Triple Trouble

by Julia DeVillers

  And then he multiplied into two.

  Double vision! I was experiencing double vision!

  I squeezed my eyes closed and opened them again.

  Oh no! It was worse! Now there were three! Three of the exact same person!

  Triple vision!!!

  Maybe the fall DID damage my brain! I shut my eyes again. Triple vision??? I suddenly felt very, very dizzy.

  “Or,” I said meekly, “I could go to the nurse after all.”

  Three

  IN HOMEROOM

  Psst. It was the new guy. Again.

  Now what? Homeroom was almost over, and I hadn’t finished my homework, which was due first period. At least it was in this same classroom. I’d have a few more minutes while everyone changed classes.

  “I’ve got this teacher for social studies next,” the boy whispered. “Is she easy?”

  Great. He was in my social studies class. Just great. Would he try to cheat off me in that class too?

  “No,” I whispered back. “And I’m not my sister, so don’t ask me for ‘help’ in there either.”

  “So, do you have a headache too?” he asked.

  “What?” I answered. “Why would I have a headache?”

  “You know, that twin question? If one twin gets hurt, does the other feel it? I guess in your case, the answer is no,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t anyone tell you? Your twin hit her head a little while ago. BAM! Total wipeout. They took her to the nurse.”

  Oh no! Suddenly it didn’t matter that Emma’s hair wasn’t shiny or that she wore a scrunchie on her head. Emma was hurt! All that mattered was that she was okay!

  I waved my hand in the air to get permission to leave class.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you didn’t know,” the new guy said. “Hope it didn’t screw up her genius brain.”

  Emma! Her brain! I jumped up and ran out of the classroom.

  Four

  NURSE’S OFFICE

  “Are you sure you feel okay?” The school nurse bent over me and peered at me.

  I looked at the nurse. Yes, one nurse. The simple, elegant number of one, not two blurry nurses or three blurry nurses. That was an enormous relief.

  “I feel fine,” I said. “But perhaps you could check to see if my pupils are dilated, just in case.”

  I held up the little flashlight/pen/key chain I’d gotten at last year’s state spelling bee and switched it on.

  Bzzzt!

  “What was that?” The nurse jumped back.

  “My flashlight/pen/key chain that I got at a spelling bee.” I showed her. “It buzzes like a bee. A bee, for a spelling bee—get it?”

  Suddenly there was a louder buzz from a different direction.

  “That’s my phone,” the nurse said rushing away from my cot. “Stay right there, honey.”

  “Honey?” I called after her. “Like from a beehive?” Heh. Bee puns.

  I flicked my flashlight off and on a few times while the nurse talked on the phone. Bzzzt. Bzzzt. I clipped the key chain back on my backpack and fidgeted around on the cot where I’d been stuck for the last twenty-one minutes. Twenty-one minutes gone meant there was only twenty-five minutes left of science class. Subtracting the three and a half minutes it would take me to walk to class, that would only leave twenty two and a half minutes left of science.

  I couldn’t miss an entire science class and let Jazmine get ahead of me. I also had to turn in my plan for the science fair today, so I had to get my A game ready. A for AcadEmma.

  “Excuse me,” I told the nurse, trying to sound as stable and rational as possible. “I’m one hundred percent fine. Here, I’ll prove it. Ask me to spell any word in the dictionary. Or do a math problem. Precalc. Calculus. Multivariable.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” the nurse said. “Your vitals are fine, and there’s no evidence of a concussion. I told your father on the phone just now I think you are fine. You can go back to class as soon as I write you a pass.”

  Excellent! I hopped up. AcadEmma was ready! She didn’t let a little thing like a bump on the head get in the way of her academic focus, especially when a Jazmine James takeover was looming on the horizon! That’s right! AcadEmma let nothing get her way! Noth—

  “Look out!” Two boys raced into the nurse’s office. Well, one raced in yelling and the other stumbled in, groaning. Then the other one threw up, right by the nurse’s desk.

