Triple Trouble

by Julia DeVillers

  “But obviously we do,” Dexter said.

  “Even our parents have trouble telling us apart,” Asher said.

  “Yeah, my twin and I have that issue,” I said.

  “Pffft, try being three, not just two of you,” Dexter said dismissing me.

  “Triplets are also called supertwins,” Oliver said.

  “Super, meaning extraordinary twins, not just regular twins,” Dexter said.

  Hey, wait a minute. Was that directed at me? It sounded on the surface like he was kidding. But I could tell from my competitions when someone was an opponent.

  “Well,” I shot back, “everyone is extraordinary in his or her own way. For example, my twin Emma has extraordinary talents—”

  “And we’re really extraordinary because . . .” Dexter said, cutting me off.

  “We’re the SUPERTWINS!” all three of them said together. And suddenly, in unison, the three of them stood up and faced the camera. The girl who had miked me raced up and handed one a guitar.

  “Ah one, two, three,” Dexter said.

  And they started singing. I looked at Mrs. Burkle, and she looked as surprised as I did.

  “ . . . and ooh, ooh, ooh . . . we’re the SuperTwins!”

  “We’re the SuperTwins!” they said, then gave little waves and sat back down like normal.

  The other people in the room started clapping. I looked at Mrs. Burkle, who was beaming and applauding.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” I said, game face still on. “So you’re a boy band?”

  “Dude, no.” They all shook their heads. “Not a boy band.”

  “We’re a musical force!” Asher added.

  “Available for parties, bar and bat mitzvahs . . .” Oliver said.

  “Book us now before we hit it big,” Dexter said. “Text us.”

  Mrs. Burkle was making slicing motions across her neck and mouthing something. I was pretty good at reading lips, so I leaned forward. “Wrap it up!” she was saying.

  “Well, that’s all the time we have,” I interrupted them. “Welcome to our school.”

  I started to get up but nearly strangled myself. The microphone was still attached to my collar. The triplets cracked up.

  “Psst! Still rolling!” Mrs. Burkle waved frantically and pointed at the green light, which unfortunately was still on.

  “. . . and welcome to our school,” I added. The green light was still on. Oh, come on, would this never end? The triplets remained slouched in their seats, smirking at me.

  “Go, Geckos!” I said weakly.

  “And we’re off the air!” Mrs. Burkle clapped her hands. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a higher budget for a new teleprompter. But that was wonderful, triplets. An impromptu musical performance!”

  “Thanks,” the triplets said in unison. Of course.

  “Have you all considered joining the drama club? Or show choir? Are you in band?” Mrs. Burkle tried to enlist them.

  “Looks like you all have a lot to chat about, so I’ll just be leaving,” I said, still in cheery Payton mode. Speaking of which, I needed to get out of there before someone discovered I wasn’t Payton. I reached down to detach my mike.

  “Can I have your cell? So I can, um, text you guys about playing at a, um, event,” the girl who had attached my mike asked. Oh no, their first groupie.

  “Tania, please get back to class. Payton, boys, wait while I write you a pass,” Mrs. Burkle said.

  “Heh, that was funny when she got trapped in the microphone,” the triplet in the middle said, elbowing his brothers.

  “I wasn’t trapped, Oliver,” I said pointedly. “Momentarily tangled.”

  “I’m not Oliver,” he smirked.

  I looked at the three of them. They must have switched seats.

  “And the look on her face when you saw the teleprompter was down,” a different one said.

  “She was like this.” another made a goofy face.

  All three triplets made disturbing faces at me. Then laughed. Oh, ha-ha-ha. Yes, something was up with these triplets. On the outside, I was cheerful Payton. On the inside, I was suspicious Emma, checking out the competition. Yes, competition. These guys were trying to make me look bad.

  These guys were Triple Trouble.

  “She is not amused,” I told them coolly, finally getting the microphone unhooked from my sweater.

  “Oh, admit it, you’re our newest superfan,” one triplet said.

  “Superfan of the SuperTwins,” another said. “If you had been nicer to us, we’d have given you our autograph.”

