Double or Nothing with the Two and Only Kelly Twins

by Johanna Hurwitz

  When the mothers were gone, Ilene turned to Roberta. “I have extra pajamas I could lend you if you stay here,” she offered.

  Then Ilene remembered that Claudia and Roberta had a huge dollhouse that their father had made for them. If there were just two girls in the room instead of four she’d get more turns playing with it. Maybe she could bring one of her dolls from home to visit the dollhouse just like she would be visiting Roberta’s house. The doll would have a sleepover, too. Ilene giggled to herself.

  “If you have a rotten time, you’ll never have to sleep over again,” Roberta promised. “But I know it will be fun. I know you’ll have a really good time.”

  “Will you sleep over here sometime?” Ilene asked Roberta.

  “Yes,” said Roberta.

  So in the end, Ilene packed an overnight bag with her pajamas, her toothbrush and hairbrush, and one of her favorite dolls. Mrs. Best drove her and Roberta to the Best house. Dinner at the Kelly house was spaghetti and meatballs. And — surprise, surprise — dinner at the Best house was spaghetti and meatballs, too. All four girls had the same favorite dinner.

  Arlene and Claudia decorated cupcakes for dessert. Ilene and Roberta made ice-cream sundaes.

  Arlene and Claudia watched a funny movie, played with the ferrets, worked on a jigsaw puzzle, and played music and danced. Ilene and Roberta played with the dollhouse, painted with watercolors, watched a cartoon, and had a pillow fight. Ilene taught Roberta a game that she and Arlene had made up: the two girls had a staring contest, and whoever laughed first lost. Arlene taught Claudia that very same game.

  All four girls washed their hands and faces. All four girls brushed their teeth and put on their pajamas. Ilene got into Claudia’s bed at the Best house and Claudia got into Ilene’s bed at the Kelly house. All four girls stayed awake talking and giggling for at least another hour — maybe it was two.

  None of the parents knew for sure. They’d already fallen asleep.

  Now that they were in second grade, Arlene and Ilene were learning about poetry. It was part of their language arts studies.

  Arlene’s teacher, Mrs. Storch, explained that nursery rhymes were poetry. Then she asked her students to think of rhymes that they might remember from when they were little. At first, no one raised a hand.

  “Let me give you a hint,” said Mrs. Storch. “How about Jack and Jill went up the . . .”

  “Hill!” most of the students shouted out.

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Storch. “Now can you think of any others?”

  “‘Three Blind Mice.’”

  “‘Hickory Dickory Dock.’”

  “‘Humpty Dumpty.’”

  Suddenly everyone in the class could remember a nursery rhyme. It was an exciting surprise to discover that they already knew poetry.

  Meanwhile, in Ilene’s second-grade class, Ms. Frost explained that poetry could be very short or very long. The teacher read a few poems aloud.

  The biggest surprise was that one poem was written by a man named Robert Frost.

  “Is he your brother?” one of the boys called out.

  Ms. Frost laughed. “No. It’s just a coincidence that Robert Frost and I have the same last name.”

  “Is he your husband?” asked another student.

  “No, no. He’s no relation at all,” said Ms. Frost.

  Still, no matter what Ms. Frost said, most of the students were certain that the poet Robert Frost was her relative. Why else would she have picked one of his poems to read?

  Ilene and her classmates copied some poems into their notebooks. Others they memorized.

  “Listen to what I learned in school today,” Ilene told her family at supper.

  “A bird came down the walk:

  He did not know I saw;

  He bit an angle-worm in halves

  And ate the fellow, raw.”

  “Yuck,” said Arlene. She had just cut a piece of chicken cutlet and put it on her fork. “I wouldn’t want to eat a raw worm.”

  “I wouldn’t want to eat a cooked worm, either,” said Ilene, “but I like that poem. It’s funny. And it’s easy to remember because it rhymes.”

  “Do you know who wrote it?” asked Mr. Kelly.

  “A lady named Emily something,” said Ilene. “I remember her name was Emily because there’s an Emily in my class.”

