The Spare - Part One (The Kings & Queens of St Augustus Book 1)

by Gemma Weir

  A thousand questions circle through my thoughts, but the more I think about it, the more certain I am that I was not aware of Tallulah’s existence and neither is anyone else, either at school, or within our social circle.

  “Can I get you a drink, Arlo?” Mrs. Archibald asks me brightly.

  “No, thank you,” I say shortly. “I think your time might be better spent explaining what the fuck is going on.”

  She titters nervously and I’m pleased to finally see some kind of reaction from her. “Darling, there’s really nothing to explain. Tallulah is Carrigan’s sister.”

  “I gathered that,” I say acerbically. “That doesn’t explain why until today I had no idea Carrigan had a sister, let alone an identical twin.”

  “My sister is an introvert. She doesn’t enjoy company,” Carrigan sneers, as she sits primly on the couch, clad in a form fitting white dress and black Louboutin sky high pumps.

  As I’m about to respond, the door silently opens and Tallulah walks in. A breathy, silent laugh falls from my parted lips, as she pads into the room in bare feet, fitted jeans with rips at the knees and a baggy white t-shirt that’s cropped just above the waist showing an inch of bare flesh above her jeans. Her hair has been pulled up into a ponytail on the top of her hair and her face is bare of any makeup.

  My cock twitches beneath my school pants and I tilt my head to the side, shaking it slightly as I take in the girl so similar, yet so incredibly different to her sister. “Hello, Tallulah,” I say, noting the way she doesn’t lift her head and look at either her mom or sister.

  “Hello, Arlo,” she says quietly, as she moves to the other couch and curls into the corner, pulling her legs up beneath her.

  In that moment, I realize that the person at my house on Friday night wasn’t Carrigan. “It was you who came to our house for dinner on Friday, wasn’t it?” I ask Tallulah.

  Her eyes move to her mom, then her sister, then back to me. “No,” she says. “I was here on Friday night; I’ve never been to your house.”

  “Bullshit,” I snap, pushing out of the chair and moving to the center of the room. Glaring at Tallulah, I wait for her to admit it, but she just looks back at me, her eyes giving nothing away. Spinning around, I smile at Carrigan. “What did we do after dinner on Friday?”

  Her smile is innocence personified. “We went for a stroll around the gardens.”

  “And what did we talk about?”

  “Not much, you ignored me for the most part.” She says, smugly.

  “What else did we do? What did I call you?” I ask, taking a step closer to her.

  She falters and I have to say she’s an impressively good actor. “You made some inappropriate suggestions that I’d rather not talk about.”

  I smile, “Before that. What did we do before my inappropriate suggestions?”

  She parts her lips, then glances at her mom.

  “You have no idea, do you? Come now, it was only three days ago, surely you can’t have forgotten in that short space of time,” I taunt.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Mrs. Archibald sighs. “Carrigan was ill on Friday night, so yes, Tallulah stepped in and pretended to be her sister for the evening, because Carrigan was heartbroken at the idea of you thinking she didn’t want to go if we’d have cancelled.”

  I scoff. “And how many times has Tallulah stepped in?” I drawl condescendingly.

  “That was the first time,” Tallulah says quietly. “I’ve never pretended to be my sister at an event before.”

  Turning around, I take a step away from Carrigan and move closer to Tallulah. It’s eerie how identical they are. “Why don’t I know you?” I ask.

  Her eyes widen and she looks at her mom again as if she needs someone to tell her what to say.

  “Do you go to St Augustus?”

  “Yes,” she replies.

  “Then why don’t I know you? Why, if we’ve been at the same school for the last three-and-a-half-years don’t I know you?” I demand, my voice getting louder as frustration fills me.

  “Surely you don’t know every single senior,” Carrigan says drolly.

