My first few steps are shaky in her shoes, and I’m tempted to grab Trigger’s hand, but Waverly would never hold hands with her security team. So I stand up straight and press on, dreading the staircase as it comes into view at the end of the hall.
Then voices echo toward us from the first-floor foyer. Footsteps clack up the stairs. My heart slams against my sternum. I don’t recognize the woman coming toward me, dark ponytail swinging behind her head, large tablet clutched in one hand.
“Waverly! There you are!” She loops her arm through mine without even a glance at Trigger, who falls back into the proper security position, his expression carefully blank. “Let’s get your hair and makeup done. This is going to be the best episode yet!”
I have no idea what to do as the woman with the ponytail half-guides, half-pulls me toward the stairs. “The crew is setting up for a sound check. We really want to get everything right for the ink ceremony,” she says, “since we can’t do a reshoot.”
“Um…” Tell her you have to go to the bathroom. Tell her you feel sick. Tell her something—anything—to keep her from dragging you into…whatever an ink ceremony is.
But what if she wants to escort me back to “my” room and hears Waverly shouting from the bathroom? What if she wants to call a doctor? Or Waverly’s mother?
Trigger trails silently behind us as the woman with the ponytail leads me down the first-floor hall past the room with all the books, into the dining room we saw on the e-glass. Two women stand to greet me the moment we step into the room.
“Waverly! Great blouse!” a blonde says as she pulls out the chair at the end of the table for me. “This is Chesca, who’s come on board to do your makeup for this special episode.”
I sit in the chair, and Chesca adjusts a tabletop lighting fixture to aim it more directly at my face, which makes me squint. At the edge of my vision, Trigger stands with his back against the wall, watching both me and the room’s two exits.
“It’s so great to meet you,” Chesca says, and I stifle a relieved exhalation. She’s never met Waverly. Which means she won’t notice any minor differences in our faces. But the other woman…
“I’m pleased to meet you as well,” I say as Chesca begins opening a series of small tubes and bottles.
The blond woman moves behind me and begins to comb out my hair. “Your hair’s grown,” she comments. “And the ends feel a little dry. Are you still conditioning every day?”
I nod in answer to a question I don’t even understand.
While the blonde works on my hair with a series of spritzes and hot metal wands, Chesca pins a paper bib to my blouse and begins to paint my face and neck with tiny brushes and smudging tools. It doesn’t take me long to realize that this is how the girls at Seren’s party looked like they did. They wore makeup.
Both women work quickly, chatting with each other, and I’m grateful that they don’t expect “Waverly” to join the conversation. When I’m not following directions to look up or suck in my cheeks, I watch the door, terrified that at any moment Waverly or her parents will walk in and expose my charade.
Half an hour later, Chesca and the blonde hold up several mirrors, angled to show me both my face and the back of my head at once.
I’m stunned by my own reflection. I look like myself, but smoother. Even. Flawless.
“Wow,” I whisper, and both women beam at me in the mirror, pleased with my reaction. Chesca removes the bib and I stand, wobbling a little in Waverly’s heels. I cast a meaningful glance at Trigger, hoping he’s ready to escape, now that—
“She looks great!” The woman in the ponytail loops her arm through mine again and leads me toward the door. “But then, she always looks great. Hennessy and his family are in the library with your parents. Your mother stood in for you during sound check. So we’re all ready to roll!”
Before I can process any of that, we’re walking down the hall, headed toward some event that has the woman next to me practically humming with excitement.
“You okay?” she whispers so that the six men gathered around the library entrance won’t hear her. “You should be excited! You’ve been waiting for this your whole life!”
“I’m thrilled,” I whisper, forcing a smile, but her frown only deepens.
“Nervous about the pain? Do you want me to get you a drink? There’s some champagne in there for the celebration, but I can go find something else—”
Pain? “No, thank you. I’m fine.” Except for the fact that I’m about to pretend to be Waverly in front of the people who know her best. At least three of whom now know that the real me actually exists.
