by Lin Oliver
Before they left, Sammie came out of her room, all dressed in her crazy queen of the hippies costume. I had talked her into having the party after all, and finally, she agreed, since all the Truth Tellers had already made plans and were counting on it.
She looked pretty wild, like an authentic hippie with her fringed moccasins and tie-dyed skirt and pink-tinted glasses. We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“Hey, didn’t you guys used to be identical?” Ryan said.
“Almost identical,” we both said at once.
A horn honked outside in the driveway.
“Sounds like Chip Wadsworth is getting impatient,” my dad called from the kitchen.
“Have the best party ever,” I said to Lauren, giving her a hug. “Tell me everything.”
“I promise,” she said. “We’ll take notes, won’t we, Ryan?”
Then, placing her hand in his, she waltzed happily out the door.
I wasn’t even allowed to go to Sammie’s party. Esperanza had come over to help with the barbecue for the kids, and I got elected to stay in our room with Ramon. Let me put it this way: The highlight of our evening was when he didn’t throw up the box of raisins he ate. There was a lot of Candy Land played, interspersed with my tying a cape on him and having him jump on the bed like Superman. Every now and then, I’d let myself think of Dodger Stadium and the great time all my friends were having, and then I’d make myself plaster on a smile and start a pillow fight with Ramon.
From the living room, it sounded like Sammie and her friends were having fun. A couple of times I stuck my head out the door and saw them dancing in their costumes. They are a weird bunch, especially when they dance. No one was doing any steps that you could recognize. They were just out there freestyling in their own goofy ways. And leading the crowd was my sister, the queen of the hippies.
At about ten o’clock, there was a knock on my bedroom door. I thought it would be my dad, coming to ask me to help clean up. After all, isn’t that what Cinderella is supposed to do? But it wasn’t Dad. It was Sammie.
“Psssst,” she whispered. “Someone’s here to see you. Waiting on the beach.”
“Lauren?” I asked, my heart leaping a little in my chest. She was a good friend and had left the party early to come tell me about it, just like she promised.
“We’re going to cover for you,” Sammie said. “Alicia said she’d watch Ramon, and I’m going to distract Dad so you can sneak outside. You have exactly ten minutes before you turn into a pumpkin. Don’t be late.”
“You’re the best,” I said.
Alicia took over the Superman duty with Ramon, Sammie went to ask Dad to get some graham crackers out of the kitchen for another batch of s’mores, and I threw on my navy-blue hoodie and headed out to the beach. The sand felt cold on my feet, even though I was wearing those ratty, fuzzy green socks, and I shivered a little.
“Lauren?” I whispered. “Where are you?”
I wandered out beyond the deck, away from the fire pit where Sammie’s friends were roasting marshmallows. Someone, probably her friend Bernard, was playing the guitar and singing some weird song. I had no doubt that he wrote it, because it sounded so bad. I shook my head and wondered what it was Sammie saw in most of those kids. I hoped Lauren wasn’t listening to them. She already thought Sammie was strange, but this would totally convince her.
I squinted into the darkness and noticed someone down by the waves, carrying a little purple glow stick like they give out at fancy dance parties. It gave just enough light to reveal the shape of a person, but not enough for me to see the face.
“There you are,” I called to her. “I can hardly see you.”
“Well, I can see you,” a voice said, “and you’re looking good.”
It wasn’t Lauren’s voice. It was Spencer. He came jogging up to me, took the purple tube, and wrapped it around me like a necklace.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“They were giving these out at the party,” he said. “I thought you should have one.”
“You came all the way here to give me this?”
“I came all the way here to see you. Besides, I was done with the party. It wasn’t as much fun without you, so I called my dad to come get me. He’s waiting outside for a sec.”
“Lauren’s coming over, too?” I asked.
“Uh, I wouldn’t count on that. Last I saw her, she was dancing with your brother. She didn’t look like she was going anywhere.”
