The Girl in the Mirror(21)

I forgot all my objections to beauty pageants. I was the most beautiful girl in Wakefield.

I was prettier than Summer.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Celia continued, “I present to you Miss Wakefield Beach: Summer Carmichael.”

That was the kind of sister I had. When I was hiding in the bathroom, they announced that third place went to Iris Carmichael, and Summer went onstage and took the humiliation for me. She knew she had won, and she let me wear the sash, let me take the crown. And she was such a nice person that she thought I would love it up there, soaking up the glory meant for her, reveling in the adulation, the darling of the crowd.

Nice is dumb.



We nearly got away with it. It wasn’t until we were about to go home, still in our swimsuits and sashes, me in my tiara, that Ben said, “There’s blood running down your leg, Iris.” He was looking at Summer, of course.

Had the scar on Summer’s leg opened up, as it did from time to time? No, it wasn’t that. It was her period, seeping out from her white suit. But it didn’t matter where the blood came from. What mattered was that as soon as Ben said it, everybody—Annabeth, Letitia, Celia, a bunch of trailing girls—looked at Summer’s thigh. Everybody saw the scar, long and red and unmistakable beneath the smear of blood. S for Summer.

Everybody knew which twin was which now. And everybody was staring at me. The ugly twin in her undeserved crown.

“Summer, darling,” came my mother’s trembling voice, “what a beautiful thing you did for your sister.”

I couldn’t speak. I ripped off my sash and crashed my crown onto my sister’s head. And then I took off running for the one thing I had wanted all day. The ocean.





6

The Plot




I stare at Summer’s pregnant belly. It’s all over. The dream is dead.

My eyes fill with tears, and I fake a so-happy-I’m-crying vibe. Maybe Summer buys it. When you’re nice, you think other people are nice, too.

It’s not even the money. Losing one hundred million dollars I never had doesn’t feel real to me yet. What I think of is the pageant.

Letitia Buckingham cried when she came second to Summer, and I thought she was deluded. What a fool to dream of beating my sister. And yet, here I am nine years later being a bigger fool. Even though my sister is married—married to a man who loves being a dad—and even though my own marriage has fallen apart, I still believed that things would work out for me, and that the money would end up in my hands.

It seems like it ought to be mine.

I throw my arms around my sister. She smells and feels different already, as though she’s softening and blurring around the new life growing inside her. There’s a delicacy about her, an overripeness, an odor that’s fruity and almost fungal. Fertility is one step away from decay.

When Adam kissed her at the hospital back in Thailand, I almost sensed the secret between them. He gazed at her as if she’d done something miraculous. She kind of has.

Noah asked me, on our wedding night, whether I was afraid of childbirth, and I heard in his voice that he wanted the pregnancy over with. He didn’t want to watch me swell up and burst. I have a feeling Adam feels differently. He finds this new, full-figured Summer hotter than ever. Her breasts are already swelling; her belly is rounder.

“It’s early days,” says Summer. “Adam said I was doing everything Helen did when she was pregnant, reacting to smells and tastes, so I took one of those super-sensitive tests before I was even overdue. In fact my period was only due”—she counts—“Three or four days from now. But I already knew it would be positive. I just knew.”

“I’m so happy for you, Twinnie,” I say. My guts twist and coil.

If only it were just the money, but it’s not. Even without the inheritance, Summer’s life is beyond perfect. She’s married to the love of her life. She’s on a yearlong holiday on a luxurious yacht. And she’s about to have what I realize she’s always wanted. A baby.

“I’m happy for you, too, Twinnie,” Summer murmurs. What nonsense is this? She catches my confused look.

“Adam and I will provide for you now,” she says. “The money’s safe from Francine. We can’t share the inheritance with you, but we can give you our own money—Adam’s money, I should say. We’ll make sure you never go without. Adam’s very generous, as I’m sure you’ll find out.”

“Thank you.” I just about choke on the words. I feel like an old-age pensioner being promised grocery money. “Why would you be worried about Francine, though? Virginia’s only fifteen.”

“Let’s not spoil the moment by talking about our stepmother,” says Summer. “I’ll fill you in on her some other time. Oh, Twinnie! I wish I could clone my life! I wish you had an Adam and a Bathsheba and a baby, too! But you will one day, I know it! You’ll have everything I’ve got! I’m first, that’s all! Anyway, we need to make a plan. There’s lots to sort out.”

For a moment I think she wants to involve me in the minutiae of her pregnancy, her birth plan and that sort of crap. There’s nothing I want to talk about less. Fortunately she’s being more pragmatic than that. She’s talking about the voyage.

One of us has to be on watch every minute, day and night, for the next two weeks or more. Summer’s been so obsequious since I stepped on board that I was thinking I could take my pick of watches, enjoying the starlit evenings and the rosy dawns, and leaving the hot noon and the graveyard shifts to my grateful sister. But now I’m at sea with a pregnant woman. Summer is going to want her beauty sleep. All the hard parts will be my job.