Beautiful Lies Read online

  “What are we doing?” I ask. “Does anybody want something to eat? Alice wants a candy apple.”

  My sister’s gaze shifts past my face. I can tell she’s staring at the rides. “Actually, I want to go on the Ferris wheel. Then I want a candy apple.” She smiles at me like a little kid. “Can we, Rachel?”

  I turn around. Faintly, I think I can hear the gears grinding on the rides. Among all the food smells, there’s a whiff of grease in the air.

  “I don’t want to. It’s so high, Alice. These things fall apart sometimes; I’ve seen it on the news.”

  “She’s right,” Nicholas says. “Some guy forgets to tighten a bolt in the wrong place, and people end up getting killed.”

  “Come on.” Holly nudges him. “It’s the Ferris wheel.” To me, she says, “It’s for kids, Rachel. You’ll be fine.”

  I glance at it again. Heights don’t usually bother me. Tonight, though, the thought of being up in the air makes me uneasy. I don’t know why. “Then come with us.”

  “Okay. We will.” Holly looks from Nicholas to Kimber. “Right?”

  Kimber nods. “Sure.”

  Nicholas shrugs, indifferent. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

  The five of us, led by my sister, hold on to one another’s hands and make a chain as we weave through the crowd together. Even though it’s chilly, the air is crisp and refreshing. Families and kids are out in droves. We pass a few more people we know from school. I see our biology teacher, Mr. Slater, standing alone beside a kettle-corn booth and smoking a cigarette; he doesn’t seem at all concerned that parents and students will see what he’s doing. He looks miserable too, but that’s nothing new for him. I see an elderly woman being pushed along in a wheelchair. She’s had her face painted tonight; her nose and cheeks are colored red and black, like a cat’s. We pass young couples with their hands in one another’s back pockets, and a slew of high-school football players in lettermen jackets who have clearly been boozing it up. Holly almost knocks over a man on stilts as he makes his way through the crowd, a good four feet taller than everyone else, dressed like Uncle Sam.

  And we pass carnies. They’re everywhere, at least one at each booth, all wearing dirty clothes, most of them smoking cigarettes, their eyes gleaming as they call out to whoever’s passing by to come and play, try to win your girl a prize, or to go for a spin on one of the rides.

  When we get to the Ferris wheel, the ride has just come to a stop. The operator is beginning to empty the seats, one swinging bench at a time. The line grows shorter as, two by two, people climb on.

  “I’m so thirsty,” Holly complains. She makes a face like she’s tasted something bad. “Nicholas.” She pouts. “I’m so thirsty, baby.”

  “You want something to drink?” he offers.

  She nods. “Yes, please. Lemonade.”

  My stomach flutters as we get closer to the ride. I stare up at the highest seat, imagining how it will feel to be stopped at the very top, swinging back and forth, helpless, and a twinge of panic ripples through me. I can smell the hot oil that greases the gears, the odor deeply unsettling for some reason. I’m not sure why I’m so afraid—the feeling has come from out of nowhere. All I know is that I don’t want to get on.

  “You need me to buy you some lemonade right now?” Nicholas asks Holly.

  “Yes. Hurry up and you’ll be back before we reach the front of the line.”

  He ducks away, disappearing into the crowd. My friends and I take small steps, getting closer and closer. I feel dizzy with dread. Get a grip, I tell myself. It’s a freaking Ferris wheel.

  But I can’t calm down. I press a hand to my stomach. The air feels much colder all of a sudden. I can hear bits of conversation coming from all around me, but I can’t focus on any of them, not completely.

  “Rachel.” It’s my sister. She’s beaming, cheeks flushed from the cold. “Come on!”

  We’re at the head of the line. She tugs me toward the empty seat. I don’t know how Kimber can even think about riding alone. I’m sweating in the chilly evening, unable to speak, arrested by anxiety. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

  We sit down beside each other, and she rests her head on my shoulder. For the moment, sitting so close that I can hear the rhythm of our breath in sync, I feel a little bit better.

  The ride’s operator approaches us, ready to lower the metal restraining bar across our laps. Nicholas appears behind him, holding an oversize Styrofoam cup.

