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The water is scalding hot when I step under it, but I don’t care; all I want is to wash off the filth and grime this night has left me coated in. Being around these people has made me feel dirty, and grabbing my washcloth, I scrub at my skin until it’s red and tender.
As each layer of my Penelope costume falls away, the bravado and resolve that’s gotten me through the night dissolves with it, and by the time I’m clean, my body is sagging with exhaustion against the cool tile.
Sighing, I let my head fall forward to rest against the tile and exhale a slow, ragged breath. How is this my life? Tonight has shown me just how out of control everything has gotten. How depraved this money has made not just my parents and sister but also the boys whose lives were altered by my great-grandfather’s will too.
If Penelope and I were closer, maybe I’d have known about all of this before it got to this point. I watched her leave the house every night knowing that she was going to be paraded in front of her potential husbands like cattle at an auction. I saw the way she changed from my confident but humble twin to the vapid, money-hungry monster she is now, and I assumed she was a willing participant in our parents’ schemes. But is she?
Has my sister just been doing what she’s told the same way I have? Have our parents demanded she do whatever she has to to secure an appropriate fiancé, the same way they ordered me to tonight? Is it possible that she hates this just as much as I do?
Once I’m clean and my skin is red and sore, I turn off the shower and pat my abused skin dry with a towel, wincing when the soft cotton touches me. I have a dresser full of Penelope-approved silk nightdresses Mom has tried to insist I wear. But as always, I dismiss them and pull on a baggy shirt and my favorite cotton shorts, feeling more like myself than I have all night the moment I’m dressed.
Grabbing a hairbrush, I drag the bristles through my hair until it’s falling in smooth, wet rivulets over my shoulders. Exhaling, I look up into the vanity mirror and finally feel a small sense of peace settle over my ragged, frayed nerves. For the first time in hours, I look like me. I see the blemish on my cheek from the first time my mom hit me and cut me with her ostentatious diamond ring. I see the freckles across my nose that I’m forced to hide because Penelope hates them and refuses to allow them to be seen. I see my odd purple eyes, the only thing my twin and I don’t share.
Tonight, my eyes are hard, but the violet has never looked brighter, and somehow the effect is startling, almost inhuman. I look like me, but I feel disconnected from my reflection in the mirror. I don’t know if that’s because I’ve spent the night pretending to be someone else, or if it’s simply because I’m losing sight of who I really am. All the hiding, all the lying and pretending, it’s becoming too much.
I feel love for my sister, and I feel love for my parents, but tonight really highlighted just how much they’ve changed in the pursuit of this money. Do they even recognize themselves anymore? Does my mom stare at herself in the mirror like this and wonder how she became the kind of person who was willing to sacrifice her own flesh and blood for money and power? Does my dad question if he truly is the kind of monster who’d tell his daughter to allow herself to be used and abused just to forge an alliance with the right family?
I wish I knew the answers to all of my questions, but a part of me already knows the truth. My mom, dad, and sister are exactly who they’ve shown themselves to be, and no matter how many excuses I think up to try to defend everything they’re doing and have done, it doesn’t negate the fact that they haven’t and won’t stop.
Crawling into bed, I reach for my headphones and slide them on, selecting a playlist from my iPad and pressing play. I might not have any need for a fancy cell phone, but music is my escape, and right now I need to be moved, be centered, be calmed, and this is the perfect way to do it.
When I go down for breakfast the next day, Penelope is sitting at the table, sipping a glass of green juice and pretending like everything is fine. Taking my seat at the table, I smile at Mrs. Humphries when she places a plate full of pancakes drowned in maple syrup down in front of me. Glancing at my sister, I wait for her to offer any kind of explanation for her absence last night, but instead she just ignores me the way she always does. For a moment, I rehearse what to say to her in my head. I tell her how angry I am that I had to pretend to be her. What I endured at the Winslows and how much Gulliver seems to hate her. But before I can even open my mouth to speak, Mom announces that she and Penelope are going shopping for next weekend’s sailing trip, and they both leave. Once they’re gone, Dad finishes his breakfast in silence, then stands and leaves without even glancing in my direction.
