Almost Identical #1 (2 page)

“Wake up, Sammie! Now! Emergency!”

I could feel Ryan shaking my shoulder hard, trying to wake me from a really deep sleep. I had been dreaming I was a baby elephant climbing a palm tree to get a coconut. It was a frustrating dream, because I think we all know that baby elephants are not good tree climbers. Actually, neither are grown-up elephants, but that's besides the point.

“What's the emergency?” I muttered, rolling over in bed.

“Only, like, the biggest tornado
ever
!” Ryan shouted. “It's moving down the coast, coming right for us.”

Did he say
tornado
? In Southern California? I had never heard of a tornado hitting Los Angeles before.

Ryan sounded really scared. “Move fast, Sam. We have to evacuate! Dad is packing everything up.”

I jumped out of bed and ran to the window, my heart beating fast. We live right on the beach in Santa Monica. I mean,
right
on the beach: Our house sits smack on the sand, about fifty feet from the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to scan the beach for a kayak so maybe I could row out to sea to get out of the tornado's path.

“Sammie, get away from the window!” Ryan warned. “We've got to bail
right now
.”

I had to see what was going on. I threw back the curtain, blinded at first by the bright morning light that was streaming in. I looked out at our beach and as my eyes adjusted to the sunlight, I saw . . .

NOTHING! No high winds. No tornado twisting its way to us. No pounding surf. Just the calm ocean, the sparkling sand, and the red-cushioned, wooden beach lounge chairs of our beach club waiting for someone to lie on them.

I looked over at Ryan, and he was laughing like the idiot boy he is.

“Not funny, dude,” I said to him.

“Oh, that's where you're wrong, little sister,” he howled. “Very funny. Extremely funny. Seriously hilarious, in fact. You should have seen your face!”

I confess: I do not understand the boy sense of humor. They burp, then they laugh. They expel gas, then they laugh. They see a girl's flip-flop get stuck on a big wad of bubblegum, then they laugh. (I know, because that happened to me a couple months ago at the mall and Ryan and his club volleyball team buddies couldn't stop yukking it up.)

Real grown-up.

“You have a very twisted sense of humor,” I said to Ryan. My heart was just beginning to slow down.

“Well, I had to do something radical to get you out of bed,” he told me. “Dad said he wants you out on the tennis court in five minutes. He's been hitting with Charlie for a half hour already.”

We have two tennis courts about a twenty-second walk from my bedroom. I know that sounds like we're rich, but we're totally not. My dad works at this private beach and tennis club called the Sporty Forty, and as part of his pay we get to live in the bungalow that was built for the caretaker. So that makes us the opposite of rich.

I reached for my cell phone to check the time. It was ten fifteen. Oops—I was supposed to meet Dad on the court at ten. My mom always used to make sure that I was up on time since I have a serious tendency to oversleep. But for the last two weeks, since Mom left for cooking school, I have been sleeping through everything. Maybe I shouldn't have stayed up half the night decorating my scrapbook with those furry tennis ball stickers GoGo bought me. I love to stay up at night to do projects and then sleep late the next day. Charlie, on the other hand, is asleep by ten o'clock and wakes up early, all bright and ready to go.

Ryan was still hanging around our room, poking his nose into my scrapbook.

“I don't think you have enough of those cute, furry stickers in here,” he said. “Look, you missed an inch.”

“For your information, they are not just cute, they also serve a purpose. I put one next to each picture of when Charlie and I won a match.”

“Oh, I get it. You're matching them with your matches.” Then, realizing what he had said, he burst out laughing. “A match match, get it? Man, I crack myself up.”

“Apparently it doesn't take much.”

“Come on, Sam. You have to admit that's funny. Or at least
punny
.” Unbelievable as it seems, he laughed again at that not-even-a-little-bit-funny remark.

“You and your ace sense of humor can leave now,” I told Ryan. “I have to get dressed. And by the way, thanks for scaring me to death.”

“No problem, Sam-I-Am. Any time.” Ryan flashed me a smile and then—you're not going to believe this—he winked at me. You heard me. My
brother
winked at me. Obviously, he was trying to work out some cool, new move that he could use on the girls at school, but I'm sorry, it is unacceptable to try it out on me. Totally unacceptable.

“I think you have something in your eye,” I said. “It looks really painful.”

Then he winked
again
as if it weren't bad enough the first time. I had no choice but to throw my pillow directly at his head.

Ryan's really athletic and has great reflexes, so he had no problem ducking out of the way. Instead, it hit the shelf on the wall behind him and knocked over three tennis trophies, a coffee can filled with my seagull feather collection, two tubes of suntan lotion, a jar of pennies, and a portable fan. This seemed to tickle him to death, and he left laughing like a two-year-old. I could hear him hollering to my dad, “Sammie will be out in a minute. She's got a little mess to clean up first.”

Boys can be so easily amused.

I was late, so there was no time for good grooming. I pulled my hair into a ponytail without even brushing it, threw on some white shorts and a bleached-out tank top, grabbed my tennis shoes and socks, and hurried into the kitchen.

Our kitchen is more like a nook than a real kitchen, because the house is very small—way too small for all of us. Charlie and I share the front bedroom that looks out on the beach. It's so tiny that our beds practically touch. Mom and Dad's bedroom used to be a locker room and still has old wooden lockers all along one wall. Ryan sleeps on a foldout couch in the living room, which I sometimes wish would fold up with him in it.

