My Double Life (10 page)

Unfortunately she already did. The light changed, and we moved forward. I asked, “So what did you want to do to have fun?”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “We could go find some drunk guys—just show up and start talking to them. They’d think they lost their minds seeing two Kari Kingsleys in front of them.”

I laughed, but shook my head. “No. We’re not going to torment drunks.”

She thought for another moment. “You speak Spanish. We could fly to a small South American country where no one knows who I am and be tourists.”

“Kari, you have a huge following in South America. You’ve sold a million CDs in Argentina alone.”

“Really?” She glanced over at me. “How do you know that?”

“Maren makes me memorize those kinds of facts because I’m supposed to know everything you know.”

“Oh. Then it’s ironic I didn’t know that.” She let out an amused laugh, but I didn’t join in. Long hours of being quizzed on Kari trivia will suck the humor right out of you. She tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel. “What do you usually do for fun?”

“I used to hang out at the mall or see a movie with my friends. Sometimes we’d go to a school game and then go to Dairy Queen.” It sounded low class, but I’d been trapped in dance studios and fitness rooms for too long. I missed my old life more than I thought I would.

“I can’t do any of that stuff,” Kari said. “I’d be trampled by fans.” She said this wistfully, as though she’d like to be anonymous for a while.

I stopped being jealous of her right then—well, a little bit anyway. What must it be like to not be able to hang out in public places?

“Let’s go horseback riding,” she said. “I’ve got some great horses, and the stable is really good about working with celebrities. I call them up and tell them I’m coming with a guest, and they get everything ready for me. No questions, no leaks to the paparazzi.”

I perked up in my seat. “Horseback riding sounds way better than hunting down drunk guys or fleeing from fans in South America.”

We drove to the stable where two of Kari’s horses were boarded. As we went through the private entrance, Kari told me that she actually had three horses. Her third, a gelding named Chance, lived at her dad’s ranch in Hidden Valley. Chance had been a gift from him to Kari when she turned twelve years old. And—unbelievably—he was tawny brown.

When she told me this, I snapped right back into jealous mode and came close to doing something psychotic like kicking a random bale of hay and yelling, “I can’t believe he gave you my horse! You got a dad at your birthday and a horse!” But I didn’t. Chalk one up for self-control.

I climbed onto this huge black horse and hoped he was gentler than he looked. Kari gave me a crash course in riding and then we followed a trail into the nearby hills. Wearing helmets and sunglasses, and with our hair pulled back into ponytails, we weren’t recognizable. We might have been any two sisters out for a ride.

Kari talked about her album and its frustrations. She didn’t want the studio to Auto-Tune her because if her fans were used to hearing songs that were perfected digitally, then her live performances would always suffer by comparison. She’d have to lip-synch them just to sound right. She also said a bunch of stuff about stylization in lieu of enunciation, and vibrato, and other stuff I didn’t understand. The girl might not have known when Saint Patrick’s Day was, but she knew a ton about music.

Finally Kari said, “Sorry for dumping that on you. I was supposed to let you ask questions about the music business and stuff. So what do you want to know?”

I had a lot of questions, but none of them were about the music business. Even though Kari had said it was hard to grow up with a father everybody loved and thought was perfect, I had a hard time convincing myself that those were bad things. Unless it was all image and no truth. “What was it like growing up with Alex Kingsley as your father?”

Kari held the reins loosely, her posture casual enough that I could tell she was comfortable on a horse. “He stayed pretty busy with recording and touring. I traveled with him a lot when I was little, so I pretty much grew up on tour buses. I didn’t know any differently—I thought every kid had an entire band sing them to sleep at night.”

This still didn’t tell me what type of person he was, so I tried again. “Did he help you with your homework and teach you to ride a bike and stuff?”

Kari cocked her head at me. “Maren told you to ask that question, didn’t she? She wants me to feel guilty so I’ll call and make up with him. Well, I’m not doing it, so tell her to forget it.” Kari snapped her reins and her horse picked up speed, but she still spoke loud enough over her shoulder for me to hear. “Remind Maren that he also volunteered to play at my prom so he could keep an eye on me—thus ruining prom night and embarrassing me in front of my friends.” She sent me a pointed look. “Also, the last time I asked him for a loan, he said that he wasn’t a bank. My own dad. So I’m not calling him. I’m not seeing him.”

I urged my horse to go faster in order to catch up with her, too absorbed with what she said to worry about getting jostled in the saddle. I could see her point about prom night, but still, he seemed really nice. I tucked that knowledge away with both the pain and the pleasure it brought me.

“We don’t have to talk about your dad if you don’t want to,” I said when I rode by her side again. “We’ll talk about you.” I should ask something normal, like how she decided which fans to give autographs to when a line of them were waving pens at her, or what she did when she was waiting to go onstage, but I kept wondering how she would react when she found out I was her sister. Would she be excited, or would she see me as an encroacher? Maybe she’d hate me. “Did you mind being an only child?” I asked. “Did you ever want a brother or a sister?”

She turned to me, surprised, and laughed.

“What?” I said, afraid she’d somehow guessed my reasons for asking.

“It’s just a weird question. No one has ever asked that before. But sure, I guess when I was little, I wanted somebody to play with. As I got older, I realized brothers and sisters are a pain, though, and who wants that?” Her gaze returned to me. “Admit it, I bet there’ve been times you wished you were an only child.”

“I
am
an only child,” I said, and then wondered if I should have said it. It wasn’t quite true.

“Really?” She let out a huff of disbelief. “It’s wild how much we have in common.”

