T*Witches: The Power of Two (5 page)

She didn't know what was wrong. She only knew that something very, very bad was about to happen.

Racing through Big Sky, Cam retraced her path past snack stands and ticket booths, the Wild West saloon, the sheriff's office. Startling tourists and scattering those in her way, she ran until, finally, she arrived, perplexed and panting, back at the Ol' Wagon Wheel.

Instinctively, her head jerked up. The late afternoon sun was fading over the horizon. A full moon shone directly overhead. How extraordinary, she thought, the sun and moon visible in the same sky.

The Ferris wheel had stopped. Empty carts and those filled with people rocked gently, silhouetted in space. New passengers were being ushered onto the ride. But it was the metal basket on top, swaying at the very crest of the wheel, that captured Cam's attention.

In that cart, fifty, sixty feet above the park, exactly as she had pictured them, a family waited for the ride to re-start. A young father, his smiling wife, and their baby daughter. The man had one arm wrapped tightly around his child's tiny waist. With the other, he was pointing at the early moon and whispering in his daughter's ear.

Cam saw it in impossible detail. The little girl's worried smile, her dainty hands clutching at her father's shirt.

And then she saw the bar above them, the steel rod from which the cart swung. The once sturdy pole that fixed the steel basket to the ride's frame seemed slightly lopsided. And loose. Two huge bolts usually held it to the Ferris wheel. Only one of them was left—and it looked as though it were tearing away from the shaft.

Cam squinted at the bar, zoned in as if her eyes were a telescope capable of focusing on the distant, dangerously loose bolt.

A jolt, one strong gust of wind, and it would come undone. The cart would be wrenched from the rod above it, tear off the ride's frame, and plummet to the ground.

Cam wanted to scream but, just as on the soccer field, no sound came. She pointed, but no one was watching...

Except...

Alex's high-speed scramble had also ended at the Ol' Wagon Wheel. She stood on the other side of the ride, directly opposite Cam. She was staring up at the very same cart, listening to the soft clanging of the loose bar and the jiggling bolt that held it.

Alex closed her eyes and the sounds became more distinct. Now she could hear a gentle voice telling a story—and she realized that, impossibly, the voice belonged to the man in the cart.

But how could she have heard him?

He was all the way at the top of the Ferris wheel, holding his baby daughter, reciting a line from a book, a book Sara had read over and over to Alex when she was just a child.

"Goodnight room, goodnight moon..."

Another voice, new but familiar, broke Alex's concentration. "Look," it was begging. "Oh, please. Someone. Look!"

Opening her eyes, turning toward the sound, Alex caught a glimpse of herself in what, for a moment, seemed like a fun-house mirror. Someone who looked like her, if
she
were cheesy enough to wear a baseball cap, khaki capris, and a pink sweater set, was standing on the other side of the ride, staring, horrified, up at the same cart.

Boston's own Camryn Barnes.

Had tourist-girl heard the dad reciting, "Goodnight Moon"? Alex wondered. Could she hear the rusty creaking of the old bolt?

"Goodnight kittens, goodnight mittens..."

Afraid to turn away, as if her amazingly enhanced eyesight was all that held the wobbly bolt in place, Cam continued to gaze at it steadily. But she had a sense that someone had heard her unspoken plea. And, all at once, with a mingling of shock and gratitude, she knew that it was the gray-eyed girl from Crow Creek. Alex.

"Goodnight comb, goodnight brush..."
That ride should have been condemned years ago, Alex heard her own desperate thoughts. Why wasn't it inspected? Why wasn't it fixed? Those people—

...won't survive, Cam thought. I've got to help, got to do something. I can't let them die—

"Why not?" asked a deep, disturbing voice, a man's voice.

Cam shuddered. Pure dread shot through her. Shivering, she turned toward the sound and saw, in the shadow of the wheelhouse, a powerful, bearded man with jet-black hair and eyes that pooled dark as oil spills. A twisted smile played across his lips as he saw her staring back at him.

She wanted to turn back to the cart, which was swaying dangerously above them, but the man's dark smile held her gaze, then weakened and numbed her.

He could have been anyone, anyone big. He was wearing a simple shirt, blue jeans, and, despite the heat of summer, a leather jacket and thick hobnailed work boots.

Cam stood frozen, mesmerized. Energy and urgency seemed to seep out of her. She was suddenly weary, emptied of hope, hollow with despair.

In a nanosecond, a hot-dog man, pushing his cart, seemed to pop up out of nowhere. He was old, frail, with wiry silver-white hair, wearing oddly out-of-place black velvet slippers. Cam gasped. It was the old skinny guy she'd seen back in the bleachers of her soccer game. He passed directly in front of the shadowy stranger, breaking the burly man's gaze.

