Beautiful Lies

by Jessica Warman

  With sudden clarity, I realize that whoever padlocked the door is at least one step ahead of me, maybe more. I’ve made a terrible mistake.

  The house seems to breathe as I take a few unsteady steps backward. The walls appear to tilt inward, like they might fold down upon me. There are noises everywhere: in the ceiling, the floors, outside and upstairs and beneath me. What the hell am I doing here? What if I’m not alone?

  My fingers and toes are numb with panic. I’m afraid my knees will buckle as I start to run upstairs, frantic to get out of the house, but somehow I manage to make it all the way onto the street and into my car.

  I lock all the doors and fumble with my key, forcing it into the ignition, pressing my foot so hard against the gas pedal that my tires squeal when I pull away from the curb. I’m almost to the highway when I realize that I left the front door to the house hanging open with my key in the lock.

  I don’t think about where I’m going as I speed away from Pennsylvania Avenue; it’s like my hands steer the wheel automatically, my subconscious somehow directing me to a place where I might feel safe. Eventually I calm down enough to realize where I’m headed. I don’t know where else to go, not right now. If anyone can help me at all, maybe it’s Robin.

  His home—it’s actually half a duplex—is in a section of Greensburg known as Friendship. Nestled in between the railroad tracks and a patch of undeveloped land, the area is not the cheerful place that its name suggests. The streets are nearly deserted this early on a Sunday morning, and what little activity there is makes me even more uneasy than I was to begin with. The neighborhood is supposedly working on improving its image, but it’s not quite there yet. At the bus stop next to a supermarket, a homeless man sleeps soundly, his body only partway covered by a child’s filthy comforter embroidered with a scene from Winnie the Pooh. Farther down the street, just before I make a left onto Willow Circle, there’s a block of commercial buildings, each entrance protected by metal gates meant to keep people from smashing the windows. The stores appear rundown and sketchy, offering services like paycheck advances, cash for gold, rental furniture, and used computers starting at $19.99.

  As I come to a stop at the red light before my turn, a lone little girl makes her way down the street. She looks like she can’t be older than nine or ten. She’s pushing a shopping cart filled with small cardboard boxes. Their sides are stamped with the contradiction FRESH FROZEN FRIED FISH.

  I don’t know what prompts me to pull up beside her and open my window. Maybe it’s because I know how it feels to be alone with nobody to help me, faced with a task no child should ever have to take on by herself.

  “Hey. Do you need a ride, sweetie?” I smile at her.

  She stops, looks up and down the empty street, then fixes me with a cool stare and raises a single eyebrow. “I don’t need nothing,” she says. “I’m good.”

  I force a deep breath, discomfort only halfway filling my lungs as the struggle to fully breathe remains persistent. I should leave her alone. I have more important things to do.

  But then she stands up straight and wraps her arms around her skinny body as she shivers, rubbing herself for warmth. I can’t leave her out here alone. I won’t.

  “Where do you need to go with those boxes? You shouldn’t be walking around by yourself.” And I smile again, trying to seem safe and friendly. “It’s okay, really. I just want to help you.”

  She hesitates. Her gaze lingers on the Porsche, so out of place in this neighborhood. “I only gotta go a little bit farther,” she says.

  I shake my head. “That’s okay. I’ll take you.”

  She taps a foot against the pavement. All of a sudden, behind her, an ungated storefront called CHINA TASTE becomes illuminated. When the lights come on, the girl is immediately standing before a backdrop of decadent squalor. Inside the building, its windows big enough that I can see everything within the restaurant, ornate Chinese lamps hang from a stained drop ceiling. Small tables fill the room. An old Asian man shuffles around them. He carries an armful of vases, each one holding a brightly colored flower. He stops at each table to place a vase on the center. His actions are precarious and slow, and when I take a closer look, I see why he’s struggling to do something so simple: he only has one hand. The bottom half of his left arm is completely gone, the empty sleeve flapping uselessly as he works.

