The Third Twin by Cj Omololu

Author:Cj Omololu [Omololu, Cj]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780385390248
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2015-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

I click Alicia’s page off my phone just as Dad walks into the kitchen.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he says, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey, Dad,” I answer, shoving the phone back into my pocket.

He places a tissue-paper-wrapped lump in front of me on the counter. “I forgot to give this to you when I got home yesterday.”

I pick it up and feel the liquid sloshing around. “You don’t have to keep bringing me snow globes. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Don’t remind me.” He’s smiling, but he still looks sad. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

I pull the tissue paper away to see a glass globe with the South African flag inside.

“I know it’s not the tacky plastic ones that you like, but you’d be amazed how hard it is to find a snow globe in South Africa.”

I shake it up so that the glitter fills the water. “It’s perfect. Thanks.”

“Listen, I was thinking that this spring break must have been pretty boring. How about we pick a week right after school gets out and go on vacation, just the three of us? Anywhere you guys want—Hawaii, Mexico, Paris … anywhere.”

As long as we’re not in jail by then. “Sure. That would be great.”

Dad pours himself a cup of coffee and leans his elbows on the counter next to mine. “Stop sulking, okay? I already told you that we’re going to fix this Stanford mess. I’m sure it was just a big mistake. I’ve got a call in to a buddy of mine who has some pull, to see what he can do.”

I can feel tears pricking the backs of my eyes. Dad’s been so nice about it since he got home, like it was Stanford’s mistake, not mine. “Once you get rejected from Stanford, that’s it. No reconsiderations.”

Dad winces at the word “rejected.”

“Probably just some overzealous administrator who didn’t know what they were doing.” He kisses me on the forehead. “Stanford is where you belong. We’ll get you there, don’t worry.”

“Hmm,” I say. Is it really where I belong?

I wait until he’s shut the front door behind him before I pick up the house phone. It beeps as I scroll through the call history on the handset, trying to remember what day the salon called. Just as I’m getting impatient, I see the call from Leon’s and a number. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds to look up the salon on the Internet and get an address. I have only an hour to get there before Alicia’s appointment. Someone is pretending to be Alicia, and I have to find out who it is. Even if I find out that it’s Ava.

I follow the directions to a small strip mall in Solana Beach. Leon’s is wedged between a taqueria and a dry cleaner’s, and it’s easy to spot because of the blown-up photos of slightly out-of-date haircuts posted in the window. Ava usually gets her hair cut in the city at two hundred dollars a pop, and I can’t imagine her coming all the way out here, even if she’s trying to be incognito.

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