  “Too bad, so sad,” I shot back.

  The triplets looked at one another with what I believed was a little surprise. Perhaps they were realizing I was a worthy opponent. I was not going to let their little mind games get to me. Good thing it was me, Emma, and not Payton here. I’d faced down every type of competitor in existence: intimidators, scrappers, come-from-behinders . . . I wasn’t about to be taken down by boy banders!

  “Hey, do you think she . . . ?” one of the triplets said cryptically.

  The other two laughed.

  “Agreed,” one said.

  “Eh, maybe,” said the third.

  What the—? Were they having a conversation? They were all quiet, and then they burst out laughing.

  “Are you feeling left out?” one of the triplets said to me.

  “We’re just having a little triplet talk,” one said.

  “But you weren’t talking,” I pointed out.

  One of the triplets grinned and leaned back in his chair with the front feet off the floor.

  “Well, you know how some multiples can read one another’s minds—” he said.

  “—and finish one another’s sentences,” another said.

  “That’s a myth,” I pointed out. “We can be attuned to each other, but not really read each others’ minds.”

  “Whatever you say,” one triplet said and shrugged. The other two laughed.

  “Vanilla,” one suddenly said.

  “Agreed,” the other answered.

  Wait. Were they really reading one another’s minds? No. Of course not. ESP was scientifically impossible.

  “Twelve,” the other said. “Definitely.”

  No. There was no way. The triplets stood up at exactly the same time. But these superTwins weren’t supernatural. Scientifically. Impossible. Okay, that was a little eerie.

  I had to admit, I’d always been irritated by the question, “Can you and your twin read each other’s minds?” There was absolutely no evidence of telepathic communication between twins. There were times when Payton and I did seem attuned to each other in ways that seemed to defy science. But that, of course, was because we lived together, went to the same school, looked almost exactly alike . . .

  Then I noticed that the triplets were eyeing me up and down.

  “Hey, Payton?” one of the triplets said.

  “Come closer. We want tell you apart from your sister,” one of the triplets said.

  “We know how annoying some multiples get when people mix you up,” the third said.

  “Look at the time,” I said. “I have to get to class!”

  I fled.

  Nine

  FOURTH PERIOD

  Clothes? Meat? Flowers?

  I only had a couple more minutes to get to my locker, find my social studies textbook, and find out what the last two exports were. . . .

  When I got to my locker, it was buzzing. I’d forgotten to turn off my cell phone. I opened the door and grabbed my cell to see who was texting me during a school day.

  Emma? Why was Emma texting me? I clicked on it.

  JC! NOW!

  The Janitor’s Closet? Emma wanted me to meet her at the Janitor’s Closet? The site of our Twin Switches? Did Emma want to switch places?

  That was a coincidence, since I’d just pretended I was Emma in the principal’s office. It was definitely a TWINcidence. Identical twins have a lot of coincidences! Like the famous stor
y our parents told us about these real-life identical twins who were separated at birth. They met when they were grown-up and found out that their adoptive parents named them both James! And the men had each married women named Linda, and they named their sons James and their dogs Toy!

  Weird!

  I walked quickly to the Janitor’s Closet. We had only ten minutes before next period, and I didn’t want to be late to social studies. I turned the corner and—

  “Hey!”

  Emma grabbed me and practically shoved me into the closet. Bzzzt!

  “What the heck?” I hissed. A tiny light flicked on.

  “Hurry! Switch clothes with me!” Emma said. “We can see by the light of my prizewinning flashlight/pen/key chain.”

  Bzzzt!

  “Switch outfits?” I protested. “I like my outfit today. Ow!”

  Emma had accidentally elbowed me as she pulled off a pink sweater. Hey, wait a minute.

  “Are you wearing my sweater?” I peered closer.

  “Yes, and your jeans and belt,” Emma grumbled. “I got them from your locker. We need to switch clothes so we’re not busted.”

