The Midnight Twins Read Online Free PDF Page A

mother’s best friend, Bonnie. Merry often explained to Mallory that it would just be perfect if she and David grew up and got married because their mothers could be in-laws. David, she prattled on until Mally wanted to scream, was not just cute, like most guys, but truly beautiful, with his perfect nose and slightly olive skin and long blond thatch. Merry thought David’s face looked like something traced from a history book, like a face from a Roman myth. Mallory thought Merry was nuts. She considered David Jellico, with his sweaters tied around his neck like he’d just jumped off a yacht, too much like a boy model to be even semi-interesting.
    She also knew that she could beat him in a race, any day of the week.
    But now, Mallory smiled reluctantly at her sister. Oh well. She’s Merry . Being at the center of a giggling crowd, like a chick surrounded by big peacocks, was Merry’s idea of heaven. She liked it when boys picked her up and held her like a life-size doll; she liked actually wearing a size zero—like the puking girls, but without puking.
    On the other hand, any boy who tried to pick Mallory up like a toy would have faced serious damage to his kneecaps. When Drew told her that legally, she was a midget—as if there were a legal definition for midgetness, as there was for blindness—she popped a bubble from her customary huge wad of gum in his face.
    Despite her devotion to sports, Mallory was still heroically lazy, happiest on the sofa with a ginger ale and a whole tower of saltines for three straight hours of recorded soap operas.
    “How can you stand watching old people talking about sex?” Merry would ask. “How can you stand the creepy hairstyles?”
    “They comfort me,” Mally answered. “They’re like life. Nobody ever talks about anything that matters in real life, either. Like in school. All just a bunch of lies and temper tantrums. Look at you and Kim. And I like that when it’s Halloween on the soaps, it’s Halloween in real life. It’s very fishbowl.” If she ran out of soaps, Mally watched science fiction and mystery movies of every description that were old when their mother was their age. She owned stacks of old tapes she had lugged home from garage sales on her bike, along with the last VCR made in America. Mallory pulled that home in a wagon . Meredith was glad the only one who saw her was Drew, who yelled, “You need some green canvas sneakers and geraniums, Brynn. You look like my grandma Shirley going around the square at the Farmers’ Market!”
    Unperturbed, Mallory set up the cruddy old thing in the living room.
    Merry would come into the house with Kim, and Mallory would hold up her hand in the darkness. “Movie,” she would say. “No idiot speak.” Mallory was as rude as a guy.
    No one, not even Kim, quite “got” the twins. She and her own brother were nowhere near as loyal as Meredith and Mally were. They made fun of each other, but Kim was sure that Mallory would kill anyone who tried to hurt Merry. She hoped David would do the same for her.
    “Mally, come on!” Merry pleaded. Mallory didn’t stir. If anything, she curled tighter into herself. Then finally, for the first time that night, Merry took a long look at Mally’s face.
    Mallory looked lousy, pasty-faced, her big gray-blue eyes darkened, troubled, like puddles muddied by a rainstorm. It wasn’t the party, the clothes, or the boys. “Anno,” Merry said—old twin language that meant “ I care that you hurt. I’m here. You’re not hurting alone .” “Tell me.”
    In a rush, Mally said, “I dreamed that we were in a fire and these burning window drapes fell on me and I suffocated. I woke up totally covered in sweat. I’ve never had a dream like that. Aren’t you supposed to really die if you dream you die?”
    “That’s an old wives’ tale,” Meredith said, feeling that same creep of fear. “It’s just nerves.”
    “It didn’t feel like an old wives’ tale,” Mallory went on, as