Look Both Ways (5 page)

“Someone put tape on her shoes,” Merry told Mallory after the ambulance left. They sat down in the cafeteria to wait for Drew to be finished with cross-country.

“But why?” Mallory asked.

“It’s a cheat. People used to do it to slide better, but it’s illegal because, obviously, it makes you go too fast. This can happen to someone even if she knows the tape is there.”

“Maybe she put it there herself,” Mally suggested, opening her math book.

“Impossible. Crystal is a total stickler for stuff like that. And plus, she can do horizontal splits anyhow. She can do regular splits against a wall if she’s warmed up.”

“Well,” Mallory said, lowering her voice, although the twins were alone in the Commons. “I saw the shoes. This must have something to do with . . . you know.” She made her hands into small claws.

“How do you know you saw it flip over Crystal’s shoes?” Merry asked, equally quietly. “They could have been anyone’s. They could have been mine.”

“You don’t get to see stuff that’s about yourself.”

“I’m not yourself.”

“I know but kind of . . . I heard you call me on the ridge when you were up there and David . . .”

“But I called you. That’s different,” Merry said. She began to gnaw her pencil. “I think.”

“Well, nobody got a fractured skull at least,” Mallory said.

It was one less thing to worry about. And for that day and for days to come, they simply didn’t talk about it.

Mallory decided to use the time between alerts from the universe to take care of herself. She settled down at practice the next afternoon for the first time in a week.

And she had never looked so good, turning from offense to defense on a dime, as the great midfielders should. Her only sadness was the emptiness left by losing Eden’s friendship. Mally hadn’t realized just how much she counted on the time she spent with Eden. Elegant, slender, and tough, Eden still performed on the field like a pro—the queen of defense, knocking shots away with her knees or her chest as if she wore armor instead of kneepads. But she looked right through Mallory. It broke Mally’s heart.

Meanwhile, in Crystal’s absence, Merry led practice alone for the rest of the week. She led it with a vengeance, to prove to herself that she was a real athlete as much as her jock sister.

“Okay, let’s harden up those inner thighs,” she said. “Hands on the floor. V-position. Wider. No wobbles. Now, raise and lower. Raise and lower. And raise. I’ll count it. One. Two.”

“Can you count any slower?” Alli yelled. “It’s ten seconds by the clock and you’re up to three.”

“Let’s hold to twenty,” Merry said impassively.

“Remember when we were little and my brother almost knocked your teeth out with his lacrosse bat?” Caitlin called. “What went wrong there?”

“Does this mean you want to hold for a count of fifty?” Merry asked and then finally, as the girls groaned in relief, said, “Okay, let’s stretch. Nose down over your right knee. Lift up from the hips and lean over. And over. Now, deep in the middle. And now we’re ready to lift and go for thirty.”

Girls were screaming by the end of the second series. When they were finished practicing the floor cheers, the stunting and their dance, Merry announced a cool-down jog, twice around the perimeter of the school, or a distance of two miles. Alli literally punched her on the arm. Merry said, “Get going, Lard.” Alli had hips that were a little rounder than everyone else’s. Though she was in no way fat, she acted like she was size 20.

“Who’re you calling Lard, Squirt?” Alli snapped, breaking into laughter.

The only one who didn’t object to anything and did everything just a little better and a little longer than Merry did was Neely Chaplin. Merry asked for twenty push-ups; Neely did thirty. Merry did a double back across the floor. Neely did a triple and ended with a round-off. She dusted off her hands and said, “Bring it, Merry.”

What a little queenie!

What was Neely trying to prove, other than that she was the most insufferable rich kid to ever attend Ridgeline High? And that wasn’t easy, considering Trevor Solwyn and Gina DeGloria and a few others who lived over in Haven Hills, a “golf-course community,” a big glop of one-acre houses on one-acre yards. (Neely’s was a two-acre house on a
three-acre
yard.) They acted so all-that, it made the regular townies sick.

And now the gung-ho Neely made Merry wonder. Could she be the person with the secret stash of tape? Neely acted so above all the rest of them, with her gourmet low-cal lunches and the long dark Lincoln Continental that picked her up from school every day. Everyone made such a big fuss over her, so Merry decided to make an art form of ignoring Neely. When Neely did triple backs to a round-off and front over for warm-ups, Merry concentrated on making sure there were no spaces between the maps. When she did full splits at the place in the dance where everyone was required to do a half, Merry said softly, “Let’s all be synchronized, guys. Let’s make it pretty.”