  Looking over my shoulder, I glare at her. “Not every single senior no, but I’d sure as shit know if there was a set of identical twins. That’s not something that goes unnoticed.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Arlo,” Carrigan snaps, her holier-than-thou tone instantly pissing me off. “I have a twin sister. It’s not some big conspiracy. We’re both students at St Augustus, but my sister is a loner. She doesn’t have friends and chooses not to attend social events. That’s hardly a crime. I’m sorry she came to your house on Friday. She insisted, and honestly, I just didn’t want to be rude and cancel. It’s the first time we’ve ever done it and I promise it won’t happen again.” Then she looks pointedly at her sister. “Tallulah, you can run back upstairs. You look positively terrified and I’m sure Arlo isn’t that much of a brute that he can possibly want to interrogate you just for being a weirdo recluse.”

  As if she was a servant being dismissed, Tallulah climbs from the chair and turns to leave. I move, intercepting her before I even realize I’m doing it. “Goodbye, Tallulah,” I say, staring down into her eyes, that I realize now I’m so close are a strange shade of violet.

  Her pink tongue darts out and wets her full lower lip. “Goodbye, Arlo.”

  Reluctantly, I step aside to let her go. My eyes following her until the door closes behind her. Then I turn back to Carrigan and her mother. Neither of them looks even slightly affected by anything that was revealed today and that only makes me more suspicious. What the hell is going on? It seems clear to me that they’ve deliberately kept Tallulah a secret, but is it because like they said, she simply likes to keep to herself, or is it something more?

  “I should be getting home,” I announce.

  “Why don’t you stay for dinner?” Mrs. Archibald pleads in a Mrs. Robinson, seductive way.

  “No, thank you,” I say, trying to sound polite, but really just needing to get the hell out of this house and away from the grimy feeling that settled over me when I saw how terrified Tallulah was to be here.

  “Let me call Greg and he can drive you home if you’re sure you can’t stay,” Mrs. Archibald offers, rising from her chair and smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt.

  “That’s okay. I texted my driver on the way here. He’s waiting outside for me,” I say dismissively, already moving toward the door.

  I hear the click of heels, then smell the cloying scent of her perfume as Carrigan wraps herself around me, her lips at my ear. “I know what you said to my sister on Friday, what you asked her to do. We could go up to my room and I could show you what you wanted,” she says breathily, her hand sliding down my chest toward my dick.

  I laugh. “I’m good thanks. Did she tell you that I called you a whore and told her that I’d never marry you, no matter how pretty and untouched your cunt might be?” Then I pry her away from my side and stride to the front door, letting myself out and walking straight to my car idling at the curb.

  I sit in my room and wait for the explosion. For the screaming and shouting that I’m sure is ultimately going to follow our secret being discovered, but it doesn’t come. From my window I watch Arlo stride down the front steps and climb into a sleek black town car. Then I wait. An hour later I’m still in my room alone and neither Carrigan nor Mom has so much as taken a step upstairs.

  I think this strained fearful waiting is actually worse than the vitriol I’m expecting from them. I can almost hear the accusation, the guilt and recriminations, the shaming that I’m expecting, but instead I just get silence.

  Maybe they managed to convince Arlo that it’s not a big deal. I mean he doesn’t know that I step in to keep my sisters grades up, to keep her inheritance on track. All he knows is that there are two of us, and that I don’t socialize. That’s not exactly true. I don’t socialize because my family can’t use me as a substitute Carrigan if people know I exist, but that’s not the
most logical leap most people would take.

  Some of the fear trickles from me and I let my shoulders relax a little. So he knows I exist, it’s hardly the end of the world. In fact, maybe this will serve as a good thing, a secret between him and my sister that will allow them to connect over a shared confidence.

  Relaxing a little more, I pull my homework from my backpack and settle down at my desk to start it. None of it’s due for a few days, but given everything that’s happened today, there’s no way I can ignore the call again if Carrigan needs me to attend her classes for her, so I need to be up to date on my own work.

  I lose myself to my assignments until a knock at the door startles me, causing me to jolt and knock my notepad to the floor. “Come in,” I call, expecting Mrs. Humphries to appear, but instead my mother steps into my room, her expression unreadable.

