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warmed up.”
    “Well,” Mallory said, lowering her voice, although the twins were alone in the Commons. “I saw the shoes. This must have something to do with . . . you know.” She made her hands into small claws.
    “How do you know you saw it flip over Crystal’s shoes?” Merry asked, equally quietly. “They could have been anyone’s. They could have been mine.”
    “You don’t get to see stuff that’s about yourself.”
    “I’m not yourself.”
    “I know but kind of . . . I heard you call me on the ridge when you were up there and David . . .”
    “But I called you. That’s different,” Merry said. She began to gnaw her pencil. “I think.”
    “Well, nobody got a fractured skull at least,” Mallory said.
    It was one less thing to worry about. And for that day and for days to come, they simply didn’t talk about it.
    Mallory decided to use the time between alerts from the universe to take care of herself. She settled down at practice the next afternoon for the first time in a week.
    And she had never looked so good, turning from offense to defense on a dime, as the great midfielders should. Her only sadness was the emptiness left by losing Eden’s friendship. Mally hadn’t realized just how much she counted on the time she spent with Eden. Elegant, slender, and tough, Eden still performed on the field like a pro—the queen of defense, knocking shots away with her knees or her chest as if she wore armor instead of kneepads. But she looked right through Mallory. It broke Mally’s heart.
    Meanwhile, in Crystal’s absence, Merry led practice alone for the rest of the week. She led it with a vengeance, to prove to herself that she was a real athlete as much as her jock sister.
    “Okay, let’s harden up those inner thighs,” she said. “Hands on the floor. V-position. Wider. No wobbles. Now, raise and lower. Raise and lower. And raise. I’ll count it. One. Two.”
    “Can you count any slower?” Alli yelled. “It’s ten seconds by the clock and you’re up to three.”
    “Let’s hold to twenty,” Merry said impassively.
    “Remember when we were little and my brother almost knocked your teeth out with his lacrosse bat?” Caitlin called. “What went wrong there?”
    “Does this mean you want to hold for a count of fifty?” Merry asked and then finally, as the girls groaned in relief, said, “Okay, let’s stretch. Nose down over your right knee. Lift up from the hips and lean over. And over. Now, deep in the middle. And now we’re ready to lift and go for thirty.”
    Girls were screaming by the end of the second series. When they were finished practicing the floor cheers, the stunting and their dance, Merry announced a cool-down jog, twice around the perimeter of the school, or a distance of two miles. Alli literally punched her on the arm. Merry said, “Get going, Lard.” Alli had hips that were a little rounder than everyone else’s. Though she was in no way fat, she acted like she was size 20.
    “Who’re you calling Lard, Squirt?” Alli snapped, breaking into laughter.
    The only one who didn’t object to anything and did everything just a little better and a little longer than Merry did was Neely Chaplin. Merry asked for twenty push-ups; Neely did thirty. Merry did a double back across the floor. Neely did a triple and ended with a round-off. She dusted off her hands and said, “Bring it, Merry.”
    What a little queenie!
    What was Neely trying to prove, other than that she was the most insufferable rich kid to ever attend Ridgeline High? And that wasn’t easy, considering Trevor Solwyn and Gina DeGloria and a few others who lived over in Haven Hills, a “golf-course community,” a big glop of one-acre houses on one-acre yards. (Neely’s was a two-acre house on a three-acre yard.) They acted so all-that, it made the regular townies sick.
    And now the gung-ho Neely made Merry wonder. Could she be the person with the secret stash of tape? Neely acted so above all the rest of