Re-Vamped!

“Are
you done yet?” Olivia Abbott asked her mother. Olivia had finally convinced her
father to take a break from his regular Tuesday tai chiathon by shaking a
pom-pom in his face, but her mom wouldn’t stop embroidering the living room
curtains.

“Not
quite yet,” her mom murmured. “What’s taking so long?” Olivia prodded. “It’s a
daisy,” her mom muttered, squinting

with
concentration, “with twenty petals.” Olivia looked at her pink glitter watch to
find that less than two minutes had passed since she’d last checked. She felt
like she was in a time warp—time had never moved so slowly in her entire life,
and yet tomorrow was approaching at a terrifying rate. In fourteen hours and
seven minutes, the
 Franklin Grove Scribe,
her school paper, was going
to reveal something Olivia had been keeping secret for weeks: on her first day
at Franklin Grove Middle School, she had discovered a twin sister she’d never
known she had. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing Olivia wanted her adoptive
mom and dad to find out from the school paper.

She
could not put off telling them for another minute, no matter how badly they
were going to freak out.

“Mom,”
she said slowly, “I have to talk to you.”

“Only
three more petals,” her mom said.

Exasperated,
Olivia put her hands on her mother’s shoulders and gave a gentle shake.
“Attention, Mom!” she announced, like she was calling out a cheer. “This Is
Your Daughter, Olivia, Speaking. I Need To Tell You And Dad Something Really,
Really Important RIGHT NOW!”

“Oh,
sweetheart!” her mother gasped, jumping to her feet in concern. “I’m so sorry!
You have something you need to talk about?”

Olivia’s
eyes rolled toward the ceiling. Parents could be so slow sometimes.

“Don’t
worry.” Her mom took her hand. “You can tell us anything.”

“Maybe
you two should sit down,” Olivia suggested.

Her
parents exchanged nervous glances and perched on the edge of the couch. Olivia
took a deep breath, and her stomach filled with butterflies. The words came
spilling out as she exhaled. “On my first day at school I met Ivy and found out
that she’s my sister.”

Olivia’s
mom nodded like she understood, and Olivia felt a rush of relief. Olivia had
mentioned Ivy lots of times before, even though she’d never actually allowed
her parents to meet her, fearing that they’d spot the resemblance right away.

“Yes,
darling, and I’m very glad you’re making such good friends at your new school.”
Her mom smiled supportively.

“Me,
too.” Her father gulped, looking lost.

They
don’t get it,
Olivia thought.
This is going to be even harder than I expected.

“I
don’t mean Ivy and I are
like
sisters,” she clarified. “We
 are
sisters. She was born on the same day as me in Owl Creek.We were both given up
for adoption when we were a year old. We’re identical twins.”

Olivia
could almost see a flashing DOES NOT COMPUTE message suspended over her
parents’ heads. She decided to try another tack. Squeezing in between her mom
and dad on the couch, she held out her left hand so that they could see the
dark emerald ring on her middle finger.

“You
know how this ring is something I got from my biological parents?” Olivia
asked, looking from her mom to her dad. They both nodded. “Well, Ivy Vega has
one exactly like it.”

There
was a long silence, and then her father began, “But how can this girl Ivy
have—”

“Oh my
goodness!” Mrs. Abbott interrupted. “You have an identical twin sister!” she
exclaimed like she’d figured it out all on her own.

“Thank
you.” Olivia sighed, collapsing back into the couch. If it was this hard just
to get her parents to understand that she had a
twin,
she couldn’t
imagine how hard it would be to explain her other huge secret: Ivy was a bona
fide vampire. Luckily, Olivia wasn’t going to have to explain that one, because
she wasn’t allowed to tell another soul that particular secret for as long as
she lived.

“ ‘I
see,’ said the blind man,” her father intoned, sagely stroking his chin. He was
always saying stuff like that, trying to sound like a kung fu master instead of
an accountant.

“The
adoption agency never told us you had a
sister
,” her mom said. She said
the word “sister” like she was saying “million dollars.”

“Ivy
was left at a different adoption agency,” Olivia explained.

“But
why would your biological parents separate you?” her mom asked. “Does Ivy know
who your parents are?”

Olivia
smiled. Her mom was asking all the questions she and Ivy had been trying to
answer without success for weeks.

“She
doesn’t know,” Olivia answered, “and neither does her dad,” she added. “He’s
her only parent.”

“Wow,”
her mom said after a moment. “I mean, wow-wee!” Olivia giggled. “How’d you two
find each other after all these years?”

“I
bumped into her in the hallway when I was looking for the principal’s office,”
Olivia replied. She realized that her dad was just sitting there. “Say
something, Dad. Aren’t you surprised?”

He
shook his head. “I always knew my little girl had a double aura.” Olivia had no
idea what that meant, but he seemed oddly proud. Suddenly he threw his arms
around her and gave her a huge hug.

Olivia’s
mom clapped her hands excitedly and leaped into the hugging fray. “There’s
another person out there as wonderful as our daughter!” she declared happily.

“Everybody
calm down!” Olivia laughed, trying to push her parents off.

