Beautiful Lies (35 page)

“Jesus,” I say. “God. Kimber, you’ve never told me all that before.” I’ve heard the general story plenty of times, of course—people at school still talk about it—but we’ve never discussed it in as much detail as we are right now.

Finally, she looks at me. She smiles. “I never told you,” she repeats.

I nod. “Yes.”

She
laughs
at me. She shakes her head. “You’re right. I never told you.”

Her gaze locks onto mine. The room is so still.

“But I told your sister all about it, a few weeks ago.”

The room deflates. “You told my sister.”

“Yes.” Her smile widens. “I told your sister. I told Rachel.”

As the weight of Kimber’s words sinks in, the room seems to shrink around us, leaving little space for me to breathe, let alone think. My first instinct is to lie to her, to deny everything and insist that I
am
Rachel. I only have to pretend for a few more days. Maybe it won’t even take that long. Maybe everything will work out, and Kimber will never have to know any different. I could pretend to be disoriented, like I’m getting a headache. I could claim to have forgotten what she told me about her father, and the night he started the fire that almost killed her.

Except who could forget a story like that? As Kimber stares at me, waiting for a response to her accusation, I know that I can’t lie to her anymore. I don’t have the energy. And she deserves to hear the truth.

My voice is suddenly hoarse, my throat dry. “When did you know?”

She leans her head back and stares up at the ceiling. Just above us, there’s a circular brown stain on the paint. It’s probably from a water leak. The discolored area is puffy, its paint beginning to chip and peel away, the faintest layer of condensation glistening on the surface of the mark. I wonder how long the leak had been there, seeping through the plaster, before the ceiling showed any external signs of a problem.

“I knew something was weird the night of the fair,” she begins. “When Rachel wandered off, I knew from the way you panicked that things weren’t right. If it were really Alice who’d snuck away, why would you be so worried? Alice runs away all the time, right?”

I nod.

“But this time was different,” Kimber continues. “You were so upset, like you knew it didn’t make any sense for her to disappear. But even when I first had the idea, I thought it was ridiculous. I mean, the two of you? Switching places? It’s crazy. Twins don’t actually do things like that, not in real life.” She pauses. “And then when you made me skip school, and we went to visit your grandma, it was all so … I don’t know, so surreal. It wasn’t the kind of thing Rachel would do. It didn’t make sense. So I paid closer attention. And you know the funniest thing? I almost believed that you were her, and that I was just imagining things. Because you’re so good at being her. I mean, Alice, you look
exactly
like her. The way you move, the way you talk, everything.”

As she’s speaking, she gets up and crosses the room. She turns the lock on the door, and as it clicks into place I feel a sense of finality combined with the urge to tell her everything. Maybe she knows far more about Rachel’s life in the past few months than I do. Maybe she knows about TJ. The question is whether or not she’ll be willing to tell me anything. My best shot, I know, is to be honest and see where it gets me.

She leans against the sink and crosses her arms, waiting for me to explain my side of things.

Where am I supposed to begin? If I tell her the whole truth right away, she’ll only think I’m crazy, if she doesn’t already.

I grip the monkey in my hand. I feel so alone, so completely out of control. It’s unlikely that she’ll believe what I’m about to tell her, but what do I have to lose?

So I begin in what seems to me like as good a place as any. “You want to know how my grandma’s dog died?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Not really. Aren’t you going to admit the truth? You’ve been lying to me for days.”

“I know.” The space still feels impossibly small, like there’s not enough room to breathe. It’s like my tension is weaving a cocoon around my body, closing me off from the rest of the world.

“Then tell me why,” she says. “Please.”

“I will, Kimber. But first you need to understand how things are between me and Rachel. If I tell you what happened
to the dog, it will make more sense.” I pause. “Will you listen? Please?”

For a second I think she might refuse to hear me out. But she doesn’t protest; she just gives a reluctant nod and waits for me to keep talking. Apparently she isn’t concerned about being late for study hall anymore.

“Our grandma owned the Captain ever since before Rachel and I were born. He was a really good dog. Every time we’d go to visit her, we’d spend most of our time playing with him in the yard. We both loved him, but Rachel was always a little more timid than I was. When we were younger, like five and six years old, he was so much bigger than we were. He was always gentle, never mean at all, but our parents still used to warn us to be careful around him.

“Anyway, this one afternoon we went to visit my grandma. She’d been in the hospital for a while, and she’d just gotten home a few days earlier, so my parents brought over a cake and we had a picnic outside. Afterward, Rachel and I were running around the yard, playing with the Captain, trying to keep him from catching this tennis ball we had. We were throwing it back and forth between the two of us, over his head.”

“How old were you?” Kimber asks.

“We were about to turn seven.” I stop, shutting my eyes. It’s like I can see everything happening right in front of me, almost like I’m living it again: My parents are sitting at the picnic table behind my grandma’s house, deep in
conversation, barely paying attention to me and Rachel. A nearly empty pitcher of sangria sits on the table, along with the half-eaten cake. My grandma looks like she’s lost a ton of weight in the last few weeks; she seems weak and frail and not like herself at all. That day was the first time I realized she’d been dyeing her hair for as long as I’d known her. It was naturally red once, but now her roots were coming in gray. She must not have had time to touch it up in between her return from the hospital and our visit, and it made her look so much older than usual.

The Captain ran toward my sister. Just before he reached her, she threw the tennis ball high overhead, in my direction. Every other time we’d done this, the dog would quickly change direction to continue chasing after the ball. This time, though, he kept heading toward Rachel. When he reached her, he jumped onto his back legs and tackled her to the ground.

