The Pink Lemonade Charade Page 7

  But Susan refused to become upset. “Nonsense. You and I have come up with fantastic schemes in much shorter amounts of time than that.”

  “Well ... I guess you could be right....”

  “Of course I’m right! Come on, Chris; have a little confidence in the Pratt twins’ abilities as schemers!” Despite her enthusiasm, however, she could see that her pep talk wasn’t doing much good. Chris still looked as if she were down in the dumps.

  “Here, I’ll tell you what. How about if we try thinking about something else for a change? You know, something that’ll help us both take our minds off this for a while.”

  “Okay, Sooz. I guess that’s not a bad idea.”

  At least there was a hint of optimism in Chris’s voice once again. Susan couldn’t help feeling just a little bit satisfied.

  “Well, let’s see.” She glanced around the hotel room, hoping to find something that would hold her twin’s attention for a while—at least until she snapped out of this discouraged mood of hers. “Oh, I know!” Susan had just spotted the shopping bag from that morning’s buying spree in Georgetown. It was tucked away in a corner, next to the dresser, and she had forgotten all about it. “Why don’t you try on the new dress I bought you today?”

  “Oh, that’s a great idea! Why, I can’t wait to see how I look in it. Why don’t you try on yours, too?”

  “Okay.” Susan had already tried hers on, back at the store. But if it would help Chris cheer up, she was willing to put it on again.

  Chattering away about all the places they could wear their new dresses, Chris and Susan took them out of the bag and slipped them on. Not surprisingly, once they did, the two girls looked exactly the same. The twins stood in front of the mirror, looking at their reflection.

  “Oh, it’s such a cute dress!” Chris exclaimed. “I really like the way it fits. And I love the color. This shade of pink is gorgeous.”

  “It’s the color of pink lemonade!” Susan reminded her with a chuckle. “I must say, I think the salesclerk thought that Beth and I were going a little bit overboard. I mean, there we were, standing at the counter together, and she was buying one of these dresses, and I was buying two.... Chris, are you listening to me?”

  Even as she spoke to her twin, Susan couldn’t help noticing that Chris suddenly had that peculiar, faraway look in her eyes, the look that said she wasn’t really listening at all.

  “Chris, Chris ... Oh, dear, now what? Have you decided that you don’t like the dress, after all?”

  “I’ve got it,” Chris whispered, her eyes still glued to the mirror. “I’ve finally come up with our plan. Sooz, I know how we can help Natasha Samchenko defect!”

  “How? What’s the plan? Ooh, Chris, I’m so excited I can hardly wait for you to tell me.”

  “It’s so simple that it’s—it’s ingenious!” Chris’s dark brown eyes were glowing as she ran her inspired idea over and over again in her mind.

  Susan, meanwhile, was growing so impatient that she was certain she would scream if Chris didn’t hurry up and tell her what she was thinking. “Christine ...”

  “Look, Susan. We have three identical dresses in our possession, right?”

  “Well, more or less. We do if we can manage to borrow Beth’s.”

  “No problem. We’ll just have to come up with a creative reason why we want it. I only hope she’s not planning to wear it to the party and the ballet tomorrow evening.” Chris’s forehead was wrinkled with worry.

  Susan was getting impatient once again. “Chris, she brought that green dress of hers to wear Saturday night. You know, the one she wore when Dennis took her out to that fancy French restaurant on her birthday ... But you still haven’t told me the plan!”

  “Okay. We’ve got three identical dresses. We’ve also got two identical twins ... and a third person who has the same basic coloring as us, who, with a little planning, could pass for one of us....”

  “Christine Pratt! You are driving me up the wall!”

  Totally exasperated by this point, Susan threw her hands up into the air, “Will you please stop teasing me with these little clues of yours and just tell me, once and for all, how on earth we’re going to help Natasha?”

  “All right, here it is.” Chris leaned forward, wearing a big grin that made it clear how proud she was. “This Saturday, the night of the party and the dance, you and I are going to show up looking like each other’s mirror image. As a matter of fact, we’ll both be wearing our new ‘pink lemonade’ dresses.”

