The Midnight Twins

  The officials presented each of the twins with Public Service medals and five-hundred-dollar scholarships from the state Police and Fire Association.

  Much sweeter were the little notes from Hannah and Heather and Alex. Hannah’s began, “We love Twin . . .” (Their cousins, like most of their teachers, couldn’t tell Mallory and Meredith apart, and called them, separately and collectively, “Twin.”) Aunt Kate was ridiculously moved by Meredith’s gutsy effort to save the baby books. She bought her a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Scrips-and-Scraps—which Merry intended to use entirely for commemorating her cheerleading career. For Mallory, her aunt and uncle provided a year’s worth of weekly tickets to the Overture Cinema Center in Deptford. Mally was grateful, but didn’t know how her aunt thought she was going to pop over to the Deptford Mall on her own. Maybe Drew or Eden would take her.

  Drew came over every day to look at her like she was a science project. “I can’t believe you went through that,” he said, and begged for detail after detail. He brought Mally two more of his outgrown cross-country shirts and one that was new. “All guys are pyros,” Drew said. “But this had to be some kind of psycho if he knew people were in there.”

  “Maybe it was a girl,” Mally suggested, just to bug him.

  “No, a girl wouldn’t do that. I looked it up.”

  “Oh, well, if you looked it up . . .” Mallory mocked him. Drew’s face flushed. Mally felt sorry for redheads: They would never be able to play poker.

  “It’s true. Girls don’t have the same thing with fire. They’ll catch him, though, because they always make a mistake.”

  “The one who burned down the church in Tremont didn’t.”

  “That’s the one fire everyone always brings up. . . .” Drew said. “But I read about it on the Internet, and it said they always make a mistake. Like on purpose. They’re proud of what they do. Arsonists. I don’t know about that church in Tremont. Maybe somebody did it who’s already in jail for something else. Whenever I talk about this, someone mentions the church.”

  “That’s because it was the only other one there was,” Mally told him. “We don’t get a lot of arson in Ridgeline. I Googled the last murder. It was in 1956. That was, like, years before my mother was born.”

  “Who was it?” Drew asked.

  “Guy shot his wife’s boyfriend. Very boring.”

  “What about the cat murders?” he asked Mallory.

  “I’m not counting cat murders. People poison cats all the time. It’s creepy, but people just hate cats. There actually are too many cats, Drewsky. And cats don’t really like people, either.”

  “I like my cat,” Drew objected. His ancient one-eyed cat, Fluffy, slept every night practically on Drew’s head. Drew smelled like shampoo and mint kitty litter.

  “Do you want to go to the movies?” Mally finally asked.

  Drew blushed again. “Like, with you?” he mumbled.

  “No, like by yourself,” Mally replied. “I’m not asking you out! God! That would only be so sick.”

  Drew personally didn’t think it was sick. He adored Mallory and couldn’t wait until she was fifteen, when Campbell and Tim would allow “group dates.” He would come back from college for it. If he waited only forever, he knew Mallory would marry him. But Mally said, “It’s just that my aunt gave me enough movie passes to last until I’m thirty for saving the kids.”

  “Well, you did.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. Merry did it all. I was out of it. . . .”

  “Still, Mallory. People run from fires. I’ve heard of parents running from a fire with their own kids inside.”

  “No way.”

  “Way,” Drew said.

  “Did you Google that, too?”

  “No,” Drew said. He had.

  Mallory sighed and said, “Well, I’m watching Days here, if you don’t mind. So do you want to go to the movies? Or should I just give you some of the fourteen thousand passes I have and you can take a real girl?”

  “I’ll go,” Drew told her. “You’ll have to wear a mask, though.”

  Mallory threw her hands up over her face. Drew wanted to punch himself. She thought he meant the faint rosy remains of the scorch burns on her face.

  “I only meant that everyone recognizes you.”

  “I’ll go dressed as Meredith. I’ll put on false eyelashes.”

