Read Online Perfume by Caroline B. Cooney - Free Book Online Page B

that was too much balancing for somebody whose brain has been shoveled into a corner to make room for another person. Teetering, she managed to get on the yellow school bus and drop into a seat next to Luce, who chattered endlessly.
    Mr. Phinney was absent.
    The substitute said she was very very very sorry, but Mr. Phinney had not left a lesson plan and so the children were to be very very very quiet and work very very very hard on whatever readings they had previously been assigned.
    Another very very very person, thought Dove. I vote we get rid of that trio.
    Wing was laughing. Dove could tell from the way her brain shook. I did it! cried Wing silently. I knew I could do it with my Venom. His vanished twin took over! He’s destroyed!
    What vanished twin? You are imagining things! He’s just absent, thought Dove.
    No, he’s ruined , said Wing.
    Not everybody has a vanished twin, you know.
    It’s probably coincidence, thought Dove. She could feel Wing’s shock. The sudden quiet, the abrupt end of Wing’s dancing with joy.
    Not everybody has a vanished twin? repeated Wing.
    Course not, said Dove. She said it in such a way that nobody could argue with her, because what if Dove were wrong? What if the whole world could possibly be invaded? What if every single living human body had a door through which, given the right set of circumstances, another soul could enter? Could take up residence as easily as buying another condominium?
    You’re wrong , said Wing with fury. You’re wrong! Everybody has a vanished twin! There are billions of waiting twins like me, trapped inside, trying to get free!
    Nope, thought Dove. There’s only you.
    She was an actress now, keeping her manner certain and upbeat. Allowing no fear to escape. Trying to con Wing.
    The biology teacher was right after all, she thought, and Laurence was wrong. The brain is in layers. Wing does not have them all; some of them are still mine. I can listen to two different people talking inside my own head. Yet at the same time I have separate thoughts, and Wing must also have separate thoughts, so she has a layer of my very own brain that I don’t have access to!
    “Playing with us?” said Timmy.
    Dove stared at him.
    “I hate when you have that expression on your face, Dove,” said Hesta. “You look as if you’re dead in there.”
    Dove stared at Hesta.
    Hesta giggled. “Now you look homicidal.” She flounced while sitting down, making a big deal of ignoring Dove from now on. “Here, you go first, Timmy. We don’t want to play with Dove.”
    “Yes, we do,” said Timmy. “Hangman’s more fun with three.”
    For one horrible moment, Dove again saw her head coming off. Saw both herself and Wing in the skull, as the noose tightened and their shared body swung from the gibbet. No! thought Dove, please no!
    She was trying not to scream. I’d rather live with Wing than have a hangman—
    Timmy put a pencil in her hand and said, “Hesta’s first.”
    It was only the word game. Hangman. On Timmy’s desk was a large blank piece of paper with a primitive gibbet drawn toward the top of the page. Hesta had chosen a word with five letters. Under the gibbet she had pencilled the blank lines for the right letter guesses: _ _ _ _ _.
    Dove already knew what it was. It could not be anything else. Dove did not even bother to call out a letter choice, but just filled in the blanks.
    V E N O M.
    “How did you know?” cried Hesta. She was angry and frustrated and also a little frightened.
    “Weird,” said Timmy, looking at Dove with strange eyes. His eyes had a new shape and a new thought, and Dove did not know what either one was. Except he kept looking at her and did not look back at Hesta.
    Dove managed to smile. Timmy seemed to have no trouble smiling back. The smiles trembled, like little children alone in the park.
    Dove’s eyes dropped. Timmy’s eyes turned to the window.
    Their eyes swung back, met, dropped again, and they both giggled