Almost Identical #1 (3 page)

“Really ratty,” she chimed in, moving her body in front of mine so my shoelaces weren't visible.

“And full of cantaloupe juice,” I added for an authentic touch.

“Glad you changed them,” he said. “You want to look your best for the tournament tomorrow. You do remember you girls are playing in a tournament tomorrow, don't you, Sammie?”

“Course I do, Dad.”

How could I forget? The 12th Annual Sand and Surf Club Satellite Classic was the next day, and our dad had been talking about it nonstop for two weeks. It was a really important tournament, because if we won both of our matches, we'd get enough total points to qualify for a state ranking. And that was really, really important to Dad.

Charlie and I had been ranked twenty-second in the state in the Under-12 Girls Doubles category. Not to brag or anything, but that's pretty good. I mean, California is a big state with a lot of very competitive tennis players. But after we turned twelve, we had to move up to an older category, the Under-14, and we were still trying to accumulate enough points to get our ranking back. You get so many points for each match you win, and when you get enough, you get a ranking.

Our dad is totally focused on our getting a ranking. He has it all planned out for us kids: Ryan is going to go to college on a volleyball scholarship, and Charlie and I are going to get tennis scholarships. At least that's what he thinks. In our family, the purpose of sports isn't to have fun and get exercise. It's to win, to be the best. Our future, our education, everything depends on it.

I know what you're thinking. “No pressure there!” Yeah, tell me about it.

“I'll warm up Sammie,” my dad said to Charlie, “while you go hydrate.”

Hydrate
is sports-guy talk for
get a drink of water
. I've learned that if you play sports seriously, you have to use the right vocab. I mean, if you say “I'm thirsty,” it just sounds like your mouth is dry. But if you say “I need some hydration,” well, that sounds like you're ready to compete in the Olympics.

Charlie went in the kitchen, and my dad started hitting with me, yelling at me to move my feet, to lunge for the ball, to quicken my reaction time. He was right, of course, but what did he want from me? I mean, like five minutes before I had been sound asleep. You don't just wake up and start lunging for the ball. At least
I
don't.

When Charlie came back from “hydrating,” Ryan was tagging along behind her. He had tied a red bandanna around his head like he was the Karate Kid or something. It covered his forehead and held his long, blond hair back from his face. On anyone else, that bandanna would have looked totally stupid. But Ryan has a way of taking the oddest things and making them look cool. Don't get me wrong: I don't think he's cool at all, but I happen to know that lots of other people do. All of our friends at our old school always acted really flirty when he was around and constantly told us how cute he was. They wouldn't have thought that if they knew he puts green beans in his nose and makes monkey noises at the dinner table.

“There's Ry Guy,” my dad said when he saw Ryan. “Tell you what, handsome: Let's you and me play a doubles set against Sammie and Charlie. What do you say, girls? Can you whip us?”

“
Them
whip
us
?” Ryan laughed. “No way!”

“Oh, yes way,” Charlie shot back.

“We'll eat you alive,” I added. “I have a certain tornado story I need to get even for.”

“I still can't believe you bit on that one.”

Ryan was laughing about it all over again, which made me even more determined to whip his butt on the tennis court. I know it sounds impossible for Charlie and me to beat one almost-professional grown-up man and his total jock of a son, but it wasn't out of the question. Charlie and I are very competitive. She's light on her feet and quick at the net. I move slower, but I have a lot of power at the baseline. Each of us makes up for what the other doesn't have. Dad says we are like two halves of a circle, born to play doubles tennis.

We started the set, and Charlie and I were playing great. We were tied at three games each, and I was beginning to think we had a chance. But then we had to quit because Mr. Hornblower arrived for his eleven o'clock tennis lesson with Dad. Ryan wanted to play a tiebreaker, but Mr. Hornblower didn't want to wait. He's a total grump, although I have to say, I would be, too, if my name were Mr. Hornblower.