  “Yay!” Holly claps from her place in line. “Thank you!”

  The operator turns around. “Nope,” he says, shaking his head. “You can’t cut in line, man.”

  “Dude, I just stepped out for a second.” Nicholas’s tone is light, friendly. “Come on. I’m with my girlfriend.”

  “Sorry, kid. Can’t do it. You’ll have to wait for the next one.”

  And before I have a chance to realize what’s happening, my sister slides out of the seat we’re sharing. “You can ride with Holly, Rachel.” She begins to back away, waving with both hands. “I’ll catch up with you after. I want a candy apple!”

  She turns on her heel and rushes away from us. It is such a typical Alice move—restless, impulsive—but I feel like she’s only acting this way because that’s the kind of behavior everyone expects from her. Almost immediately I lose sight of her in the thick crowd.

  Holly climbs into the seat next to me. Nicholas is still standing beside the head of the line. He shrugs at us before stepping away, giving the finger to the ride operator’s back.

  “I guess that worked out,” Holly says, clutching her purse against her chest. Without any warning, she raises her voice and screams “I love you!” at Nicholas.

  The operator leans over us. With one hand, he pulls the metal bar downward, securing it tightly against our laps. “Enjoy your ride.” His voice is flat as his eyes stare into mine. His breath on my face is so sour, so sickening, that I have to look away before I gag.

  Our seat rises into the air. Beneath us, previous riders climb out, replaced by Kimber.

  I search the crowd for my sister, looking everywhere for a glimpse of her red hair, for a sign of the face I recognize so well.

  The wheel turns slowly at first, then begins to speed up. Across the field, the band starts to play. I recognize the music. It’s “Sleep Walk” by Santo & Johnny. It was my parents’ wedding song.

  “Holly.” My voice barely breaks a whisper. The music is too loud, the ride too fast.

  “Whoo!” Holly kicks her feet with glee. Even though it’s fall, she’s wearing open-toed high-heeled sandals, her toenails painted a creamy shade of pink. She raises her arms, making spirit fingers in the air, and I get a whiff of her perfume. The smell turns my stomach again. I could almost throw up.

  “Alice.” My voice is louder, but Holly still doesn’t hear me. She stands up a little in her seat, the metal bar pressing against her thighs, to blow kisses at Nicholas.

  From high above the crowd, I can spot Uncle Sam on his stilts. I can see strands of customers, their bodies woven into ropes of flesh as they line up for food. I can see the candy-apple stand, its neon light glowing red against the crowd. But I don’t see my sister anywhere.

  Long before our births, we shared the same space in our mother’s body. We are what’s known as “monochorionic monoamniotic twins,” which means we are identical twins who grew in the same amniotic sac and shared one placenta. It’s a pretty rare phenomenon; when it does happen, both twins don’t always survive, let alone thrive as we have—especially back when we were born. The chance of our simple existence is a marvel of nature. No matter where I am, no matter where she is, I have always felt her presence from somewhere within myself.

  Until this moment. It is as though the thread connecting us has snapped, like something deep inside me has been severed. She is simply gone.

  Chapter Two

  My friends won’t listen. They don’t understand.

  “Call her phone,” Holly says, sipping he
r lemonade, uninterested in my panic.

  We have to shout just to hear each other. The band is playing a Tom Petty song now; notes of “American Girl” bounce off the crowd that has gathered around the stage. Kids are perched on their parents’ shoulders, up way past their bedtimes, their faces flushed with exhausted glee. Lots of them wear neon glow-in-the-dark necklaces that are being sold for five bucks apiece at a nearby booth. The booth is also offering snow globes with tiny replicas of Greensburg contained inside them. For a moment, I want to grab one, to stare at it until I see my sister somewhere within the miniature world, maybe only walking home early or hanging out with a friend she ran into. Except, like I said, my sister doesn’t really have many friends lately. Maybe she’s by herself, on the outside of the field somewhere, happily eating her apple. Maybe she went to Oktoberfest.

  “Alice doesn’t have a phone,” I tell them.

  Kimber frowns. “Who doesn’t have a phone?”

