Twins

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “Furthermore, if you were really a man, and had any abilities of your own — ”

  He wanted to hit her. Every muscle in him gathered for striking. Mary Lee flinched, expecting pain.

  But he did nothing. “I don’t do violence,” said Jon Pear very softly. “I just watch it. I let it happen. So I won’t hurt you with my fists, Mary Lee. But I will use Winter Sleigh Day, since it has such a perfect name. Winter Slay Day.” Jon Pear was night fog, a wet clinging blanket of evil.

  “Do anything you want next week in school,” said Mary Lee, all prissy, “but promise me you won’t touch Winter Sleigh Day.”

  “I don’t make promises,” said Jon Pear, “and if I did, do you really think I would keep them?” Jon Pear laughed. He got out of the car and unhooked the hood. From his pocket he produced something small and round, which she couldn’t see very well through the crack, and screwed it back on. He let go of the hood, and it slammed itself down.

  The engine started.

  He stepped back so she couldn’t just run him over, leaving him in the student parking lot.

  “We’ll have a contest, you and me, Mary Lee. Welcome to my playground. There are no rules. There is no such thing as fair play. I don’t give warnings. I will win.”

  When she got home, Mother and Father were waiting up for her. They were frightened. They were dressed in jackets and gloves to go out after her, search for her — but they hadn’t. Perhaps they knew better. Perhaps they had tried to find Madrigal before — and regretted it.

  She went straight to the truth.

  “There’s something I have to tell you. I’m Mary Lee, not Madrigal. When she was killed, everybody thought it was me. Just the ski suit. That was all anybody based it on. And I let them. I wanted Madrigal’s life. Madrigal had you! She had home, and everything I missed so much. So I stepped into her clothing and her bedroom and her life, even her boyfriend and her classes. But I’m sorry now. Madrigal didn’t have a life that I want.”

  She had not surprised them. She saw that they knew; had known from the first. “Mother?” she said shakily. “Father?”

  They hugged her swiftly and encompassed her with their love.

  “You knew?” she cried.

  “Of course we knew,” said Mother softly. “Right away. What we did not know was what to do next. We were afraid. Parents should not be afraid.”

  “Sweetie,” said her father, “I don’t know what you found out about Madrigal. I don’t know what you ever knew. There was something very wrong with your sister. There always had been. She was a scary little girl. She didn’t take it out on you, and we thought you were her lifeline to being good. We thought she would outgrow the things she did, and be more like you; be nice. Really nice, not just nice to get something she wanted.”

  “But it got worse,” said Mother. “Each year, she was scarier and scarier. Angry. Mostly she was very very angry. And after a long time, we realized she was angry at you, her twin! Angry that you existed. Angry that she shared her beautiful looks with you.”

  “Madrigal would stand in front of the mirror,” said Mother, “and like a demented queen in a fairy tale, cry, ‘Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who Is the Fairest of Them All?’ Then she would be enraged because she wasn’t. There was a pair of fairest.”

  “When your back was turned, Mary Lee,” Father said, “she would look at you with such hatred, we trembled. We tried to talk to her about it, and she had her own solution: separate the two of you. So we did.”

  Did Madrigal always feel that way, wondered Mary Lee, or did it happen over the years? Did Jon Pear come first or during or after?

  Oh, Madrigal! I didn’t want to be the fairest of them all. I wanted us both to be the fairest of them all! We could have done it. You didn’t need to throw us away.

  “We failed you,” said her father.

  “Yes, you did!” cried Mary Lee. “Why did you ship me away? Why didn’t you send Madrigal away?”

  “Where would we have sent her? Who would have taken her? Besides, we thought we could turn her around. We thought when we had just one daughter at home, and we could concentrate on her, that we could make her good.”

  “It just gave her more space to be bad in,” said Mother. “It was a terrible mistake. I go back over her life all the time, trying to see where the first mistake was, and the second, and the third. But I don’t find them. All I find are two little girls I loved so much.”

  “Why did you let me be Madrigal?” she said. She was angry herself. She wanted parents who didn’t make such big mistakes. Parents who could tell what was going to happen instead of going all the wrong ways.

  “We knew you wouldn’t behave like Madrigal. We knew you’d be good. You wanted her life so much. We should have said, ‘Mary Lee, forget it. This is Madrigal who died.’ But — we were so shaken up, we were so flustered, it was all so horrible — and we let it happen. We just stood there and let it happen.”

  Mary Lee knew the real horror then. The worst, absolutely worst thing, is to see something wrong, and then just stand there and let it happen.

  I’ve seen something wrong, thought Mary Lee, and its name is Jon Pear, and I’m not going to let him happen again.

  The reunion with her parents lasted long into the night, but at last she was in her room; Madrigal’s room. The day had lasted a generation.

  The mirror was dusty.

  “I’m mad at you, Madrigal,” she said, as if her reflection were the twin who had been her reflection. “You knew better. I don’t care how powerful or how exciting Jon Pear was. You could have chosen not to be a part of it. How could you do that? When you and I were part and share of each other, how could you choose evil over good?”

  There was no message, for there was no Madrigal.

