The Third Twin (18 page)

“Dylan sure wasn’t.” The anger seems to seep out of her, and now Ava’s eyes are shining with tears.

Cecilia visibly softens when she sees that Ava is really upset. “You’re a smart, beautiful, kind girl. In a few days this
Dylan person will be just a memory.” Ava seems to sink into Cecilia’s hug.

“I doubt it,” she says, wiping a stray tear off her cheek.

“I promise,” Cecilia says, pulling back and patting her on the cheek. “I’m going to go start dinner.” She gives her hand a squeeze. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Ava can’t help but laugh at that. Cecilia never swears. “Okay. If you say so.”

“I say so.”

None of us says a word until Cecilia is safely down the hall. “Did anyone else see you?” I ask.

Ava shrugs. “I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t.”

“It was really hideous,” Maya says. “Dylan didn’t even look sorry. Almost like he was enjoying the fight.”

“Fight?” I watch Ava carefully. “What did you do?”

She turns to me, her hands on her hips. “I wished them the best and walked away. What do you think I did? I told both of them exactly what I thought.”

“And that’s it? Nothing physical?”

“I may have pushed that bitch a couple of times. But she totally deserved it. And more.”

“Okay,” I say. Even in the midst of all this anger, it’s hard to believe that Ava would do anything else. One minute I’d never believe she’d do something to Casey (or more realistically, get someone to do it for her), and the next I’m holding a red leather jacket that puts her at the scene and we’re getting speeding tickets that belong to somebody who really lives in Oceanside. What else isn’t she telling me?

“Well, I’m taking care of Dylan right now,” Maya says, tapping on her phone. “One more second … and there.” She flips her phone around to us, and I see a photo of Dylan and a girl who’s definitely not Ava clearly making out on the beach. “I posted it on my wall and then tagged everyone who knows Alicia.”

Ava kneels on the bed and puts her arm around Maya. “You’re the best.”

“I know.”

“So we’re still going out tonight, right?” Ava asks me, glancing at her closet.

I can’t believe she really wants to get out there and do it all over again. “I’m not going out,” I say.

“Oh, come on. There’s only a few days left of spring break,” Ava says. “Don’t let one little incident spoil everything. We were just starting to have some fun.”

“I don’t really count getting attacked at a party as a little incident. And I meant it when I said that I was done as Alicia. Now that Dylan’s over, you should be too.”

“Do whatever you want, but I’m going.” Ava walks to her closet and starts pawing through outfits. “This will be a good time to get Dylan out of my system.” She holds up a dress that looks more like a tunic, it’s so short. “What about this for drowning my sorrows?”

“That’ll work,” Maya says with a grin.

“Lex, you really need to learn how to live a little.” She holds up the dress and looks at herself in the reflection of the window.

I reach over and quickly pull her curtains closed. It’s not
totally dark yet, but it’s creepy even thinking about someone sitting out there watching us.

“Hey! I wasn’t done.”

“Use your mirror,” I say. “The whole world can see you out there.”

“Like anybody even cares,” she protests, but turns to the mirror. “I told you those seeds don’t mean anything. You’re being paranoid.”

“Someone out there might be stalking us,” I say. “I don’t consider that paranoid.”

“You guys are like an old married couple.” Maya grins and then goes back to tapping on her phone. “Hey—when were you at the reggae festival?”

Ava’s busy looking in the mirror over her desk. “Never. Why?”

“Because someone named Nancy tagged Alicia in a photo from last week.” She hands her phone to Ava.

“That’s not me,” Ava says, handing the phone back.

“Let me see it,” I say. The photo is a picture of Ava holding a beer with a stage in the background. She’s standing next to a girl with blond hair and a guy with dreads. It’s taken from pretty far away, but it sure looks like her. “Are you sure that isn’t you?”

“I’d know if I accidentally stumbled into a reggae festival,” Ava says. “Must be you.”

“Come on,” I say. “That’s not me.” I scroll down. There are tons of photos on Alicia’s feed that I haven’t seen before.

