14
Buttercup and I win the talent competition.
I hardly believe it. I was only trying to get through those ninety seconds and survive with enough points to keep Ginny in the top twenty. But when the emcee announces the winner of the talent prelims, it’s my name that she calls.
Well, technically she calls Ginny’s name.
But in this instance, Ginny’s name is good enough. Because what I just did onstage with Buttercup wasn’t my sister’s talent routine. It was mine. For the first time in days, I performed as myself.
And I won!
I scoop Buttercup into my arms and return to the stage to accept our plaque, along with a huge bouquet of red roses. The bouquet is so lush that I can’t hold on to it and Buttercup at the same time. I place her back down on the ground and she prances in place, seemingly aware that she’s every bit as much a winner as I am in this scenario.
“Good girl,” I tell her. “Very good girl.”
Her big, batlike ears swivel to and fro.
All the hoopla feels nice. I can’t deny it. I also can’t deny that my sense of accomplishment would be greater if Gray Beckham weren’t on the judging panel.
I tell myself that he’s not the type of person who would give me a better score than I deserve. After all, between the two of us, I’m the dishonest one. Still, the memory of our recent, ahem, encounter looms.
I can’t help feeling like I’ve cheated, and I don’t just mean the whole pageant.
But as the emcee beams at me, she clears her throat and makes another announcement. “I’m happy to tell you, Miss Texas, that your performance received a near-perfect score. You received a ten from all but one of our judges.”
I blink. “What?”
She means a ten from one judge, right? Not all but one of them. Gray obviously has a healthy appreciation for the literary works of J. K. Rowling, but I’m dubious about the rest of the judges. I can’t exactly picture that guy from The Bachelorette with his head buried in a book.
There I go, jumping to conclusions again. Clearly I’m wrong, because the emcee meant what she said.
“You got five tens and one nine,” she says.
My mind reels.
“Thank you.” I sniff. My eyes fill. I did this. I did. I would have won the talent prelim, even if Gray hadn’t been on the panel. “Thank you so much.”
I press the plaque to my heart with one hand and clutch the bouquet in my other. The roses are deep crimson, just like the ones resting in my mother’s arms in the photograph on Ginny’s nightstand.
I close my eyes, fighting the tears that are threatening to spill down my face. When I open them, I see the current Miss American Treasure coming toward me, carrying something sparkly.
It’s a tiara.
The crown is much smaller than the one my mother wore, but the design is exactly the same.
My face crumples as she secures it to my head full of hair extensions and styling products. Tears stream down my cheeks. I have officially become a cliché. I’m one of those GIFs of sobbing pageant girls that make the rounds on social media every year when the Miss America pageant is televised. It’s ridiculous.
But I can’t help it. Other than playing dress-up with my mother’s crown as a kid, this is the first time a tiara has ever come in contact with my head. Ginny’s bedroom at Dad and Susan’s house is stacked with them. It’s practically a tiara warehouse. She’s got homecoming queen tiaras and crowns from so many pageants that I’d never be able to name them all if I tried.
I was never envious of all my twin’s beauty queen hardware. Honestly. At least not that I realized. But the crown feels so right on my head, and knowing that it looks just like my mother’s did makes me never want to take it off.
Warmth blossoms in my chest. I take a deep breath—the deepest one I’ve taken in years. Something has shaken loose inside me. It seems that Ginny isn’t the only one who’s been walking around with a beauty queen–shaped hole in her heart.
I have too.
And this moment feels like a balm. I cling to it, holding on tight. And I try with all my might to remember that whatever happens when all of this is over will be worth it.
Because right here, right now, I’m where I belong.
In the excitement that follows, I lose track of Gray. He slips away at some point while I pose for pictures and am hugged and congratulated by all forty-nine of my fellow contestants.
I’m embraced so many times that my roses are starting to wilt. When I finally head back to the hotel room, I leave a trail of petals in my wake, like a flower girl at a wedding.
My head is buzzing. I can’t wait to tell Ginny what just happened. But once I’m standing at our door with my card key poised just over the lock, I hesitate.
Seeing me in a tiara is going to sting. I know it will. I’m tempted to pry the thing off my head, even though Miss American Treasure anchored it in place with so many bobby pins that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to remove it.
I look down at Buttercup. “What do you think?”
Her response is nothing but a series of long, slow-motion blinks. The poor thing is exhausted. Cramming a month’s worth of dog training into a single day will do that to a dog, apparently.
Message received. We can’t keep hiding in the hallway. And it’s not as if I can keep the tiara a secret from Ginny forever. Sooner or later, she’d sniff it out. Probably sooner. She has a nose for crowned jewels.
I slide my key into the lock, take a deep breath, and open the door. Then I pause, thoroughly confused by the sight of Ginny on the other side.
“Here you are,” she says. “I thought I heard someone out there.”
