Wanted

12 DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE

Late Wednesday afternoon, Emily stood in front of her bedroom mirror, turning first to the right, then to the left. Should she have used a curling iron on her stick-straight, reddish-blond hair? Did her sister Carolyn’s pink lip gloss look stupid? She pulled off the striped T-shirt she was wearing, threw it on the floor, and slid on a pink wool-cashmere sweater instead. That looked wrong, too. She checked the digital clock on the nightstand again. Courtney would be here any minute.

Maybe she was overthinking this. Maybe Courtney hadn’t even been flirting with her in gym class. She had been in unconventional schools her whole life—she might not be well-versed in the fine art of flirtation and other social cues.

The doorbell rang, and Emily froze, staring at her wide-eyed expression in the mirror. In an instant, she was thundering down the stairs and scampering through the hall to the door. No one else was home—her mother had taken Carolyn to a doctor’s appointment after swimming, and her dad was still at work. She and Courtney would have the house to themselves.

Courtney stood on the steps, her cheeks pink and her blue eyes sparkling. “Hey!”

“Hi!” Emily unintentionally backed away just as Courtney came in for a hug. Then Emily stepped forward to hug, too, just when Courtney was self-consciously stepping aside.

Emily giggled. “Come in,” she said. Courtney shuffled into the foyer and looked around, taking in the hutch of Hummel figurines in the hall, the dusty, upright piano in the living room, and the cluster of hanging plants that Mrs. Fields had brought indoors for the winter.

“Should we go to your room?”

“Sure.”

Courtney bounded up the stairs, turned right at the landing, and stopped at the door to the bedroom that Emily and Carolyn shared. Emily gawked. “H-how did you know where my room was?”

Courtney gave her a crazy look. “Because it says so on your door.” She pointed at the wooden sign that said EMILY AND CAROLYN in cartoonish letters. Emily let out a breath. Duh. It had been there since she was six.

Emily moved some stuffed animals off her twin bed so they could both fit. “Wow,” Courtney breathed, gesturing at the Ali collage over the bureau. It was a series of photographs of Emily and Ali together from sixth and seventh grade. In one corner was a shot of the five of them in the living room of Ali’s Poconos house, doing each other’s hair. In another corner was a photo of Emily and Ali in matching striped bikinis on Spencer’s pool deck, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. There were plenty of pictures of Ali alone, many of which Emily had snapped without Ali knowing—of Ali sleeping on Aria’s rollaway cot, her face relaxed and beautiful. Another of Ali sprinting up the hockey field in her Rosewood Day JV uniform, her stick raised high in the air. Propped up next to the collage was the patent leather change purse Maya had returned to her at the press conference. Emily had scoured all the dirt and grime off it as soon as she’d gotten home that afternoon.

Emily blushed, wondering if the shrine was weird. “That stuff is so old. I haven’t gone through it in a long time.” It’s not like I’m obsessed or anything, she wanted to add.

“No, I like it,” Courtney insisted. She bounced on the bed. “It looks like you guys had a lot of fun.”

“Yeah,” Emily said.

Courtney flung off her Frye boots. “What’s that?” She pointed at a jar on Emily’s nightstand.

Emily cradled the jar between her palms. The contents rattled. “Dandelion seeds.”

“What for?”

Color rushed to Emily’s cheeks. “We all tried to smoke them once, to see if we’d hallucinate. It’s stupid.”

Courtney crossed her arms over her chest, looking intrigued. “Did it work?”

“No, but we wanted it to work. So we put on music and started to dance. Aria made these squiggly motions in front of her face, like she was seeing shapes. Hanna stared at her fingerprints, like they were really fascinating. I giggled at everything. Spencer was the only one who didn’t play along. She kept saying, ‘I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything.’”

Courtney leaned forward. “What did Ali do?”

Emily jiggled her knees, suddenly shy. “Ali…well, Ali made up this dance.”

“Do you remember it?”

“It was a long time ago.”

Courtney poked Emily’s leg. “You do remember it, don’t you?”

Of course she did. Emily remembered pretty much everything Ali did.

Wriggling with glee, Courtney clasped Emily’s hands. “Show it to me!”

“No!”

“Please?” Courtney begged. She was still holding Emily’s hands, which made Emily’s heart beat faster and faster. “I’m dying to know what Ali was really like. I hardly saw her. And now that she’s gone…” She broke her gaze, staring absently at the poster of Dara Torres that hung over Carolyn’s bed. “I wish I’d known her for real.”

