They were sitting on the little bench at the side of the tennis court. Beth, visibly shaken, passed Cam the water bottle, and urged her to drink. "You're probably just dehydrated," she ventured. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with you. A spooky thing happened, that's all. Anyone would be freaked if they came face-to-face with—"
"It's not just that," Cam said reluctantly.
"Of course it is! Camryn Alicia Barnes, you are the most totally together person in the whole world. I have firsthand knowledge of that, being the best friend of the most totally—"
"I saw a face, all pasty white, a creature," Cam started.
"—together person in the... a creature? Oh, you mean Alex. Well, her hair was monstrous, but calling her a creature—"
"Beth, please listen," Cam urged. "In the stands. At the game. That's why I didn't make the goal. Something happened, something is wrong with me."
"You just choked. It's unusual for you, but it happens to the best of us. Which, may I remind you, defines you. The best of—"
"I didn't choke. I saw a face in the stands, and I just knew—"
"A bleacher-creature? That's what lost the game for us?" Beth studied Cam skeptically.
"And I knew something was about to happen. Something bad."
Beth cleared her throat. "Let's review. We're about to win the most important game of our soccer careers. You're in position to nail it for us. But instead of kicking the ball, something forces you to look up into the stands. Where you see—what? A pasty-white, uh, creature. And so you freeze. Well, who wouldn't?" Beth dabbed gently at Cam's flushed face with a towel. "And then, I'm thinking aloud here, this old man—what? Kidnaps Marleigh? Is that about it?"
Cam didn't respond.
"Cami," Beth added, "can you hear how that sounds?"
"The old guy didn't kidnap Marleigh. It... he... was trying to tell me something. Warn me that she was in danger. Beth, it's not as if this hasn't happened before. I even told you about it."
Beth scrunched her forehead. "You did?"
"Back in fourth grade, remember, about the bony-faced guy from my dreams? The one who called me Apolla? My parents said it was just a bad dream—"
"I vote for that one," Beth interrupted, trying to lighten the moment.
"You didn't believe me then. You still don't." Cam shook her head. "But what about my premonitions? How sometimes I can, you know, like 'see' what's going to happen. Isn't that kind of the same thing as seeing someone?"
Beth thought about it. "I don't know, Cami—"
"Remember last fall?"
"I was just thinking about that," Beth confessed. "You totally saved my life."
They had been on their way home from school on a street red and yellow with crunchy fallen leaves. Beth stepped off the curb. At the exact same moment, Cam saw what she could not have seen. And grabbed Beth's arm. And yanked her back.
A nanosecond later, an out-of-control car screeched around the corner and totally destroyed, ripped to pieces, the backpack Beth had dropped.
One backpack-turned-roadkill. One friend saved. Thanks to Cam's "seeing" the car seconds before it rounded the corner.
The two of them had stood there on the leaf-thick sidewalk, screaming, shaking, hugging each other, hearts thudding with panic and relief.
In a funny way, Cam felt a lot like she had that day. Now, too, she sensed that something was coming, screeching around the corner, speeding unstoppably toward her. Something even stranger than having a nightmare come true; more important than saving your best friend's life.
Her mom was gone by the time Alex woke up the next morning. So was the letter from the clinic. On the kitchen table, there was a crusty sweet roll her mother had probably snagged at the diner last night, a couple of orange slices, and a note asking if Alex could please catch a ride to work with Evan or Lucinda. It was signed with five X'd kisses and a blot of purple lipstick.
Which for some dumb reason made Alex want to cry. It was all she could do not to pick up the stupid note and press the dorky imprint of her mother's lips against her own.
By the time she climbed into Evan's pickup, Alex had decided not to talk about her mom's condition. It wasn't exactly a decision. It was more like a superstition. It wouldn't be real unless she said it aloud.
They drove to Big Sky saying the usual dumb things. Evan led off with "Another day, another dollar-fifty." But instead of getting annoyed at his lame sense of humor, Alex was grateful. She'd had enough surprises. Ordinary was fine with her today.
And ordinary it was. No emergency phone calls from her mom. No rides self-destructing. No sudden appearance of clones from across the country. Not for three whole days. Then, on Sunday, Lucinda brought Alex's midafternoon junk-food rations to the back door of the ticket booth. A bag of greasy fries and a trickle of warm cola, floating brown and flat, in a cup of chipped ice.
"Hey, what happened to that hunch of yours?" Alex chose that exact moment to rag on Luce. "Where's the Boston bean queen, or did you have an ESP meltdown?"
Shoving the cardboard tray at Alex, Lucinda grumbled, "Very funny. Oh, and by the way, thanks for being such a fabulous friend, Lucinda, and bringing me a snack." Then she stalked away.
"Thanks, Luce," Alex, embarrassed, called after her. Then she turned back to the ticket window and looked up.
Her very own face stared back at her from the other side of the booth. It was Camryn.
"I know you're busy," she blurted, "and we're on the way to the airport. I just wanted to..."She let it trail, shrugged, pushed a piece of paper through the window slot at Alex, and took off.
Chapter 12 — Moms Don't Lie
The file in her dad's study was labeled FAMILY PAPERS.
