’s turning into Texans! Even Moxy.”

  “Woof!” Moxy barked at the sound of her name.

  “Well, this Texan has an announcement to make,” Uncle Scott said. “I got the new job!”

  Mrs. Sackett let out a whoop, and Coach hugged his bro
ther.

  “It’s about forty-five minutes away, over in Eagle Ridge,” Uncle Scott informed them. “And I already found an apartment close by. I just signed the lease. I’ll be moving out at the end of the month.”

  Mrs. Sackett almost let out another whoop, but contained herself. Ava and Alex looked at each other. Each twin knew what the other was thinking.

  They both would be sad to see him go—but it would be nice to have just five Sacketts in the house again!

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  When Alex saw Max the next day, he didn’t try to avoid her. In fact, he gave her a nervous smile and motioned for her to talk to him outside the social studies classroom.

  “So, I talked to my parents last night,” Max said. “They set up a meeting with Ms. Farmen today. If Alexa doesn’t scream all the way through the meeting, it should be very productive.”

  “Wait, your baby sister’s name is Alexa?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah—oh wow, I didn’t think of that,” Max said. “That’s pretty funny.”

  “I swear, I don’t scream like that,” Alex joked.

  Max laughed. “Listen, I want to say thanks.”

  Alex wondered if she could keep her fingers crossed for Max all day but decided it would be much more effective to keep them crossed inside her head. She was so excited for Max that at lunch, she almost missed something significant.

  Lindsey was walking past her, carrying her lunch tray, when her carton of milk fell off. Alex instinctively picked it up and handed it to her.

  “Thanks, Alex,” Lindsey said.

  A few seconds later, it hit Alex. Lindsey had talked to her! After a week of the silent treatment! That meant there was hope.

  Alex proceeded cautiously. Lindsey still treated her coolly during lunch. The girls started talking about their Dancing Divas outfits, and Alex listened in.

  “I still say that the dresses with the sequins aren’t ‘Wild West’ enough,” Rosa said.

  Emily started tapping her phone. “I still like the idea of wearing those cute vests we found, with a red pleated skirt.”