Without warning, the sky darkened and a thunderous whirlwind swept through the theme park. Startled, visitors began to shout. Tickets, food wrappers, newspapers, trash barrels, anything that wasn't nailed down, seemed to go flying. Anxious parents gripped their children and ducked for cover.

And the cart at the top of the Ol' Wagon Wheel made a sickening sound as it swung violently.

Cam felt a tap on her shoulder. She shrieked and whirled around.

The girl with the random blue-streaked hair jumped back, yelling, "Get a grip!"

"What are you doing here?" Cam gasped.

"Same thing you are," Alex heard herself say. "And we'd better do it fast."

They knew what was about to happen. Cam could see it. Alex could hear the rusty bolt squeaking as the cart carrying the unaware family was lashed to and fro by the wind.

They watched in horror as the bolt worked its way out of the rod.

"We need help," Cam shouted over the howling storm.

"Ya' think?" Alex sneered.

"Can you see them? I mean, they look like such a nice family—"

"Grant them a long life."
The words flew out of Alex's mouth. She had no idea how they'd even formed in her brain, let alone exited her lips.

"Free them,"
Cam suddenly recited, "
of fear, pain, and strife."
She was rhyming again—just as she had at the soccer match. Bewildered, alarmed, she turned to Alex.

"Um...
they're young and happy, loving and good,"
Alex whispered. Her eyes were shut. Her hands balled into determined fists.
"Help us to help them as we should."

"Tell us what to do to save... the mom and dad, and their young babe,"
Cam murmured excitedly, grasping Alex's hand.

A surge of energy tore through them.

"Babe does not rhyme with save," Alex grumbled.

"It was the best I could do," Cam argued. She panicked again, wondering what was wrong with her.

"It's… it's… working," Alex stuttered, astonished.

Cam looked up. She couldn't hear, as Alex had, through the wailing wind, the screech of the bolt turning. But she could see it.

The loose rod began to straighten. Rust rained down as the bolt tightened.

But the family wasn't out of danger yet—not unless that bolt could be fastened, forced to stay tight in its rusty mooring.

And Alex could not. "It won't hold," she cried. "There's no nut. It needs to be soldered."

"Soldered?"

"The metal has to melt and harden—"

"Melt and harden. Er, garden, pardon..."Cam searched desperately for a rhyme. Then stopped abruptly as she felt the earlier warmth of the day collect inside her. The sun-drenched dust burned through her shoes, her feet. Her whole body trembled and her eyes hurt, stung, blurred.

She fixed her gaze on the bolt, fighting not to blink. The steel bar turned red, and then white with heat. A wisp of smoke wound around the edge of the bolt.

Moving agonizingly slowly, the big bolt began to melt. When it was nearly liquid, when Alex's hand was gripping Cam's tight enough to stop the blood flow, another gust of wind, a swirling tornado, wrapped itself around the cart—cooling, Cam knew, the molten metal.

Alex heard it. All at once, she heard the faint hiss of fire, smelled the acrid odor of sizzling metal. By the time the dark whirlwind had passed, the cart was secure again. The family was safe.

"Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere."

"What just happened?"

Beth, who'd arrived at the Ol' Wagon Wheel, was out of breath and—had Cam noticed—patience, too. "One minute we're talking, and then, snap! You're gone. No explanation, no see-ya-later. I thought it was a barf-emergency or something. I looked everywhere."

Leaning against the split-log fence that funneled passengers onto the ride, Cam could barely hear Beth. The thunderous roar in her head overshadowed the soft pelting of her friend's complaints.

"Camryn, have you totally lost it? I'm talking to you! Why'd you run away from me and come back here?" Beth's nostrils flared, signaling borderline anger, about as close as the good-natured girl ever got.

Cam struggled to stop trembling, to quiet the clamor and come back to herself. "I'm... oh, man, Bethie... my bad."

Her calculated use of Elisabeth's childhood nickname had its desired effect: instant anger-be-gone.

"Bethie? You haven't called me that since, like, kindergarten. Wow—this is big. It has something to do with that girl, doesn't it?"

"What girl?" Cam asked quickly.

"You know, the local, that Alex kid." Beth gave an exaggerated sigh. "The one with your face, your eyes, your bod—"

"Beth, did you just see us together? Did you see what happened?!" Cam's heart leaped with hope. It was too good to be true. Had her best friend actually witnessed the stunning save? Had Beth seen what Cam and Big Sky girl had managed to pull off, with nothing but rhymes and desperate determination?!

