“Yeah, I heard you! But I thought you were mad!”
“I was scared to death, Mer!”
“Who do you think it was?”
“The devil!” said Mallory.
“Talk sense, honey,” Campbell said wearily. “All this drama! It had to be kids . . .”
It took two hours for the police to finish photographing, measuring, and dusting. Finally Denley Hames said, “It’s not that it’s just vandalism. Someone knew she was here. That’s just not right.” He added, “We’re going to do our best to figure out what’s going on here, just like we’re still working on catching whoever was responsible for that fire. But I’d bet my redbone hound that the two things are related.”
“Just don’t put a yellow plastic tape up in front of my house,” Tim Brynn pleaded. “My family’s been through enough.”
In bed that night, Merry whispered, “You don’t think it was David.”
“I don’t think it wasn’t him. I saw him driving around when I was running.”
“So he bangs on the door? That makes no sense.”
“Maybe he’s mad about you knowing about the dog.”
“Maybe.”
“You admit I was right about the dog now.”
“I semi-admit it. Or if I don’t, at least I’m scared by tonight. Scared in my own way. Can you sleep?” Merry asked.
“I’m afraid to sleep. I’m afraid to dream. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Merry decided that this wasn’t the time to bring up her own dream about the old lady. And her fainting spell, in which she saw David burying Sunny’s dog. It was still possible that just came to her because Mallory suggested it, because Kim said it.
There had to be an upside to this. She asked, “Didn’t you get any idea of who it was out there? Nothing? Not even if it was a girl or a guy?”
“No,” Mallory said. She was still sitting up, shivering, despite the old quilt Campbell had draped around her shoulders. Campbell offered to camp out on the girls’ floor, which Mallory would have loved, except that then she and Merry wouldn’t have been able to talk. “That’s what’s so harsh about this. I didn’t see it coming. Maybe . . . I’ll tell you this. I don’t ever want to sleep again. And I have to tell you what else I saw, before any of this happened, when I took a nap.”
“What? You mean you saw something else?” Meredith asked slowly, dreading what Mallory would tell her. “You can tell me, Mally.”
“I’m afraid to,” Mally whispered, sliding down into her nest of quilts.
“Mal, you have to. If I’m going to believe this . . .” But she hadn’t even finished her sentence when she saw that Mally had fallen asleep, fast asleep, while Meredith was talking.
It was Merry who lay awake until the sky behind the branches of the maple turned gray as a dove’s breast.
BAITING THE TRAP
It was after seven o’clock on Saturday night, and Mally rejoiced. Sitting in the darkened theater between Eden and Drew, she inwardly jumped up and down. Her sister hadn’t called. She felt pure, total joy of having nothing happen.
She could have predicted that Merry wouldn’t believe her about Deirdre Bradshaw. When Mallory finally got her alone, after the night of the knocking prowler, she told her about her blackout, about David and Deirdre. At least, Meredith said she didn’t believe her twin. How she looked told a different story. She doesn’t want to believe me, Mallory said to herself. She’s trying her best. I don’t blame her. Put the dream with the door thing and it’s definitely too spooky to handle.
“You were just thinking about Deirdre because we were going to follow him,” said PART Merry.
“I hope you’re right,” Mally told her. “I never hoped anything more.” Now it seemed that she really had hallucinated the ghastly picture of David hurting the girl—and maybe the dog as well.
But only five minutes later, Mallory’s phone vibrated.
Merry’s text read ODD.
Mallory texted back, her fingers nimble in the dark. Where?
Within seconds, the phone trembled again. Pizza Papa, it read. 5 mins lev.
“Drew,” Mallory whispered. “I have to go.”
“You’re little. You can squeeze past.”
“Not to the bathroom, you dip. I have to go, go, leave. It’s an emergency.”
“Come on, Mal,” Drew huffed at her.
“I really have to go.”
“Call your dad, then.”
“I can’t. They’re at my aunt’s.”
“Call your grandmother.”
