by Betsy Haynes
"Or something worse!" said Beth in her most dramatic voice.
"Like what?" I demanded.
Beth's eyes got really big. Then she ran her finger along her throat and made a slashing noise. "Maybe she couldn't face the fact that everybody knew the truth about her, so she ended it all," she said.
It was too horrible to think about. What if Beth was right? What if Taffy really had ended it all? It would be my fault. It would be because of my exposé. I was more depressed than ever now. And more worried. I might even go to jail if Taffy did something terrible because of the article I wrote.
When the bell rang, I went to our classroom. I was so worried about Taffy Sinclair that I was practically in a trance. About a half an hour later someone handed me a note. It was from Beth:
Jana—
Meet me in the girls' bathroom before lunch. I have to show you what I found. It's awful!
Beth
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I didn't think the morning would ever end. I was beginning to wonder if I would grow old and die sitting at my desk. But finally it was lunchtime, and I made a mad dash for the girls' bathroom.
My four best friends and I got there at practically the same time. Beth went into her mysterious routine, holding up her hand for quiet and checking all the stalls to make sure no one was listening. Finally she decided we were safe.
"Here. Look what I found." She held out a folded-up piece of paper. It was obviously a note and didn't look special. In fact, it looked just like the notes everybody passes all the time. Just the same, Beth's hand was shaking.
"I found it lying beside Taffy Sinclair's locker, and it's in her handwriting."
Beth pushed it toward me as if it were a poisonous snake. I didn't want to take it. I was afraid of what I'd find inside, but I had to know. I opened it up and read it. I couldn't believe my eyes.
I can't go on any longer. It's just too painful to
The note ended there. I stared at it for a minute and then passed it to my friends. It was Taffy's squiggly handwriting, all right.
"It's just too painful to . . . what?" I whispered.
"I don't know," said Christie. "But whatever it was, it was so painful she couldn't even finish the note."
"I'm scared," said Melanie in a high-pitched voice. Two tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Me, too," said Katie.
"Me, too," I said. "But come on, let's go to the cafeteria. Lunch is half over already."
We scrambled out the door.
"I'm still scared," said Christie as we gathered at a corner table in the cafeteria.
Melanie looked as if she were about to cry again. "Me, too. What are we going to do?"
Nobody said anything. We just sat there passing that note around and thinking awful thoughts. My heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it were about to jump right out of my chest. I hadn't meant for anything like this to happen when I wrote that exposé. If only I could find Taffy and tell her that—before it was too late.
After school we promised to call one another if we heard anything. Beth gave me the note, and I sort of got the feeling that everybody thought I should be the one to do something about it. I suppose I couldn't blame them. It was my article and my by-line.
When I got home, I walked right past the television set and went to Mom's radio on the kitchen counter. She kept it set to the local station so that in the morning she could find out if bad weather was causing school closings or delays. I knew the local news came on every half hour and that if anything terrible had happened to Taffy Sinclair, I'd hear about it. Some dumb song was playing. Ten more minutes until the news.
I pulled Taffy's note out of my pocket and sat down at the kitchen table to wait. I read it over and over, trying to imagine what it meant. Suppose she was doing something terrible right this minute? Suppose she was on Bridgeport Beach near the spot where she and Mr. Scott had almost kissed? I closed my eyes. I could see it all. There was Taffy, standing alone, gazing out across the water. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and this time they weren't fake. Now she was starting to walk slowly out into the surf. I knew what she was going to do. I had to stop her! Suddenly I was tearing across the sand after her.
"Taffy! Stop! Don't do it! I'm sorry I wrote those awful things!"
I came out of my daydream in time to hear the radio announcer say, "And that's it for the three-thirty news. Stay tuned. We'll be back at four."
I couldn't believe it. I had missed the news. That made me feel even guiltier than ever. What was I going to do? I could never get to Bridgeport Beach and back before the four o'clock news. Besides, she might be somewhere else. She might even be at home. There were a lot of awful things a person could do at home.
I knew I could call her to see if she was all right, and if she was, I could tell her I was sorry. I stared at the phone. I tried to stand up, but my knees gave way and I heard a funny crackling sound in my ears. Not only that, I felt as if I were going to throw up.
Deep down I knew that I was really just a coward. As much as I wanted to save Taffy, I couldn't. I didn't have the nerve. I would probably never be a hero in my whole life.
Then I got this great idea. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before. I needed a hero to save Taffy Sinclair. Randy Kirwan was a hero. I knew he would jump off a building to save an old lady from being mugged if he had to. He was also kind and sensitive, and even though he thought I was a villain, I was sure he would try to save Taffy if he knew she was in trouble.
This time I didn't have any trouble standing up and going to the phone. I dialed his number and listened to it ring. His mother answered.
"Hello," she said.
"Hi. This is Jana Morgan. Is Randy home?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Jana. Randy hasn't come home from football practice yet. He should be here in about half an hour. Can I have him call you?"
Half an hour. That might be too late.
"No, thanks, Mrs. Kirwan. That's okay."
I hung up the phone and headed out the door. I had another plan. If he was due home in half an hour, he was probably still at the school. So I would wait for him by the bicycle racks outside the gym.
