PUBLISHED BY:
Ria Goff on Smashwords
Mirror, Mirror
Copyright © 2009 by Ria Goff
How long had it been since they'd come in and told her? 6 hours? 6 days? She rolled her watch over on her aching wrist and glanced at the time and sighed out loud. It had only been 13 minutes since they had come in their white lab coats and their cloud of bad news and negative feelings.
Allison was dead. No matter what else she learned today, where she went or what she did, she would be unable to change this one simple fact. Her sister was dead. How had this happened? She had asked the doctors to explain it over and over but they had no answers for her. Her heart had stopped, it was this simple. Mitch and the kids waited for her to call home now to tell them how their sister in law and aunt was feeling. Was she alright?
No. She was gone forever. She stood now and paced to the window and stared outside but her eyes saw nothing. When the door behind her snapped open and the nurse stepped in she did not turn around. Just kept staring through her unseeing eyes out at nothingness.
“Ms. Tate?” She heard her saying, it sounded so very far away to her ears. She turned slowly, tears dancing in the corners of her eyes while she tried to swollen around a lump in her throat the size of a Buick.
“Yes?”
“You can see her now.”
See her now? Why in the world would she want to see her dead twin sister? Wouldn't this be a bit like looking down into her own face sometime in the future? Wouldn't it?
“Sure.” She answered and with numb fingers she bent to pick up her coat. It took two tries to actually get a grip on it, then straightening she followed the nurse down the hall and into the elevator. They went down 3 floors to the morgue. How quickly they had moved her body. Was she even cold yet? She shuddered as she asked herself this question. They paused outside a door and the nurse held up a finger for 1 minute and disappeared inside. The sound of a saw could be heard, clearly and her stomach turned as she turned desperately around to find somewhere to be sick. With no other choice she ducked into an unmarked room to her right and threw up in the sink. She heard the door in the hall reopen and the nurses confused huh? Before she pulled the door open and stepped back out into the hall. The saw had stopped and its terrible sound was gone.
“I, um, I am sorry.” Cindy Tate heard herself saying and the nurse looked at her in confusion for a moment.
“The saw, well the sound of it. It made me sick.” She pointed apologetically at the unmarked room and the nurse nodded and told her she could go in now. She touched her arm gently before going down the hall to phone a janitor.
Cindy pushes the heavy metal door in and steps into the room. The walls are white, stark white and the cleanest she has even seen. On the far left wall there is a row of metal cabinets, she assumes this is where the bodies are kept. On a metal table, next to a metal sink, below a metal light, next to a man holding a metal hose is her sisters body. He releases the hose and it retracts up and away from him and he does his best to smile at her, to put her at ease. She doesn't shake his extended hand, after all he touches the dead for a living and she is alive, still alive.
“So you are Allison Tates twin sister?” He looks from her sisters face to her own. She nods numbly.
“Pretty big shadow to live in, huh?”
When she stared at him blankly, he continued.
“Her being a supermodel and all.”
“She's dead now, isn't she?” She bit off, swore ripely under her breathe as she turned away from the table a moment to compose herself before turning back to look at Ally.
“You two look a lot a like.” He said as he studied their faces.
“You just said I was her twin sister.” Cindy bit off and wishes for once in her life things could be easy.
“Would you mind leaving me with my sister.” She said softly, her heart breaking through every syllable.
“Oh and junior” She called after him.
“If so much as a whisper of my sisters death is leaked to the press I will tie this hospital up in legal knots so fucking tight you will be lucky to choke down so much as a grape for the rest of your natural born life.”
As he skittered from the room to warn the others about what she had said she leaned in and pressed a kiss to her sisters forehead. She had always envied Ally's sun kissed skin, she had tanned so easily. Now it was a beautiful bronze that made her short platinum hair stand out and really pop. Her eyes had been a deep, rich, chocolatey brown. Her lips a pale pink and perfectly plump. She knew her sister had been five foot eleven inches, the same as her and that her waist had been a size 6. A perfect size 6 that she had easily maintained where as Cindy had had to work her ass off to get back in shape after having twin sons of her own. Bret and Grant where the love of her life beside Mitch. Mitch had actually dated Allison the first time around and when she had decided that she didn't want a life of kids and soccer practices she had simply cast him and his freshly ripped out heart aside. A few months later Mitch had run into Cindy at Chili's where they had casually shared a meal together. They had always been friends, her trial partner through most of law school and had been the one to introduce him to Ally to begin with. She never understood how she could be the twin sister of a supermodel and still feel so plain within her own body. Her hair was longer, yes, and she wasn't a perfect size 6. No, she had to work for her 6 and she did every day with her personal trainer. Truth be told, Cindy had clawed her way up into the law world, stuck it out and had become the first ever female partner of her law firm and had, 4 years later, given it all up for the life her sister had not wanted. She drove Grant and Bret and their dog Biscuit to and from soccer practice and games several times a week and never, ever did it alarm her that she drove a mini van or no longer pranced around the court room ready to take off someones head. She fantasized a little, but who didn't? Maybe when the boys were a bit older she'd go back to practicing law but instead of defending bad guys she'd be the one to help put them away. Maybe make the streets a little safer for her boys.