“Please, Drewsky.”
“No. All you do is have emergencies. Fires and midnight door-banging assaults . . .”
“I really have to leave! Now!”
Eden turned to Drew. “She means it. If you won’t drive her, I will.”
“Oh shit. Great. Fine,” Drew said.
Everyone in the row behind shushed them.
As they drove, Mally kept consulting her cell phone. No word from Meredith.
“Can you stop at my house?” Mallory suddenly asked Drew.
“Want to drive to Softy’s for a smoothie, too?”
“I just have to change.”
“What?”
“I have to change clothes.” Mallory hoped to forestall any griping he might do about this by making it sound private, like a girl thing. It apparently worked, because Drew shut up. Inside, she raced up the stairs and pulled on a pair of Merry’s hip-hugging jeans and a couple of multicolored shirts, one longer and one sleeveless and V-necked. She threw open her sister’s sorted-by-color makeup drawer and swept blush across her cheek, then nearly blinded herself whipping mascara onto her lashes.
When she jumped back into the car, she saw Drew’s covert look of approval. “What’s with this?” he asked. “You look like Merry. No, you look like you, but better. Why did you do it now?”
“Nothing of mine was clean,” Mally lied, knowing it didn’t explain the makeup. In fact, she didn’t know why she had the urgent, sudden need to look like Merry, either. It had hit her between the ears like a command.
Finally they were outside the little strip mall that looped around the pizza joint.
Drew finally asked, “What’s this all about? What are we doing? Do you want me to come in with you?”
“Yes,” Mally said, then added, “No. Well, yes. I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong, Mal?”
Dread clogging her voice, Mallory said, “I’m following David Jellico.”
“What the hell for?”
“I . . . like him.”
Drew gasped as though there wasn’t enough room in the car for him to breathe. Then he studied Mallory’s face in the light of passing cars. She was lying.
“You do not,” he said. “You don’t like him like a boyfriend.”
“I do.”
“Merry likes him. I’ve heard her say it twenty times.”
“No, I do.”
“Mallory, this isn’t about you chasing a crush to the mall.”
Mallory bit her thumbnail. She had never bitten her nails, and was surprised at how satisfying it was. “No, it isn’t.”
“What’s it about?”
It was crazy, but she spilled the whole story: about the weird cemetery, and Sunday Scavo’s dog, and the pounding. But she could not bring herself to mention Deirdre Bradshaw. It was too foul. When she finished, just as she expected, Drew stared at her like she’d picked her nose. Slowly he said, “I don’t know Jellico. I think we have gym together. He doesn’t hang with my friends. It would be completely sick to try to scare you by trying to break into the house. But why do you think he killed the Scavos’ dog?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he ran over it. I just think it’s weird that he buries pets. Like his own and other people’s.”
“It’s either he really likes animals or he’s got a weird fixation.”
“I didn’t say he dissected them!” Mallory said.
“It’s like being the dead-animal patrol.
The guys from the city who come and scrape roadkill off the street. I was out there once when they came to get this big fat raccoon. The whole truck was filled with white plastic bags. I was like, boy, who do you have to know to get this job?”
“He did this before.”
“He killed another dog?”
“No, he . . . he tried to scare us. We were sleeping over at Kim Jellico’s for her birthday when we were little and he came mauing up the window with a stocking over his face.”
“So he’s a cat-burying, dog-burying dork and we’re going out to see him at Pizza Papa’s. And we got up and ran out of the Star Wars marathon for this. And you changed into Meredith’s clothes. I’m sure this all makes complete sense. Does he have a dog with him? Did you get dressed up for the dog?”
“I don’t even see his car,” Mallory said, relaxing. “There probably wasn’t any reason to come. Let’s just wait five minutes.”
She relaxed, laying her head on the headrest. Drew flicked on the radio and flicked off the headlights.
The tap at the window was so soft she almost missed it.
She opened her eyes.
David Jellico’s face was next to hers behind the glass of the passenger-side window.
