The Lie That Traps (Lies and Truths Book 1)

1. Izabella

IZABELLA

You can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear. You can tell even more about them when their shoes are the only kind of self-expression they’re allowed to have. Green Acres Academy has a strict dress code. Green-plaid skirts or pinafores, white blouses, green ties, and blazers for the girls. Tan chinos, white shirts, green ties, and green blazers for the boys. Everybody looks the same, except for their shoes.

I see a lot of shoes in the halls of this school. I see the popular girls who strut between classes like the hallways are a catwalk and the sleepy guys who drag their feet as they saunter from one period to the next. I see it all, because I’m the only person looking down when everyone around me is looking forward.

You’d think traversing busy hallways that are full of students would be almost impossible with my head down and my gaze pinned firmly on my feet. But I’ve done it for so long that I could move around GAA with my eyes closed and never bump into anything.

Looking down is my camouflage, it’s the way I stay hidden in plain sight. Looking down at the ground and all those shoes makes me invisible and that’s what I need to be, because if no one sees me, then I don’t have to see them either.

On TV and in movies, people always talk about high school being the best years of your life, and maybe for some people it is, but not for me. I’m a senior, and instead of the last three-and-a-half years being my glory days, they’ve simply been a lesson in survival. I’ve learned how to stay hidden; I’ve learned how to be invisible, and I’ve learned that if you try hard enough, you can simply fail to exist.

Green Acres Academy is the crème de la crème of prep schools. The world is full of rich people, and most of them want their kids to come here, but no matter how much money they have, the majority of them won’t get in. GAA has about three hundred students, and the vast majority will be from families who have attended this school since its inception.

Occasionally the school allows one or two scholarship kids or a townie who can afford to pay the fees to attend, but for the most part, the students all hail from the same group of high society families.

Most of my graduating class have known each other their entire lives. Which is why I spend most of my time staring down at the floor. I need to stay invisible, because all of my problems start when people see my face.

My cell beeps with a text message, and for a moment I pretend I don’t hear it. There’s only one person at this school who has my number, and they’re the only person I really don’t want to hear from.

Sighing, I shuffle to the side of the hallway and step between two banks of lockers. Keeping my gaze lowered and using my hair as a shield, I reluctantly pull my cell from my blazer pocket. My cell is old—so old that apart from calls and texts, its only other feature is a game called Snake. The screen is black and white, it only has one very 80s computer font, and it doesn’t even have a camera, but it works and does everything that I need it to do, and I love it.

Using the buttons, I scroll through the menu until I reach the little pixelated envelope that will take me to my text messages. The other kids at this school love texts and Snapchats and whatever the fuck else they get on their cell phones, but even without reading the contents of the message, I know it’s nothing good.

Closing my eyes, I inhale deeply and seriously consider just ignoring it. My cell’s so outdated that no one would know if I’d read the message or not. I could just pretend that my battery died or that a teacher thought I’d stolen an antique cell phone and confiscated it.

For a long, rebellious moment, I actually think about doing it, about ignoring whatever demand is in this text. But then a seed of doubt starts to grow in my stomach. What if it’s something important? Or what if it’s not what I think it is?

Exhaling, I stop trying to pretend that I have a choice and open the message.

Penelope – Second floor bathroom, now!

A bitter scoff falls from my lips. Every time I get a message like this from her, I wonder why I’m still surprised. It’s been over three years since I received a text that wasn’t a demand or an order, but for some stupid reason, the tiny voice at the back of my mind still taunts me with the idea that it could be something different.

Albert Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result, but I can’t quite give up the hope that one day things might change.

Lifting my wrist, I check the time on my watch. It’s five minutes until the bell, which unfortunately means enough time for me to do as I’m told. Pushing my cell back into my blazer, I inhale, then exhale, psyching myself up to move from my hiding spot.

I’ve gotten so good at being invisible that I barely have to try. Lowering my gaze, I allow my shoulders to curl in, making myself as small as possible as I step out from the wall. With my hair shielding my face, I start to walk, keeping a medium pace, not so slow that I block anyone, nor fast enough to be memorable.

Clutching my books tightly against my chest, I don’t look up until I’m standing outside the bathroom door. No one ever comes up here because it’s at the very end of the south wing, next to where a hallway was blocked off and rerouted years ago. We’ve used this bathroom as a meeting place since freshman year when we thought high school would be an exciting new adventure. Back then, I enjoyed school, now it’s just something else to survive.