  “Madrigal,” she whispered. She touched the mirror, as a thousand times a thousand she had touched her real living twin. “I forgive you. You are still my twin. My beloved twin. Still my beloved sister. You are still half of me, and I am still half of you.”

  The glass turned warm at her touch, alive and full of hope. “I still love you, Madrigal.”

  Mary Lee straightened her shoulders. “Rest in peace, Madrigal. I am Mary Lee and I will beat Jon Pear.”

  Chapter 14

  THE MARCHING BAND GATHERED between the track oval and the lake. Brass players warmed their mouthpieces, huffing constantly. Third-graders in crayon-colored ski suits got ready for their ice-skating relay races.

  Fourth-graders drank hot chocolate, while fifth-graders prepared maple-sugar-on-snow candy. The big boys got ready for snow wrestling. Forts for the snowball war were being built. The log cabin with the huge stone fireplace was the only warm spot at Sleigh Day, and children raced in to dry their mittens and raced out to get them wet again.

  Where Mary Lee stood, the ice on the lake was not solidly frozen. A little brook kept it mushy. Little orange signs on thin metal rods said over and over THIN ICE, THIN ICE, THIN ICE.

  Jon Pear held her from behind, his arms encircling her.

  The day grew colder, the sky thinner, its blue watered down with winter chill. People stood closer and shivered, and made fists of their fingers inside their mittens. People curled their toes inside their boots and tucked their hands beneath their arms.

  “Where does the relay team skate?” asked Jon Pear.

  “Way over there,” said Mary Lee. “The ice is three full inches thick over there.”

  “But over here,” said Jon Pear, as if he had discovered treasure, “it isn’t.”

  Her mother and father were laughing with the other parents. Judges and PTA officers, teachers, and older brothers and sisters home from college, were everywhere. She took a step toward the crowd she yearned for: Van and Scarlett, Kip, Geordie and Courtney.

  Jon Pear did not move. His weight kept her tethered. “This is a good vantage point,” remarked Jon Pear. “If anything goes wrong, we’ll have a good view.” Jon Pear was enjoying himself. If she fought against his grip, he’d
enjoy it more. If she didn’t fight, he’d win.

  Sweet, innocent, brightly clad children, thinking only of snow and ribbons, ice and prizes, swarmed and danced, skated and raced.

  The crowd of her classmates suddenly surged toward Mary Lee and Jon Pear. How grim their expressions were. How determined they looked.

  They were coming for revenge.

  Would they include Mary Lee in it? Would they make her pay for Madrigal’s deeds? Did they even believe that she was Mary Lee?

  Mary Lee tried a third time to step free of Jon Pear and, as she leaned and struggled, he released her so suddenly she fell onto the hard ground and cried out in pain.

  Jon Pear smiled.

  Van lifted her up.

  Scarlett moved between her and Jon Pear.

  And the students surrounded Jon Pear.

  Home-grown justice, thought Mary Lee. They have come to do away with Jon Pear.

  The boys were armed. Not with knives, not with guns, not with stones. They carried icicles. Long vicious sharp icicles. Nothing would melt in this weather. And icicles would penetrate a heart as well as steel.

  “No,” whispered Mary Lee.

  “Yes,” said the crowd. They surrounded Jon Pear. He merely continued to smile, his expression filled with superior loathing.

  The crowd hated that smile. They would wipe it off.

  “It’s time, Jon Pear,” said Van. “You’re going to get yours.”

  Jon Pear raised his eyebrows skeptically.

  “You pride yourself on standing by and watching people suffer,” said Katy. “We’re going to see how that feels. Because we’re going to stand by and watch you suffer.”

  Jon Pear laughed.

  “We won’t actually do anything to you,” added Courtney. “We’ll be passive.”

  “I think,” said Geordie, “that he should drown the way he and Madrigal watched that man drown.” Armed with ice, Geordie hardly looked passive. He looked truly and willingly violent.

  A flicker crossed Jon Pear’s face. He was not so sure of this situation after all.

  “I vote to have Jon Pear drown,” said Katy.

  Jon Pear was taller and broader than most, and he gazed around, casually, as if bored. But he saw no way out, and he was not bored.

  “Second,” said Van.

  “All in favor?” said Katy.

  “Aye,” chorused the students.

  “All opposed?” said Katy, and they laughed because nobody would be opposed to the end of Jon Pear.

  “I’m opposed,” said Mary Lee. Her voice hung like spun sugar in the freezing air.

  They stepped away from Mary Lee, and Mary Lee stepped away from them, and even further from Jon Pear. “It isn’t right,” she said. “You have to give people what you would like them to give you.” She swallowed. “We have to be decent, whether Jon Pear is or not.”

  Jon Pear’s laugh flipped in wild peals like a Frisbee.

  “Listen to him!” shouted Van. “He knows you’re nothing but a patsy, saying he should go free! Does he have you in his spell the way he had Madrigal? There has to be an end to people like Jon Pear! Let him drown.”

  The group agreed, chorus-like, singing and swaying along.

  They pressed forward, and Jon Pear was forced back a step, and then two steps, and then the heel of his boot was in the mush and sliding down.