And it worked.

One day, when Merry was carefully ignoring her, twisting tiny braids into the front of her black bob and pinning each one down—you never knew who might come to your sister’s fall soccer game—Neely turned and said, “I asked Caitlin and Alli if they wanted to sleep over Friday, and I wanted to ask you too.”

Merry waited a full count of three. Slow.

Then she said, “Three’s company, right?”

She didn’t need Neely’s charity invitation. Alli’s and Caitlin’s moms didn’t work. Alli’s father owned two health clubs in Deptford. Neely probably saw them as her equals.

But Neely just smiled and said, “Come on! Four is more gossip. Don’t be so stuck up.”

“Me?” Merry began to laugh. She said, “Well, okay. But I have to go see Crystal. She had surgery yesterday.”

“Come after. Poor Crystal. I’d go see her too, if I knew her better. Although I have to admit she’s a little all-that with the movie-star twisty hair. I’m intimidated.”

Meredith laughed again. Neely intimidated? For Meredith, heaven would be a place where she could flip through the
Bliss
catalog and mark every product she wanted. How could someone who ordered her clothes from boutiques in, like, Miami, as Alli said Neely did, and who lived in a house with eight bedrooms and two pools want . . . anything on earth?

Merry would look back later and think she was some fabulous psychic: She would have to wait a long time to learn the answer, and she would never have guessed it.

A
nurse made the twins wait in the corridor while Crystal took her pain medication.

“She’s afraid we’ll see what kind of pills they are,” Merry whispered. “Like we couldn’t be addicts if we wanted to.”

“That’s not funny,” Mallory said. “Some kids whose mothers are nurses really are like that. This is just a privacy thing for Crystal.”

“Mallory, could you
be
more of a stick?” Merry griped.

The room they finally walked into looked like a combination of a florist’s shop and a pep rally. There were green-and-white streamers and vases of carnations and single-stemmed roses everywhere. And there was a big heart arrangement with real white roses and green ribbons signed by Neely Chaplin.

As they walked in, Mallory whispered to her sister, “Seeleye.”

“She did not,” Merry said automatically.

In twin language, it meant something like “It’s a lie” or “She’s a fake.” Mallory thought that Neely was probably the one responsible for Crystal’s injury. But Merry wasn’t sure. Neely
had
worn a different outfit for thirty school days straight at the beginning of the year—Merry had counted. But being rich didn’t make you a secret assassin. Being a snot didn’t make you a schemer who was so ruthless she’d do anything.

It didn’t hurt, though.

“Who did not what?” Crystal asked. She opened the box of chocolates the twins brought and started poking the bottoms, looking for caramel—which she hated. She barely acknowledged them with a thank-you.

Merry said, “Oh, nothing. Mallory’s just on about something! Oh, Crystal. This is horrible! You must be so uncomfortable and sad too!”

“I can take a lot of pain,” Crystal said, with a dark look at Mallory. Obviously, Merry had told everybody cheerleaders weren’t real athletes, and now they all hated Mallory’s guts even more than usual. “All cheerleaders live with pain. But this is unbelievable. The ligaments were shredded like string cheese. I
heard
them go
sprong
. And like, why? Why did this happen to me?”

“It’s so unfair, I know,” Merry said.

“It’s not like I would be above illegal,” Crystal said casually. “When there’s something I want, I’ll do anything. Except hurt somebody. That’s where I draw the line. And there’s nothing they could have asked that I couldn’t do.” Crystal knew exactly how beautiful and flexible she was. She had a grudge against Coach for giving her less floor time than the flyers and was so into herself that she would never have risked anything that would give her an inch-long scar and keep her from working out every day.
Crystal could have been the chosen one,
Merry thought. She certainly looked older than a freshman and had a real body. There
was
the sex appeal factor.

Standing on the other end of the room, Mallory thought,
Typical cheerleader.
She concentrated deliberately to make sure her sister heard. Meredith did and, as quick as a snake would, stuck out her tongue.

“The best I can figure,” Crystal went on, “is that someone thought her shoes were my shoes. She put the tape on before the tryouts so she could cheat, and I wasn’t ready for it.”

“I didn’t even consider that,” Merry said.

