The Midnight Twins by Jacquelyn Mitchard Page A

overflowing with knowledge and mourning. Then David Jellico, in a garden, carefully arranging great circles of smooth white stones or shells. Merry thought it was a religious place. Mally thought it was a graveyard.
    They ran away into sleep.
    Finally real people appeared.
    Kim came, sobbing, pleading with Merry to wake up, kissing Merry when she opened her eyes and blinked to show that she was already awake. Will Brent knelt at Merry’s bedside in prayer.
    Mally, still in and out of consciousness, saw her teammates, led by her friend Eden, carrying a signed ball through the hospital’s revolving door. And then they appeared in her room, for real.
    “Way to get attention, Brynn,” Eden said. “Don’t expect to get out of practice this way.” Except it sounded like donexpectogeddoudda . . .
    Finally, each heard words distinct as musical notes: The voice of Dr. Staats, their pediatrician. Their father’s. “Undeniable.” “Without them . . .” “Permanent . . .” “Breathing, at first . . .”
    Mallory wrenched her mind up and out.
    She opened her eyes. What lay over her? A tent? A plastic sheet? In her nose . . . in her nose was a plastic tube. She tugged lightly on it and choked.
    She tried to think her way to Meredith, but she heard only a mewling, like a kitten. Meredith was deep under some kind of syrupy layering, a mental mud of medication. Only when someone changed the dressings on her hand did Meredith stir from the fog of painkillers. As she watched dimly, the nurses replacing the dressings, she would think of her hand as it had been—fluttering, pointing, directing, thrust up in the Y sign, snapping back and forth across her green cheerleader’s sweater in the gestures of the routines, waving when she flirted with the crowd on the bleachers, calling out instructions under her breath to the rest of the squad, “Last time now . . . Ridgeline, so fine!”
    No, she thought.
    And, for the first time, Mally heard her clearly. That one word. In separate rooms, both girls struggled to sit up.
    “Hey! Hey! Hi there!” Tim said, jumping out of his chair when he saw Mallory strain against her pillows. “Thank God, oh thank God. Hold on! Go slow, honey.”
    More gently than he had ever held his rough-and-tumble child, Tim Brynn slid an arm under Mallory’s back and asked, “Are you awake awake now, Mal? Mallory? Do you understand what I’m saying? You gave us quite a scare, little one. You’ve been out of it, well, in and out of it, since the fire. Three days ago, Mally. You’re a hero, you know? Did you know that? Alex and Adam and the little girls would never have made it without you two. Don’t. Don’t try to talk. You sucked in half a houseful of smoke.” When she pointed to her face, Tim said, “That’s oxygen going in through your nose, and purified air around you. Your face was just scorched, like a bad sunburn. No scars. I promise.” Ill at ease, when he ought to be happy, for a reason he didn’t quite understand, Tim hurried on, sharing with Mallory a list of details that might have been important to her at any other time but this. “Actually, it’s amazing that the house is not that bad. They’re staying with us now, but the worst thing was the smoke damage. And the porch is wrecked, of course.” He added, “You’ll be out in a few days. I should ring for the nurse. . . .”
    Why isn’t he telling me? Mallory wondered. He knows it’s the first thing I would want to hear.
    On the other side of the wall, Campbell said to Meredith, “Please, honey, stop trying to talk. The oxygen tube isn’t going to let you, anyhow. Your chest is going to hurt for a while, not to mention your poor little hand. And you’ll probably have the worst sore throat ever. Are the pain meds helping?”
    Meredith writhed on the bed . How do they expect me to rest when I can’t hear her? I’m not sure if she can hear me or if I’m dreaming. Why don’t they know?
    Campbell said, “Merry-heart. I’ll