  “There’s a famous poet named Emily Dickinson,” said Mrs. Kelly.

  “That’s who it was.” Ilene remembered now. “The poet was named Emily Dickinson.”

  The next day, Ms. Frost taught Ilene’s class about very, very short poems called haiku. Each poem had exactly three lines. No more. No less. Ms. Frost read several haiku to her students. The first line and the third line had exactly five syllables each. The middle line always had exactly seven syllables. The three lines didn’t have to rhyme. Even so, Ilene knew it wouldn’t be that easy to write one. Her homework was to write a haiku.

  “All haiku are about nature,” Ms. Frost pointed out. “For example, it could be about a season or the weather.”

  “How about trees?” asked one student.

  “Or flowers?” asked one of the girls.

  “Or dogs?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes,” said Ms. Frost. “Those are all good ideas.”

  “We could write a haiku about snow,” said Roberta.

  “Or frost,” said Ilene.

  Everyone laughed. Imagine writing a poem about their teacher!

  Arlene came home with a different poetry assignment. She didn’t have to write a poem, but she had to find one from a book. “Pick out and copy down a poem about something you can touch,” Mrs. Storch had told her students.

  “I don’t think it’s very fair,” said Ilene when she heard what Arlene’s homework was. “It’s so much easier to pick out a poem somebody else wrote than to write one yourself.”

  Arlene grinned. “I guess it’s my lucky day,” she said. Then she added, “I’ll help you write your haiku if you want.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Ilene said. She was glad to have a sister to help her. “I guess it’s my lucky day, too.”

  With Arlene’s help, Ilene had a haiku written by the end of the week.

  When it snows and snows

  I feel it on my toes and

  Also on my nose.

  It was Arlene who suggested that the word “and” could be part of the second line to make the three lines have the right number of syllables.

  Then, just for fun, the two girls wrote another poem together.

  I have a sister —

  She is my twin.

  She’s not very fat,

  And she’s not very thin.

  When I look at her,

  What do I see?

  She’s just like a mirror.

  I see me.

  Arlene’s easy homework turned out not to be so easy after all. Mrs. Kelly took her daughters to the public library, where Arlene could look through lots of poetry books. Four of Arlene’s classmates were at the library working on the assignment, too. They were all looking for the perfect poem about something that could be touched: daffodils, pussy willows, dandelions. Arlene wanted something more exciting than flowers.

  She looked through three books before she found the perfect poem. She was sure that no one else would ever select it. The poem was by a man named William Blake and was called “The Tyger.” Even though the poet spelled the name of the animal in an odd way, Arlene knew he was writing about a tiger.

  “I have it,” she told Ilene, and showed her the page.

  “A tyger?” said Ilene after reading the poem. “You can’t touch a tiger. It’s too dangerous. It would be impossible. Besides, there aren’t any around here so how could you possibly touch one?”

  Arlene was disappointed. She loved the tiger poem and didn’t want to copy down a poem about daffodils.

  Ilene saw how sad her sister looked. “Daffodils are very pretty,” she said.

  Arlene sat staring at the words on the page in the poet
ry book. Ilene sat next to her and tried hard to think of a way to help her sister. How could one possibly touch a tiger?

  And then, Arlene suddenly got an idea. Almost at the same time, Ilene got an idea, too. They whispered and giggled together as Arlene began copying the tiger poem.

  When she handed in her homework on Friday, Mrs. Storch shook her head. “This is a wonderful poem,” she told Arlene. “And it’s very famous. But you forgot about my instructions. You can’t touch a tiger.”

  Arlene grinned. She was able to tell her teacher that there were not one or two or even three ways to touch a tiger. She listed four ways that a person could touch a tiger: “When he’s a baby, when he’s sleeping, when he’s dead, and with a stick.”

  For a moment, Mrs. Storch was speechless. Then she started laughing. “I’ve been teaching for many years, and no one has ever come up with that argument,” she said. “You’re very clever to figure that out.”

  Arlene smiled happily at Mrs. Storch. She bet even William Blake wouldn’t have thought of four ways to touch a tiger.

