second before Andy rang the bell.
“Hey,” he exclaimed, taking in the auburn-haired, gray-eyed girl in the red sweater and clingy black ski pants. “You look fantastic. Life out East agrees with you.”
Cam laughed. “It must. I’ve lived there forever.”
Andy, in his plaid shirt and black cap, looked exactly as he had in her vision. He was studying her now, trying to figure out what she’d meant.
“I’m not Alex,” Cam finally said. “She’ll be down in a minute. I’m Camryn, her sister.”
Andy tugged off his cap. His head looked like a topographicalmap, jungles of tangled curls interspersed with damp flatlands of hat hair. But his dark eyes sparkled and the space between his front teeth was, as Alex had said, classic.
“I heard she had a sister … but no one said —”
“That we were twins?” Alex was suddenly at Cam’s side, looking fine and foxy in her black sweater and jeans.
Andy’s grin widened. And Cam felt a hint of jealousy as he looked Alex over with obvious joy. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were back. Are you staying?”
“For a couple of days,” Alex said. She cocked her head and frowned unexpectedly. “Anyway, thanks for coming by and giving us a lift —”
Cam was surprised at the sudden coolness in her sister’s voice. “What’s up?” she asked as they followed Andy to his car.
“He’s got the hots for someone,” Alex reported. “He was checking us out but thinking of
her
—”
“Bumosity,” Cam groaned. “He is such the rural babe. Who’s the lucky girl?”
Alex shrugged and they took off, three of them in the roomy front seat, with Cam in the middle. There was no need for mind reading on the ride to Evan’s. The twins peppered Andy with questions — beginning with Alex’s blurted, “So are you, like, seeing someone?”
“Huh?” Andy was startled.
“Um, I think Lucinda mentioned it,” Cam bailed out her sister.
“Lucinda? Lucinda Carmelson?” Andy asked, as if Luce were ice cream, his favorite flavor. “She thinks I’m seeing someone — is that what she said? No way. How’d she say it? I mean, you know, like she cared?”
“Lucinda?” Cam and Alex stared at the boy, taken aback.
Holy cow, he’s into Luce,
Alex thought.
Duh,
Cam responded silently. They glanced at each other, then broke up laughing.
“Yeah, yeah —” Andy blushed, then started laughing, too. “Hey, I always liked her,” he confessed. “And, I don’t know, on my trips home from school she’s looking really fine lately —”
“I second that emotion.” Alex let the embarrassed hottie off the hook and moved on to the bonus round. Evan.
Andy knew, as everyone did, that Evan had bonded with the rattlesnake crew. From what he’d heard
they’d
put Alex’s bud up to bad-mouthing Mr. Adamson, who Derek Jasper had a grudge against. Andy doubted that Evan wrote the threatening note — even though Adamson was supposed to have made fun of his cruddy karate performance. But then someone had seen the knife. Seen it tumble out of Evan’s locker when the principal pried itopen. “He’s not like you remember him, Alex,” Andy cautioned again. “He’s really changed.”
Evan’s house was out of town, up a snowplowed, two-lane mountain road and then down a narrow, pitted dirt path. Almost every two miles, a mailbox would appear. The fourth box was an old rusty one labeled FRETTS. Judging by what was left of the paint chips on the container, it had once been red, white, and blue.
“That’s it,” Alex said, excited just to see Ev’s last name on the run-down mailbox.
While Andy waited in the car, Cam trailed her sister along a path made by tire ruts in frozen mud. Carefully stepping over a piece of crusty inner tube and then a discarded hubcap, Cam shook her head involuntarily. How could someone who looked so like her, who knew her inner thoughts and feelings, be so pumped to be back in this awful place?
There was nothing remotely Marble Bay about
L. Sprague de Camp, Catherine Crook de Camp
Volume 2 The Eugenics Wars