“Yes,” Clara said, sighing, “that is my dream.”
Juanita nodded thoughtfully for a minute, considering this. “All right,” she pronounced at last, “it is a worthy project. I accept your offer to bring me along as the third bad-coffee judge.” She looked over to Bridget, who was in the middle of ordering at the counter. “Hey, Bridget,” she called out, “do you want to come on our epic mission to find the worst coffee in the world?”
The door swung open behind her, and Max walked in alone. His wishy-washy hair was slightly tousled now, and he had a faded blue backpack slung over his shoulder.
I felt Clara staring at him, and without allowing myself to stop and think, I turned to wave at him.
“Max! Come hear about our mission. I think you’ll definitely want to join!”
He stopped just inside the doorway. He looked at me, at Juanita, then back at me, and finally at Clara. I swear I could feel the moment when their eyes met, like a shock that passed through Clara and right into me.
Max opened his mouth, shut it again, and closed his eyes for two full seconds before refocusing them on me.
He said, “I—”
“Come on, come on,” I said, starting to speak before I heard him, and realizing a moment too late that I’d cut him off. “The mission starts immediately. We shall bravely traverse the globe to find the world’s worst coffee. None shall rest until the matter is settled once and for all. So it’s time to choose. Are you with us, or are you against us?”
He stared at me a moment longer, then turned around and walked right back out the door.
For a minute no one said anything.
“Well,” Juanita said at last, “I would not call that a great success.”
7
Clara
“Juanita, you have to help!” Hailey said. “We need you now. The mission is failing, but we can’t let it go up in flames.”
“Um,” I said, “are we still talking about the mission to find the world’s worst coffee?”
Hailey scoffed. “Like you don’t know. The real mission, obviously, is to get Max up to the observatory so he can fall in love with you, and then you can ask him to the dance, and then you’ll live happily ever after in a fairy-tale castle or—Well, at the very least, let’s just start with the observatory, all right?”
“Oh, was that the plan?” A little smidgen of tension drained away from me as I realized that Hailey hadn’t mentioned anything about asking Max to the dance for me. This was still bad, but not as bad as I’d thought.
“Come on,” Hailey urged Juanita, “earn your stripes!”
“Are you sure you want me to?” Juanita asked, frowning. “I mean, what’s his problem, just turning around and walking out like that?”
“Oh, please,” Bridget said. “After that nonsense Hailey was shouting at him? You can’t really blame him for running.”
“That’s true,” Hailey said. “I was shouting a lot of nonsense. Well, not shouting, but saying loudly.”
“Oh, I’ll get him,” Bridget said, and she hurried out the door.
A minute later Bridget was leading Max to the counter. I could see her pointing out various menu items, probably giving advice about which ones to avoid, which was almost all of them.
“Better watch out for that one, Clara,” Juanita teased me as we watched Bridget leaning in toward Max, whispering something to him. “I can’t remember if she ever officially signed on to our plan of letting you have Max.”
“Poor guy,” I said, “he probably doesn’t even realize you’re in charge of his life.”
Max completed his purchase and came over with Bridget, looking distinctly pink-faced and uncomfortable.
“Max,” Bridget said brightly, “have you met everyone?”
“Um, no.” He cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”
“Well, don’t worry,” she said. “No one is really going to force you to travel the world looking for bad coffee. At least not right away.”
As she introduced us all, I got the sense that Max was having to push himself to make eye contact with each of us—not just me and Hailey, but Juanita too.
As far as I could tell, he did not pause to inspect the area where Hailey and I were conjoined, or spend any time trying to visually figure out how it worked. I guessed that it must have taken a lot of self-control.
When Bridget finished, there was about half a second when Max looked nervous and unsure what to do, and I almost thought he might bolt again; but then, out of nowhere, he unfurled that broad, twinkly smile and said, “Nice to meet you.”
And immediately a boxing match was on inside my brain.
See, some people apparently have a little angel that sits on one shoulder and a little devil that sits on the other, just politely debating back and forth. But in my case it’s more often a showdown between Idiot-Girl and the Cynic. So over here in one corner of my mind, we’ve got Idiot-Girl jumping up and down and shrieking in a high-pitched voice, Omigod, did you hear what he said? He said ‘Nice to meet you’! That is the most charming and witty line I have ever heard in my life!
And from the other corner the Cynic comes running to punch Idiot-Girl in the nose and shouts, Calm down and get some sense into your stupid head!
“Have a minute to join us?” Hailey asked calmly. “We’re still planning this bad-coffee-finding mission, and we could use your advice.”
“Um,” he said. He looked at the package of mini chocolate doughnuts in his hand, then looked over at the door. “Actually, I was just going—”
“But we just want to know,” Hailey interrupted, “what is the worst coffee that you’ve ever had?”
“Ah.” He cleared his throat, hesitated a moment longer, then pulled out a chair and sat down at our table. “Well, I don’t really drink coffee.”
“Oh. Oh, all right.” Hailey leaned in Max’s direction, while I did my best to pull her back the other way. “I’ll ask you something completely different, then. How are you liking Bear Pass so far?”