  “We have a puker,” the nurse announced. “Emma, lie back down and I’ll write your pass after I take care of the vomiter.”

  “If you write it fast, I could get back to class and—” I hadn’t finished the sentence before the kid went “Blaaaaagh” and vomited large chunks on the floor. The nurse raced off to him.

  Sigh. AcadEmma was on hold. I stayed on the cot. This might take a few minutes. I closed my eyes and began silently reciting the classification of zoological species for fun.

  “Blaaaagh.”

  Oof! Someone had knocked me back onto the cot. And was hugging me wildly.

  “Glarg!” I attempted to speak, but my twin had her arms wrapped tightly around my esophagus.

  “The nurse said you’re okay! You’re okay! I was freaking out!” Payton said dramatically.

  I would have told her I was fine, but she was hugging my larynx.

  “I was so worried!” Payton continued. “At first I thought, What if Emma gets amnesia and forgets that she even has a twin? I’m so happy you didn’t forget me! And then I thought, Wait, what if Emma has a brain injury?”

  Payton gasped. “If you broke your brain, that would change everything, Emma,” Payton babbled on. “Suddenly I’d be the smart twin!”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I said, twisting so she was no longer cutting off my speech. “No brain injury. Except maybe from you just now cutting off my oxygen.”

  “Oh!” Payton loosened her grip. “Sorry. I’m just so relieved you’re okay.”

  It was nice of my sister to care about me so much. Even though we were so different, we were this close when it came to important things.

  “I am okay,” I said loudly, for the nurse’s benefit. Then I lowered my voice. “ . . . now. But right after I hit my head, I started seeing triple.

  “Whoa. But you’re really okay?” Payton said. She held up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Three,” I said.

  “No, just one.” Payton frowned. “Oh no! You’re still seeing triple!”

  Wait, wha—?!

  “Kidding!” Payton laughed. “LOL.”

  “Don’t mess with my brain,” I scolded her.

  “Hey.” Payton wrinkled her nose. “What stinks?”

  “A puker,” I said motioning toward the front area of the nurse’s office. “The nurse is going to write me a pass to leave as soon as she takes care of him. Which I hope is soon because I need to get to science class. I’m missing it now. Bad timing.”

  “It was good timing for me,” Payton said. “I can always use a break from homework. Oh, that reminds me. There’s a new guy in my class. He was the one who told me you fell. He said he saw you. Did you see him?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I saw him all right.” Three times, I saw him.

  “He thought I was you,” Payton said. “He’s been here about five minutes, and he mixed us up already. He asked me to help him with his math because he heard I was a math genius.”

  I smiled. My reputation as a genius was known to even the newest of students.

  Well, that was a plus. At least his impression of me wasn’t just me hitting my head and lying on the floor.

  “Did you tell him that we’re twins?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” Payton said, but then frowned. “He actually didn’t ask me for help. He wanted me—you—to cheat.”

  “Cheat on math?” I asked.

  “He had that math assessment thing to figure out what math class he’s going to be in,” Payton said. “He asked
me to do it for him.”

  I’ve always had my share of people who try to copy my homework, sneak looks at my test paper, or pass me at my locker with a casual “Hey, Emma! What’s three x minus fourteen times pi?” knowing I’d answer their homework question accidentally without thinking twice.

  I was used to it. Payton looked really bothered by it, though.

  “Maybe you were confused,” I said. “He is new. But if he asks again, feel free to use my standard response: ‘Nullum! Cheaters nunquam prosperabitur.’ ”

  “What?” Payton said.

  “That ‘No! Cheaters never prosper,’ ” I told her. “In Latin. I find if you say it in Latin, it’s very effective. People are confused so they don’t know how to respond. Or they think it’s a wizard spell I’m putting on them, and that scares them off.”

  Payton looked at me, shaking her head.

  “What? It’s effective.” I shrugged.

  “Your brain is so weird,” Payton said. “But I’m so glad it’s working.”

