Trading Faces (23 page)

Something to worry about! Something to worry about!

The camera panned out to show both Jazmine and Payton behind the long desk. Payton looked stunned.

“So, Emma,” Jazmine said. “Thanks for joining us for our first-ever surprise student spotlight! How do you like being a Gecko?”

“Um,” Payton said. “It's great?”

“Emma Mills was last year's state spelling champion,” Jazmine said. “Emma, can you share your winning word with us?”

“Um . . .” Payton's forehead crinkled.

Logorrhea,
I willed her to answer.
Logorrhea.

If twin ESP were ever true, please let it work now.

And then she smiled and sat up straighter. Phew! It worked! She remembered it!

“Diarrhea!” she said, brightly. “It was diarrhea!”

People in the audience cracked up. Oh, no.

“Interesting,” Jazmine said. “Well, you're also an elementary school mathletics champion, like I was. And I can see why! Here's an example of Emma's work.
P
equals
E
, and
E
equals
P
.”

Huh?

And then Jazmine held up a piece of paper. It was Payton's copy of the switch schedule I had made.

Oh. NO.

Jazmine knew.

Jazmine knew. And Payton was up there with no idea.

“I—I—” I turned to Ox. “I have to go.”

“You have to go?” Ox asked.

No time to explain. I got up.

“Down in front!” the annoying kid behind me hissed.

I leaned down. And crawled out of the assembly as fast as I possibly could. And ran to the VOGS studio.

STILL NINTH PERIOD

“Yes! That's right! I love science, too!” I said. “That's me! Science fair . . . lover!”

This was way awkward. Here I was, sitting on camera while Jazmine James interviewed me as Emma. Why, oh, why did they have to choose me as the first student spotlight? I didn't know the answers to these questions.

“So you have a twin sister, Payton,” Jazmine said.

“Yes!” I nodded. “Payton is . . . great! She's a great twin!”

“And she must be so supportive of you,” Jazmine continued. “Because she's here in the studio right now!”

Jazmine pointed off camera. Emma! Emma was there?

“Emma—Pay—?” I stammered. “I mean, Paytonmma! I mean . . . PAYTON! Hi, TWIN!”

Okay, that was smooth
.

Emma was giving me looks. Looks that meant . . . I didn't know what she was trying to tell me.
Use your twin ESP, Emma! I don't understand!

“Why, they look like clones,” Jazmine said into the camera. I saw Emma's face freeze as she was on-screen. Then the camera swung back to me. “Except that Emma's nose is bigger.”

No, actually my nose was bigger. But if this was going to be broadcast to the entire school, I guess I'd rather have that mixed up.

“And now it's time for our weather report! Adam, over to you!”

Some guy's face filled the screen on the camera, with a large map behind him. Whew. I was glad that was over.

“Thanks for the interview,
Emma
,” Jazmine said. “Or wait, are you Payton? It's
so
easy to get you two mixed up. Have you ever traded places?”

Huh? I looked at Emma. She looked frozen.

“No, I'm sure you would
never
do that,” Jazmine cooed. “That would be dishonest, wouldn't it? Especially for Emma, an honors student who is likely hoping to represent the school in so many competitions?”

Emma looked down at the floor.

“Well! I'd better get ready for my next segment!” Jazmine said. She practically skipped away.

“She knows!” Emma hissed at me. “Jazmine knows we switched places!”

She knows?

“And,” Emma continued, panicky, “she's going to tell on us!”

“Why would she do that?” I asked her.

“Why? Why? Because I'm a threat to her! She knows I—I, Emma—am competition in the spelling bee! Mathletes! Science fairs!” Emma was in a panic now. “It's her chance to take down the competition!”

Oh. Yeah. That.

“Somehow she got our switched schedule,” Emma kept going. “I still have my copy. How could she have gotten hold of the
only other copy
of the schedule?”

???

???

Oh.
She must have gotten it when I knocked into her and all our stuff got mixed up on the floor
.

“Um—,” I started to say, but Emma cut me off.

“I give you one easy task—not to lose the schedule! How could you be so dumb?”

Dumb? Did Emma just call me dumb?

“Excuse me, Miss Brainiac,” I told her. “I know I'm not as smart as you are, but at least I can go on camera. And make you look good!”

“Make me look good?” Emma said. “You just told everyone I won the spelling bee with the word ‘diarrhea'!”

“I was helping you out!” I protested.

“I sacrificed my crush so you could have your so-called friends,” Emma said. “Your superficial, shallow, clothes-obsessed popular people!”

“Like your ‘we're too smart to have any fun' brainiac people are any better?” I shot back. “You're so selfish!”

