Almost Identical #1 Read online

  by Lin Oliver

  Grosset & Dunlap

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  We gratefully acknowledge the

  poem contributed by Sonya Sones,

  author of Stop Pretending

  and other young adult novels in verse.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Text copyright © 2012 by Lin Oliver. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011043240

  ISBN 978-1-101-56714-2

  For Bonnie Bader, Lauren Roth, and Allie Roth—who inspired this book from start to finish!—LO

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  The Weigh-In

  Chapter 1

  “Step up on the scale, young lady. Let’s see what you weigh.”

  Dr. Hartley was leaning against the wall, holding my chart, and smiling like he had just said a normal thing. I’m sorry. That was about as not-normal a request as I’ve ever heard.

  Are you totally insane? I thought. Get on the scale? Right here? Right now? With everyone watching?

  I think we can all agree that asking a girl who is almost thirteen to hop on a scale and have her weight announced in public is seriously horrifying. Especially if the girl in question—and that would be me—has always felt too fat for her own good.

  I was facing the big, stupid scale in the hallway of Dr. Hartley’s office where my twin sister, Charlie, and I were getting our yearly start-of-school checkups. My dad was hovering around me like he couldn’t wait to see the results. (Which, by the way, he couldn’t.) Our fourteen-year-old brother, Ryan, was lurking in the hall, too, pretending to drop off his pee sample on the green linoleum counter, but I knew he was just being his usual nosy self. And as if having my family clustered around weren’t bad enough, also within earshot were two nurses, a receptionist, a whining four-year-old with a gross leg rash, his mother, and a random plumber who was checking out a leak underneath the sink.

  I couldn’t believe Dr. Hartley, my very own pediatrician, who was there when I was born, who wears a clip-on teddy bear on his stethoscope, who nuzzles babies and tells knock-knock jokes, actually wanted me to hop right up on the scale in front of—count ’em—nine people! Nine and a half if you count the four-year-old with the leg rash.

  Um, I don’t think so, Dr. Hartley.

  I couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing than a public weigh-in. Except maybe that time at the beach when I got back from boogie boarding and Jason Kemp, who is the cutest guy I have ever met and has beautiful tan eyes that perfectly match his beautiful tan body, pointed out that I had a long, green, slimy thingie hanging from my nose. That was definitely way up there on my most-embarrassing list, but I was suffering from a nasty cold and sinus infection at the time, so in my opinion, the long, green thingie wasn’t totally my fault.

  Dr. Hartley reached for my elbow and gently guided me toward the scale. No, this wasn’t going to happen. I dug my fluorescent-yellow flip-flops into his carpet and stood my ground.

  “You know what, Dr. Hartley? My foot just fell asleep, and if I stand on the scale I might fall over on my face and slice open my chin and have to get stitches, and it would be a real shame to start school with stitches on my face, don’t you think?”

  Dr. Hartley laughed.

  “You’re a hoot, Sammie. You’ve been making me laugh since you were a toddler. You’re a real character, young lady.”

  Good. Keep laughing. The more you laugh, the less you’ll think about weighing me.

  “Come on,” Dr. Hartley said, refusing to be deterred. “Height and weight. It just takes a second.”

  Yeah, a second for the weigh-in, but forever to get over the embarrassment.

  Charlie had already gotten weighed and measured. She was five feet two and, of course, a perfect 105 pounds. I knew I was the same height because we’re identical twins, and we’d been exactly the same height from the day we were born. But as my family likes to point out, when she was born she weighed a delicate five pounds two ounces, and I came busting out weighing in at a hefty six pounds twelve ounces. That’s not big for a regular baby, but for a twin, it’s pretty chubby. The family joke has always been that when we were in our mom’s belly, I hogged all the food. That used to be funny, but over the last couple of years, as my weight has seriously zoomed ahead of Charlie’s, I’m not finding the hog jokes so funny anymore.

  In fact, not at all funny.

  I’m not what you would call fat. But I’m not what you would call slim, either. Standing there in Dr. Hartley’s office, I was positive I weighed at least fifteen pounds more than Charlie, and I wasn’t exactly dying to share that news with the whole group. Especially my dad. I would have sooner told the random plumber what I weigh than tell my dad. He’s our tennis coach, and when he isn’t talking about serves and volleys and topspin and mental toughness, he’s lecturing us about weight. I’m sick of it, and so is Charlie, especially since she doesn’t even have a weight problem.

  “If you want to be champions, you have to be quick on your feet,” Dad tells us at least once a week. “And you can’t move your feet if you’re dragging a big butt around behind you,” he adds with a special glance in my direction.

  Funny, I’m not aware of dragging my butt around behind me. It just seems to follow me wherever I go, which I’ve grown used to. I mean, what else would be behind me if not my butt?

  “Sammie, did
you hear Dr. Hartley?” I heard my dad say. “He wants you on the scale.” He sounded irritated, but that was no surprise. He’s not big on patience, my dad.

  “Actually, Dad, I didn’t hear him. Maybe instead of checking my weight, we should check my hearing.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan piped up. “We don’t want her to be fat and deaf.”

  Thank you, big brother Ryan. Always there when a girl needs a little love.

  “Ryan, why don’t you go back in the bathroom where you belong?” Charlie snapped, coming to my rescue. “We’ll call you when we want your opinion. Which, by the way, is never.”