Pushing through the door, I tense. This won’t be good, it never is, and no matter how much I want things to be different, no matter how much I wish things would change, they never do.

“Where the hell have you been? I texted you ten minutes ago,” Penelope screeches, her voice so full of venom and hatred that I barely recognize it.

Although it’s impossible not to recognize someone who looks exactly like I do. Most people only get to see how they look in pictures or a mirror. I get to see every angle of every emotion as it plays across my identical twin’s face. I never imagined that my sister would look at me with hatred in her eyes, but I’ve seen it so often now that I think I could imitate the expression without ever having truly felt the emotion.

“I was all the way—” I start to explain.

“I don’t care,” she says, cutting me off, her hands on her hips, her lips twisted into an ugly, imperious snarl. “You need to go to my physics class. There’s going to be a pop quiz that I need you to take.”

“Mr. Brooks will notice if I’m not in English. He’s already threatened to fail me if I skip any more of his classes,” I tell her, silently willing her to understand.

“That sounds like a you problem,” she replies simply, as if my concerns are of no interest to her. “You need to go to physics. No one cares if you fail a class, but Mom will lose her mind if I fail this quiz. Do you want to be the reason why I don’t maintain my perfect 4.0?”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this particular guilt-filled argument. Making sure my sister is perfect in every way possible is the reason behind everything I’ve done for the last three years.

“Will you go to my English class?” I ask, a slither of hope flaring to life.

Arching one perfectly shaped brow, she sneers. “No.”

I don’t bother arguing with her. There’s no point. She doesn’t care about me or anything that isn’t about her and her future. Glancing past her, I see my reflection in the mirror. I look the same way I do every day: blonde hair styled just the way she likes, makeup done how she insists. I look perfect—just like her.

In fact, I look exactly like her, which is why she can demand I go and take her physics quiz and no one will ever know it wasn’t her. With most identical twins, there’s a way to tell them apart, but Penelope and I really are identical. Same height, weight, build. Same ears, lips, hair. In fact, the only discernible difference between us and the only way to tell us apart is our eyes, which is why I spend so much time looking down at the floor.

“You’re going to make me late,” she says dismissively, her voice polished, just the way we were taught.

A part of me wants to scream and shout, to refuse to do her bidding, but there’s no point, because no matter how much I hate the way she just told me she’s more important than I am, it’s still true. When I don’t go to my English class, my teacher will be annoyed, but he won’t question where I am because he doesn’t care. No one cares.

After all this time, I know I should have gotten used to being insignificant, but every time my sister reminds me that my life is paltry in comparison with hers, it still hurts. Without saying another word, I turn and leave. I hear the door swing closed behind me, but I don’t look back. Instead, I hurry down the corridor and dart into a shadowy corner.

Inhaling slowly, I close my eyes, willing all of my insecurities to fall away. Penelope Emerson Rhodes doesn’t hide. She doesn’t cower or look at the floor. Rolling my shoulders back, I pull in a breath, then call on years of practice.

Stepping out of the darkness, I emerge as Penelope, my head held high, each step purposeful and powerful, an enigmatic smile tipping at the corners of my lips as I make my way to the science wing and my physics class.

No one questions me when I stroll into the classroom and take my seat, three rows back, three rows in, just like in every other class. No one wonders why I’m here instead of my sister, because to every person in this room, I am Penelope. So, I do what’s expected of me. I smile and wave, and then I take a pop quiz on physics while my English assignment sits forgotten in my backpack. When the bell rings fifty minutes later, I pick up my quiz and drop it on the teacher’s desk before sashaying out of the classroom.

It’s two hundred and thirty-six steps from Penelope’s physics class to the photography darkroom, and I count each one as I walk confidently through the school. It takes every ounce of bravado I can muster not to allow the trembling in my fingers to travel through the rest of my limbs, but somehow I manage it. When salvation is in sight, I check that no one is watching before I pull the darkroom key from my blazer pocket and frantically try to push it into the lock.

My nerves ratchet up with every moment that passes, and my hands shake hard enough that I can’t get the key to work. Eventually, it slides home, and turning it, I push open the door, dart inside, and close it behind me.

The moment the door has latched, I flip the lock, then slump back against the cool wooden surface. Closing my eyes, I focus on breathing, each inhale ragged as I try to take in enough oxygen to calm my racing heart. After all this time, I should be used to pretending to be my sister—it’s not like it’s a rare occurrence—but no matter how many of her classes I attend or how many times I take her place, it never seems to get any easier.