  Slowly rising from my chair, I take a step away from my desk and swallow thickly.

  “Would you like to explain how it is that Arlo Lexington came to follow you home this afternoon?” she asks, her voice so calm and cordial that goose bumps pebble across the skin of my arms.

  “I… I…” I stammer. “I was walking through school to meet Greg and he came up behind me. He knew I wasn’t Carrigan and I just…” I trail off, not wanting to admit that I was shouting my own name out, to remind myself that I still existed.

  “How did he know you weren’t your sister?” She asks coolly.

  “I don’t know. I think he said something about me walking differently, but he knew, and I didn’t know what to say,” I blurt, the words falling from my mouth too quickly.

  “You won’t speak to him again; you won’t make people aware of your presence at St Augustus.”

  I nod quickly, clamping my lips together to stop myself from speaking again.

  Mom smiles, taking four purposeful steps closer, until she’s directly in front of me. She lifts her hand and runs her fingers across my cheek, almost tenderly, then she pushes a wayward strand of hair behind my ear before she grabs the ends of my ponytail and yanks hard enough that my eyes instantly water. “And you won’t ever risk your sister’s future by ignoring her calls or messages ever again. Carrigan is the key to all of our futures and I will not let you ruin her chances of success because you want to be a selfish little cunt. No one is interested in you, daughter. No one cares if you’re at that school, no one cares what grades you get or what you plan to do after you graduate. You are nothing and no one of consequence and if you are the reason your sister’s grades slip to anything below perfect, I will make you pay for it.”

  Tears fill my eyes, from the pain of my hair almost being ripped from the root and the reality of my mom’s words, but I refuse to let them fall.

  When she smiles, I feel like all I can see is the true evil below the beautiful façade and I have no idea who she is. “I know you think you’re going to run off to England after graduation, but that won’t be happening unless you do as you’re told. From now on, you’ll be attending all science, English and math classes in your sister’s place, to ensure a situation like today doesn’t happen again.”

  “But what about my own classes?” I cry before I can stop myself.

  Mom sneers, her hand dropping from my hair as she steps back, brushing a non-existent rumple from her dress. “Honestly, Tallulah, how many times do I have to say it? No one cares about you.”

  With her words hanging in the air, she turns and walks out of my room without a backward glance and I’m left alone.

  Hours later, her words are still playing on repeat, circling through my brain. “No one cares about you.” It’s not like this is new information to me, or that I haven’t felt like that for years, but to have her spell it out so blatantly hurts so much more than I expected it would.

  Would she still feel this way if Dad had been named as the beneficiary of the Archibald fortune, or grandad, like he should have been? Would I just be one of the Archibald twins then, instead of the inconvenient spare?

  Crawling into bed, I try to ignore the rapidly swelling emotions that are building up inside of me, but tonight I’m raw and I just can’t push them down like I normally would. Maybe it’s having another person know who I am, even if he’s an asshole, or maybe it’s just that Mom threatened my escape plan, but whatever it is, tonight I can’t ignore it. I can’t pretend or distract myself, so instead I squeeze my eyes shut and let the handful of tears fall.

  In the morning I’ll be braver, stronger, but for tonight I allow myself to be the weak little spare.

  It’s been two days since I met Tallulah. Two days since the fucked up, sort of confrontation with Carrigan and her mother. Now I knew she existed, I expected to notice Tallulah at school. But in two days I haven’t see her once.

  Carrigan unfortunately has been everywhere, waving at me in the hallways, circling me and my friends at lunch, and generally flashing her annoying, too perfect fucking face everywhere I am.

  “How many of your classes is Carrigan Archibald in?” I ask my friends at lunchtime on Wednesday.

  Wats laughs, his lips pressed to the valley between the girl on his lap’s tits. “What the hell is going on with you and Little Miss Priss? I thought you hated the girl. You changed your mind and thinking about marrying her after all?” He teases, his voice filled with amusement.

