“You should have given Brian your e-mail address,” Audrey whispered in her ear as the actors took the stage.
That’s it! thought Ivy. I’ll send the museum curator an e-mail on behalf of my dad!
“Good thinking,” Ivy whispered back. “Thanks, Mom!”
Olivia carefully folded a pair of black cargo shorts and put them atop the other clothes in a cardboard box. She grabbed the tape gun off Ivy’s bed and sealed the box shut. Then she took a black marker and wrote on the side: IVY’S SUMMER CLOTHES. She collapsed on the bed. Ouch! She reached underneath herself and pulled out one of Ivy’s huge black purses, brimming with cosmetics and school supplies. At least if Ivy has to move, she thought sadly, she’ll have a few boxes that are neatly packed.
Olivia had been half relieved, half disappointed when she got to Ivy’s house and found a note from Mr. Vega saying he’d be home late. On the one hand, she didn’t have to worry about keeping up her Ivy act. But on the other, she’d been quite excited about spending some time with her father. She wanted to show him what he’d be missing if he moved—how nice and smart and cool she was—even if he did think she was actually Ivy.
At that moment, Olivia heard a noise from upstairs. “Ivy!” Mr. Vega’s voice called. “I need your help!”
Olivia sprang to her feet and bounded to the mirror on the inside of one of Ivy’s wardrobe doors. She shook her body to get her perk out and brushed her hair down in front of her face with her hands.
“Coming,” she called. All of a sudden, she felt totally nervous. What if he sees through the switch? she thought.
She speed trudged upstairs to the foyer, bracing herself for the moment Mr. Vega first saw her dressed as Ivy. But when she got there, her father’s back was to her, his heels dug into the stone floor. In the dim light, he was trying to pull what looked like an enormous gray furry beast through the front door by its tiny head. “Help... me,” he groaned.
“What is that thing?” Olivia squealed, immediately kicking herself because her sister would never be so excitable.
“The Christmas tree,” her dad said with a gasp. “It’s stuck!”
Sure enough, Olivia could see that her father wasn’t grabbing monster fur at all—he was holding the branches of an enormous tree. Strangely, the leaves were silvery gray instead of green.
Her father grunted with effort. Olivia ran up to where the tree met the doorway, but there wasn’t any place for her to grab on. She bent down and saw that there was a small space between the tree and the doorjamb.
“Hurry!” her father called hoarsely.
Olivia scooted underneath on all fours and emerged outside, where the chill of the air immediately pricked her skin. She hurried to the bottom of the tree and pushed on its cut trunk. Nothing budged. She tried again. Nothing.
“P-O-W,” she cheered quietly to herself as she leaned into the tree with all her might, “E and R! That’s how you get the power!”
All at once, the tree slipped through the door like a giant pipe cleaner. Inside, there was a terrible crash. Olivia rushed in.
Her father was splayed on the floor, the tip of the tree in his lap. He was laughing. Olivia couldn’t remember if she’d ever heard him laugh like that before.
“Now that is the way to bring in the Christmas spirit!” he said giddily.
“Are you okay?” Olivia asked.
“Now I am,” he said. “Thank you, Ivy. You always were strong and clever.”
“Thanks,” said Olivia softly. It felt good to hear him compliment her, even if he didn’t know it was her.
“I had wanted to surprise you,” Mr. Vega admitted. He reached into the back pocket of his pants and handed Olivia a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it with trembling fingers.
It was the charcoal drawing he’d been working on a few days ago, when Olivia and her sister had interrupted him in his study. She could see now that it was a design for the most amazing Christmas tree ever.
“It’s a silver ash,” her father told her. “I ordered it specially.”
In the drawing, the Christmas tree looked almost as enormous as it was in real life, reaching from floor to ceiling of the foyer. The whole thing was so elaborately decorated that it looked covered in a delicate spiderweb of sparkling ornaments. On its top was the silhouette of a bat.
“It’s beautiful,” Olivia whispered.
“I wanted to do something special for you”— her father smiled gently—“to celebrate our last Christmas in this house.”
“Thanks... Dad. I love it,” Olivia said genuinely. Then he reached over and gave her a big hug, and Olivia’s heart almost burst.
“Can we decorate it tonight?” she asked after a second.
He shook his head. “Not tonight, darling. It’s too late. We’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Sure,” Olivia said softly, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.
A little while later, Olivia lay in the dark on top of her sister’s coffin, replaying in her mind the moment when her father had hugged her. She smiled to herself. Maybe Ivy will agree to switch again tomorrow, she thought as she drifted off to sleep. Maybe my father and I can decorate the tree together.
Chapter 6
Ten minutes before her social studies exam, first thing on Friday morning, Olivia was huddled in a stall in the science hallway bathroom, rushing to switch clothes with her sister. She frantically peeled Ivy’s black leggings from her legs.
“You saw Brian Warchuck?” she said to the metal divider.
“He’s still in love with you.” Ivy’s voice echoed from the next stall.
Olivia’s heart raced. “How’d he look?” She’d been waiting her entire life to see her Prince Charming again!
“Like a pencil with pimples,” Ivy’s voice answered matter-of-factly.
“Noooo,” said Olivia, grabbing the pink fuzzy sweater Ivy had just thrown over the divider. “He used to be so cute!”
“Well, he still is, if you like boys who plaster their hair to their foreheads with Vaseline,” Ivy told her. Olivia heard her sister’s stall door open and shut. “Anyway, you’d better hurry up. We’re going to be late for our last midterm, and I still haven’t told you about how our dad’s not moving to Europe.”