Beth was ballistic. "What's wrong with you? You totally blew off those kids. How could you act like that?"
"Like what?" Cam said, out of breath. Hands on her hips, she took a couple of deep sucks of air. "I'm... I'm just..."How could she explain it to Beth, who was clearly more excited than alarmed that a stranger had turned up looking eerily like Cam? How could she explain that she didn't want, couldn't take, any more spooky surprises? That seeing things others didn't see, hearing voices no one else could hear and, now, bumping into this distorted mirror image, was more than she could handle right now?
"No matter what," Beth lectured, "even if you're still bummed about the game, or freaked by the creepy vibes at Saddlebrook—"
"Beth, you have no idea what happened at the game," Cam began.
"Give me a break. This is me, Cami. And that girl with the blue-streaked hair is—"
"She's who? She's what? She's nobody!" Cam exploded.
"You!" Undeterred, Beth finished her sentence. "She's you."
Cam felt like a punctured balloon, leaking adrenaline. She had no strength left to battle her best friend. Instead, she found herself fighting back tears.
Instinctively, Beth put an arm around her. "I know this is weirding you out," she said softly. "Me, too. But don't you even want to find out who she is?"
Cam shrugged and busied herself digging for a tissue in her backpack. "No," she said, blowing her nose. "I don't want to know who or what she is. I don't want to have 'mojo.' Or be different from other kids—"
"You're not," Beth gently assured her. "I mean, in lots of ways you're not."
In front of her friends, Alex forced herself to laugh. "As advertised, that was such the blast! What can we do for an encore? I vote for the buffalo chips at Chuck Wagon Charlie's. Equally vomitacious."
Usually, Alex was expert at getting her buds to change the subject. Or to do anything she wanted. Now they circled her.
"How could you let her go like that?" Evan challenged. "She's on your turf, with your face, and you let her trash-talk us and walk away? You don't got game, Alex."
"Unlike you?" Alex glared at Evan, who, at that moment, stumbled on an empty soda can some tourist had tossed away. Only his pride was bruised, however, when both girls laughed at him.
"I'd work on that eye-foot coordination thing before you go disrespecting my game," Alex hooted, relieved to dodge the spotlight.
As if that would derail Lucinda. "What's going on with you, Alex?" she steamrolled on. "You've been a space-cadet for the last few weeks and now this UFO thing happens and you don't even want to investigate?"
"UFO? What's that, Lucinda-speak for Unidentified Ferris wheel Omens?"
"Unexplained Face rip-Off," Evan quipped.
Alex chuckled, hoping to mask the dread she was feeling. And the opposite, but intense sense of... well, something like peace. Completeness.
"Look, this is bogus." Alex tried to clear her head. "I've got more important things to deal with than some Kinko's copy from Massachusetts."
"What could be more important than finding out who she is?" Lucinda demanded.
"My mother," Alex snapped. "That's a ton more important. I'm going to call her right now."
Evan stepped in front of her and gently squeezed her shoulder. "You spoke to your mom less than an hour ago. I doubt anything's changed."
He was right, of course. The minute she'd gotten off work, Alex had mad-dashed to the pay phone. Her mom, at the Laundromat, had answered right away. Between coughs, Sara had told her, no, the results weren't in. "Relax, baby, I'll see you later. Go with your friends, you deserve a little fun."
Fun, right. She'd remember to add that to her "to-do" list.
Now Lucinda was in her face. "It's her eyes, Als. The girl's got the same creepy-peepers as you."
Alex refused to respond. But that didn't stop one-track Luce from hurtling on. "Don't you believe in fate? We've all got these doppelgänger things. It was fate that you just met yours—"
"Doppelgänger? Shopping at Words R Us again, Luce? Color me impressed."
That cracked Evan up, but didn't dent Lucinda's iron will. "Tease me all you want, Alexandra Nicole Fielding, but that won't change a thing. That girl is you."
"And that girl..."Out of the corner of her eye, Alex spotted a pale blond, sunglasses-wearing tourist. Hoping to reroute Luce, she flipped around to point her out. "Isn't that Marleigh Cooper? Maybe your favorite disappeared diva is hiding out in broad daylight? Come on, Luce, this is your kind of obsession. Where's that inquiring mind when we really need it?"
Swing and a miss. Lucinda and Evan whirled around, but the girl Alex had fingered was too short by half a foot to be mistaken for Marleigh.
"You're just trying to get my mind off your double." Lucinda caught on. "And it isn't gonna work."
As the trio trekked the park, Alex was able to tune her friends out. Only she couldn't find the off switch to the music playing over and over in her own head. The one that kept circling back to tourist girl.
They looked nothing alike, really. Okay, their features were similar. But New England Cam-chowder was a tidy little trendoid, complete with the latest smart phone, and probably designer duds. They couldn't have been more different where it counted. Plus what was up with those whammy eyes? Alex had wound up with flu symptoms just from glancing at the girl?
The girl. A little girl. Very little, very young...
Suddenly, Alex was overcome by a pull more powerful than her own brooding, more urgent than anything she'd ever felt before. It was as if, all at once, she knew exactly where she needed to be. And, without a "gotta go" or good-bye to her headstrong homeys, Alexandra Nicole Fielding raced toward it.