“Give it,” Maya says, her hand out. She zooms in on the
first image. “Probably Photoshopped,” she says. “Someone got a picture of one of you and cropped the head onto someone else’s body. Do you guys know this Nancy person?”

We both shake our heads.

“I’m sure it’s some kind of joke. Maybe someone found out about Alicia,” Maya says.

“I thought you locked this page,” I say to Ava. “So that people we actually know won’t find it.” The last thing we need is to have to explain Alicia’s page to people at school. “We did,” Ava says. “I haven’t even looked at it in forever.” Maya taps on her phone. “Uh-oh,” she says, using her finger to scroll down.

“What?” I ask, trying to see over her shoulder.

“You haven’t been posting as Alicia, have you?” she asks me.

“No. I told you—I totally forgot about it.”

“Well, someone has. Alicia Rios has been a very busy girl lately.” She scrolls down some more. “The page must have been hacked. There’s a trip to Tijuana … a beach party that looks like it’s in Mission Bay somewhere.”

Ava grabs the phone. “Let me see that.” She studies the photos on the page. “I didn’t take this profile shot—did you?” She turns the phone to me, and I see a selfie, obviously taken in a bathroom mirror that shows part of an eye and some hair. “No. You can’t even see who that is.”

“Shit.” Maya taps her phone hard. “I can’t get into the account anymore. Someone changed the password.”

“That’s crazy,” Ava says. “Give it here.” She taps on the
phone with an increasingly frustrated look on her face. “Call them or something. Tell them that someone stole our page.”

“It’s not that easy,” I say, looking at the phone. I try all of our usual passwords, but none of them will get us in.

Maya takes her phone back. “You know who can figure this out, don’t you?”

I stand up. “No way. I don’t want Zane getting involved in this.”

Ava leans against her desk. “Maya’s right. Zane could figure out if the pictures were Photoshopped. He might even be able to figure out how to get back into Alicia’s page. Quicker than the stupid people who run the site, anyway.”

“I don’t want anyone else involved in this. I already told him that we weren’t doing Alicia anymore.”

“Whatever.” Maya hands me the phone so that I can see the photos again. “If you go through the Internet, it might take weeks. Zane could have it done in an hour.”

I’m outnumbered. And they’re right. Zane was setting up our wireless system back in elementary school. If anyone can figure this out, he can, but I don’t want any of his I-told-you-so attitude. “Fine. But I’m not calling him.”

Maya takes the phone back and continues scrolling. “Hey.” She looks up at me. “When did Casey die?”

“March thirtieth. Sometime around midnight.” I know I’ll never forget the date. It looked so official on the paperwork Detective Naito had.

“And you definitely didn’t see him that day?” Maya is starting to sound exactly like a cop.

“No. Why?”

“You’re not going to like this,” Maya says, handing the phone back to me. I look on Alicia’s time line and see a one-line posting from March twenty-ninth at eight-thirty p.m.—four hours before he died. A line that neither Ava nor I put there.

Going to see Casey after he gets off work—wish me luck!

I click Alicia’s page off my phone just as Dad walks into the kitchen.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he says, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey, Dad,” I answer, shoving the phone back into my pocket.

He places a tissue-paper-wrapped lump in front of me on the counter. “I forgot to give this to you when I got home yesterday.”

I pick it up and feel the liquid sloshing around. “You don’t have to keep bringing me snow globes. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Don’t remind me.” He’s smiling, but he still looks sad. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

I pull the tissue paper away to see a glass globe with the South African flag inside.

“I know it’s not the tacky plastic ones that you like, but
you’d be amazed how hard it is to find a snow globe in South Africa.”

I shake it up so that the glitter fills the water. “It’s perfect. Thanks.”

“Listen, I was thinking that this spring break must have been pretty boring. How about we pick a week right after school gets out and go on vacation, just the three of us? Anywhere you guys want—Hawaii, Mexico, Paris … anywhere.”

As long as we’re not in jail by then. “Sure. That would be great.”

