The Midnight Twins Read Online Free PDF Page B

expected to memorize.
    In the same way, dreaming the same dreams at the same time was the usual: Their father had watched them in their sleep when they were tiny, one girl talking in her sleep about losing her stuffed poodle, the other asking if she’d found it.
    What was creepy was that there was a dream now that only one of them knew about.
    “If I dreamed it, why didn’t you?” Mally asked again.
    “Because . . . because . . . probably because I was awake ,” Meredith explained, after a pause. She was improvising, and Mally knew it. A little spool of nausea began to unwind in her belly. She should have heard Mally’s dream, or felt it. Still, Mally’s moods were going to give Merry an ulcer. “Can we please go downstairs now? We can obsess later on. Otherwise, I’m going without you. I’ve got to dance.”
    Mallory ignored her.
    “Mal,” Merry said after a moment, “this is me.” She began to dance as if the closet door mirror were a cute guy, glancing up at him from under her long eyelashes, then switching her lead and tossing her hair back over her shoulder. Then she stuck out her stomach and rounded her shoulders. “This is you.”
    At last, Mallory laughed.
    She jumped up, perused her actually-pretty-decent reflection, and clattered down the back stairs. They made a grand entrance under the arch Tim had wound with hundreds of white twinkle lights. Even David Jellico seemed to notice.
    And it was that kind of night, a night like ten thousand twinkle lights—the best fun the twins would have . . . to be honest, they told each other later when they talked about it, ever again in their lives.
    The party would be the last time that they didn’t know what they didn’t know—the thing for which Mally’s horrifying dream was only the opening note.
    As time passed, thirteen years of not knowing would seem a kind of blessing. Mallory would often remind Merry that she hadn’t really wanted to turn thirteen. Something about it nagged at her. She figured she simply was still too happy to be a kid, not really ready to be an official teenager. But after they knew the real reason, even Merry would mourn all the days she spent so freely, unburdened by awareness, and wish she had treasured them.
    At the party that night, Mally got over her fear of guys long enough to dance with Justin Springer, Dane Greenberg, and Daniel Eppelin. She smiled, showing the dimple in her left cheek, all but flirting with everybody.
    “Daniel likes you,” Merry told her, showing the dimple in her right cheek. “He looks all mushed.”
    “Merry, be real. We danced, like, twice,” Mally said. “It’s not like a big romance.”
    “It’s good enough,” Merry said, who got her first kiss that night, from Will Brent—who was trying hard to win her back and almost succeeding. But she also got a crashing headache, as if Mally’s dream had passed to her like a virus.
    Generally, though, it was a great party, although most people wouldn’t think of it that way. They would remember only that they’d seen the twins just two nights before the fire.

UNLUCKY THIRTEEN
    “You have Auntie Karin’s cell number,” Campbell reminded them for the hundredth time as the family piled into the van. Dutifully, Merry fished the list out of her pocket and held it up, rolling her eyes. “And Mallory, you brought the nice video games for the little kids, and the party hats? I want them all in bed by nine thirty, but you can have them watch the New Year—”
    “On TV, at seven p.m. from London,” Mally repeated. “Mom! You’ve told us all this so many times I could write a song about it! We know what to do!”
    It was five p.m., barely dark, as they set out down Pilgrim and out Cemetery Road.
    Cemetery Road curved up toward Mountain Rest Cemetery. At a respectful distance, the ancient cemetery now overlooked a spanking-new housing development called Bell Fields. Plunked down in the middle of what was still mostly a sweep of cropland was a neat