  Among the girls in Arlene’s class and those in Ilene’s class, some had very long hair. Hannah Ross wore her blond hair in a long ponytail, Sophie Sheehan usually wore her brown hair loose, and Ellen Miller had pigtails like Arlene and Ilene, but hers were much longer. The sisters admired the hairstyles of their classmates, but they were satisfied with their small pigtails. Having shorter hair meant that it didn’t take too long to dry after they washed it. And having shorter hair meant it didn’t get tangled and need lots of brushing. Of course, the sisters knew that they didn’t always have to wear their hair in the same way. Each could change her look if she wanted. Arlene sometimes wondered what she would look like with long, long hair. She imagined moving her head and having her hair swing back and forth. That would be so neat. Still, she just wasn’t ready to let her hair start growing out yet. Then one day their hair situation changed.

  It began when Mrs. Kelly noticed Ilene scratching her head as she was doing her homework.

  “Stop poking at your head,” she told her daughter. “You just had a shampoo last night.”

  “I can’t help it,” said Ilene. “My head is itchy.”

  “I feel itchy, too,” agreed Arlene. She scratched the top of her head.

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Kelly. “I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means.” She parted Ilene’s hair with her fingers and looked.

  “Oh, no,” she said again.

  “What is it?” asked Ilene.

  “I think you have head lice,” she told her daughter.

  “Lice! Yuck!” said Ilene with a shudder.

  “What about me? Do I have lice, too?” asked Arlene with concern.

  “Probably,” said her mom. She looked at Arlene’s scalp, and then she sighed. “The answer is yes.”

  “Well, we’re twins,” Ilene reminded Mrs. Kelly. “We always do the same thing.” It was absolutely the most awful thing in the world to have lice, Ilene thought. But it was a big, big relief to her that Arlene had them, too. At least her sister couldn’t tease her about them. Not when she had them herself.

  “This is a good example of a time when it would be good not to do everything alike,” said Mrs. Kelly with a sigh. “But we’re going to take care of this situation as fast as we can. Get your jackets. We’re going to the drugstore right now. There is a special shampoo that we can buy to get rid of the lice.”

  Mrs. Kelly turned off the stove where she had been preparing dinner.

  So even before dinner, Arlene and Ilene washed their hair for the second night in a row. They wore clean pajamas, and Mrs. Kelly changed the sheets and pillowcases on their beds. Their blankets went into the washing machine. “Such tiny bugs, but they sure cause a lot of work,” Mrs. Kelly complained.

  “Where did we get them?” asked Arlene. “Did I catch them from Ilene?”

  “Maybe I caught them from Arlene,” said Ilene.

  “Who knows?” said their mom. “There may well be many cases of them at your school.”

  The next day at school, the sisters each secretly presented their teachers with a note from their mother.

  Ilene’s teacher, Ms. Frost, read the note and made an announcement at once. “There’s a possibility that some of you, most likely girls because you have longer hair than the boys, have been exposed to head lice.”

  Ilene was pleased that her teacher hadn’t singled her out.

  The boys all grinned at one another. “Thank goodness I’m not a girl,” one of them called out.

  “No. You’re wrong there,” said Mrs. Frost. “Lice don’t care if they live on the scalp of a girl or a boy. So there is equal chance that everyone here has some uninvited guests on their heads.”

  “Gross!” said someone. Everyone felt the same.

  In her classroom, Arlene blushed when Mrs. Storch made the annoucement. Luckily no one knew that she had those little creatures in her hair. Maybe they were gone by now, she hoped. She looked over at Claudia. If Claudia and Roberta and their brother, Simon, all had lice, their mom would really have a huge load of laundry to do.

  Before the morning was over, Mrs. Robbins, the school nurse, examined every second-grader’s head. Not just girls but boys too. Then she made an announcement in each classroom.

  “Most of you have head lice. I’m going to give every student a note to take home. There is a brand of shampoo that your parents can buy at the drugstore without a prescription. If you follow the directions on the shampoo bottle, you should be able to get rid of the lice within a few days. If you don’t all follow the instructions and wash with this special shampoo, you may re-infect your classmates. So it’s very important to take care of this situation at once.”

