What did crazy mean, exactly? Crazy busy? Or crazy sad? Olivia felt a sharp tightening in her stomach as she imagined Calla after the gala, telling her friends what had happened. Explaining that it was over with Soren.
Calla shook her head gently, the scent of vanilla shampoo floating in the air between them. Then, with slow, careful motions, she lifted both hands to the sides of her face and pulled her sunglasses down onto her lap. She brought her eyes up to meet Olivia’s, and Olivia could see that they were pink and swollen, like bugs had been biting around them all night.
All signs were pointing to crazy sad.
“Please,” Calla said evenly. “Say you can make it.”
Olivia didn’t really have a choice. Even Violet could see that. Her sister tossed her a helpless shrug, shaking her head as she looked down at the beige and white–squared carpet.
“Of course.” Olivia closed her notebook and tucked it into her soft leather tote. “I’d love to help.”
Calla rocked back in the couch and smiled, before pulling herself up to her feet. “Thank you so much.”
Calla started down the spiral stairs toward the lobby, and Olivia followed close behind. Heavy footsteps passed by her head and she turned to see the door to the ceramics studio swinging open, a familiar pair of blue Converse shell-toes stepping out into the hall.
“Don’t look back,” Violet warned as they passed through the lobby. Olivia felt her cheeks splotching red and hoped Calla wouldn’t notice. They turned a corner and swung through a pair of French doors into the faculty lounge.
Lark, Eve, Graham, and a half-dozen other kids were already scattered around the circular room. Graham and Eve were lounging on the floor, their legs intertwined as they leaned back against a gurgling watercooler. Lark had claimed a high-backed chair at the head of an oval mahogany table. Her thick blond hair was pulled back into a swinging ponytail, with a static-electric halo clinging to her head. She stood up as Calla entered the room, indicating the open seat by her side.
“Hey, Cal,” Lark said, capping her pen and placing it on the top of her spiral notebook. “I was about to get started without you.”
Calla circled the table and hoisted herself up onto the sill of a bay window overlooking the courtyard. She swung her legs over the back of the empty chair as Lark settled back into her seat.
Olivia was starting toward the table when Violet put a hand on her shoulder.
“How about the couch?” she suggested, motioning to a checkered love seat in the corner, wedged underneath an oil painting of a country farmhouse. Olivia quietly sank into one of the soft square cushions. “Just try to lie low,” Violet advised, crouching on the floor beside her. “You’ll be fine.”
Calla removed a small oval case from her tote. “First of all, thanks so much for coming today.” She exchanged her dark shades for turquoise-rimmed, rectangular eyeglasses, slipping them carefully onto her face. Naturally, they made her look even more effortlessly glamorous and hip, and Olivia actually found herself hoping that her own 20/20 vision would someday deteriorate.
“I know this is a really busy time for everyone,” Calla said, quietly taking in the room. “And it means a lot that you’re taking the time to be here.”
“Really.” Lark beamed, rapping her pen against the spiral binding of her notebook. “It’s great to see so many new faces. I mean, remember when it was just me and you and Kiko at that Burmese place on Clement? I never would have imagined—”
“So as you know, we’re hosting a fundraising event for the thrift shop,” Calla cut in, gazing out over the top of Lark’s head. “The goal is to raise enough money to open at Golden Gate before the summer. My cousins started one at their school in Manhattan, and it’s a great way to generate a steady flow of income for a cause.”
Violet yawned dramatically from the floor and Olivia shot her a silencing glare.
“Lark’s handing out some information we put together last week,” Calla explained. “We’ve decided, since we’re already getting so many donations, that the best way to get people excited would be to showcase some of the pieces in a fashion show.”
Olivia noticed Violet’s spine straighten and her eyes light up. All anybody had to say was fashion and suddenly her sister was all ears.
“So,” Calla said, flopping her hands against her lap. “Any thoughts about locations?”
