My Double Life

by Janette Rallison

MY DOUBLE Life

  by Janette Rallison

  Other titles by Janette Rallison

  Son of War, Daughter of Chaos

  My Fairly Dangerous Godmother

  My Fairly Dangerous Godmother audio book

  Blue Eyes and Other Teenage Hazards

  Just One Wish

  Just One Wish audio book

  Masquerade

  My Double Life

  A Longtime (and at One Point Illegal) Crush

  The Girl Who Heard Demons

  Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws

  Playing The Field

  The Wrong Side of Magic

  My Fair Godmother

  My Unfair Godmother

  All’s Fair in Love, War, and High School

  Fame, Glory, and Other Things on my To Do List

  It’s a Mall World After All

  Revenge of the Cheerleaders

  How to Take The Ex Out of Ex-boyfriend

  Slayers (under pen name CJ Hill)

  Slayers: Friends and Traitors (under pen name CJ Hill)

  Erasing Time (under pen name CJ Hill)

  Echo in Time (under pen name CJ Hill)

  What the Doctor Ordered (under pen name Sierra St. James)

  My Double Life

  By Janette Rallison

  Copyright 2016

  Dedication

  To my dad, who was always there for me. When I didn’t think I was good enough to be a writer, he proved me wrong by sending an essay I'd written to a magazine. It was my first sale and my first step on this very fun road I now travel. Thanks, Dad!

  And to my mom, who is the most avid reader I know. It's an honor to be your favorite author!

 

  CHAPTER 1

  I didn’t want to write this. Really, there’s a lot that’s happened in the last few months that I’d rather forget. But Mom says I need to have an autobiography on hand, that I need to record all the facts, in case someone writes a trashy tell-all book about me. Mom also told me I should describe her as ten pounds thinner, looking like a fashion model, and being an immaculate housekeeper. So here's the disclaimer: Whatever else you might think about the events in this story, please keep in mind that my mom is gorgeous and our bathrooms were always clean.

  Because autobiographies have pictures, I’m supposed to go through my photo album and come up with some representative snapshots that show what I was like before my life got swept away in stardust and celebrity glitter. None of the photos I have are truly representative of me though.

  A snapshot couldn't reveal what it’s like to grow up half white, half Latina in small town West Virginia, or how missing your father your entire life changes everything. I could put in a picture of me sprawled on my couch with my best friend, Lori, but you wouldn’t catch the crucial details: that everything I’m wearing and the couch itself are secondhand. My brown shoulder-length hair always looks the same, not because I have a no-nonsense style, but because it was the only style my mother knew how to cut. I was too poor to go to a salon.

  Since I don't have a picture, I will describe a scene from my life, a day at the end of February when I asked Trevor Wilson to the Sadie Hawkins dance, the day that set so many other things in motion.

  It started with Hector Domingas trailing me around the library. Since I’m bilingual, teachers always assigned me to sit by the Spanish speaking kids who struggled with English. That way they had someone to explain anything they couldn’t understand. In world history that person was Hector.

  I helped Hector a lot. And because the Morgantown High staff might someday read this, I won’t say more about his homework or any part I played in the completion of several five-paragraph essays.

  The thing about Hector was that the last couple of days he’d been acting strange. He'd say bizarre things to me and then wouldn't explain himself. He’d show up outside my classes and watch me walk past him. It was beginning to creep me out, and I wanted to spend as little time with him as possible, but on this day Hector needed help on our latest writing assignment: Leaders Who Changed the World. He wanted to do one about Cesar Chavez. Unfortunately, Hector couldn't find any books on Chavez, and our teacher said we had to use books, not Internet sites.

  I fingered the book I'd picked up on Churchill. "Choose someone else,” I told him. "Solo escoge un libro del estante.” Just pick a book off the shelf.

  “Deben tener Chavez." They should have Chavez. He folded his arms over a T-shirt that was too big. Hector never seemed to fill out his clothes. He was shorter than me— and, granted, I’m five foot eight, but with his skinny arms and large brown eyes, he looked like a freshman instead of a senior.

  "You can ask the librarian to find a book for you,” I said. I knew he wouldn’t. He hated conjugating enough English verbs to pull off a conversation with a teacher. He scowled at me, then turned and disappeared down one of the non-fiction aisles.

  I did a quick check around the library to see where Trevor was. He sat at one of the tables in the middle of the room taking notes. His blond hair stayed perfectly in place, even though he was bent over a book. It was like his hair just knew what to do to make him look good.

  My plan had been to sit down at the same table and strike up a conversation. I walked several steps toward him, felt my stomach bang into my ribs, then made a U-turn and hurried over to the table where Lori sat.

