Twice As Nice

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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

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  Cover illustration by Mallory Grigg

  Text copyright © 2014 by Lin Oliver. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset and 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) LLC. Printed in the USA.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-698-16775-9

  Version_1

  For my Third Act sisters who

  inspire and delight—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

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  “Hey, Charlie, you’ve got to come outside right now and check this out,” my older brother, Ryan, yelled, pounding on my bedroom door. “It’s the weirdest thing I’ve even seen!”

  I was sitting cross-legged on my bed, deeply engrossed in applying a second coat of fluorescent lime-green polish to my nails.

  “What could be weirder than you?” I hollered back, suspecting that this was just another one of Ryan’s practical jokes.

  I held out my hand to examine the effect. Perfect. The green was so bright that I practically needed sunglasses to look at it. Usually, I prefer a more neutral shade, like light pink or pale silver. When I’m feeling bad, though, I go for bolder colors. My twin sister, Sammie, says she can tell my mood from my nails—the brighter the color, the worse my mood. So my choice of the smoking-hot fluorescent lime-green polish should tell you something about how miserable a mood I was in.

  “Okay, fine,” Ryan said. “Stay in there. I guess you don’t want to see how totally insane Lauren is acting.”

  I jumped off my bed, practically tripped over my own feet, and flung open the door.

  “Did you say Lauren?” I asked, waving both my hands urgently in the air so the polish would dry faster.

  “Yeah. She’s out on the tennis court, acting like a chicken. Clucking and everything.”

  “Wait. You don’t mean Lauren Wadsworth, do you?”

  Lauren was definitely not the kind of person who would go around clucking like a chicken for no reason.

  “Yeah. Lauren Wadsworth. As in your ex–best friend. Remember her?”

  I didn’t appreciate his sarcasm. Of course I remembered her. It had been three weeks since Lauren and I had stopped talking, but I thought about her every day and wished we were still friends. My grandma GoGo says it’s really hard to lose a best friend. No matter what your problems were or what you fought about or how much you believe you were right and she was wrong. Because the sad fact is that one day you have a best friend and the next day you don’t. Trust me, that can put a person in a really miserable mood, one that even the brightest green nail polish can’t fix.

  “Are you positive it’s Lauren?” I asked Ryan.

  “I guess there’s always the possibility that it’s a mutant clone of her.”

  Very funny. Score another sarcastic comment for Ryan.

  He had to be wrong. I knew it couldn’t be Lauren. Sammie, and her Truth Tellers friends Alicia and Sara, might think it was hilarious to walk around clucking like a chicken or growling like a tiger. But they’re drama kids—and they’re always coming up with weird stuff to do. Lauren is a whole other kind of person. She’s cool and popular and beautiful. The total opposite of weird. She wouldn’t go clucking around unless she had lost her mind or something.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Come see for yourself, Charles. She’s right in the middle of the tennis court.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but I’m warning you, Ry. If this is one of your lame practical jokes, I’m never speaking to you again.”

  “Is that a threat or a promise?” he answered, cracking himself up.

  I slipped into my flip-flops, gave one last wave of my hands, and ran out of my room. Following Ryan, I zoomed out of the house onto the deck and headed to the tennis courts, which are between the house and the beach. By the way, don’t get the idea that we’re rich enough to live on the beach with our own private tennis court or anything. We live in the caretaker’s cottage at the Sporty Forty Beach Club in Santa Monica, California, where my dad is the tennis teacher while my Mom is away at cooking school. The forty families who belong to the club, like the Wadsworths, now they’re rich. We, on the other hand, are totally not.

  As I raced past the kitchen, I caught sight of GoGo and some girl out of the corner of my eye.

  “What’s the rush?” GoGo called out to me through the open window. “Come meet Bethany.”

  “I will later, GoGo,” I answered without losing a step.

  When I neared the tennis courts, I suddenly realized that I needed a plan. I couldn’t just barge out there and ask Lauren what was up with the chicken thing. She probably wouldn’t answer me. After all, we still weren’t speaking.

  What had happened between us was no little fight—it was major. I had told the police that Sean and Jared, two of her best friends, had started a bonfire at the beach that almost burned the neighbor’s house down. They got in big-time trouble. I felt I had to tell the truth, but Lauren didn’t think so. She said that the kids in the SF2s—her group, which until a couple weeks ago used to be my group, too—were loyal to each other, no matter what. They didn’t rat each other out. Since then, she hasn’t spoken to me, and neither have most of the other SF2s, except for Lily March and, thankfully, Spencer Ballard, the cutest boy in the entire seventh grade.

  I decided to crouch down behind a bush. Craning my neck, I peeked through the chain-link fence that surrounds the two tennis courts. I couldn’t see the whole court, just Lauren standing by the net, dressed in her usual great-fitting jeans and a yellow tank top that matched the gold highlights in her hair. She looked totally normal.