“It was really nice of you to come over, Spencer.”
“I wanted to bring you something.”
“The necklace?” I laughed. Even though it cost two cents, it felt like the most beautiful necklace any girl could ever get.
“Yes, the necklace. And I have one more thing for you, if it’s okay.”
“Sure. What is it?”
“This.”
And then he reached out and put his hands on my waist and pulled me close to him. It was dark, but there was just enough glow from my necklace to see that his lips were slightly trembling as he leaned down to kiss me.
And there, on the beach with Bernard’s weird music playing in the background and me in my hoodie and fuzzy green socks, I had my first kiss. It wasn’t like I imagined it would be. It was better. There was no Dodger Stadium with fireworks going off, no fancy dress or cool deejay. Just me and Spencer and the stars peeking out from under a cloudy California sky.
I had always promised Sammie that I would tell her every detail of my first kiss. But you know what? There are some things a girl just has to keep to herself.
Here’s a sneak peek at the next book in the Almost Identical series, Double-Crossed.
“The new boys are here!” my twin sister, Charlie, shouted as I jogged across the beach to the lounge chair where she was sprawled out sipping a strawberry smoothie.
Before you get the wrong impression of me, let me tell you right away that I am not a major jogger. In fact, the only thing I hate more than jogging is running. And the only thing I hate more than running is running fast. I think you get the point. But my dad has me on a shape-up program for our next tennis tournament, and if I take a daily run, he lets me eat french fries on the weekend. I’d say that’s worth a twenty-minute jog.
“What boys are you talking about?” I asked, grabbing the smoothie from Charlie’s hand and taking a giant slurp. “Ouch. Brain freeze.”
“Press your thumb against the roof of your mouth,” Charlie suggested.
“Why? So I can look stupid?”
“Because it warms up your mouth which gets rid of the brain freeze. Honestly, Sammie, everyone knows that.”
I shrugged, but did it, anyway, and after about twenty seconds, the brain freeze went away. Unfortunately, what didn’t go away was our brother, Ryan, who was hanging out on the deck juggling a volleyball in his hands. He dropped the ball, reached into his pocket to pull out his phone, and snapped a picture of me.
“Nice thumb-sucking,” he commented, checking out my image on the screen. “Oh, and just a little heads-up, Sammie. That’s not a real popular look in the seventh grade.”
“Delete it, Ry,” I ordered.
“I was thinking that whoever these new boys are might enjoy seeing it. What’s it worth to you for me to delete it?”
I lunged for his phone, but he held it up high above his head where I couldn’t reach it. The higher Ryan held his phone, the more I jumped, mostly just to harass him. Eventually, it worked.
“Okay, okay, I’ll get rid of it,” he said. “On one condition: You tell me who these new boys are. Spill it. Could our little Sam-I-Am be having a hot romance?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ryan. I don’t know any new boys. I barely know any old boys.”
“Well, I know who t
hey are,” Charlie said. “Their names are Eddie and Oscar.”
I just stared at her blankly. None of this was ringing a bell.
“Alicia called when you were jogging,” Charlie continued. “Or what you laughingly call jogging because it looks more like creeping. Anyway, she said to tell you her cousins Eddie and Oscar have arrived and she wants to bring them over to say hi.”
Ding, ding, ding. A bell rang inside my head. I remembered that when I walked Alicia to her bus stop after school last week, she had mentioned that her twin cousins were coming to visit Los Angeles from El Salvador.
“Listen, Sammie,” Charlie said, and from the tone of her voice I knew she was annoyed. “I’m having a little get-together here at the club and it’s just for my friends. So maybe you could show Eddie and Oscar to the door, like, pretty immediately after they arrive.”
“You’re having a party?” I asked Charlie. “What for?”
“It’s Saturday,” Ryan chimed in. “That’s party day for Charlie’s friends. Oh, I forgot. So are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And Sunday.”
“It’s not really a party,” Charlie said. “It’s more of a photo shoot.”
