Envy

“Gotcha.” Taylor slipped into her life science class and her sister went on to English.

Both were wondering the same thing: What was up with Starla?

THE WINTER AFTERNOON SKY TURNED INTO DUSK as Taylor trailed her sister down the stairs from their bedrooms. Hayley had just run home to grab a textbook.

“Off to hang out with Colton again?” Taylor asked. Her tone was unmistakable. The little lilt on the last word turned the question into a snipping judgment.

Hayley turned to face her. She did not have a smile on her face. In fact, she could not conceal her brewing anger. That first day back at school, Hayley had spent every minute between and after class with her boyfriend. And Taylor took every opportunity to complain about it. The incessant questioning about Colton had become more than an irritant.

It was worse than a flea bite that never went away.

“What’s gotten into you, Taylor?”

Finally, another chance to be direct, and Taylor took it. “Maybe the fact that all you ever do is hang out with him. What about Katelyn? And the ‘look’ message? We’re nowhere with it. What are you two so busy doing all the time, anyway?”

Hayley clearly didn’t like what she was hearing. “What is that supposed to mean exactly? If you’re accusing me of something, I would prefer it if you’d just spell it out.”

Taylor held her ground. “You know.”

“Colton and I are just hanging out.”

“Hey, I’m your twin. Don’t lie to me. Save it for someone who doesn’t give a crap,” Taylor spat out, trying to bury her jealousy.

Hayley wasn’t buying it. “Look,” she said, “there’s a lot going on around here that we don’t know. The two of us need to stick together to figure it all out. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you’d please lay off the Colton jabs.”

With that, she turned the knob of the back door and was gone.

chapter 12

JEALOUSY, ANNOYANCE, WHATEVER IT WAS, reverberated between Hayley and Taylor with a vengeance. Maybe it was because they had come from the same egg, or maybe it was because even after the womb they spent so much time together. Whatever the case, the girls shared and experienced intense emotions simultaneously. The energy was almost a twin-sense, telegraphed to each other silently through the air like sound waves.

Didn’t everyone feel that way? Didn’t everyone understand the transference of emotion in the same manner?

They didn’t, of course.

Hayley’s ability to capture feelings and images came to her differently from Taylor’s. The older sister by less than a minute, Taylor could immerse herself in water and infuse her brainwaves with the past thoughts of others. Hayley’s pathway was more tactile. The transmission that came to her often came through her fingertips. It was as if she could touch an object, a person—dead or alive—and capture an instant in the real, present world.

She’d touched Katelyn’s laptop, and the exchange of the moment had taken place.

Two days after school had started, Hayley sat at the kitchen table, her parents gone somewhere, her sister upstairs reading her latest US Weekly. She drank a glass of water, because water always helped the process. She shut her eyes and tried to recall the images that had flashed too quickly through her head in Katelyn’s room. She needed to see it all in slow-mo in order to understand it. She waited. She did what she and Taylor called “hope and focus.”

In a moment, the images came. There was a computer. Hayley could tell that a person was typing on one machine and sending the words to Katelyn’s shiny silver laptop. She watched fingers glide over the keyboard as if each grenade being dropped were a mere powder puff. One fluent keystroke after another. There was very little hesitation because the writer of the message knew exactly which words to use.

CULLANT: I’M NOT A TOTL STALKR BUT I’VE BN WOTCHN U, KATELYN.

Hayley watched as the pair typed.

KATIEBUG: U SOUND LK A PERV.

CULLANT: NOT @ ALL!!! DZ SOUND PERVY 2 WOTCH SOME1. LOL. TRUTH IS DAT IF U WEREN’T SO HOT—N I 100% MEAN DAT IN THE RYT WAY—I WUD JUST ASK U OUT.

KATIEBUG: RU A FREAK OR WAT?

Hayley sipped the tepid tap water, and then let a flood of it down her throat.

CULLANT: NO. JUST A GUY WHO DZN’T WANT 2 GET SHOT DWN BY THE HOTTST GAL @ KHS. DAT’S U, KATELYN. U KNOW, U REALLY R.

She could feel that Katelyn knew every reason why she should just stop the online conversation and maybe report the guy to someone. But Katelyn wasn’t exactly sure, however, who the boss of the Internet was anyway. It didn’t seem like there was an Internet police either. Every day her e-mail inbox was stacked with ads for Viagra (gross), breast enhancers (not!), and offers from Nigerians to share their fortune (tempting, but no thanks).

Hayley was irritated by the digression, though she completely agreed with Katelyn’s thoughts. She hoped and refocused on more of what she was after, and what she was seeking came forth.

Instead of telling someone or giving the boy on the other side of the computer screen the big kiss-off, Katelyn, who’d never felt lonelier in her life, answered him.

KATIEBUG: THX, I GUESS. BUT I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING BOUT U. UR NOT LYK THAT PHANTOM OF THE OPERA GUY. RU?

CULLANT: DON’T LIKE OPERA. BORING

Katelyn shook her head and typed.

KATIEBUG: LOL. MEANT THE BWAY SHOW. FREAK W/A BURNED UP FACE FALLS 4 A WOMAN & DZN’T WANT HER 2C HIS BUTTUGLY FACE.

CULLANT: I’M TLD I HAVE A NICE (_(_).

Katelyn smiled. The guy hitting on her was actually kind of funny. Maybe a little clueless, but amusing nevertheless. The boys at Kingston were in one of two camps—either a slacker or a jock who measured his muscles in the reflection of the school’s trophy case. None seemed to understand for a single nanosecond that talking to a girl was hotter than a Dirty Girl Scout drink, a blanket, and a quickie down at the beach.

Far, far, hotter.

CULLANT: I WANT 2 MEET U.

KATIEBUG: DN’T KNOW IF I’M RDY. 2B W/U IN PERSON MIGHT BE MORE THN I CN HANDLE.

More than she can handle? She could handle plenty. That is, if someone gave her something to sink her teeth into … er … hold. Whatever!

Katelyn started to type just as her mother entered the room. Sandra Berkley had been drinking since five that afternoon and she was clearly feeling the effects of the alcohol. She’d switched to vodka earlier in the year because she was under the erroneous assumption that it didn’t have an odor. Of course it didn’t have the sweet smell that wafted out of a whiskey drinker’s mouth, but it did carry the hard-edge scent that reminded Katelyn of Listerine. Minus the minty freshness, of course.

“What do you want?” Katelyn asked, sending a perceptible glare in the direction of her nosy, drunk, and all- too-predictable mom.

“That’s no way to talk to your mother, Katelyn.”

“You haven’t acted like my mother since I was seven,” Katelyn said from behind her laptop. She’d swiveled on the edge of the bed so that her mother could see only the back of her computer.

Sandra brushed her dark, limp hair from her forehead in a display of dramatic effect that was meant to show impatience and tolerance at the same time.

“Must we always go there?” she asked, slumping on the foot of the bed.

Katelyn closed the chat window on her laptop, just in case her mother’s vision was less blurry than she