Dad started his lesson, and Charlie and I headed into the kitchen. I really needed to hydrate because I was sweating like a pig. Charlie always manages to look good when she sweats. She just gets a moist glow all over her face. Me? I get these big globs of sweat that pop out on my upper lip, and no matter how many times I wipe them off, they just seem to bubble back out again. And my hair, which is normally dark blond, gets wet and stringy and turns the color of baby poop. I think we can all agree that's not an attractive look.

So you can imagine how I felt when my baby-poop hair and I walked into the kitchen to find Lauren Wadsworth sitting at the counter with GoGo. She was wearing a sundress with swirly, yellow flowers and sandals with yellow jewels to match. Her hair, which is very shiny and the color of maple syrup, was held back in a yellow headband that totally matched her dress. She looked like she had just stepped out of a suntan lotion ad in
Seventeen
magazine. She and GoGo were in a deep discussion about whether the brownies should go on the silver tray or the blue tray with pink seashells.

“Hi, kids,” GoGo said. “You all know Lauren, don't you?”

Lauren turned and gave us a really nice smile. I could smell her lip gloss—it was strawberry. She must have just put it on. I glanced at my reflection in the glass panes of the cupboard. Yup, those big globs of sweat were definitely there on my upper lip. I wiped them off with my arm, but I swear they squirted out again before I had even said hello to Lauren.

“Happy birthday,” Charlie said to her.

“Thanks.” Lauren looked at her jelly watch that had the cutest fluorescent-orange band you've ever seen. “I'll be thirteen in three hours and twelve minutes.”

“Then you'll officially be a teenager,” I added, tucking my sticky, loose hair back into my ratty ponytail. It was hopeless—why didn't I just give up? I'm sure Lauren was thinking that I was the most disgusting creature she had ever seen.

But then I noticed that Lauren wasn't looking at my hair—or at me at all. She wasn't looking at Charlie, either. She was smiling at someone behind us, someone wearing a red bandanna and grinning right back at her.

“Hi, Ryan,” she said, her teeth looking very white against her strawberry lip gloss.

“Hey, Lauren. Nice tan.”

The two of them just stood there smiling at each other like goons. GoGo didn't seem to notice that a major flirt-fest was going on. Or if she did, she didn't let on.

“We're making all kinds of critical decisions for Lauren's party tonight,” she said, holding up the silver tray and the blue one with pink seashells. “Which one should we put the brownies on?”

“I'd go with the seashell one,” Ryan said. “We're at the beach and all.”

Lauren nodded enthusiastically.

“Great thought, Ryan.”

Really? What's so great about it? Look around: There's the sand. There's the ocean. There's the beach. How hard is that to figure out?

“Sounds like you're going to have a fun party,” Ryan said to her.

“Why don't you come, Ryan? All my friends are going to be there.”

GoGo put the trays down and looked up, a big smile on her face.

“Oh, what a lovely invitation, Lauren. I'm sure the girls would be happy to join, too. Wouldn't you, girls?”

GoGo! Are you kidding me???? She didn't invite us; she invited Ryan. Did you not notice?

Lauren looked a little surprised, but GoGo put her tan arm around Lauren's shoulder and gave her a really big smile.

“It will be such a nice opportunity for Charlie and Sammie to meet some kids from Beachside.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Lauren said. What else could she say? “Oh, I didn't mean to invite
them,
I only wanted
him
”? No, only a total jerk would say that, and actually, she didn't seem like a jerk at all—she seemed really friendly.

“It's at six o'clock,” Lauren said. “Here on the beach.”

“Cool,” Charlie said. “We'll see you later. What should we wear?”

“Shorts. Jeans. It's totally whatever.”

“You'd better get a move on, Sam,” Ryan said. “If you're going to be out in public, you've got some serious work to do on that hair.”

Lauren giggled like he had just said the funniest thing ever. It's amazing what a guy can get away with when he looks good in a bandanna. I was about to open my mouth and let him know what I thought of his tennis-shoes-with-no-socks look, but Charlie grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the kitchen before I could say anything.