“A photo shoot!” Ryan laughed. “Just because you girls stand around taking pictures of yourselves trying to look like models does not make it a photo shoot.”
“For your information,” Charlie said, “we are having an actual fashion photographer here. Lauren has arranged it all.”
That shut Ryan up. Lauren Wadsworth, his sometimes girlfriend, who is rich and beautiful and popular and perfect, probably had her dad call up Seventeen and send over their best photographer.
Charlie got up from her beach lounger and gathered up her headband, sunglasses, and sunscreen from the side table.
“Everybody’s going to be here in half an hour,” she said to me. “So unless Alicia’s cousins are male models, I don’t think they’ll exactly fit in. Sorry, Sammie. I have dibs on the deck and patio.”
Charlie headed down the wooden path to the clubhouse and went into our apartment, letting the screen door slam behind her. I looked over at Ryan and shook my head.
“You’ve got to give her credit,” he said. “That girl is going places in the world. You and me, Sams, we’re just ordinary folk.”
“I am not ordinary,” I snapped, “and you’re not either, Ry. You’re the captain of the all-city volleyball team and I’m . . . I’m . . .”
“Sweaty,” he said, tossing me his terry wrist guard. “You might want to dab your upper lip.” Then he headed back out to the beach, tossing the volleyball in the air and setting it with his fingertips as he went.
When I went in the house and checked myself in the bathroom mirror, I discovered Ryan was right. I was a sweaty mess. I took a fast shower, threw on some shorts and a baggy, old, yellow T-shirt, and pulled my hair into a ponytail. When I came out of the bathroom, Charlie was still trying on outfits, figuring out what to wear to the photo shoot.
“Don’t wear white,” I said. “Makes you look ten pounds heavier.”
“Then I’ll look just like you,” she answered, and no sooner were the words out of her mouth than she let out a little gasp. “Oh, I didn’t mean it to come out that way, Sammie.”
“That’s okay,” I said, even though it actually wasn’t. “A fact is a fact. I weigh ten pounds more than you.” Actually, that fact wasn’t a fact, either, because I weigh twenty pounds more than Charlie.
“Doodle,” I heard GoGo call from the kitchen. “Alicia’s here.”
I ran out of our tiny bedroom, across the tiny living room, and into the tiny kitchen, all in about ten steps. Alicia was waiting for me at the kitchen counter, munching on some taco chips that GoGo was putting on a dip plate.
“Hi,” I said, giving Alicia a hug. “So where are these boys everyone’s talking about?”
“They’re on their way in,” she answered. “Oscar’s kind of a slowpoke. Wait until you meet them, Sammie. They’re so cute. And they’re identical, just like you and Charlie.”
“Wait . . . I won’t even be able to tell them apart?”
“Oh no, you’ll totally be able to tell them apart, trust me.”
That was a strange thing to say, but before I could ask what she meant by that, I saw Candido coming in from the parking lot, followed by a boy of about thirteen. He had long, jet-black hair that flopped casually over one eye and the whitest teeth I had ever seen. Alicia had lied—he wasn’t cute, he was awesomely gorgeous.
“This is my nephew Eddie,” Candido said. Eddie walked right up to me and stuck his hand out. He didn’t seem shy in the least.
“Hola,” he said.
“Does he speak English?” I asked.
“Sí, I do,” he said, and immediately I felt like a total idiot for not asking him directly. “My uncle and my cousin Alicia teach me every summer when they come to visit my country.”
He smiled at me with those gorgeous glistening white chompers, and I suddenly wished I had put on a better T-shirt.
If Eddie was this handsome, I couldn’t wait to meet his brother. Two of a good thing makes it doubly good. I didn’t have long to wait. Oscar came in from the parking lot wearing a blue and white soccer jersey. He had the same shiny black hair as his brother, the same sparkling teeth, the same adorable smile. But there was one major difference. Something was wrong with his leg. A major something.