  Reaching over, I slap him in the back of his head, causing him to jerk forward, his forehead banging into Elysia’s chest and unbalancing her.

  “Hey,” Wats cries.

  “Answer the fucking question,” I snap, glancing around the table at the rest of my friends.

  “I don’t fucking know,” Wats says, pushing upright and shoving Elysia off as he glares at me. “Chemistry and French.”

  “Yeah me too. Anyone else have any other classes with her?” I ask the people sat around the large table.

  “I have English and trig with her,” Candace says.

  “Nah, I have English with her and Latin,” Olly says, before he takes a huge bite from the sandwich on his plate.

  St Augustus doesn’t have the usual dreadful high school canteen food. No, we have a team of chefs that prepare our meals. Nothing but the best for the crème de la crème of the upper classes.

  “I have biology with her,” Carson offers offhandedly, his attention on his cell phone.

  “You can’t. We don’t have biology together and she’s in my class,” Missy says.

  “You’re sure it’s Carrigan Archibald in your classes?” I ask, putting emphasis on her name, hoping one of them will mention Tallulah. That I’m the only one that didn’t know there was two of them.

  “Who the fuck else would it be? The heiress makes sure everyone knows who she is,” Olly laughs.

  My mind takes a moment to process what my friends are saying, and they’re right, everyone knows who Carrigan is, because she likes it that way. I doubt there’s a soul in this school who isn’t aware of the fortune she’s expected to inherit, or the terms of the inheritance. So how is it possible that both twins really do go to school here and no one knows?

  My friends continue to bicker about who has classes with Carrigan and who doesn’t, but I let their voices become background noise. Am I really the only one who knows about Tallulah? And if I am, how is it possible that they’ve both been here the entire time?

  The doors to the lunchroom open and Carrigan glides in accompanied by her minions and the guys who are so desperate to fuck her, that they’re prepared to follow her virgin ass around just in case she decides she wants them more than the billions her virginity is worth.

  Without thought, I scan the room for Tallulah, but I already know she’s not here. The entire senior class have lunch together and I know I’ve never seen them both in here at the same time, so where does Tallulah eat?

  I spend the rest of lunch going through the motions of eating and chatting about our weekend sailing plans with Wats, Olly, and Carson, but I’m only half paying attention. Instead I’m watching Carrigan, trying to fi
gure out if that’s who I’m looking at. Could it actually be Tallulah? From a distance, in their school uniform, I doubt I could tell them apart.

  The thought that I might have spoken to Tallulah more than once, and assumed she was her sister is unsettling. More so is the fact that if I have met both sisters, why didn’t they correct me? Why haven’t they corrected anyone?

  When the final bell rings, I don’t rush to get to my locker or out to the parking lot. I hold back and wait for Carrigan to appear. Just like I expected, she makes a grand exit, sashaying through the hallways like she’s walking a runway at fashion week. I follow her outside, watching as she chats to her friends and waits for her car.

  When the same driver who drove Tallulah and I back to her house yesterday appears and opens the door for Carrigan, I try to see if Tallulah’s in the back of the car, but it’s empty. Carrigan climbs in and he closes the door, circles around to the driver’s seat and pulls away from the curb, blending onto the street and disappearing from view.

  Narrowing my eyes, I search for another car, for another blonde head, but instead the rest of the students filter off in limited edition super cars, limos, and town cars, until twenty minutes later only a handful remain in the lot.

  For a second I wonder if maybe she didn’t come to school today, then a now familiar town car slows to a stop at the curb and I watch from my semi-hidden position as Tallulah Archibald scurries from the side of the building, heading quickly toward the car and driver.

  My feet move even though I know I shouldn’t be doing this, even though I know I should just let this go, and do what I’ve always done before, which is to try to pretend the Archibalds are nothing to do with me. But something about the other Archibald twin calls to me. Maybe it’s the novelty or the intrigue that’s surrounding her, or maybe it’s that even though she looks just like Carrigan, she’s nothing like her, that has me falling into step beside her.