“Not now,” she whispered as she yanked me into our room.

“Why? He deserves it after that hair remark.”

“Because Lauren likes him and we want to make a good impression on her.”

“We do? Why?”

“Because she's Lauren Wadsworth.”

“So?”

“So we're the new kids and she's really popular, and it would make everything so much easier at school if we could be friends with her.”

“But we don't even know if we like her yet.”

“It doesn't matter, Sammie.”

“I see.”

“Of course you do. We're twins. We agree on everything, right?”

I nodded, but deep down I wasn't nodding. I actually didn't agree with what Charlie was thinking. I wasn't sure I wanted to be friends with Lauren Wadsworth, and even more important, I wasn't sure she wanted to be friends with me.

“Please tell me you're not seriously wearing that,” Charlie said as I came out of our room.

We had spent all afternoon discussing what to wear to Lauren's party. After trying on everything she owns, Charlie decided to keep it simple: white shorts and a pink tee with a peace sign in purple rhinestones. I was clearly going to wear jeans instead of shorts. Finding out that you officially weigh one two six and a half doesn't exactly make you feel confident enough to show off your thigh region to a bunch of kids you've never met before.

At first I put on a red knit top, but after staring at myself in the mirror for at least twenty minutes, I concluded that it showed too much boob. I'm still not entirely used to the fact that I have boobs at all, so I for sure didn't want to flaunt them. I figured that since I was meeting all new kids, I didn't need to introduce my boobs to everyone before anyone even knew my name.

So off went the red top and on went a black-and-white striped top. I checked out that look in the mirror and decided that black-and-white horizontal stripes made me look like an overweight zebra. Definitely not the look I was going for.

Finally I put on a loose T-shirt that I bought earlier in the summer when we took the backlot tour at Universal Studios as a going-away celebration for Mom. It's your basic black tee, except across the front it says
I Do All My Own Stunts
. I was so amazed at the Universal Studios stunt show, at how all those cowboys threw themselves off the tops of buildings and those race car drivers slammed into walls of flaming fires, that I just had to buy a souvenir. It's like after we took this amazing hike down into the Grand Canyon, I got a T-shirt that said
Mules are for Sissies
. I thought of that hike every time I wore it.

“What's wrong with this shirt?” I asked Charlie. “I think it's cool.”

“It's just so weird, Sammie. Why would you wear a
souvenir
to a party?”

“It's a good conversation starter. I bet everyone who sees me will ask what stunts I do, and then I can say something clever.”

“Such as?”

Oops—I hadn't thought that far ahead. It was definitely not good to wear a conversation starter that you couldn't converse about.

“I'll come up with something at the appropriate time,” I reassured her. “Don't you worry. You look great, by the way.”

Charlie adjusted the purple headband in her hair. With her hair pulled away from her face, you could really see the freckle just over her left eyebrow. I have the exact same one, but mine is over my right eyebrow. Even though they're just plain, old, regular freckles, GoGo calls them our beauty marks. She has a way of making you feel good about everything.

“Okay,” I said, taking Charlie's hand and starting down the wooden path to the beach. “I guess it's time to make our entrance.”

“Sammie, are you nervous?”

“Why should I be nervous? Just because we're meeting
all
new kids who
all
know one another and are
all
going to think we're weird for crashing their party? Of course I'm nervous.”

“Good.”

I stopped in my tracks and gave her a look.

“That sounded horrible,” Charlie apologized. “I didn't mean it's good that you're nervous, but good that we're both nervous so I don't feel so bad about being the only one who is really nervous. You know what I mean?”

“The question is, do
you
know what you mean?”

“I don't have a clue,” she said, and we both laughed. A nervous laugh.

As we passed outside the kitchen, I could see GoGo through the window arranging vegetables around a big bowl of ranch dip. She loves to arrange food, and since she's so artistic, she makes everything into a beautiful design. I could see her standing up the broccoli like little trees and arranging rings of red pepper into a necklace surrounding the dip.