This will never work.
I glance back at Trigger, who’s taken up his position behind us. As if Waverly would need security in her own house. But the woman with the ponytail is so focused on her task that she hasn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. She gives a hand signal to one of the men in the hallway.
He gestures to the rest of the crew, and they part to make way for me, but the woman with the ponytail hangs back, watching me expectantly. Without even noticing that she’s blocking Trigger’s path.
One of the men aims a piece of shoulder-mounted equipment at me while the other holds a microphone mounted to a long pole over my head. “Let’s get rolling,” the first man calls. “And keep it as unobtrusive as possible. This is a tender moment, people!”
I continue toward the library, as I’m obviously expected to do, and they all watch me as if I’m about to perform some kind of trick. The microphone follows me overhead, and suddenly I understand. I’m being recorded. Whatever this ink ceremony is, Waverly is having it documented, like the historical films we saw in class and the instructional videos that taught us how to use new gardening equipment.
If I run now, my attempted escape will be caught on camera. Though that would probably be true anyway, considering that every corner of this house seems to be under surveillance as part of the security system.
“Hey, Audra, do you want us to get a setup shot of her coming down the stairs?” the man in charge of the crew asks.
The woman with the ponytail—Audra—shakes her head. “We can shoot that afterward. For now, let’s capture the ink bonding as honestly as we can. I want four different angles so we don’t miss anything. And this time, make sure the equipment doesn’t intrude on the reality of the moment.”
The crew seems to close in around me, herding me toward the library. Cutting me off from Trigger.
I hesitate in the doorway. Inside, Hennessy kneels on a pillow on the floor, his left forearm resting on a cloth spread over the coffee table in the center of the grouping of furniture. Kneeling next to him, a woman is making adjustments to a piece of equipment that looks like a hefty cylinder. Like a long, heavy steel sleeve.
Waverly’s father stands at the end of the coffee table, talking to a man and woman with mostly gray hair, and all three of them hold narrow stemmed glasses half-full of the champagne Audra mentioned. The gray-haired man has Hennessy’s nose, and the woman has his eyes. They can only be his parents.
Margo sits on the couch at her brother’s back, scrolling and tapping on her tablet, as if she can’t see the camera crew or the parents obviously gathered to celebrate.
“—and the Caruthers sisters have designed a union ink pattern unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Lorna says to the camera aimed at her. A woman on her left holds a metal sleeve identical to the one the woman next to Hennessy is adjusting. “Or so I hear. I haven’t actually seen it yet, but I know that designs have evolved quite a bit since Dane and I got ours!” Waverly’s mother holds up her left arm, showing off the date written in scrolling numbers on her skin.
Union ink. Understanding washes over me.
Waverly and Hennessy are here to have matching dates applied to their arms, to commemorate their upcoming wedding—a legal union of two people for the purposes
of affection and procreation. An archaic tradition, according to my teachers in Lakeview, yet one that is obviously still alive and well in the rest of the world.
Hennessy’s parents’ cuffs have been rolled up to show off matching dates. Dane Whitmore’s right sweater sleeve has been pushed halfway up his arm, exposing a date that matches Lorna’s.
My feet freeze to the floor, my heart pounding in my ears. I can’t step into this room.
Hennessy’s gaze meets mine, and relief washes over his face. “Waverly.” He starts to stand, but the woman with the steel sleeve grabs his wrist to stop him.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m still calibrating.”
Waverly’s mother sees me, and my pulse races. Surely she’ll know with one glance at me that I’m not her daughter. She’ll make up some excuse to get me out of there and find Waverly.
Being caught now seems like the lesser of two evils.
But Lorna only gives me a tense smile, then ushers the woman carrying the sleeve toward the coffee table. “We’re ready for you over here,” she says as she sets the cylinder on the table.