  “Up you go, Sammie,” said Dr. Hartley. “Let’s see what Mr. Scale has to tell us.”

  Maybe that “Mr. Scale” stuff is amusing to four-year-olds with leg rashes, but I am twelve and three quarters, and it wasn’t amusing to me. Personally, I hoped Mr. Scale would blow up and die.

  I was out of excuses. I stepped on the scale and closed my eyes. I could hear Dr. Hartley pushing that little metal weight—which had been set on 105 pounds for Charlie—up and up and up.

  No more up, please. Make it stop. Make it stop.

  “One two six and a half,” he said, after it seemed like he had been fiddling with that stupid weight forever.

  I’m no math genius, but I knew that “one two six and a half” was a nice way of saying that I weighed one hundred and twenty-six and a half pounds. You don’t want to leave out the half.

  “Someone’s going to have to cut out the ice cream and candy bars,” my dad blurted out. “Right, Sammie?”

  I wanted to cry and yell at the same time. There should be a word for that, like crell. Yeah, that’s it: I wanted to crell. I wanted to tell him that I don’t sit around stuffing my face with ice cream and candy bars, that I eat a ton of salad, and that if I ate another bag of those baby carrots I was going to turn orange and get eaten by a rabbit.

  “Dad,” Charlie whispered. “Not a good topic. Not now.”

  “Don’t be silly, Charlie,” my dad said. “Now is always the best time to deal with things. Besides, we’re all family here.”

  Really? I didn’t know that I was related to the whining four-year-old with the leg rash or that the random plumber was my long-lost uncle Fred.

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Sammie,” Dr. Hartley said. “You just have to make some better food choices and continue to get lots of exercise.”

  “Yeah,” my dad agreed. “Then you’ll weigh what Charlie weighs. Lean muscle, quick feet, no extra drag—that’s what we’re going for.”

  “Rick,” Dr. Hartley said, holding up his hand to stop my dad from going on. “Sammie’s a bright girl. She gets the point.”

  I hate being compared to Charlie. We’re different. Sure, she weighs less and probably always will. But I can whistle and she can’t. And her third toe on her right foot is longer than her second toe and mine isn’t. And I have a pink birthmark on my upper arm that looks like a baby ladybug, and she doesn’t have any birthmarks at all. The point being that even though Charlie and I are identical twins, we’re not identical. We’re almost identical. My dad just doesn’t get that.

  Thank goodness Dr. Hartley took Charlie and me into a private examining room for the rest of the checkup. He listened to our hearts and checked that our spines were straight. He talked to us about using good judgment now that we were going into seventh grade and not giving in to peer pressure. When it came to diet and weight, he said that I was at the high end of normal and reminded me that I should focus on eating lots of healthy fruits and vegetables. If I wanted, he had a nutritionist I could see. And then he dropped the subject, which was a giant relief. Another giant relief was that we didn’t have to get any shots this year. I’m not a fan of sharp needles.

  When we left Dr. Hartley’s office, I was so relieved to see GoGo waiting for us in the lobby. She’s our grandmother. Our mom’s mom. She’s taking care of us for a year because our mom has gone across the country to Boston to study cooking so she can come back to Los Angeles and open a restaurant. I miss my mom a lot, but GoGo makes it bearable because she’s so much fun. Charlie and I named her GoGo when we were little because she’s always on the go with, like, a thousand fun things a minute. She takes us to the beach and to the mall and to art classes at the museum and to movies and to a bead store where you can make your own bracelets. Everything she does is fun.

  “Who’s up for ice cream?” she asked. It was one of our traditions. Whenever we went to the doctor to get a shot or a strep throat test or a checkup, GoGo would magically appear in the lobby and take us for ice cream afterward.

  “I’m in,” Ryan said.

  “Root-beer float for me,” Charlie agreed.

  “What are you craving, Sammie?” GoGo asked, throwing her tan arm around my shoulder. I heard her silver bracelets jangling next to my ear, but I didn’t look up. I could feel my dad staring at me.

  “I’m not in the mood for ice cream,” I said, which was a total lie, because I was seriously dying for a scoop of cappuccino chocolate chip with hot caramel sauce and two cherries on the side. I had been thinking about it all morning.

  GoGo gave me a funny look. She knew something was up.

  “Sammie nearly broke the scale in the doctor’s office,” Ryan told her. “We’re sewing her mouth shut.”

  “Nonsense,” GoGo answered. “Sammie has a healthy, robust body.”

  “Oh yeah? Then how come she weighs a ton?”

  GoGo shot Ryan a stern look. “Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Sammie is a healthy young woman, and that’s what matters.”

  I wanted to drop into the floor and disappear. Since when was my body a topic of conversation?

  Hey, everyone join in. Oh you, Mr. Police Officer on the corner giving a parking ticket, what do you think of my body? Step right up and comment.

  “I don’t want to discuss it anymore, okay?” I snapped. And by the tone of my voice, everyone knew I was about two seconds away from crying. Even Ryan just shrugged and shut up.

  So we went to the ice-cream place and everyone else ordered. Me? I had nothing. Not a lick, not a sip, not a swallow.

  The only things I swallowed were my tears.

  The Sporty Forty

  Chapter 2

  “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 waitin
g 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.