  “See? What’d I tell you?” Ryan whispered as he crouched down next to me. “She’s crazy, isn’t she?”

  “She’s not doing anything even remotely crazy,” I whispered back. “You’re the crazy one.”

  But before he could say anything, Lauren put her hands on her hips, bent her arms at the elbow and started moving them back and
forth like a chicken flapping its wings. Then she took off strutting around the court, poking her head in and out, the way a chicken does when it walks.

  “Hey, Lauren, I don’t hear you clucking,” a girl’s voice called from the open kitchen window.

  “Bethany, do I have to?” Lauren whined. “It’s so embarrassing.”

  “We all did it!” the girl named Bethany shouted back. “You can, too.”

  “Cluck, cluck, cluck,” Lauren said, sounding like a really angry chicken.

  Bethany howled with laughter. “Keep going, Lauren. I’ll let you stop when I’m finished talking to the cook here.”

  What cook? I thought. Then I realized that Bethany was the girl in the kitchen who was talking to GoGo. It happens that GoGo is a great cook—her guacamole is to die for—but she does not work at the club as a cook. She helps plan the parties and events, which is an entirely other thing.

  “Who does she think she is, calling GoGo the cook?” I whispered to Ryan.

  “Obviously one of the rich kids who belong here,” he said. “They think everyone works for them.”

  “That girl isn’t a member. I’ve never seen her here before.”

  “Me neither,” he said, trying to peer into the kitchen. “But my eyes are happy they’re seeing her now.”

  He made one of those boy hoots, the sound guys make when they see someone way too pretty for them to even talk to. The sound attracted Lauren’s attention, and she strutted over to the fence where we were crouched.

  “Who’s there?” she asked, pointing her face in our direction.

  I crouched lower but Ryan stood up.

  “Ryan!” I heard Lauren giggle. She has a huge crush on my brother and likes to think that he has a huge crush back. “How long have you been here?”

  “Long enough to see you do this,” Ryan said. Then he immediately went into his imitation of Lauren imitating a chicken.

  “Oh no!” she said. “Please forget you ever saw that. It’s definitely not my best look.”

  “I didn’t mind it,” Ryan answered. “I like chickens. I usually like them fried with mashed potatoes on the side, but apparently, that’s not your style.”

  “I can explain this whole thing,” Lauren said.

  “I hear you talking, Lauren,” Bethany interrupted from the kitchen. “That’s against the rules. Only clucking until I say you can stop.”

  Lauren dropped her voice to a low whisper. “I’m trying out for a club,” she explained, just loud enough so Ryan could hear. Of course, I could hear, too, but she couldn’t see me.

  “And this club,” Ryan said. “Is it just for people who impersonate chickens, or do you guys allow other poultry in, too? I do a mean duck quack.”

  “No, silly,” Lauren said in the flirtiest tone of voice you’ve ever heard. “The club is called The Waves. My cousin Bethany is president.”

  “The Waves? Oh yeah. That spirit club at the high school—the one with all the hot girls who come to the football games and cheer?”

  “Yup, that’s it. And Bethany might let me start a Junior Waves at Beachside. But first I have to be initiated, which includes acting like a chicken until she says I can stop.”

  “Ahh . . . initiation by clucking,” Ryan said. “That’s girl logic for you.”

  Lauren laughed. She has this high giggle that makes you want to laugh right along with her. I remember the first night I slept over at her house and we tried on her mom’s gold jewelry and took pictures of ourselves trying to look very sophisticated. I laughed so much my stomach hurt.

  I shifted my position behind the bush, suddenly aware that my leg was falling asleep. As I moved my foot, I thought I felt something crawling on it. Looking down, I saw the biggest spider you have ever seen walking up my ankle. It wasn’t a sweet little spider like Charlotte, but a huge brownish thing with a shiny body and long purple-tinted legs. And those legs were crawling past my ankle and up to my knee.

  Have I mentioned that I hate spiders? Well, I do.

  I couldn’t control myself. I jumped up and started screaming like I was being attacked by a zombie. I pulled off my sweatshirt and wildly swatted at my leg with the sleeve. I could hear myself yelling in this really panicky way, but I couldn’t stop myself until I finally knocked the spider off my leg and it dropped to the ground. It was only then that I realized Lauren was staring at me with a nasty look on her face.

  “Hi, Lauren,” I muttered.

  “Why were you spying on me?” she accused.

  “I wasn’t spying.”

  “Oh really? Then what do you call it? And just so you know, my conversation with Ryan doesn’t concern you, so I’d appreciate it if you’d just leave.”

  “Whoa there,” Ryan said. “Charlie lives here. Where’s she supposed to go?”