He nodded and cleared his throat, two of his fingers tapping against the pack of doughnuts in his hand. “Good, good, it’s been great,” he said. There was an odd precision to his words, or to the way he articulated them, but it faded as he continued to talk. “You know, everybody’s been really friendly.” He looked at Hailey thoughtfully. “To be honest, I kind of expected nobody would talk to me the first day, but it’s actually been just the opposite.”
Bridget’s brown eyes were wide behind her giant glasses. “You thought nobody would talk to you? At all? The whole day? Why wouldn’t they?”
Max cracked a half smile, which somehow managed to be just as dazzling as the full display he’d given us earlier.
My inner Idiot-Girl swooned a little, and the Cynic actually forgot to slap her.
“I’m from LA, you know?” he said. “I’ve never lived in such a small town before, and I guess it’s different. It seems like a really nice place.”
“Yeah, LA, that’s right,” Bridget said, peering at him. “So why did you leave? I mean, like, in October of your senior year? Doesn’t that sort of suck?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but my dad’s university decided to eliminate its whole classics department last spring, and it was looking like he wasn’t going to find another job. I mean, all the schools had started their fall semesters and everything, and he was, like, looking for freelance translation work and stuff. It was pretty bad. Then some poor dude at Sutter College had to go on long-term medical leave, and here we are.” He shrugged. “At least until Sutter decides to eliminate classics too.”
Then Max’s father would be working with our parents—sort of. Our parents were both in the English Department, but they might cross paths with a classics guy every now and again. More of the faculty lived around Los Pinos, but a couple of others were here.
Hailey leaned in, pulling us toward Max. “Did you love LA?”
He shrugged. “We were in Santa Monica. You ever been there? I don’t know, it’s like you’ve got no rig
ht to complain. You’ve got the ocean right there, amazing beaches, great weather. It’s not even that far from the hills, but the place itself is just . . .” He opened one hand and spread out his fingers, palm down, and made a small circular motion. “Flat.” Shrugging, he opened his doughnuts and popped one into his mouth.
Though I’d been doing my best to silently disappear, I somehow heard myself saying as I looked up at him, “You like the mountains more than the ocean.”
He turned his head to look my way, his lips turning upward with a hint of a smile. “I guess I do. Is that weird?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t seem to look away from the deep blueness of his eyes, and I wondered if that was what the ocean looked like when it was calm, and reflecting a clear blue sky.
“What about you? Which one do you like better?” he asked, and I thought at first that he must have been speaking to someone else, but he was looking right at me.
I cleared my throat, and my gaze fell away from his. “I’ve never seen the ocean.”
All at once, and for the first time in my life, I found myself wanting to stand at the water’s edge, feeling it lap over my toes while my feet sank into the wet sand, looking all the way out to where the sea reached up to meet the sky.
“I would kill to see the ocean,” Hailey said.
“You should go sometime. It’s not that far. Just a few hours’ drive. Give it a chance.” Max spoke confidently, but then he suddenly looked embarrassed, and for the first time his gaze went to the place where Hailey and I were joined.
While I tried to think how to gloss over this, Bridget leaned forward eagerly. “What’s the air quality like in LA?” she asked, her eyes wide behind her oversize glasses, her voice so sweet and childlike that it made you forgive the oddness of the question.
Max looked at her curiously for a second and then gave a short, bewildered laugh. “It’s better here.”
Bridget waved her hand toward me. “Clara here—you know Clara, she’s the pretty one—she says we have the best conditions for stargazing. Because there’s no air pollution.”
“Light pollution,” I corrected her, even as I winced at her ridiculous characterization of me as “the pretty one.” I figured that Max was now wondering whether Bridget was “the blind one.” The truth was that even if you were just comparing me and Hailey, it was Hailey who somehow, despite being my identical twin, always managed to be a little more attractive than me.
Bridget whacked her forehead with the heel of her hand, a gesture that was not common for her, and it occurred to me that she had actually made the mistake on purpose. Not the mistake about me being pretty, but the mistake about the pollution. Well, actually, both.
“Light pollution!” she agreed. “See, Clara’s the astronomy expert, not me.”
Max tilted his head toward me. “You’re into stargazing?”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
“How often do you go to the observatory?” Juanita asked me pointedly.
“Um, I don’t know, two or three times a month, if Hailey will let me?” Unfortunately, Hailey loved the observatory about as much as I loved art class. And at the observatory it was too dark for her to bring a book. I didn’t mention that if it weren’t for Hailey’s resistance, and if I didn’t care what anyone else thought, I would probably go up there several times a week.
“Case closed,” Juanita said. “She’s practically obsessed.”
For the first time Max scooted his chair in closer to the table and leaned into his words. With perfect seriousness and not a shred of self-consciousness, he said, “So am I. What observatory do you go to?”
Idiot-Girl screamed shrilly, echoing through my brain, Did you hear that? Did you hear? He’s practically obsessed with stargazing, just like me!
But as fast as lightning, the Cynic had her pinned down on the floor, and she growled back at her, Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he wants anything to do with a freak like you, you freak!
I tried to block them out and do my best imitation of speaking like a normal person. “Over at Sutter College,” I said.
