Natalia Takes the Lead Read online

  For the best sister of all, Lia Nigro

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Teaser

  Copyright

  “Zoe! Think fast!” Natalia Martinez pitched a handful of fall leaves at her twin sister’s head.

  Zoe glared at her and shook her head so that the red and gold leaves fluttered to the ground. “Not funny,” she said, picking a leaf out of her bangs.

  Their cousin Emma, who was industriously raking on the other side of the lawn, laughed. “It’s a little funny,” she said.

  Zoe made a face at them both, but her eyes were amused. “Messing up my beautiful hair,” she complained with an exaggerated pout.

  Zoe did have nice hair, Natalia thought.

  Sometimes Natalia couldn’t understand how she and Zoe could be identical twins. Right now, for instance, Zoe’s preppy shirt and pants were as pressed and clean as if she’d just ironed them and put them on, even though she’d been wearing them all day. Her sleek dark bob swung neatly just below her chin, looking freshly combed.

  Natalia, well … She glanced down at her own glittery but slightly rumpled sweater, which now had bits of leaf clinging to it, then smoothed a hand over her own long hair, which was frizzing out in all directions.

  She could have looked as put-together as Zoe did, Natalia knew. If she wanted to get acquainted with the ironing board, and get her hair cut, and hang up her clothes as soon as they came out of the laundry, and sit and talk at recess instead of flinging herself across the playground to play tag—if she did all that, she and Zoe could look as identical as they were genetically.

  But Natalia didn’t care about that stuff. And Zoe did. And these differences, Natalia thought, were the real mystery.

  “Twins are weird,” she said out loud.

  “Well, I didn’t want to say anything,” Emma joked, glancing up from her neat, small pile of leaves.

  “I mean, look at us,” Natalia said, gesturing back and forth between herself and Zoe. “For that matter, look at you. You’re not a twin, but you’re family. And you’re the same age as us and we’re in the same class at school. Why are we all so different?”

  Natalia glanced around at Seaview House’s wide front lawn, where they were raking. Even the lawn, Natalia thought, was like a tiny model of the differences between the three girls.

  Generations of their family had lived in Seaview House, the oldest house in the small town of Waverly on the Chesapeake Bay. Just recently, Emma and her parents had moved in with Grandma Stephenson, who had gotten too old to want to live there by herself. Emma’s mom was Natalia and Zoe’s mom’s twin sister, and they were turning the house into a bed-and-breakfast together. Emma and her parents were lucky enough to live at Seaview House. They had an apartment all to themselves on the top floor.

  Natalia loved Seaview House, which was old in the best ways and full of cool things: a secret staircase concealed behind what looked like a regular wall, an attic crowded with stuff stored by more than a hundred years of ancestors, and a dumbwaiter, which was a tiny elevator for food. She was glad her mom and dad had bought a house just around the corner when they got married. But Seaview House had a lot of lawn. At their moms’ request, the three girls had divided up the front lawn and had spent all Sunday morning raking it. Even divided into three, the lawn was huge, and a lot of work.

  Emma had sectioned her part of the yard off into quarters. She worked intently on each quarter in turn, making small piles in their centers, a frown of careful concentration on her face, focused on getting up every last leaf. This was exactly what Emma was like, Natalia thought with a surge of affection: precise, and eager to do her best. Emma made lists and won swim meets and soccer games and worried about everything. She worked hard to do a good job at whatever she did.

  Zoe, on the other hand … Natalia looked at her twin thoughtfully. What Zoe had actually gotten around to raking was almost as neat as what Emma had done. A couple mostly filled leaf bags leaned against a tree. Zoe liked to do things well, and she liked them to look right. But she hadn’t done nearly as much as Emma, and Natalia knew it was because Zoe wasn’t that interested in lawns. Right now, she wasn’t raking at all, and she wasn’t paying attention to what Natalia and Emma were saying, either.

  Instead, she was looking at a bright red maple leaf, her head cocked thoughtfully to one side. As Natalia watched, Zoe crouched down—carefully not kneeling on the grass so that her pants stayed clean—and laid the leaf on the lawn between a smaller, almost pink one and a brilliantly golden gingko leaf.

