The Third Twin (22 page)

“What happened?” I ask.

“Cut myself. It’s no big deal.” She grabs a paper towel off the roll and wraps it around her finger.

I nod, but I know she’s lying. It is a big deal. In all the years I’ve known her, she’s never once cut herself in the kitchen. Maybe Dad’s blaming her for not watching us carefully—no wonder she’s upset. Now I feel even worse that I dragged her into this mess. No way can he fire her. I can’t imagine not having her around.

Cecilia dishes out some chicken and rice with her good
hand, and I take my place at the counter, with Ava right beside me. I’m not sure if it’s excitement or guilt that’s got her so wound up. She’s still talking about this afternoon while I take a few bites of dinner.

“So what did they say about Dylan?” she asks. “Did they give you any details?”

I watch her, alert for anything in her voice that might give her away. “Not really. Just that he was killed sometime around dawn by the gym. The same way Casey was killed.” I wonder where she was early this morning. She came into the kitchen and got coffee right after I did, but that doesn’t mean anything. Her alibi is as good as mine. Which means it sucks.

Ava’s biting her lip, and she looks lost in thought. “You mean stabbed?”

“In the back of the neck,” I confirm. I watch her face carefully.

She looks at me. “What’s going on?”

“That’s what I need to figure out. One dead ex-boyfriend might be a coincidence. The cops think two means there’s a serial killer.”

Cecilia drops a plate in the sink with a clatter and turns around to face us. I can see she’s rattled. “There are two dead boys? And they think you had something to do with it?”

I look over at Ava, but she’s not giving anything away. “They think Alicia did. All I know is that it wasn’t me.”

Ava’s eyes narrow. “So what are you saying? That I’m involved somehow? Go on—say it.”

I want to believe she had nothing to do with all this. I mean, come on, this is Ava we’re talking about, not some assassin.
But there’s a tiny nugget of doubt that isn’t sure what to think anymore. All clues seem to lead to Alicia, and there are only a few things that I know for sure, and the main one is that I didn’t do it. “No,” I finally say, although I’m not sure I believe it. “But there are a bunch of cops in a brightly lit building that think that one of us might.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ava says, turning away from me.

I reach over and grab her arm, spinning her around. After all I’ve been through, she doesn’t have the right to walk away from me. Not now. “Then explain it to me, will you? Why do the cops have a photo of a girl who looks suspiciously like you in that neighborhood right around when Casey died? Wearing a red leather jacket that just happens to be hanging in your closet?” I look into her face, a face that’s more familiar to me than my own, and realize that it’s not the deaths that have me so upset. It’s the fact that she could hide something from me so well. She has to know how our DNA got onto Casey.

“That’s not evidence,” Ava says, angrily shaking my hand off her arm. “At most it’s a coincidence. Look, I had issues with Dylan, and whatever happened to him and Casey sucks, but I had nothing to do with it.” She takes a step toward me. “And what about you? You act all innocent, but how do I know it wasn’t you in that surveillance photo?” Her voice is getting louder with every word. “Maybe instead of just scratching Casey with the keys, you took it a step further?”

Anger boils up inside me. I could have let them take Ava down to the station in handcuffs, but instead I volunteered, and this is the thanks I get? “How dare you—”

Cecilia steps between us. “Girls! Stop it this instant!” She pushes us apart roughly, looking from me to Ava in a way that suddenly makes me feel guilty. “This is no way to act. Whenever one of you is in the tiniest bit of trouble, you always pull together, and now you’re out here screaming just when you need each other the most.”

Ava is shaking. “I don’t have to stand here and take Lexi’s crap,” she says.

My
crap? Doing her a favor is what got me into this in the first place.

Cecilia puts Ava’s hand in mine and clasps ours with her own. She doesn’t say a word, but looks us both in the eyes and then turns to open the refrigerator. The feel of my sister’s hand in mine makes the hard lump inside soften a little bit. That is, until she yanks her hand away.

“So the only piece of evidence you have is some stupid jacket that’s hanging in my closet? I bought it at the mall a couple of weeks ago. Like hundreds of other girls.”

“Show me your arms,” I say evenly.

“My what? What for?”

“Somehow our DNA got under Casey’s fingernails. The cops think he scratched one of us just before he died.”

“You’ve seen my arms a million times!” she shouts. “We were just at the beach together, for God’s sake.”

“I wasn’t looking for anything then.”

Ava pulls up the sleeves of her sweater to show me her unbroken skin. When I don’t say anything, she pulls her shirt over her head and twirls around in front of me in her bra. “Look closely,” she says. “You won’t find anything because
I wasn’t there.” She grabs her phone off the counter and throws it at me. “Take my phone. Go ahead. Check the texts, the call history, anything you want. The only thing I know for sure is that I was here, asleep in my bed, when Dylan was killed this morning.” I see tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. “But apparently my word isn’t good enough for you anymore.”

And that’s the sentence that hurts. Since we were born, it has been the two of us against the world, and I’ve been more alone these past few days than I’ve ever been before. The reality of it is that I don’t think Ava could hurt anyone. Drive them crazy, maybe. Talk behind their back about their fashion sense, definitely. But kill someone? “Sorry,” I say quietly.

“You bet you’re sorry!” Ava continues, the heaviness of the moment obviously lost on her. “You come home, accusing me of—”

“Ava!” Cecilia says sharply.

