“Didn’t he say that they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse?” asked Sophia. Ivy nodded.
“But we don’t even know why he separated me and you in the first place,” Olivia said, unconvinced. “Maybe when I was a baby, I bit him in the leg.”
Ivy smiled. “I don’t think he would insist on moving away just because of you, Olivia. He was talking about this job before you even came to Franklin Grove.”
Olivia looked at her gratefully. “You’re right,” she said. “Sorry, I’m just being completely neurotic.”
“What we need to do is come up with something even a great job can’t compete with,” Camilla said.
Brendan nodded, his dark curls flopping in front of his eyes. He was so drop-dead handsome. “With the right reason, your father will decide to stay,” he agreed.
At that moment, Ivy couldn’t imagine being apart from Brendan. She felt herself filling with determination again. “Then we’ll just have to come up with the right reason.”
“Hey, Vega!” a voice called.
Ivy spun around and saw Garrick Stephens and his greaseball goons, Dylan Soyle and Kyle Glass, winding their way toward the table. Instinctively, she rolled her eyes. The Beasts were the lamest vampires in the whole school.
“Word in the dirt is that you’re skipping town!” Garrick said happily.
“What’s it to you?” Ivy said coolly.
“Nothing,” Garrick said, but then he turned and grinned as his friends. “Nothing at all,” he repeated, wheeling back to face her, “except that with you gone the Beasts are going to rule the school!”
Kyle and Dylan laughed idiotically and waited for Garrick to give them high fives.
“As if,” said Sophia under her breath. “You tombstones couldn’t rule an empty cemetery plot.”
Garrick pretended not to hear. “So, uh, before you go, why don’t you do an article on us for the Scribe?”
Ivy stared at him, but he just kept leering at her. “You’re not serious,” she said at last.
Garrick sighed. “Oh, come on,” he whined. “Once our new band gets famous, you can say that you knew me when...”
Rather than answering, Ivy fixed Garrick with her worst death squint. She imagined she was burning a black hole through the center of his forehead.
“Fine, but don’t think we’re going to send any VIP tickets your way,” he grumbled finally, then lumbered off with the other Beasts in tow.
“Gross.” Camilla giggled.
“I can’t believe they’ve started a band!” said Olivia with a grin.
Sophia tapped the table with a spoon as if it were a gavel. “I hereby call our second emergency meeting to order!” she announced.
“Second?” said Brendan. “When was the first?”
I was worried you’d ask that, Ivy thought. “Yesterday,” she said, “but it was girls only. Now we’re coed.”
“Good,” Brendan said. “Because I don’t want to miss a moment with you over the next week.”
Ivy’s heart ached, and she took Brendan’s cool hand in her own. “You were studying for your social studies midterm,” she tried to explain.
“Social studies!” exclaimed Sophia suddenly. “That’s how we’ll keep Mr. Vega in Franklin Grove!”
“Homework and pop quizzes wouldn’t tempt me to stay,” Camilla said.
Sophia rolled her eyes. “I mean what we’re learning in social studies. We just did a whole unit on the Civil Rights Movement, and we had to watch part of that movie Gandhi. There’s only one way to successfully fight the blatant injustice of racism, British colonial rule, or being forced to move to Europe!”
“And that would be...?” Brendan said cluelessly.
“Passive resistance!” blurted Sophia. She looked around excitedly.
“I should’ve known that,” Brendan slapped his head with his palm. “I am seriously going to fail this midterm.”
“You mean like a sit-in?” Camilla asked.
Sophia nodded. “We’ll chain ourselves to Mr. Vega’s car and refuse to move until he changes his mind.”
“That would certainly be dramatic,” remarked Olivia.
“I bet we’d get in the local paper,” Camilla said with a shrug.
Between her recent interview with Serena Star on national TV and all the newspaper and magazine articles about Ivy and Olivia being long-lost twins, Ivy had had enough media attention to last eternity. “I don’t know,” she said tentatively. “We’d miss all our exams.”
“We can do it after midterms,” Sophia adjusted. “As long as we start before the actual day of the move, it’ll still work.”
“What would we eat?” Brendan wondered.
“We’ll bring food,” Sophia countered.
“But what if we run out of food?” Olivia asked.
“Then we’ll be on a hunger strike,” Sophia replied matter-of-factly, stabbing the air with a fork. “That’s what Gandhi did.”
“It’s pretty cold out lately,” Olivia said, scrunching up her nose.
Sophia seemed to sense the tide turning against her. “This can work, you guys!” She waved her fork around. “History is on our side!”
Ivy knew how Sophia could be when she got attached to an idea. She’d cling to it like a bat on its perch—nothing would bring her back down to earth. “How about this?” Ivy said. “Passive resistance can be our last resort. If in a week’s time we still haven’t been able to convince my dad, we’ll start the revolution. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” everyone said, Sophia loudest of all.
“I have an idea,” Camilla piped up. “Have any of you ever seen that old movie about the identical twins who switch places?”
Olivia shook her head. “Ivy and I don’t have to see that movie!”
“It’s our life,” Ivy agreed with a grin. The sisters had switched places a few times since they’d met. Sophia even had photos of Ivy in Olivia’s outfit at a cheerleading practice, which made Ivy want to be buried alive.
“Yeah, but there’s this one part I keep thinking about,” Camilla went on. “In order not to get separated again, these sisters have to get their parents back together. They have to make them fall in love again.”