“Well,
I can’t wait to meet her,” her mom said. She stood up and straightened her
blouse. “Can she come over tonight for dinner?”

Olivia
glanced at her watch skeptically. “Dinner’s in, like, an hour.”

Her
mother nodded. “Invite her father, too. I have to meet the man who raised my
daughter’s sister! Do you think they like zucchini?”

Olivia
shrugged. “Ivy’s allergic to garlic, but I don’t know about zucchini.”

“Well,
find out! Go call her! Shoo!” Her mom waved Olivia up the stairs as she made
for the kitchen. “Come on, Steve. You can chop the vegetables with your samurai
knife.”

Ivy
finally located the ringing phone buried in a pile of clothes beside her
coffin. She reached in and snatched it up on the tenth ring.

“Hello?”
she said, slightly out of breath. “I told them!” her sister’s voice declared.
Ivy shoved some books aside and sat down.

“How’d
they take it?” She and Olivia had only revealed their twinship to Toby Decker,
a reporter for the school paper, on Friday, but when he’d told them that he’d
succeeded in writing up the story in time to squeeze it into the upcoming
Wednesday issue, the girls knew they finally had to tell their parents. At
school today, Olivia had seemed almost as nervous about telling her parents as
Ivy was about telling her dad.

“They
are so excited about you, Ivy,” said

Olivia.
“It was even better than when I told them I got four A’s last year! What’d your
dad say?” Ivy hesitated. “Nothing.”

“‘Nothing’
like he couldn’t deal, ‘nothing’ like he always knew,” Olivia queried, “or
‘nothing’ like literally nothing?”

“‘Nothing’
like I haven’t told him yet,” Ivy admitted.

“I-vyyy!”
Olivia pleaded.

“Hey,”
Ivy said, “you left it to the last possible minute, too, remember? I was about
to go upstairs and tell him when you called.” Which was true. She’d been about
to go upstairs for the last three hours.

“Okay,
okay,” Olivia said. “Do you like zucchini?”

“I
guess,” Ivy answered. “Why?”

“Because
my mom wants you and your dad to come to our house for dinner tonight.”

“I
don’t know if that’s such a killer idea,” Ivy said doubtfully. “My father
barely ever eats human food . . . and I worry that meeting your parents so soon
might spook him.”

“I’ll
make my dad promise not to be weird,” Olivia offered.

It’s
my
dad I’m worried about,
Ivy thought.

“Would
it be okay if I came by myself?” she asked. “I could use an excuse to get out
of the house after I break the news.”

“Sure.”
Olivia paused. “You’re not sounding very optimistic,” she pointed out, “even
for a Goth.”

Ivy
grabbed a pillow and lay her head on it.

“My
adoption is my dad’s least favorite topic, Olivia,” she said. “Every time I
bring it up, he changes the subject. And he’s really old-fashioned when it
comes to mixing with humans.”

“You
think he won’t like me?” Olivia asked.

“No,
he will. I know he will,” Ivy replied, uncertain whether she was trying to
convince Olivia or herself. “My dad has a really good heart. He’ll make an
exception for my blood sister. It just might take him a little while to get
used to you.”

“Well,
he’d better,” Olivia declared, “because we’re stuck together.”

“Like
bubble gum and black licorice.” Ivy grinned. No matter what her dad was going
to say, she felt lucky to have found Olivia. She took a deep breath and sat up.
“Okay, I’m going to go tell him right now.”

A few
moments later, Ivy stood peeking in through the open door of her father’s
study. In the center of the bookshelf-lined room, her dad was hunched over a
sprawling gray cardboard model atop a high table. From the door, Ivy could see
postage stamp–sized color Xeroxes of paintings on the interior walls and
elaborate floor lamps the size of chess pieces. She knew her dad was
redecorating a wealthy New York family’s crypt—
Vamp
magazine was already
talking about doing a piece on it.

Ivy
watched silently as her father adjusted a tiny gray altar in one of the rooms.
Next to it, he lay a scrap of dark purple fabric as a carpet, then thought
better of it and tried a burgundy one instead.

Ivy
loved watching her father work. It was like watching him play with an
ever-changing Goth dollhouse. She could just imagine a black-clad, high-society
vampire lounging on that altar. “Hello, Ivy,” her father said suddenly without looking
up.

“Hi,”
Ivy said in a small voice. She’d thought he hadn’t known she was there.

“Is
something on your mind?” he asked, picking up a tiny black coffin between thumb
and forefinger.

“No.”
Ivy gulped. “I just thought I’d say hello. You know how I like to watch you
work. That burgundy carpet’s killer.”

Her
father glanced up at her suspiciously. “Okay, I’d better get back to my
homework and stuff,” Ivy said, her heart racing. “Just wanted you to know I
have an identical twin sister named Olivia who’s in my science class. Bye.” She
bolted away.

“Ivy?”
her father called after her.

She
stopped in her tracks and took three slow steps backward so she could see her
father again through the doorway. He was standing upright, the miniature coffin
held up like a little exclamation point next to the O of his open mouth. “What
did you just say?” he asked.