“You look adorable, girls,” she called out as she saw us walk by. “Have fun!”

Easier said than done when you're crashing a party and don't know a soul.

The tennis courts are on one side of the wooden beach path and the Sporty Forty members' deck area is on the other. It faces the wide Santa Monica beach and usually has chaise lounges and umbrellas set up for the members to lie around and sunbathe and talk on their cell phones. But all the furniture had been cleared away to make a dance floor for the party. A deejay was playing an old Beyoncé song and a few kids were dancing. At the far end of the dance floor was a huge banner that said
Happy Birthday, Lauren!
Out on the beach, a few boys were tossing around a Frisbee, and my dad was there lighting tiki torches. Or at least
trying
to light tiki torches. He was having a tough time because the wind kept blowing them out, and I could tell by the way he hunched his shoulders that he was annoyed. No surprise there. He's the king of being annoyed. But everyone else seemed to be having a great time laughing and talking and hanging out.

Charlie and I walked up to the edge of the dance floor and stopped.

“Now what?” I whispered to her.

“Now two really cute guys come up and ask us to dance. That's the way it happens in the movies.”

Charlie looked around and put her best smile out there for anyone who was interested. No one was. Not only did no one ask us to dance, no one even came up to say hi.

“Wow, this is awkward,” I said. “Let's go back inside.”

I was seriously considering running back to our room when a familiar voice called out from the far end of the dance floor.

“Come on out here, Charlie. Yo, Sammie, show everyone your moves.”

It was Ryan. He was dancing with Lauren, smiling and laughing like all her friends were already his best friends.

“Let's show them how we Diamonds do it,” he called, and then went into his robot dance routine that he practices nonstop in front of the mirror.

A bunch of kids turned to see if we were going to join Ryan.

Not me. I would rather die. Maybe that Diamond doesn't mind making a spectacle of himself, but this one does!

Ryan went through his robot routine, then he dropped to the floor and launched into a scissors kick and backspin. My brother has about six dance steps, or as he calls them, “power moves.” They're all pretty bad, but the amazing thing is, he pulls them off. He's just got this confident attitude that what he's doing is cool, and before you know it, it is! Obviously, I didn't inherit that quality.

“Do you want to dance?” someone asked from behind us. I whirled around to see a cute, redheaded guy smiling and holding out his hand. I was just about to answer when I realized that he wasn't asking
me
to dance, he was asking
Charlie
.

“Do you mind?” she whispered to me.

“Go ahead. I'll be fine.”

The truth is, I wasn't fine. As I watched Charlie follow him out onto the deck, I felt like a total nerd standing there by myself. I stared down at my feet, and when I looked up, what I saw was everyone else dancing. I tried to pretend I was having a great time and plastered a frozen, fake smile on my face. When I couldn't hold that smile a second longer, I turned and bolted out to the beach where some boys had organized a game of Frisbee football. Maybe joining in a Frisbee game was the best way for me to break the ice.

“Anyone want to toss me one?” I asked.

“This is a serious game,” a boy in plaid shorts and glasses said. “Notice how you don't see other girls out here.”

“Maybe they can't catch,” I shot back, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Try me. I'm going long.”

The boy in the plaid shorts looked at the other guys and shrugged. I took off running down the beach, and he tossed a long throw in my direction. It was over my head, so I sprinted as hard as I could and had to jump high off the sand to just barely catch the Frisbee by the rim. But I caught it.

“Nice grab,” the boy with the glasses hollered. “Is that one of your stunts?”

Okay, Sammie. Time to say something clever about the T-shirt. Here's the moment you were waiting for.

“Sure is,” I called out. It was all I could come up with and not exactly a brilliant conversation starter. But at least someone answered.

“Where'd you learn to catch like that?” one of the guys asked.

“My brother, Ryan. I've played catch with him since I could walk.”

