FROM THE MOMENT Jane found Skye crumpled on the bathroom floor to when she looked into the mirror and saw Rainbow looking back at her was one long blur of activity. Bits and pieces stood out—Mr. Geballe asking if she was certain she knew the whole play by heart, Iantha calmly kneeling beside Skye, Melissa’s fury when she heard about the switch, and most of all, the sense that this was one of the most exciting things that had ever happened to her, Jane.

  Then all at once she was on the stage behind the curtain with Melissa, listening to the last performance before the start of Sisters and Sacrifice, a band called Jesse’s Wild Bunch. Jane danced along to their music, finding them as fabulous as everything else in her world that night. When they finished their song, and she heard the clanging and banging as they dragged their instruments and microphones off the stage, she knew the play was only seconds away.

  She grabbed Melissa’s hand and shook it, whispering, “Break a leg.”

  “Break your own leg,” Melissa whispered back. “You’d better not mess up.”

  “Never fear, Grass Flower. I cannot fail, for my whole life has led me to this hour.”

  “Oh, be quiet.”

  In front of the curtain, the narrator had begun. Jane silently mouthed the words with him. “Long ago in the land of the Aztecs, there was great worry. The rain had not come for many months, and without the rain, the maize didn’t grow, and without the maize, the people starved.”

  Next came the chorus with all their “Alas, alas”es, and then—

  The curtain came up, and Jane turned to the audience, deliriously happy. They were out there, all wondrous four hundred of them, ready to love her as much as she loved them. And she gave them her best. From her first line, she was a Rainbow to end all Rainbows—through her brave switch with Grass Flower, her long march to the sacrificial table, her dramatic rescue by lightning, and all the way to the end of the play, which just happened to be Rainbow’s most glorious speech.

  “Dear Coyote, I am honored by your vows of love. But you must return to my beloved sister, who has nothing but you in this life. I, on the other hand, have a great destiny, to devote my life to my people. I will never forget you, and you must never forget me, either—Rainbow, who loves you, but loves duty more!”

  The applause was intoxicating. Jane waved, and bowed, and didn’t even mind when she bowed so low her wig fell off and everyone laughed. They were laughing with her! They adored her! If only it could go on forever!

  Applause never does go on forever, but when the last curtain fell, still Jane’s happiness went on and on. Behind the curtain was great celebration—Aztec maidens darting this way and that, shrieking with laughter, soldiers marching in and out of formation, priests gleefully reliving their gruesome deaths by crashing to the floor. Jane hugged herself with delight, for all this was the result of her imagination come to life. Then she saw Skye skirting a band of rampaging villagers.

  Jane raced over to her. “Are you all right? Have you stopped fainting? Did you get to see any of the play?”

  “I saw most of it from the wings, and you were terrific, Jane.”

  “Really? Because with all that applause I thought that maybe I was good, good enough that I could become an actress someday. I mean, I’m still going to be a writer, but in case I ever get writer’s block, I could turn to acting. What do you think?”

  But Skye wasn’t listening. She was too busy steering Jane toward the exit, her only goal to avoid the crowds and go home. Fainting hadn’t wiped out her horror at the deceit she’d perpetrated. Indeed, since then, the horror had only grown, for people had been so nice—Mr. Geballe, who hadn’t scolded once, or even looked annoyed that his star was out of commission, and Iantha, bathing her forehead and feeding her bits of crackers she’d produced from goodness knew where. If only they’d known what a lying lowlif
e they were dealing with. Sisters and Sacrifice by Skye Penderwick—ha! She’d heard the applause. She’d even heard a few cries of “Author, author!” and had crouched behind a pile of boxes in the wings, terrified someone would spot her and push her out onto the stage.

  The exit door was just up ahead, but before they could reach it, Pearson was suddenly in front of them, gawking at Skye with the intensity of a hungry frog.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He shuffled his feet and turned into an out-and-out starving frog. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to be in the play.”

  “I’m not. See you on Monday.” She tried to maneuver Jane around him, but he stuck with them.

  “It’s only that I just tonight realized how good the play is. When Jane said those words, you know, about life and death and love and stuff—well, I just thought about what a good writer you are, Skye, and how you know a lot about…stuff.”

  “Believe me, I don’t know anything. Now get out of my way.” This time Skye managed to dodge past him, still with Jane in tow.