  “Wait a minute. You mean you want Mr. Pirov and Mrs. Korsky to know there are two of us?”

  “I sure do!” Chris was growing even more excited as she went on. “Meanwhile, we’ll have snuck the third pink dress over to Natasha. Let’s see ... maybe one of us could do it at the party”

  “I don’t know, Chris,” Susan interjected nervously. “That may be cutting things a little close, don’t you think?”

  “Hmmm. Maybe you’re right. Well, then, I’ll just have to get the pink dress to Natasha before Saturday night, to make sure everything proceeds on schedule.”

  “Good idea, Chris. There’s only one small detail you seem to have left out.”

  “What’s that?” Chris looked puzzled.

  “You still haven’t told me what the plan is!”

  “Oh, right. Here goes, then. By the end of the performance, you and I will be wearing pink T-shirt dresses, and Natasha will be waiting backstage, having secretly changed into her pink dress. She can—oh, I don’t know, maybe throw a raincoat over it or something. Anyway, after the performance, you and I will go backstage, supposedly to congratulate Natasha and say good-bye ... and that’s when we’ll do it!”

  “Do what?”

  Chris’s eyes were big and round. When she spoke, her voice was so soft that it was almost a whisper. “Sooz, I’ll switch places with Natasha! Then, once she’s masquerading as me, she can sneak out of the Kennedy Center with you. As soon as she’s away from the chaperones, she can go to the nearest police station and say she wants to defect because she wants artistic freedom!”

  Susan gasped. “That is inspired, Chris!” But already her mind was racing, becoming clouded with doubts and fears. “But what about you, Chris? What happens when Mr. Pirov realizes what you’ve done ... and he’s got you in his clutches?”

  “Oh, come on, Sooz, What could he possibly do to me? After all, I’m an American citizen, so he has no power over me. Besides, I won’t have necessarily done anything wrong. All I’ll be doing—if he even finds me— is sitting in Natasha’s dressing room, wearing a pink dress and minding my own business.” She sat back and folded her arms across her chest. “So there it is. What do you think?”

  Susan eyed her twin warily. “I think you’re very brave, Chris.”

  “Yes, but do you think it’ll work?”

  “If you don’t lose your nerve, it could very well work,” Susan replied seriously.

  “Well, I’m not the only one who’s going to need her nerve,” Chris pointed out. “Don’t forget, you’re playing a big part in this, too.”

  Susan gulped. “Gee, I almost forgot. I guess I’ll have to pull out all the stops on my acting ability, too.”

  “So, Sooz, are you up for this?”

  “I sure am. As a matter of fact, while you’ve been telling me all this, I even managed to come up with a name for this little caper of ours.”

  “Really? What is it?”

  “Well, Natasha is going to be pretending to be you—and vice versa, right? As if the two of you were carrying out some sort of charade?”

  “Right ...”

  “And all three of us will be wearing dresses that are the color of pink lemonade.”

  Chris burst out laughing. “I think I know what you’re about to say, Sooz! Don’t tell me!”

  In unison, the twins cried out, “The Pink Lemonade Charade!” And then they both broke into hysterical giggling.

  Somehow, having something else to think about besides
the possible dangers of what they were planning to do—in only twenty-four hours, no less—helped them get over some of their growing nervousness. It even helped them forget, at least for a moment, that the adventure that they were about to embark upon was in an entirely different league from anything else they had ever attempted before.

  Chapter Nine

  The butterflies that were already jumping around inside Chris’s stomach as she woke up told her that this was an important day even before she had a chance to remember exactly what day it was. And as soon as she realized that it was already Saturday, the day of the Pink Lemonade Charade, the butterflies went berserk.

  There were several things Chris had to accomplish today. First, she had to get Beth to lend her the third pink dress. Fortunately, she and her twin had already devised a way to do that, late the night before. Second, she had to get the dress to Natasha, as well as explain what the Pink Lemonade Charade was all about, without having anyone suspect, especially Mr. Pirov and Mrs. Korsky, whose jobs were to keep an eye out for exactly this type of thing. Third, there was the Pink Lemonade Charade itself, scheduled for that very evening....