  “No!” said Mary Lee. “We can’t.”

  “Watch us,” said Courtney.

  They were a mob, and they were going on without her.

  She had not stopped her twin, she had not stopped Jon Pear, she could not stop this mob. She had no silver tongue and had convinced nobody of anything.

  On Jon Pear’s face, a tear of panic formed. He swung wildly, looking for a way out, and the tear was flung out over the ice and replaced by another tear.

  “He’s scared!” said Katy. “Oh, good! He’s scared!”

  Across the lake, a little skater left the course.

  Head down, feet pumping, the small bright-blue-clad racer was thinking only of speed. The shouts from the crowd, shouts of his name — Bryan! Bryan! — meant nothing; Bryan thought they were his fans.

  His legs were short and, even on skates, his strides were short.

  The judge abandoned his position at the end of the race course and ran — not on skates, but on slippery rubber boots — to stop Bryan.

  Parents left the shore, and shouting, skidding, falling, tried to stop Bryan.

  The little boy flew across the last of the solid ice, and vanished as quick as a stone through the possessive mush of the bad ice.

  Jon Pear was closest.

  “Save him!” shrieked Mary Lee. “Jon Pear! Go out after him!”

  But Jon Pear had only himself on his mind, and the mob had only Jon Pear. Mary Lee ran out on the ice, passing them, screaming, “Jon Pear! Do something good for a change!”

  She too wore no skates, and her rubber soles slipped. But she knew this lake. It was shallow at this end. If she fell through, she was tall enough to stand. She just had to get to Bryan, yank him up, pull him out of the water that would stop his heart.

  She fell through the ice yards from where Bryan had gone down. She righted herself, smashing the ice between them with her fists. The cold was so bad, it was like being burned. She felt as if her legs would be amputated by the water itself.

  On the shore, the teenagers abandoned Jon Pear and flung themselves through the ice, to help from their side.

  But they were too far and too late.

  Mary Lee waded forward somehow, making herself an icebreaker, using muscles she had not possessed when she was fighting Jon Pear.

  The bright bright blue of Bryan’s jacket showed through the cold cold water.

  Mary Lee pulled him up, dragging him out of the water, holding him high. Geordie and Van reached her, and the teenagers passed the little boy from arm to arm, a bucket brigade, handing him at last to the parents on dry land.

  When the ambulance had arrived, and Bryan was breathing and yelling that he didn’t want to go to the hospital, he still wanted to be in his race, they relaxed.

  Relaxed enough to remember who and where they were.

  And Katy said, “Where’s Jon Pear?”

  Nobody still held an icicle. Nobody still formed a mob. They were just kids, thrilled to have saved a life, proud of themselves, and very very wet and cold.

  Jon Pear was nowhere. They stared across the churned and broken ice at the long expanse of frozen lake where the skating had begun again.

  “Maybe he was supernatural,” whispered Katy. “Maybe he dematerialized.”

  Mary Lee knew better. But she didn’t know where Jon Pear was. Where could he have gone? How did he get there without anybody noticing?

  “Come on, Mary Lee,” said Scarlet, “I brought a change of clothing. You’ll have to put it on — quick — before you die of exposure.”

  Mary Lee still looked for Jon Pear. He wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to lose track of. You didn’t want him at your back.

  “Mary Lee, your ski suit’s turning to ice right on your body,” said Scarlett. “Move it.”

  But when she moved it, she saw the colors in the water. Bright bleeding colors. Beneath the churned ice. Floating in the frigid water.

  She stepped forward, to see more clearly, and Geordie and Kip, Kenneth and Stephen, stepped between her and the ice.

  “It’ll freeze over again,” said Geordie.

  “Temperature’s dropping as we speak,” said Kip.

  “Time to go in,” said Van.

  This mob. Her new friends. Had they held him under? Had they trampled him when she thought they were rushing to rescue Bryan? Or had Jon Pear slipped of his own accord, and just as he never rescued anybody, nobody rescued him?

  Which of these boys and girls had shrugged and let him drown? Or had he let himself drown? Had he known, for a few seconds at least, how evil he was?

  I will never know what Madrigal really planned to do on t
hat visit, she thought. I will never know why she switched ski suits with me, or what would have happened if the ski lift hadn’t broken.

  And unless I ask, I will never know how Jon Pear found his way beneath the ice, to stay there until spring.

  “Carry her,” advised Katy. “I think she’s going into shock herself. Lift her up on your shoulders and carry her to the warming cabin.”

  They were ready to let the ice freeze over, and the past stay past.

  They lifted her up and ran, a bunch of boys holding a pretty girl in the air. She jounced in the aching cold, held up by the flat palms of nice young men, who had taken justice into those same hands. People shouted and cheered, thinking she was the princess of Winter Sleigh Day. Thinking there must have been a vote they didn’t know about.

  There was a vote, thought Mary Lee. And I voted no. I have to remember that. I wasn’t able to stop evil, but I didn’t stand and watch it, either. Jon Pear didn’t win. I won.

  I’m Mary Lee. And I’m glad.

  A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney

  Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller The Face on the Milk Carton. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

  Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

  Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

  Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book, Safe as the Grave, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.