That's the one, Cam thought. If my birth certificate is anywhere in this house, it'll be in this file.
Ever since she'd gotten back to Marble Bay three days ago she was on a mission. Mission: idiotic, that is. As if she needed proof of what she already knew, proof that would get Beth off her back.
She was Camryn Alicia Barnes, daughter of Emily and David Barnes. Born to them on October 31. Beth was wrong, wrong, wrong to suspect anything but. Like she was adopted. Right. Like she had a twin!
So false was this "investigation," she couldn't even admit to her parents she was doing it. So she'd waited until they were out of the house to do her sleuthing.
Already, she'd rifled through tons of old baby pictures. She hadn't come across any of her mom pregnant, but that proved exactly what? Her mom was camera-shy when expecting? No great revelation.
She had unearthed Dylan's "at birth" shot, taken in the hospital, a wrinkled little red-faced infant swathed in a blue baby blanket. That there wasn't a matching one of her didn't freak her. It was somewhere, no doubt.
Now, Cam eyeballed the contents of the file. As advertised, there were several significant family documents. The deed to the house. Her parents' marriage certificate. Her granddad's will. Stocks, bonds, money stuff. And, score! A birth certificate!
As Cam started to unfold it, her cell phone rang, startling her. She nearly jumped out of her skin.
Alex, she thought. Then she realized, with a start, that she'd been expecting to hear from Montana-girl. Well, half expecting, anyway. Not really. It was just a slim possibility.
The day the vacation ended, Cam had been seized by a wild impulse. With the excuse that she thought she wanted to buy a souvenir for Dylan, she'd talked her parents into swinging by the park on the way to the airport. With the minivan purring outside the gate, she'd run up to the ticket booth and slipped a piece of paper to the girl behind the window. On it Cam had scrawled her full name, birthday, e-mail, landline and cell. Without explanation, she'd shoved the paper at Alex.
Alexandra. The girl with her face. The girl with whom she'd... she'd what? Whispered witchy rhymes, stopped an accident, saved a family?
No way, Cam reminded herself. It never happened. It was just another eerie episode in her increasingly weird life.
Stil
l she'd been waiting for the call. She'd compulsively kept her phone at her side and checked her e-mail hourly. So far, zilch.
Except now. Cam braced herself and hit the TALK button.
"Where on earth is Camryn Sandiego?"
So much for premonitions, Cam thought, instantly recognizing Beth's teasing voice.
Cam laughed nervously. "Channeling Bree much?" Their bud Brianna was the one always riffing on Cam's name.
"Speaking of Bree," Beth responded, "and the rest of our friends, you remember them. Names like Kristen, Sukari, Amanda? Everyone wants to know where you've been hiding. You've become a phantom since we got home. Report your location—longitude and latitude, please?"
"I'm home. Where else would I be?"
"And answering the phone is, what, too far to stretch? I've been texting, and just tried your land line."
"Hmmm, I thought the phone might be screwy," Cam lied, feeling as if Beth could see her, had caught her rifling through her parents' private papers. "Anyway, I'm glad it worked this time. So what is up?"
"That's the question, Cami. What is up? No one's heard from you. You're not returning messages—"
"Come on, Beth, it's just that I've been, you know, busy."
Preoccupied was more like it. Trying to find her birth certificate. Trying to pretend that Alex didn't exist... while hoping she'd call. Trying to remember for the police, who were interviewing everyone who'd spoken with the still-missing Marleigh Cooper, exactly what she'd seen the day of the finals. Without, of course, mentioning the nightmare man.
"Cam," Beth asked gently, "you're not still mad at me, are you?"
"For what?"
On the other end of the phone, Beth sighed. "You know."
Of course she did. For insisting that Alex, a complete stranger, had to be Cam's twin. For planting the seed of doubt in Cam's own mind. For just... doing what a bff—best friend forever—would do: say what was really on her mind. Tell the truth. Try to be supportive.
"Even if I was mad at you," Cam rushed to reassure Beth. "You know, where you're concerned, I'm incapable of holding a grudge—"
"Prove it. Meet me for pizza in fifteen."
"Wait!" Cam laughed. "I hear something. Aha! The sound of my stomach rumbling. Okay, Fish, give me and my humongo appetite twenty minutes, and we'll meet you at PITS."
Her spirits high, Cam hung up and finally looked at the birth certificate in her hand. It read, "Dylan Michael Barnes." Stashing it back in the file, she zipped through all the other papers. Not one was her birth certificate.
Pie in the Sky, aka PITS, had been a hangout for Cam and her friends since the beginning of junior high. Because the gang totaled a half dozen—besides Cam, Beth, and Brianna, there was Kristen, Sukari Woodard, and Amanda Carter—Cam's dad had tagged them the "Six Pack." The label had stuck.
"So is everyone annoyed at me, or what?" Cam, sitting in a booth across from Beth, fiddled with her phone, making sure it was on and powered up. Just in case.
"I covered for you," Beth responded, sipping her soda. "Told them you had to do the mother-daughter bonding thing—you know, since Dylan's away for a while. They totally bought it. Everyone knows how tight you and your mom are."
