Switched (11 page)

As she
headed home, Olivia marveled at how much had changed since she’d first met
Charlotte last week.
I can’t believe I actually thought Charlotte Brown
would be my new best friend
, she thought.
Gross!

“What
about a big box of props for the photographs, so that people can pretend to
stake each other?” Sophia asked eagerly as she added a chocolate brownie to her
lunch tray.

Ivy
tried to nod enthusiastically, but her best friend was driving her seriously
batty. Lately the ball was all that Sophia wanted to talk about. Ivy scanned
the cafeteria for a place to sit. Holly and Collette were both studying for a
test in the library, so Ivy knew she had to do something to avoid an entire
lunch debating streamers versus balloons.

She
spotted Olivia sitting in the corner with Camilla Edmunson, who Ivy and Sophia
both knew because she occasionally wrote for the school paper. “Let’s sit over
there,” Ivy suggested. At least with them Sophia would have to take a break
from the ball.

“With
the bunnies?” Sophia said skeptically. “Why not?” Ivy answered. “You always
like Camilla’s book reviews.”

Sophia
shrugged, and they made their way over.

“Hey,”
said Ivy, with an innocent nod toward Olivia. “Can we sit here?”

“Sure,”
Camilla replied.

“Totally,”
Olivia agreed.

As
they sat down, Camilla said, “Your last photo essay in the paper was really
great, Sophia.”

“Thanks,”
Sophia replied appreciatively.

“Speaking
of the paper, I read that book you reviewed last week. You know, the one you
gave four devils out of five,
The Vortex Effect
? You were right. It sucks.”

“Doesn’t
it?” gushed Camilla.

“Where’s
your food?” Olivia asked Ivy, gesturing at Ivy’s half-empty tray.

“They
ran out of burgers,” Ivy explained, rolling her eyes. “What kind of school
cafeteria runs out of burgers?”

“We
should riot,” joked Sophia, and everyone laughed.

“Want
some of my beef lasagna?” Camilla offered. “My mom made it. It’s the best.”

Ivy
peered into Camilla’s Tupperware. It did look really good, and she was dying
for something with meat in it. “Okay,” she said gratefully. “If you think you
have enough.”

Camilla
slid a generous piece of lasagna onto a napkin and passed it to Ivy.

“Thanks,”
Ivy said. She scooped up a hunk with her fork and popped it in her mouth. Right
away, her tongue felt like it was on fire. She gagged and swallowed to stop the
pain.

Oh,
no!
thought Ivy in
a blind panic.
That was the gravest thing I could possibly have done!
Her
stomach turned, and she felt ice-cold. She started seeing spots—big black and
blue blobs at the corners of her vision.

“Ivy?”
Olivia said, leaning across the table.

“Are
you okay?”

She
couldn’t answer.

“She
looks really pale,” Camilla said in a far away voice. “Like, even paler than
normal.” Ivy blinked. Her head was killing her. Sophia grabbed Ivy’s hand and
turned to Camilla. “Did that have garlic in it?” she asked urgently.

“I,
er, don’t know,” Camilla stammered.

“Maybe.”

Sophia
stood up. “We have to go.”

Ivy
felt her friend pull her to her feet. The last thing she heard as Sophia
dragged her out of the cafeteria was Olivia’s voice calling, “Is she okay?” from
a million miles away.

“Do
you think she’s okay?” Olivia repeated as Ivy and Sophia disappeared out the
cafeteria doors. “I don’t know what happened,” Camilla said, shaking her head
guiltily. “Maybe Ivy’s allergic to garlic.”

“She
looked so ill!” Olivia remarked. “Everybody says my mom’s lasagna’s great,”
Camilla tried to explain. “At least Sophia seemed to know what to do,” she
added.

“Yeah.”
Olivia wrung her hands. “I just hope Ivy’s
all right
.”

After
lunch and through the rest of the day, Olivia watched for her sister in the
hallways, but she was nowhere to be found. She didn’t see Sophia anywhere
either.