“How about a vineyard in Napa?” Eve quickly suggested, her dark almond eyes blinking as she nestled into her perennial position on Graham’s lanky lap. “We could do a wine tasting before the show.”
There were a few bored snickers from the back of the room, and Graham gallantly came to his lady’s defense. “It could be cool,” he said, stretching out his long legs. He was wearing faded black skinny jeans and lime green Nike high-tops with paint-splattered soles, which Olivia decided were one part trendy and one part toddler. “What better way to get people to write fat checks than by getting them wasted first?”
The crowd rumbled with giggles and nods of approval.
“Maybe,” a heavy baritone interjected from the other side of the room. Olivia turned to see a petite boy with a blond crew cut and an upturned nose leaning on his elbows at the table. “But how about Sonoma instead of Napa?”
Olivia had seen him before in the halls. He looked a little bit like some baby-faced child actor she couldn’t quite place, but his voice was like sandpaper.
“Napa is like the Disney World of wine country. It’s played out,” he boomed. “Sonoma is the new Napa.”
There was another swell of laughter across the room and Lark spun violently around in her seat.
“Seriously, Logan?” she spat. “You’ve never even been to Napa. I read that issue of Sunset in Mom’s bathroom, too. Do you want to quote the rest of it for us?”
Graham keeled forward, laughing so hard that he nearly knocked Eve onto the floor. Olivia smiled as she registered the sibling rivalry. Now that she thought about it, Lark and Logan did have the same golden hair and too-perfect skin.
“All right,” Calla said loudly, quieting the giggling crowd. “I like the drunken check-writing theory, but I don’t know if we have time to plan something so involved. The event is less than a month away, and we haven’t even booked a space. We’re going to have to get creative here.”
“Graham’s dad is on the board at the Palace of Fine Arts,” Eve offered, turning her heart-shaped face up to Graham’s and beaming proudly.
“That could work.” Calla nodded eagerly. “Graham, since you’ve got the hookup, do you and Eve want to work on location?”
“No problem,” Eve said sweetly, tucking a section of her slick, layered hair behind one tiny ear.
“Great. Did you get that, Lark?” Calla tapped her finger on Lark’s notebook and looked around the room. “What else? Oh, I know.” Calla stood with her back to the table glancing down at the tops of her mango-colored painted toes, her long dark tresses falling over her shoulders and covering both sides of her face. She took a deep breath and looked up.
“So, I thought I was going to be able to handle overseeing everything on my own,” she began. “But it turns out my mom needs me for some more iWIN stuff, plus I’m busy with peer theater meetings and the meditation workshops…”
“Oh, is that all?” Violet added. “What about the paper bag police? Doesn’t somebody have to stand outside the supermarket and hand out reusable totes?”
Olivia tossed her sister another stern glance.
“So it looks like I’m going to need a little help after all,” Calla said, quickly laying a hand on Lark’s shoulder. “And Lark is in the middle of volleyball season…so what I’m looking for is a volunteer for cochair.” She looked out at the room, lifting her chin high over Lark’s head and eagerly scanning the crowd.
“Ouch,” Violet hissed. “Write that down, Lark.”
Olivia swiveled swiftly around in her chair and hissed at Violet.
“Quiet!” Olivia grunted without thinking. As soon as th
e word had left her lips, Olivia felt twenty pairs of eyes on the back of her neck. Violet’s features were locked in a pre-panic grimace as she glanced carefully around the room.
“Madonna?” Olivia turned to see Calla hopping down from the window and starting toward her on the couch. “Was that you?”
Olivia swallowed and glanced up at the table. A guy she recognized from her religion class, with greasy long hair and a black plug in one ear, had his head on his elbows and appeared to be sleeping.
“Um,” Olivia stalled. She hadn’t even wanted to come to the meeting in the first place, and now she had accidentally volunteered to cochair the entire event? “Well, I don’t know…”
“Perfect,” Calla said, standing over her by the couch. “Don’t worry—it’s not like there’s tons to do, and I think it’ll be fun to work together. Don’t you?”