Cam eyed her knowingly. "And sort of insinuated I'm not ready to face anyone since I blew the game?"
"Posttraumatic soccer stress—they bought it," Beth admitted. "And, no, I never mentioned she-who-shall-be-nameless, your Montana mirror image. I'll leave that to you." She smiled, shrugging. "They wouldn't have believed me, anyway."
"Thanks, Bethie," Cam said gratefully.
Beth shrugged and toyed with her straw. "Anyway, everyone's consumed with trying to figure out what happened to Marleigh Cooper."
"Yeah, there's a motion to rename the town 'Marleigh Bay.'" Their waiter, a tall, dark-haired boy with a cute, almost-shy smile, had arrived and inserted himself into the convo.
For some weird reason, Beth lit up. "You-so-clever, Jason." Then she kicked Cam, a signal that Cam basically didn't get. So she ignored it and began to order. "We'll do the half veggie pie and—"
"Half extra cheese," Jason finished for her. "Comin' right up." He left, still smiling.
"How'd he know that?"
Beth rolled her eyes. "Figure it out."
"Sorry." Cam laughed. "Flight figure-it-out is way overbooked. I'll have to put that one on standby."
"Oh, no, not again," someone at the next table groaned. He was looking at the TV perched over the counter. "Another Marleigh Cooper update. Right in the middle of the game."
"That's the mother," the girl sitting with him said. "Poor woman. Shhhh, I want to hear her."
Cam and Beth turned toward the screen, where a petite, well-dressed woman, her eyes puffy, face contorted in misery, was being besieged by reporters with microphones. Desperately wringing her hands, she was visibly shaking.
"Marleigh's mom looks beyond freaked out," Beth whispered.
"Mrs. Cooper," a reporter shouted, "any news? Can you give us... anything?"
"Leave her alone," someone off-screen whimpered. The camera pulled back to reveal Tonya Gladstone, protectively pressed against Mrs. Cooper.
"Wow, it's Tonya. Talk about bizarre," Cam said. "She's a mess. She must've lost ten pounds in the week we were gone."
Marleigh's mother gratefully grasped Tonya's hand.
"Tonya, over here." A newswoman stuck a microphone into her face. "It's been over a week. Do you still feel hopeful that Marleigh will be found?"
"Of course I do," Tonya responded forcefully. "I just know my friend Marleigh is going to be okay. She has to be," she added pathetically.
"You should hear Brianna on the subject," Beth said, imitating Bree's breathless gush. "Guess who's become the ultimate superstar? Tonya! Tweeting! Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. She's had a miracle cure and thrown away her crutches. Guess they didn't look telegenic enough."
"You've got Brianna down," Cam marveled.
"Yeah, she thinks it's the mother."
"The mother what?"
"Just that there's something wrong in mom-ville. That Mom Cooper staged the whole thing—"
"Staged it? Why would she do that?" Cam rubbed her arms.
"Bree says Mrs. C is supposed to be this totally controlling stage mother who runs every part of Marleigh's life—and that this whole thing's a publicity stunt engineered by 'Mommy Dearest.'"
Although Cam had been preoccupied, there was no escaping headline news. And Cam really had thought she'd heard it all. The rumors. The gossip. The faux sightings. The psychic predictions. The endless TV news "bulletins," and those cheesy scrawls across the bottom of the screen. The posts. No update on Marleigh's Facebook page. Marleigh music had shot to the top of the charts—even though the "disappeared diva" had only released one album. It seemed everyone was using them as ring tones. If this was, as some insisted, all a publicity stunt, well... it was the "mother" of all publicity stunts.
"Alrighty then." The lanky waiter reappeared with their pizza—and a huge grin. "Please note," he said, setting the pie down between them, "the extra cheese half has not run into the more contained veggie side. We pride ourselves here on the no-spillover rule."
Cam blinked up at him, mystified. But Beth's elbow to her ribs informed her that she was expected to say something. "Thanks, uh, that's great, Jordan."
"English-as-a-second-language," Beth quickly explained to the boy. "She totally meant Jason."
"What's with the quick defense?" Cam hissed, when he walked away.
"Camryn. He's so cute. He's trying to be funny. He's into you. Remembering his name would be a plus—even just to be polite."
"Who's into me?" Cam asked, surprised, checking out the gangly guy. "Do I even know him?"
Beth rolled her eyes again. "His name's Jason Weissman. He's a senior. He practically interrogates me about you every time I see him."
"You're kidding—"
"So not," Beth said, gingerly cutting a slice of the extra cheese for herself.
"Anyway, polling the Six-Pack: Kris agrees with Brianna that Marleigh's mom's a suspect. Sukari is thumbs-up on the publicity stunt, to make Marleigh's music more popular. But she doesn't think Mrs. Cooper's in on it. And Amanda's with me, hoping Marleigh's okay."
"Put me on that list, too," Cam mused. "No one's said anything about the stalker fan thing?"
"Did you?" Beth asked. "When you first talked to the police?"
"I completely forgot it," Cam admitted.
"Me, too," Beth consoled her. "They haven't been playing that angle, which, when you think about it, is weird."
T*Witches: The Power of Two Page 7
