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The hallway starts to empty, but I don’t rush to my next class. Just because I have to attend doesn’t mean I have to be enthusiastic about it. Davis stumbles through the door just after the bell has rung, his hair a disheveled mess, his clothes askew, and a wide, dopey grin spread across his face. For the next hour, we listen to our teacher attempt to explain quadratic equations, but my mind is still caught on Penelope. Everything about her behavior earlier is nagging at me, and I don’t know why.
I know her well enough to know that I don’t want to know her any better. We might be forced to move in the same social circles, but that’s where any similarities between us end. She spends her evenings and weekends being touted about like a sideshow at the circus, while I spend my time partying with my buddies, drinking thirty-year-old scotch, and fucking whichever new money girl is offering up her pussy in the hopes of bagging a respectable old money husband.
People assume that it’s only poor women that are gold diggers, and some of them are, but the rich always want to be richer, and for most trust fund girls, their entire aim in life is to marry someone richer than they are.
Money is a vicious circle, a fucked-up merry-go-round that never stops, and you can never get off.
As the only child of Donovan Winslow and Camilla Winslow-Henderson, my dad decided the day I was born that as soon as I was old enough, I’d take over the family business. Until their divorce, that’s what my mother expected of me too. Now she’d rather I waste my life being rich and spending Dad’s money just to spite him. That’s probably why I haven’t seen or spoken to her in nearly two years.
The truth is, I don’t have a problem with running Winslow International when my dad retires. Business has always fascinated me, and I’m incredibly proud of everything my dad has achieved, when he could have just sat on his butt and lived off his trust fund his whole life.
I’m willing to fall in line with the life my dad wants me to live, but only up to a point. I’ll go to his alma mater; I’ll intern at his company. I’ll work my way up from the bottom and earn my place. But I refuse to pick a wife from one of the suitable girls he keeps parading in front of me in the hope that I’ll be engaged before the end of fucking high school.
Unfortunately, Penelope fucking Rhodes is number one on my dad’s fantasy daughter-in-law wishlist. I see the way his eyes light up when he mentions her and the company she’s due to inherit. He couldn’t give a fuck about Penelope, but in this archaic Richie Rich world we live in, whoever she marries will get automatic control of her great-grandfather’s businesses.
Sometimes I almost feel sorry for Penelope. Her great-grandfather gifted her a fortune, but he made sure it would never truly be hers. Her parents treat her like she’s their golden goose, making her prance and preen for every eligible guy from the age of seventeen to seventy-five, and no matter who she actually marries, they’ll never want her for her, it’ll always just be about the money.
That fucking will put a target on her back and a noose around her neck. But who the fuck allows themselves to be controlled by a dead guy? Penelope could walk away, she could refuse to play the game, she could take back her own life, but she hasn’t. Instead, she flirts and rubs against every guy her mom points her toward. Because she loves the game, she loves the attention, even if the only reason anyone looks at her is because her pussy is the key to a billion-dollar payout.
All of this makes her skulking around school and hiding in the dark room even more intriguing. Penelope is always so fucking predictable, her behavior always so obvious, but today, for the first time ever, she’s managed to pique my interest. Because what could the ultimate good girl be doing that she needs to hide?
3
IZABELLA
By the time the final bell rings, I’m more than ready to go home, but because Penelope refused to go to my class while I took her test, I have detention for skipping English. On days like today, when everything feels so broken and awful, I think about marching into the principal’s office and telling her everything. But then I remember that my parents have this place locked down, they pay the faculty very well to pretend that I don’t exist, and I doubt my confession would change anything.
I don’t bother to move as the other students shuffle between the desks. Sometimes I rush to be the first person to leave after class, but other times, like now, I lag behind, taking my time packing up my laptop and sliding it into my backpack. By the time I slip my arms through the straps, even the teacher has left and I’m alone.
