I Copied My Twin Sister Until She Screamed "I QUIT!" novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Matching Gown
At the company gala Gwendolyn copies her twin's dress, unveiling and CEO badge until Cordelia screams "I quit!" and walks out; Ambrose hands Gwendolyn a sale contract, and a message on Cordelia's phone says to keep Gwendolyn from copying anything for seven days.
The first thing I copied at my sister's gala was her dress, and I had paid $1,860 to be sure of it.
Cordelia had bought hers on Tuesday morning, in black.
I bought mine on Tuesday afternoon, from the same shop, in the only color left.
It was red.
That is my rule, and I have kept it since we were nine.
Whatever Cordelia gets, I get the same thing, the same day, for the same price.
When she broke her left leg that spring, I climbed out of the second-floor window and broke my right.
Nobody had to explain it to me. It was the only way we'd match.
At 6:58, in the ballroom of the Larimer Grand, my phone buzzed.
Cordelia, from across the room: "Wear whatever you want tonight. Copy anything you like. I mean it."
I looked up.
She was standing under the chandelier in her black gown, three hundred guests around her, smiling at me.
It was the smile she uses on the bank.
"She said I could," I told the waiter.
"Ma'am?"
"Never mind."
Tiernan O'Malley handed me a glass of champagne before I could take one off the tray.
No ice, the way I like it.
He was supposed to be marrying my sister. He had a tuxedo on and an apologetic look, and he hadn't asked me which twin I was.
Everyone else had asked.
The board members had asked, and so had the caterer and a man who said he had known us since birth.
Tiernan just said, "Gwendolyn," and moved on to the shrimp.
At eight, Cordelia took the stage.
She was the CEO of Harcastle Gems now, our grandfather's company, and she had been running it for a year.
I had spent the rehearsal at the back of the room, memorizing her speech.
She said "eighty years" and I said it with her, silently, with my mouth.
She said "Larch Creek," pointing to the glass case on the stage.
I pointed at it too, from table nine.
Inside the case sat the Larch Creek Star, sixty-one carats, the biggest diamond our family mine had ever produced.
It had cost our grandfather four years of his life.
"And now," Cordelia said, "my sister and I would like you to see what the future of this family looks like."
She lifted the cover.
The room gasped.
At the same time, I lifted the silver dome from the cake stand in front of me.
Under it was the Larch Creek Star, sixty-one carats, in cubic zirconia, which had cost me $310 and a very unhappy jeweler.
Table nine took out its phones.
Half the ballroom photographed the real one and half photographed mine.
The woman next to me whispered, "Which one is she?"
"The one with the real one," I said.
Cordelia was looking at me across three hundred heads.
She did not move.
Then she reached up and unclipped her CEO badge from her gown, to hold it up for the board.
I reached into my clutch and took out mine.
It said GWENDOLYN HARCASTLE, CEO, in the same font, laminated, and I had been carrying it for three days.
I pinned it to my dress.
A board member at table six leaned over and asked, a little loudly, whether the company now had two chief executives.
"It could," said our great-uncle Ambrose.
He was the board chair, sixty-six years old, in a navy three-piece suit, and he was smiling.
That was when Cordelia screamed.
I had never heard her do it, not once, not even with the leg.
"I QUIT!"
The microphone made it enormous.
"I QUIT! Do you hear me? I quit! I can't turn around and find myself standing there!"
She ripped the badge off its clip and threw it.
It landed in the top glass of the champagne tower.
The tower held for a second.
Then it came down, all six tiers, and three hundred guests stepped back from the splash.
Cordelia walked off the stage and down the center aisle.
At my table, she stopped.
She put her phone in my open hand and left without a word.
The doors closed behind her.
I stood in the wet, shining silence, wearing the same dress in the wrong color.
I was holding two phones.
Ambrose reached my table first.
He was still smiling, and he'd brought a folder.
"Gwendolyn, dear. Someone has to be in charge by morning," he said.
He opened it to a contract with Thorsby Resources printed across the top, and a gold pen laid across the signature line.
"Your sister refused to sign this for four months. Sell them Larch Creek, and the company, and we'll say tonight was a misunderstanding."
I looked at the pen.
I looked at the tower of broken glass, and at the badge floating in the bottom of it.
So I fished it out and dried it on my red dress.
"Cordelia didn't sign it," I said. "So I'm not signing it."
Ambrose's smile stayed exactly where it was.
"Then you have seven days, dear, and then the board decides."
He walked away, and in my left hand Cordelia's phone lit up.
A message from someone saved only as H.
*She's out. Good. Whatever it costs, don't let Gwendolyn copy anything for seven days.*
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