Mallory screamed. Then she sat up and smiled and calmly depressed the window button. “Hi,” she said. “What are you doing? You scared the hell out of me.”
“Getting some ’za. What are you doing?”
“Same. You know Drew Vaughan.”
“Vaughan,” David said, making it sound like a hello. “This is Deirdre.”
Saliva gushed into Mallory’s mouth. She tried to swallow. Deirdre was wearing a long cream-colored cashmere scarf with tassels.
“We were at the Star Wars marathon. Boring,” said Drew. “If you’ve already seen them all.”
“I’m not into it,” David said. “Want to go look at the Ruby Slipper first?” he asked Deirdre.
“Or sit in the car and talk . . .” she said, all purry and sexy.
Mallory’s brain screeched, No!, and she called out, “What, is something on sale at the Slipper?”
“All the boots,” said Deirdre.
David looked at his watch. “It’s only open another fifteen minutes, Merry.”
Mallory shook her head sharply at Drew. He got the cue. He wouldn’t correct the mistake and tell them which twin this really was.
“Can I come?” she asked.
Deirdre pouted a little. “Sure,” she said.
With Drew standing outside the store rearranging the contents of his wallet, and David playing like he was Prince Charming putting the glass slippers on Deirdre’s feet, they spent the next fifteen minutes in the shoe store. When it closed, David took Deirdre’s arm and said, “We’re going to grab a slice quick and go watch a movie at home. See you guys.”
“We actually . . . came here to get pizza,” Mally said. “Want to sit together?”
Because she had no money, Drew ended up buying pizza for both of them, and asking for Mallory’s to be wrapped up after she used a knife and fork to cut off two bites the size of a stamp.
All the while Mallory was panic-thinking. There had to be a way to keep him from taking Deirdre home to his house—or her house—alone. But what could it be?
“Why don’t you go to the nine o’clock? You can make it,” she suggested to David.
“We got a movie before at Video Box.”
“What one?”
“Some chick flick,” he said, as Deirdre punched him on the bicep. Mallory leaned over and punched him on the chest, but hard. His mouth fell open in a kind of shock, studying her. “You looked like Mallory for a minute,” he said.
“I look like Mallory all the time.”
“But she’s always pissed off,” said David.
“She is not. She’s just, you know, aggressive,” Mallory said.
“She’s a thinker. She’s sort of a math genius.” She realized how much she was bragging when Drew stomped on her foot.
“We should go, honey,” said Deirdre.
“We should go, too, honey,” Mallory said to Drew.
“Okay, sugar pie,” Drew answered.
They walked out into the mall’s tiny courtyard where merchants were drawing down the bars on their stores. “I’m going to run into the bathroom,” Deirdre said.
“Me too,” Mallory told Drew.
Deirdre drew a thick line around her perfect lips and began shading it in, the way Mally used to do with her coloring books.
“Deirdre,” Mallory said.
“What?”
“David . . . he . . .”
“What?” Deirdre asked sharply, the last “t” like a bee sting.
“He’s seeing another girl from Deptford.”
“What?”
“He’s seeing another girl from Deptford Consolidated. Andrea. Her name is Andrea,” Mallory said, realizing, with a shock that made her sway so much she had to grab for the sink, that this was actually true. “For about two weeks. When he . . . said he had to go indoor golfing with his dad, he was with her.”
“Meredith,” Deirdre said. “Everyone in the universe knows you have this total obsession with David. Don’t think that making up stories about another girl is going to come between us.” She massaged a little golden peach cream blush into the apples of her cheeks, her fingertips stroking the color up toward the blond ringlets at her hairline.
“Except it’s true. He has . . . he has her . . . he has her earrings in the glove box of his car. They’re . . . silver half-moons.”
“You are such a little snot. The cheerleaders at Memorial dread you coming. You are not going to be moved to varsity as a freshman. You can forget it. It’s not junior high. It takes more than being a . . . dwarf to be on varsity there.”