Courtney looked at Emily with clear blue eyes so much like Ali’s that the back of Emily’s throat burned. Emily pressed her hands to her knees and stood. She shifted from left to right, then shimmied her shoulders up and down. After about three seconds of dancing, she blurted out, “That’s all I can remember,” and went to sit down fast. But her left foot stumbled over her fish-shaped slippers next to the bed. As she groped for balance, her hip rammed into the bed frame. “Oof,” she said, hurtling face-first toward Courtney’s lap.

Courtney grabbed Emily’s waist. “Whoa,” she giggled. She didn’t let go right away. Pulsing heat sizzled through Emily’s veins.

“Sorry,” Emily mumbled, shooting up to stand.

“No worries,” Courtney said quickly, straightening her plaid shirt.

Emily sat back down on the bed and looked anywhere else in the room besides Courtney’s face. “Oh! It’s four fifty-six,” she blurted stupidly, pointing to the digital clock by the bed. “Four-five-six. Make a wish.”

“I thought that was only for eleven eleven,” Courtney teased.

“I make up my own rules.”

“It seems that way.” Courtney’s eyes gleamed.

Emily felt suddenly breathless.

“Tell you what,” Courtney chuckled. “I’ll make a wish if you do.”

Emily shut her eyes and lay back on the bed, her body throbbing from the fall and her head reeling from the smell of Courtney’s skin. There was something she really wanted to wish for, but she knew it was impossible. She tried to think of random wishes instead. For her mom to finally let her paint her side of the bedroom a color other than pink. For her English teacher to give her a good grade on the F. Scott Fitzgerald paper she’d handed in that morning. For spring to come unnaturally early that year.

Emily heard a sigh and opened her eyes. Courtney’s face was inches from hers. “Oh,” Emily breathed. Courtney moved even closer. The room vibrated with possibility.

“I…” Emily started, but then Courtney leaned forward and touched her lips to Emily’s. A billion explosions went off in Emily’s head. Courtney’s lips were soft yet firm. Emily’s mouth fit hers perfectly. They kissed deeper, pressing harder. Emily was pretty sure her heart was beating even faster than it did in a fifty-meter freestyle sprint. When Courtney broke away, her eyes were shining.

“Well, I got my wish,” Courtney said giddily. “I always hoped I’d get to do that again.”

Emily’s mouth tingled. It took her three long beats before she realized what Courtney said. “Wait…Again?”

Courtney’s smile turned shaky. She bit her bottom lip and grabbed Emily’s hand. “Okay. Don’t freak out. But Em…it’s me. Ali.”

Emily dropped Courtney’s hand and moved a few inches away. “I’m sorry. What?”

Courtney’s eyes were glassy, as if she was about to cry. Light from the corner window spilled across her face, making her look both angelic and ghostly. “I know it’s crazy, but it’s true. I’m Ali,” she whispered, lowering her head. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you.”

“To tell me that you’re…Ali?” The words felt leaden on Emily’s tongue.

Courtney nodded. “My twin’s name was Courtney. But she didn’t have health problems. She was certifiably insane. In second grade, she started imitating me, pretending to be me.”

Emily scuttled backward until her spine hit the wall. The words weren’t exactly making sense.

“She hurt me a couple of times,” Courtney went on, her voice strained. “And then she tried to kill me.”

“How?” Emily whispered.

“It was the summer before third grade. I was in the pool in our old house in Connecticut. Courtney came out and started dunking me. At first, I thought it was a game, but she wouldn’t let me up. While she held me underwater, she said, ‘You don’t deserve to be you. I do.’”

“Oh my God.” Emily curled into a ball, gripping her knees to her chest tightly. Out the window, a flock of birds took off from the roof. Their wings flapped fast, as if they were fleeing something terrifying.

“My parents were horrified. They sent my sister away and moved the family to Rosewood,” the girl across from Emily whispered. “They told me never to talk about her, which is why I kept her secret. But then in sixth grade, Courtney switched from the Radley to the Preserve. She put up this huge fight about it—she didn’t want to start over at a new hospital—but once she was there, she finally began to improve. My parents decided to have her live at home for the summer after seventh grade on a trial basis. She came back a few days before the school year ended.”

Emily opened her mouth, but no words came out. Courtney had been here in seventh grade, too? But Ali and Emily were friends then. How had Emily missed her?

Courtney—or was it Ali?—gave Emily a knowing look, as if she understood what Emily was thinking. “You guys saw her. Remember the day before our sleepover when I found you on the patio, but you said you’d just seen me upstairs in my room?”