  “Oh no, we’ve lost her to the colors again,” Natalia said to Emma. Zoe didn’t even look up.

  Zoe loved her family and her small group of close friends. She was snarky and funny and smart. But what she was most interested in was painting and drawing and making things. She could get swept up in examining a contrast of color or working on a sketch, and Natalia could see everything else melt away for her sister, leaving only the colors or the drawing.

  Natalia herself didn’t especially want to be able to draw, but she couldn’t help envying Zoe a little. Zoe knew what she was good at, knew what she was passionate about. Natalia did lots of stuff—theater and service club and volunteer work—but she didn’t have one special interest or talent like Zoe did.

  So, if Emma was careful and conscientious and Zoe was wrapped up in her art, what was she like? Natalia wondered. She looked at her part of the lawn. There was one big pile in the middle of her section of the lawn, bigger than any one of Emma’s or Zoe’s piles, but there were still tons of leaves threaded through the grass as well.

  Natalia made a face. “Ugh, why do I have so many leaves left? I’ve been raking like crazy!” She had been putting all her energy into it, dragging huge rakefuls of leaves across the lawn. Why wasn’t she as close to done as they were?

  Zoe, distracted from her contemplation of colors, snorted.

  “What?” Natalia asked, putting her hands on her hips.

  “Well,” Emma told her, exchanging a glance with Zoe, “it’s true that you’ve been working really hard. When you’re working. But you keep getting—”

  “Hello, girls!” Mrs. Lau from down the block was waving at them from the sidewalk, where she was pushing her baby in a stroller. Emma and Zoe both waved. Natalia hurried over.

  “Hey, Mrs. Lau!” she said. “Were you guys down by the water?” She puffed her cheeks out at baby Charlie, making him giggle. “You like the beach, don’t you, Charlie?” Charlie made babbling noises and reached up toward her, and Natalia took his plump little baby hands and smooched them.

  She and Mrs. Lau chatted for a couple minutes. When Mrs. Lau and Charlie moved on, Natalia spotted old Mr. Ainsley, another neighbor, washing his car, and ran across the street for a minute to say hello.

  When she came back, Emma raised her eyebrows pointedly.

  “What?” Natalia asked.

  “You were wondering why you haven’t gotten a ton done?” Emma reminded her. “It’s because Mr. Ainsley was probably the eighth person you’ve stopped to talk to since we started.”

  “I like to talk to people,” Natalia said defensively. She reached down and picked up her rake. “Besides, I couldn’t be rude and ignore them.”

  “You want to be friends with everybody,” Zoe diagnosed
. She reached down and pulled a lemon-colored leaf out of her pile and held it up, peering at it against the sun.

  “Well … yeah,” Natalia said, puzzled. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with everybody? “Of course I do.”

  Emma leaned back against a tree and smiled at her. “And that’s why we love you, Natalia,” she said.

  Seaview House’s front door burst open as Natalia and Zoe’s little brothers, six-year-old Tomás and five-year-old Mateo, ran outside, across the front porch, and down the steps to the lawn. Their elderly family dog, Riley, followed more slowly, puffing a little, and lay down by the front walk, his tail wagging.

  Mateo and Tomás didn’t stop. “Can’t catch me!” Mateo screeched tauntingly, and sped across the lawn, running straight through Natalia’s big pile and scattering two of Emma’s smaller ones.

  “Stop!” Zoe yelled, running to intercept the little boys as they headed for her part of the lawn. She was too late. Tomás tackled Mateo straight into the side of one of the bags full of leaves she’d raked and it toppled, spilling bright leaves between the trees. “No!” Zoe said, grabbing another bag to steady it before it fell, too. “Cut it out, you guys!”

  “Keep them over there!” Emma called, hurriedly re-raking her own pile. “I’ll come help you in a minute.”

  Natalia stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled, a loud, shrill note. Mateo and Tomás untangled from each other and looked up at her, blinking.