She looked down at her sisters perfect features and her heart cracked. She fought against the first wave of emotion but the second nearly swept her under. So she picked up her hand and held it in her own, squeezing it gently she found herself sobbing when she found the answer to her question. Her hand was cold.
Three hours later she was sitting downtown in a bar and doing shots to try to ease some of the pain. She never drank. Ever. Perhaps it was the alcohol that began planting seeds in her mind. Or perhaps it was answering her sisters cell phone and being called 'Ally baby' by someone smoothly British and from his picture on the phone, unbelievably cute. He said his name was Kendrick, which she found fitting, and reminded her that if she as done with the ice queen and her family she should head on back to L.A. The west was a bit sadder without her, he'd said. Cindy found herself laughing at hearing herself called the ice queen, it would be just like Allison to see her that way. She heard herself saying..
“Oh shit the shoot.”
“Ally baby, why do you always forget these things? They are your life!” Kendrick had laughed, a rich rolling laugh that had warmed some of the cold in her.
“I'll be there.” She had said and snapped the phone shut. Then she'd gone home, kissed Mitch and told him not to worry. That everything was going to be alright. Little did he know that she was about to blow a whole in their sleepy life the size of Texas. Texas was where they had lived since Mitch had been transferred here. The heat waves and the drawling accents had driven her mad, until she'd become one of them. She'd found the drawl had crept its way in and she couldn't shake it. As she backed her suitcase, explaining that she had to go to L.A. To deal with the loose strings of Ally's life, Mitch had rubbed her back. Been supportive.
And she had hated him for it.
He'd given up their life on them, the life she loved. Down the hall, in their rooms, Bret and Grant were asleep and here in this room beside Mitch she was suffocating. Maybe Allison had been right, maybe she had run cause their had been no other choice for her.
Maybe she had suffocated too.
Maybe now she would never know why Allison chose the life she had. Maybe she'd just have to find out for herself.
The flight to L.A. Had been uneventful. Other than having to remove her shoes three times and having every liquid in her bag opened, sniff tested and replaced a dozen times, it had been easy. She had her sisters bag with her keys, address book, cell phone, debit card and pin cause Ally had never kept those separate and her car keys. Somewhere in the parking lot of LAX was a car that belonged to her sister. She stepped out of the airport and frowned at the sea of cars in lots around her. The L.A. Sun was beating down on her head and she was feeling a bit fatigued after catching the red eye out and staying awake the entire flight thinking about what she would do when she touched down in Los Angles. She had a plan but she didn't know if it would work or if it made her mentally ill to conceive it. She just wanted a taste.
Just a taste of what Allison's life had been like. So after she found her 2010 Jaguar XK convertible in its deep dark black and slipped behind the wheel she had turned the ignition, found the start stop button and fumbled her way out of the parking lot. Pausing before leaving she turned to the GPS unit in the card and said.
“Hair.”
And was greeted by a list of places nearby that did hair and nails with walk in service. Picking one at random off the list she pointed the car in that direction, got on the highway when it said and found herself whooping with joy as the car cut through traffic like melting butter on toast. The thrill of unbridled speed whipped through her as the wind tangled her hair. She found the hairdresser, put the top back up on the car and turned the alarm on. Then she laughed at herself when she realized she had driven a giant loop and was standing in front of the LAX Marriott where she was going to see someone named Norma.
Norma turned out to be more than a person but a whole salon on the lobby level of the Marriott. She had her hair cut just like Ally's. It had taken nearly an hour and a half as her hair was so long for so long. Now as she studied her new haircut in the mirror the man behind her dipped his head to the side and said.
“Wow girl, You almost look like Allison Tate.” He laughed.
“Almost? Really?” She had asked, confused on how she could miss the mark, being her twin and all.
“She is tan, that girl is smoking. You get yourself a tan and you could be almost as hot as she is.”
He walked away laughing as she paid for her haircut and as she left she heard him bitching up a blue streak.
She had almost tipped.
Almost.
It took another hour to find a place that promised her a spray tan that looked real and after standing in the booth and getting sprayed, counting to three and turning to be sprayed again. She was almost convinced that she looked like Allison.
But not quite. Her outfit left a lot to be desired.
After fiddling with the GPS unit again she wound her way through the city and eventually found Allison's apartment. Her apartment was on the 19th floor of a sprawling building that was open and loft like. The only room that had walls was the bathroom and that only had 1 wall to separate it from the kitchen. The floor was black marble, the windows went from ceiling to floor, the kitchen echoed the black marble and the bedroom did as well. Here she found a set of doors that led into a huge walk in closet. There was so much designer clothing in this one closet that Cindy found it hard to breath. Marc by Marc Jacobs bags filled an entire cubby in her California custom closet. She had Vera Wang gowns in their dry cleaning bags hung on the dress rack in the back of the closet. There where shoes by the busload and more printed tee's than she had seen in her life, ever. Skinny jeans, ripped, shredded and pristine all resided side by side. Not knowing what to wear, Cindy slipped out of the closet and looked around the living room for pictures of her sister. She found several on a table behind her leather sofa and picked one up that looked fairly recent. In it her sister wore skinny jeans, ripped of course, high heels and a printed tee. Her accessories where a thick leather watch on her left wrist and a thick leather cuff on her right one. It was her ears that stopped Cindy cold. She had plugs in her ears. Big thick wooden plugs. Could she have those? While being a model? Really?