Emily blinked fast. Of course she remembered. They’d caught Ali in her bedroom, reading a notebook. Mrs. DiLaurentis had appeared and sternly told the girls to go downstairs. Minutes later, when Ali found them in the backyard, she’d acted as if the incident in the bedroom had never happened. She had on a completely different outfit, and she seemed startled that Emily and the others were there, like she’d had no memory of the past ten minutes.

“That was Courtney. She was reading my journal, trying to be me again. After that, I stayed away from her. The night of our sleepover, Spencer and I fought, and I ran out of the barn. But Billy didn’t attack me like everyone thinks—I ran back to my bedroom, and he…well, he got the wrong sister.”

Emily put her hand over her mouth. “But…I don’t understand….”

“My sister was supposed to stay in her bedroom all night,” Courtney—no, Ali—went on. “When my parents saw only me the next morning, they assumed I was Courtney—Ali was supposed to be in Spencer’s barn. I tried to tell my parents that I was Ali, but they didn’t believe me—that was Courtney’s act. I’m Ali, I’m Ali, she always said.”

“Oh my God,” Emily whispered. The peanut butter crackers she’d eaten earlier roiled in her stomach.

“Then when the twin they thought was Ali didn’t come home from the sleepover, they flipped out. They figured I was Courtney, and that I had done something terrible. They couldn’t handle having a sick daughter home while the other was missing, so they sent the girl they thought was her back to the Preserve the next afternoon. Except…it was me.” She placed her palm over her heart, her eyes filling with tears. “It was horrible. They didn’t visit me once. Jason used to visit Courtney all the time, but even he wouldn’t listen to me when I pleaded that I was Ali. It was like a light switch went off in their heads and I was dead to them.”

The neighbor’s rattling Honda Civic passed. A dog barked, then another. Emily stared at the girl across from her. The girl who claimed to be Ali. “But…why didn’t you call us before they shipped you off?” Emily asked. “We would’ve known the truth.”

“My parents wouldn’t let me use the phone. And then at the hospital, I wasn’t allowed to make any calls. It was like being in prison.” Tears streamed down Ali’s face. “The more I said I was Ali, the sicker everyone thought I was. I realized that the only way to get out was to act like I really was Courtney. My parents still don’t know who I am. If I tell them, they might send me back.” She hiccupped. “I just want my life again.”

Emily offered her a Kleenex from a box on her nightstand, and then took one herself. “So whose body did the police find?”

“Courtney’s. We’re twins, so we have the same DNA. We even have the same dental records.” She gazed at Emily in grief and desperation. “I remember everything about you, Emily. I was the one who did that dance when we smoked the dandelion seeds. I’m the one in these photos on your wall. I remember how we met, and I especially remember you and me, in my tree house, kissing.”

The smell of vanilla soap filled Emily’s nostrils. She closed her eyes, practically seeing the stunned look on Ali’s face after she’d kissed her. She and Ali had never directly discussed it. There were plenty of times Emily had wanted to, but she’d been too afraid. Ali had started teasing her about it so quickly afterward.

“I was talking about an older boy I liked,” Ali rehashed, “and then suddenly, you kissed me. I got all self-conscious and scared, but then you wrote that note to me. The one that said how much you liked me. I loved it, Em. I’d never gotten a note like that from anyone in my life.”

“Really?” Emily traced a heart into her duvet cover. “I figured you thought I was a freak.”

Ali winced. “I was scared. And stupid. I acted like an idiot. But I had almost four long years in the hospital to think it over.” She placed her palms on her knees. “What more do I need to say to make you believe me? What can I do to prove that I’m Ali?”

Emily’s lips still tingled from the kiss, and her hands and legs were trembling with shock. But as stunning as this was, she’d known, deep down, that something about Courtney was amiss. She’d felt that special spark between them, like they’d known each other for years. And they had.

Emily had dreamed of this moment for years. She’d consulted horoscopes and tarot cards and numerological charts, desperate for a clue that Ali was alive. She’d saved every single one of Ali’s notes, random doodles, and just-’cause-I-feel-like-it gifts, unable to let them go because a deep, mystical force inside her urged that this wasn’t over. Ali was still out there. She was okay.

And all this time, Emily had been right. She’d been granted her biggest wish of all.

The clouds lifted from her head. Emily’s heart banged out a constant, steady beat, clear and pure. She gave Ali a wobbly smile. “Of course I believe you,” she said, throwing her arms around her old friend. “I’m so glad you came back.”