  “My aunt and uncle took it away.” We live with our aunt Sharon and uncle Jeff. Aunt Sharon was my mom’s twin sister. Twins run in our family; we’ve had three sets in four generations. But my mom and Aunt Sharon didn’t get along; my sister and I had never met our aunt or uncle until they showed up to claim us nine years ago, even though we’d lived less than thirty miles away from them our entire lives.

  My mom and aunt were fraternal, not identical. This fact is an act of mercy on the part of the universe—I cannot imagine how it would feel to be living with a woman who looked exactly like my mother, knowing every moment that it wasn’t truly her.

  “What did she do?” Nicholas asks.

  “What did who do?” I can barely think. I feel a light trembling in my chest, almost no worse than a tickle. I’m wheezing. I never wheeze.

  “What did Alice do to have her phone taken away?”

  “Oh. She … uh … she got drunk.”

  Nicholas frowns. “That’s all? She got drunk, and they took away her phone?”

  “Um … it was worse than that,” I say. The ground feels soft and unsteady beneath my feet. “Alice drank a fifth of my uncle’s coconut rum. Then around three in the morning, she decided to go swimming in our neighbors’ pool.”

  Holly, Nicholas, and Kimber stare at me, expectant. “So? What’s the big deal, then?” Holly asks.

  “She thought they were on vacation. They weren’t.” I take a step backward. My breath quickens. I need air.

  “Rachel. You have to calm down.” Kimber puts a hand on my shoulder. When she smiles, she reveals a slight gap between her top front teeth. “Alice has been gone all of ten minutes. She went to get a candy apple, that’s all.”

  I’m shivering. When I breathe, my chest rattles, the wheeze deep and uncomfortable. “I should look for her. Maybe she went home. I should go.”

  Holly stares at me. “Rachel, you can’t leave. You just got here.”

  I don’t have asthma, but it’s getting more and more difficult to catch my breath. “Can I have one of those pills?”

  Holly and Nicholas exchange a momentary glance. But Holly says, “Sure, Rach,” and rifles through her purse to find the bottle.

  “One doesn’t do much,” she tells me, shaking a few into my palm. “I always take three or four. You’re taller than me. You should take four.” She pauses. “Maybe five.”

  “You’ll kill her, Holly.” Kimber pushes the bottle away from my hand. “How many does your brother take?”

  “My brother,” Holly pronounces, “is seven years old. He’s fifty pounds. He takes one.”

  There are four pills in my hand. Without giving it much thought, I pop them all into my mouth. I take a long drink from Holly’s lemonade to wash them down.

  “I’m going home,” I tell them. “Alice isn’t here.”

  The crowd applauds as the band finishes playing “American Girl” and launches into “Honey Bee.” As I start to walk away, Kimber grabs me by the arm. She doesn’t let go until I turn to face her.

  “What?” My breathing is labored. I can still smell the grease from the rides. The odor is so strong that it feels like it’s burning the insides of my nostrils.

  “We’ll keep looking for her,” she says. She has kind eyes, a sincere face. “We’ll call you as soon as we find her, then you can come back.”

  “Okay.”

  She gives me a hug. Beneath her thin cheerleading sweater, I can feel the outlines of deep scars on her back. I bet they still hurt sometimes.

  I push my way through the crowd, looking around for my sister, trying to ignore the certainty that she isn’t here. Where else would she go? Aside from the Yellow Moon—which is a long walk, all the way across town—the only possibility I can think of is that she ran into Robin somewhere, but Robin has been gone for almost two weeks. Besides, she would have told me if she’d seen him around. And she wouldn’t have snuck off with him regardless. She must be here somewhere. I can’t imagine that she would have left without telling me.

  The crowd begins to thin around the arts-and-crafts booths. Eager-looking women stand behind tables full of things like handmade stone jewelry, personalized calligraphy, and needlepoint. At one booth, there’s an old man sitting in a wooden folding chair, using a pocketknife to carve something very small. There’s an almost empty basket of peaches beside him.

  I don’t know why, but I stop. I watch him work for a few seconds. Maybe I pause because it’s still so difficult to breathe; I have to calm down before I go up the hill behind the park, toward the jogging path that will take me home.

  “Would you like a peach?” We’re far enough from the stage that I can hear his raspy voice pretty well.