"You mean how the two of you freaked when everyone was saying how you looked alike?"

"No, not that—"

"Then what?" Beth was clueless.

Dejected, Cam pushed off from the railing. What was she supposed to say? Did you see us doing what we couldn't possibly have done—fixing a busted, rusted old ride, rescuing a family from certain death?
It was crazy, she thought. Beth hadn't felt the irresistible force that had drawn Cam, and the stranger who looked like her, to the Ferris wheel. No one had.

And no one, not even Alex, seemed to have noticed the black-bearded guy in the shadows, whose gaze had left Cam feeling weak.

Or the other one, who'd appeared just before the windstorm, the skinny, old man...

No. Nuh-
uh
. Could not have happened, Cam told herself. Way too weird. If it had been real, any of it, everyone in the park would have seen it.

Okay. It's over, she decided. Not gonna obsess about it one more second. Not gonna talk about it. Ever!

Aiding and abetting Cam's decision, the girl, Alexandra Wilding, or Fieldhopper, or whoever she was, had vanished.

"So what happened? Why'd you take off like that?"

Cam slipped her sunglasses out of her pocket and put them on—and lied. "Couldn't find my shades. Figured I left them back here. And, see—I did."

Alex was collapsed on a bench a few yards from the Ferris wheel when Luce and Evan found her. She had no idea how long she'd been sitting there. Long enough, she guessed, to go from wondering if she'd really stopped a fatal accident from happening to trying to figure out how.

With help, was the answer. The girl, the one with the same gray eyes as her own, had something to do with it.

The million bees buzzing in her brain had quieted to a tolerable hum now. Quieted enough for her to hear Lucinda say breathlessly, "Als, hey! What are you doing back here? Five minutes ago you couldn't get away from the Ol' Wagon Wheel fast enough."

"Yeah, why'd you dump us like that?" Evan demanded. "Man, I never saw you move so fast. Now you see her, now she's a blur streaking through the tourist herd."

"You don't look all that good," Lucinda added.

"Yeah, well you're not exactly rockin' that outfit too," Alex snapped. She felt wiped out. Obviously, it showed.

Lucinda shot back, "Sorry I'm not as cool as your new Boston buds."

"Mine?!" Alex said, "You're the one who pushed for the Kodak moment with them."

"And you're the one who looks just like them," Luce retorted. "Like that Camryn one, anyway."

"Not," Alex barked. "You want to know why I cut out? Because I was sick of you guys riding me about looking like a tourist. Can we go now? I am so done with this day."

"You should've said something, Al. I thought something happened to your mom," Evan said, as they walked toward the gravel pit reserved for employee parking. "I thought you got, you know, like one of your 'feelings.'"

"Oh, no, did you?" Lucinda gasped. "Is your mom okay?"

Alex shuddered and rubbed her arms. "I won't know till I get home, will I?"

Okay, memo to self, she thought as they piled into Evan's rusty red pickup. I'm freaking out here. But it's because of my mom. That cough. Oh, man. It's got nothing to do with... what's-her-name?
The girl who's supposed to be like me.

Is... like me. In a way. She knew about the wheel. She was staring at the rusted bolt when I showed up. What is happening here? How could I—or, okay, even we—stop the Ferris wheel free-fall fiasco?

I don't even know why I was there. And why was she there? And how us both being there changed something. Stopped a disaster.

Oh, man! Like my life isn't screwy enough, now there's this? I'm just not going there. It's over.

"Maybe we should go back and find her," Evan was saying. When Alex didn't respond, he leaned over and rapped lightly on her head. "Hello, anybody home? You listening?"

"You've got a fine grasp of the obvious, Fretts," Alex answered. "I'm doing my best not to."

They were almost at her turnoff. She could see the stop sign just ahead. She unzipped her backpack and began to hunt for her keys.

Evan shook his head. "Then you'll have to do better, 'cause you've got to hear me. She didn't resemble you, Allie. She twinned you."

"What if she is?" Lucinda chimed in. "I mean, what if you were separated at birth—"

"You saying it couldn't be?" Evan narrowed his soft brown eyes.

"My mom would have told me, that's all. It's full disclosure between the two of us. Always has been."

"If I were you, I'd
have
to know who she is—and why she just happened to drop into your life right now," Lucinda said.

"Good thing you're not me, Luce, because I've got a lot of other stuff to deal with now. Stuff called real life." They hit the hole in the road, the one Beeson kept saying he'd fix.