Olivia
started to really worry when Ivy didn’t show up for last period. She remembered
how, at her old school, somebody’s little brother had almost died after
accidentally eating a peanut. All through science, Olivia had to fight the urge
to rush out of class. She kept staring at the door.

“Olivia?”
Mr. Strain was pointing at her with a piece of chalk. “The process by which
plants turn sunlight into energy?”

“Er .
. . chlorophyll?” Olivia suggested. The entire class chuckled.

It was
the longest science class of her life. When the bell finally rang, Olivia had
already packed up her things and punched Ivy’s phone number into her new cell
phone.

She
was the first one out the door, hitting Send the moment she crossed the
threshold. It rang once. Twice. Three times.
Four times
.

“Hello?”
Ivy’s sickly voice answered.

“Ivy!”
Olivia cried. “Are you okay?”

“Hi,
Olivia,” her sister said weakly. “I’m all right. I just had a ...grave reaction
to . . . the garlic in Camilla’s . . . lasagna.”

“You
sound
awful
,” Olivia told her, leaning against a locker.

“I’ll
be better . . . in a day or two,” Ivy said drily.

Olivia
felt tears spring to her eyes. “I was really worried.” She gulped.

“Really,
I’m okay,” Ivy said reassuringly. “I just can’t . . . practice today. I’m
sorry.”

“Don’t
worry about that,” said Olivia. She’d been so worried she’d actually totally
forgotten they were supposed to cheer together this afternoon. “Just get
better! Do you need anything?”

“No
thanks,” Ivy whispered. “Just rest.”

“I’ll
call you later,” Olivia said.

After
she’d hung up, Olivia spotted Camilla by her locker and went over to give her
the update. “Ivy’s okay,” Olivia said. “She went home.”

“What
happened?” Camilla asked, her eyes wide with concern.

“She’s
allergic to garlic,” Olivia explained. “She needs some time to recover, but she
says it’s really no biggie.”

“I’m
so relieved she’s all right,” Camilla said, sliding a book into her bag. Then
she looked up at Olivia. “Are you doing anything after school today?”

“I did
have plans,” Olivia replied, “but they got canceled.”

“Want
to go to a book signing at the mall?” Camilla asked, swinging her bag over her
shoulder. “It’s this guy who’s, like, a minor deity in the sci-fi world.”

Olivia
thought about it for about half a second. Her parents weren’t expecting her home
until dinner. “Sure.” She grinned. “I’d love to.”

Thursday
afternoon, Ivy stretched in her backyard and waited for Olivia to arrive. While
she still felt a little stiff from the lasagna incident, she was seriously
ready to reenter the land of the living after two days in bed.

She
sat down and leaned over her outstretched legs to touch her toes. It had rained
the night before, and the still-damp grass soaked through her black sweats, so
she scrambled to her feet again.

As she
did so, her sister bounded around the corner of the house with an excited, “Hello!”

Ivy
smiled, and they hugged tightly.

“You
have one bite of garlic and you’re out of commission?” Olivia poked her in
playful disbelief. “That’s insane!”

Ivy
stepped back and shrugged uncomfortably. “I had too much garlic as a baby,” she
mumbled. “It doesn’t agree with me.”

“That’s
weird,” Olivia said. “Especially because we had the same parents until we were
one. And I
love
garlic.”

Can
she tell I’m lying?
Ivy
wondered.

Fortunately,
her sister didn’t say anything more about it. Instead, Olivia did a double clap
and said, “Okay, on Monday, you made it pretty clear you can cheer. But your
shouting looked more like pouting!”

“Are
you rhyming on purpose?” Ivy asked.

“Yes,”
Olivia replied enthusiastically. “So let’s see whether today you can sell the
yell!”

Ivy
rolled her eyes. Then she stood up straight, turned up the corners of her
mouth, and launched into the “Ashes to Ashes” cheer. During the past two days
in bed, she’d come up with a trick to help her smile: she imagined the four
Beasts standing in a graveyard, wearing nothing but pink briefs that said I’M
WITH STUPID on them. It worked like a charm.