Dane Whitmore and the Chapmans turn. Silence descends from the crew, and when I look up, I realize that this moment is already being recorded not just by the camera that followed me in here, but by crew members stationed all over the room, wearing small, thin cameras mounted to their shoulders in rigs supporting a bunch of equipment I’ve never seen before. Microphones. Display screens. Long, segmented lenses.
It feels like a million eyes are on me right now. How can none of them realize I’m not Waverly?
I never mistook any of my identicals for one another. We might have looked alike, but we weren’t the same people. We had different gestures and habits. Different speech patterns. Different expressions. And that’s doubly true for Waverly and me, having grown up in different worlds.
Yet the people closest to her are only seeing what they expect to see. Which can only mean they’re not really paying attention.
I let Lorna lead me to the coffee table, mentally scrambling for a way out of this. But maybe the best way out is straight through: if Waverly’s parents are fooled, surely the rest of the world will be too. Maybe I should just ride this out. Try not to say or do anything she wouldn’t say or do. That has to be easier now that I’ve actually met her and heard her speak.
“Kneel on the pillow and put your left arm on the table,” the woman holding the cylinder says to me.
Slowly, I kneel and hold my arm out.
Hennessy smiles at me, and he looks almost as terrified as I feel, even though he’s really supposed to be here. Margo leans forward on the couch behind him, peering over his shoulder.
“Wow, I can’t believe you guys are really going through with it,” she says. “No turning back after this.”
“That’s the whole point, Margo,” he says, but he’s still looking at me, a tender smile on his lips. “We’re not scared, are we?” And to his credit, his steady voice doesn’t even hint at the fear in his eyes. I wonder if the cameras can see that?
I wonder if Waverly’s seen it.
“No,” I whisper back. Two of the camera men move for a better view of me. I remember what Audra told me on our way here. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”
“Aww,” Mrs. Chapman says, and two cameras shift to focus on her, taking some of the pressure off me. They concentrate on the parents’ sweet smiles as Lorna hooks her arm around her husband’s, her expression glazing over with a haze of nostalgia.
Dane Whitmore smiles at me, but his posture is stiff. He’s holding himself apart from Lorna, despite her grip on his arm, but no one else seems to have noticed the tension between them. Because everyone else is looking at me.
The woman next to me unbuttons the cuff of my left sleeve and rolls it back. “Okay, slide your hand through here,” she says, holding out the metal cylinder while the woman attending to Hennessy does the same thing.
I hesitate, staring at the smooth steel sleeve. But I can’t back out without exposing myself as an imposter. So I’ll get the ink, and then Waverly can get it too. Later. In private. No one will ever know she wasn’t actually present for what’s obviously supposed to be a monumental moment in her life.
I feel almost as bad about her missing it as I do about being trapped here in her place.
Left with no other choice, I slide my arm into the cold cylinder, and it tightens immediately, drawing a gasp from me.
The woman laughs. “I know you’re nervous, but in just a minute, you’ll be able to show the world what all the fuss has been about.” She smiles for the camera. “This is the single most intricate design we’ve ever done. Truly one of a kind. And it means the world to my sister and me to know that it will be forever worn by Waverly and Hennessy.”
“The honor is all ours.” Hennessy lays his right arm across the table, his palm open, fingers grasping for mine. I put my free hand in his, and he squeezes it, amid another round of “Awws” from the parents.
Margo rolls her eyes and leans back on the couch, but her gaze is glued to the sleek machines encircling her brother’s arm and mine.
“Any last words?” the woman next to Hennessy asks, and everyone else laughs.
Hennessy looks right into my eyes. “To the start of forever,” he whispers, and though I’m not sure if the cameras can hear him, the families certainly can.
“Forever,” I echo, because I don’t know what else to say.
“Okay. Now hold very still.” The woman next to me leans over the device wrapped around my arm. “Relax your hand.”
I try to comply as Hennessy’s grip on my free hand tightens until my fingers ache.