Our old house in Culver City was much bigger, but we had to sell it when my dad lost his job last year. While we were figuring out where to live, my dad's college buddy, Chip Wadsworth, asked him to be the athletic director of his beach club, the Sporty Forty. They call it that because the club has been owned by the same forty families since, like, forever. They're all pretty rich, but none of them can play tennis like my dad, who was almost a professional until he messed up his knee and had to have surgery. When Chip said we could live in the caretaker's cottage for free, that sealed the deal. Dad said we could save a lot of money while Mom went to cooking school, and when she came back, they would open a restaurant together and we could move into a real house again.

So one month ago we moved into the caretaker's bungalow of the Sporty Forty, and two weeks ago, my mom left for Boston.

Even though we're totally on top of one another all the time, living at the Sporty Forty is a pretty sweet arrangement. I mean, Charlie and I can see the waves breaking from our bedroom window. We can go to the beach all the time and use the club facilities, too. It has two tennis courts, so Charlie and I can practice whenever the members aren't using them. And there's constant beach volleyball for Ryan, who, besides being an idiot boy, is a major volleyball champion and all-around jock.

GoGo was in the kitchen when I came running in. She helps out at the club when there are parties and stuff, so I figured there must be a party that day. GoGo used to have a little shop near the Venice boardwalk called Moonstone, where she sold beautiful silver jewelry she made by hand. But business hadn't been great lately, so she closed her shop and sells at craft fairs instead. When we moved into the Sporty Forty, Chip Wadsworth asked her if she'd have time to help organize their events, and she said sure. She loves parties, and besides, working there gives her extra money and plenty of time to make her jewelry and take care of us, too.

“Morning, Sammie,” she said. “I put some sliced cantaloupe for you on the counter.”

“Thanks, GoGo, but I'm late.”

“It's never too late for fruit.”

She held the plate out for me with a look that said
You will eat this cantaloupe and enjoy it
. I grabbed a slice and stuffed it in my mouth, reaching down to tie my shoes at the same time. I must not have totally closed my lips because as soon as I bit down, some juice shot out of my mouth onto my shoe.

“Oh, great,” I groaned. “Now my shoes are all cantaloupey.”

GoGo laughed and handed me a napkin.

“When will you learn? You're always late, always rushing. That makes life messy.”

“Squirty cantaloupe makes life messy.”

“You should have gotten up on time, Doodle. Noodle has been on the court with your father for a half hour already.”

In case you're wondering why GoGo was speaking in rhyme, Doodle and Noodle are her special nicknames for us. My real name is Samantha Ellen Diamond, mostly known as Sammie, except that GoGo calls me Doodle. My sister is Charlotte Joy Diamond, mostly known as Charlie, but in GoGo-speak, she's Noodle or, sometimes, The Noodle. I'm not sure how I got to be Doodle and she got to be Noodle, but I'm guessing it's because she was always thin like a noodle and I was round like a doodlebug.

Oh, there it is again. The weight thing. Why is it always on my mind even when it's not on my mind?

GoGo reached up to the shelves above the sink, pulled out a whole bunch of platters and trays, and started to wipe them off.

“I think the brownies will look really nice on this silver one,” she said, holding up a beautiful, shiny tray.

“Brownies? Yum. I love brownies!”

Oh, I forgot. No, Sammie. No brownies for you. Not at one two six and a half.

“Is there a party tonight?” I asked, stuffing another cantaloupe slice into my mouth to drive out the thought of those evil, chocolaty brownies.

“It's Lauren Wadsworth's thirteenth birthday party,” GoGo said. “She's having about thirty people. Lots of kids from your new school will be there. I'm sure Lauren won't mind if you and Charlie go.”

Grown-ups always think that just because you're the same age as another kid, you'll want to hang out with them and they'll want to hang out with you. What even a cool grown-up like GoGo didn't understand was that Lauren Wadsworth was the most perfect, most popular, most
everything
girl at Beachside Middle School. Charlie and I hadn't even started school there yet, but we already knew about her. Even at Culver, our old middle school, she was famous for being rich, smart, beautiful, and everything else you'd ever want to be.

“We can't go to her party, GoGo. We don't even know Lauren Wadsworth.”

“I hear she's a darling girl. And you are darling girls. So it's a perfect fit.”

Yeah, right, a perfect fit.
Charlie and I had seen Lauren a few times at the club over the last month, and she didn't exactly come over and ask to be our new best friend. She just hung out with her group, the other girls from the club, like Brooke Addison, Jillian Kendall, and Lily March. None of those girls seemed like they were dying to get to know the two new, girl, jock tennis players who were living in the caretaker's bungalow and transferring in from Culver City Middle School.

I grabbed my racket and headed outside. It was another perfect day: the sun shining, the red beach umbrellas of the club fluttering in the ocean breeze. On the first court, four members were playing doubles— older women with floppy hats and even floppier upper arms. On the second court, Charlie was practicing her serve, and Dad was calling out instructions.

“Toss the ball higher, Charlie. Raise your point of contact. Don't overpower it—go for accuracy!”

When Charlie saw me, she stopped serving and came running over. She gave me a hug, her hot cheek pressing against my cool one. I immediately felt guilty that she was out there working so hard and I was the slacker, as usual.

“Is he mad that I'm late?” I whispered.

“I told him you had to put new shoelaces in.”

“How'd you come up with that?”

“I don't know. Sometimes I amaze myself.” Charlie giggled.

I love my sister. She's always there for me when I screw up. Of course, I'm there for her, too, but she doesn't screw up nearly as often as I do, that's for sure.

“Get your game face on,” she whispered as Dad came jogging up to us. “He's very hyped-up about the tournament.”

“How're the new shoelaces?” my dad asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his wristband.

“So much better, Dad. Those old ones were . . .” I hesitated and looked over at Charlie, not knowing what she had told him.