  “That’ll do it. No one will recognize Meredith,” Drew said. “I feel better already.”

  Later that day, Drew hung around outside the dining room while Mallory and Meredith were interviewed by the state fire inspector. Mallory didn’t tell Drew, but she found the state fire investigator sexy and fascinating, though he was old, probably thirty.

  The girls sat side by side across from him at the dining room table. From his briefcase, he took a stack of photos and a folder filled with dozens of reports detailing anonymous tips. He used a fountain pen, like Mallory’s father, and squared a clean stack of blank paper before he wrote down the date and Third Brynn Twins Interview.

  “Now that you’re home and all well, think about it. Did you see anyone? Did you hear anything?” he asked. “The least little thing, something you wouldn’t think would matter, could be the key to all of it. Think hard.” He studied their eyes, to prompt them and to search for the hint of a lie.

  “Not one single thing,” Merry said. “Not even one car went by that we saw.”

  “Everybody else saw cars. Why not you?”

  “We were taking care of the little kids, not staring out the windows,” Mally told him.

  “There had to be a car. We saw tire marks, marks with mud in them. Someone pulled over and parked in front of your uncle’s house. They were new tires, though. No special wear pattern. Could match almost any car.”

  Mallory loved the way he talked. She decided to try to talk in partial sentences herself.

  Seemed normal. Could have been anyone. Possible stranger. No personal involvement. She liked the swagger of it.

  In the end, nothing about the fire investigation gave up a scintilla of new information.

  All they knew was that the fireworks had been placed in advance, and ignited easily—concealed by dry leaves with a barrier made of cardboard around them. They’d been lit by hand, probably with a cheap cigarette lighter, almost certainly by someone wearing work gloves. There were scorched fabric fibers that would have matched only every one of ten thousand or so pairs of gloves sold just in the week since Christmas.

  Everybody in Ridgeline apparently had seen more cars drive up and down the dead-end cul-de-sac of Pumpkin Hollow Road than anyone had seen that night on the New Jersey Turnpike, judging from the number of phone tips. But not one had seen a single human being. No one had even seen the children playing outside the house! No one, even people just a block away, witnessed the fireworks. No one had seen an explosive device thrown onto the roof. Everyone was somewhere else. That was what the arsonist had counted on. Police figured the callers just wanted in on the excitement.

  The neighbors next door had indeed been out, returning home at two a.m. to find, to their horror, their street clogged with fire trucks, firefighters, and squad cars from three villages. The only thing that turned up in the neighbors’ yard was the burnt end of what might have been a long fuse.

  From the scorch mark, it was apparent that something big had flamed out on the back porch, evidently intended to block that route of escape. It was all planned to do serious damage, and yet, not serious enough to insure that kind of damage. Something about it was amateurish, but deliberately or . . . because it was the work of an amateur? The fire inspector told the locals that it was almost like someone was trying to scare the girls almost to death rather than kill them outright. The pyrotechnics might have gone further than the perpetrator intended.

  A prank that got out of hand, the officials finally figured. The only question was, why that house? The isolated location was the best guess. The girls were well known, but their school fri
ends called them nice and popular. The twins had no enemies. In fact, Edensau Cardinal, a beautiful, dark-haired sophomore, told officers, “No one would hurt Mally and Merry. Twins are sacred.”

  And though the police officers thought the comment was about as nuts as everything else about this case, and warranted a long look into Eden’s background, she was just as pure as the twins. An athlete, a good student from a big family, she spent most of her time taking care of younger siblings and cousins, working Sundays at the Sunglass Nook in Deptford. She didn’t even date. The twins’ uncle, Kevin Brynn, was a real-estate lawyer. No one was in jail because of his job. No one was even angry with him over a divorce.

  No one in Ridgeline had a bad word to say about any of the Brynns.

  At last, there was nothing left to ask, nothing left to tell, nothing.