“He bit her. She was wearing shorts, and he bit her on the calf. Our parents didn’t realize what had happened at first, but I did. I ran over to her and started screaming at the dog. His teeth were still in her leg. He started to drag her body downhill. I threw the tennis ball as hard as I could, and he let go and went running after it. The whole thing happened in less than ten seconds, and then it was over. By the time our parents got to us, I had my arms around Rachel; she was screaming, and I was crying. She was bleeding all over the place. There were deep bite marks in her calf. My parents
took her to the hospital right away. She needed sixteen stitches.”

“Okay,” Kimber says, “so the dog bit your sister. What does that have to do with anything, Alice?”

I’ve never told anyone this story before in my whole life. The only people who ever knew what happened were the ones who were there. What I’m about to tell Kimber is going to sound impossible, I know. She probably won’t believe me. But I have to try.

“My parents left me at my grandma’s while they drove Rachel to the hospital,” I continue, “and my grandma took me inside and gave me some lemonade. She left the Captain outside, in her front yard.” As I’m speaking, I begin to roll up the left leg of my jeans to expose my bare calf. “I was sitting at her kitchen table and I felt something running down my leg. I thought it was sweat. I leaned over to wipe it away, and when I looked at my hand, there was blood all over it.” I extend my leg, showing Kimber. “Here. See it? I was sitting in her kitchen, and it just appeared. Bite marks identical to the ones in Rachel’s leg. You can still see the scars.”

Kimber crosses her arms against her chest and kneels down to take a look. She stares hard at the scar, which is so faint that you wouldn’t even notice it unless you knew what to look for.

She stands up. “I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s a scar.” Her voice wavers. “Everybody has them.”

“Kimber,” I beg, “please believe me. Rachel and I aren’t
ordinary twins. We’re different.” I take a deep breath, ready to spill more of the unbelievable truth. “I know things about her sometimes. Things I shouldn’t know, things she hasn’t told me yet. I can even sense things before they happen to her sometimes. I know it’s crazy, I know, but please listen. On Saturday night, I had this terrible feeling that something bad had happened to her. Then the feeling just vanished, and I was so afraid, and that’s why I made you skip school, so we could look for her. But then I saw her in the barn at my grandma’s house, except I couldn’t talk to her. I don’t know why. She wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t know why she’s doing this. I don’t know what’s happening to me. And the more I try to figure it out, the more confused I get.” I pause. “Maybe she hates me. Maybe all she wants is to get away from me forever.”

Kimber’s eyes are filled with pity. “That’s not true. She’s worried about you, Alice.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t believe you. Why would she be worried? I’m right here. I’m fine.”

“Alice,” Kimber says gently, “I know you’re upset. I know things don’t make sense. But has it ever occurred to you that these abilities you think you have—your connection to Rachel, and the things you sense about her—are just part of your imagination?”

I stare at the scars on my leg. They’re concrete proof of our connection—can’t Kimber understand that? And why would Rachel ever doubt it? “I’m not imagining them,” I
insist. “Just because you don’t believe me doesn’t mean it’s not really happening. You can’t prove that.”

She takes a sharp breath inward. She steps toward me, kneels down again, and places a hand on my shoulder. “What if I
can
prove it, Alice?”

I am crying. Kimber was my only hope—someone who might be able to help me right now, who might believe me—and she obviously thinks I’m losing it.

“If I can prove that you’ve imagined some of these things,” she continues, “then will you tell your aunt and uncle the truth? That you’re Alice?”

I give up. Let her try, I think. See how far it gets either of us. I nod in agreement.

“Good,” she says, smiling. “And we’ll figure out where Rachel is. You’ll tell us what happened on Saturday night. Right?”

At the sound of her words, I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I stare up at her in disbelief. Suddenly, I understand: she thinks I know exactly where Rachel is, because she thinks I did something to Rachel.

“I already told you everything I know,” I lie.

Kimber is cool as a cucumber. “Okay. Fine. I believe you.” I can tell she’s lying too.

“I would never hurt my sister, Kimber.”

She nods. She doesn’t respond.

“How are you going to prove anything? I know what I feel. I know what I’ve seen.”

“We’ll go after school,” she says. “I’ll show you something. Then you’ll understand what I mean.”

“Where are we going?”

She doesn’t answer me.

“Where are we going?” I demand, my voice rising a little bit. I’m still crying, the monkey clutched in my fist. Everything is falling apart, and there’s nobody who can help me.

Kimber sighs. She stands up and unlocks the bathroom door, and she gives me a long, sad look.

“We’re going to Friendship,” she says. “We’re going to see your friend Robin.”

If Kimber’s reaction tells me anything, I don’t think I’ll be able to get away with pretending to be Rachel for the rest of the school day. There are a couple of obvious factors against me: the wrong locker combination and the fact that I’m totally unprepared for her more advanced classes—but there’s more to it than that.

In the past, it’s like she and I have been able to slip into each other’s skin. It was so easy for me to be Rachel, and vice versa. When I played Rachel, it used to feel like a valve had been turned from somewhere within myself, and there’d be this blissful release in pressure when I got to hide behind her calm kindness for the day. It was like a time-out in life, like pressing pause on all the chaos and volatility I usually feel. I used to love it so much.

And while Rachel usually seemed to enjoy being me, it occurs to me now that I never thought much about what it did for her. I was far too preoccupied with what it allowed
me to do: relax. Could it have had the opposite effect on her? The burden of my personality, all my problems with school and authority and our friends—was it too much for her? Did she decide that she finally couldn’t take it anymore? And if so, why didn’t she just tell me how she felt? I would have listened.

I’m pretty sure I would have listened.