My plan worked. I had just gotten to the school when I saw him come out of the gym with some other guys. I hadn't even stopped panting yet. Randy hesitated for a second when he saw me, and I had the awful feeling that he was going to duck back into the gym to avoid me, but thank goodness he didn't.
He must have known I wanted to talk to him because he left his friends and came over to me. He just stood there, waiting for me to say something. I knew I had to do it and do it fast before I lost my nerve. I pulled Taffy's note out of my pocket and handed it to him as I started to talk.
"Taffy Sinclair hasn't been in school since . . . since the Sentinel came out, and she hasn't been on Interns and Lovers, either. My friends and I were starting to worry about her and then we found this note."
Randy read the note and frowned. I couldn't tell if he was frowning because he was worried about her or because he was mad at me.
"I know that I should go to her house or call her or something since I was the one who wrote that awful article, but . . ." I tried to gulp away the lump that was stuck in my throat. Randy was looking straight at me now, and this time I was sure his frown was meant for me. ". . . but I guess I'd have to say I'm scared."
"Look, Jana. I used to think you were a pretty nice person. But after all those terrible things you wrote about Taffy, I'm not sure anymore." He paused and looked at the note again. My heart felt as if someone were stabbing it with a knife. "I'll go to Taffy's house. Something might be wrong. But don't think of it as a favor to you."
Randy stuffed the note in his shirt pocket and jumped on his bike. He didn't say another word. He just took off down the street as fast as he could.
"Call me when you find out something," I shouted, but I couldn't tell whether he'd heard me.
I watched him ride away, knowing that I had lost him forever. He woul
d never think I was a kind and sensitive person again.
All the way home I kept crossing and uncrossing my fingers and saying little prayers, hoping Taffy was all right. When I got to our apartment, I could hear the phone ringing inside. I dashed in and grabbed it. I tried to say hello, but only air came out of my mouth.
"Jana? Is that you?"
It was Mom. "Uh-huh," was all I could say.
"Where have you been? I've been calling for fifteen minutes. Never mind. Stay there. Don't leave for anything! I'm coming straight home and I've got something very important to talk to you about."
"Okay," I said. My hands were trembling when I hung up. Mom worked at the newspaper. They got news as fast as the radio station did. Sometimes even faster. Was she coming home to tell me something awful had happened to Taffy Sinclair?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I was pacing the floor like crazy when Mom walked in the door, and I could tell by the look on her face that she was upset. I held my breath while she took off her coat, hung it up, came into the living room and sat down on the sofa. I knew I was supposed to sit down with her, so I did.
"Jana, I just got a call at work from your father, and he's very upset. He said you wrote him a letter and said you were dying."
I fell back against the sofa, letting out all the breath I was holding. It wasn't bad news about Taffy Sinclair after all. But as I remembered what I had written in that letter to my father, a prickly feeling went up my spine.
"You scared him half to death, Jana," Mom was saying. "What on earth made you do a thing like that?"
I just looked at her for a minute. This was going to be hard to explain. "I was trying to get him to tell me about my secret identical twin."
"What do you mean, your secret identical twin?" Mom asked.
"Just like on Interns and Lovers," I said. "You see, Cynthia's parents were divorced when she was little, just like you and my father. Cynthia's father never came to see her, and he hardly ever wrote. Then, when she was dying of anorexia, she wrote him one last letter. He wrote back and told her that the reason he had not paid much attention to her all these years was because she had an identical twin sister who lived with him. And now Stephanie—that's her twin's name—is on her way to the hospital to be with Cynthia when she dies."
It was Mom's turn to sink back against the sofa. I could tell that she was really surprised, but she didn't look as if she were going to cry.
"Honey, Interns and Lovers is just a soap opera, a story. The people who write them try to make them as intriguing and exciting as they can so that viewers will get hooked and have to watch every day to see what will happen next. Besides, just because you and Cynthia both have fathers who ignore you doesn't mean the reasons are the same."
"But, Mom, just listen to this. Everything that happens on those soaps comes true. First Cynthia quit eating and got anorexia. She told Chad it was because she wanted some self-control and discipline in her life. Now Melanie is losing weight like crazy, and she said the very same words."
I paused a minute to catch my breath, and Mom jumped in. She looked very stern.
"Jana, you are letting your imagination run away with you."
"No, I'm not. There's another thing. You know how you got mad at Pink for flirting with the woman at the bowling alley? Well, the same thing happened to Samantha on To Have and to Hold. Michael has been fooling around with her best friend, Terri. And you know how you had a talk with Pink and he told you it was no big deal? That's exactly what Michael told Samantha, and then he went to meet Terri again." I thought about telling her about my dream and how Beth and I had spied on her and Pink at the bowling alley, but I decided not to. Not now, anyway. Instead, I decided to drop the biggest bomb of all. "Besides, I know I have a secret twin. I can remember what she looks like. At first I couldn't, but then her face started coming out of the fog just like Arthur's on To Live, Perchance to Love. Besides, I have proof!"
I marched into my room and got my third-birthday picture out of my drawer. I looked at it for a minute. I had an awful feeling I knew what Mom would say.