She’s walking toward me with a strained smile plastered to her face. Her eyes are wild. Manic, almost. But her frenzied expression and unnaturally high-pitched voice aren’t the only things that give me pause. What catches me most off guard are her clothes.
She’s wearing my Hogwarts T-shirt. It hangs loosely on her, reaching halfway to her knees—a good two or three sizes larger than any shirt she would willingly put on. And are those my favorite sweatpants she’s got on? The ones she almost didn’t let me wear to the cheeseburger party?
Yes. Yes, they are.
“Um . . .” My gaze fixes with hers, and it’s then that I notice her messy bun and lack of makeup. She looks like me, from head to toe, only her face is still swollen. So, more accurately, she looks like I would on an exceptionally bad day.
I glare at her.
Is this some kind of joke? She’s mocking my usual appearance. But why?
“Come on in, silly.” She grabs my hand, squeezing it hard when I try to pull away. “Look who’s here.”
I stumble into the room behind her, tripping over my high heels. Buttercup trails after me. Then two familiar faces come into view and I freeze. My beautiful bouquet of roses falls to the ground.
“Dad. Susan.” I swallow. Hard. My heart is beating so hard that I might be on the verge of a panic attack. I probably am, because if ever there was a time to panic, it’s now.
What on earth are our dad and stepmother doing here? They weren’t scheduled to arrive until the start of the finals two days from now.
“That’s right. They wanted to come early and surprise us, since we’re both here together,” Ginny says. “Aren’t you surprised? I know I am.”
Understatement. I’m beyond surprised. I’m aghast. I’m so stunned to see them standing in our room that I’m rooted to the spot.
My twin moves closer to me and gives me a subtle jab in the ribs.
I jump, then propel myself toward our parents for a hug, since that’s what Ginny would normally do. It’s also what I would normally do if I weren’t suddenly longing for a paper bag to breathe into. “Sorry, it’s great to see you both. I just wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
My throat closes as I throw my arms around my dad. He’ll never be fooled by this charade. He’s our father. No amount of makeup and sparkle will trick him into believing I’m anyone but who I am.
But behind him, I spot Ginny again, dressed in her Charlotte attire. I’m not altogether sure what transpired while I’ve been competing, but clearly my sister had enough of a heads-up to transform herself into me. Granted, it was surely a much less time-consuming endeavor than what I went through to assume her identity.
Still.
As convincing as her dressed-down Charlotte costume may be, how has she managed to fool them for even a few minutes?
“Hi, honey,” my dad says.
I don’t trust myself to speak, so I just nod and shoot a panicked glance over his shoulder toward Ginny.
Susan wraps me in her arms the minute my dad releases me. She’s been our stepmother for more than two decades, so she’s not much more likely than our father is to fall for our switcheroo. She isn’t my real mother, but she’s the next best thing. She sat beside my dad in the stands and cheered for me when I graduated from both high school and college. She covered all the kitchen shelves in my first real apartment with scented contact paper. She took me shopping for my wedding gown. Two months later, she held me as I cried when I told her and Dad that the wedding had been called off.
So the odds that she won’t recognize me are slim at best.
But when she pulls back from our embrace and plants her hands on my shoulders to take a good look at me, Susan doesn’t flinch.
“Oh, Ginny. You look beautiful, sweetheart. Look at her, Ed. Isn’t she just gorgeous?” Her gaze flits to my dad, who nods in his quiet dadlike way, and then back toward me. “And look at that tiara! What a sparkler. You’ve won something already!”
She bustles toward the bed and gives the space at the foot of it a little pat. “Sit down and tell us all about it.”
Obediently, I follow her and sit down on the bed. Before I say anything to confirm the fact that I’m supposed to be Ginny, I search my sister’s gaze.
Now is the time to come clean and tell our parents what we’ve done. They’re sure to be disappointed. Actually, that’s probably an understatement. They’re going to be pissed.
We weren’t raised to be liars, especially when it comes to the whole twin thing. I have a very clear memory of being grounded for writing Ginny’s English lit final paper when we were seniors in high school. And isn’t what we’re doing now essentially the exact same thing?
It is. I know it is. So does Ginny, although from the looks of things she has no qualms about keeping the charade going.
“Wow.” Ginny crosses her arms and stares at my crown. In her rush to usher me inside and get me up to speed with the most recent development in our deception, she’d clearly overlooked it. “That is definitely a tiara.”
Her gaze darts to the photo on her nightstand—the one of our mother. Ginny’s chin wobbles, then she looks back at me.
“Actually . . . ,” I begin.
Actually, I’m not Ginny. I’m Charlotte.
I’m doing it.
I’m ending this farce once and for all. We can’t lie to our parents. So far, I haven’t actually claimed to be Ginny in their presence. It’s not too late.
