She was in bed when I came upstairs earlier that night. She was grounded. Dad had come home early from work on Tuesday and caught her and Alex in her bedroom. She worked him down from three weeks without a phone to one night of grounding, but that left her stuck at home on a Saturday night with nothing but me and her collection of DVDs to keep her company. So what was she doing on the other end of my phone?
Flicking on the hallway light, I stared across the narrow space to her room. As always, her door was closed, and I had to get up, trudge those seven steps to her door, and push it open. The room was quiet, her rumpled bed empty. The window behind it was open a crack, probably so she could sneak back in.
“Maddy? Where are you?”
“Alex’s,” she said, her voice muffled by what I could’ve sworn were tears.
“What’s the matter?”
I was more curious than anything. Maddy didn’t cry. Ever. She said it was a sign of weakness and that it made your makeup run. The weakness part I got; the popular crowd she’d immersed herself in would use anything they could against one another.
The makeup part … yeah, that I didn’t get.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I just need a ride home, Ella.”
“Where’s your car?”
My guess was that she’d lost her keys or, better yet, was too drunk at one of Alex’s parties to drive. I’d pick her up—there was no question about that, but I wanted to prod her for a reason first.
“It’s at home. Jenna picked me up.”
“It’s two-thirty in the morning, Maddy,” I said, already putting on my shoes. “Can’t you get Jenna or Alex or somebody else to drive you home?”
“No, Alex can’t and Jenna won’t.”
I shrugged, not caring that Maddy couldn’t see me. I didn’t get why Maddy hung out with Jenna, what she could possibly see in her best friend.
“Come on, Ella. If Mom and Dad find out I snuck out, I’m screwed.”
I snorted at that one. Screwed? My twin sister was never screwed. She always seemed to skate by, knew exactly what to say to get herself out of everything. She’d be extra-sweet to our mother, pout for our father, and for Alex … well, from what I could gather, she had an entirely different arsenal for getting her way with him.
I could count my friends on one finger, but she could fill the entire cafeteria with laughter. I’d wake up at six in the morning so I could be early for school, and she’d roll in five minutes past the first bell, moaning about some flat tire to get herself out of detention. I’d collapse on my bed exhausted from studying till midnight, and she’d sneak out and go to a party with her boyfriend.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something to tell them.” And they’d buy it. No matter who she was talking to or what lie she was selling, they always bought it.
Maddy managed to make the honor roll, but that was mostly my doing. I’d study for days, then cave when she’d beg me to pretend I was her and take a test she’d completely forgotten about. I never complained; it’s not like she took any advanced courses, so it required no effort on my part.
I was getting so good at playing her that her friends couldn’t tell us apart. I kept my hair long and stopped adding pink streaks to the underside to look more like her. I’d mastered her voice as well, knew exactly how to raise and lower the pitch to match her sarcasm.
She paid me fifty bucks to take an oral Spanish exam for her last week, one she “completely forgot I had.” I scored her a solid 82. No point in getting her an A. She took my spot in Physics that day, pretending to be me so I wouldn’t get a detention for skipping class. We had a pop quiz. She took it for me, scoring me a miserable 47. Now I was looking at doing extra-credit work for the rest of the term to even manage a B.