Re-Vamped! (3 page)

Olivia
was trapped in front of the whiteboard, still in her coat. She was flanked by
Toby Decker, who had written the article for the school paper, and her friend
Camilla Edmunson who was wearing a blue hoodie that said THE PAST WAS THE
FUTURE on it. Camilla was seriously into sci-fi.

People
were shouting questions.

“Can
you read each other’s minds?”

“Were
you surgically separated at birth?”

“Have
you ever met the Olsen twins?” Olivia was trying to answer, but people kept interrupting.

“Did
you always know you had a twin?” a girl in a red beret shouted.

Sort
of,
Ivy thought.
Looking back, she had always felt like something was missing in her life, but
she had never known what it was until the day she found Olivia.

In the
middle of the classroom, greasy-haired Garrick Stephens, probably the lamest
vampire in the whole school, got up on top of a desk. “Does anybody have any
questions about when I climbed out of a coffin during a funeral?” he called.
Garrick and his boneheaded friends—aka the Beasts—had recently sparked a witch
hunt on national TV that had almost revealed the existence of vampires. Now he
was clearly jealous that someone else was getting all the attention. Somebody
threw an eraser at his head, and he lost his balance and fell off the desk. Ivy
couldn’t keep from laughing, and a girl in front of her looked around and
gasped.

“It’s
Ivy! The twin!” she gasped.

The
words “Ivy” and “twin” rippled through the crowd. People turned their heads to
look.
Uh-oh,
thought Ivy.

“When
one of you gets hurt, does the other one feel it?”

“Why
don’t you have the same color eyes?”

“Do
you have any matching birthmarks?” Soon everyone was shouting and talking and crowding
around Ivy as well as Olivia. Instead of attempting to answer anyone’s
question, Ivy focused on trying not to fall over in the stampede. Suddenly an
earsplitting whistle rang out.

Immediately,
the crowd hushed. At the front of the room, Camilla was standing with one hand
in the air authoritatively, the other to her lips. She looked like a traffic
cop.

“Everyone
stand still!” she commanded. Then Camilla jumped off the desk and pushed
through the crowd. Grabbing Ivy’s hand, she dragged her back to stand next to
Olivia.

The
sisters exchanged nervous looks. “You said nobody was going to read the
article!” Ivy whispered.

“Oops.”
Olivia shrugged.

The
room lit up with flashes from camera phones as people took pictures of the
sisters side by side. “Ivy and Olivia can only answer one question at a time!”
Camilla announced. “If you have a question, raise your hand.” Scores of hands
shot into the air.

Camilla
was about to choose one, when a familiar high-pitched voice screeched, “Get out
of my way!” The crowd parted, and Charlotte Brown—neighbor, nemesis, and
cheerleading captain—shoved her way to the front. She looked from Ivy to Olivia
with narrowed eyes. As her sidekicks, Katie and Allison, appeared behind her,
she nodded.

“This
explains a lot,” Charlotte told her friends, as if Ivy and Olivia couldn’t hear
her from five feet away.

Then
Charlotte plastered an insincere look of sympathy on her face. “Don’t worry,
Olivia,” she said loudly, “the cheerleading squad will stand by you no matter
what.”

All at
once, Ivy’s embarrassment gave way to annoyance. She trained her death squint
on Charlotte Brown and was about to unleash an acid comeback when the bell
rang.

Charlotte
spun on her heel and headed for the door, her minions in tow. The rest of the
crowd also started pouring out of the room.

Toby
Decker, clearly delighted with the attention his story was receiving, patted
Olivia and Ivy encouragingly on their backs as he squeezed past. “Maybe we
shouldn’t have told anyone,” Ivy said under her breath to her sister.

Olivia
nodded and then grinned. “But, since we did, maybe we should have worn matching
outfits!”

As she
made her way among the tables at lunch, people Olivia didn’t even know kept
inviting her to sit with them. Luckily, she spotted Ivy’s pale hand waving at
her from a table near the window, where she was hiding behind Brendan. Olivia
hurried over.