But the words stick in my throat, because even though I haven’t dragged Dad and Susan into our pageant hoax yet, Ginny obviously has. How long have our parents been here?
Hours?
She gives me an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
The deed is done. They think she’s me.
“Actually . . . ,” I say again, stalling for time. I can’t believe I’m going through with this. Switching places in the pageant is one thing. Doing so in front of our parents is another matter entirely. Lindsay Lohan was twelve years old when she played identical twins who switched places in The Parent Trap. We’re adults, for crying out loud. “Yes, it’s a tiara. I won the talent competition this afternoon.”
“That’s fantastic,” Susan says, clapping her hands.
Dad beams. He hasn’t looked at me with this much pride since I showed him the magna cum laude insignia on my college degree. Seriously?
“Wonderful, Ginny. Just wonderful,” he says.
I nod and smile. Yes, it’s wonderful. And yes, I’m Ginny.
It’s official. I’m the world’s worst daughter. I glance at my sister. Fine, it’s a tie. We’ll share the title, even though it’s a far cry from the crown we’ve been chasing for the past few days.
“You’re kidding, right?” Ginny’s gaze narrows. “You won? As in, you had the highest score out of all fifty contestants?”
“That’s generally what winning means,” I say tightly.
Dad and Susan don’t appear to notice any tension between the two of us, which should be a relief. But honestly, it’s kind of a blow. The real Charlotte—as in me—is usually far more supportive of Ginny. At least I like to think she is.
But when I try to remember the last time the sight of my sister wearing a tiara elicited any sort of praise from my lips, I come up empty and an uncomfortable shame settles over me.
I didn’t even come to Orlando to support her, did I? I’d planned on attending the finals, just like Dad and Susan. But the main reason I showed up was because I wanted a vacation.
Some holiday.
Nothing has gone as planned. Not one thing. Although I have to admit that this week has had its fair share of . . . moments.
As if on cue, my gaze flits to our new ice bucket.
“I guess all those twirling lessons paid off,” Susan says.
“She didn’t twirl,” Ginny says flatly.
“Really? Why not? You worked so hard.” Susan waits for an answer, and the room falls silent.
Oh, right. She’s talking to me. She thinks I’m the one who’s spent months practicing all that complicated head, toe, head, toe stuff. “I thought it might be nice to try something different. You know, more creative.”
My word choice is less than ideal.
Ginny takes immediate offense. “Really? I thought you changed plans because you kept dropping your baton earlier.”
“Charlotte.” Dad’s voice carries a hint of reprimand.
Ginny shrugs. “It’s true. Ask her.”
I sigh. Clearly we’re not adults. We’re being petty and childish, which is absurd. After all, we’re in this together.
“Charlotte’s right,” I say. “I’m pretty terrible at twirling. Thank goodness Buttercup was here to save the day.”
“You’re kidding.” My dad looks at Buttercup—fast asleep, snoring and grunting on my pillow—and laughs. “Forgive me, but I just can’t picture that dog doing much of anything.”
“She’s a good dog,” Ginny counters. “A brilliant dog, in fact.”
Dad lifts a brow. “That’s high praise coming from someone who just met her a few days ago. When did you become such an animal lover?”
The question is directed at my sister, but I intervene, since technically we’re talking about me.
“Charlotte likes animals,” I say. I don’t dislike them, anyway.
“Since when?” Dad asks, sounding genuinely curious.
Ginny opens her mouth to respond, but again, I answer for her. “Since always. She just doesn’t dress them up in sweaters and bunny ears and plaster them all over her Instagram page.” I clear my throat. “You know, like I do.”
Ginny nods. “It’s super cute when you do that, though. Don’t you think so, Dad?”
Our father glances back and forth between the two of us.
My stomach drops. Oh God. He knows.
I do my best to get the conversation back on track by launching into a detailed description of my talent routine. There’s another shaky moment when Susan points out that Charlotte is the big Harry Potter fan in the family, not Ginny. But when I give Charlotte credit for coming up with the theme for the routine, she seems convinced.
Susan smiles at Ginny. “It’s nice that you’re helping your sister with the pageant, Charlotte.”
If she only knew.
“I’ve been a big help. Huge,” Ginny says. “But it means a lot to Ginny. I know it does, even if she forgets to say it sometimes.”
It’s the most sincere expression of appreciation I’ve gotten all week, and I can’t help but get a little misty-eyed. I blink furiously before Dad or Susan grow suspicious again.
Keeping them in the dark is going to be impossible. We are terrible at this. I’m too much like myself for them to keep believing I’m Ginny. And Ginny is just too much, period.
Why haven’t they figured it out yet? Especially Dad. I always thought I was his favorite. When I was a little girl and I’d spend hours tucked into the corner of his office with a book, he sometimes called me his mini me. How is it possible that he no longer knows who I am?