Shut up, said the Cynic. Just shut up! Or find a way to change the subject!
But Idiot-Girl kept me talking: “It’s pretty good, I think. Well, actually, it’s the only observatory I’ve ever been to. But to me it seems amazing, and I’ve heard other people say there’s good viewing there.”
“What type of telescope do they have?”
Idiot-Girl found this question profoundly brilliant. The Cynic gave Idiot-Girl a whack upside the head.
I looked down at my hands, which were wrapped tightly around my now-cold coffee cup.
“A Schmidt-Cassegrain,” I said, my voice coming out all quiet and breathy, like some kind of moron. I tried hard for a regular voice as I added, “Sixteen inches.”
He was on the edge of his seat. “When are they open?”
I glanced nervously at Juanita. Max was playing right into my friends’ plans, and I couldn’t think of any way out.
“It just so happens,” said Hailey, with a note of triumph, “that all of us are going there this Friday night. Would you care to join us?” A playful, almost flirtatious note crept into her voice as she added, “Maybe let Clara show you where Orion meets up with the Gemini constellation?”
I would need to strangle Hailey in her sleep. Had a conjoined twin ever successfully murdered her sibling? I would have to look into it.
“Oh.” Max drew back into his chair, his shoulders straight. His hand must have tightened around his pack of doughnuts, because it made a loud crinkling sound. He looked again at the door.
It was, I saw, exactly how I’d predicted. Hailey’s two-headed invitation had completely freaked him out. Of course. Of course it had. How could it not?
“Have somewhere to be?” Juanita asked Max, seeing him look toward the door.
“W-well, I did plan—”
“You planned what exactly?” Juanita said sharply.
I drew back, pressing my shoulder into Hailey’s so hard that I could feel her bones. It was rare for Juanita to take this tone with anyone, but I had heard it a few times before, when she’d felt the need to defend me and Hailey against other people’s hurtful behavior. That was when her claws came out.
I didn’t want a fight. I didn’t want anyone to make any points. All I wanted was for Max to leave, and as quickly as possible.
Max looked at her uncertainly, and before he could come up with any response, Juanita took a quick swerve in her tactics. Her smile turned mischievous. “What are you so nervous about anyway?” she asked, teasing him. “Never been alone in the dark with four girls before?”
“Er, no, I just—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I burst out, “stop trying to mess with his head. He doesn’t have to go to the stupid observatory.”
Juanita raised her eyebrows at me. “Oh, now it’s the stupid observatory?”
“Leave him alone,” I repeated lamely.
My gut twisted. Why didn’t he just leave? Why couldn’t this just be over now?
“It—it—it’s okay,” Max said. “I—”
I was such a fool. The truth was that from the moment when Max had smiled at me in class that morning, there had been a part of me that had imagined—what? Surely not dating him, but . . . Having him smile at me again? Having him become my friend? My incredibly cute friend who made my breath catch with every one of those thousand-kilowatt smiles?
But even that had been a fantasy. I’d imagined that just because he was so good-looking, he must be extra good inside too. See, that’s the thing about our species. We can kind of tell the difference between looks and personality, but only kind of. We’re always getting the two things mixed up in our heads, even when we know better. That’s part of what makes it so hard for people to accept me and Hailey, and it was that very same flawed thinking that had made me fantasize some kind of connection with Max.
But here he was, completely flustered by Hailey’s simple suggest
ion that he come out with us as a group, and after all, the chances were that he was just another skittish, reputation-protecting jock. He was probably afraid of what people would say if he went up there with us.
“It’s too bad,” Hailey said. “You didn’t seem so scared of us when you first walked in.”
For a long, drawn-out moment the whole Sandwich Shack fell absolutely silent. Bridget’s eyes were wide, and her mouth had fallen open in shock.
Juanita waved a hand in Max’s direction. “Oh, forget it,” she said. “Just forget it.”
Max said, “I j—”
“I said forget it. We’ll see you around.”
She waved at the door. I was frozen, waiting for him to leave so that maybe, just maybe, I could finally breathe again.
He looked like he wanted to say something. But whatever it was, he didn’t say it, and then the moment passed. He stood up, and as he did, his face seemed to contort into a strange, rigid anger. I pulled back in alarm; it was as if he’d turned into a different person from the wind-tousled, broadly smiling guy who had walked in here just a few minutes earlier.
Max turned to look at each of us, one by one—Juanita, Bridget, then Hailey, and finally me. With his eyes on me, he opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out, and then he shut it again. He seemed to be as mute with fury as I was with fear.
He shoved his chair too hard into the table, with a loud screech and a clatter. He turned away, grabbed his backpack from the floor, and walked out. As the glass door swung shut behind him, I noticed his bag of miniature doughnuts sitting on the floor where he’d dropped them. Half of the doughnuts were smashed flat.
8
Hailey
That night, when I’d had enough of homework, Clara and I headed for the kitchen. I’d been smelling Thai curry for the past twenty minutes, and between that and the fact that I kept thinking maybe I should say something to Clara about Max, make sure she was okay or whatever, I wasn’t getting much done.
We found our mom standing in front of the stove with two pots going, her laptop open on the counter nearby.
Gemini Page 4