  “Are you sure you feel all right, Skye?” asked Jane, who would have greatly enjoyed a long conversation with Pearson about life and death and love. “You know, he was pretty good as Coyote, especially in that scene at the end, when I sent him back to Grass Flower.”

  “Shh,” said Skye, for despite her efforts to escape, now it was Melissa blocking their path.

  “You look okay to me, Skye Penderwick,” she said, her hands on her hips. “I bet you two had the switch planned all along.”

  “We didn’t, honest,” protested Jane.

  “Then, Miss Know-It-All Fifth Grader, why did you know the entire script by heart?”

  Skye cut in before Jane could answer. “We’re in a hurry, Melissa. I’m sorry if the switch made it hard for you.”

  “Oh. Well, I still don’t trust either of you. Just wait until the soccer game tomorrow. I’ll get my revenge.”

  While Melissa stomped off, Jane rounded on her sister. “You apologized to your loathsome enemy? Did you hit your head when you fainted?”

  “She expected to outshine me tonight, and instead you outshone her. I feel sort of sorry for her.”

  “You did hit your head. You must have.”

  “Maybe I did, but come on, Jane, please let’s get out of here.”

  “Skye, Jane, wait!”

  Rats! It was Mr. Geballe. Skye turned to him as though facing a firing squad.

  “Good evening, Mr. Geballe,” she said. “How are you?”

  “How am I? For heaven’s sake, Skye, how are you? Are you feeling better?”

  “Much better, thank you.”

  “That’s good,” he said, smiling. “And, Jane, our savior, how do you feel?”

  “Terrific, amazing, magnificent!”

  “That’s just what I was going to say about your performance. What a family for talent you are!”

  “We are, aren’t we?” Jane was aglow with his praise.

  “Not particularly,” said Skye, treading on Jane’s foot to calm her down. “I mean, some of us are more talented than others in certain things.”

  “Well, you’ve got the writing talent, Skye, that’s for sure,” said Mr. Geballe. “And, Jane, you’re certainly an impressive young actress. Are you a writer, too, like your sister?”

  “I—um—am I, Skye?”

  “Actually, Mr. Geballe, Jane’s a much better writer than I am.”

  “Wow! I can’t wait to see the play she writes next year. Who knows? Maybe another Penderwick will get a shot at Sixth Grade Performance Night.”

  “That would be great,” said Jane, though even her enthusiasm was wilting under Mr. Geballe’s unquestioning trust. She was as glad as Skye when he left to quell an uprising among the sacrificial maidens.

  The sisters made it to the exit door without further interference. They emerged into the first graders’ hall, hung everywhere with bright crayon drawings, bitter reminders of innocence lost.

  “If only Mr. Geballe had been even a little suspicious of us. Or if I didn’t care what he thought of me. Or if I weren’t such a bonehead!” said Skye, glaring at one drawing in particular, in which stick figures cavorted merrily among green flowers and blue trees. “Jane, you know we’re the biggest frauds in the universe.”

  “Not the universe.” Jane was trying desperately to hold on to the last bits of Rainbow euphoria, but, alas, it was gone. She hated being a fraud.

  “The solar system, then.” All at once Skye knew what she had to do. “I need to tell Daddy I didn’t write Sisters and Sacrifice. I can leave you out of it, though. I’ll say I stole the play from a book.”

  Now Jane had to decide which would be worse—confessing to her father, or watching Skye confess to him all by herself, when half of it was her own fault. It took only seconds to work it out.

  “That would be another lie,” she said. “Don’t leave me out of it. After all, you wrote my science essay about robotics.”

  “Antibiotics.”

  “I meant antibiotics.”

  “Are you sure, Jane? Because I really can do it alone.”

  “No, you can’t. I am sure.”

  “Then let’s tell Daddy tonight, and Rosy and even Batty, too, as soon as we’re all home. Do or die?”

  “Do or die.” And Jane ran off to change out of her costume.

  Later, with the whole family around the kitchen table—even Batty, whose bedtime was long gone—Skye and Jane came clean. They took no shortcuts, telling the whole story from beginning to end, leaving out no shameful detail, no evasion, no careless fib. They were lucid and concise—except while scrapping over which of them was more to blame—and made no excuses for their behavior. During it all, Skye stared fixedly at the ceiling, and Jane studied the floor as though she’d never seen it before. Only when they’d run out of guilty deeds to describe did they dare look at their father. He was twisting his eyeglasses this way, that way, and the other way, until everyone was sure they would break.