  The town as a whole seemed to make a summary decision to let the girls get on with their lives—at least, the adults did. The kids wouldn’t have let go of this drama if they were paid to do it. Gossip about the fire still raced through the halls of the middle school and high school. At the Brynns’ house, there was a constant parade of visitors—everyone standing in front of the TV as Mally tried to watch Days or General Hospital. The girls’ bedroom was like a florist’s shop. Music boxes, teddy bears, and earrings were brought, like offerings. For Merry, it was like a second Christmas or birthday—with the added drama of all her friends’ complete and utter fascination.

  Even David Jellico visited once (Mally noticed he had a sweater tied around his neck and one half of his shirt tucked into his pants, with the other end out in front in a show-off way). And though he seemed bored and waiting for a chance to escape the whole time, Meredith acted like there was a rock band in the living room and was annoyed when Mallory kept turning the volume up on the TV. Frankly, Meredith was worn out from having to change outfits for the arrival of different boys.

  Will Brent and Dane Greenberg came.

  “Someone is going to pay,” Dane said.

  “No one hurts the M and M and gets away with it,” Will said.

  Meredith loved this even more.

  “It’s like being the total girl of the school,” she said. “Like being homecoming queen or something.”

  “It’s like being a weenie,” Mallory told her. “All you had to do to get so popular was almost burn up.” Even Tim kept walking around, punching the air and swearing he was going to black somebody’s eye. Like their father would ever punch anyone out. Please. Mallory got aggravated with being treated like a little dumpling someone had to protect.

  Everyone was convinced that the villain was someone they knew.

  Mally was convinced of that much, too. She had the unkind, creepy thought that David Jellico did it—not meaning to hurt anyone, but to scare her for standing up to him at Kim’s party two years ago.

  “I don’t think he meant it to go that far, but he’s an ass,” she told Merry.

  “You’re the ass,” Merry said. “That’s so mean and stupid. Bonnie is Mom’s best friend.”

  “So David can’t be a wingnut. I see.”

  “He was at a party in Deptford with Deirdre Bradshaw,” Merry said. “They got there at, like, nine. Deidre is so beautiful. I would have a hard time getting him away from her.”

  “Being in Deptford would still give him time, you twit!” Mally said.

  “I think you’re the one who really has a crush on him,” said Merry. “Like he’s going to say, ‘Hey, I have to stop and set fire to Kevin Brynn’s house before we go to the party’?”

  Mally gave up.

  They missed the first two weeks of the second semester, but all their teachers were so sympathetic, neither one had to make up a single thing. Most even gave them all the class notes. Boys fell all over Merry, carrying her book bag because of her injury. Merry felt like a medieval princess with champions vying for her hand.

  Her hand.

  The scars were getting better, but they were still a mess.

  All the attention was small compensation for missing her whole basketball cheering season, but still. Every week, the bandages were smaller. Every week, there was more healthy tissue that her mother carefully treated with antibiotics and gels. But she still couldn’t hold a pencil. Her teachers wrote down all her answers for her.

  Well.

  At least the lower half of her body was undamaged.

  Merry was too optimistic to sink down into a full depression. She stayed in focus on being ready for competition in March. She sat on the sidelines, a peppy little hero with her hand matching the white of the sweaters they wore with the big green letter R on the front. She spent early mornings in the gym, working her legs on the curling machine, practicing endless but careful combinations of jumps and splits and stretches—anything that didn’t involve her hands. She could practice arm movements and choreography to music with the squad, but no one dared throw her on a mount or even let her balance on the hand of the one boy on the team, Kellen Fish, although she’d been practicing partner stunting in private, years before she technically should have done it. Merry’s combination of balance and strength was so tempting that Coach Everson allowed it, but only reluctantly.

  “You should be in college for this,” she said every time Merry threw herself into a handspring and Kellen caught her and elevated her into a Statue of Liberty.

  But anything extreme was out of the question now. Coach laid down the law.

  Caitlin Andersen had taken over as the captain, and Kiley Karzniak as flyer. Merry was furious.

