“It’s Ivy! The twin!” she gasped.
The words “Ivy” and “twin” rippled through the crowd. People turned their heads to look. Uh-oh, thought Ivy.
“When one of you gets hurt, does the other one feel it?”
“Why don’t you have the same color eyes?”
“Do you have any matching birthmarks?” Soon everyone was shouting and talking and crowding around Ivy as well as Olivia. Instead of attempting to answer anyone’s question, Ivy focused on trying not to fall over in the stampede. Suddenly an earsplitting whistle rang out.
Immediately, the crowd hushed. At the front of the room, Camilla was standing with one hand in the air authoritatively, the other to her lips. She looked like a traffic cop.
“Everyone stand still!” she commanded. Then Camilla jumped off the desk and pushed through the crowd. Grabbing Ivy’s hand, she dragged her back to stand next to Olivia.
The sisters exchanged nervous looks. “You said nobody was going to read the article!” Ivy whispered.
“Oops.” Olivia shrugged.
The room lit up with flashes from camera phones as people took pictures of the sisters side by side. “Ivy and Olivia can only answer one question at a time!” Camilla announced. “If you have a question, raise your hand.” Scores of hands shot into the air.
Camilla was about to choose one, when a familiar high-pitched voice screeched, “Get out of my way!” The crowd parted, and Charlotte Brown—neighbor, nemesis, and cheerleading captain—shoved her way to the front. She looked from Ivy to Olivia with narrowed eyes. As her sidekicks, Katie and Allison, appeared behind her, she nodded.
“This explains a lot,” Charlotte told her friends, as if Ivy and Olivia couldn’t hear her from five feet away.
Then Charlotte plastered an insincere look of sympathy on her face. “Don’t worry, Olivia,” she said loudly, “the cheerleading squad will stand by you no matter what.”
All at once, Ivy’s embarrassment gave way to annoyance. She trained her death squint on Charlotte Brown and was about to unleash an acid comeback when the bell rang.
Charlotte spun on her heel and headed for the door, her minions in tow. The rest of the crowd also started pouring out of the room.
Toby Decker, clearly delighted with the attention his story was receiving, patted Olivia and Ivy encouragingly on their backs as he squeezed past. “Maybe we shouldn’t have told anyone,” Ivy said under her breath to her sister.
Olivia nodded and then grinned. “But, since we did, maybe we should have worn matching outfits!”
As she made her way among the tables at lunch, people Olivia didn’t even know kept inviting her to sit with them. Luckily, she spotted Ivy’s pale hand waving at her from a table near the window, where she was hiding behind Brendan. Olivia hurried over.
“Craziness!” Olivia sang, setting down her tray across from her sister.
“Brendan has heard that somebody is selling pictures of us on eBay,” Ivy said wryly.
“Bidding’s already up to ten bucks,” Brendan announced.
Ivy’s best friend, Sophia, put her tray down next to Ivy’s, her camera hanging around her neck. “Ten bucks for what?” she asked.
“Somebody’s selling pictures of Ivy and me on eBay,” Olivia told her.
Sophia looked embarrassed.
Ivy stared at her in disbelief. “Please tell me you did not post pictures of us on eBay, Sophia.”
“Sorry.” Sophia gulped guiltily.
“Wow,” Olivia teased. “Sold out by your own best friend!”
“I was going to split the money with you!” Sophia offered desperately.
“Oh,” Ivy said, her face relaxing into a grin. “That’s okay, then!”
They all laughed, but a second later, Olivia realized she was the only one still chuckling. Her sister’s eyes were fixed over her shoulder.
“Hi, Vera,” Ivy said cautiously.
Olivia turned to find a Goth girl with a streak of white hair standing behind her. She knew Vera from the All Hallows’ Ball committee meetings, where Olivia had impersonated Ivy.
“Last time I checked,” Vera said, with a pointed glance at Olivia, “oil and water don’t mix.” Then she stuck her nose in the air and stalked off.
“What was that about?” Olivia asked when Vera was out of earshot.
Ivy lowered her voice. “Some vampires are a little . . . extreme in their views about mixing with bunnies—humans, I mean.”
“But why?” Olivia wanted to know. “Aren’t we supposed to be scared of you?”
“Not really,” answered Sophia. “Your kind has a habit of breaking out the wooden stake first and asking questions later.”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “As if that’s happened this century.”
“Either way,” Brendan said diplomatically, “it’s hard to have relationships with nonvamps when you’re bound by a strict code of secrecy and have a weird diet.”
“True,” Ivy admitted. “It’s easier with you because you know,” she added to Olivia.
“Could that be why our parents split us up?” Olivia wondered aloud. She and her sister had been trying to figure out how a vampire and a human could be twins—and why their parents had separated them—for almost the whole time they’d known each other. “Maybe they were worried that if a vampire and a human grew up together, the vampire secret wouldn’t be safe?” Olivia suggested.
Ivy grimaced. “Well, I certainly proved them right.” She sighed. She’d broken the First Law of the Night by telling Olivia the truth about vampires, when bad scratches on her arm had healed before Olivia’s eyes.
“You know I’d never tell,” Olivia reassured her.
“Yes, and luckily,” said Ivy, “no one beyond this table knows that you know, except for my dad, and he would never tell.”
A question sprang into Olivia’s mind. “But aren’t all your friends going to guess that I know now, since it’s out that we’re sisters?”
Ivy stopped mid-sip of pink lemonade. “How come none of us thought of that?” she said to Sophia and Brendan.
The two of them shrugged worriedly in response.
Ivy bent to lightly bang her head against the table. “We’re so dead,” she said. “By the end of the day, every vamp in Franklin Grove is going to know we’re sisters, and everyone’s going to guess there’s been a violation of the First Law.”