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them, with her gourmet low-cal lunches and the long dark Lincoln Continental that picked her up from school every day. Everyone made such a big fuss over her, so Merry decided to make an art form of ignoring Neely. When Neely did triple backs to a round-off and front over for warm-ups, Merry concentrated on making sure there were no spaces between the maps. When she did full splits at the place in the dance where everyone was required to do a half, Merry said softly, “Let’s all be synchronized, guys. Let’s make it pretty.”
    And it worked.
    One day, when Merry was carefully ignoring her, twisting tiny braids into the front of her black bob and pinning each one down—you never knew who might come to your sister’s fall soccer game—Neely turned and said, “I asked Caitlin and Alli if they wanted to sleep over Friday, and I wanted to ask you too.”
    Merry waited a full count of three. Slow.
    Then she said, “Three’s company, right?”
    She didn’t need Neely’s charity invitation. Alli’s and Caitlin’s moms didn’t work. Alli’s father owned two health clubs in Deptford. Neely probably saw them as her equals.
    But Neely just smiled and said, “Come on! Four is more gossip. Don’t be so stuck up.”
    “Me?” Merry began to laugh. She said, “Well, okay. But I have to go see Crystal. She had surgery yesterday.”
    “Come after. Poor Crystal. I’d go see her too, if I knew her better. Although I have to admit she’s a little all-that with the movie-star twisty hair. I’m intimidated.”
    Meredith laughed again. Neely intimidated? For Meredith, heaven would be a place where she could flip through the Bliss catalog and mark every product she wanted. How could someone who ordered her clothes from boutiques in, like, Miami, as Alli said Neely did, and who lived in a house with eight bedrooms and two pools want . . . anything on earth?
    Merry would look back later and think she was some fabulous psychic: She would have to wait a long time to learn the answer, and she would never have guessed it.

ALL FALL DOWN
    A nurse made the twins wait in the corridor while Crystal took her pain medication.
    “She’s afraid we’ll see what kind of pills they are,” Merry whispered. “Like we couldn’t be addicts if we wanted to.”
    “That’s not funny,” Mallory said. “Some kids whose mothers are nurses really are like that. This is just a privacy thing for Crystal.”
    “Mallory, could you be more of a stick?” Merry griped.
    The room they finally walked into looked like a combination of a florist’s shop and a pep rally. There were green-and-white streamers and vases of carnations and single-stemmed roses everywhere. And there was a big heart arrangement with real white roses and green ribbons signed by Neely Chaplin.
    As they walked in, Mallory whispered to her sister, “Seeleye.”
    “She did not,” Merry said automatically.
    In twin language, it meant something like “It’s a lie” or “She’s a fake.” Mallory thought that Neely was probably the one responsible for Crystal’s injury. But Merry wasn’t sure. Neely had worn a different outfit for thirty school days straight at the beginning of the year—Merry had counted. But being rich didn’t make you a secret assassin. Being a snot didn’t make you a schemer who was so ruthless she’d do anything.
    It didn’t hurt, though.
    “Who did not what?” Crystal asked. She opened the box of chocolates the twins brought and started poking the bottoms, looking for caramel—which she hated. She barely acknowledged them with a thank-you.
    Merry said, “Oh, nothing. Mallory’s just on about something! Oh, Crystal. This is horrible! You must be so uncomfortable and sad too!”
    “I can take a lot of pain,” Crystal said, with a dark look at Mallory. Obviously, Merry had told everybody cheerleaders weren’t real athletes, and now they all hated Mallory’s guts even more than usual. “All cheerleaders live with pain. But this is