Switched (12 page)

“Most
don’t,” Ivy admitted matter-of-factly, putting her contacts back in. “My eyes
are special. Bright yellow, luminous green—those are more normal.”

“Normal?”
Olivia said dumbly.

“Uh-huh,”
Ivy confirmed.

“That’s
not in the Count Vira books,” Olivia said with a doubtful shake of her
ponytail.

“Count
Vira is fiction,” Ivy replied. “I’m a fact. We all have to wear special
sunscreen, too,” she went on. “Vampire skin is very pale and sensitive. It’s
completely different from yours.”

“Is
that why your arm stopped bleeding?” Olivia asked.

“We
heal super quickly,” Ivy explained.

Olivia
suddenly took a step back. “You’re not going to suck my blood, are you?”

Ivy
rolled her eyes. “Olivia, I’m your twin sister,” she said. “Do you think I’d be
practicing
cheerleading
with you if I wanted to suck your blood?”

Olivia
came back and examined Ivy’s arm closely. “But isn’t that what vampires do?
Suck blood and kill people?”

“We
don’t kill people at all.
Ever
,” Ivy said seriously. “It’s evil! And,
besides, the risk of exposing our kind is too great. We haven’t sucked blood
since the seventeenth century, when they burned half of us at the stake.”

“So
how do you satisfy your insatiable thirst for hemoglobin?” Olivia pressed.

“
My
insatiable thirst for hemoglobin!?”
Ivy repeated incredulously. “You have
to start reading better books, Olivia. I go to BloodMart like everyone else.
There’s one in the basement of FoodMart.”

Olivia
nodded thoughtfully. Then her eyes lit up. “You have a reflection. You
can’t
be a vampire!” she declared triumphantly.

Ivy
raised her eyebrows. “That’s a myth.”

“Oh,”
said Olivia, deflated. “Do you sleep in a coffin?”

“Yes.”
Ivy almost blushed. “That myth happens to be true.”

“But I
saw your bed,” Olivia said.

“The
quilts and pillows and stuff make it more comfortable when I’m doing homework.
There’s a coffin underneath,” Ivy explained. “When I was little I was utterly
jealous of Sophia and her sister’s bunk bed coffins,” she added wistfully.

“And
you getting sick from Camilla’s lasagna?” Olivia prompted.

“Was a
bit more than an allergic reaction,” Ivy admitted.

“You’re
really serious,” Olivia breathed in amazement.

“Completely,”
Ivy confirmed.

For a
moment, Olivia said nothing. Then she gave a queasy smile. “I am
so
glad
I didn’t have any cherry punch at the ball meeting.”

Ivy
couldn’t help laughing. “Pretty killer secret, huh?” she said.

“Totally,”
Olivia croaked.

Ivy
touched her sister’s arm. “Olivia, by telling you this, I’ve broken the First
Law of the Night. A vampire is
never
supposed to reveal her true self to
an outsider. I could get into serious trouble if anybody ever finds out that I
have”—Ivy paused—“and you could, too.”

Olivia
nodded bravely. “I won’t tell,” she said. Then a weird look crossed her face.

“Are
you freaked out?” Ivy asked.

“If we’re
twins,” Olivia said slowly, “does that mean that
I’m
a vampire?”

Ivy
had been asking herself that question for a week. She shook her head. “There’s
no way, Olivia. You love garlic; you have normal skin; you have regular blue
eyes; and, on top of it all, you’re a vegetarian! You’re the least vampy person
on earth.”

“But
you’re still sure we’re twins, right?” Olivia asked.

“Absolutely,”
Ivy said. “I won’t pretend to understand it, but I know I’m a vampire and you’re
a bunny. We just happen to also be identical twins.”

“So
that’s what a bunny is,” Olivia murmured distractedly.

This
is a lot for Olivia to take in all at once
, Ivy realized. “Maybe now that you know,” she said, “swapping
places isn’t such a good idea. Maybe you shouldn’t go to any more ball
meetings. I’ll do it. You focus on cheering.”

