T*Witches: Don’t Think Twice

by H. B. Gilmour

  The ultimate bummer? She wasn’t allowed to talk or write about who was actually there, or for what. “Even though every tabloid in the nation knows and tells,” she grumbled. Much as it killed her not to dish, she confessed, she had decided to play by the rules.

  Of course, the place was not perk-devoid, Bree eventually admitted. It was the ultimate in luxury. Great private rooms with plush carpeting, TVs, VCR, DVD and CD players, plus a media room, a spa, and a greenhouse-like solarium. Best of all was the pampering. “You get waited on hand and foot, you could live here,” she joked. Though she wasn’t planning to, there were others who were “lifers.” There was even an on-site beauty salon, not that everyone used it. This one woman she’d gotten friendly with had not cut her hair since arriving — fifteen years ago!

  “Fifteen years? What’s the name of her place again?” Alex asked, getting out her list of clinic names.

  “Rolling Hills. Why?” Cam wanted to know, although she’d gotten the same electric buzz at the number. “You’re not thinking —”

  “No, dude. No way.” Alex’s finger flew down the pages. Frustrated, she tossed the sheaf onto her bed. “Must be totally exclusive. It’s not even listed!”

  What about the guys? Beth had prodded Cam to ask.

  Oh, yeah, it’s a regular Hotties Anonymous, Bree reported drolly. Actually, she was surprisingly uninterested in boys. Call me crazy, she wrote — making Cam laugh — but the psycho-babes on campus are so not my thing. Mostly she hung with the woman with the long hair. “Rapunzel,” Bree called her, like the fairy-tale princess.

  There was something very regal about her. Which was weird, Bree knew, since in addition to blowing off the beauty salon, the woman didn’t wear stitch one of makeup and never went anywhere without clutching this raggedy old quilt. She carried it to meals, the solarium, probably to the bath.

  Alex was standing behind Cam, reading Bree’s e-mail.

  “A quilt?” Cam looked over her shoulder at her sister. “Didn’t Karsh tell us once that Miranda had made us a patchwork quilt?”

  Alex shrugged, but only because her lips had gone dry. And her heart was totally thudding.

  The thing was, being with Quilt Woman made Bree feel good. Not like all happy and woo-hah, but … quietly good. Healthy. Oh, and don’t tell Amanda, ’cause she’ll like storm the place, but Rapunzel is way into herbs, candles, and crystals.

  “Cam?” Alex said, her voice breaking. “It can’t be, could it?” But before Cam got a chance to answer, Alex shook her head. “No way. Someone’s messing with us.”

  “Either that or —”

  “Or what?!” Alex challenged, balking suddenly at the possibility. She’d been pushing Cam, telling her they had to find their mother. But was she herself really ready? Now? Ready to be disappointed?

  She’s got this New Agey vibe going, Brianna reported in another e-mail. She’ll be staring into space, sitting there wrapped in her old quilt, but the minute I show up — me or this other kid I’m bonding with, a well-known teen actress whose identity must remain a secret except to say she got busted for shoplifting and it was all over the news two weeks ago … When either of us shows up, Rapunzel snaps out of her trance and turns into this full-out mama bear. Totally there. And she’ll ask, I don’t know, all the right questions, the kind that get you to really open up. She’s an amazing listener. She seems to understand everything. There’s something different about her.

  Different. Hadn’t that been what Cam and Alex had felt all their lives? Was “Rapunzel” different the way they were?

  “It’s her,” Cam said one day, a minute before her cell phone rang. They both jumped. “I didn’t mean the phone. I meant Bree’s … friend. It’s Miranda, Alex.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” her sister cautioned.

  Cam pressed TALK. Brianna was on the phone, sounding distressingly, in Alex’s opinion, like her old manic monologue-ing self. Today’s call was all about the shopping trips Bree was now allowed to take — in addition to the phone privileges she’d earned. “Not that there are many designer stores in the ’hood,” Alex heard her complain to Cam.

  The ’hood, they’d finally learned, was the small, privately owned island off the coast of California where Rolling Hills was located. Alex grabbed her guitar, with every intention of drowning out Brianna’s latest tale.

  “Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you — Quilt Lady?” Bree reported. “She never dresses in anything but hospital robes, but I bought this top I thought would look so slammin’ on her. When she tried it on the other day I noticed she’s got this necklace. I never noticed it on her before, it’s probably been hidden under her robe. But the necklace? If you put Alex’s and your charms together, it would look sort of like hers.”

  Cam was afraid to speak.

  Alex tossed her bass on the bed and quickly filched the phone from her. “What’s her name?” she asked. “Besides ‘Rapunzel’?”

  “Minda. Minda something. I don’t know,” Brianna said casually.

  Cam found her voice and the twins began cautiously to lob questions at Bree. They found out the woman was “a lifer.” That Bree wasn’t sure why she was there, but she did seem kinda moony and depressed a lot. “Her story is a weeper,” Brianna conceded. “Her husband was killed — and she only has this one strange-o visitor. Scary guy. Massive and mean-looking. Black beard, boots that are so lumberjack.”

  My vision! Cam sent an excited telepathic message to Alex. The one I had before? Of a woman with a long braid, staring out a big window? There were all these colors — like a patchwork quilt! Als, could it be an …?

  Epic coincidence, or evil master plan? Alex finished the thought. Thantos said he’d bring us to her. “Yo, Breeski,” she said, “can you hold on a minute?”