It was happening. Oh, no, not here. Not now. Not again.
Cam's eyesight got sharper as her hearing dulled.
She knew Beth was talking to her, but she couldn't make out the words.
What she saw, though she was too far away to see it so clearly, was the iron arc of the Ferris wheel outlined against the tangerine afternoon sky.
At the top of the ride, holding tight to the safety bar in front of them, were two people, a man and a woman. Between them, glowing like a separate sun, a gleaming, dazzling, radiant jewel, was a child. A girl. A little girl. Very little, very young.
"I'll be out in a minute, okay?" Beth repeated, disappearing through the door labeled COWGIRLS.
Cam nodded, or thought she did. Then, just as it had at the soccer game, a cold sweat soaked her, an icy breeze set her shivering, the thudding of her pulse was suddenly louder than the laughter and chatter of the crowd around her.
She didn't know what was wrong. She only knew that something very, very bad was about to happen.
Chapter 9 — Goodnight Moon
Racing through Big Sky, Cam retraced her path past snack stands and ticket booths, the Wild West saloon, the sheriff's office. Startling tourists and scattering those in her way, she ran until, finally, she arrived, perplexed and panting, back at the Ol' Wagon Wheel.
Instinctively, her head jerked up. The late afternoon sun was fading over the horizon. A full moon shone directly overhead. How extraordinary, she thought, the sun and moon visible in the same sky.
The Ferris wheel had stopped. Empty carts and those filled with people rocked gently, silhouetted in space. New passengers were being ushered onto the ride. But it was the metal basket on top, swaying at the very crest of the wheel, that captured Cam's attention.
In that cart, fifty, sixty feet above the park, exactly as she had pictured them, a family waited for the ride to re-start. A young father, his smiling wife, and their baby daughter. The man had one arm wrapped tightly around his child's tiny waist. With the other, he was pointing at the early moon and whispering in his daughter's ear.
Cam saw it in impossible detail. The little girl's worried smile, her dainty hands clutching at her father's shirt.
And then she saw the bar above them, the steel rod from which the cart swung. The once stur
dy pole that fixed the steel basket to the ride's frame seemed slightly lopsided. And loose. Two huge bolts usually held it to the Ferris wheel. Only one of them was left—and it looked as though it were tearing away from the shaft.
Cam squinted at the bar, zoned in as if her eyes were a telescope capable of focusing on the distant, dangerously loose bolt.
A jolt, one strong gust of wind, and it would come undone. The cart would be wrenched from the rod above it, tear off the ride's frame, and plummet to the ground.
Cam wanted to scream but, just as on the soccer field, no sound came. She pointed, but no one was watching...
Except...
Alex's high-speed scramble had also ended at the Ol' Wagon Wheel. She stood on the other side of the ride, directly opposite Cam. She was staring up at the very same cart, listening to the soft clanging of the loose bar and the jiggling bolt that held it.
Alex closed her eyes and the sounds became more distinct. Now she could hear a gentle voice telling a story—and she realized that, impossibly, the voice belonged to the man in the cart.
But how could she have heard him?
He was all the way at the top of the Ferris wheel, holding his baby daughter, reciting a line from a book, a book Sara had read over and over to Alex when she was just a child.
"Goodnight room, goodnight moon..."
Another voice, new but familiar, broke Alex's concentration. "Look," it was begging. "Oh, please. Someone. Look!"
Opening her eyes, turning toward the sound, Alex caught a glimpse of herself in what, for a moment, seemed like a fun-house mirror. Someone who looked like her, if she were cheesy enough to wear a baseball cap, khaki capris, and a pink sweater set, was standing on the other side of the ride, staring, horrified, up at the same cart.
Boston's own Camryn Barnes.
Had tourist-girl heard the dad reciting, "Goodnight Moon"? Alex wondered. Could she hear the rusty creaking of the old bolt?
"Goodnight kittens, goodnight mittens..."
Afraid to turn away, as if her amazingly enhanced eyesight was all that held the wobbly bolt in place, Cam continued to gaze at it steadily. But she had a sense that someone had heard her unspoken plea. And, all at once, with a mingling of shock and gratitude, she knew that it was the gray-eyed girl from Crow Creek. Alex.
"Goodnight comb, goodnight brush..."
That ride should have been condemned years ago, Alex heard her own desperate thoughts. Why wasn't it inspected? Why wasn't it fixed? Those people—
...won't survive, Cam thought. I've got to help, got to do something. I can't let them die—
"Why not?" asked a deep, disturbing voice, a man's voice.
Cam shuddered. Pure dread shot through her. Shivering, she turned toward the sound and saw, in the shadow of the wheelhouse, a powerful, bearded man with jet-black hair and eyes that pooled dark as oil spills. A twisted smile played across his lips as he saw her staring back at him.
She wanted to turn back to the cart, which was swaying dangerously above them, but the man's dark smile held her gaze, then weakened and numbed her.