Olivia
shook her head. “No,” she said firmly, “I can do it. I promised you.” Suddenly,
her eyes rested on Ivy’s mouth. Olivia bent her head down a little, and Ivy
thought for a second that her sister was trying to look up her nose. Then Ivy
realized that wasn’t what Olivia was doing at all.

“Are
you looking for fangs?” Ivy demanded. Olivia smiled sheepishly. “Maybe.”

Ivy
rolled her eyes. “We get our incisors filed

down.
And just so you know,” she added, “my face never gets gross and bumpy like the ‘vampires’
on
Buffy
.”

Olivia
nodded thoughtfully.

She
needs time to get used to this,
Ivy
thought. “I think we’re done cheering for today,” she said aloud.

“But
we only just started,” Olivia protested halfheartedly.

“It’s
okay,” Ivy said. “Really. I’m ready for tomorrow. I have the moves. I can
shout. I can even smile. You said it yourself.”

Olivia’s
eyes flickered uncertainly.

“Are
you sure you still want to go through with it?” Ivy asked.

Her
sister grinned. “Are you worried I’ll freak out in front of all your friends?”

“A
little,” Ivy admitted.

Olivia
looked her in the eye. “Trust me,” she said. “I can handle it.” They hugged. “After
all, you know what they say,” Olivia continued. “Blood is thicker than water.”

Ivy
couldn’t resist. “And better tasting, too!”

In
math the next morning, Mr. Langel stood in front of the board, telling the
class how to calculate a rectangle’s area. He started doing an impression of
the Count from
Sesame Street
. “One! Ha-ha-ha!” he declared, smiling.

But
Olivia couldn’t roll her eyes as she usually did at Mr. Langel’s sense of
humor.
Could he be a vampire?
she wondered, looking at him suspiciously.
After all, his hairline descended into what her mom called a widow’s peak—a
point in the center of his forehead—which made him look vaguely vampiric.
Olivia wondered what color his eyes really were. She pictured him climbing out
of a coffin earlier that morning, pajamas still on.

Then
she realized that if her goofy math teacher could be a vampire, anyone could!
She turned her attention to a stocky Goth boy with an earring and spiky hair
sitting at a nearby desk. His hand rested next to his notebook, and there was a
leering skull-and-crossbones ring on his pinky. Now that she thought about it,
Olivia realized that she’d never seen him open his mouth. Was it because he
hadn’t had his fangs filed?

She
could deal with her sister being a vampire, because she knew Ivy would never do
anything to hurt her. It was all the other vampires at Franklin Grove Middle
School that Olivia was suddenly worried about. She surreptitiously counted the
number of other students in the class: twenty-one possible vampires. She pulled
her cardigan more tightly around herself.

What
about the cheerleaders?
she
wondered. Nobody said a vampire couldn’t wear pink. Besides, if anyone had some
evil in her, it was Charlotte Brown.
Now I’m being ridiculous
, Olivia
told herself.
No way is Charlotte cool enough to be a vampire!

She
looked down at her blank paper and wrote, “VAMPIRES DO NOT EAT BUNNIES” ten
times without stopping. It sort of helped, except that, when she was done, she
realized she’d missed out on how to calculate the area of a trapezoid.

By the
end of class, Olivia was obsessing about the ball planning meeting after
school. Everyone was nice to Ivy, but what if they discovered she was an
impostor? What if they found out that she knew their secret? Ivy had said there
could be trouble....

Quickly
Olivia tried to think of some sort of protection she could take with her, just
in case. She had a nearly empty nail polish bottle in her purse. She thought
maybe she could empty it and then fill it with holy water. But, then, what if
that was a myth, too? And where was she going to get holy water, anyway?
Would
a pencil count as a stake?
she asked herself. She did have two of those in
her purse.
Garlic!
she thought suddenly. At least she knew
that
wasn’t
a myth.

At
lunch, Olivia was hoping for a garlic infused daily special, but no luck. The
specials board announced that today it was crab salad, and as Olivia read it
something clicked inside her head.
I get it!
she thought.
Vampires
are just different kinds of humans, just like crabs and lobsters are different
kinds of crustaceans! They’re pretty much the same thing: one big happy
crustacean family!
And from then on, Olivia felt much better.

