Point Horror: Twins (Caroline B. Cooney)

Mary Lee and Madrigal are twin sisters and best friends, up to the point when their parents decide to send Mary Lee (ML from here on out) to a private boarding school. ML expects her sister to stick up for her and refuse the separation, but Madrigal thinks it’s a good idea. ML feels all crappy because she thinks her parents hate her, but goes anyway.

She hates the school and withdraws from everyone, to the point where her roommates and classmates start ignoring her and think she’s weird. She goes home and learns that her twin now has her own life, including a boyfriend. She doesn’t want him to see her at all because she wants him to think of her as unique. Then Madrigal comes for a visit and wows all of her classmates, who think she’s so cool.

They all go skiing and she loans ML her own cool ski outfit. The lift breaks and Madrigal falls to her death, but because of her clothes, everyone thinks it was ML. She tries to tell everyone who she really is, but they think she’s in shock. When her own parents can’t tell the difference, she decides to pretend that she’s her sister because her twin had a better life.

Once ML gets back to school, she realizes that Madrigal didn’t have as great a life as she thought. She does have a boyfriend John Pear, which makes me laugh. It feels like someone heard John Pierre wrong or some other French name and wrote this down instead. He talks about how he’s glad her twin is dead because now she’s the only one and wipes her tears into a little vial that he wears around his neck.

She also learns that other people in school don’t like her and most people are afraid of her. Her own friend Scarlett won’t come near her because she thinks that she’s Madrigal and her crush Vince wants nothing to do with her either so she ends up spending more time with John Pear. He makes plans to pick her up that night and take her to their special place.

He drives them to another school where they pick up Katy, a younger girl. He then drives her to the crappy part of the “city”. It turns out that their special place and special thing involves leaving girls in the middle of the ghetto and watching them freak out. They did it to Scarlett and now he wants to do it to Katy. When ML freaks out, he pushes her out of the car. Eventually he lets both girls back in and convinces Katy that it was all a joke.

ML decides that she wants nothing to do with John Pear because he’s evil. He refuses to listen because he knows what things were like before and she tells him that he isn’t good. He asks her to name one good person and when she picks Vince, he thinks she has a crush on him. He claims that he’ll do something awful at their winter carnival/sleigh days thing and she gets super worried.

John Pear goes after Vince and ML confesses that she’s not Madrigal. Scarlett believes her because of the look in her eyes and John Pear runs off in shame. She goes home and her parents confess that they knew the truth all along, but wanted to let her come to them. Apparently Madrigal was an evil child who hated her twin. They saw the way she looked at ML and decided to send her away before her sister killed her.

She goes back to the winter carnival, feeling a lot better about her life because now she has friends and parents who love her. She finds a large group of kids surrounded John Pear with sharp icicles. They plan on killing him and making him feel the way he made all those girls feel. ML tries to calm them all down by saying she doesn’t want them to be like him.

A young boy falls through the ice and all the teens bond together to help him escape. ML literally jumps in the icy water and pulls him out. When the authorities arrive, she looks around for John Pear and discovers him dead under the water. She looks at the other teens and realizes that they killed him while she was trying to save the little boy. She feels terrible, but stands proud because she didn’t take part.

Uh, what? This book was just…odd. First of all, if her parents were so worried, then why didn’t they send Madrigal to a psychiatrist or something? Or why not send her away to school and keep the good twin? Why did she switch clothes with her twin and what was she planning? I just have so many unanswered questions after finishing this one.