Finally – finally! – she was going to be performing again, playing the lead role in the long-delayed Big Movie Adaptation of Eternal Sunset! Not only was it glamorous, it was going to be the biggest acting challenge of her short career. She’d play immortal vampire identical twins who both fall in love with human – mortal – twin brothers. In the story, the vampire girls would seek out the reincarnated versions of their beloved humans every one hundred years, finding and falling in love with them all over again.
I hope I can pull it off, Olivia thought – not for the first time!
At least she wouldn’t have any problems getting into the right emotional state. She would be acting opposite Jackson Caulfield – world-famous teen idol, fantastic actor . . . and Olivia’s ex-boyfriend. She wasn’t sure that all her feelings for Jackson had totally disappeared since they’d broken up earlier in the summer. Her heart still skipped a beat whenever she saw his face, even on a magazine cover. And Jackson was on the cover of a lot of magazines.
It’s going to be great for my performance, less great for my love life.
Olivia wasn’t sure how she was going to handle any of this.
‘Back with Jackson again,’ Sophia murmured, interrupting Olivia’s thoughts. ‘How cool is it that you get a second bite at the cherry?’
Olivia could feel the heat coming off her blushing cheeks. Can Sophia actually see inside my head now?
‘The “cherry”?’ Ivy snorted with laughter. ‘No, it’s “second bite at the apple”.’
Sophia frowned at Ivy. ‘I’m sure it’s “cherry”,’ she said.
Ivy gave a huff of disbelief. ‘And how many times have you eaten a cherry that takes two bites?’
‘Well . . .’ Sophia shrugged. ‘I have to admit, you may have a point there. But cherries are better fruits anyway.’
Ivy’s mouth dropped open. ‘Are you crazy?’ she gasped, before launching into a full-on rant about cherries, while Sophia was just as vehement on the opposing side.
Olivia traded a glance with Brendan and they both grinned ruefully, settling back to enjoy the show. Only Ivy and Sophia could get into a serious debate about the ‘bite-able qualities’ of cherries versus apples. Once the two of them got started, they were unstoppable.
But soon, Olivia began to tune out their voices. Honestly, she had more than enough to think about right now. Back when she’d first been cast, it had meant everything to her that she was going to star opposite the same Hollywood megastar she had met and fallen in love with right here in her hometown. What she had not realised at the time was that it couldn’t last. When the film industry was hit with a strike, lots of movies were shut down – Eternal Sunset included. At first, Olivia had been relieved – she would have the time to properly prepare for the role, and would not have to up and leave Franklin Grove, and her family, behind.
But the strike also gave her and Jackson time to realise that they could grow apart. And they did.
Olivia had done the Hollywood scene now, and it confirmed for her where she belonged: right here in Franklin Grove. If only Jackson had felt the same. Her mouth twisted as she remembered their final split. As he’d toured around the world, they’d emailed less and less; their text messages had got shorter, the jokes more forced. Eventually, they both had no choice but to admit it wasn’t working any more. The memory wasn’t as painful as it had been but, still, she couldn’t help feeling sad.
I just wish I could know for sure that we made the right decision.
Sophia’s voice broke in with an all-too-painfully-relevant question: ‘So, will you rekindle your romance?’
Olivia’s mouth dropped open. Instinctively, she looked to Ivy for protection . . . but her twin just shrugged at her.
‘We’re just preparing you for the inevitable journalist questions,’ she said. ‘It’s for your own good – think of us as your personal publicists!’
Rolling her eyes, Olivia forced herself to relax. ‘I’ll always be glad to know Jackson,’ she said, and gave Sophia a gracious Hollywood smile.
Ivy gave her a thumbs-up of approval . . . then leapt in for a second prong of attack. ‘Will you know him as more than friends?’
Olivia widened her smile. ‘You can never have too many friends,’ she said sweetly. ‘And isn’t the weather in England lovely? Don’t you just love rain?’
Ivy collapsed into laughter. ‘Good job,’ she said. ‘I like your evasiveness. It’s practice for when you’re being hounded by gossip columns!’
Olivia shook her head. ‘I don’t think that’ll be any time soon. After all, this is my first starring role. I have a long way to go before I’m famous.’
