by Mark Elliott
Jay had to admit that Melissa seemed a lot cuter today than he’d thought she was on Friday. But still nowhere near as cute as Julie Parkman. But there would be time for her. Because this little adventure in Rayness was giving Jay all kinds of ideas. It was suddenly obvious that he could be much cooler and smoother than he had ever imagined possible. Jay thought, When it comes to girls, Jay is the new Ray—new and improved. And the school year is just beginning!
When science class ended, Jay smiled at Melissa and said, “See you tomorrow.” And he wished that were true. But it wasn’t. Because tomorrow, the other Jay would be sitting at table nine.
Still, as he walked out into the crowded hallway and caught up with James for the walk to gym class, Jay felt like he was on top of the world.
And he was especially looking forward to soccer practice after school. He couldn’t wait to show James how the real Jay Grayson played the game.
CHAPTER 16
THE LITTLE THINGS
During his second lap around the big oval track behind the school, Jay remembered exactly why he had never wanted to be on a soccer team: too much running—way too much. But still, he felt like he was doing okay. He was having no trouble keeping up with James. Not bad for my first practice, Jay told himself.
The two of them were actually leading the pack, a good thirty yards out in front of the rest of the guys, and that made Jay feel good too. Because when it came to sports, he didn’t have to try to be like Ray. Ray had to try to be like him.
During the first lap, he and James had talked a little as they jogged, mostly about baseball. James was a big Cleveland Indians fan, and Jay liked the Colorado Rockies, and neither team was even in the wild-card race. So they’d had fun comparing best and worst pitchers, then best and worst batters, then best and worst pennant races all around both leagues. The conversation went back and forth until they began to need all their air for running. And the second trip around the track was mostly quiet.
But as they began the third lap, James looked over at Jay and said, “How’s your knee?”
“My knee?”
“Yeah,” James said, “from that scrape yesterday. You were really limping for a while. Looked bad—blood on your sock and everything? Thought you’d have it taped up today.”
“Oh—that,” Jay said, and he pretended to breathe with extra effort for five or ten seconds, giving himself time to think. Then he said, “Wasn’t as bad as it looked. And stuff like that? I heal up really fast. Almost can’t see it now.”
James glanced at him again and nodded, but he didn’t reply.
Another thirty yards or so bounced by, and then James said, “You met my little brothers yet?”
Jay said, “Nope—just moved here, remember?”
James said, “Thought you might have noticed them around school. They look a lot like me. Robert and Edward. They’re twins, completely identical.”
Jay jerked his head sideways to look at James and almost stumbled. But James was running, eyes straight ahead, face expressionless.
Jay kept his voice as even as possible. “Twins, huh? So what’s that like?”
James took about ten strides before he answered. “Kinda fun. They’re good little guys. And no one can tell which is which, sometimes not even our parents. But I always know.”
Jay glanced sideways again. “How’s that work?”
“Not sure,” James said. “I can just tell. That they’re different. Different people.”
After a few more strides, he added, “And I see a lot of little things. ’Cause I’m good at noticing stuff. That’s what the art teacher says. That I’m good at seeing. Like an artist, I guess.”
“So you’re good at art? Like, drawing and painting?” Jay wanted to change the subject. “I’m lousy at that stuff,” he said. “Can you draw faces? I can never draw faces.”
But James stayed on his point. “Because with Edward and Robert? The thing is, they only look identical. They’re not really the same at all. Not if you notice little things. Or even big things. Like a scraped knee.”
Jay stopped running, just stopped. And so did James. Then they stepped off the track and stood on the grass, panting, while the other twelve guys went huffing past.
“So . . . ,” Jay said, “like, when did you know?”
James grinned. “For sure? Today, when we started running. No scratches on your knee. Plus, you’re a lot faster, and you’ve got a whole different stride. And you don’t swing your elbows out like a chicken when you run. Which is what the other guy does.”
“His name’s Ray,” said Jay. “Can you believe that? My parents named us Jay and Ray.”
From across the field a sharp blast from the coach’s whistle got both boys back onto the track. And while they finished the third lap, Jay told the whole story. And he made James promise not to tell anyone else.
As they pulled on some yellow vests to get ready for a scrimmage, Jay said, “And listen, don’t tell Ray, either, okay? ’Cause he didn’t want to try this in the first place. And it would just make him nervous if he knew. That someone else knew about us.”
And James smiled and nodded. “No problem. I won’t tell him—as long as you don’t tell my little brothers one word about this, okay?”
They both laughed a little at that, then James added, “It’s really cool, y’know, what you guys are doing. If I could ditch school every other day, I would totally do that.”
Jay nodded, and he wanted to say, But really, that’s not what this is about, like staying home or tricking everybody. Me and Ray, we’re just trying to do a few things on our own. And the best part isn’t staying home. It’s stuff at school—stuff like this, right now.
But Jay didn’t say that. Because most kids wouldn’t understand. It was a twins thing.
So all he said was, “Yeah, but this whole deal is weird, too. And when it ends—who knows what’ll happen? ’Cause at the end of this week, we’re stopping it. Friday’s gonna be quite a day.”
