SVH05-All Night Long (5 page)

"Oh, thank God. Liz, it is
such
a long story," Jessica said. "I basically had the worst night of my life. Please. Mom can't find out I didn't come home. This whole thing has been bad enough. I can't get grounded for it too."

"Jess, how do you expect me to--"

"Liz, please!" Jessica's voice wavered on the edge of tears. "You have no idea what I've been through."

"Well, then tell me," Elizabeth said.

"I can't. There's no time. And Beau doesn't even know I'm using her phone."

"Beau? Who's Beau?" Elizabeth asked.

"Liz! Focus! I'm hoping to get out of here soon, but you have to cover for me in the meantime," Jessica whispered.

Elizabeth hugged herself, clutching the fabric of her T-shirt at her side. As much as she hated it, she could feel herself caving. "Well, what about the test?" she asked.

"I can still make the test if you help me," Jessica said.

"Jessica, what do you expect me to do?" Elizabeth whispered as the scent of pancakes wafted up from the kitchen. "I'm not a magician, you know. I can't be two people at once. Mom's going to figure it out when you don't come down for breakfast."

"You'll think of something. You always do," Jessica said confidently.

"Yeah. I always do," Elizabeth repeated flatly.
And I always
have
to,
she added silently.

"I'll make it up to you, Liz. I swear. Just help me out this one time and I swear I'll never ask you for another favor as long as I live," Jessica said, perfectly reading Elizabeth's fed-up tone. "Scout's honor."

"You dropped out of the Girl Scouts," Elizabeth pointed out.

"Yeah, well, you wouldn't know it considering the survival skills I displayed last night," Jessica said lightly.

Elizabeth's brows knit. "What? Jess, what exactly-"

"Oh, crap. I have to go," Jessica said quickly. "I'll see you at school. And thank you
so
much, Liz!" Then the line went dead. Elizabeth groaned and

shoved the phone back into her bag. Leave it to Jessica to thank her when she hadn't even said she would help.

God, what I wouldn't give to be an only child,
Elizabeth thought.
Although I'd keep Steven around. Steven's okay,
she joked to herself. The worst infraction her older brother had ever committed was giving her the occasional noogie. So much better than asking her to lie to their parents.

"Girls!" Alice Wakefield's voice had taken on an impatient edge.

Elizabeth slung her bag over her shoulder and rushed to the top of the stairs, where she paused. What was she going to tell her mother? It wasn't like she would believe that Jessica had left the house early. Jess never got out of bed until she absolutely had to, and if by some miracle she
had
gotten up and left, she certainly would have taken the Jeep the twins shared.

Okay, okay, what would Jessica do?
Elizabeth thought. It was an old trick she had used since childhood on those rare occasions when she needed to find a quick way out of a sticky situation: She imagined she was Jessica, Figured out what her

devious twin would do if she and her "anything goes" attitude wound up in the same scenario.

Suddenly, Elizabeth knew exactly what she had to do. The perfect Jessica-inspired plan. The thought made her dizzy with dread, but she could see no other way out. Taking a deep breath, she started slowly down the stairs.

***

CHAPTER
5

"Where's Jessica?" Alice Wakefield slid a stack of pancakes onto a plate and handed it to Elizabeth as she entered the kitchen.

"Um, she'll be down in a minute," Elizabeth said, avoiding her mother's gaze. "She's having wardrobe issues. What else is new?" she joked. Her laugh sounded fake even to her, so she cut it off abruptly.

"Well, she'd better hurry if she wants to eat. I have to start getting ready for work in a few minutes," her mother said with a sigh, returning to the griddle.

Elizabeth sat silently at the kitchen table, going over her plan in her mind as her mother wiped down the counter and put away the pancake mix. As always, her mother had gotten up early to go jogging, and she was still wearing her running shorts and sneakers. Her honey blond hair was caught up in a ponytail, adding a youthfulness to her tan, slender appearance. She hummed as she cleaned up, totally oblivious to the fact that one daughter was scheming against her while the other was God knew where. Elizabeth almost felt sorry for her.