‘Uh-uh.’ Sophia shook her head vigorously. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Olivia. People are already talking about you and Jackson! Everyone loves a beautiful couple, even a beautiful couple who are in splitsville.’
‘Especially a beautiful couple who are in splitsville,’ Ivy agreed. ‘What could be more fascinating? The magazines will all want to know exactly where you two are in your relationship.’
I only wish I knew that myself ! Olivia grimaced. There was so much unfinished business between her and Jackson, she couldn’t even begin to analyse it all. Even the way they’d broken up . . . she still didn’t completely understand what had happened. She’d been even more confused ever since Jackson had starting calling her again lately, sounding wistful as he talked about ‘the old days’.
‘Hey!’ A sharp voice interrupted her musing. It was the waitress, finally arriving. Her name-tag said ‘Joy’ . . . her face said that she hadn’t laughed in at least a year. ‘Are you ready to make your orders yet? Or are you just going to hang around chatting?’
Olivia blinked. Wow. I guess she really isn’t happy.
Sophia smiled calmly. ‘I’ll have a lamb burger with French fries, please.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Brendan smirked. ‘Well, I will see your lamb burger and fries, and I will raise you . . . a Burgel!’
Joy-the-waitress stared at him.
Brendan raised his hands as if he were accepting applause. ‘Yes, yes, that is a hamburger in a bagel. Traditionally eaten for breakfast, but . . . I’m feeling a little cavalier.’
As Ivy and Sophia chortled, Olivia just blinked. ‘Uh . . .’ She looked around the three grinning faces. ‘What exactly is going on?’
‘It’s a new game we’re playing.’ Ivy dug Brendan in the ribs. ‘We like to call it . . . “raising the steaks”!’
Olivia frowned. ‘Raising the stakes?’
‘You know,’ Sophia said. ‘Meat . . . steaks . . . and . . .’ Twisting her body to hide the movement from the waitress’s eyesight, she crooked her fingers in a ‘fangs’ gesture that definitely meant vampires. ‘The person to order the weirdest, meatiest thing on the menu wins.’
Olivia snickered. ‘Sounds . . . “fun”.’
‘You wanna hurry it along, folks?’ Joy’s face looked as sour as if she’d bitten into a lemon. ‘Or am I going to grow old and die while waiting for one more wonderful pun?’
Ivy scooped up her menu. ‘I will see Brendan’s Burgel and raise him a . . . um . . . er . . .’
Olivia leaned over to scour the menu at the same time as her twin. ‘Wow,’ she breathed. ‘I can’t believe it. The Burgel really is listed!’
‘And it’s the most ridiculous thing on there,’ Ivy moaned. ‘How am I supposed to top that?’
‘Yes!’ Brendan pumped his fist. ‘I win!’
‘Not so fast, Buster.’ Ivy smacked down the menu with a look of triumph. ‘Because I will have . . . a doughger!’
‘A what?’ four voices chorused at once.
Ivy beamed at the whole group. ‘A hamburger,’ she said, ‘inside a doughnut!’
‘Oh, please.’ Joy rolled her eyes even as she wrote the order down. ‘And for you?’ She turned to Olivia, her expression weary. ‘Let me guess. A hamburger in a brownie? Or in an ice-cream cone?’
‘No, thank you.’ Olivia smiled. ‘I’ll just have a ch
ickpea salad.’
Joy blinked rapidly. ‘Could you repeat that order, please? I don’t think I got that.’
Olivia repeated it calmly, while her three vampire friends covered their mouths to keep from laughing. Joy sighed as she turned away. She stopped after a few steps, turning to call back:
‘I forgot to ask. How would you kids like your burgers?’
Olivia shook her head. As if she had to ask.
All three vampires chorused as one: ‘Rare.’
Half an hour later, Olivia set down her spoon and looked around the table.
Ivy was lolling in her seat, clutching her stomach. ‘Why didn’t anybody stop me from eating that doughger?’
Brendan had his arm around Ivy and was grinning as he teased her. ‘We didn’t dare. You and that doughger had a special thing going!’