  “Come on!” she said cheerfully. “We’ll play a game.” The boys scrambled up and came over. She looked around her section of the lawn, a plan beginning to take shape. “Here,” she said, handing her rake to Mateo. “We’ll make a maze. And when we’re done, Zoe and Emma will have to find their way through it.”

  Tomás nodded enthusiastically and started pushing the leaves into walls, but Mateo leaned on the rake and frowned.

  “We don’t have enough leaves,” he complained. “Emma and Zoe will be able to see over the walls.”

  “We could get leaves out of the bags,” Tomás suggested.

  “No, don’t do that,” Natalia said, seeing Emma’s horrified face. “It would be cool to make really huge walls, but I’m not sure how we’d keep them up.” She remembered a maze she’d seen once at a park. “What if instead of the kind with high walls, we just used low walls to mark out our maze?”

  She crouched and picked up a stick to sketch a square in a nearby patch of dirt. “Pretend this is the maze. We could put the entrance here and the exit here.” She drew little lines to show where she meant. “We can make it as complicated or as simple as we want—we just need to make sure there’s only one way to get to the exit.”

  “We could make it look like a path by letting them get this far and then putting a wall,” Tomás said, taking the stick and making scratches of his own. “They’ll be so mad!” He giggled.

  Once they’d marked out all the twists and turns, building the maze wasn’t too hard. They all ran back and forth for a while, looking at their drawing before Natalia realized it would be easier to stand by the plan and direct Mateo and Tomás.

  “Okay, Mateo,” she said, squinting at the plan. “Put a long line of leaves up to where Tomás made the turn.”

  “What are you, the General of Leaves?” Zoe called teasingly from across the lawn.

  “I’m the Commander of Autumn!” Natalia called back. “Obey me!” Emma and Zoe both rolled their eyes, but the boys, who loved playing army, saluted.

  “Hut, hut, hut, double time,” Natalia ordered. “Get those leaf walls built up, soldiers!”

  There were long lines of red, yellow, and brown leaves crisscrossing Natalia’s whole section of the lawn. “Almost ready,” Tomás said, excited.

  Zoe shook her head as she stuffed her last armload of leaves into a trash bag. “You know you’re going to end up having to rake that whole side of the lawn again.”

  Natalia sighed. It was true. Still, at least the leaves were all neatly laid out. Probably she and the boys could just scoop them up.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll help you,” Emma said supportively.

  Zoe grinned. “I suppose. But only if the maze is fun.”

  The maze was fun.

  “This is actually impossible, isn’t it?” Emma asked, a line of concentration appearing between her eyebrows.

  “You’re never going to get it!” Mateo teased, jumping up and down, and Zoe and Emma both groaned.

  Tomás, looking sympathetic, whispered loudly, “Emma! Turn here!”

  Natalia flopped down cross-legged on the lawn to watch Zoe and Emma puzzle their way through. Riley, wagging his tail, walked over stiff-leggedly and collapsed next to her, putting his head in Natalia’s lap.

  “Hey there, good boy,” Natalia said, playing with Riley’s long, silky ears. “Whatcha doing? You want to play?” Riley woofed softly and closed his eyes.

  “You all look busy.” Her mother’s amused voice came from above her, and Natalia twisted around to look up at her.

  “Hey!” Natalia said. “I didn’t hear you come out.” Then she remembered what she was supposed to be doing and grimaced. “Sorry, we were raking, I swear.”

  “I know,” her mom said, smiling. “But come on inside, because Aunt Amy and I have news for you.” She raised her voice. “Emma! Zoe! You, too.”

  Emma was just triumphantly stepping out of the maze. “What?” she said. “We’re going to clean it up! It’s not Natalia’s fault!”

  “Well, it actually is,” Zoe muttered, still stuck halfway through the maze. At Emma’s look, she sighed and added, “But we are going to help clean up.”

  “You’re not in trouble,” Natalia’s mom said. “Just come inside. We have something exciting to tell you.”

  In the elegant front room of Seaview House, Emma’s mom, Aunt Amy, was waiting. Natalia and Zoe’s mom sat down next to her on the long velvet settee and waved the girls into cushy armchairs.