“Selfish!” Emma practically screamed. “After everything I've done for you?!”

She raised her hand. Was she going to . . . smack me?

And all of a sudden I realized that the room had gone quiet. I looked down at my shirt. Oh, no. My microphone was still attached.

I looked up at the VOGS monitor. Emma and I were on camera.

We were on camera.

“Emma,” I said, slowly. “Um.”

I pointed.

Emma looked over and saw herself on camera. Both of our faces, in total shock, were being broadcast to the entire student body.

Please tell me our entire fight was not just broadcast to the entire school
.

I looked around and saw all the news reporters staring at us.

Oh, no. It was.

The camera turned, and Jazmine was back on-screen.

“Wow!” Jazmine said, from behind the desk. “That was enlightening! We almost had that twin question answered, didn't we: If one twin slaps the other in the face, will the other one feel it?”

Emma slowly put her hand down. We looked at each other in horror.

“Thanks, Emma and Payton—or should I say Payton and Emma?” Jazmine said, cheerfully. “What a fascinating inside look at twins! And that's our show for the day.”

She turned and smiled at us.

Emma looked at me. I looked at Emma.

“And, cut!” the producer said. “It's over!”

It was.

It was over.

For the Mills twins, that is.

IN THE CAR

Principal Patel had called our parents into school after the VOGS incident. Two long, humiliating hours later we were in the car on our way home.

I was sitting in the middle seat. Payton was sitting in the back.

“Grounded,” Dad said. “Both of you. For a month. No, two.”

“I just don't understand what you two were thinking,” Mom said. “Especially you, Emma. You've always had such a good head on your shoulders.”

BRRRZPP!

I had a text message. From Payton.

And what's mine? A bad head?

I almost smiled at Payton's text. But I stopped myself. I was still too mad at her to reply.

“How is this going to look on your permanent records?” Mom said. “Detention!”

I groaned. What college would want me now? Who would want such a troublemaker? All my hard work had been destroyed, all because Payton wanted to be popular!

I texted Payton:

This is all ur fault.

There. Now I was never going to speak—or text—my sister again. I put my phone away.

“And the manipulation, the deception . . . ,” my mother droned on.

“The principal said it's lucky you didn't take any tests for each other, or you'd have been suspended for cheating,” Dad said. “Or even expelled!”

Sheesh, it's not like we broke the law or anything
. I sneaked a look at Payton in the rearview mirror. She looked as miserable as I felt.

“Both of you betrayed people,” my mother said.
“You've disappointed us, and you've disappointed people at your new school. What are you going to do about it?”

What are we going to do about it?

“I know what I'm going to do about it,” Payton said. “I'm going into the witness protection program.”

“Haven't you had enough identity switching?” Mom asked.

“Fine, then I'm switching schools,” Payton grumbled.

“Young lady, you are not switching anything. You are going to face the consequences,” Dad said.

“My future is over,” Payton sighed.

Hmm. That gave me an idea. We couldn't change the past, but maybe—just maybe—we could make things a little better at school.

Last weekend we'd practiced becoming each other. Now we had to prepare for something else: being ourselves (our humbled, humiliated selves).

I texted her.

We need 2 do live apology on VOGS 2 the school.

Payton's head popped over the seat.

“Seriously?” she whispered.

I nodded. It was the only way I could think of to do damage control.

“YOU want to go on camera?” Payton whispered.

“No,” I whispered back, “I don't. But logically, it's the only reasonable solution. Plus, my phobia of being on camera was that I didn't want to look stupid. I kind of blew that already.”

“Are you listening to us, girls?” my father yelled from the driver's seat.

Payton disappeared.

“Yes,” we both said.

“You'd better listen, because blah blah blahbity blah . . .”

Hmm. The plan was beginning to percolate in my mind. It would take some work. We'd be up really late tonight. We'd have to figure out what we wanted to say to everybody. As well as do the extra assignments that the principal had told our teachers to give us. But what else did we have to do? We were grounded. No TV. No computer. Aaugh!

At least we'd be together. Like we were back in easier times. Before middle school, before Jazmine and Sydney and Ox.

Oh, Ox
. It had been so great to be myself with a boy,
even if he'd thought I was somebody else. Well, life wasn't a fairy tale. I didn't get to magically switch places, destroy the evil witch(es), win the prince's heart, and live happily ever after. Reality was that Sydney and Jazmine and Ox would still be at school tomorrow. And we would have to face them all. As ourselves. Our true selves.

WEDNESDAY, HOMEROOM

The next morning, Emma and I convinced Dad to drive us in early. We went straight to Mrs. Burkle's classroom and explained what we wanted to do. She checked with Principal Patel. And our plan was put into action.