I tossed the Frisbee back to one of the guys—with dead-on aim, I might add—and jogged back to join their group.

“Oh, so you're Ryan's sister. He's a great dude.”

“Fun guy,” another one agreed.

“I'm Sammie Diamond,” I said. “Short for Samantha.”

They went around the circle and each guy introduced himself. There was Ben in the plaid shorts and glasses, Jared in the long basketball shorts, Spencer in the jeans and white T-shirt, and the General in the camouflage pants. I'm pretty sure that wasn't his real name, but I said, “Nice to meet you, General,” anyway. And then I saluted.

“At ease, soldier,” he said, and we all laughed.

This is a good beginning, Sammie. Everyone's laughing. Laughing is good.

As the laughter died out, there was an awkward silence. They didn't seem to be inviting me into their game, so I thought maybe they wanted to just talk instead.

“My sister, Charlie, and I are starting Beachside on Monday,” I began. “Seventh grade.”

“You're both in seventh grade?” Spencer asked. “How does that work?”

“Yeah, did one of you get left behind?” the General said, and everyone laughed.

“No, we're twins. She's over there dancing.”

The kid named Jared looked over at Charlie, who was still dancing with the redheaded guy.

“Yeah, I see her. She's the hot version of you.”

Ouch. That hurts. Why do boys always say things that hurt?

I tried to make a joke of it. What else was I going to do? Cry?

“She's from the hot side of the family. I got the mac 'n' cheese gene.”

I gave an awkward, little laugh, but no one else did.

“Sucks to be you,” Jared said.

Then they all laughed again. Honestly, it wasn't even funny. It was just mean. I couldn't laugh along with them. I just wanted to run away and hide. So without even a good-bye, I turned and ran down the beach toward the water, far enough away from them so they couldn't see my face and I couldn't see theirs. When I reached the last of the tiki torches that my dad had finally gotten lit, I flopped down in the sand and took a deep breath, trying to hold back my tears.

“I hate them,” I muttered to myself. “I truly hate them.”

“They're just being guys,” said a voice.

I nearly jumped out of my skin. I had thought I was totally alone there on the sand, in a quiet spot except for the sound of the waves lapping the shore. But when I whipped around, I noticed a girl standing in the shadow of the tiki torch. She was really pretty, with shiny, black hair that reflected the flickering flames from the torch. I was so embarrassed that she heard what I said. She was probably best friends with all these kids, and here I was being Miss Negative.

“I didn't mean hate them as in
real
hate,” I said. “Just
kind of
hate, like the temporary kind.”

“I get it,” she said with a smile. “That's cool.”

Wow, could this actually be someone being nice to me? That was a welcome change.

I noticed she was wearing a beautiful white top with orange and blue flowers embroidered all across the front.

“That's a great shirt,” I said.

“Thanks. It's from El Salvador, where I'm from.”

“Oh. When did you come here? I mean, your English is really great.”

“I was born there, but my parents came to California when I was three. I've been speaking English for a long time.”

I nodded. She was really friendly.

“My name is Alicia, by the way. Alicia Bermudez.”

“Hey. I'm Sammie Diamond.”

“I know,” Alicia said. “My parents work with your dad.”

“So your parents are . . .”

“Esperanza and Candido. My dad is the groundskeeper here, and my mom comes twice a week to clean.”

“Oh, Candido! He's your dad? He always stops by to watch us practice tennis. When he's taking a pineapple break.”

“He loves pineapple. I'm surprised he hasn't sprouted leaves on the top of his head.”

We both laughed. She had the biggest brown eyes that crinkled up at the sides when she smiled.

“So how do you know my name?” I asked her.

“My father told me about you and your sister. He thinks we should hang out. You know how parents are, always thinking kids should hang out together.”

“Tell me about it,” I agreed. “That's what I'm doing here. My grandma thinks Charlie and I should hang out with Lauren Wadsworth and her friends. You can see how well that's working out for me.”