It was the most logical explanation. Mallory stopped to consider why she hadn’t thought of it herself. Just at that moment, Crystal gave a little shriek as Merry’s eyes rolled up in her head. Before her twin could even take a step, Merry collapsed on the floor, hitting her head with a thunk that made even Mallory queasy.

Crystal would later tell Erika that Merry looked like a zombie chick or something from
Lost in the Hills
. She would tell Alli that she almost puked, although, in fact, she’d gone on eating her chocolates while a swarm of nurses squeezed into the room. Meredith woke looking up at a fat, red-faced nurse who stank of cigarettes. Her tummy rolled. Why did nurses smoke? Mallory was on the other side of the room, so pale she probably looked worse than Merry did, if possible.

How did Merry look? She’d done her hair carefully and picked out new five-pockets to go to Neely’s. Now here she was, rolling in germs and about to have an egg on the back of her head that would really complement the scaly junk on her face.

“If you have anorexia, please don’t come to our hospital and get hurt when you pass out from not eating!” the nurse said. “Look at your skin. That’s from poor nutrition too.”

Mallory said, “It is not! I’ll have you know my sister eats more than most guys.”

Thanks, sis,
Merry thought, wishing she could add that Mallory, in fact, ate twice as much as most guys—and in front of them!

“Help me up,” Merry said. “The red places on my face are from toothpaste. They have nothing to do with anything I ate,” she told the nurse.

For a moment, Red-Faced Fat Person was clearly stumped. Then she started giving orders. “Don’t move. You have to lie there until Dr. Pennington comes.” Meredith knew Dr. Pennington. She’d fixed Adam’s collarbone when he’d jumped out of the maple tree.

“It’s not the first time,” Mallory said helpfully. “Well, it is the first time for her. But I’ve fainted before.” What was this? Mallory never spoke two sentences voluntarily to anyone but Meredith. But no sooner did the nurse look away than Mallory hissed at Merry, “Get up, imbecile! They’ll think we really are on drugs! I’m trying to be nice to buy you time.”

“What happened?”

“You fell over like somebody chopped you down, duh,” Mallory whispered angrily.

“Well, you should know. It’s your specialty.”

“Not in front of fifty people,” Mallory said.

“You mean, like not at my competition? Oh, there were only probably three hundred witnesses.”

Mallory said, “Oh, my mistake. You only pass out in front of people who are trying to kill you!” Meredith took Mally’s hand and stood up.

“That’s AMG,” the nurse said.

“What?”

“Against medical advice.”

“Oh, stop,” Merry said. “Will you go get my mother, please?”

“I’m sorry but I don’t know your mother?” the nasty nurse said.

“She’s Campbell Brynn? She’s the chief nurse in the ER,” Meredith said. Red-Face went white. Merry wanted to laugh. She personally would not have wanted to mess with Campbell’s temper either.

“And I can’t even see!” Crystal complained, trying to crane her neck around her suspended leg. “This is the first non-boring thing to happen since the anesthetic. Did you slip? How could you slip when I slipped? It’s like a conspiracy or something.”

That was exactly what it was,
Merry thought. She had to get people to stop messing with her long enough to talk to her sister.

It
was
a conspiracy.

In her half-conscious vision, what she had seen were beautiful hands, tiny, each with two slim gold bands on the ring and index fingers. She saw those fingers lay two parallel slips of tape along the bottom of each tennis shoe and press the tape down securely. The giveaway was that when the hands set the shoes back up, Merry saw a tiny fish in permanent marker on the rubber tab. Fish was Crystal’s last name. The mark was so small that anyone who didn’t know wouldn’t have noticed it. Crystal’s hands were long and thin. The ones in Meredith’s vision were elfin.

It had happened just like their theory. Someone had sabotaged Crystal. Her vision confirmed it. Meredith could only see the past. She’d seen hands that definitely were not Crystal’s hands. She had to shuffle her mind like the bingo ball rollers they used at church when she went to bingo with Grandma Gwenny. She had to revise everything she had almost refused to believe but had nearly suspected about Neely. It had to be Neely, the overboard case of blond ambition. But how could it be Neely? She wasn’t even on the squad. She wasn’t allowed in the dressing room. She wouldn’t have known where to look for the name tags that identified each girl’s outfit, sewn in a tiny invisible flap in the hem of each garment.