  I won’t think about it right now, Chris thought as she climbed out of bed. I’ll just take things one at a time. That way, she reasoned, she was less likely to become overwhelmed by what she and her sister were trying to do.

  When she waltzed into the hotel coffee shop twenty minutes later, wearing her pink dress and looking as cool as if she didn’t have a care in the world, she found that Susan was already sitting with Holly and Beth, chatting away as she and her friends ate their breakfast.

  So far, so good, thought Chris, forcing herself to smile as she joined the threesome at their table.

  “Hi, everybody,” she said brightly. “Like my new dress?”

  “Well, I certainly do,” Beth joked. “I must say, Chris, you have wonderful taste in clothes.”

  “I’ll second that,” Susan agreed heartily. “That is definitely a fantastic dress.”

  Holly looked up from her waffles with surprise. “What’s all this? I mean, the dress is cute, but you’re all acting as if it were a designer original or something.”

  The others laughed, and then explained how all three of them happened to own the same dress.

  “Yes, I couldn’t wait to wear it,” Chris went on to say after she had ordered her scrambled eggs and toast, making sure to tell the waiter she wanted lots of grape jelly with her order. “Sure, I plan to wear it tonight, to the party and the ballet performance. And maybe I should have waited. But you know me; once I get something new, I can’t wait to put it on!”

  “Just be careful you don’t get it dirty,” Susan made a point of warning her.

  “Oh, come on, Susan,” Holly protested. “Chris is a big girl. She can manage to go a whole day without getting her clothes stained!”

  Susan and Chris just exchanged amused glances.

  “So, Beth, what have you got lined up for today?” Holly asked as the waiter placed Chris’s breakfast on the table and she dug right into it.

  “Actually, I thought I’d go to the zoo,” Beth replied. “The National Zoo is supposed to be one of the finest in the country.”

  “What a great idea!” Susan exclaimed. “That’s where the pandas are! Oooh, I think I’ll go, too.” Without thinking, she turned to her sister. “How about you, Chris? Care to join us?”

  “Oh, gee, Sooz, I don’t know....”

  “Oh, come on, Chris. Why not?”

  Susan froze the moment she realized “why not.” But it was already too late; both Beth and Holly were looking at Chris expectantly.

  Fortunately, Chris had always been good at thinking on her feet. “As a matter of fact, there is something I want to do this morning, but it’s a secret.”

  “A secret!” That, of course, made Holly and Beth more curious than ever.

  “If Chris wants to keep it a secret,” Susan insisted, “we should respect that. After all, a girl’s entitled to her privacy.” The look she gave her sister, however, showed that she was utterly confused by Chris’s reply to her question.

  “Well, there is one thing I can tell you ... no, two.”

  This time, the look that Susan cast her twin was one of shock.

  “Okay, Chris,” Holly said cheerfully, unaware of all the tension between the twin sisters during this seemingly innocent conversation. “Give us some clues.”

  “All right. One is that you’ll find out tomorrow what this morning’s ‘secret’ was all about. And the other is that ... well, what I plan to do today has a lot to do with a decision I’ve made about my future.”

  “My, my. That certainly sounds serious,” Beth observed.

  Susan just looked puzzled. Sure, she understood what Chris was referring to by her first “clue.” Of course, by tomorrow everyone would know what Chris had been up to. As far as the second part, however, she was totally in the dark. And here she had always prided herself on knowing her twin sister so well!

  Chris, meanwhile, glanced over at her best friend. “Holly knows what I’m talking about. Don’t you, Holly?”

  “Well, sure, but ... Well, in that case, I can hardly wait! It sounds like Chris here has finally decided what she wants to be when she grows up,” she added with a teasing grin.

  Susan just continued to look baffled.

  “Well,” Holly went on, tucking some dollar bills under her plate and slinging her purse over her shoulder, “what do you say the rest of us—those of us with boring, unmysterious lives—start heading for the zoo?”