Violet stood next to Calla, her eyes frantically darting back and forth. “Uh, no?” Violet prompted her sister. “Not so much fun as totally inconvenient. Olivia, this is not a good idea.”
But Calla was already heaving a sigh of relief. “Thank you so much,” she said to Olivia with a warm smile before heading back to the front of the room.
Violet collapsed dramatically on the couch beside her sister. “Whyyyyy did you do that?” she moaned.
Olivia chewed at the inside of her lip. What was she supposed to do?
Calla settled back against the window, swinging her legs against the wall like a little girl. “Madonna Is My Copilot,” she joked. “Not a bad bumper sticker, huh?”
Violet scoffed and dropped her head in her hands. “So much for lying low.”
23
“Watch your step,” Olivia warned Miles as they stood at the front door to her house. Her key was wedged in the lock and she was trying not to touch any of the fresh red paint, drying in streaks on the frame. Her dad had decided to keep all of the original primary colors and was in the process of touching them up. Olivia thought it gave the house a circus-tent feel, but she had to admit that the outside entrance was getting a little less disgusting every day.
Inside was a different story.
Miles followed her into the hall, carefully sidestepping the legs of a broken ladder on the floor. He had a bulky black camera bag slung over one shoulder and was clutching it to his side, the way a supermodel might protect her teacup Chihuahua.
“Wow,” he said, craning his head up toward the spiderweb cracks in the ceiling.
Olivia dropped her bag to the floor and plopped her keys into the dish on the front table. She was already regretting her decision to suggest her yard as a place to film part of their scene for Whitley’s class. But as soon as Miles had said they needed to find a spot for the garden scene, somewhere lush and overgrown, Mrs. Havisham style, she’d known her neglected backyard would be the perfect place.
Still, if she hadn’t run into him waiting for the bus after school, she probably would have forgotten that today was the day they had arranged to shoot it. She’d spent most of the day imagining a secret afternoon rendezvous with Soren, maybe at an out-of-the-way coffee shop, or another hidden hike. But she’d hardly even seen him in the halls all day. She was starting to wonder if maybe she’d read too much into the time they’d spent together. He hadn’t even asked for her number or anything. Maybe he just wanted somebody to talk to.
Olivia sighed, seeing the demolition zone that was her home as if for the first time, through Miles’s untrained eyes. “Sorry. I should’ve told you to bring a hard hat or something.”
Miles laughed and rested his hand on the inside of the open door frame leading to the downstairs den. “No,” he said, “this place is amazing. Look at the detail. It must be all the original molding, right?”
Olivia shrugged, kneeling down to rifle through her bag. Molding? Wasn’t that a bad thing? The house was old and nothing worked. “I think I left the script in my desk upstairs,” Olivia muttered and turned toward the rickety spiral steps.
Miles leaned over to examine the fireplace, also nonworking and currently doubling as Mac’s toolbox.
“The backyard is through the kitchen,” Olivia said, pointing over his shoulder to the big picture window on the far wall. “I’ll be right down.”
She skipped up to the third floor and into her room. She half expected to find Violet waiting for her, but quickly remembered that her sister had taken the afternoon off, deciding that homework, much like gym class, was not suitable for ghostly entertainment. There was an Andy Warhol exhibit at the de Young and she’d been talking about sneaking into it ever since they’d seen the poster on the side of a city bus.
Olivia opened the rollback top of her antique desk—the one piece of furniture she’d been allowed to pick out for herself—and flipped through loose papers and photographs. This was where she’d stuffed everything that she didn’t have a place for yet—old journals, half-finished homework, pictures she hadn’t yet framed.
She had finally located her yellow English composition notebook when her gaze shifted, landing on the curling edge of a photograph, sticking out from underneath an unopened package of Post-its. She pulled the picture out and held it in one hand, pressing back the bent corner with her thumb.