  “All right,” he said finally. “I want to make sure I have this straight. You two swapped homework because your own assignments bored you. And when Mr. Geballe decided to stage Jane’s play, thus getting half of Wildwood Elementary caught up in your original deceit, it didn’t occur to either of you to tell him—or anyone else—the truth. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.” Skye felt as small as a raisin, as small as a crumb that Hound would lick off the floor.

  “Not even me. It didn’t occur to you to tell me.”

  Skye, too ashamed to answer, could only shake her head no.

  Now Jane tried to answer, but she’d started crying with such wrenching sobs that no one understood her. It was terrible to see. Rosalind pulled Batty onto her lap, needing comfort right then. Hound, just as affected, licked Batty’s left sneaker.

  Mr. Penderwick got up and poured a glass of water for Jane. Drinking it calmed her enough to let her choke out some words. “Not only have we sullied the family honor, we’ve hurt you terribly, Daddy.”

  “I’m disappointed, Jane, not hurt. I thought I’d taught you better than this.” His sad smile made more than one sister think her heart would break. “At least you’re telling me now, yes? That took courage. So let’s figure out how to un-sully the family honor. Any ideas?”

  Skye sat up straight. The hardest part was over now, and she could breathe freely again. “I’ll confess to Mr. Geballe on Monday, and if he wants, I’ll be his slave. I’ll sweep the classroom floor and clean the blackboard and even the windows and his car. Of course I’ll write an Aztec play of my own, even though I’ll hate every minute of it and it’ll be as poorly written as a play could possibly be. Oh, and I want to confess to Iantha, too. Is that enough, Daddy?”

  “Add in a little slaving around here. I’ll come up with a list of chores. What about you, Jane?”

  Jane wiped away the last of her tears. “I’ll write a new science essay, and I’ll help Skye with home chores and M
r. Geballe’s chores, and I’ll send the Cameron Gazette a letter explaining what we did.” She was already composing it in her head. To my beloved town of Cameron, Massachusetts: It is my deepest sorrow to announce that it was not my sister Skye who wrote—

  “It isn’t necessary to confess to the whole town, Jane. Only to your teacher.”

  “All right.” Jane knew she’d rather face all of Cameron than Miss Bunda. But would Rainbow fear Miss Bunda? Would Sabrina Starr?

  “Daddy, can you forgive us?” asked Skye.

  “Of course I can.” There was that smile again, though not as sad this time. “It occurs to me that I might need forgiveness, too, for not paying better attention around here. Skye, how could I have believed you wrote that play?”

  “Because she said she did,” said Batty, though everyone had thought her asleep on Rosalind’s lap.

  “Daddy’s right. We should have been more suspicious,” said Rosalind. “Skye could never have written I cannot live without the love of the boy I love—what’s the rest?”

  It was one of Jane’s favorite lines. “Especially if I have to see him with Grass Flower.”

  “I could have written that if I’d wanted to,” protested Skye. She’d been through enough that night without having her intelligence insulted.

  “But you wouldn’t have wanted to,” said Rosalind.

  “No, I wouldn’t have.” One corner of Skye’s mouth twitched. She’d almost smiled.

  “How about this line, Skye?” said Jane. “You must wed Coyote, dear sister. Bear him many children and name one of your daughters after me.”

  “Nope, I wouldn’t have written that one, either. Jane, say it the way I did.”

  With a look of mingled boredom and annoyance that was pure Skye, Jane did the line again. Then Skye took a turn being Jane as a madly emoting Rainbow, and Jane did Melissa as an upstaged—and furious about it—Grass Flower. Rosalind did Pearson stumbling through his love scenes with Melissa, Batty did the priests yelling “BLOOD!” and there was much laughter, for nothing is better for the spirits than unburdening a terrible load of guilt. Skye felt so much better that she inhaled a cheese-and-tomato sandwich, then started on a quart of fudge-and-caramel ice cream, which her sisters insisted on sharing.
In all the excitement of berserk mimicry and rattling bowls and spoons, only Rosalind noticed that their father wasn’t joining in the festivities. After a while, she watched him leave the kitchen, then come back with the orange-spined book he’d been carrying around for weeks.

  “Sense and Sensibility,” she said, reading the title.