  She had several books spread out in front of her but shook her head with disappointment as I sat down. She’d watched me head toward Trevor's table and then bail out.

  "Sadie Hawkins is nineteen days away," she said.

  She had reminded me to ask Trevor to the Sadie Hawkins dance every day for the last week. She kept suggesting cute little ways I could do it, like bringing him Chinese food and engineering a fortune cookie with a slip of paper that said I’d be fortunate if you went to the dance with me. Please say yes.

  Personally, I think asking a guy out is hard enough without turning the whole thing into some sort of reality show event. If you make it into a treasure hunt and he decides he doesn’t like the treasure, well, how humiliating is that?

  Lori hadn’t asked anyone to the dance yet either. She wanted to double with me but couldn’t decide between three guys who kept calling her. Picking one guy would mean choosing a favorite and thus offending the other two. Lori's life is so hard.

  "I’ll ask him,” I said. "I just need to do it my way. You know, really casually”

  She leaned toward me over her books and papers. "You’re waiting for someone else to ask him so you don’t have to. You're afraid to talk to him.”

  I glanced at Trevor, then quickly glanced away so he didn't catch me staring. "I am not.”

  She took a Seventeen magazine from her bag and slid it across to me. "Exhibit one: the flirting quiz.”

  I never should have taken that stupid test. Lori wasn’t going to let me forget that I flunked it.

  Apparently if you see someone attractive staring at you, you're supposed to either A) smile back at him playfully or B) send him a wink, not C) assume you have a wardrobe malfunction and check to make sure everything is zipped and buttoned.

  And if a guy comes up to you and stands too close—it might mean A) he's interested in you, instead of C) he’s trying to intimidate you by violating your personal space and you have every right to shove him away.

  Luckily, Seventeen also wrote a "Rev Up Your Flirting Skills” article to remedy my near-hopeless situation. Lori made me read it. Three times.

  Lori took a stealth glance at Trevor. "He's alone. This is the perfect time to ask him.”

  “I don’t even know if Trevor likes me."

  Which was my major problem. Trevor seemed interested in me during physics when he turned around at his desk to talk to
me. Half the time he offered up some pointless trivia or made observations on my handwriting. He’d grab the pencil out of my hand and doodle comics on my assignment. Guys don't do that sort of thing unless they want your attention.

  But at lunchtime, I morphed into the invisible woman. He didn’t look at my table. He never spoke to me. Instead, he spent most of his time trying to get attention from Theresa Davidson, reigning popularity queen. He and his friends sat at the table next to hers and he’d do things like flip Cheetos onto her table. Theresa and her friends pretended to be annoyed about this, but they weren’t.

  If it were anyone else that Trevor was flirting with, I would have accepted the fact that I had a rival and I would have tried harder. But Theresa and I had a history of bad blood. Back when I was a kid, we lived in an apartment in a rundown section of DC, and I was kind of a fighter. Not a gang member or anything; it's just that you had to be tough to get left alone. Now that I think about it, I guess I did get in a couple of fights in the beginning of sixth grade, because that's what convinced Mom that we needed to move back to Morgantown, West Virginia. She wanted a better environment for me. We’ve lived with my grandmother, my abuela, ever since.

  Before I moved, my friend Armando told me, "I’ve been the new kid lots of times. What you need to do is figure out who the biggest bully is and take him on right away. You take on the bully, and it don't even matter whether you win or not because everybody knows you got guts and you don’t back down. They'll respect you, and you’ll fit in.”

  When I made my entrance into my new school, I instantly pegged Theresa as the biggest bully. After all, the entire sixth grade seemed to hover around her, waiting to do her bidding. So there was this unfortunate incident where she cut in front of me in the lunch line and I pushed her, causing her to stumble into a cafeteria garbage can.

  Apparently that's not the best way to make friends at your new school. And this is the main reason I never take advice from guys anymore. They just live in different worlds.

  Even though I apologized, Theresa and her friends never forgave me. They loved to remind everyone that I lived in a run-down neighborhood, that I walked to school instead of driving my own car, that I didn’t wear designer clothes— there are so many ways to rub in being poor. I retaliated in the only way that wouldn't get me kicked out of school. I got straight A's so I could look down at them for being stupid. I probably owe all my high school honor roll achievements to Theresa and the Cliquistas. Oh, and that’s another way I retaliated. I called them the Cliquistas. It’s not my fault the name stuck.

  Well, maybe it was my fault, but still, I refuse to feel guilty about it.

