Read Online Double-Crossed by Lin Oliver - Free Book Online Page A

parked the car. I think she was probably going to try to slow him down some. She’s always such a calming force in our family, reminding us that being kind and having fun are more important than zooming around all stressed out.
    The registration was taking place in the lobby at a big old mahogany desk with red velvet chairs behind it. Two stuffy-looking men were sitting in those stuffy-looking chairs, wearing stuffy-looking navy blazers with gold buttons, and striped red ties. It was weird because practically nobody in California wears jackets and ties, and certainly nobody does at a beach club.
    Except those two guys. They looked us up and down and seemed tickled pink that we were wearing white tennis skirts and white tops, which is the traditional way tennis players dress. The Sand and Surf Club is so snooty, they even have a policy that all women have to wear tennis skirts and all men have to wear collared shirts—no T-shirts allowed except on the beach. I don’t know where they get the idea that having a collar on your shirt makes you classy, but somehow they made that rule like three hundred years ago and it’s stuck.
    Charlie and I always dress alike when we play tennis because our dad thinks it’s good strategy. “Makes your opponent think she’s seeing double,” he says. So when the man at the registration desk looked up and saw us both in white, our hair pulled back with white headbands, looking all preppy and identical, he broke into a big smile.
    â€œWhat do we have here?” he said, tweaking his thin gray mustache that was clipped so short it was hardly a mustache at all. “Looks like double trouble, Ted.”
    â€œIt does indeed,” said the man next to him, who I’m presuming was the Ted in question. “Two little peas in a pod.”
    Really, Ted? Little peas? Breaking news—we’re not green and round. Well, okay, maybe one of us is round. Roundish. But we’re definitely not green.
    â€œWhich court are we on?” Charlie asked. She was trying to be polite, but there was a definite edge in her voice. Neither of us like it when people make a big deal out of the fact that we’re twins.
    â€œCourt eleven,” Mr. I-Don’t-Have-Much-of-a-Mustache said. “Your match begins at exactly twelve thirty. Oh, by the way, you have three guests waiting for you on the court. They already checked in.”
    As we walked down the cement path to court eleven, I craned my neck to see if it was Alicia and Oscar and Eddie. Ever since last night, Charlie had been distant and cold to me, and I was hoping to see a friendly face or three.
    It wasn’t them, though. It was just the
opposite
— Lauren Wadsworth, Brooke Addison, and Jillian Kendall. The girls were lounging around on the bleachers, sipping iced Frappuccinos and looking ever so gorgeous in their tennis whites.
    What are they wearing white for? They aren’t playing.
    â€œCharlie! Over here!” Lauren screeched, waving to Charlie as though she had been shipwrecked on a deserted island and they hadn’t seen each other in twenty years.
    Charlie went running up to her and all four of them hugged in that overly enthusiastic SF2 way, which is to say there was lots of squealing and jumping up and down and hand-holding involved.
    â€œHi, Sammie,” Lauren said when I strolled up and plopped my monogrammed red canvas tennis bag down on the bench. It had been a going-away gift from my mom. “Cute bag.”
    The one thing you have to say about Lauren is that the girl has a good eye for accessories. She never misses a new leather belt or a pair of dangly earrings. She’s like one of those radar screens that lights up when she spots an expensive purse.
    â€œHi, Lauren,” I said.
    â€œWasn’t it so great of them to come?” Charlie said to me.
    â€œAre you kidding?” Lauren squealed. “We wouldn’t have missed it. We all came to support you