I barely see any of them for the rest of the weekend. They all go to a party on Saturday night, and while Dad plays golf all day on Sunday, Mom and Penelope spend the day at a spa. I spend the time alone in my room, eating ice cream in my pj’s. After Friday night, I’d rather stay at home alone than go to any kind of social event with my parents, but I don’t miss the sad, sympathetic look in Mrs. Humphries’s eyes every time she knocks on my bedroom door to remind me to eat.
Monday morning and a new school week comes much quicker than I’d like. Once I’m awake, I shower and dutifully style my hair in Penelope’s signature style. Applying my makeup just the way my sister does hers, I dress in my GAA uniform and head downstairs.
Once I sit down at the dining table, Mrs. Humphries slides a plate of eggs and bacon in front of me. “Thank you,” I say quietly a moment before Penelope sashays into the room, her face identical, but as usual, just a little more polished and perfect than mine. When I think back to our childhood, it’s always been that way. She’s always been that little bit better than me. The most well-behaved and the one who was the best at amusing and impressing Dad’s clients. I guess it makes sense that she made an impression on our great-grandfather too.
Instead of sitting down, she taps the toe of her shoe impatiently against the floor while she waits for Mrs. Humphries to finish making her usual wheatgrass and Goji berry smoothie, or whatever green juice is on her nutritionist’s meal plan for the day.
“Finally,” she hisses rudely when our housekeeper hands her the glass to-go thermos. Grabbing it, she turns and looks at me, her lip curling in disgust as she eyes the half-eaten plate of food in front of me. “We’re leaving. Now,” she demands coldly a moment before she turns and walks away.
Sighing resignedly, I push my plate away, wishing I could finish, but knowing that if I try to, she’ll only come back and scream at me until I give up and get in the car. “Thank you,” I say, my voice quiet as I take my backpack from Mrs. Humphries and walk out of the dining room.
Our town car is idling outside the house with Mark standing at the car door, his hand resting on the top as he waits stoically for me to arrive. Offering him a small smile, I slide into the car next to my sister, lowering my backpack to the floor at my feet.
She doesn’t speak to me as we pull away from the house and onto the street, her attention entirely focused on her cell phone.
“Where were you on Friday night?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
“Sick,” she replies immediately, not glancing up from the message her fingers are busily typing out.
I want to call her out on her obvious lie, but what’s the point? I know she won’t tell me what she was really doing or who she was with, even though I feel like I deserve to know. Exhaling wearily, I let my head fall back to the seat and stare out of the darkened windows at the scenery as we drive the familiar route to school.
When the imposing school buildings come into view, I feel the all-too-familiar pressure settle on my shoulders. No matter how many times I come here, it never gets any easier, and it never will, not while I’m living this strange double life.
When our car slows to a stop beside the school steps, Penelope preens, fluffing her hair and straightening her blazer before her door opens, and she slides out without a backward glance in my direction.
Just like every other day, the door closes again with me still inside. Mark climbs back behind the wheel, and we pull away from the school, circling the block until moments before the final bell. When we approach the school again, we stop in the same place we dropped Penelope ten minutes ago, and I drag in a breath and wait. When the door opens, I climb out and strut away from the car, just like she would.
The moment I stepped through the entrance doors, I scan the hallway and find it almost entirely absent of students. Reassured that no one is watching, I drop the Penelope act and curl into myself, lowering my head and hunching my shoulders forward as I scurry through the hallways toward my homeroom.
It says something about the quality of the kids in my class that, in three years, no one has noticed that I’m not my sister. The school’s policy of identifying students by their surname has definitely helped, but surely by now, someone should have figured out that Miss Rhodes is in more than one set of classes.
My parents would never admit to bribing the faculty, but some hefty donations have been made in our name since the news of the inheritance hit. All of the teachers know that there are two of us, but they either don’t care that my parents don’t want my existence to be public knowledge, or Principal Smith has convinced them all to overlook it. For the most part, the entire faculty pretends I don’t exist, and the only one of my teachers who ever comments about me skipping classes is Mr. Brooks, my English teacher. The rest happily accept my absence and late papers without penalizing me.
The ironic thing about this whole situation is that even though I take most of Penelope’s tests for her, I’m still maintaining my own perfect 4.0, despite regularly missing most of my classes to attend hers.