  The little girl turns her head to follow my gaze. Her lips curl into an amused grin. “That’s Mr. Lee. He’s called Freaky Lee. Know what he does? Has his wife massage his arm that ain’t there. He says it aches all the time. Even though it’s gone.” She pauses, shades her eyes to peer at the sky, and doesn’t say anything else.

  It’s like I’ve slipped into some other world, where nothing fully makes sense and the most random things seem significant. Why is this little girl telling me about a one-armed man right now? Her comment spooks me, as I think of my sister and our connection, which throbs with such clarity despite her absence. I’m wasting time. I should go.

  Without another word to the girl, I put my window up and drive away, leaving her behind in the cold. After a few blocks, I make the left onto Willow Circle and go down the brick-paved street until I park in front of a small white house. I’m here. Finally.

  His door is unlocked. I don’t bother knocking.

  Robin sits calmly on his orange sofa, smoking an unfiltered cigarette and watching television. He is hunched over with his elbows on his knees, wearing his usual jeans and white shirt. His hair is damp, like he’s just taken a shower.

  Robin stares at me in his doorway. He puts a hand to his mouth, gazing at me with shock and concern. “What the hell happened to you? Are you okay?” He stands up and hurries toward me.

  “What?” I ask, confused, trying not to panic even as a creeping sense of dread spreads through me. What now? I think.

  “Your face.” He’s so close to me that I can feel his breath warming the air between us. When he touches me, I flinch as his fingers brush my right cheek. I cannot stop myself from closing my eyes. I don’t breathe. It is as though I can sense every groove in his fingertips, which are callused and tough from so many hours spent stretching canvas and gripping paintbrushes. There is usually paint in his hair and on his clothing, but not today. Despite his freshly scrubbed appearance, he smells like the turpentine he uses to clean his brushes.

  “What’s wrong with my face?” I ask, my eyes still closed.

  He moves his hands to my shoulders and pivots my body to face a small round mirror hanging on the wall beside the door. “Look.”

  I don’t know whether to scream or cry or both. I have two black eyes.

  As I stare at my reflection, an ache begins to spread across my face. “What happened?” Robin asks again.

  I hesitate. I know exactly what’s going on. But if I’m going to explain it to him right now, I have to start at the beginning.

  “Would you answer me?” he persists. “Who did this to you?”

  I don’t answer. Turning around, I stare past him. Above the sofa, a large painting of a female nude, her form depicted in dark sepia tones, hangs from the wall. The girl’s arms are outstretched, her legs folded into a V-shape and pointing to one side. The details are sketchy enough that, at a glance, a person might not even understand what they were looking at.

  The painting took several hours. It was done in one sitting, on a dreary Thursday morning last spring, when I should have been in school. Instead, I was here. The girl in the painting is me.

  “Robin,” I begin, “nobody hurt me. Not really. That’s why I’m here, though—I need to talk to you. Something bad is happening.” I pause, my thoughts swirling, unsure exactly how to begin, so afraid that he might not believe me. My gaze flickers back and forth between the painting and Robin. Finally, I say, “My sister is gone.”

  He blinks a few times, unimpressed by my declaration. “Your sister?”

  I nod. I am not wearing any makeup. My outfit—jean shorts and a pink polo shirt—is differ
ent from the style I typically wear. I know that most people would mistake me for my sister right now. Robin knows I’m an identical twin, but he’s never even seen my sister. I wait for him to fully recognize me, to show some sign of understanding. I feel hopeful that, if anyone can see the truth, it might be him.

  He looks like he hasn’t been sleeping well. His hazel eyes are bloodshot. The skin around his lips is dry and chapped. “Well … do you know where she might have gone?”

  I ignore the question. I know I have to tell him the truth right now, before we can go any further.

  I don’t know quite how to say it, but I do my best. “Nobody knows who I am,” I whisper.

  He’s confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I said. Nobody knows who I am. Not right now, anyway.” I pause. “But you do. Right?”