  One night, Kim and Merry were lying on Kim’s bed, sharing a pizza (Kim wouldn’t eat the crusts and Merry wouldn’t eat the middles, so it worked out well). The windows were open because the weather was so warm, but they had called everyone they knew and there wasn’t a single thing to do. Crystal’s house had been TP’ed and Wade Greenberg had already been grounded for it, and it was only nine o’clock.

  “I want to tell you something,” Kim said.

  “Okay,” Merry answered.

  “It’s kind of deep.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “It’s like, you did this good thing, and you get only bad things,” Kim said. “It’s like being cursed. Not really. But kind of.”

  “I got a lot of good things,” Merry said. “I mean, I saved my brother’s life. You don’t get to feel much better than that.” But she didn’t sound convinced. “Of course, like Mallory says, I would have saved Adam anyway. It’s not like it was anything special. If we were pioneers, we’d have had to pull him out of a flood a couple of times by now, probably.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Mallory did. She thinks it’s sick that everybody made such a big deal out of us doing stuff we were supposed to do anyhow.”

  “But your life is totally messed up!” Kim said, her eyes glistening with unspent tears.

  “Well, thanks,” said Merry.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Kim apologized. “I meant messed up for now! I just feel so bad for you. You’re like somebody on the Lifetime Channel.”

  David appeared in the hall, dressed in his brown leather jacket—Merry loved that it was brown leather, not black like some hoodlum or white like a gangster. He looked to her like old pictures of Charles Lindbergh in her history book, thin and straight and tall, like a Norse god with his brown eyes and blond hair. Did Italians have blond hair? Was David adopted? No, Campbell said that Bonnie got pregnant with David just a year after they began working together on the surgical floor at the hospital. David was just . . . gifted, where looks were concerned. Kim was cute, but not like her brother. Under the leather jacket, David wore one of those white sweaters that felt oily when you touched it. Merry wished she could.

  “You don’t look Italian,” Merry said, curling her knees under her butt in a kitten’s pose, hoping to prolong the moment.

  “Como!” David explained. “Tutti blonds in the Alps.”

  “You speak Italian?”

  “He??
?s taking it,” Kim put in. “There’s a distance course for Latin and Italian and Japanese. Our dad speaks a little. Our one grandpa hardly spoke any English.”

  “It comes naturally,” David said. “Va bene! Multo grazie!”

  “Pizza! Gorgonzola!” Kim mocked him. “That’s such crap. I hear you repeating the sentences until one in the morning!”

  “It’s the language of love. And what you don’t know is that I’m dictating my novel!”

  “David!” Meredith exclaimed. “Are you really a writer, too?”

  “What do you mean, ‘too’?” Kim asked. “What else does he do, golf? He’s not dictating a novel. He talks to himself! He answers! He’s done it all his life!”

  “Shut up, fat butt! I want to be able to sound halfway educated when I go to college. Unlike some people. And as for golf, Tiger Woods will be a billionaire if he isn’t already. At least it’s a real sport!” David abruptly jumped into the air, landed in a spread-eagle stance with one arm thrust in front and one above his head, and cried, “Ridgeline, so fine! Rah-rah, team! They’re all even lousy teams!”

  Kim threw her apple core at David’s head and nailed him. “Hah!” she cried, but not before David could whip it back, and hard. It left a red mark. Brothers, Merry thought, but Kim looked puzzled and hurt. David headed out, for a date with Deirdre, Meredith assumed. That night, when she and Kim finally fell asleep, she dreamed again of David arranging stones in a garden. He looked so serious and sweet, his hair curling with the raindrops. He was a gentle boy, who must love flowers. Or it was his and Bonnie’s vegetable garden. She wanted to marry a boy who loved his mother.

  The next morning, she asked Kim, “Where does David work? Does he have a garden? You don’t have a rock garden at your grandparents’ house, do you?”

  “No!” Kim said. “What do you mean?”