Lucinda squealed as Evan's truck bounced and clanked over the crater. "Do this one thing for me, Als," she said. "Let's find her. At the very least, find out when her birthday is. If it's the same as yours, you know, Halloween—"

"Oooooo, stop. You're spooking me," Alex cracked sarcastically. "Can we please just drop it? First of all, I'm so not interested in finding out anything about her. And secondly, one day at Big Sky is usually enough for any tourist. She's gone. Boo-hoo, I may never see my twin sister again."

The trailer was jut ahead, propped up on cinder blocks. Home sweet home.

"Oh, you will," Lucinda sounded totally sure of herself.

"And you know that, exactly how?"

"I just do," Luce announced. "You're not the only one who gets hunches."

Her mother was home early. Their old Chevy was parked in the rutted weeds beside the trailer. "Should we wait?" Evan called as Alex sprinted from the pickup.

"No. Catchya later," she told them. "I'll call you."

Sara was at the kitchen table, staring out the window at the mountains. She turned as the door creaked open. And Alex was frightened by what she saw.

Her mother looked like a skeleton. White-faced, bony, the hollows around her eyes were dark with exhaustion. The skin pulled tight around her cheeks. For a minute, a split second, she reminded Alex of the nightmare man. Then her mom crumpled up a piece of paper lying on the table and grinned a big, loving, glad-to-see-you grin at Alex, and she looked like herself again.

"What's that?" Alex nodded at the paper in her mom's hand. "Another rent hike notice from Beeson?"

"Nothing for you to worry about," Sara said, her voice raw and raspy.

She was lying. Alex knew it, knew her mom better than anyone in the world. "Wouldn't be from the clinic, would it? I mean, you wouldn't mess with me, Mom, and not tell me if the news is bad?"

"How could I? Don't you always know the truth anyway? Ever since you were a little girl—"

"That letter. It's not from Beeson, is it? And the lab results. You already got them, right?"

"Oh, baby," Sara said, tears spilling from her dark eyes. "I don't know why you were given to me. I'm such a lousy... liar. I'd do anything to protect you, baby. Anything, if I could."

Suddenly, Alex didn't want to know the truth. "How much is he threatening to raise us today?" she asked, turning her back on her mother, walking over to the fridge and pretending to care what was inside.

Sara coughed harshly, tried to clear her throat. "Don't worry. It's not all that bad, Allie," she said, her voice muffled by the dish towel pressed to her lips.

Later that night, Alex woke to get some water. On her way to the kitchen, she passed her mother's door—an accordion-pleated piece of stiff gray vinyl that hung from an overhead track. Behind the rigid curtain, Alex heard the thick rattle and wheeze of Sara's breathing.

The crumpled letter was on the kitchen table. It had been smoothed out and lay next to her mother's empty coffee cup, as if Sara had been studying it before she went to bed.

Had it been left there for Alex to find? Did her mom want her to know what was in the note? The first thing she saw was the clinic letterhead. The next thing her eyes fell on was the word CHEMOTHERAPY.

Sara Fielding had lung cancer. Surgery was not an option, the note said, but a regimen of radiology and chemotherapy might delay the spread of the disease, possibly even put it into remission. In order to begin treatment, the letter requested that Sara fill out the following information about her health insurance.

What health insurance, Alex thought. They had none. And then it hit her full out. Lung cancer. How bad was it?

Not all that bad, her mom had said. But they'd been talking about the bogus rent increase, right? Or was it the cancer her mom had really meant? It's not all that bad, Allie. Did that mean she wasn't going to die?

Alex sat down slowly, sank into the same wobbly chair Sara had been sitting on earlier. She looked out at the mountains, which were visible even in the dark of night and resembled, Alex used to think, a dragon's back. A zigzag of peaks. Ridges silhouetted against a star-splashed moonlit sky. It was the same full moon she'd seen that afternoon, up early and pale over the Ol' Wagon Wheel.

She thought of Cam then, of seeing the girl on the other side of the run-down ride. Alex raked her hands through her purposely stringy, blue-streaked hair. Except for their height and eyes being the same—and that weird thing that'd happened between them--she was nothing like the pampered princess from Massachusetts.

And didn't this prove it, Alex thought, grabbing the letter and shaking it angrily. Would little Miss Four-tickets-at-twenty-five-bucks-apiece have to worry about health insurance if anyone in her family got sick? No way.

Who cared anyhow? She wasn't part of some stupid sitcom family. It was just her and her mom now, and they'd gotten along fine, just the two of them.

Well, fine might not be the right word. They'd gotten by. They'd survived. And they were going to keep on surviving, too. Both of them. No way was Sara not gonna get the treatment she needed. Even if Alex had to work two shifts at the park or quit school and get a real job. There was no one dying around here. Least of all the one person in the world Alex trusted and loved completely.