Double Vision
Page 11
Gabe ignored her, glaring at Cassie again. “Was this why you were following me around earlier?” he demanded. “I shoulda known. You big-city girls are always trouble.” He reached out as if to shove her again.
Cassie jumped back. A second later I heard the squeak of crutches over the sounds of the game. It was Brayden Diaz, hobbling toward us on his one good leg.
“Yo, Campbell!” Brayden’s voice was deeper and sterner than usual. “What are you doing? Get away from her—uh, them.”
“Who’s gonna make me?” Gabe’s chin jutted out, and he clenched his fists.
By now more people were watching us from the stands. “Fight! Fight!” a few guys chanted.
“Whack him with your crutch, Diaz!” a girl shouted with a laugh.
The ruckus caught the attention of the high school principal, who was sitting nearby. He hurried toward us. “Break it up!” he said sternly. “What’s going on over here, young men?”
I stepped closer to Cassie. “Whoa,” I murmured. “Knight in shining armor much? Is there something you need to tell me about you and Brayden?”
“Grow up,” she said. “Can’t a guy just be a gentleman without you getting all weird about it?”
Her voice sounded cool. But I knew her pretty well. Was that a hint of a blush creeping over her cheeks? Interesting . . .
The principal sent the boys back to their seats, watching to make sure nothing happened.
“Come on.” Lavender poked Cassie on the arm. “You guys already made me miss, like, half the game. Let’s go watch the rest.”
“I STILL CAN’T believe nobody told Mom until now what really happened to the guy she replaced.” That night Cassie leaned back on her pillow, hands tucked behind her head. “Didn’t they think she might want to know that he got fired for embezzling?”
Yeah, Lavender’s gossip turned out to be true. Mom had confirmed it over dinner.
“I guess the chief was trying to protect him,” I said. “At least that’s what Mom said. The Campbells have been in Aura for, like, generations.”
“That won’t help Chuck now.” Cassie sounded satisfied. “Mom said the chief is going public with what happened, and Chuck might end up in jail.”
“Or at least pay a big fine or something,” I added.
“I hope it’s jail,” Cassie said. “If he’s free, he might try to cause more trouble for Mom.”
“I doubt it.” I rolled over and stared up at the shadows dancing on the ceiling. “The other officers know he was trying to make Mom look bad to get her fired. He won’t be able to get away with anything, no matter what he does.”
“Guess you’re right. Besides, everyone would automatically suspect him if there’s any more trouble.”
Luckily, Uncle Chuck hadn’t put up a fight when Mom arrested him for breaking into the locked precinct. It turned out that Uncle Chuck had had a copy of a key made. But nobody knew how he’d gotten his hands on a key to make the copy—nobody except me and Cassie. I’d remembered that visit from Gabe, the way his hand had felt sticky when I’d touched it. And she’d remembered that grayish brick of something or other she’d seen him pass to his uncle—and realized it looked a lot like the modeling clay from art class. He must have used it to make an impression of Mom’s key when I had gone to get Mom from the backyard.
“Gabe was lucky Mom’s keys were sitting right there when he stopped in,” I mused aloud. “I mean, what was he planning to do otherwise?”
Cassie’s snort echoed in the dark room. “I’m sure he would’ve come up with something,” she said. “Asked for a glass of water to get her out of the room, maybe. He’s sneaky, that one. Even Lavender says so.”
I supposed she was right. “I just wish there was a way we could prove Gabe was involved.”
“We can’t,” Cass responded immediately. “And we can’t even try—not without making ourselves sound like mental cases.”
Cassie was right—nobody would believe how we knew about Gabe’s involvement, even if we told them. It was still kind of hard to believe it myself.
“Speaking of our visions . . . ,” I began.
Cass sighed. “Do we have to?” But there was no force behind her words this time.
“No, listen,” I insisted. “This proves it can be done. We can change what we see! Isn’t that kind of cool?”
I rolled over and peered through the darkness, but I couldn’t see her face well enough to read it.
“It is cool,” she said quietly after a moment. “But scary, too. You know?”
“Yeah. But that’s even more reason to figure out what’s happening to us.” I thought about the parapsychology website and that deleted thread. Finding out more might not be easy, but that wasn’t going to stop me. Especially with our twelfth birthday coming up so soon.
Cassie seemed to read my mind—just like old times. “I know you’re going to do it no matter what I say, so I might as well go along with it.” She sighed loudly.
I smiled in the darkness. I realized I hadn’t told Cass about the website stuff, but that could wait until tomorrow. “True. It’ll definitely be more fun arguing with you about it than going at it alone.”
She laughed. “Face it—you love arguing with me!”
“I do,” I admitted. “And Cass?”
“Yeah?”
“This has been fun. Working together, I mean. Like old times. Maybe moving to Aura hasn’t been all bad, you know?”
“Yeah.” There was a rustling across the room, and a moment later she jumped onto my bed, embracing me in a big hug. “It definitely hasn’t been all bad.”
I hugged her back, squeezing hard. As I did, my head filled with buzzing. The darkness cleared, and I saw a vivid vision of Cassie standing on the front porch. I was there with her. Both of us were looking at a package that Cass was holding. It was covered in foreign stamps and addressed to the two of us, but I couldn’t quite make out the return address.
Cassie pulled back sharply, gasping. “Whoa,” she said. “I just had a vision—about you!”
“I had one about you, too,” I said as the buzzing faded away. “What did you see?”
“The two of us were out front looking at a package.”
I gasped. “With airmail stickers and stuff on it?”
Her face was only inches away, and her widened eyes caught the dim moonlight coming in through the windows. “You saw the same thing?” she exclaimed.
“Sounds like it.” My eyes met hers, a mirror image of confusion. “But how’s that even possible if I’ve been seeing positive stuff and you’ve been seeing negative stuff? It can’t be good and bad at the same time, can it?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded a little nervous. “But when it does happen, good or bad, we’ll have to deal with it.”
“Right. We’ll deal with it.” I smiled and leaned in for another hug. “Together.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
TIA MOWRY-HARDRICT
TAMERA MOWRY-HOUSLEY
Photo by Diana King
Photo by Dana Patrick
TIA MOWRY-HARDRICT & TAMERA MOWRY-HOUSLEY have been in the public eye for over eighteen years, beginning with their hit ABC/WB show Sister, Sister. They’ve starred in Disney Channel’s original movies Twitches and Twitches Too as well as the Style Network’s #1 reality series, Tia & Tamera. Tia was the lead of The CW/BET’s hit show The Game and can most recently be seen starring in and producing the Nickelodeon series Instant Mom. Tamera is currently a host and producer of The Real talk show, which airs on FOX and BET, and starred in the Lifetime hit series Strong Medicine. Tia and Tamera reside in Los Angeles with their sons and husbands.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2015 by Annabelle Métayer
Cover design by Katie Fitch
Front cover type by Annica Lydenberg
COPYRIGHT
TWINTUITION: DOUBLE VISION. Copyright © 2015 by Dashon Productions and Two
Heart Productions. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014958872
ISBN 978-0-06-237286-4
EPub Edition © March 2015 ISBN 9780062372888
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FIRST EDITION
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