  He squints at me. “Of course I know who you are.”

  “Tell me. I want to hear you say it.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me who I am. Tell me my name.”

  He cups my face gently in his hands. He tilts my head upward a little bit and steps closer.

  “Your name is Alice,” he says.

  Despite everything that I’m feeling—all the fear and panic and pain—I cannot help but smile at him. “Yes. I’m Alice.”

  Chapter Six

  I’ve only known Robin for four months, but it feels like so much longer. Sometimes you meet someone and the connection is instant and undeniable. Aside from my sister, Robin is the only other person I feel close to. But we had a fight a couple of weeks ago. Until his phone call last night, I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in thirteen days.

  My aunt and uncle refer to him as my boyfriend, but they’re using the term loosely. Our relationship was never really like that, even though I think we both wanted it to be. But it always seemed impossible. At age twenty-one, Robin is a little too old for me. Even though I’m eighteen and technically an adult, there’s a quality to him that always made it clear to me that he was very much a man. It’s sort of there in the way he carries himself, so self-possessed and poised despite his disheveled appearance. He has a quiet intelligence that can be disarming. I’ve seen him drink for hours without ever appearing tipsy or out of control.

  It’s not just his calm presence, though, that makes him so arresting. He is a mystery. I’ve never met any of his family, and he’s never shown any interest in meeting mine. His face always has a five o’ clock shadow, no matter what time it is. He wears the same uniform pretty much every day: a white T-shirt, baggy jeans, and a beat-up pair of Converse sneakers.

  Like me, he is an artist. His paintings are all huge and intimidating, wild yet deliberate splashes of bright color applied with thick brushstrokes. Maybe I’m biased, but I think they’re some of the most beautiful pieces I’ve ever seen.

  His apartment seems so much cleaner today than I ever remember it being. The whole place smells like disinfectant. In the corner of the room, beside the kitchenette, a metal folding table serves as a breakfast nook. The table used to be constantly covered in pieces of mail, dog-eared books, dirty plates and bowls, and whatever else Robin didn’t feel like putting away. Now the surface is wiped clean, without so much as a stray drinking glass. The kitchenette countertops—made of chipped white-and-gold Formica—are bare except for a lone open container of orange juice. There are fresh vacuum lines on the shaggy beige carpet. I didn’t even know Robin owned a vacuum cleaner.

  “So help me understand,” he says. He presses the back of his hand to his forehead. Even though his hands are clean, there are rusty red-paint stains beneath his fingernails and along his cuticles. “You’re saying that nobody else knows who you really are.” I nod. “Yes.”

  “And who are they mistaking you for?”

  I stare at the carpet. “My sister. Rachel. We went to the fair together last night, and she disappeared. She still isn’t home. And I came here because I needed to ask you face-to-face if you saw her yesterday. But you wouldn’t have known it was her. She looked like me. I mean, she sort of was me.” I falter. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “I think so, yeah,” he says. “You two … switched?”

  “Yes.”

  He shakes his head, like what I’m saying can’t possibly be true. “Alice, come on. Nobody would buy that.”

  I almost laugh out loud. “You’ve never even met Rachel. You’ve never seen the two of us together. We’re identical.”

  “Okay, but still, there must be tiny differences. I’m sure your family—”

  “My family doesn’t know anything. We’ve been doing it for years, and we’ve been getting away with it. Robin, my aunt and uncle think that I’m Rachel. They think that Alice ran off last night, so they aren’t worried. But they should be,” I continue, my voice rising in panic, “because Rachel would never do anything like that. Something’s wrong. I know it is.”

  He presses his lips together in thought. “I assume this has something to do with the bruises on your face?”

  When he says the word—“bruises”—I flinch again. I can feel my eyes growing puffier by the minute. I have no idea how I’m going to hide this from my aunt and uncle; makeup can only do so much. I hesitate. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it will sound crazy. It’s not, though. It’s true.”