He could have been anyone, anyone big. He was wearing a simple shirt, blue jeans, and, despite the heat of summer, a leather jacket and thick hobnailed work boots.
Cam stood frozen, mesmerized. Energy and urgency seemed to seep out of her. She was suddenly weary, emptied of hope, hollow with despair.
In a nanosecond, a hot-dog man, pushing his cart, seemed to pop up out of nowhere. He was old, frail, with wiry silver-white hair, wearing oddly out-of-place black velvet slippers. Cam gasped. It was the old skinny guy she'd seen back in the bleachers of her soccer game. He passed directly in front of the shadowy stranger, breaking the burly man's gaze.
Without warning, the sky darkened and a thunderous whirlwind swept through the theme park. Startled, visitors began to shout. Tickets, food wrappers, newspapers, trash barrels, anything that wasn't nailed down, seemed to go flying. Anxious parents gripped their children and ducked for cover.
And the cart at the top of the Ol' Wagon Wheel made a sickening sound as it swung violently.
Cam felt a tap on her shoulder. She shrieked and whirled around.
The girl with the random blue-streaked hair jumped back, yelling, "Get a grip!"
"What are you doing here?" Cam gasped.
"Same thing you are," Alex heard herself say. "And we'd better do it fast."
They knew what was about to happen. Cam could see it. Alex could hear the rusty bolt squeaking as the cart carrying the unaware family was lashed to and fro by the wind.
They watched in horror as the bolt worked its way out of the rod.
"We need help," Cam shouted over the howling storm.
"Ya' think?" Alex sneered.
"Can you see them? I mean, they look like such a nice family—"
"Grant them a long life." The words flew out of Alex's mouth. She had no idea how they'd even formed in her brain, let alone exited her lips.
"Free them," Cam suddenly recited, "of fear, pain, and strife." She was rhyming again—just as she had at the soccer match. Bewildered, alarmed, she turned to Alex.
"Um... they're young and happy, loving and good," Alex whispered. Her eyes were shut. Her hands balled into determined fists. "Help us to help them as we should."
"Tell us what to do to save... the mom and dad, and their young babe," Cam murmured excitedly, grasping Alex's hand.
A surge of energy tore through them.
"Babe does not rhyme with save," Alex grumbled.
"It was the best I could do," Cam argued. She panicked again, wondering what was wrong with her.
"It's… it's… working," Alex stuttered, astonished.
Cam looked up. She couldn't hear, as Alex had, through the wailing wind, the screech of the bolt turning. But she could see it.
The loose rod began to straighten. Rust rained down as the bolt tightened.
But the family wasn't out of danger yet—not unless that bolt could be fastened, forced to stay tight in its rusty mooring.
And Alex could not. "It won't hold," she cried. "There's no nut. It needs to be soldered."
"Soldered?"
"The metal has to melt and harden—"
"Melt and harden. Er, garden, pardon..."Cam searched desperately for a rhyme. Then stopped abruptly as she felt the earlier warmth of the day collect inside her. The sun-drenched dust burned through her shoes, her feet. Her whole body trembled and her eyes hurt, stung, blurred.
She fixed her gaze on the bolt, fighting not to blink. The steel bar turned red, and then white with heat. A wisp of smoke wound around the edge of the bolt.
Moving agonizingly slowly, the big bolt began to melt. When it was nearly liquid, when Alex's hand was gripping Cam's tight enough to stop the blood flow, another gust of wind, a swirling tornado, wrapped itself around the cart—cooling, Cam knew, the molten metal.
Alex heard it. All at once, she heard the faint hiss of fire, smelled the acrid odor of sizzling metal. By the time the dark whirlwind had passed, the cart was secure again. The family was safe.
"Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere."
Chapter 10 — A Letter From the Clinic
"What just happened?"
Beth, who'd arrived at the Ol' Wagon Wheel, was out of breath and—had Cam noticed—patience, too. "One minute we're talking, and then, snap! You're gone. No explanation, no see-ya-later. I thought it was a barf-emergency or something. I looked everywhere."
Leaning against the split-log fence that funneled passengers onto the ride, Cam could barely hear Beth. The thunderous roar in her head overshadowed the soft pelting of her friend's complaints.
"Camryn, have you totally lost it? I'm talking to you! Why'd you run away from me and come back here?" Beth's nostrils flared, signaling borderline anger, about as close as the good-natured girl ever got.
Cam struggled to stop trembling, to quiet the clamor and come back to herself. "I'm... oh, man, Bethie... my bad."
Her calculated use of Elisabeth's childhood nickname had its desired effect: instant anger-be-gone.
"Bethie? You haven't called me that since, like, kindergarten. Wow—this is big. It has something to do with that girl, doesn't it?"
"What girl?" Cam asked quickly.
"You know, the local, that Alex kid." Beth gave an exaggerated sigh. "The one with your face, your eyes, your bod—"
"Beth, did you just see us together? Did you see what happened?!" Cam's heart leaped with hope. It was too good to be true. Had her best friend actually witnessed the stunning save? Had Beth seen what Cam and Big Sky girl had managed to pull off, with nothing but rhymes and desperate determination?!
T*Witches: The Power of Two Page 5