The coach started calling out positions, so their conversation was over. But that phrase stuck in Jay’s head, and he said it again to himself: Friday’s gonna be quite a day.
Except Jay was wrong about that. Because other forces were in motion at Taft Elementary School.
And Jay and Ray had no idea what was coming. Or when.
But something was coming. And soon.
Soon.
CHAPTER 17
DETECTION
The door of Mrs. Cardiff’s room was always open. And there was a sign above that open doorway: SCHOOL NURSE.
Much smaller than a classroom, the nurse’s office was not a fancy place: charts and posters on the painted yellow walls, one pale oak desk with a rolling chair, three filing cabinets, one low vinyl cot, one folding privacy screen, one scale, and three different-size chairs for different-size visitors. Also, the nurse’s room was the only office in the school with its own private bathroom.
Mrs. Cardiff was an excellent school nurse, which means that she was part mother hen, part educator, and part detective. And at times she also acted as a child advocate, as a parent-teacher arbitrator, and when needed, as a first responder.
And when she had to, she could summon the full authority of the Ohio Department of Health with one phone call. Nobody messed with Emma Cardiff, RN.
Mrs. Cardiff spent a good part of every day standing outside her open doorway, which was at the intersection of the main hallways near the entrance of the school. She watched the children arrive in the morning, she watched them go to and from the cafeteria during the lunch periods, and she watched them hurry homeward at the end of the day.
If a child seemed unusually thin or especially heavy, she took notice. If a child seemed overly tired or oddly energetic, she got on that case. If a child was limping or squinting or scratching or coughing, the nurse looked into the matter. She rarely missed a clue, because she wanted each of the kids here to be as happy and comfortable as possible.
At the start of every year M
rs. Cardiff paid special attention to the eyes and the ears of the kids. She had some students on a “watch list” so she could follow up on them each fall. She had gotten some referrals from teachers for kids who might need hearing or vision testing. And then there were the transfer kids, the ones who had moved into town over the summer. Those children always got some special attention from Mrs. Cardiff.
And that box Jay had seen in his homeroom? The one with the student folders—the folders that Ray thought had been tucked away for the rest of the year? They hadn’t been filed away at all. All the boxes from every grade had been stacked in a small storage area next to the nurse’s room. And like a detective hunting for clues, Mrs. Cardiff had been carefully working her way through those files for the past several days.
As usual, she had started with the sixth graders, glancing through every file for new health notes, and she had pulled out the files of the kids on her special watch list. And she had also set aside the files of all the new transfers.
Then she did that same kind of search through the file boxes for each of the other grades. And when she had all the file folders she wanted to examine pulled from the boxes into a tall stack on her desk, she began carefully reading each file again, starting with the sixth graders.
And that’s why on Wednesday morning, twenty minutes before the first buses arrived, the school nurse opened up a thick, bright blue student folder labeled, “Grayson, Jay Ray.”
Less than ten minutes later, Mrs. Cardiff called an emergency meeting with the principal and with Jay’s homeroom teacher, Mrs. Lane.
Because it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to see that there was something wrong with the Grayson file—very, very wrong.
CHAPTER 18
THE SITUATION
The principal, Mrs. Karen Lonsdale, sat behind her desk in her office, the Grayson file open in front of her. She was holding two small photographs, one in each hand. She looked from one picture to the other, and then back again, and then she glanced up into the face of Mrs. Lane. “And only one of these boys has been at school? Since last Tuesday?”
Mrs. Lane nodded.
Looking at the nurse, Mrs. Lonsdale said, “Have you tried to reach the parents yet?”
Mrs. Cardiff shook her head and said, “I wanted to speak with both of you first. There’s nothing in the file to indicate it, but this could be a divorce situation, and maybe there’s a custody issue we don’t know about. I don’t see any record of either parent actually coming to the school yet, so I don’t know what to think.”
The principal said, “So . . . should we call the child welfare agency? Or the police? Because the one thing we know for sure is that we have a missing child. Jay Grayson has been coming to school for a week now, and we’ve heard nothing about this other brother from the boy or from the parents. No note, no explanation of any kind. What’s the other child’s name?”
“Ray,” Mrs. Cardiff said. “One is Jay and the other one’s Ray.”
Turning to Mrs. Lane, the principal frowned and said, “What I want to know is, why didn’t you spot this when you read through your student files last week?”
Mrs. Lane was upset. “Well, I . . . I know I looked through all the folders, but I didn’t really study every file, and I guess—”
The nurse interrupted. “I almost didn’t spot it myself, Karen. One boy is named Jay Ray, and the other is Ray Jay, and all the photos in that file look exactly alike. Two files got stuffed into an envelope by someone in Colorado, and when it arrived here in the mail, it looked like we were getting one new student. The district secretary didn’t catch it, or the district attendance officer, or our own school secretary—no one caught the mistake. And right now, we know that we are one student short. So the question isn’t, ‘Who should have seen this?’ The question is, ‘Where’s the missing boy?’”