Inhaling slowly, I prepare myself to step into the hallway. The majority of the kids pulling stuff from their lockers will have gone by now, but I’m so conditioned to fear someone realizing who I am that my heart races with discomfort the moment I have to step into any communal space where my presence could be discovered.
Gaze on the floor, I skirt the edge of the hallway until I get to the library. Detention at GAA is usually filled with the same handful of people, the sophomore couple who refuse to stop making out in the halls. The senior guy who gets caught smoking every single day. The junior who supplies the entire school with drugs, beer, and any other party favors anyone might need, and the handful of kids who deliberately get detention so they can buy off him.
You’d think, given how much money my parents give to this school, they’d be able to get me out of detention, but they don’t. They’re more than happy for me to serve my punishment, and as Mr. Brooks, my English teacher, refuses to turn a blind eye to the classes I miss, I’m a regular attendee. My parents might not pay to get me out of bullshit detentions, but they’re happy enough to pay to arrange for me to spend the time alone. Because God forbid anyone think Penelope was anything but perfect.
To be honest, I don’t mind the hour’s solitude and quiet in the small private study area at the back of the library. It’s peaceful and one of the only places in this school where I can relax. But sometimes I resent that I’m the only one getting punished for the things Penelope and I do.
I never planned to tell my parents that I’d taken that first test for Penelope, it should have been our secret, but she ran to our mom the moment we got home. It seems stupid now, but back then, I’d thought maybe Mom would be mad at us for swapping, that she’d tell us that cheating was wrong. Instead, I can clearly remember the excited gleam in her eyes when she’d hugged Penelope, laughing as she praised her for being so clever. Then she’d cupped my cheek in her hand, smiled, and told me how happy she was that I was doing my part to help the family and that it’d be better for all of us if I just took all of the tests from then on.
Within weeks, everyone at GAA had forgotten about the other Rhodes twin. I was practically invisible, hiding my identity and spending hours after school studying with private tutors to make sure that I could cover for my twin at a moment’s notice.
The worst part is that Penelope isn’t stupid, she’s more than capable of passing all of her classes without my help if she actually tried. But why try when she doesn’t have to? Why try when she and our parents have erased my existence and forced me to become nothing more than her body double?
I hate them all. My sister for morphing our relationship into something abusive and toxic, and my parents for forgetting I’m their child too and not just a useful facsimile of the daughter they actually want.
Pushing the library door open, I lift my chin just high enough to catch the stoic gaze of the stone-faced librarian. Forcing my lips into a polite half-smile, I scurry past her and head for my study room. Once I’m inside with the door closed behind me, I twist the dial on the wall, obscuring the small glass window, and changing the sign from “Available” to “In Use.”
Sighing wearily, I drop my backpack to the floor and lower myself into the wooden chair. Folding my arms on top of the desk, I drop my head down to rest on top of them and close my eyes.
I’m tired, so fucking tired. The toll I feel every day from pretending to be my sister is both physically and mentally draining. My life has become a constant drone of invisibility, and I don’t know how much longer I can be in a world where no one knows I even exist. I feel like my entire identity has been erased, and I’m starting to wonder if I even know who I am when I’m not posing as Penelope.
My hour’s detention passes quicker than I’d like. I don’t want to be here, but I want to go home even less. Our shiny black town car is waiting at the curb when I step outside, and I pad toward it, sliding into the seat when Mark, my driver, opens the door for me.
“How was your day, Miss Izabella?” Mark asks, his Boston accent thick and comfortingly familiar. Mark has been mine and Penelope’s driver for years. He was here before the will, before the money changed everything, and he’s one of the only people who actually gives a crap about me.
“Same old, same old,” I say, not giving him any real details. Mark might be a lovely guy who genuinely cares for me, but I still can’t actually tell him anything real, anything that could be leaked to the press or used to blackmail us.
“Are you going home, or are you joining Miss Penelope and your parents at the Woodsonvilles?” he asks, already knowing what my answer will be.