  I looked over at Trevor's head, still bent over his books. So did he like me or Theresa? Maybe his throwing Cheetos at her wasn’t really flirting. After all, I'd throw a lot of stuff at her if I thought I could get away with it. Besides, Trevor was in honors classes and Theresa's grades were much closer to mid-alphabet. How could he like someone who reveled in her own mediocrity? Then again, if he liked me, why did he always ignore me at lunch?

  “He likes you,” Lori said. "You’re smart and gorgeous. For heaven's sake, you look like Kari Kingsley. How many people can say that?”

  "Me and Kari Kingsley."

  “Right. So turn on some of the celebrity charm and go talk to him."

  I raised my eyebrow at her. I wasn't sure whether she meant to be ironic or not.

  You know how they say everyone has a twin somewhere in the world, a person chance has formed to be their mirror image? Mine happens to be rock star Kari Kingsley. Our faces are eerily identical. In all the pictures of her that I'd studied, I’d only been able to see two differences: Her nose was sharper than mine, and she had blond hair. Mine is brown. But even that wasn’t a true difference; her hair is bleached. Natural blondes don't have our olive-toned skin and dark brown eyes.

  I'd think we were twins separated by birth, but Kari Kingsley is twenty-one and I'm eighteen, plus I'm pretty sure my mom would have remembered giving birth to twins and then losing one somewhere along the way.

  When Kari's first album came out and her face popped up everywhere, I thought I was lucky to resemble her. She’s beautiful, confident, and oozes sultriness. But then she opened her mouth and started speaking to reporters.

  While walking down the red carpet on the way to the Grammys, a reporter asked her what she was doing to be green. She gave a dazzling smile and replied, "Nothing. I don’t really celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day.”

  During the MTV awards she put in a plug for the ethical treatment of animals: “It's so important we all remember that animals are people too.”

  Really? How many of us lick ourselves clean?

  On Good Morning America, while talking about the reasons role models shouldn’t smoke, she said, "Cigarettes can kill you, and that really changes your life.”

  I suppose so.

  That’s when it became a lot less fun to look like a celebrity. Her gaffes were instantly put on YouTube and half the senior class’s Facebook pages.

  Suddenly I was stupid by association.

  I looked at Lori and tilted my chin down. "I’m supposed to turn on some of Kari's celebrity charm? I could tell him I wish I had some pickup lines, but my family doesn't own a truck.”

  She gave my arm a shove. "You know what I mean. Go bat your eyelashes at him.”

  I have never batted my eyelashes at anyone. Suddenly I wondered if that was part of the problem. Perhaps Trevor didn't realize I liked him. I couldn’t blame him for flirting with Theresa if he didn’t think I was interested.

  I opened the magazine and looked at the flirting article again. I went over the bullet points in my mind. Maybe they would work. After all, highly trained professionals who understood the male psyche wrote these sorts of articles.

  Trevor pushed his chair away from the table and went and stood by the Roman and Greek history section.

  Flirting tip number one: Don't stay in a group. A guy may feel like he can't approach you because of your friends.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I stood up and followed him. He didn’t take his eyes off the books in front of him, which made tip number two hard to do: Gaze at him from head to toe, then flash him your brightest smile. I decided to go on to tip three: Smooth a wrinkle from his shirt or playfully tug on a piece of clothing.

  I reached over and smoothed out the material on Trevor’s shoulder, which must have startled him. He jumped about two feet.

  "Sheesh, Alexia. What are you doing?”

  I froze. I couldn’t very well tell him I was flirting with him. "Um . . . you had a bug on your shoulder, a big one. I brushed it off.”

  “Oh.” He looked around on the floor to check if anything was crawling away and took a tentative step backward. “These books have been sitting here so long they probably have spider colonies living in the bindings.”

  Tip number four: Compliment him.

  "Well, your shirt is really nice, so you can't blame the spiders for wanting a closer look.”

  He peered over his shoulder at the back of his shirt. "What? Are there more on me?”

  Why was this not working? I went on to tip five: Make and maintain eye contact. I also flashed him my brightest smile since he hadn't seen it while I did tip number two. "No, of course not. There was only that one bug, and it's gone.”

  He met my gaze, but instead of smiling back, he narrowed his eyes. "Then why are you staring at me?”

  "I'm not staring at you.”

  "You are too.”

  Okay, forget the tips. Tips apparently didn't work with the guys in my school. I held up one hand as though taking an oath. "I don't see any more bugs.”

  It occurred to me in a moment of brilliance that I didn’t need that article. I already knew what sort of flirting Trevor noticed. All I had to do was copy Theresa's body language— and I’d seen her in action for years.