  “Yes.” He put it down in the middle of the table.

  All the sisters were paying attention now. Consumption of ice cream slowed to a halt.

  “Are you going to read it to us?” asked Jane, though she couldn’t imagine why he would.

  “No. Actually, yes, a few lines,” he answered. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be mysterious. It’s just that I have a confession to make, too, and I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “What could you possibly confess about, Daddy?” asked Rosalind.

  “Not murder or embezzlement, I hope,” said Jane. “Skye, stop kicking me.”

  “Then stop being an idiot.”

  “It’s not murder or embezzlement,” said Mr. Penderwick. “Skye, earlier this evening, I told you what I believed about deceit. Something about being selfish.”

  She remembered it exactly. “You said that even a tiny bit of deceit is dishonorable when it’s used for selfish or cowardly reasons.”

  “Ah. Well, lately I’ve been using more than a tiny bit of deceit around here.”

  “No,” said Skye, adamant. “You never do.”

  “I wish you were right, Skye, but yes, I have been deceiving you girls about Marianne.”

  Jane gasped. “Have you secretly married her?”

  “Jane!” This was Rosalind, close to kicking someone herself.

  “Girls, maybe it would be best if you could let me tell the story without interruption.” He ruffled Batty’s hair. “How about you, pumpkin? Can you stay awake for a little longer?”

  Rosalind took Batty onto her lap again. “We’re listening, Daddy.”

  “I have to begin years ago, with your mother. Do you older girls remember how stubborn she was? Skye, you inherited more than blond hair and blue eyes from her. Sometimes when you narrow your eyes and tip your chin a certain way, I—I miss her so terribly.”

  Though Skye had been told hundreds of times about having her mother’s hair and eyes, this was the first time she’d heard about having the stubbornness, too. She sat very still, trying not to explode with pride.

  Her father went on. “I’m a little off the track of my confession already, but not really. Lizzy knew I’d miss her. She knew all about it—toward the end she seemed to know all about everything. She talked to me then about dating, and asked me to promise her I wouldn’t be alone forever, but I couldn’t promise anything like that. I couldn’t bear even to think about other women, so I begged her to stop asking. I suppose it was then Lizzy wrote the blue letter and gave it to Aunt Claire. Girls, that letter was so full of love and caring—for all of you, and for me. It simply wasn’t the kind of letter I could put away in a drawer and forget about. So I went on that first blind date, and it was about as unpleasant as a blind date could be.” He stopped to shake his head at the memory.

  “Cruciatus,” said Rosalind. “I heard you tell Aunt Claire.”

  “Yes, absolute torture. But it was nothing compared to the second date, with that skating woman. She was—” He was interrupted by a flutter of embarrassment among his daughters. “What is it now? You all look as though you’ve been caught robbing a bank.”

  Rosalind thought that confessing to bank robbery would be easier than explaining the basics of the Save-Daddy Plan. But how could she be less courageous than her younger sisters? “Daddy, the skating coach was our fault. We decided—no, I decided, and made the others go along with me—that if we found you truly awful dates, you’d never want to date again, and then Anna suggested Lara.”

  “Anna set me up?” He seemed to find this amusing.

  “She was just doing it because I asked her to. Don’t blame the others, especially Skye. She said from the beginning it was all dishonorable.”

  “All right, Rosy, you may help Skye and Jane with the extra chores around the house. Still, though I can’t approve of what you did, I’ll give you credit for clear thinking. What you hoped would happen did, in fact, happen. My evening with Lara was so horrific that I never wanted to date again.”

  “Until you met Marianne,” said Jane.

  “Yes and no. This is where my confession comes in.” He opened Sense and Sensibility and read out loud, “‘She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.’”

  “That sounds familiar,” said Rosalind, puzzled.

  “Hold on, here’s another passage: ‘ “With me a flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with aches, cramps, rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and the feeble.” ’ And another: ‘They gaily ascended the downs…. “Is there a felicity in the world,” said Marianne, “superior to this? Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours.” ’”

  “Why, Marianne’s in a book,” said Jane with wonder. “She isn’t a real person.”

  “Of course she’s real,” said Skye. “Daddy’s been going on dates with her.”

  Rosalind felt like she was on a falling elevator, plunging into some dreadful unknown. “What are you saying, Daddy? What’s going on?”

  “I’m so sorry, but Jane’s correct,” he said. “Marianne is