Positively Beautiful by Mills Wendy

Author:Mills, Wendy [Mills, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-03-05T08:00:00+00:00

“I called in a fire down the road, but I don’t think it’ll keep them occupied for long.” He glances in the rearview mirror. He is big and male and it’s hard not to notice that.

“What fire?” I fumble for my seat belt because he’s accelerating like Mario Andretti. But he gets to fifty-five and stays there.

“I called 911 and said there was a small brush fire just north of the gas station, figuring those cops would respond,” he says. “Hopefully it gave us enough time. Are you okay?” He glances at me.

“How did you know? How did you know those cops were looking for me?”

He hesitates. “Your mom called my house this morning. Looking for Ashley. She looked at your cell phone records so they know you’ve been texting … her.”

Something about the way he says this makes me look at him sharply.

“And what did Ashley say?” I ask.

“She said she hadn’t heard from you since early this morning before you soloed and she didn’t know where you were. They found the plane a couple hours ago, so now they know you’re around here somewhere. They’re calling you a ‘troubled teen.’ ”

I keep looking at him, not even caring right then about the whole “troubled teen” thing.

“How old are you?” I ask.

He hesitates. “Eighteen.”

“And you and Ashley are what? Twins? She never mentioned a twin brother. Or a brother at all for that matter.”

He doesn’t say anything.

It all makes a horrible kind of sense. The fact he has Ashley’s phone, the strange hesitations, the feeling of familiarity …

“You’re her, aren’t you?” I whisper. “You’re Ashley!”

He won’t look at me. Then, “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would go this far. I wanted to tell you, but it never seemed like the right time.”

“What, are you some sort of online predator or something? Why were you pretending to be a girl?” I don’t know whether to be scared or angry. I put my hand on the door handle, but we’re going too fast for me to jump out.

“It wasn’t like that!” He looks at me, his eyes earnest. “I didn’t mean to do it. When I joined that BRCA forum, I was thinking of my little sister, Ashley. I knew Mom was going to tell her about the gene when she turned eighteen next year, and I was wondering what it was like to be a girl and know you might have the bad gene and have to make all those decisions about what to do. So when I signed up, I used the screen name Ashley, because her name was the first thing that came to mind.”

I remembered my own screen name: Thissucks.

“When you posted, it was the first time I’d seen anything from someone our age. When I e-mailed you, it didn’t occur to me that you would think I was a girl. Not until too late. And then you were telling me … stuff …”

“Oh my God!” I shriek, remembering some of the things I told Ashley.

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