  Susan cast her twin a meaningful glance. But Chris didn’t need to be reminded that for Phase One of the Pink Lemonade Charade, it was now or never.

  “Sounds like a good idea. Have fun!” Chris said loudly.

  Just then, she scooped up a huge glob of purple grape jelly with a knife, went to smear it on top of a piece of toast, and promptly dropped it smack in the middle of her lap instead.

  “My dress!” she cried, standing up quickly so that the jelly dribbled down across the skin, making what would have been only a small stain into a huge one. “I’ve ruined it! It’s purple!”

  Immediately the three other girls grabbed their napkins and starting dabbing at the stain. But their attempts at banishing the purple blobs on the bright pink fabric proved futile.

  “You’d better take that dress upstairs and soak it in cold water right away,” Susan told her while Beth and Holly looked on sorrowfully.

  “Good idea,” Holly agreed. “Before it has a chance to set in.”

  “But I really wanted to wear this dress today!” Chris wailed,

  “Don’t worry,” her sister said. “If you rinse it out now, it’ll be dry by tonight.”

  “But you don’t understand!” Chris insisted. “I wanted to wear it today!” She pretended that she had just gotten a brainstorm. “Hey, Susan, how about if you let me borrow your pink dress today? I’m dying to wear something new, you know. I mean, this is practically my last day in Washington, and I just feel like looking really nice....”

  “No way!” Susan cried. “Not when you’re such a butterfingers!”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t be such a spoilsport.” By now, Chris was pretending to be very upset. “Please! It’d mean so much to me....”

  “You can borrow my pink dress,” Beth suddenly offered, her voice so soft that Chris might not even have heard her if she hadn’t had her ears on the alert for that very invitation.

  “Really?” Chris blinked. “You mean you’d really let me borrow your dress today? Oh, I promise I’ll be careful, Beth. I—I won’t eat a single thing all day. I’ll do anything to keep it from getting ruined, now that I’ve seen what a klutz I can be.”

  “You don’t have to starve yourself,” Beth said with a chuckle. “You can borrow it, Chris, if it means that much to you.”

  “Oh, boy! Thanks a million, Beth. You won’t be sorry; I promise.” Chris couldn’t resist casting a meaningful glance in her twin’s direct
ion.

  Immediately after breakfast, Chris hurried back to her room and rinsed out her pink dress. Much to her relief, she discovered that the purple stains came right out. She hung it up in front of an open window; that way, it was sure to be dry by that evening. Then she took the key that Beth had lent her, retrieved the third pink dress from the room that Beth and Susan were sharing, and tucked it into a plastic bag.

  While she was proceeding with speed and confidence, the truth of the matter was that Chris had yet to figure out how on earth she was going to get to Natasha during the Russian ballet troupe’s Saturday morning rehearsal. But then, as she was about to leave Beth and Susan’s room and she returned to the closet to put back the empty hanger on which Beth’s pink dress had been hung, she had an inspiration.

  Less than an hour later, Chris was striding into the main entrance of the rehearsal hall, dressed in one of her twin’s most serious-looking outfits: a white blouse, a dark skirt, and simple low-heeled shoes. Under her arm she was carrying a notebook, one she’d picked up at the stationery store she’d found right around the corner from the hotel. When the receptionist right inside the front door glanced up, Chris was ready.

  “Good morning. My name is Mary McGregor, and I’m here to interview some of the Russian dancers for my high school English project.”

  The receptionist just looked bored. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I certainly do. As a matter of fact, if I don’t scoot inside right away, I’m going to be late. And if I don’t get this term paper written, my English teacher is going to flunk me.”

  Fortunately, her plea worked. The receptionist’s expression went from bored to sympathetic. “Go right in,” she said.

  Once inside, Chris hurried directly to the one place she knew she had at least a chance of getting Natasha alone—and the one place the chaperones probably wouldn’t bother to accompany the dancers. There was a women’s rest room right outside the rehearsal hall. Before she ducked inside, prepared to wait as long as she had to, she glanced through the glass door to the large dance studio and saw that the dancers were already gathering, stretching, and warming up for the workout ahead.