Is this what it was like with Adam? Did he see me at all, or did he simply prefer my twin? I’m not sure which option is less excruciating.
There’s a knock at the door, and I’m grateful for the distraction. I know I should be glad that our ruse has gone undiscovered, but I can’t help but feel a little unsettled. I’m not hiding anymore. I’m right here. And my own father doesn’t even see me.
“Who could that be?” Ginny tenses, poised to run and hide in case the person responsible for the knock is somehow related to the Miss American Treasure pageant.
I almost hope it’s the pageant director herself, just because I’d love to hear my sister explain to our parents why she needs to cower behind the shower curtain.
“I have no idea. Let me check.” I push myself off the bed and head for the door. Buttercup rouses from her sleep and trots after me.
Ginny’s not sticking around. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
She dashes out of sight while Dad and Susan linger, oblivious to the drama unfolding around them.
Why does it feel like things are getting crazier by the minute around here?
Probably because they are.
I open the door a crack. To my extreme delight, the person standing on our threshold doesn’t have a thing to do with the pageant. It’s a room service waiter, and he’s holding a fancy looking bottle of champagne. Veuve Clicquot, with a sleek orange label.
“Ginny Gorman?” he says.
“Um . . .” Who am I again? I swear I’m beginning to lose track. “Yes, that’s me.”
“This is for you.” He hands me the bottle, along with a small white envelope. “Special delivery.”
“Oh, wow. Thank you.” At this particular moment in time, alcohol seems like either a fantastic idea or a really terrible one. Either way, I definitely plan on indulging. I’ll take my chances.
“How many glasses do you require?”
I hold up four fingers with my free hand. “Four, please.”
“Let me get that for you, sweetheart.” My dad takes the bottle and hands me a few dollars to tip the waiter.
I trade the bills for four slender champagne flutes. Buttercup watches the transaction with rapt interest.
“Thank you, again,” I say.
“My pleasure. Enjoy.” The waiter glances at my tiara, smiles, and then disappears down the hall.
I shut the door, then swing around to face my parents. “Wow, champagne. Thanks so much, y’all.”
Dad and Susan exchange a glance.
“It’s not from us,” Susan says.
“Oh.” I shrug. “It must be a gift from the pageant for winning the talent competition.”
Ginny emerges from the bathroom, slinking among us like a cat burglar. She should really work on her subtlety since she’s so keen on living a double life.
“It was room service,” I say, just as Dad pops the cork.
Ginny gives a little start at the noise.
She has got to calm down. I really doubt the waiter was an undercover spy for Miss American Treasure. He didn’t even see her, for goodness’ sake.
I shove a glass in her hand. “Here.”
“Charlotte?” Susan says.
Ginny and I turn our heads in unison.
Oops.
“Should you be drinking while you’re still on medication for your allergic reaction?” Susan pulls a face.
“I’ll just have a tiny sip,” Ginny says, while I make a big show of helping Dad as if I didn’t accidentally think Susan was actually talking to me.
“When did you order this?” Ginny peers into her glass.
“I didn’t. I think it’s from the pageant.” My dad hands me a glass and I take a sip. The champagne is ice-cold, and the fizzy bubbles dance on my tongue. Mmm. “Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a card.”
I look around for the small white envelope. I can’t remember what I did with it. It’s not on the dresser or any of the other cluttered surfaces in our cramped room.
Just when I think it’s permanently buried beneath a pile of glitter somewhere, I spot Buttercup in the corner, gnawing gleefully on something. Upon closer inspection, I see that it’s my card.
“Gee, thanks.” I pry it from her jaws.
It’s a soggy mess, but still in one piece. With any luck, I’ll be able to read what it says.
I slide the card from the envelope, and my heart swells. It’s definitely readable, and I love what it says.
Well done, Hermione. Congratulations.
He didn’t sign the card, but he didn’t have to. I know the champagne was a gift from Gray. I’m suddenly glad I didn’t cave and confess all to Dad and Susan. I’m not ready for this crazy ride to end.
Not yet.
Just one more day.
The swelling in Ginny’s face has gone down nearly 75 percent, but now she’s got a purple bruise across the bridge of her nose where I hit her with the baton. I want her to get better. Of course I do. But I’m not ready to switch back. It’s too soon.
Just one more day.
It’s running through my head like a mantra. I refuse to ask myself the obvious follow-up question. And then what?
“Well?” Ginny eyes the square of paper in my hand.
I wad the note into a ball in my fist, but I don’t toss it into the trash. I save it, holding on tight to Gray’s words. “It’s from the pageant, just like I thought.”
“That was nice of them.” Ginny smiles and clinks her glass against mine. “And you deserve it. Congratulations, sis. Tomorrow is the evening-gown competition—the last stop before the finals. You know what that means.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I can’t bring myself to answer my twin because I do. I know exactly what it means.
Just one more day.