  “But is he powerful enough to have engineered Brianna being at the same place he stashed our mother?” Cam asked, as Alex clamped her hand over the receiver. “Is this how he’s finally going to lure us? Or are we being galactically paranoid?”

  Cam snatched back the phone. “Bree, is there a very, very sunny room at Rolling Hills, one filled with plants?”

  “Hello. Did I mention our sunroom? That’s like Rapunzel headquarters.” The phone flew back and forth as they plied Bree with questions. The woman was sort of average height, had auburn hair, they learned. “She’s the one who never cut it, wears it in a braid down her back,” Brianna reminded them. “Gray eyes, sometimes they look kind of dull, but other times, they do resemble yours. Age: indeterminate.” And now that she thought about it, the woman seemed to seek out Bree.

  “She asks me about where I live, what I think about things. She’s really easy to talk to. And you know what’s really funny? Funny weird, not funny ha-ha. Of all the doctors and shrinks in this place? Minda’s the one I can talk to about the really deep stuff. We talk about my dad, how he’s acted like a jerk. Like how one day maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be okay being me. At whatever weight.” Bree added thoughtfully, “She hardly talks to anyone else. Just me and Jocelyn — oops, I mean, my anonymous famous shoplifting friend.”

  “Did she ever talk about … I mean, does she have kids?” Cam’s voice cracked.

  “Lost. Lost babies she once said. Who’d be about my age,” Bree answered.

  “More than one? Two lost babies?”

  Later that night, they sat together in their room, staring at the phone. “It’s not like I had a vision today,” Cam reminded Alex.

  “I know. I didn’t catch a scent or hear a standby,” Alex said.

  “But she’s going to call, right?”

  “Soon,” Alex decided. “Are your hands clammy?”

  “No. My neck.” Cam tugged at the collar of her sweater. “I’m hot and cold and sweating.”

  When the phone in their bedroom rang, she and Alex just stared at it. They knew who was calling.

  A second ago, a buzzing had started in Alex’s ears. “Oh, no. What if I can’t hear her?”

  As if she
were getting a premonition, Cam’s eyes started to sting.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?” Alex rasped.

  Slowly, Cam reached for the receiver. Alex’s hand whipped past and pressed speakerphone.

  A soft, whispery voice asked, “May I speak to … Apolla? I’m sorry, I mean, Camryn? Camryn Barnes?”

  Cam’s body turned to jelly. “This is,” Cam managed to squeak.

  Alex was hyperventilating. There was silence on the other end. “And … Artem — Is Alexandra also there?”

  “Yes,” Alex practically shouted, then lowering her voice she said, “This is Artemis. Apolla is here, too….”

  They could hear crying on the other end of the phone. Suddenly, Cam’s face was wet. When she spoke again her voice was thick with tears. “Is it really you?” she sobbed.

  “Are you all right?” Alex asked, trembling.

  Suddenly, it didn’t matter if Thantos had masterminded the whole thing. It didn’t matter if he had used Brianna, or was now using Miranda, their mother, to lure them — or if he intended to put their powers to work for him.

  The person they’d been searching for ever since they’d met was close enough to — “Can we come to you?” Cam sputtered.

  “Soon,” Miranda responded, clearing her throat. “Very soon. I’ll come to you.”

  “Can you leave Rolling Hills? Will they let you leave? How will you get here?” Alex blurted.

  “I can. There’s just been no reason before. I haven’t — not in fifteen years. But if you are my babies, my lost babies —” Miranda couldn’t continue.

  Why didn’t you come for us? Alex only thought it, but through the phone, from 3,000 miles away, her mother heard. And answered.

  “I was sick. And when I began to get well, I asked for you. And I was told you had not survived.”

  “He told you that? Thantos?” Alex asked bitterly.

  “And you believed it?” Cam wanted to know.

  “In my heart, I never gave up hope. Apolla. Artemis. My lost babies.” Miranda could barely speak. “I’ll see you —”

  “Wait!” Cam said, terrified that their mother would hang up, and somehow be lost to them again, this time forever. “Don’t go! I mean, where — are you coming here, to the house? When? Where can we meet you? Where will you be?”

  “At the tree,” Miranda said. “I’ve pictured you there so many times. A gnarled old oak tree on a hill in a park overlooking a harbor. Is there such a place?”

  “Mariner’s Park,” Cam said.

  “But when?” Alex asked.

  “Soon,” Miranda promised.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  H.B. Gilmour is the author of numerous best-selling books for adults and young readers, including the Clueless movie novelization and series; Pretty in Pink, a University of Iowa Best Book for Young Readers; and Godzilla, a Nickelodeon Kids Choice nominee. She also cowrote the award-winning screenplay Tag.

  H.B. lives in upstate New York with her husband, John Johann, and their misunderstood dog, Fred, one of the family’s five pit bulls, three cats, two snakes (a boa constrictor and a python), and five extremely bright, animal-loving children.

  Randi Reisfeld has written many best-sellers, such as the Clueless series (which she wrote with H.B.); the Moesha series; and biographies of Prince William, New Kids on the Block, and Hanson. Her Scholastic paperback Got Issues Much? was named an ALA Best Book for Reluctant Readers in 1999.

  Randi has always been fascinated with the randomness of life … About how any of our lives can simply “turn on a dime” and instantly (snap!) be forever changed. About the power each one of us has deep inside, if only we knew how to access it. About how any of us would react if, out of the blue, we came face-to-face with our exact double.

  From those random fascinations, T*Witches was born.

  Oh, and BTW: She has no twin (that she knows of) but an extremely cool family and cadre of BFFs to whom she is totally devoted.