  “Anywhere, as long as it’s away from me,” Lauren told him.

  Just then, I heard the kitchen screen door slam, and turned around to see a girl who I assumed was Bethany bouncing over to the tennis courts. Okay, she wasn’t actually bouncing, but her hair sure was. She had the thickest, shiniest, bounciest hair I’d ever seen—like Lauren’s, only black instead of blonde. Those Wadsworths must have invented the gene for great hair. GoGo followed behind her, leaning on her fancy cane, the one with the carved pink flamingoes for a handle. GoGo’s been staying with us ever since she broke her leg in a car accident, and even though she’s up and around now, she still needs a little help walking.

  “Well, how nice to see you girls talking,” she said, sounding all cheery.

  “The conversation is officially over,” Lauren snapped.

  GoGo could feel the hostility in the air. You’d have to be some kind of alien not to. Lauren was looking at me like she wished I would drop through a hole in the ground and disappear. Good ole GoGo, though, she tried to come up with some chatty things to say. She actually believes that if you’re nice to people, they’ll be nice back to you.

  “Well, Bethany and I certainly got a lot accomplished,” she said. “We planned the whole theme and menu for her sweet sixteen party. Wait until you girls hear about it.”

  “I’m totally stoked,” Bethany said.

  “The theme is very clever,” GoGo said. “It’s going to be ‘Hats Off to Bethany.’ ”

  “Let me guess,” Ryan said. “Are all the guests going to wear hats?”

  “How’d you know?” Bethany asked.

  “Ryan is really smart,” Lauren said.

  Let me just point out here, unlike Sammie and I, who get good grades, Ryan is a straight-C student. The only person who would say he is “really smart” is someone who has a total crush on him.

  “The hats are only the beginning,” Bethany gushed on. “We’re going to give everyone a crazy-fun hat and then at exactly the time I was born, 10:51 p.m., everyone’s going to take off her hat and throw it in the air. Lily March is helping me design them. She’s really talented, even though she’s just a middle-schooler.”

  “Lily is an amazing clothes designer,” I piped up. “She has her own special look.”

  “So,” Bethany said, looking me up and down, as if it finally occurred to her that she wasn’t the only person there. “Who are you, exactly?”

  “Bethany, meet my granddaughter Charlie,” GoGo said. “I assumed you two girls knew each other.”

  “Oh, so you’re one of the twins,” Bethany said to me. “Are you the one who used to be Lauren’s friend? Or is that your sister?”

  “No, that would be me,” I said.

  Bethany rolled her eyes, looked at her watch and sighed. “They’re late,” she announced.

  “Who? Your royal coach and driver?” Ryan joked.

  Lauren giggled, but Bethany clearly was not amused. “No. My parents. They have to go over my party details with the staff.”

  “I guess that means me,” GoGo said,
with a little edge in her voice. “If you kids will excuse me, the staff has to review the benefits of sliders versus mini pizzas.” Then looking at me, she added, “I’m sure you girls have a lot to discuss as well.”

  I knew GoGo didn’t have to leave that minute, but I figured she thought that if we kids were left alone, we would start a fun conversation and before you know it, Lauren and I would be talking again. GoGo always says that anger doesn’t last, but friendship does.

  Well, she was wrong this time.

  “Come on, Bethany,” Lauren said, the minute GoGo was gone. “We have better things to do than hang out with her. Ryan, you can come with us.”

  “Not so fast, Lauren,” Bethany said. “I don’t believe I’ve given you permission to stop clucking and strutting.”

  “You said I could stop when you got here,” Lauren said.

  “I said you could stop when I told you could stop. And I haven’t yet.”

  “Bethany, please,” Lauren begged.

  “No whimpering, little cousin,” Bethany said. “If you want to be in The Waves, you have to do what the president says. You’ll understand that when you’re president of the Junior Waves. You’ll want everyone to follow what you say, too.”

  Lauren looked really annoyed but didn’t say anything. Ryan, Mr. Sensitive, filled the silence with a series of duck quacks. Lauren forced a little laugh, but Bethany was not amused. I couldn’t blame her for that. Giving Ryan a grow up, you dork look, Bethany gathered her hair into a ponytail. I noticed that she was wearing this soft gray-lavender nail polish, and suddenly, I felt like a total idiot for having neon-green nails. It’s like my nails were screaming, “Charlie Diamond is a total dork, too!”

  “Okay,” Bethany said to Lauren. “I’m going to give you a break this time. No more chicken, but only if you go into the kitchen and get me a cold bottle of peach iced tea and bring it to our table.”

  “There are only two tables on the whole deck,” Ryan pointed out. “You guys get one all to yourselves?”

  “Do you have a problem with that?” Bethany answered, without even looking at him.