  Cindy Webb started crying. “I don’t want to have bugs on my head,” she sobbed.

  “No one wants to have bugs,” Ms. Frost said. She gave Cindy a tissue. “Please don’t cry,” she begged. “Or else I might start crying, too.”

  “Do you have bugs?” Monty asked Ms. Frost.

  Ms. Frost sat down and Mrs. Robbins examined her scalp. Mrs. Robbins nodded.

  “When a teacher sits down and goes over a workbook or a reading lesson with a student, their heads are close together,” Mrs. Robbins explained. “These lice are good jumpers, so they can jump from head to head.”

  “I can’t wait for school to be over so I can go buy that shampoo,” Ms. Frost said.

  Kids always say they can’t wait for school to be over, but it was the first time Ilene had ever heard a teacher say that.

  “And I’m going to get myself a short haircut, too,” she announced.

  That gave Ilene an idea.

  “Can we get a haircut?” Ilene asked her mother when they went home.

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Mrs. Kelly said after reading the school nurse’s note.

  “Do I have to get my hair cut?” asked Arlene as they went to the local hair salon.

  “No. It’s up to you,” her mother said.

  There were eight girls and two boys ahead of them. So instead of waiting, Mrs. Kelly took the girls to the barber shop where Mr. Kelly got his hair cut. There was only one man there ahead of them. He was getting the few hairs along the bottom of his head trimmed.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are,” Mrs. Kelly said to the balding man as he got out of the barber’s chair.

  “We have head lice,” Arlene announced.

  The bald man rubbed his hairless scalp and smiled. “I guess that just shows there’s a good side to everything,” he said.

  Mrs. Kelly thought the barber might not want to touch Ilene’s head. But that wasn’t the case.

  “Who’s first?” he asked the girls. “I give a lot of crew cuts when the head lice strike.”

  “I don’t want a crew cut,” said Ilene as she climbed up into the barber’s chair.

  “Just joking,” the barber assured the girls. He removed the rubber bands from Ilene’s little pigtails and combed out her h
air. “Trust me,” said the barber. “No one has ever left my shop without smiling.” He showed Ilene a picture of a girl with very short hair. “You’d look good with this style.”

  Ilene studied the picture. She liked it, so she nodded in agreement.

  Arlene just watched as the barber snipped away at her sister’s hair. Soon Ilene had a short pixie hairdo. She looked very cute.

  Arlene looked at her sister’s head. She had never considered having a pixie hairdo, but it suddenly seemed like the most wonderful style she had ever seen.

  “I want my hair cut exactly like that,” Arlene said to the barber.

  “Are you sure?” asked Mrs. Kelly. “This is a great chance to change your look. You don’t have to look like Ilene.”

  “I’m sure,” said Arlene, pointing to Ilene. “That’s the way I want my hair cut, too.”

  There would be plenty of time in the years ahead for her to look different from Ilene.

  The next day, Arlene arrived at school to discover that half the girls in her class had new haircuts, too. Ellen Miller hadn’t cut her hair, but she was wearing it in a pair of tight braids. And there was even someone else, besides Arlene, with a pixie haircut. It was her teacher, Mrs. Storch.

  There were a lot of new looks in Ilene’s class, too.

  A new idea was beginning to develop inside each pixie-haired twin’s head. Arlene and Ilene didn’t always have to be mirror images of each other. Maybe next time they went shopping, they would pick clothes that didn’t match. Maybe they would try different colors as well as different styles. No matter what they wore, however, or how their hair was cut, Arlene and Ilene would always be sisters. They would always be twins.

  JOHANNA HURWITZ loves books, and no wonder! Her parents met in a bookstore. When she was young, they read Stuart Little aloud to her, and E. B. White is still one of her favorite writers. She embarked on her own writing career when she was just eight years old but would be thirty-eight before her first book was published. She is now the author of more than seventy books, including the Mostly Monty books, the beloved Riverside Kids series, and the first book about Ilene and Arlene, The Two and Only Kelly Twins.