It had been taken two summers ago on the Vineyard, on one of the first sticky-hot days of the season. They’d all decided to go out on Mac’s motorboat, a cranky old whaler he’d had since before the girls were born, and were puttering around in the bay. Violet had figured out how to set the timer on Bridget’s digital camera and wedged it up and over the steering wheel, catching the four of them squinting into the sunlight, tanned and carefree.
It was the one photograph Olivia had of her whole family where everyone was smiling.
“That looks like fun.”
Olivia jumped and turned to find Miles standing at the foot of her bed. “You scared me.”
He reached for the photograph and sat down on the edge of her comforter. Olivia felt her fingers trembling and her cheeks getting hot. She’d couldn’t tell if it was because there was a boy in her room on her bed, or because that boy on her bed was Miles, or because that boy on her bed was Miles and he was looking at a picture of her family with Violet…but whatever it was, it was wrong. All wrong.
“Man.” He shook his head as Olivia tried not to hyperventilate. “You and your sister. Wow. I mean, usually there are little differences with twins, but you guys are, like, totally identical.”
Olivia glanced out the window. He was right. Even to people who had known them for years, it was a challenge to tell the twins apart on film. They’d always worn their long, red-blond curls to the exact same wispy, midback length. Their blue-gray eyes caught the same shimmering light in the same hidden corners, and neither had any defining facial markings—though Violet had experimented with a nose ring for a few weeks (until Bridget had threatened to relieve her of that portion of her face completely).
“And your parents look really cool,” Miles said. “It must be nice to be so close.”
Olivia looked sharply at Miles and exhaled through her nose. Close?
“We’re not,” she said. It came out harsher than she’d intended, so she tried to soften it up. “I mean, not anymore. My mom’s never home, and my dad’s always busy with the house.”
Miles nodded, handing the photo back to Olivia. “Oh,” he said. “I just assumed, I mean, the other night when you left, you said you guys always had dinner together.”
Olivia tossed the photograph back on her desk and hurried toward the hall. “We should probably start filming while the light is still good,” she said, waiting for Miles at the door. She’d been caught in her stupid, pointless lie, and all she wanted to do was run away, even if it was only as far as outside.
“Hey,” Miles said gently. He was still sitting on the corner of her bed and gave no sign of standing up. “After you told me about, you know, about your sister…I didn’t really know what to say. I’ve been meaning to ask you about it again, but I don’t know
how. I mean, I don’t want to make you think about something you’d rather forget, you know?”
Olivia looked down at the little bows on the tops of her quilted flats. It seemed weird to have her shoes on in her room, but she’d forgotten to take them off downstairs. She was kind of glad to still be wearing them, as if they were armor she’d feel naked without.
“Not that you want to forget her. Your sister, I mean. But I guess I just wanted to say that I’m here, you know?” Miles looked up at her and smiled, in a way that looked like it hurt. It wasn’t that he didn’t mean what he was saying; it just looked like such an ordeal. As if smiling was stretching the muscles in his face in a way they weren’t used to moving. “I mean,” he went on, tightly gripping the engraved bedpost with one hand, as if for support, “if you ever want to talk, or anything…” He trailed off. His eyes hopped round from the floor to the window to the door, like he was stuck in a maze and couldn’t find a way out.
Olivia realized he was just as uncomfortable as she was, and something in her softened. “Thanks, Miles,” she said, and meant it.
Miles nodded deliberately, like an executive checking off an item on a to-do list at a meeting. He rose to his feet, squeezing past her through the doorway and starting down the stairs.
It was nice of him to try.
“How’s my favorite movie star?”
Olivia was sitting up in bed, her marine biology homework open in her lap, when Violet finally returned from her afternoon of culture.
“Was it an Oscar-worthy performance?” Violet joked from the open window, one long leg dangling out onto the balcony, the other swinging against the inside wall. “What was your motivation?”
Olivia smiled and shook her head. Since Miles had gone home, she’d been trying to focus on homework, but hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Soren. Tortoises and beluga whales were not exactly the most engaging of distractions, and she was glad to have Violet back.
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