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A waiter passes by with flutes of champagne, so I grab two and hand one to Missy. She’s not normally in this bad of a mood,but lately, she’s been in a constant state ofI hate everyone and everythingand I have no idea how to help break her out of it.
I’ve tried the mani-pedi route. The movie night. The twin sister gossip trick.
Nothing works.
“They’re so happy to wallow in Daddy’s money. Ignore the world’s problems, so long as they don’t affect them.”
“Isn’t that what we do?”
She shoots me a dark look, brown eyes like two little laser beams aimed at my head.
“God, how are we so different?”
I shrug, forcing a smile on my face. Mom’s watching. “We weren’t . . . until you decided the world was out to get you and started keeping secrets.”
“Maybe I had to grow up quicker than you.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes and down my flute of champagne, sipping it instead, like I’m supposed to.
I’m going to need a whole keg if she keeps this attitude up.
“You forget we’re twins?” I chuckle, though the declaration is clear. She’s literally two minutes and fifteen seconds older than me. “We even share the same birthday.”
“I’m still older,” she murmurs, still deadlocked on Bailey, Savannah, and Mila Carpenter. “More mature. I’ve done things you wouldn’t dream of.”
I hate when she says things like that. Like she’s going on world tours every night, only to slip quietly back in her bed before anyone notices she’s gone. Can’t be that exciting because she still lives at the LA mansion, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be less than this city.
“Dramatic much?”
In a lot of ways, Missy and I are almost exactly the same. We’re the same height, shoe size, and we used to be the same dress size until I grew hips and boobs and she grew more elegant and thin.
That’s where the similarities stop, though. Where my hair is a lighter, cool red, hers is a darker fiery chocolate, appearing brown in regular lighting, but filled with red highlights in the sun. Not that she ever goes out in it from sleeping as late as she can every day.
Her eyes are brown. Mine are green. She has a dimple in her cheek. I don’t.
Where I’m constantly trying to see the good in the world—sometimes to my own downfall—Missy’s hate couldn’t be more apparent if it danced naked in the center of the room.
I guess, that’s why we grew apart over the years. The old stories about twins are true. You can sense each other’s presence. Emotions. You share in their pain.
Of course, that’s only if the other half is willing to let you in.
“Look at them, Hannah,” she says quietly. She steps closer and the scent of her Chanel No. 5 washes over me like a haze. It’s Missy’s signature scent. I don’t know that she even owns anything else. It used to comfort me. Now it just makes me sad. “They’re happy to be controlled by men.”
She says it so vehemently, for a moment, I can feel her loathing seeping through my veins like poison.
“Don’t you want to be in control of yourownlife?”
“I am,” I argue, though it sounds meek even to my ears. Missy just chuckles darkly
“No, Mother’s in control of your life. Just like she’s in control of mine, or so she thinks. Until the day we’re married off to the highest bidder to be controlled by another boring, unfaithful man to further her political agenda.”
“Mom wouldn’t do that.”
“Are you sure?”
The way she says it makes my stomach turn.
Of course, I’m sure. I hope. She may be running for governor, but our mother’s not the arranged marriage type. Not now, in modern-day America. That’s something that happened hundreds of years ago.