"Are you okay? You seem quiet," her mother said, glancing over the butcher block. "You're worried about that test, aren't you? I know how much this means to you girls."

It means a lot to
one
of us, at least,
Elizabeth thought.

She forced down a forkful of pancakes and syrup, nudging it along with a generous swallow of orange juice. Normally pancakes were her favorite breakfast, and a rare treat on mornings when her mother had a bit of extra time, but that morning she wasn't remotely hungry. Her stomach felt as if it had been french-braided.

"I think I'm ready," Elizabeth mumbled. "The questions on the practice test weren't that hard; there are just a lot of them. There's a lot to remember."

"When I was your age, I wanted to be a camp counselor," her mother mused. "About twenty kids applied, and they only needed five, so we took a test and then they interviewed us."

"Did you get the job?" Elizabeth asked, trying to be interested even as she was planning her next move. She took another bite of her pancakes.

Her mother chuckled. "I failed the test miserably, but I had babysat for the daughter of the woman who was interviewing us. She liked me so much she gave me the job anyway."

Elizabeth forced a smile through her discomfort.

"I'll bet you were great at it."

"I'm not sure how great I was, but it was definitely fun, especially since I was paired up with my best friend at the time," her mother replied. "I'm so glad you and Jess decided to do this. It's nice you'll be able to work together."

"Yeah. If we both pass," Elizabeth muttered.

"I
am
a bit worried about your sister. She didn't

stay up too late studying, did she? Is that why she slept so late?"

Elizabeth choked on a mouthful of pancakes she was swallowing. She doubled over the table in a fit of coughing that brought her mother scurrying to pound on her back.

"Are you okay?" her mother asked.

"Fine," Elizabeth said, still choking. She sat up and took a few deep breaths, coughing slightly.

"Sorry."

Her mother sighed in relief. "I think you just gave me a few new gray hairs," she joked, looking up at her bangs.

Elizabeth smiled. There wasn't a single gray hair among her mother's tawny locks.

"Sorry, Mom. I guess I'm just in kind of a hurry."

She wasn't really sorry, though. At least she had momentarily distracted her mother from the subject of Jessica's whereabouts. Her mother smiled and shook her head, smoothing a stray wisp of hair back toward her ponytail.

"You two used to have such fights back when you were in high chairs; you would work yourselves up and get food lodged in your throat all the time,"

she said, rolling her eyes. "Jessica would start by throwing pieces of her food at you and you'd usually wind up dumping your cup of milk over her head. You always got the last word that way, Liz."

Yeah. Not anymore,
Elizabeth thought bitterly.
Now Jessica always wins.

Her mother frowned up at the ceiling. "What is taking her so long? She only has four thousand tons of clothes. I'm sure she can find something acceptable for a Monday at school."

"Well, you know Jess. Every week is Fashion Week." Elizabeth shoveled the last of her breakfast into her mouth with lightning speed. "Thanks for the pancakes, Mom, but I have to go. Todd's picking me up and I told him I'd meet him outside," she lied.

"What about your sister?" her mom asked as Elizabeth was heading out the back door.

"Tell her she can take the Jeep!" Elizabeth called back.

"Okay. Well, good luck on the test, hon!" her mother shouted after her. "I know you don't need it, but good luck anyway."

"Thanks!"

Actually, I'm going to need all the luck I can get,
she thought as she ducked outside, slamming the door behind her. She had made it past stage one, but her mission was far from over. The hardest part was still to come. Could she do it? Could she fool her own mother into thinking she was Jessica? She was certain Jessica would have no trouble pulling off the deception--she'd done it often enough in the past. But Jessica was a natural actress, while Elizabeth hated lying so much it practically gave her hives. This was going to be interesting.

Silently cursing her twin, Elizabeth rushed to the driveway and dropped her book bag into the open backseat of the Jeep. Then she doubled back around the side of the house, crouching down as she passed the kitchen window so that her mother wouldn't see her. Carefully, she let herself in through the front door, removing her sneakers as she did so.

She could hear her mother moving around at the back of the house. If her mom came out to the stairs to shout at Jessica again, she would find the twin who had just left standing in the foyer, clutching her shoes. The visual was almost amusing.