  As Natalia looked at her mom and aunt, she was reminded again of how different she and Zoe were, because their mom and Aunt Amy, who were twins, too, were just as unlike each other. Aunt Amy, who had been a lawyer in Seattle before coming back to Waverly, looked very businesslike. She had short, neat hair and wore blazers and nice pants and shoes with a low heel on them. Natalia’s own mom was more a classic-mom type: shoulder-length hair, sweaters, and sneakers. But they shared the dream of turning Seaview House into a bed-and-breakfast, and they worked together really well.

  “So what’s up?” Zoe asked curiously.

  Natalia’s mom and Aunt Amy looked at each other. “Well …” Aunt Amy said, drawing out the anticipation, “… we have our first guests!”

  “What?” Natalia said. “That’s amazing!” Zoe and Emma cheered. Her mom and Aunt Amy had been working on fixing Seaview House up for months and, except for a reception for friends and family, they hadn’t opened for business yet. Apparently, getting ready for guests took a long time.

  “We have two couples coming for three full weeks. They’re friends and they’re traveling together,” Natalia’s mom said. “They sounded lovely on the phone.”

  “We could work to make their stay better. I can help Dad in the kitchen,” Emma offered. “I like cooking.”

  “Do you want me and Zoe to wait tables?” Natalia asked. “That could be fun.”

  Zoe frowned, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. “Do I have to? I’d rather make beds or something like that. I don’t want to have to talk to strangers first thing in the morning. Ugh.”

  Their mom laughed. “Don’t worry, Zoe, I think we can handle four guests. We can come back to the idea when the bed-and-breakfast starts getting busier. But if we ever do need you girls to help out, it’ll be your choice. And I imagine you’d get paid.”

  “Well, congratulations,” Emma said. “The guests are going to have a great time.”

  “I hope so.” Aunt Amy sighed. “Each couple is bringing a dog with them. They asked if I could recommend a dog-walking service o
r doggy day care around here, but I couldn’t. They decided to come anyway, but it means they’ll have to schedule their days around walking the dogs.”

  Zoe and Natalia’s mom shook her head. “I really wish we could have found another option for them. Those dogs are going to get restless.”

  A brilliant idea hit Natalia, and she bounced in her seat. “What if we walk the dogs? I love dogs!”

  Her mom and Aunt Amy exchanged a look. “Are you sure?” Aunt Amy asked. “You’ll be responsible for taking them out twice every day. If you’re going to do it, you’ll have to make a commitment and stick to it.”

  “Of course we’ll stick to it,” Natalia said.

  “I want to help,” Emma said hesitantly. “But I’ve got soccer practice twice a week and games as well. And swim team practice, too.”

  “And I’m going to do theater club with Natalia this year,” Zoe said, not making eye contact with anyone.

  “You are?” Natalia asked, distracted. Zoe had never wanted to sign up for theater club before. “Are you going to paint sets?”

  Zoe’s cheeks were turning pink. “I might try out for Dorothy,” she mumbled. “I really like The Wizard of Oz.”

  Of course. Natalia knew that was her sister’s favorite musical. “I think that’s great,” she said decidedly. “You’ve got a way better singing voice than I do.”

  Zoe peeked at her from the corner of her eye. “Do I?”

  “You really do,” Natalia assured her.

  “It sounds like you girls are pretty busy,” Natalia’s mom said, biting her lip. “It’s a good idea, though. Maybe there’s someone at your school who would like—”

  “No!” Natalia said. “We want to do it. Come on, you guys. There are three of us, and only two dogs, for just a few weeks. It’ll be easy.”

  “Well …” said Emma.

  “I guess …” said Zoe.

  “Awesome,” Natalia said confidently. Between the three of them, they’d have plenty of time. “We’ll do it,” she said to her mom and Aunt Amy. “Trust me, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

  “It’s going to be so fun,” Natalia told her best friend, Caitlin, the next day at school. “You should help, too. You like dogs. And we’ll get paid.”