Dad pours himself a cup of coffee and leans his elbows on the counter next to mine. “Stop sulking, okay? I already told you that we’re going to fix this Stanford mess. I’m sure it was just a big mistake. I’ve got a call in to a buddy of mine who has some pull, to see what he can do.”

I can feel tears pricking the backs of my eyes. Dad’s been so nice about it since he got home, like it was Stanford’s mistake, not mine. “Once you get rejected from Stanford, that’s it. No reconsiderations.”

Dad winces at the word “rejected.”

“Probably just some overzealous administrator who didn’t know what they were doing.” He kisses me on the forehead. “Stanford is where you belong. We’ll get you there, don’t worry.”

“Hmm,” I say. Is it really where I belong?

I wait until he’s shut the front door behind him before I pick up the house phone. It beeps as I scroll through the call history on the handset, trying to remember what day the salon called. Just as I’m getting impatient, I see the call
from Leon’s and a number. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds to look up the salon on the Internet and get an address. I have only an hour to get there before Alicia’s appointment. Someone is pretending to be Alicia, and I have to find out who it is. Even if I find out that it’s Ava.

I follow the directions to a small strip mall in Solana Beach. Leon’s is wedged between a taqueria and a dry cleaner’s, and it’s easy to spot because of the blown-up photos of slightly out-of-date haircuts posted in the window. Ava usually gets her hair cut in the city at two hundred dollars a pop, and I can’t imagine her coming all the way out here, even if she’s trying to be incognito.

I sit in my car with a good view of the front door, watching people come and go. My stomach is in knots, and I’m not sure if I’m hoping that Ava will show up or that she won’t. Her car is nowhere in sight, but I’m not surprised—if she’s coming out here as Alicia, she’s not going to park her car right out front. Maybe she won’t drive her car at all. I put the speeding ticket in the top drawer of my desk. It was for a 2011 Honda. What would Ava be doing in someone else’s Honda? None of this makes any sense.

Watching the numbers on the clock change makes time drag, and I get to 4:20 before I’ve had enough. Nobody even remotely matching Alicia’s description has gone through the salon door. What if I missed her? Even though Ava is never early for anything, what if she beat me here?

I get out of the car and walk toward the salon. Having a confrontation here in front of all these people is better than not having a clue what she’s up to. I pull open the door, and
the uniquely salon smell of hair dye and perm solution hits me right in the face.

“Excuse me.” A woman with a clipboard pushes past me to the reception desk. “Here’s my client card with all the info.”

“Thanks,” says the bored-looking receptionist. “Take a seat, and someone will be right with you.”

There are six chairs lining the styling area of the room, three on either side. Four of them are occupied by women in various stages of cut or dye jobs, but none of the women is Ava. Maybe she was right and it was a different Alicia Rios. I’m almost disappointed as I turn to go.

“Alicia!” says a woman who’s holding a blow-dryer to an older woman’s head. “Hold on one second.” She snaps the dryer off and leans over to tell the woman something, handing her a magazine off the counter in front of her. The stylist’s hair is a red color that is found nowhere in nature, and it’s piled on her head in stiff, messy curls. I wonder if she did this to herself or if it was a training exercise by a new employee.

She smiles at me as she approaches the front of the salon. “I’m sorry, hon, but when you didn’t show up today, I gave your time slot away.” She walks up to a big appointment book that’s spread out on a desk in the front. “Let’s see,” she says, flipping pages. “I’m booked up for the beginning of next week, but things free up starting on Wednesday.”

I’m totally caught off guard. I don’t know what to say. Has Ava been coming here in secret? “Um—”

The woman looks up and runs her fingers through the ends of my hair. “We’d better make it Wednesday. I can’t believe your hair has gotten this out of control in six short
weeks. Looks like rats have been nesting in there. So Wednesday? At the same time?”

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.” I grab a business card from the counter in case I need it later. I have one hand on the door when an idea hits me. “Hey, could I get a look at my client card? I got a new cell number, and I’m not sure you have it.”