Which was the understatement of the year.

“Do you sing?” she asked.

“I’ve done some musicals at school.”

“Have you ever had a boyfriend named Michael?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Stay away from those. They’re nothing but trouble.”

I laughed, and she went on asking questions about my life, looking for more similarities. They weren’t hard to find. We both loved swimming, and hated jogging. We loved comedies and romances, hated horror movies, sad endings, or anything where the dog dies. Loved hot chocolate—really, anything that was chocolate—but hated the taste of coffee. It made me wonder how much of a role genetics plays in everything. I also wondered if our places had been switched if I would have ended up with her personality and she would have ended up with mine. Maybe she would have been the one in the National Honor Society and I would have been on YouTube insisting that animals were people too.

With every question she asked, with every exclamation of something like, “I love Chinese food too!” I almost expected her to figure the truth out for herself. We looked so much alike, and she already knew that my mother had been an Alex Kingsley fan.

She didn’t guess, though, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. Not before I had a chance to meet with Alex Kingsley himself. Besides, while only I knew the secret, I felt powerful. I could watch Kari and learn stuff about my father—and neither could hurt me. Not really. Once they knew, the power would be in their hands. I wasn’t sure which reaction I feared most—outright distaste or frozen, horrified silence.

Finally, when she ran out of questions, I said, “Well, there is still one big difference between us. We both grew up only children, but I always wanted a sister.”

I hoped she remembered that when she found out the truth.

After two and a half weeks of dancing, learning to glide in high heels, and memorizing Kari facts with more fervency than I’d studied for the SAT, Maren decided I was ready for my first real event. I was going to a club opening. Kari had been invited by the owner—was actually getting paid to show up there opening night—but since the owner had never met Kari, Maren thought it was the perfect place to test me out before I started the mall openings/rodeo concerts /parades she had lined up.

Kari was only grudgingly letting me go, as she liked clubbing, but Maren didn’t want her to go anywhere until she finished her work in the studio.

Maren set up a date for me with a male model named Stefano so I wouldn’t show up alone. Going to a club without a date was something Kari would never do, even though she still sort of considered Michael her boyfriend. In her words, “We’re taking a break, not breaking up.”

On the appointed night, Kari left her entourage and came over to Maren’s house to check out my hair, outfit, and glitterfication. Not only did I have sparkly body lotion and crystals in my manicure and pedicure, I had half a bottle of gold glitter sprinkled and then sprayed into place in my hair.

Kari had an arrangement with Lorenzo Rafael, one of the Hollywood elite fashion designers, to wear his outfits to openings, premieres, and award ceremonies. He even paid her two hundred thousand dollars a year for doing it. It was pure advertising for his label.

I thought this was an extremely sweet deal for her, until Maren handed me the dress I had to put on. Imagine a tan fake-leather top and matching miniskirt, with dark tan strips of fake leather hanging from the skirt—a pseudo Roman soldier look.

“You’re kidding,” I told Kari when she handed it to me.

Maren said, “Lorenzo Rafael likes to make a statement with his clothes.”

“Yes,” I said, “and that statement is: Bring out the gladiators.”

Kari looked at me and sighed. “I don’t know why you’re complaining. I’m the one who’s going to be trashed in the entertainment magazines for having no taste.” Her gaze ran over the dress again. “I’ll be snickered at by other celebrities and openly mocked on
Entertainment Tonight.
Fashion isn’t a competition, you know. It’s a blood sport.”

“Can’t you tell Lorenzo that you don’t like this outfit?”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to tick him off. He’s making me a hand-sewn silk gown for the Grammys. It’s going to have five pounds of beads on it.”

Great. She got to wear silk, and I got to wear Xena: Warrior Princess.

After I dressed, Kari fussed over my hair and makeup, giving me club etiquette tips. She slipped lip gloss, my cell phone, and mints into a small over-the-shoulder purse that Lorenzo had made to match my outfit. I would not only look like a gladiator, I would look like a gladiator with a purse. Kari handed it to me with a proud smile. “It’s like you’re my little sister and you’re going to the prom.”

I nearly dropped the purse. I couldn’t look at her, afraid she would see the truth in my eyes. When I did return my gaze to her, she studied my features so intently my heart pounded against my chest. I waited for her to make the connection. Instead she dragged me in front of the bathroom mirror, and we stood side by side comparing our r eflections.

“You look just like me—except for your nose.” She turned to Maren, who stood in the doorway watching us. “I like Alexia’s nose better than mine. What do you think? Should I get work done on mine?”

Maren said, “You need to finish your album before you do anything so drastic. How is the latest song going anyway? Did you get the feel you wanted?”

Kari walked out of the bathroom to the living room. She sank down into the love seat, somehow still managing to look ultrafeminine, even though she’d sprawled herself over the cushions. “I’m spending time relaxing so I can fill myself with creative energy before I start on it again.”

Maren walked over until she stood directly in front of Kari. “Before you start again? You were supposed to be done with it by now.”

“You can’t rush your muse. They don’t punch time clocks.”

I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes after nine. My driver, a middle-aged guy named Bao-Zhi would be here soon with my bodyguard and Stefano. I wasn’t sure what country Bao-Zhi came from. I’d only talked to him briefly before—briefly because he didn’t speak much English. Mostly he just smiled, nodded, and checked his GPS. I think that was part of Maren’s plan to keep my identity a secret. My staff was completely made up of foreigners. That way, there was less chance of them figuring out who I was, or leaking anything about me to the press. At any rate, it was almost time to leave. “Any last words of advice?” I asked.