Fangtastic! (16 page)

Suddenly,
Olivia saw Camilla walk into the diner and look around. She waved and came
over. “Hey, everyone.”

“Hi,
Camilla,” everyone replied, except Brendan, who was still laughing himself
silly in the corner.

“Olivia,”
Camilla said, “I wanted to tell you I was finally able to book the video camera
for—” She stopped midsentence, doing a double take as she looked at Ivy and
Olivia sitting beside each other. She blinked, shifting her eyes between their
faces. “Have you two ever noticed how similar you look?”

Some
secrets should stay hidden forever,
Olivia thought,
but some really shouldn’t.
She and Ivy shared a look,
and Olivia knew her sister felt the same way. “Camilla,” Olivia said, “I think
you’d better sit down.”

Sophia
and Brendan obligingly slid over on their bench. “It’s like you’re clones,”
Camilla said excitedly as she sat. “Or better yet, one of you traveled in time
to meet yourself!”

Olivia
laughed. “No, you sci-fi nut, we’re
twins
!”

“You’re
joking,” said Camilla. “How can you be twins when you just moved here?”

Olivia
shrugged, and Ivy said, “Neither of us knew we had a sister until Olivia and I
bumped into each other at school at the beginning of the year.”

“Are
you sure?” Camilla said skeptically. “I mean, apart from the fact that you look
alike, how can you be sure you’re actual twins?”

“Well,
we both have the same birthday,” Olivia said.

“We
were born in the same town,” Ivy put in.

“And
we’re both adopted,” Olivia added. “Besides,” she went on, raising her hand as
Ivy held up her necklace. “Matching rings!” Ivy and Olivia said together.

“Left
to us by our birth parents,” Olivia explained.

Camilla
leaned forward to examine the rings. “Wow!” she whispered.

“I
just found out Wednesday,” confided Brendan.

Camilla
leaned back in her seat. After a moment, she said, “I’m really disappointed you
didn’t tell me sooner, Olivia—”

Olivia
started to apologize. “I’m sorry, I—”

“because
we could definitely have got an A plus with a movie called ‘The Long Lost Twin
Sisters of Franklin Grove!’ ” Camilla interrupted with a grin.

Olivia
smiled. “It’d be a really short movie. At least with Great-aunt Edna’s stuff
there’s some history to talk about. Ivy and I haven’t been able to find out a
thing about our background.”

Camilla
was about to ask another question when all of a sudden Toby Decker appeared by
their table, looking like his dog had just died.

“Hi,
Toby,” said Olivia. “What’s the matter?”

“Everything,”
Toby sighed. “Now that Serena Star is getting ‘professional help,’ I don’t even
have a story to put in this edition of the
Scribe
.”

Olivia
nodded sympathetically and turned to her sister. Ivy shrugged and gave a tiny
nod, and Olivia knew they were both thinking the same thing.
More and more
people are going to notice we look alike, and we’re going to have to tell
everyone eventually.Why not now?

“Toby,”
said Olivia, “Ivy and I would like to give you the scoop of your career.”

Toby
reached into his book bag and eagerly pulled out his reporter’s pad. “What is
it?” he asked, squeezing into the booth beside her.

“Ivy
and I are long-lost twin sisters who just found each other,” Olivia announced.

“Oh,
no, you don’t,” Toby protested, shaking his head. “You can’t fool me. If there
is anything I’ve learned this week, it’s not to believe outrageous stories with
no basis in—” Suddenly Toby’s jaw dropped, as he looked back and forth between
Olivia and Ivy. “You
are
twins!” he cried.

Ivy
and Olivia grinned and nodded.

“First,”
Toby said, scribbling on his pad, “I want to know whether you have any early
memories of each other.”

Ivy
whispered to Olivia, “Does this mean we both have to tell our parents now?”

Olivia
scrunched up her nose and nodded. “They probably should know before the whole
school does.”

Ivy
started to laugh, but then stopped abruptly. Olivia followed her gaze to the
front of the diner.

Garrick
Stephens was lurking by the door, wearing a different black T-shirt for the
first time in days. The other three Beasts slouched in behind him, and they all
started heading right for Olivia and Ivy’s table. Olivia was steeling herself
for a confrontation, but they stopped a few tables away, and Garrick looked
down his nose at a couple of sixth-grade boys drinking milkshakes.

“This
is our table,” Garrick hissed.

“Yeah.”
Kyle guffawed. “Like, we own it.”

One of
the boys looked them up and down. “It’s a free country.”

Garrick
leaned on his knuckles and sneered, “You want to get bit?”

“Oooh,”
said the other sixth-grader sarcastically, “coffin boy is going to bite us.
Help! Please! Oh, where is Serena Star when we need her?” The boy and his
friend both cracked up.

Garrick
straightened. He looked like he was trying to think of a comeback, except he
wasn’t smart enough. Finally he turned to the other Beasts and whimpered, “I
like sitting at the counter.”

“Yeah,
we can spin the stools,” Dylan Soyle mumbled as the Beasts followed their
leader to the other side of the diner.

“Some
things never change.” Ivy laughed.

Olivia
held up her glass, and her friends followed suit—except Toby and Camilla, who
held up salt and pepper shakers. “To the Beasts,” Olivia toasted. “May their
breath always be worse than their bite!”

Laughing,
everyone clinked their glasses and shakers.

Ivy
kept her glass raised aloft. “And to secrets,” she said. “There are those that
should never see the light of day”—she smiled at Olivia tenderly— “and others
that need the sunlight to blossom.”

“Awww!”
Camilla and Sophia both said.

Olivia’s
eyes welled with tears. She thrust her glass forward.

Clink!
Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink!

[end]