“Go,
Ivy!” Olivia cheered as Ivy finished. “That was much better! You even smiled!”

“Thanks,”
Ivy responded, slightly embarrassed.

Olivia
patted her on the back and said, “Want to work on round-off combinations for a
new cheer?”

“Okay,”
said Ivy. They moved closer to the house and turned to face a distant line of thorn
bushes. Olivia counted down, and together they took a few running steps and
leaped into the air.

One,
two, three round-offs. Out of the corner of her eye, Ivy saw Olivia stick her
last move.

Deciding
to go one better, Ivy put her hand to the ground, ready to push off into a
double handspring. But her palm slipped on the rain-slick grass, her arm went
out from under her, and suddenly she was flying wildly through the air.

The thorn
bushes came spinning toward her like a kaleidoscope. “Owww!” Ivy cried as she
slammed into them.

Olivia
came running. “Ivy!”

“I’m
okay,” Ivy called, feeling like an utter loser. She stood up from the bushes
and brushed herself off. “That’s what I get for trying to show off.”

“You’re
hurt!” Olivia exclaimed.

Ivy
looked down and saw that her left arm was covered in blood; two deep crimson
cuts ran its length. She had been careless. Usually, she would have checked to
make sure there weren’t any obvious injuries before emerging from the thorn
bushes, but it was too late now. Instinctively, she put her other hand over the
scratches so her sister wouldn’t see.

But
before she knew it, Olivia was at her side, trying to move her hand away.

“Let
me look,” Olivia said reassuringly. “I took first aid for my babysitting course
last summer.”

Olivia
pried Ivy’s fingers away and gingerly dabbed at the area with a little towel
she had pulled from her waistband.

The
blood came away on Olivia’s towel, but— just as Ivy knew they would be—the
scratches were gone!

“You
were bleeding,” Olivia said, twisting Ivy’s arm around in her hands, looking
for a cut. “You were bleeding,” she said again in confusion.

Ivy
stared at the ground, frantically wondering what she could say.

Olivia
shook her head, frowning. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No,
it’s fine. I, er . . .” Ivy stammered. How was she going to explain this?

“You’re
not cut somewhere else, are you?” Olivia asked, bending to inspect Ivy’s legs. “This
is so weird,” she muttered, clutching the bloody towel in her hands.

Ivy
could feel her sister trying to catch her eye now.

“Ivy?”
Olivia said, her voice brimming with confusion. “What just happened? Did you .
. . did you
heal
?”

I
should tell Olivia the truth,
Ivy
thought.
I don’t want to lie to her. She’s my twin sister.

“Ivy,
say something!” Olivia demanded in exasperation.

I
have to tell her,
Ivy
decided. “Olivia,” Ivy said slowly, meeting her sister’s gaze, “I have to tell
you a secret.”

“Okay,”
Olivia answered
cautiously.

“It’s
serious,” Ivy told her, taking her hand. “I need you to promise you won’t tell
anyone.”

Olivia’s
eyes searched Ivy’s face. “What is it?”

“It’s
the most important secret you’ll ever know,” Ivy said simply.

Olivia
took a deep breath. “I swear on our sisterhood,” she said at last.

Ivy
pulled Olivia into the shade of the thorn bushes. Then she slowly lifted her
hands up to her face and carefully popped out her contact lenses, one after the
other.

Olivia
put her hand to her mouth. “Your eyes are purple!”

“They’re
violet,” corrected Ivy. She tried to smile. “Olivia,” she said, “I’m a vampire.”
Olivia put her hands on her hips. “You are not.” Ivy nodded solemnly in
response.

“You’re
a vampire?” Olivia asked, bewildered. “For real?”

“And
Sophia’s a vampire,” Ivy went on. “And the other people in my . . . community:
they’re vampires, too. We have to wear contact lenses to protect our eyes from
the sun.”

“Yeah,
right,” Olivia said. “Like I’m going to believe that vampires have purple eyes!”