Olivia had just finished setting the table for dinner when the doorbell rang.
"I'll get it!" her mom shouted.
Olivia immediately bolted for the front of the house and rounded the corner just in time to catch her mom swinging open the door and singing, "Hell - " her mom's voice broke midword " - o," she finished, mouth agape.
Olivia looked past her staring mother to see Ivy on the doorstep. Her sister had clearly dressed up for the occasion. She was wearing a warm black jacket over a turtleneck sweater, a black miniskirt with fishnets, and her long black boots.
She'd even put on her dark purple lipstick. Olivia thought she looked fabulous.
"Hi, Olivia." Ivy smiled with a worried twitch of the eyebrows toward Olivia's speechless, staring mom.
"Mom," Olivia said, elbowing her mother in the side. "This is Ivy."
"It is so . . . interesting to meet you, Ivy," her mom said. She glanced over Ivy's shoulder into the street. "Did your father drop you off?"
"He has to work tonight," Ivy replied. "He's really sorry he couldn't stay."
"I hope we get to meet him soon," Olivia's mom said as Olivia pushed past and gave her sister a hug.
After taking Ivy's jacket, Olivia led her into the living room, where her father did a double take.
Olivia caught her mom staring at her sister's outfit again as Ivy sat down on the couch.
"Can I get you something to drab, Ivy?"
Olivia's mom asked.
"You mean 'to drink,' Mom," Olivia said, completely embarrassed. Her mom was normally like America's Best Hostess, but apparently her hos- pitality mechanism malfunctioned when it came to guests wearing black nail polish.
Olivia stepped between Ivy and her mother and mouthed the word "sorry" to her sister. Ivy responded with a little don't-worry-about-it smile.
"Want anything?" Olivia asked aloud.
"Do you have cranberry juice?" responded Ivy.
Olivia nodded and headed for the kitchen. "I'll help you find a glass, sweetheart." Her mom gulped, hurrying after her.
Olivia groaned inwardly as she overheard her dad saying, "So, Ivy, did you know you had a double aura?"
Olivia got the bottle of cranberry juice from the fridge as her mom took down a glass.
"Is she getting over some sort of illness?" her mom whispered.
"No," Olivia said.
"I knew it!" Her mother gasped, putting her hand to her mouth. "Poor girl. Somebody died, right?"
My parents have got to get out more, Olivia thought. "No, Mom, nobody died. And Ivy's not training to be a mime, either. She's a Goth." "Didn't Serena Star do a show about those people?" Mrs. Abbott asked.
"It's just a style choice," Olivia explained. Her mom nodded slowly, taking this in. "Do Goths eat zucchini?" she asked.
"Yes, Mother," Olivia replied. Then she headed out of the kitchen with Ivy's drink.
A few minutes later, Mr. Abbott was staring at Olivia and her sister across the dinner table. "I wouldn't have noticed at first, but you two really do look exactly alike!" he said in amazement.
"Like yin and yang."
"Like Superman and Clark Kent," Ivy agreed. Olivia's mom set down the last casserole dish and pulled off her oven mitts. As she sat, she looked from Ivy to Olivia and smiled warmly. "Like . . . peanut butter and jelly?" she tried.
Everybody laughed. All at once, the room thawed, and Olivia's parents started showering Ivy with questions. Did she have any extracurriculars?
(School newspaper.) What did her dad do for a living? (Interior designer.) What was her favorite color? (Black. Duh!)
Then Olivia's mom asked, "So, Ivy, do you have a boyfriend?" in that weird way mastered by moms everywhere.
Ivy squirmed in her seat as Olivia answered for her excitedly. "Yes! Brendan Daniels! He's awesome!"
Wow! she thought as Ivy shot her a look of playful annoyance. It's sort of nice not to be the one in the hot seat.
"All right! Enough about me!" Ivy put her hands in the air. "I have some questions, too."
"Ask us anything," Olivia's mom challenged.
"What about Olivia's adoption?" Ivy asked eagerly.
Maybe Ivy will find out something I haven't been able to! Olivia thought.
"It was the happiest day of our lives," Olivia's dad said proudly.
"Did the agency tell you anything about our biological parents?" Ivy probed.
"No." Olivia's mom shrugged. "All they knew was what was written on the note that accompanied the baby: Olivia's name and her date of birth." A strange expression flickered briefly across Ivy's eyes.
"Must be just like the note in your own file," Olivia's mom guessed.
Ivy shook her head. "I don't have a note. I don't even have a file!"
Mrs. Abbott's face flushed with sympathy, and before Olivia knew it, her mom was rushing around the table to give Ivy a hug.To Olivia's surprise, Ivy didn't stiffen. In fact, she actually seemed comforted by it. Of course, Olivia's mom was a master of the art of hugging.
"I feel like I have a whole new daughter," Olivia's mom declared proudly as she began clearing the table a little while later. She beamed at Ivy. "I can't wait to see more of Olivia's other half."
Olivia watched for Ivy's reaction, half expecting her sister to look like a deer caught in headlights. Olivia loved her parents, but they could be superoverbearing sometimes.
Ivy looked genuinely touched though. "That sounds killer." She grinned.
The next thing Olivia knew, her father had a mountain of photo albums in his arms.
"Please, no," Olivia whined. "Ivy doesn't want to see pictures. Do you, Ivy?"
"Wait until you see Olivia dressed as a green kangaroo in her kindergarten play. She was so cute!" her mom squealed.
"As a matter of fact," said Ivy, shooting Olivia a devilish grin as she followed Mr. Abbott into the living room, "I would like to see that."
Three photo albums and hundreds of embarrassing photos later, Olivia was pretty much at the end of her rope.To her relief, a car horn sounded outside.
Olivia leaped to her feet and looked out the living room window. "Ivy's dad's here," she said.
"Time to go!"
"Aw," Ivy teased from where she was sandwiched between Olivia's parents on the couch.
"But we're just getting started."
"Here's Olivia with spaghetti in her hair," her mom said.
"Sorry," Olivia said firmly, pulling her sister to her feet. "Show's over."
Ivy grinned. "Thank you so much for dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Abbott," she said.
"Call me Steve," Olivia's father said.
"And I'm Audrey," said Olivia's mother. "Why don't you invite your father in for a cup of coffee, Ivy?"
"I can't tonight," Ivy said apologetically. "I still have some homework to finish."
"Well," Olivia's mom said, "tell him we can't wait to meet him."
Olivia walked Ivy to the door.
"That wasn't bad at all," Ivy said in a low voice as she slipped into her jacket.
"You don't think so?" Olivia demanded.
"Okay, next time we'll look at pictures of you drooling and wearing embarrassing clothes!"
Ivy laughed. "I'll see you in the morning at school," she said, giving Olivia a hug. "I bet nobody even reads the piece about us in the school paper."
"Probably not." Olivia shrugged. "But I'm still glad we told our parents."
"Me, too," Ivy agreed.
After Olivia had closed the door, her mom appeared and peered out through one of the glass panes.
"It must be hard," Audrey Abbott said thoughtfully as Ivy climbed into her father's car, "with only one parent."
Olivia had never really thought about that. She gave her mom a hug. "I'm glad Ivy finally got to meet you," she whispered.
Over her mom's shoulder, Olivia saw her dad emerge from the living room.
"Nice girl, Ivy," he said matter-of-factly, "but who died?"
Olivia rolled her eyes and started to explain, again.