  “Alice—”

  “Rachel and I have a connection,” I blurt. “It’s because we’re twins. But it’s not just that, Robin—we’re different than other twins. I’ve told you before. We shared the same gestational space. That isn’t how it normally works.” I stop, watching him, trying to appraise his expression. He can be tough to read.

  “You shared the same gestational space,” he echoes.

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “But isn’t that true for all twins?”

  “No.” When I shake my head, the room goes a little fuzzy, and I begin to feel dizzy. I have to wiggle my toes in my shoes, reassuring myself of the floor beneath my feet in order to remain steady. “During their mother’s pregnancy, normal twins will each have their own amniotic sac and their own placenta. Rachel and I shared them.”

  As he nods, I imagine him visualizing what I’m describing. “Okay,” he says, “but that can’t be so unusual, can it?”

  “Yes,” I say, “it’s unusual. Not unheard of, but rare—only about one percent of all twin pregnancies. And when Rachel and I were born eighteen years ago, medical technology wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is today. At least half of all monochorionic monoamniotic twins didn’t make it.”

  Robin squints at me. There’s a hint of satisfaction in his gaze. “But you two survived. And you’re … perfect.”

  “No, Robin. We aren’t perfect. We’re freaks.”

  “Freaks?” He raises an eyebrow. “You’re being a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

  I shake my head. “Think about it. First of all, we’re genetically identical. That’s not so rare, but monochorionic monoamniotic twins? That’s far less likely. Add to that the fact that both of us survived when we were born almost twenty years ago, and it makes us very lucky, to say the least. But now think about this: even though monochorionic monoamniotic twins are genetically identical, they often look different from each other once they’re born. Because of the complications from sharing one placenta and one amniotic sac, they sometimes develop at different rates in the womb—with one twin taking most of the nutrients from the other. Yet somehow, with almost no medical intervention, Rachel and I look exactly alike. What do you think the chances are, Robin?”

  He studies me for a few seconds before responding. “And you think there’s some sort of … what? A psychic connection between the two of you?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “It’s been that way our entire lives. I can sense her. I can tell when she’s not okay. And sometimes it becomes … physical.”

  “Physical how? What do you mean?”

&nbs
p; I gesture to my face. “I didn’t do this to myself, Robin. Nobody hurt me, either. This happened because somebody is hurting Rachel.”

  Robin looks around the room, almost like he’s expecting a camera crew to jump out from behind a chair and tell him this is all a big joke. Except that it’s not funny.

  “Has this kind of thing ever happened to you before?”

  I nod. “Lots of times. And there have been so many little things too, things that I sense before they happen to her.”

  “Like what?” He pauses, reaching toward me. “Come here.” He takes my hand and tugs me onto the couch. I sit down beside him, let him wrap his arms around me, and rest my head against his chest. Our fight seems so ridiculous now that we’re together again, his body warm and comforting, the pressure from his embrace somehow slowing my panic, absorbing my fear. I’m so grateful that he isn’t laughing or dismissing me entirely. Instead, he’s being kind; he’s listening, trying to understand. He knows me, and he knows I wouldn’t lie to him, especially not about something so serious.

  “When we turned twelve, my aunt and uncle bought us new bikes for our birthdays. Rachel was so excited, way more than I was. It was a really pretty day, and my aunt and uncle told us we could go for a ride right away. The bikes were in our backyard, and before Rachel was even out the door, I knew she shouldn’t go. I didn’t know why, but I was certain something awful was about to happen. But there wasn’t much time for me to do anything, and I was so scared that I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know how else to stop her, so I grabbed one of my aunt’s porcelain figurines from the mantel and I threw it against the wall. That got everyone’s attention real quick. My aunt flipped out. There was glass everywhere, and I guess the figurine—it was shaped like a bird—was some kind of collector’s item, so she started screaming at me, asking what the hell was the matter with me. But I didn’t care, because Rachel didn’t go outside and get on her bike.”

  When Robin speaks, I can hear his smile. “That’s so … so Alice of you.” He holds me closer.