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“Show me,” I demand. Part of me is expecting her to tell me to go fuck myself, but instead, the curtain slides back, revealing Penelope Rhodes in skin-tight jeans and a pink shirt. “Jeans, yes, shirt, no.”
“I look ridiculous,” she moans, her lips twisted into a grimace as she fiddles with the hem of her shirt.
Ignoring her pouting, I step past her and grab a different top. “The jeans are hot, but try this shirt instead,” I direct, shooing her back into the changing room and pulling the curtain across again.
“This is so humiliating. I have a closet full of couture, why are we buying off the rack?” she moans. “Now I look slutty and weird,” she announces, opening the curtain with a flourish.
“You look hot,” I say, eyeing the way the fitted black crop top clings to her small pert breasts and shows off her toned stomach. She and Izzy might look the same, but their energy is so different, and right now, Penelope’s pissed-off insecurity is kind of sexy. Dressed like this, it’s clear to see just how much smaller she is than her sister. Her waist is so tiny in the jeans that I think I could wrap my hands around her and my thumbs would touch.
She turns to look at herself in the mirror, her brow wrinkling with distaste. “I think the last time I owned jeans, I was twelve.”
“Izzy wears jeans.” I shrug.
“She might have them, but she never wore them out in public, Mom says they’re the clothes of the working class.”
“Princess, your mom is a bitch,” I say coldly, daring her to disagree.
Instead, her laugh is high and sweet. “She really is. I still think I look weird, but I’m going to buy them and wear them just out of spite. I hope someone she knows sees me and tells her; she’d be appalled to see me dressed like this. Do you think there’s anywhere here that I can get some sneakers too, and maybe a pair of sweatpants? Oh, and I need a hairband, I want to tie my hair up.”
A calculating smile spreads across her lips, reminding me of the evil, manipulative bitch who exploited her sister, but for some reason I’m not as disgusted by it as I normally am. Maybe it’s because right now she’s not plotting against Izzy, but her mother instead.
It’s funny that both girls started their rebellion against their parents with their clothes. Izzy purged her entire wardrobe of anything that made her look like her sister, and Penelope is picking stuff that she knows will piss their mom off.
By the time we leave the mall, Penelope is in the jeans and top she tried on, with a cropped sweatshirt that only reveals a slither of bare skin. Her feet are clad in a sick pair of Nike sneakers, and her hair is in a high ponytail that swings back and forth as she walks.
She looks totally different and yet familiar at the same time. Without her sexy dresses and six-inch heels, Princess looks younger, sweeter, and sad. There’s an innate melancholy in her eyes that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in someone our age before. Izzy’s trauma is different, when Gulliver backed her into a corner, she came out swinging, throwing barbs with her words, and making sure that we all knew how pissed she was. But Penelope doesn’t seem to have that fire. I can sense some kind of anger simmering beneath her usually perfect exterior, but it’s so stifled I’m not sure it would emerge even if she was really pushed to the edge.
The more time I spend with her, the more obvious it is to see that the Rhodes have really done a number on both girls, only in very different ways. There’s no question that Penelope has some damage, although I don’t presume to know anything about how it affects her. But I do wonder, if Izzy had been the eldest twin, how she would have reacted to her parents’ manipulations? Would she have let them treat her like a cash cow, or would she have rebelled before it dissolved into threats and violence?
The moment she’s seated in the car, all of Penelope’s spite-driven rebellion starts to dissolve, and she becomes quiet and withdrawn. Penelope isn’t my friend or my problem. I shouldn’t care that her fingers are shaking a little as she pulls the tie from her hair and finger-combs it until it’s hanging in her usual style. But I saw the fire starting to burn in her, and now watching as it’s doused by whatever war is going on in her head affects me more than it should.
A part of me wonders if this is all a game and if she’s playing with me. Penelope Rhodes is a talented actress; she’s spent years toying with the boys on her list. She’s flirted with them, complimented them, chased them, and anything else her evil bitch of a mother coached her to do to endear herself to all of her potential future husbands. No matter how much sympathy I might be feeling for her right now, I can’t forget that she’s not above using manipulation to get what she wants.
“What do you want to eat?” I ask as I pull my car into a drive-through fast food place just around the corner from the marina.
“Oh, I’m not hungry, thank you. I normally just have a green juice for breakfast.”
My lips turn down into a scowl. “No.”
“No?” she echoes back at me, her brows pulled together in confusion.
“I’m ordering breakfast for us, so what do you want?” I growl.
“I can’t eat anything. Do you know how many calories are in the food they serve here?” Panic laces her tone as she shakes her head emphatically. “I can’t eat anything.”
Something about the way she repeats the same phrase twice sends me on high alert, making my hackles raise. “Princess, you can eat whatever the fuck you want. You’re skin and fucking bone, now tell me what you want to eat, or I’ll pick for you.”
Her eyes dart to the menu, widening a little before she shakes her head again. “I can’t eat any of this, Hawthorn. I’m not allowed carbs. I can’t eat anything.”
For a second, I question if this is just another bullshit manipulation tactic, but then I remember Izzy saying she only ate pizza for the first time last year when she visited family overseas on her own. I think she said something about their mother saying the girls would get fat.
“Hawthorn,” she begs.
My name on her lips triggers something, and I find myself nodding. Turning to the speaker to order, I reel off a selection of food. “Juice, coffee, or both?” I ask Penelope.
“Water, please,” she says meekly, and for the hundredth time this morning, I want to punch Trudy Rhodes in the face for being such a fucking cunt.
“Juice and coffee with creamer and a shot of caramel syrup it is,” I tell her, ignoring her wide-eyed protest. After ordering our drinks, I move to the window and pay, refusing to acknowledge the fretful anxiety that’s pulsing from the girl beside me in agitated waves. Every emotion that she exudes feels almost painfully real, but I’m still not confident that her behavior this morning has been honest. I wish I knew which version of Penelope was the real one. Is she the docile girl or the conniving Machiavellian woman?