Sophia was drawing fashion designs on her napkin with a bat-winged fountain pen. Olivia smiled around at all of them and stood, picking up her beaded purse. ‘OK,’ she said, giving a little wave. ‘See ya.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Sophia dropped her pen. She turned from Olivia to Ivy and then back again, shaking her head. ‘That’s it? Olivia Abbott, you are going to be in other countries for quite some time. Is that really all you can say? “See ya”?’
‘Well . . .’ Olivia shrugged, still smiling.
‘It has to be bigger than that!’ Sophia said. ‘Think of Ivy!’
Olivia looked at her twin . . . and they both burst out laughing.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ivy said to Sophia. ‘We worked this out ahead of time. We are so done with the big, sad, sappy goodbyes. We’ve had way too many of them recently.’
‘We don’t need them any more,’ Olivia said, as she and her twin exchanged warm smiles. They had been through a lot this past year – but that had just confirmed exactly how strong their bond was.
‘If there’s one thing we both learned from eighth grade,’ she said, ‘it’s that the two of us drifting apart is pretty much impossible!’
‘That’s right,’ Ivy said. She lifted one hand in a wave. ‘See you later, twin.’
Olivia was still smiling as she stepped out of the Meat and Greet a minute later. As the front door closed behind her, she cast a last look over the familiar shop fronts of Franklin Grove – the town she wouldn’t be seeing for quite a while, just as Sophia had pointed out.
I really wish she hadn’t said that.
Olivia took a deep breath, feeling a sudden heaviness in her chest.
This is good. It’s wonderful. Because of this movie, I’m going to see the world!
But would things be different when she finally made it back?
She couldn’t help it. She looked back over her shoulder . . . and found Ivy looking right at her through the diner window.
Ivy gave a little nod, just as if she had read Olivia’s mind and was letting her know: Everything’s going to be OK.
Olivia felt her shoulders slump in relief. Ivy’s always right about this kind of thing.
With one last smile for her sister, she turned and walked quickly home. She had packing to finish and a movie to make!
Chapter Two
Brrrring!
The shrill sound of the alarm clock sent Ivy jerking upright. Her head hit the lid of her coffin-bed. Ouch! As she sat up, rubbing her head, she groaned. Welcome to ninth grade, huh?
It was pitch black inside the coffin-bed, but Ivy didn’t need to see the clock face to know exactly what time it was: Ridiculous O’clock!
Any other day, she would have turned over and gone right back to sleep. Today, though . . . Dad will just come and get me otherwise.
She yawned and pushed the lid open. It creaked softly. She kept her eyes closed against the dawn light streaming in from her bedroom window.
Ivy hadn’t thought anyone could be more nervous about her first day of high school than she was, but Mr Vega had proved her wrong. Her dad had insisted on the insanely early wake-up so that they could go over their ‘plan of assimilation’ before school. Worse yet, Ivy was pretty sure that he was right to be worried.
Because Franklin Grove High School was on the north edge of town, Ivy was going to meet a lot of new kids from Lincoln Vale, the next town over – kids who had not grown up with vampires in their midst! Kids who would ask questions that Franklin Grove’s youngsters just didn’t:
Why are these goths faster, more agile and stronger than most other boys and girls their age? Why do the goths from Franklin Grove stay so pale, even in summer? How can anyone eat a burger so rare?
The Franklin Grove goth kids were going to seem really, really strange to their new classmates from Lincoln Vale, and this was totally freaking out Ivy’s dad. The First Law of the Night ordered that a vampire never revealed their true self to an outsider. But the students at Franklin Grove Middle had become so used to the odd spurt of speed or the super-quick catch of a ball that they’d stopped noticing. The same wouldn’t be true at Franklin Grove High. Ivy and her friends were going to have to be extra careful . . .
‘You don’t want to be caught out,’ her dad had warned her, his face even paler than usual. ‘It could have disastrous consequences for the whole vampire community. Do you understand the seriousness of the situation?’
Oh, Ivy understood all too well. She wasn’t just starting at a new school – she was putting her vampire identity on the line. Along with the extra homework, she’d need to be extra vigilant.
Ivy groaned and clambered out of her coffin, the morning light hurting her sleep-deprived eyes. Ha. She gave a pained laugh at the irony. I’ve never felt more like a vampire than I do right now!
