Free The Midnight Twins by Jacquelyn Mitchard Page B

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?”
    “Like big circles of stones or shells?”
    “Oh, he’d kill you!” Kim said. She fell back into her ten orange polka-dotted feather pillows, laughing.
    “What?”
    “Did you follow him?”
    “No.”
    “Did he tell you?”
    “Kind of.”
    “Well, David acts like he’s all that, but he’s totally a baby when it comes to animals and stuff. He used to bring home these cats that had been abused or were just hopelessly sick. If they lived, he gave them to the vet to find homes for them, but if they died, he buried them . . . well, not far from your family camp. This has been since we were little kids. My mom used to drive him there. He even had funerals for the hamsters. He used to say they liked being on the mountain.”
    “That’s so sweet.”
    “Don’t talk about it with him, though,” Kim said. “I’m surprised he mentioned it. It’s not this big macho thing to do. He even puts flowers up there.”
    Merry wished she could be just two years older, no matter what her mother always warned about wishing her life away. Having a guy who was that sensitive, and cute, and . . . David was like a song or something, except human.
    That morning as she was eating breakfast, she said to David, “I won’t tell anyone.”
    “What?”
    “About the pets and the little graves. It’s so sweet.”
    “What? What are you talking about?” David asked, his face changed, hardened.
    “Forget I said anything,” Merry said. It was clearly a tender spot.
    “Really? What are you talking about?”
    “About the cats you tried to rescue, that died . . . Kim told me . . . I think it’s really—”
    “Kim’s fricking crazy! I did that when I was, like . . . ten. Kim’s out of her mind.” Kim came into the room and David punched her on the arm, hard, then shot her a sneer, turned, and stomped away. Merry concentrated on her French toast. In her dream, David hadn’t been ten. He’d been wearing the same beautiful, worn, toast-colored leather bomber.
    He was just embarrassed.
    And so was Kim. “He never used to be like this. He’s an ass,” Kim told Merry. “He got like this after he started dating girls in Deptford. My mom says they’re . . . you know.”
    Merry knew what Kim meant by “you know.” But she hoped that David would wait for her instead of settling for anyone else, “you know” or not.

DOUBLE VISIONS
    Mallory did play in the last