The principal nodded in agreement, and Jay’s homeroom teacher smiled at the nurse, grateful for the support.
The principal said, “So again, who should we call about this?”
Mrs. Lane shrugged.
Not Mrs. Cardiff. She never shrugged. She always had a positive idea about what to do next, and this Grayson business was no exception.
She sat up straight on the edge of her chair and said, “There might be a very simple explanation about why the other twin hasn’t been coming, so we don’t want to overreact. First I think we need to talk to Jay, the boy who’s at school. I’m beginning the hearing tests today, so I could call him to my office during homeroom. The audiologist won’t arrive until later, but I can just talk with him a little, in a nonthreatening way. And based on what we learn, then I suggest that we call the parents. And if for some reason the parents are not cooperative, then we can involve the authorities. Does that sound like a good way forward?”
The principal and the homeroom teacher looked at each other, and both nodded in agreement.
Mrs. Lonsdale stood up, closed the blue file folder, and handed it across her desk to the nurse. “All right, then. That’s what we’ll do. And for now, let’s keep this matter to ourselves, understood?”
Mrs. Lane and Mrs. Cardiff nodded at the principal and got to their feet. All three women walked into the main office and then out into the central hallway just as the first buses pulled up at the curb out front.
The school day had begun.
CHAPTER 19
TROUBLE IN TWINSVILLE
Ray timed his morning walk perfectly, and on Wednesday he got to school just as the first buses arrived. He went through the front doors with a big crowd of kids, then walked straight across the central hallway and stopped against the far wall, scanning for faces amid the flow of kids. He was looking for Melissa. Or for James. He saw Sean, but he didn’t really want to talk with him. He wanted to talk to the kids who knew who he was. The ones who knew that he was Ray. And he didn’t spot either of them.
So he eased back into the heavy foot traffic, turned right, and shuffled along toward the sixth-grade hall. He was going to get to homeroom earlier than usual, but he still had some issues with the math homework, so the extra time would be good.
As the first busloads of kids came inside on Wednesday, Mrs. Cardiff stood next to the open doorway of her office, watching. She had an excellent memory for faces, and almost immediately she saw Jay Grayson walk in the door—a perfect match with the fifth-grade school picture in his student folder. Except this morning, the boy had a fresh bruise on his right cheekbone. Plus a small scrape on his chin. The nurse made a mental note of those physical issues.
The child seemed hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure which way to go. And he wasn’t walking with friends, wasn’t talking with anyone, acted like he didn’t see the three or four girls who smiled his way. He stood alone near the wall for about twenty seconds, looking this way and that, and then turned and walked toward the sixth-grade hall. Seems like sort of a loner, she thought. Maybe he feels a little lost without his twin.
Ray sat down in homeroom and started talking with Alex Grellman. He was a math whiz, and Ray needed help. He’d had some trouble with the homework about factoring—which was Jay’s fault, for taking such lousy notes. Which was because all during math class on Tuesday, Jay had kept getting distracted by that girl he thought was so special—Julie Parkman.
But Ray didn’t want to think about Jay. He was glad to be nowhere near his brother . . . the nasty little rat, he thought. And if I never see him again in my whole life? That would be just fine.
And Ray felt that way because the previous night had not been a happy time in Twinsville.
The problems had begun after dinner on Tuesday, when Ray and Jay had gone to their room to do homework. They sat at their double-wide desk, passing their one math book back and forth, trying to figure out the assignment. It was slow going.
After about ten minutes of struggling to explain factoring to Ray, Jay said, “Listen, forget about this stuff for a minute. I’ve got to tell you something.”
Ray stopped chewing the end of h
is pencil and said, “So tell me.”
Jay took a deep breath and said, “James found out. About you and me. That we’re twins, and that we’ve been switching off at school.”
Ray stared at his brother. “You’re kidding, right?”
Jay shook his head. “James has twin brothers, fourth graders. And he can always tell them apart. And when we were doing our laps at soccer practice this afternoon? He said he could tell that we were different. He just knew. Especially since you didn’t tell me that you had a scrape on your knee from yesterday. So he took one look at my knee today, then looked at the way I run, and he—”
“The way you run?” Ray said. “What’s that mean?”
“Well, he watched you running on Monday,” Jay said, “and you’re slower. Plus your elbows stick out like chicken wings.”
“No, they don’t—chicken wings? James said that?”
Jay said, “Yeah, but not making fun, just describing. So anyway, he knows now. But he’s not gonna tell anyone. Because he—”
“I’m slower?” Ray said. “He thinks I run slower than you do? He’s crazy.”
Jay said, “So . . . you’re okay with it? That he knows about us?”
Ray shrugged. “Sure. I mean, it doesn’t really matter. Everyone’s gonna know on Friday anyway.” He paused a moment, then added, “And besides, I told Melissa all about everything. On Monday morning.”
Jay’s mouth dropped open. “You what?”
Ray said, “I told Melissa. On Monday. I didn’t want to tell her a million lies about why I seemed like such a complete idiot on Friday.”