  Theresa has thick blond hair, which she uses to swish lesser mortals into submissi
on. I have seen her hypnotize guys by merely running her fingers through it. She also leans up against lockers in this seductive way with one elbow on the wall and her hand intertwined in her hair, which makes her look like she’s posing for a fashion shoot. Then she half whispers things to whichever guy she's talking to so he has to lean in close to hear her.

  I tossed my hair off my shoulder, which Trevor didn't see because he was examining the shelf in front of him, taking a book off slowly, and turning it in his hands to make sure nothing jumped out at him.

  "So, Trevor ...” I hadn't wanted to bring up the dance out of the blue, but I didn’t know how to segue from bugs to dating and I couldn't prolong this conversation any longer. It was better just to do it and get it over with. "Have you been asked to the Sadie Hawkins?"

  He looked over at me, really seeing me for the first time. His voice sounded hesitant. “No.” Hesitant was bad, but then his voice returned to normal and he shrugged. "Well, not yet."

  I put one hand on the bookshelf, leaning against it. I couldn’t duplicate Theresa's one-elbow pose, but at least I could borrow some of her nonchalance. "Do you want to go with me?”

  As it turns out, you shouldn't lean seductively against bookcases. Half a dozen books pushed through and went flying off the shelf into the next aisle. Somebody called out, "Hey, watch it!”

  "Sorry,” I called back.

  I hoped I hadn't hurt whoever was on the other side of the bookcase—which would have been my luck: I'd go down in history as the first girl from Morgantown High who induced casualties while flirting.

  I turned back to Trevor, but he seemed more interested in the hole I'd created on the shelf than in answering my question. 1 peered through it to see what he was looking at.

  Two guys stood with their backs to the bookcase. No one seemed to be hurt. They were already ignoring the books on the floor. Next to them was Hector.

  I recognized Rob Wells’s voice when he spoke. He was one of the popular guys and didn’t usually talk to people as far out of his realm as Hector was. "The thing about American girls,” Rob said, "is they expect you to be forward. You should stand really close and touch them when you want to get their attention.”

  "Yeah," Jeff Savage said. He was Theresa's ex-boyfriend and the fullback on the football team. “Call them five or six times a night to show them you want to be friends."

  "Stop by their house unexpectedly a lot,” Rob said. "And if a girl calls you a stalker, that means she likes you.”

  Suddenly this explained a lot about Hector's odd behavior.

  I didn't really think about what I did next. As hard as I could, I shoved more books forward. They slammed into the guys with a terrific thud.

  I leaned forward onto the now mostly empty shelf. "Did those hit you? I’m so sorry I get accident-prone when I hear guys telling random people to stalk me.”

  Rob and Jeff laughed and took off. Hector followed after them, blushing. The librarian came up behind me, her voice a mixture of alarm and anger. “What happened here?”

  "Accident,” I said. "I think this shelf is unstable."

  The librarian was not nearly as gullible as Hector. Not only did I have to pick up the books, I had to go see Mrs. Callahan, the principal. She lectured me about respect for school property, and then gave me after-school detention.

  "You’re one of the best students in this school,” she told me. "I expect more out of you."

  That stung.

  I missed the rest of world history, so I went to my locker, got my homework, and brooded all through detention. I kept wondering what Trevor would have said to me if I hadn't emptied the bookcase. He'd left the scene of the crime as soon as the librarian had come over to yell at me. Had I ruined my chances with him? I wasn't even sure whether he'd heard the things Rob and Jeff said to Hector. In which case, I’d looked completely psychotic asking him to the dance and then pushing a row of books off the shelf. He probably thought our date would consist of me checking in with my invisible friends and telling him about my past life as a unicorn.

  What I didn't worry about was Theresa's reaction to my asking Trevor. Which, looking back, is what I should have thought about.

  News travels fast by text.

  I don’t know exactly when Theresa got a hold of that picture the yearbook staff had taken of me—the one where I stood by the Morgantown High School sign, posing with Lori in our National Honor Society T-shirts. But it wouldn’t surprise me if it had been while I sat in detention.

  In the photo, I held up a calculus book while Lori wielded a calculator with more buttons than a computer keyboard. Both of us were trying to look ditzy. Visual irony. It’s geek humor.

  Theresa cropped out Lori and put the picture of me on her blog with lots of brilliant commentary. My favorite was: Any idiot can hold a calculuss book—and here's the proof!!!!!!!!!! Of course, it might have been more effective if she'd spelled calculus right. Or if she’d used fewer exclamation marks. Really, all of them lined up like that just gave the reader the impression they were about to do the punctuation version of a Rockettes-like dance number.

  But I can't blame Theresa for what happened after that. Not even I imagined the photo would go viral or how it would change my life.