“Craziness!”
Olivia sang, setting down her tray across from her sister.

“Brendan
has heard that somebody is selling pictures of us on eBay,” Ivy said wryly.

“Bidding’s
already up to ten bucks,” Brendan announced.

Ivy’s
best friend, Sophia, put her tray down next to Ivy’s, her camera hanging around
her neck. “Ten bucks for what?” she asked.

“Somebody’s
selling pictures of Ivy and me on eBay,” Olivia told her.

Sophia
looked embarrassed.

Ivy
stared at her in disbelief. “Please tell me you did not post pictures of us on
eBay, Sophia.”

“Sorry.”
Sophia gulped guiltily.

“Wow,”
Olivia teased. “Sold out by your own best friend!”

“I was
going to split the money with you!” Sophia offered desperately.

“Oh,”
Ivy said, her face relaxing into a grin. “That’s okay, then!”

They
all laughed, but a second later, Olivia realized she was the only one still
chuckling. Her sister’s eyes were fixed over her shoulder.

“Hi,
Vera,” Ivy said cautiously.

Olivia
turned to find a Goth girl with a streak of white hair standing behind her. She
knew Vera from the All Hallows’ Ball committee meetings, where Olivia had
impersonated Ivy.

“Last
time I checked,” Vera said, with a pointed glance at Olivia, “oil and water
don’t mix.” Then she stuck her nose in the air and stalked off.

“What
was that about?” Olivia asked when Vera was out of earshot.

Ivy
lowered her voice. “Some vampires are a little . . . extreme in their views
about mixing with bunnies—humans, I mean.”

“But
why?” Olivia wanted to know. “Aren’t
we
supposed to be scared of
you
?”

“Not
really,” answered Sophia. “Your kind has a habit of breaking out the wooden
stake first and asking questions later.”

Ivy
rolled her eyes. “As if that’s happened this century.”

“Either
way,” Brendan said diplomatically, “it’s hard to have relationships with
nonvamps when you’re bound by a strict code of secrecy and have a weird diet.”

“True,”
Ivy admitted. “It’s easier with you because you know,” she added to Olivia.

“Could
that be why our parents split us up?” Olivia wondered aloud. She and her sister
had been trying to figure out how a vampire and a human could be twins—and why
their parents had separated them—for almost the whole time they’d known each
other. “Maybe they were worried that if a vampire and a human grew up together,
the vampire secret wouldn’t be safe?” Olivia suggested.

Ivy
grimaced. “Well, I certainly proved them right.” She sighed. She’d broken the
First Law of the Night by telling Olivia the truth about vampires, when bad
scratches on her arm had healed before Olivia’s eyes.

“You
know I’d never tell,” Olivia reassured her.

“Yes,
and luckily,” said Ivy, “no one beyond this table knows that you know, except
for my dad, and he would never tell.”

A
question sprang into Olivia’s mind. “But aren’t all your friends going to guess
that I know now, since it’s out that we’re sisters?”

Ivy
stopped mid-sip of pink lemonade. “How come none of us thought of that?” she
said to Sophia and Brendan.

The
two of them shrugged worriedly in response.

Ivy
bent to lightly bang her head against the table. “We’re so dead,” she said. “By
the end of the day, every vamp in Franklin Grove is going to know we’re
sisters, and everyone’s going to guess there’s been a violation of the First
Law.”

“I
suppose we could just deny it,” Olivia whispered.

“Our
community doesn’t let things go that easily,” Brendan said.

Ivy
nodded in agreement. “We have no choice. We’ll have to show everyone that you
have a
right
to know.”

“But
how?” Sophia asked.

“By
proving that one of our parents was a vampire, so Olivia’s at least
part
vampire, too.”

Olivia
got goosebumps. It was weird to think of vampire blood coursing through her
veins.
Maybe I should try eating more steak,
she thought, but the idea
made her stomach turn.

“The
problem,” Brendan said, “is that most people don’t think it’s possible for a
human and a vamp to have normal kids.”