  “It’s nice to see twins so caring of each other.” The nurse’s voice startled both of us.

  We smiled at her.

  “And,” the nurse continued, arching her eyebrow, “it’s also nice to see you together at all and not pretending to be each other by hiding out sick in the nurse’s office.”

  Oops. When we switched places the first time, Payton had pretended to be sick so I could go to class as her. She’d slept the afternoon away on this very cot.

  “I have to admit, I am fascinated by twins,” the nurse said. “I didn’t mean to overhear, but were you speaking in your secret twin language?”

  Payton and I looked confused.

  “When you said something like ‘Nullum something something?’ ” the nurse explained.

  “Actually no, I was just speaking Latin,” I explained to her.

  “Oh.” The nurse looked disappointed, then brightened. “Well, still, you don’t always hear twins speaking Latin to each other either! Let me give you both passes back to class.”

  The nurse handed us passes, and we headed out the door.

  “Well, back to the grind,” Payton said as we walked down the hall. “Hey, what are three export products of Brazil?”

  “Sugar,” I said automatically. “And—wait, I’m not doing your social studies work for you.”

  “Almost had you,” Payton said, and grinned.

  “Mills Twins!” One of the school secretaries came up the hallway toward us. “I heard you were both here. I have notes for each of you from the office.”

  She handed one envelope to Emma and one to me. We thanked her as she walked away.

  “I wonder what it is,” Payton said as she started to open hers. “I hope we’re not in trouble!”

  “You will be in trouble if you don’t have a hall pass.”

  We turned around to see Ox’s cousin and drama club member Sam behind us. Sam was wearing a hall monitor badge.

  “You’re a hall monitor?” Payton asked him.

  “Correct,” he said. “May I see your pass, please?”

  We held out our passes.

  “Hmmm.” He inspected them. “They look valid. Go ahead to your classes.”

  “In a minute,” Payton said, holding up her half-open envelope. “We just have to look at these—”

  “No loitering,” Sam said, shaking his head. “No dawdling or lollygagging. Move along. You need to go to your classes.”

  I didn’t need twin telepathy to decipher Payton’s eye roll. But Sam was right. I needed to get to science ASAP and show Jazmine and the world that my brain was unharmed.

  For the remaining eleven minutes of class, I would think about nothing else but world domination of science. World DomEmmation.

  Five

  BACK TO CLASS

  I opened the envelope and read the note as I walked down the hall to class.

  From the Desk of Principal Patel

  Dear Ms. Mills:

  We are pleased to request your presence in the principal’s office immediately after first period this morning.

  Oh no, I had to go to the principal’s office? Was I in trouble? Wait, Emma had gotten a note too. Were we in trouble? Oh no. Oh no! What could we be in trouble for? It couldn’t be a Twin Switch.

  No, wait. It said “pleased to request your presence.” The principal wouldn’t write that if I was in trouble, right? Or did it make principals pleased to get students in trouble? I started rereading the note as I continued walking around a corner. Dear Ms. Mills—

  OOF!

  I walked right into someone.

  “Sorry!” I said. Oh, it was the new guy. He dropped some papers he was carrying.

  “Watch where you’re going,” he mumbled.

  “Um, yeesh, sorry. It was an accident,” I said as I stooped down to pick up a piece of paper he had dropped. It was a bright yellow hall pass, like mine.

  “Getting out of study hall?” I asked him.

  “No, orchestra,” he said. He took the pass and kept on walking.

  Yeesh and yeesh. I guess he was mad at me for not helping him cheat on the math thing. Well, that’s his problem. He said he was going to orchestra, so maybe he got switched out of my study hall. That might not be a bad thing. I was still a little annoyed at how he had just treated me. I mean, he was new and all, so maybe he was a little overwhelmed, but still.

  I reached for the door to the study hall classroom, but it opened just as I reached for it. Someone was coming out.

  “Oh, hey,” I said.

  Wait a minute. Did I just bump into the new guy . . . again?