  “A peach?” I echo. My stomach lurches at the thought of food. “No, thank you.”

  When I look down at the table between us, I almost gasp. There, laid out in neat rows on a plain white cloth, are dozens of tiny monkeys clinging to bowed trees, their deep-set eyes so visibly rendered that they almost seem to have expressions. They’re carved from individual peach pits, each one no bigger than a sparrow’s egg.

  “What’s the matter?” the man asks. “Don’t like peaches no more?”

  I blink at him. “What did you say?”

  “You were just here, weren’t you? You liked them fine.”

  He saw her. She’s wearing more makeup than me, sure, and different clothes, but he remembers her face. He thinks it was me.

  “When was I here?” Without any warning, there is a sharp pain in my chest. My knees buckle a little bit. The sensation feels like fire. I have to hold on to the table just to stay upright. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It can’t be the pills; I only took them a few minutes ago. Besides, the feeling is more than just physical—my adrenaline is pumping, my stomach turning—it’s like my panic is manifesting into pain, the sensations urging me to go somewhere, to do something, to find my sister. Except I don’t know where to look.

  “Hey. You doing okay?” He holds the pit he’s been working on, squints at it. There’s almost no light around us. I don’t know how he can see what he’s doing.

  “You saw my sister.” I breathe. “We’re twins. Did she say something to you? Was she with anyone?”

  He shakes his head. “Twins. Huh. No, she didn’t say much. Wanted to buy a monkey.”

  I lean against the table hard, trying not to show the pain I’m in. “Did you sell her one?”

  “Nope.” He stands up and begins to walk toward me. He’s short and wiry, with a full head of white hair. He leans closer, so that our heads are only a few inches apart.

  “I’ll tell you something,” he says, like he’s sharing a secret. “I ain’t in this for the cash flow.” And he holds out the monkey he’s just finished carving. “I gave her one.”

  He turns my palm upright and places the monkey in my hand. “Now you got one too.” When I close my fist around it, the pit feels warm and damp.

  “You look sick,” he tells me. “You ought to get away from the crowd, honey.”

  The
pain in my chest has subsided slightly, enough for me to walk.

  “I will.” I nod at the fist that holds the monkey. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. Pretty girls deserve pretty things.” He winks.

  The old man’s booth is close to the hill behind the field, where the jogging path begins. I don’t know where else to look, so I head toward the path, hoping I’ll find my sister as she’s walking home.

  After about a quarter mile, I make a left onto the street and head up another hill, toward my house.

  It’s only a little past nine. All the lights are still on at home, illuminating the rooms behind the windows. Except for the third floor, where she and I sleep.

  As I’m standing on the front porch, I can see my aunt and uncle sitting on the sofa, facing the television. They don’t know I’m out here. For a minute, all I do is watch them. My aunt looks sort of like a shadow of my mother; her features are similar, but somehow they seem less deliberately shaped. Like my mom, she’s tall and has a slightly bumpy nose. Not big bumpy, more like uniquely pretty. They have the same skin tone, pale and lightly freckled. But that’s where the similarities end. My mom was a redhead, while my aunt is a blonde. My mom was spontaneous and fun and goofy, while my aunt is serious and thoughtful all the time. In the nine years that we’ve lived with her, I don’t know that we’ve ever seen her giggle. She doesn’t talk about her sister too much, and we’ve never discussed why they hadn’t talked in over ten years before our parents died. But I’ve gotten plenty of information from my grandma, who is always happy to share our family’s secrets.

  See, my mom believed she was different from other people. She thought she had a gift, that she was able to sense things other people couldn’t. My grandma believes that she has one too—like it’s hereditary or something. But nobody would ever think that sort of thing about my aunt Sharon. My aunt is just … normal. There’s nothing special about her. And she swears up and down that my mom and grandma are—or were—far less gifted and more mentally unstable.

  My uncle Jeff is okay—he’s not nearly as unpleasant as my aunt—but he’s also not particularly interesting. When he’s not at work, he goes running on the path almost every morning and spends pretty much all his free time reading things like the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. He’s a consultant. I’ve been living with him for years, and I’m still not sure exactly what a consultant does.