But she didn't say a thing when I handed it to her. She didn't even mention that I had taped two pictures together. She just got a really sad look on her face and took me in her arms and held me.
"I'm sorry, Jana. I know how badly you've always wanted a brother or a sister, but you have to accept the fact that you do not have a twin. Sometimes when someone wants something as badly as you want a twin, she can make herself believe it's true."
"But Mom . . ." I insisted.
"There are two things I want you to see," she said. She took her arms from around me and got up, going into her bedroom. She was gone such a long time that I began to feel scared. I couldn't imagine what she wanted me to look at. Finally she came back and sat down beside me again. She had an old yellowed envelope in one hand and a small velvet box in the other.
"First the good news," she said with a nervous laugh. "Remember that silly grin Pink was wearing last Saturday night when he came to pick me up?"
I nodded. How could I forget a fake grin like that?
"Well, he kept grinning all evening while we bowled and then . . . when he brought me home, he gave me this." She opened the velvet box, and a gold ring with a small diamond in the middle winked up at me. My mouth dropped open. I couldn't believe my eyes. "He asked me to marry him," Mom said quietly. "So now you and I know that the woman at the bowling alley meant nothing to him. Thank you for caring, Jana, but Pink is not Michael, and I am not Samantha."
All I could do was look at Mom and then at the diamond and then at Mom again. "Why aren't you wearing it?" I burst out.
"Well," she said, "to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I want to change our lives right now. And most of all, I wanted to talk it over with you before I made a decision, but I've been too much of a coward to mention it to you."
Mom and I both laughed, and she hugged me so tightly that the yellowed envelope slipped off her lap onto the floor. When she saw that, she stopped laughing and grew serious again.
"We've got lots of time to talk about whether Pink and I will get married," she said, and I felt relieved. "Now I want you to see this."
She picked up the envelope and handed it to me. I knew it had to have something to do with my twin. My hands were shaking as I opened it.
"My birth certificate!" I cried. I was so disappointed I thought I'd die. What did my birth certificate have to do with my twin? Besides, I had seen it a hundred times.
Mom pointed to a space on the paper that I hadn't noticed before. It was section 5A, and in tiny letters at the top of the space was printed Plurality of birth and beneath that was printed Single [X] Twin [ ] Triplet [ ] Other [ ].
I sat and stared at that X in the square by Single, thinking that it didn't matter anymore if Cynthia and Stephanie got together or if Arthur's face came out of the fog. The little girl in the kiddie pool was not my twin, and she never had been.
"There is a reason why your father never comes to see you and seldom writes," Mom said after a while. "And I suppose you really do have a right to know what it is."
I looked at her in surprise. If it wasn't because of a twin, I couldn't imagine what it could be.
"You father has a problem, honey. A serious drinking problem. He asked me never to tell you about it. He's terribly ashamed, and he's always been afraid that if he kept in touch with you, you'd find out the truth and you wouldn't love him anymore. You see, he wanted you to have wonderful daydreams about him. He wanted you to imagine him as all the things he could never be."
I sat there for a couple of minutes, but I didn't say anything. Finally I went to my room. Mom didn't follow me. I guess she knew I wanted to be alone. I flopped down on my bed and stared at the ceiling. My chest ached so badly it felt as if someone were standing on my heart.
I thought about my father. I was sorry that he had a problem, and I was especially sorry that he was afraid for me to see him the way he really is. He should never
have worried that I wouldn't love him if I knew the truth, but I made a secret promise to myself to have only super daydreams about him from now on.
Down deep I guess I had always sort of known that things with my father weren't quite the way I had imagined them. Probably none of the other things were the way I'd imagined them, either. I couldn't believe how gullible I'd been. Just because Melanie was losing weight didn't mean she was anorexic, and how could I ever think that Pink would fool around? He really loves Mom and wants to marry her. I'd always sort of known about my twin, too, but still, I felt a little sad. Now I would never get to meet her or trade places with her or even know her name.
A little while later I looked in my mirror. My twin was there. "Bye," I said, and gave her a little wave. She waved back. I glanced away for a second, and when I looked for her again, she was gone. Only my reflection was looking back at me.
When the phone rang, I nearly jumped out of my skin. It had to be Randy calling about Taffy Sinclair. I burst out of my room just as Mom picked up the receiver.
"It's for you, Jana. And it's a boy," she said with a big smile.
"Hello?" I said. "Randy?"
"Yeah, it's me. I just got back from Taffy Sinclair's, and she's okay, but, wow, was she mad! She said she had never been so embarrassed and humiliated in her life. She wasn't planning to go back to school again no matter what her parents did to force her. I talked to her, though, and I'm pretty sure she'll be back tomorrow."
I couldn't help feeling relieved. Randy had been a hero just the way I'd known he would be. Then I remembered something.
"But what about the note? Did you ask her about it?"
Randy chuckled. "It has something to do with another soap opera part that she was going to try out for, but she's decided not to. In fact, she's not even going to be on Interns and Lovers anymore. She said her parents won't let her because even with Mr. Scott tutoring her, she's getting terrible grades. Her parents said school was more important than being queen of the soaps."