Ava’s mouth shuts abruptly, and she pulls her shirt back over her head. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Don’t be such a poonch,” I say quietly.

The edges of a smile appear on her face for a quick second. She looks at my plate. “Are you going to finish that drumstick?”

“No,” I say, pushing my plate toward her.

“You sure you don’t want it?”

“I’m sure,” I say, watching her take a bite.

Maybe if we say normal things to each other for long enough, it will all get back to normal.

Maya gives me a sad smile as she walks me to my locker. All I can see of Ava is the back of her head as she rushes in front of me. So much for getting back to normal. “Are you going to be okay today?” Maya asks me.

I try to focus on getting my books into the backpack I borrowed from Ava, and not at the way everyone’s staring at me. “I guess,” I answer. “It’s better than sitting around at home waiting for the lawyer to call. Plus, Dad thinks that going to school is some kind of punishment. But it’s good to get out of there. It’s like everyone at home is just holding their breath waiting for the next bad thing to happen. School can’t be worse than that.” At least, I hope not. I need something to get me through the next eight hours until we meet with Ms. Alvarez.

Maya glances over her shoulder. “You should know what you’re walking into.… People are talking.”

I wince, although I’m not surprised. It’s not like yesterday’s events went unnoticed. “I figured,” I say. “It’s not every day that someone gets led out of the school in handcuffs.”

“Not our school, anyway.” She smiles but doesn’t look happy. “But most people say they don’t believe you did it.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” I say, watching people swarm the hallway. A girl I don’t know in a swim team hoodie glances at me and then grabs the girl in front of her so she can look too. I wonder if they actually think I did it.

“I’m sure it will all get fixed soon,” Maya says. “The cops know what they’re doing.”

I can barely manage a grunt in reply. As we walk away from my locker, I see people whispering and turning away. Everyone tries to be casual, but I can feel the glances like ice on my skin as we head toward the quad.

Maya squeezes my hand as she turns toward Building A. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll meet you for lunch, all right?”

I nod, not trusting my voice, feeling like a kindergartner on the first day of school.

It’s like the cops have given me a magic power that renders people completely silent the minute I come within three feet of them. Everyone’s talking at a normal volume until they see me; then it’s dead silence. Pun intended.

I make it through the first three periods by staring either straight ahead or down at my books. Apparently I was wrong—the only thing worse than sitting at home and waiting for bad things to happen is being at school and waiting for bad things to happen, knowing that half the people around you are looking forward to the show.

“Hey,” Zane says, pulling me toward him with one arm around my shoulder as I walk to Spanish. Twenty-four hours ago, things were so different. I feel so much bottled-up energy, I’m not sure how I’m going to sit at my desk and conjugate verbs for an hour.

“Hey yourself,” I say, trying to pretend that I’m not on the verge of losing it. “Thanks again for calling Ms. Alvarez. She’s been cool.”

“Any time. Glad to see she got you out of the joint.” He looks around at the people in the quad. “No Ava?”

I shrug. “I haven’t seen her since she bolted out of the car this morning. She’s not exactly helping things, anyway.”

Zane looks concerned. “Did you guys have a fight?”

“Sort of. Not really.” I try to put it into words, but I can’t. “She’s just been … different lately.” I look away from him. “I don’t know.”

Zane is silent for a moment. “You don’t really think Ava had something to do with this?” he finally asks.

I don’t want to think about it right now. I don’t want to try to come up with reasonable explanations for all the clues that seem to be pointing right at us.

Zane touches my arm. “Because whatever’s going on, she’d never do something like that to you. She was a wreck when they took you away yesterday. And I saw her in
Annie
in ninth grade. She’s not that good an actress.”

I don’t answer. I want to believe him, I really do. I want to know that Ava would never betray me like that. She’s been part of me since before we were born, and while there’s none
of that mystical twin crap with us—no private languages, no feelings of pain when she gets hurt, no telepathy—I can’t imagine not having her next to me.

“You think I don’t see it, but I do,” Zane continues. “You pretend she drives you crazy, that you don’t have anything in common, that you’ve carved out these specific roles for yourselves over the years.” He pauses. “But I know that’s all bullshit. She’d do anything for you, and you know it.”

I turn to face him. “So how do you explain the jacket that mysteriously shows up both in the surveillance photo and her closet? The speeding ticket, the hair salon—even the bartender at the club that night. Only two of us can pretend to be Alicia, and the only thing I know for sure is that none of those have been me.”

“How many girls have bought red leather jackets recently? And what if it is her in that photo? So she went out that night—doesn’t mean she had anything to do with Casey’s death.”

“But why wouldn’t she tell me the truth about where she was the night Casey was killed? Why would she just let me get ambushed at the police station like that?” It feels like we’re playing tennis—every excuse he can volley at me, I have an answer I can smack back at him. There’s one answer I haven’t wanted to look at too closely. One that makes so much sense, it scares me. “Maybe …,” I say, hesitating, because once I say it, it might become real. “Maybe Dylan broke up with Ava because he knew too much, didn’t want to get implicated. And maybe that’s what got him killed.”

Zane glances at me. “You watch too much crime TV.”

He doesn’t believe me. Nobody will believe me. “And your opinion of the average person is way too high,” I reply. “You and Ava are not exactly average people,” he says.

“So,” Ms. Alvarez says, flipping back through the papers in the large folder on her big wooden desk. “It looks like we have some decisions to make.”