She
smiled at everybody she saw for the rest of the afternoon, right up to when she
grinned goofily at Ivy at the beginning of science.

“How
are you?” Ivy asked in a low voice. “Great!” Olivia said brightly. “It’s like
you’re a lobster!”

Ivy
clearly didn’t get it, but she didn’t press. “Are you still up for the planning
meeting this afternoon?” she whispered.

“For
sure,” Olivia said. “I can totally handle the vamp—” Ivy’s eyes widened. Olivia
coughed and lowered her voice. “The meeting,” she said instead.

At the
end of class, Olivia followed her sister into the girls’ bathroom.

After
they’d switched clothes, Ivy stood looking in the mirror. “Now I wish I
didn’t
have a reflection,” she said, pulling Olivia’s pink gym shirt away from her
chest. Then she leaned forward with an eyeliner pencil to do Olivia’s eyes. “Remember
what you said about cherry punch at the meeting?”

“Uh-huh?”
Olivia said.

“Myth,”
Ivy said simply. “Vampires don’t just eat meat and drink blood. You can eat the
crackers or chips or whatever’s there.”

“Okay,”
said Olivia, feeling just a little less nervous.

“Is
there anything else you need to know?” Ivy asked.

Questions
raced to the front of Olivia’s mind and raised their hands eagerly. Finally,
she picked one. “Are all Goths vampires?”

“In
Franklin Grove? Not all but most,” Ivy told her.

“What
about everybody else?”

“Bunnies,
like you,” Ivy answered matter-offactly.

“Are
you immortal?” Olivia asked.

“That’s
a tough one.” Ivy put Olivia’s bag down. “Not really. But I might get to see
the day people live on Mars.”

“What
can kill you?” Olivia wanted to know.

“What
can kill
you
?” Ivy countered. “Listen, Olivia, vampires are people, too.”

Olivia
nodded. “I know. Like you’re a lobster and I’m a crab,” she said automatically.
“But we’re both crustaceans.”

“No,”
Ivy said. “I didn’t
say we were
seafood
.I said we were
people
. With hearts and souls
and everything. We’re into life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just
like everyone else. We don’t even talk about it among ourselves that much. It’s
like you being a vegetarian. That’s not such an enormous deal, right?”

“Right,”
Olivia admitted.
Totally. No biggie.
“Thanks, Ivy.” Olivia scrunched up
her nose. “I guess this vampire thing does take some getting used to.”

Ivy
assumed a vacant look.
“Really?”
she squealed in her cheerleader voice.

Even
though she knew she had nothing to fear, the hair on the back of Olivia’s neck
stood on end the moment she and Sophia came in sight of the towering FoodMart
sign. Sophia was talking excitedly about the ball as they walked, but Ivy’s
words were the only ones Olivia could hear: “I go to BloodMart like everyone
else. There’s one in the basement of FoodMart.”

Olivia
imagined a huge, dim underground crypt, filled with enormous vats of swirling
red liquid. Spigots dripped gruesomely, and bloodsoaked napkins littered the
floor. Before she knew it, she and Sophia were walking through the store doors
and it was too late to flee.

As
they walked down aisle nine, questions flooded Olivia’s mind. How much blood
would be needed to satisfy every vampire in Franklin Grove? How many vampires
were there in Franklin Grove, anyway? Dozens? Hundreds?
Thousands?

She
and Sophia came upon the same noseringed stock boy with the midnight stubble.

Maybe
that wasn’t cranberry juice he was stacking after all!
Olivia thought. Her heart raced.
He
must be a vampire since he opens the door.What if he can smell my fear?
She
put her hand to her neck and started hyperventilating.

Sophia
gave her a weird look. “You’re breathing like a horse,” she said. Then she
turned to the stock boy and said, “Pumpernickel.” He obediently unlocked the
staff door, and Olivia scurried past him, trying to avoid eye contact.