  Ah, she must have found out about my awesome performance as MathEmmatician in the principal’s office. I opened my mouth to boast about it just as the first warning bell for class rang. We could hear the rush of our classmates right outside the door.

  I shut my mouth. We didn’t want anyone to discover our JC switching place, that’s for sure. I tried not to yelp as we bumped into each other. It was a teeny closet. Good thing the janitor had the mop and the bucket out or we wouldn’t have fit. I pulled the sweater on. At least she had the decency to have me switch into cute clothes and not the heinous outfit she’d had on this morning, with the green scrunchie.

  “Ready!” I whispered to Emma. Emma opened the door a teeny tiny bit. We could see the madhouse of kids walking in the halls. Emma slid out. I crossed my fingers that nobody had noticed her.

  I waited. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one. Then I slipped out of the closet and tried to blend in with the crowd. I blended, but got swept along with the tide of kids rushing to their next class. Where was Emma? I wanted to fill her in on what just happened. I tried to look around the person in front of me to find my sister.

  “Hey, watch out.” It was Sydney.

  “Sydney, do you see Emma?” I hated to ask her for any help, but I needed to find out why we just switched clothes.

  “No, I see Payton,” she said, looking at me. “I think, anyway. Unless you’re Emma and you’re looking for yourself.”

  “Ha, very funny,” I said. “Twin humor. Ha.”

  “You guys are old news anyway.” She shrugged. “They’re so cool, you know?”

  Before I could ask her what she was talking about, she pushed forward into the crowd. Then I spotted Emma.

  Excellent!

  Except as I got closer, I realized that Emma was talking to her science teacher.

  Not so excellent. I wanted to fill Emma in on what had happened in the principal’s office. I waited for a minute, trying to use twin ESP to get Emma’s attention.

  “Emma! Stop talking to your science teacher and talk to me!” I tried to tell her silently. But Emma not only didn’t stop talking to the teacher, she got even more animated, waving her hands around.

  She must be talking about sciencey things only Emma would get excited about. Then the second warning bell rang. Shoot, I was going to be late for social studies.

  I hurried through the hall. I noticed people looking at someone, and I saw the new guy coming down the hall toward me.

  “Hi,” I said to him. I knew it must be weird to be the new guy. He looked at me and didn’t say anything. Well, yeesh. He could have at least acknowledged my presence, after trying to make me do his math for him.

  I ran down the stairs.

  “Hi, Payton!” Tess waved as she went by.

  “Hey there, Payton,” the new guy said—smirking?—as he went . . . up the stairs? Wait a minute. How did the new guy get there so fast? And this time he said hi to me. My head was spinning as I got to social studies just as the bell rang and slid into my seat.

  “Please pass your homework forward,” Mr. Schain said.

  As I passed my paper forward, the principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

  “We will have a special breaking-news VOGS update,” the principal said. “Please turn on your classroom televisions for this news.”

  “This is going to delay our lesson on the triangular trade route,” Mr. Schain grumbled and turned on the television.

  “Hello, Geckos,” Ahmad, one of the VOGS reporters, came on-screen. “We have a special news update. The parking lot will unexpectedly be closed off for paving. Seniors, if you park in Lot B, move, or you could be towed away by quarter past eleven. Also the faculty parking lot, too. So. Teachers. Move your cars. Thank you.”

  “Great,” Mr. Schain grumbled. “Just great.”

  As Mr. Schain was pulling his keys out of his desk drawer, Mrs. Burkle’s face came on-screen.

  “And while we have a captive audience, let’s add on a feature report!” Mrs. Burkle looked thrilled. She loved being able to, as she put it, “break into regularly scheduled classes.”

  And then something weird happened. Emma’s face came on the television. WHAT?!

  “Hi, I’m Payton,” Emma said.

  Emma say what? Why was Emma on VOGS saying she was me? People turned around to look at me. Heh. I smiled weakly and tried not to freak out. I kept my eyes glued to the screen.

  “As you may know, I’m an identical twin,” Emma was saying. “And I’m here with three new students who aren’t just twins, but triplets!”