“She is not a dwarf!” Mallory cried.
“Who isn’t?”
“Merry . . . I mean, I’m not! What, are you jealous? Not everybody can do what I do.”
“Wiggle your butt and let people throw you over as if you were really a gymnast?”
“I am really a gymnast!”
“And your sister’s a lesbian!”
“A what? And so what if she is? And she is not!” Mallory was shouting, her face hot.
“She dresses like a slob and she hates guys. Kim says.”
“Kim says that about me?”
“No, about your sister, the super jockstrap.”
“And what are you? You don’t even know your guy is with somebody else. You probably have mouth warts, you slut.”
“Toodles, Grumpy. Or is it Dopey?” Deirdre said.
Just outside, near the center doors of the mall, Drew squatted on his heels.
“Women,” he said. There was nothing else he could think of. Jellico did give off some creepy vibes.
“You’re not with Merry, are you?” David asked him. “She’s, like, a kid.”
“No. They’re our next-door neighbors. She got all these tickets to go to the five-movie all-nighter. But she didn’t feel good and we had to leave.”
“She’s hot and all.”
“But like you said,” Drew pointed out, slowly getting to his feet, noticing he was half a head taller than Jellico, “she’s a kid. I’ve known them all my life.”
“But I think sometimes, ‘Wait until you’re sixteen, little Merry.’ She has the best ass. She’s all over me. My sister . . .”
Then Kim and the real Meredith appeared, each carrying a go-cup from Latta Java, the only store still open.
Merry wore hip-hugger jeans and a green strappy T-shirt layered over a long-sleeved white one. If Drew hadn’t noticed the colors of the shirts and checked to see that it was her right ear, not the left ear, that had a pierced earring, he would have thought she was Mally.
“Where’s Deirdre?” David asked.
“I don’t know,” Kim said. “Dave, listen. Dad dropped us off but Mom and him are going to the nine o’ clock. . . .”
“I know.”
&n
bsp; “So you have to give us a ride home . . . please?”
“I have plans,” David said. “You guys were going to the multiplex with them, to another movie.”
“But we wanted to check out the boots,” Merry told him. “And now we’re going to watch Best Spring Break.”
“Or you could drive us just to the movies,” Kim suggested.
“No, he can’t,” Merry said.
“Vaughan can take you home,” David told Kim.
“I’ll take you guys home,” Drew said. Meredith elbowed Kim.
“David, I’m not supposed to ride with anyone but you,” Kim reminded him. “No offense, Drew.”
“Kim!” David griped, exasperated.
Deirdre Bradshaw burst out of the bathroom with Mallory at her heels.
“Let’s go, David!” she cried.
“What the hell?” David gasped. “You little shit. You’re not Meredith! What are you trying to pull?”
“Those are my good capris,” Meredith said.
“You go. The mall is over,” said the small man in a green uniform who had begun to clean. “The coffee has a door outside.”
In the dark of the parking lot, the boys pressed the unlock buttons. Drew opened the doors of his Toyota and leaned on the roof. Jellico’s face was so bloated and dark, it looked like he was about to seize.
“I asked you,” he said to Mallory, getting down in her face. “What were you trying to pull? Why are you dressed like her? Why did you let me think you were her?”
Mally glared up at him. “None of your business. Get away from me.”
“Leave her alone, Jellico,” Drew said quietly.
“You’re sick, both of you. Half people. You and her. Freak show.”
“Shut your mouth, Jellico,” Drew said again.
“You make me.”
“Don’t make me make you. I run cross-country, but don’t let it fool you,” Drew said, now so quietly his voice was barely audible to the girls standing on the fake cobbled walk.
“Drew, this is my fault. . . .” Mallory began.
“David, let’s just go!” Deirdre said. David wheeled and stalked away, throwing the box of leftover pizza on the ground as he searched in his jacket pockets for his keys. As Merry and Kim piled into the backseat of David’s Jeep, Deirdre stood with the passenger door open and tapped on the door of the glove box.