“Three…” The woman leaning over me positions her finger over a small screen on top of the device, where the word deploy is flashing in red letters.
“Two…,” her sister says from across the coffee table.
“One!” The woman standing over me taps the screen on my device just as the other woman taps on Hennessy’s.
Pain shoots through my forearm, and I suck in a sharp breath.
“Son of a—!” Hennessy bites off whatever he was going to say and squeezes his eyes closed.
My fist clenches involuntarily as fire contained by the metal sleeve races across my arm in a thousand pinpricks.
A second later, the pain recedes, leaving only a sharp, residual ache, and the screen on the device flashes green. Something cold and instantly soothing is sprayed over my arm inside the cylinder.
I glance at the doorway, hoping for a glimpse of Trigger. Instead, between the shoulders of two of the crew members, I see a thin slice of a face I’d know anywhere. Waverly’s tear-filled left eye blinks at me. Then she disappears down the hall while everyone else is still staring at me and Hennessy, eagerly awaiting the revelation of an ink design that should be on her arm.
The woman next to me slides the metal sleeve free.
All four parents gasp. Margo drops her tablet on the sofa as she stands to peer over her brother’s shoulder. One of the cameramen steps closer, coming in for a better shot.
I look down at my left arm, and everything else seems to fade into the background. In the center of my forearm, several inches from my wrist, is a beautifully colorful, amazingly intricate series of swirls, arches, and tiny loops forming a pattern I can’t quite make sense of.
Until Hennessy slides his arm toward mine across the coffee table.
Somehow, though our markings appear identical, when our arms are placed next to each other, inverted, the hundreds—thousands?—of individual ink markings join to form a date.
Waverly and Hennessy’s wedding date.
And after a second, they begin to pulse with color in time with my heartbeat, each stunning shade fading into the next with an odd rippling effect I should be able to feel. But I cannot.
“Oh…” Lorna sinks to her knees next to us. “It’s beautiful, darling.”
“Stunning,” my father agrees.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Mrs. Chapman says, her drink momentarily forgotten.
I can’t look away from my own arm, and as I watch, the throbbing of color begins to speed up, along with my pulse.
“There’s more.” Hennessy stands, and as he pulls his arm away from mine, the colors stop pulsing. He rounds the table, then reaches down to help me up and holds his arm next to mine.
The cameramen move closer.
Somehow, even though our arms are now oriented the same direction, the patterns still form the same date they made before.
“Whether we’re side by side or face to face, we are one. That was the idea, anyway,” he says to the room around us, with an almost shy smile.
“That’s beautiful, son.” His father raises his glass in salute.
“And it’s entirely unique.” The artist next to me picks up the metal sleeve that inked my arm, cradling it like something precious. “Eight months of work. And though I’m sure pulsing ink will become a trend, there has never been, nor will there ever be, union ink like yours.” She and her sister each press a button on the steel sleeves, and a tiny chip pops out of each device. “Just like there will never be another couple like Waverly and Hennessy.”
“Ready?” the other sister asks as she lifts the chip.
Ready for what?
The sisters each place a chip between their front teeth, then pull down with a sudden snapping motion. Breaking the chips in half.
The room erupts in applause.
I don’t understand what’s just happened, but a sick feeling churns deep in my stomach. That felt…irreversible.
“Champagne!” Lorna announces, and the cameramen move aside so she can get to a table set up on one side of the room, where two more open bottles sit in buckets of ice, next to a row of empty glass flutes.
“Now, your skin has been numbed, but that’ll wear off in a few hours, and there’s bound to be a little swelling,” one of the Caruthers sisters tells me while the parents refill their glasses. She dons a pair of sterile gloves from a sealed package, then squirts a dollop of blue foam on my forearm. “This is an antibacterial moisturizer,” she explains while she spreads it into a thin layer over the ink. Then she applies a clear, flexible protective wrap over my entire forearm and gives me instructions about how and when to wash the new ink.
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