  I turned around, but the hallway was definitely empty now. Huh. I shook my head. That was weird. The guy was in the hall around the corner, and then he was in the hall outside. How did he move so fast?

  Seriously weird. Oh, well, anyway. I had other things to think about. Like catching up on the social studies I’d missed. Eep, I’d wasted most of class in the nurse’s office, and I only knew one of the three export products of the country of Brazil. I sighed and went into class. Where the guy was still sitting in his seat. Not roaming the halls.

  I saw someone walk by the classroom door, and hey, there was the new guy walking by. Then he doubled.

  Yes, there he was. Twice. Black hair, olive-colored shirt, skinny jeans. Times two. I shook my head to clear it.

  “Psst.” I tapped the girl in front of me on the shoulder. “Did you just see anyone walk by the door?” I asked her after she turned around.

  “No,” she said.

  The girl spun back around and faced forward.

  I kept looking out the door. The guy had definitely multiplied. I thought about Emma saying she had triple vision. Maybe that twin thing was happening: When one of you gets hurt, does the other one feel it? Maybe since Emma had hit her head and had triple vision, I was experiencing triple vision too!

  I had always thought that was a stupid twin question. But could it be true? I pinched my arm and wondered if Emma could feel it. Ouch. I now had a red mark on my arm, and since we weren’t allowed to use cell phones in school, there was no way to test the results.

  The final minutes of class ticked by. I did as much of my social studies as I could without my textbook. I watched the clock tick. I brushed my hair. I put on some lip gloss (vanilla cupcake–scented). Then class was over, and I headed to the principal’s office.

  On the way, I saw Tess in the hallway. She was easy to spot because she was taller than almost everyone and I could see her blond French braid. I hurried to catch up with her.

  “Hi, Payton!” Tess said. “What’s up?”

  I could trust Tess. Maybe she knew what was going on.

  “I have to go to the principal’s office,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t know why, though.”

  “Oh, I hope everything’s okay,” Tess said. “Maybe it’s about Emma hitting her head and they’re just following up.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Except the letter said ‘We are please
d to request your presence.’ They wouldn’t be pleased about Emma hitting her head, I hope.”

  “Pleased?” Tess said. “Oh, then that’s great! It’s something positive. Hey, I bet I know what it is. Have they congratulated you on your commercial in Hollywood?”

  Hmmm. No.

  “I bet that’s it!” Tess said. “They’ll thank you and Emma for representing our school.”

  “That makes total sense.” I brightened up. “Cool. Thanks, Tess.”

  “See you in drama!” Tess said.

  I felt much better as I headed down the stairs and to the principal’s office.

  “Right on time,” the school secretary said. “And congratulations to you! You must feel so proud.”

  “Thanks!” Well, it was looking like Tess was right. Whew! I wasn’t in trouble. This was great!

  “You can leave your bag here and go right on into the principal’s office conference room,” the secretary said. “Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes.” I sighed. It was where Emma and I had our meeting with the principal and our parents and teachers after Twin Switch Fail Number One, the first week of school. At least now the room would bring better memories! I went down the short hallway and saw that the door was slightly open.

  “And here she is!” Principal Patel said. “Our star!”

  Yay! That’s me!

  I smiled my best “commercial” smile at the small group of people sitting in chairs. They looked very official, in suits and dresses and other businessy things. A few of them smiled back. A few did not.

  Eeps.

  “Hello,” I said. I felt a little awkward standing there while they all looked at me, but hey, I wanted to be an actress, so I would pretend this was an audition.

  “This is our esteemed school board as well as a few members of the state department of educational success,” the principal said. “You may recognize them.”

  I went along with it and nodded. Principal wanted to show off? Okay! I’d redeem myself for all my past wrongs. Now, where was Emma?

  “We’re very proud,” one of the women said.

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling. How nice. I shook out my hair a little so they could see the shiny hair and friendly “everygirl” look that had won us the role. (That’s what the Hollywood director had told us.)