  And the camera panned to the new guy. And the new guy and the . . . Ohhh! Suddenly things made sense. The new guy didn’t move really fast! He was a triplet!

  Now I realized why we had to switch clothes. Emma was on VOGS being me, wearing my pink sweater, which I was in now. Wait, why was she being me in the first place? Why wasn’t I being me? Oh . . . it must have been while I was being her in the principal’s office!

  OMIgosh! Accidental Twin Switch!

  “Are you identical?” Emma said, obviously reading off the teleprompter. Ugh. If she was going to impersonate me, she needed to do a better job of not so obviously reading. I mean, I did a fabulous job being her in the principal’s office. She could return the favor.

  Then I thought about how I’d flipped my hair and done “Shiny, shiny, shiny” to the school board. Maybe I’d cut Emma some slack on the teleprompter thing.

  We all watched with fascination as the triplets introduced themselves. Dexter, Oliver, Asher. They really, really looked identical. It was so cool! I tried to tell them apart, but they were dressed alike and sounded alike.

  Whenever I met other identicals, I realized how other people looked at Emma and me. Like right now, everyone was watching Emma on-screen, thinking she was me. She was doing a good job now, though. She looked like she wasn’t even reading the teleprompter. I relaxed a little bit. She was being me pretty good!

  Then things got unusual. The triplets started to sing.

  “Oooh!” a girl squealed. “We have a new boy band in our school!”

  I leaned forward, trying to watch and see what Emma/I was saying. But the class got so noisy.

  “They’re so cute!” girls were saying.

  “Seriously?” one guy snorted.

  “You’re just jealous,” a girl said. “You wish you were an identical adorable triplet guy musician.”

  I couldn’t hear what was happening on VOGS. What was Emma saying? Why were the triplets smirking at her? My class finally quieted down just as the interview was ending.

  “Go, Geckos!” Emma said. And did her awkward fist punch in the air.

  Sigh.

  Well, I’d unraveled the mystery of the new guys(s). Now I needed to unravel the mystery of why Emma had been filming VOGS while I’d been answering math question
s.

  Ten

  AT LUNCH

  I left my class.

  Ox was there waiting for me. He looked very cute. But not very pleased. He arched an eyebrow at me.

  “I can explain,” I said immediately.

  “You can explain why you impersonated your sister for the VOGS cast?” Ox asked. “I thought you two were done switching places so you wouldn’t get into any more trouble.”

  “I know.” I nodded. We walked together down the hall, and I explained what happened.

  “So I didn’t know that I was doing the interviewing as Payton. I thought I was being interviewed as Emma. So, as you can see, I had no other alternative,” I said to close my argument.

  “You couldn’t just have said, ‘I’m Emma, there’s been a mistake?’ ” he asked.

  Hmmm . . . good question. I stopped and moved off to the side where we wouldn’t get plowed over by people on their way to class.

  “Okay,” I confessed. “The triplets threw me off my game, and I got flustered.”

  Ox arched his eyebrow again.

  “And then they started challenging me, and—okay—I started getting competitive.” I sighed. “Like animals that instinctively guard their own territory?” Ox smiled. He was an animal activist as well as an athlete.

  “Well, that’s honest,” Ox said. “I get that.”

  “I may have handled it wrong,” I admitted. “Can I blame it on my bumped head? This day has been ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, I was worried about you,” Ox said, his face changing to a look of concern. “Are you okay?”

  Then Ox put his arm around me.

  OX PUT HIS ARM AROUND ME! Was I okay? I was more than okay because OX HAD HIS ARM AROUND ME!

  Now I was feeling flustered for sure. “Flustered” was definitely the accurate word for it.

  Tee hee hee.

  The warning bell for class rang.

  “Well, I better get to PE,” Ox said. “Need to keep in shape for football. And our dance.”

  Tee hee—erp. Our dance. I’d conveniently forgotten about that part.

  “I better get to lunch,” I said. “Need to . . . uh . . .”

  “Eat?” Ox finished the sentence for me. He took his arm back, and I came to my senses and said good-bye.