“Well,
they’re wrong,” Ivy said flatly. She turned to Olivia. “If we can locate our
biological parents,” she said, “and prove without a doubt that one of them was
a vampire, then no one will be able to object to your knowing the secret.”

“I’m
game,” Olivia said immediately. She’d give up her poms to know the truth about
their parents anyway. “But what can we do? We already tried the adoption agency
route, and that was a dead end.”

“What
about the VVV?” Sophia suggested.

“The
what?” Olivia asked.

“The
Vorld Vide Veb,” Sophia said, sounding like the bloodsucking bride in an old
vampire movie.

Olivia’s
jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me vampires have their own Internet!”

“It
was a vampire who
invented
the Internet,” Brendan told her with a grin.

“You
could try searching references to humanvampire relationships,” Sophia
suggested.

“And
we should definitely look up Owl Creek, where we were born,” Ivy added.
“Olivia, can you come to my house after school? Then we can go online.”

“Sure,”
Olivia agreed. “Maybe we can even find out something about what happens when
vampires— Ow!” She broke off as somebody kicked her hard under the table.

“Hello,
Camilla,” Sophia said brightly, fixing her eyes on Olivia with a meaningful
stare.

Olivia
turned as Camilla sank down on the bench next to her, laying her thick,
dog-eared paperback next to Olivia’s tray.

“Hi,”
Camilla greeted everyone. “How are the star twins of Franklin Grove?”

“Awesome,”
Olivia blurted, while Ivy croaked, “Killer.”

“How
about you?” Olivia asked Camilla, with a sheepish smile as she reached under
the table to rub her aching ankle.
Now
that
 was close!
she
thought.

Ten
minutes into last period, as Mr. Strain was going over the procedure for the
cheek-cell experiment, Ivy glanced down at the piece of paper that she and
Olivia had been passing back and forth since the beginning of class. It had
started when Ivy had jotted down one possible theory concerning their parents.
Olivia’s latest pink-ink-penned theory was about halfway down.

THEORY
14: Mom bites Dad, feels guilty, runs off with kids, can’t hack single
parenthood???

Ivy
tapped her pen thoughtfully against her lips. Glancing up, she caught Vera
shooting her a mean look. Ivy returned her stare, and Vera angrily whispered
the word “traitor” right at her. Ivy rolled her eyes and scribbled,
Vera
should go eat some garlic!

Olivia
smiled when she read it, looked in Vera’s direction, and then wrote,
Just
ignore her!

Mr.
Strain came around to hand out materials, and Ivy covered the page with her
book so he wouldn’t see it. “I read the article in today’s
Scribe,
” he
said with a smile as he held out a tongue depressor for their experiment. “As
twins, your cells should be nearly identical.”

If
so, then Olivia
must
have some vamp in her,
thought Ivy. “Here’s hoping,” she said
aloud.

“I
keep meaning to ask,” Olivia whispered once their teacher had moved on, “what
are you doing this Saturday? My mom wants you to come over for lunch.”

“Okay,”
Ivy said as she filled out their lab sheet.

Olivia
sighed. “Then she wants to take the two of us shopping.”

Ivy
stopped writing. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you sound
unhappy about shopping,” she pointed out.

“My
mom is going completely overboard,” Olivia explained. “After you left last
night, she started researching Goth cookbooks, and got excited about some
recipes she found.”

“Really?”
Ivy grinned. “Like what?”

“Blackberry
blood soufflé,” Olivia said, looking like just thinking about it made her want
to puke.

“That
does sound delicious,” Ivy admitted.

“Gross,”
Olivia said under her breath.

“I
hope that you will all discover something about your own genetics today,” Mr.
Strain told the class. “You may now begin.”

As
Olivia scraped the inside of her cheek, Ivy twirled her emerald ring around its
chain. Their matching rings were the only things either of them had from their
biological parents. While Olivia got to work on making their slide, Ivy took
the chain from around her neck, and examined the ring thoughtfully. The
emerald, a rich green, was set in a platinum band, which was covered with
etchings in yellow gold that looked like rivers on Earth as seen from outer
space.