She was still rubbing her bleary eyes as she padded downstairs to the kitchen. In the doorway, she stopped dead. Am I still asleep? She rubbed her eyes and looked again. The sight that met her eyes was the same. No way! She gently slapped her own face. I have got to be dreaming!
Maybe marriage had changed her dad . . . but no way would her father ever sit at the kitchen table in a football jersey, with a backwards baseball cap on his head!
I must be in the middle of a spectacularly strange nightmare!
‘Excuse me.’
At the sound of Lillian’s familiar voice behind her, Ivy sagged with relief. Thank goodness. She’ll take care of this madness!
She turned around – and gasped.
It might have been Lillian’s voice she’d heard, but it sure wasn’t elegant, confident Lillian she saw before her. Instead, she saw a mouse of a woman in silly pigtails, with bookish glasses propped on her nose, textbooks tucked under one arm. As Ivy gaped in disbelief, the woman with Lillian’s voice ducked her head and whispered a shy, ‘Excuse me,’ trying to get past Ivy into the kitchen.
‘What is going on?!’ Ivy’s voice rose into a shriek. ‘Did I wake up in Upside-Down Land? What are you two doing? And where did you get props from? And those costumes, oh my darkness – Lillian, do you even know how much Olivia would freak out if she saw those horrific sweater-vests?’
Lillian grinned and patted her textbooks as she set them down on the table. ‘Think of it as a rehearsal. Your dad and I decided we should do some role-play to help you prepare for interacting with the other kids at high school.’
‘And you couldn’t have warned me first?’ Ivy shook her head numbly as she sank down into her seat at the table. ‘I can’t be expected to deal with this kind of thing – I haven’t even eaten my Marshmallow Platelets yet!’
‘He-e-ey now!’ Charles drawled. Hearing the dumb-jock tone in his usually precise voice made Ivy’s head spin. ‘This is deadly serious, dudette! You cannot be taken by surprise when you get there. High school can be, like, so totally, totally lethal!’
‘Did you seriously just refer to me as “dudette”?’ Ivy put one hand over her eyes. ‘Please say I was imagining that. I have to have imagined that part. Or maybe I really am still asleep in my coffin.’
‘Seriously,’ Lillian repeated, ‘there will be a lot of new faces. Like, a l
ot. You should definitely think about how you’re going to cope with so many extra bunnies.’
‘Gaah.’ Ivy groaned and reached for her box of Marshmallow Platelets.
This was going to be a long morning. She needed all the help she could get.
‘I’ll go through with this dumb role-play if it’ll make you guys happy,’ she said, giving her dad and step-mom a weary look. ‘But, I’m telling you, if I can cope with Charlotte Brown and her cheerleader cronies, with their perma-smiles, I can definitely cope with anything this new school throws at me.’
I think.
Suddenly, she was assailed by visions of a hallway full of perky bunnies . . . and all of their faces twisting in disgust as she walked past them. Euch.
Ivy swallowed hard and concentrated on pouring her Marshmallow Platelets into a bowl, while she felt both her dad and step-mom watching her like hyper-anxious hawks.
Who knew the Wallachia Academy Experience would ever feel like a fond memory?
Promptly at eight a.m., Ivy was sitting outside her house, waiting for her ride to school and feeling like James Bond going undercover.
The week before, Lillian had shopped with her like a fashion master, helping her tear through the stores until they’d found the perfect subtle goth clothes. They were still ‘Ivy’ in style, but nothing that would catch the eye of Lincoln Vale bunnies as being too alternative. Now, she was dressed in all greys instead of blacks, from her deep grey dress, embroidered with a tasteful silver bat, to her soft, dove-grey tights. Her eyes were still lined with kohl, but she’d even changed her usual black nail polish for sparkling silver.
The one thing she had flat-out refused to change was her bat ring. It had been a gift from Brendan when she’d first returned from the Wallachia Academy, and she’d never agree to take it off. It goes where I go!
Now Ivy twisted it nervously around her finger as she waited for the bus. For the first time in her life, Undertaker Hill didn’t feel quite safe. Instead, it felt eerily silent, apart from the sound of the school bus that her vampire ears told her was only one street away. Not long now. It was already on its unstoppable charge towards her . . . and then it would take her all the way to school.
13 Double Disaster - My Sister the Vampire Page 2