Holding her breath, Elizabeth sprinted up the stairs on her tiptoes and slipped into Jessica's room. She tore the rubber band out of her hair and shook her ponytail out, then ripped her clothes off and yanked one of Jessica's favorite sundresses from the closet. She stepped into it and zipped it up while shoving her feet into a random pair of sandals at the same time. Then, panting for breath, she spritzed on some of Jessica's perfume, swiped on some lipstick and blush, and fastened a pair of dangling earrings in her ears. One glance in the mirror told her she'd done the best she could. She was ready to greet the world as Jessica Wakefield.

"I am so going to kick your butt for this, Jessica," she told her own reflection. "You'd better watch your back."

Fortunately, her mother was busy washing Elizabeth's dishes and she barely glanced up as Elizabeth swooped into the kitchen and gave her a swift, perfumed peck on the cheek.

"Sorry I took so long, Mom," Elizabeth said in her sister's carefree voice, settling into Jessica's usual chair. "It took me forever to find this dress."

"Well, maybe if you cleaned your room once in a while...," her mother said, placing a stack of pancakes in front of her.

Elizabeth groaned inwardly. She was already so full she felt like she could bust out of Jessica's tight outfit. For a moment she considered telling her mother she wasn't hungry, but she knew better. Her mother never let her or her sister out of the house without eating
something.

"Forgive me, stomach, for what I'm about to do to you," she muttered under her breath, courageously spearing a generous forkful. She would have to make a good show of eating to keep her mother from getting suspicious. Unfortunately, pancakes happened to be Jessica's favorite breakfast as well.

Mrs. Wakefield spoke over her shoulder as she placed the griddle in the sink. "Liz went to school with Todd. She said you should take the Jeep."

"Okay," Elizabeth replied with an airy wave of her hand. She had to think of something to say. Jessica was pretty talkative in the morning. And besides, she didn't want to give her mother an opening to ask about Jessica's day with Cara and her

family. Suddenly, she recalled a conversation she had overheard between her mother and Jessica late last week. "Oh, by the way, did you get a chance to look at that skirt I was telling you about? The one in the window at Abercrombie?"

Her mother sighed. "Honestly, Jess, you need a new skirt like I need triplets. If you ever bothered to wash and iron the ones at the bottom of your closet, you could probably double your wardrobe."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes at the thought of the laundry--the twins' responsibility ever since their mother had gone back to work a few years before. Both she and Jessica hated the chore and were constantly trying to find ways to foist it off on each other. Maybe Elizabeth could get Jessica to take over the laundry duties for a couple of weeks as payback for this charade.

Remembering that she was supposed to be channeling her sister, Elizabeth was about to plead for the skirt again when she was struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration. The corners of her mouth lifted in a mischievous smile. If she was going to have to go through all this, she might as well get something out of it.

"I know. I was actually thinking you should get it

for Liz," she suggested sweetly. "She never asks for anything and it's totally her style."

"And of course if she had it, you could borrow it," her mother teased.

"Mom! I can't believe you'd think I could be that selfish!" Elizabeth gasped, in true Jessica denial mode.

Her mother smiled. "You know what, you're absolutely right. Elizabeth doesn't ask for new clothes very often. You could take a lesson or two from her in that department. And as for the skirt, I'll have to check it out first to make sure it
is
Liz's style, as you say."

"Oh, please. I love Abercrombie!" Elizabeth protested.

She realized her mistake the second it was out of her mouth, and turned beet red.

"I know
yo
u do, but we're talking about Elizabeth here," her mother replied with a wry smile.

"Right. I know. Right." Elizabeth shoved away from the table and grabbed Jessica's messenger bag, annoyed that she had almost slipped up so badly.

"I better go. Thanks for breakfast."

She was halfway out the door when her mother called after her.
"Oh Jess
!
"

Elizabeth froze, certain from her mother's tone that she'd given herself away with some minor detail she had overlooked in making her hasty transformation. She was sure her mother could hear her heart hammering.