Reaching behind me, I double-check the lock, then slowly lift my weight from the door. My legs feel shaky as I cross the room and slide down onto the worn leather couch that’s sitting beneath a blacked-out window.

I’m not sure when the last time this room was used as a darkroom, Green Acres Academy molds the minds of the children of the wealthy and successful, and when money and power are the end goal, there’s no time for the liberal arts when there are so many more influential lessons the students could be learning.

I stumbled across this room during my freshman year, just after my great-grandfather died. When he was alive, I rarely saw him, he had no time for little girls. So, when old age and ill health caught up with him, I understood why my parents were upset, but secretly, I wasn’t that sad to lose a man I hardly knew. I wore black to his funeral, and then I went home and assumed his death wouldn’t really have any impact on my life.

Back then, everything was simple. Penelope and I were the Rhodes twins, the only children of Barnaby and Trudy Rhodes, the only grandchildren of Nicholas Rhodes, and the great-grandchildren of Reginald Rhodes the Second.

My great-grandfather’s family is the epitome of old money, the kind you can date back to the Mayflower. But instead of sitting on his laurels and basking in his wealth, Reginald decided that the only route to happiness was by making more and more money. He invested in property and shipping and a hundred other things that made him richer than any one person should be.

Unlike Reginald, my father and grandfather have made careers out of living in the lap of luxury and spending their limitless trust funds. When Reginald died, everyone assumed his estate would pass to his only child—my grandfather, who would in turn eventually pass his estate to his only child—my dad.

Two weeks after Reginald’s death, my parents and sister were invited to the reading of the will. Now, looking back, I should have known that something was going on when I was excluded. But I don’t think anyone could have anticipated how a dead man’s wishes would change everything.

I can clearly remember the moment Penelope and my parents walked out of the lawyer’s office that day. Penelope was clutching a white envelope, her skin pale, her eyes wide, and my parents looked both shell-shocked and elated.

Instead of the money going where it was supposed to go, it all went to my sister. Penelope inherited everything. All of Reginald’s businesses, property, and fortune—or at least she will inherit it all when she turns twenty-five.

Of course, a man like my great-grandfather didn’t leave his entire estate to a fourteen-year-old without putting some thought into it. To ensure that his great-granddaughter didn’t end up rich and lazy like her father, his will stipulates that she only inherits if she excels in life.

She has to graduate from GAA with a minimum of a 4.0 grade average, she has to be accepted and graduate from one of the four pre-approved Ivy League colleges he selected, then she has to marry a boy from a pre-approved old money family.

To say that my parents were over the moon is an understatement. My father had assumed the money would go to his dad, and my mother was annoyed that she’d have to wait years to get her hands on it. Being the gatekeeper for a daughter who would inherit billions was the dream job for them.

Suddenly, instead of traveling for the majority of the year, they became doting parents to their eldest daughter, eager to guide her and mold her into the perfect heiress. Every conversation became about influential friends, political alliances between powerful families, and the most eligible bachelors from the approved list of potential grooms Penelope could marry.

In the blink of an eye, my sister went from regular old money rich to billionaire in waiting with her entire life planned out for her, and I was discarded, obsolete, and unnecessary at the age of fourteen.

Most people assume twins, especially identical twins, must be close. They expect Penelope and I to share a unique bond that no one apart from other sets of twins can understand. But we’ve never had that kind of relationship.

Penelope doesn’t particularly like me. She hates that she’s one of a matching pair. She hates that we share parents and a home, and she especially hates that we share a face. There are millions of sets of twins in the world, millions of pairs of similar faces, but Penelope and I are truly identical. Our height, frame, hair, face—everything about us is the same. The only distinguishing difference between us is that her eyes are blue and mine are violet.

When we were six months old, my eyes changed color, shocking everyone, because up until that point, no one had been able to tell us apart. My parents took me to specialists, and apparently, there’s a chance I have a very rare genetic condition that makes my eyes look purple, or in my case, a deep shade of violet. It’s the only unique thing about me, and I’m fairly sure it only makes my sister hate me more.

Despite our relationship not being everything I imagined it to be, I do love my sister, or at least I love the person she used to be before the inheritance imploded all of our lives. Back then, she might not have been my biggest fan, but we were at least equals.

Now, when I consider my life, everything can be categorized as either before or after the inheritance. Before the inheritance, I had two parents and a sister. After, I lost all three of them to greed and the pursuit of power.

A part of me kind of understands what my great-grandfather was trying to do when he named Penelope in his will. But I don’t think he considered the kind of pressure his stipulations would put on someone who was barely more than a child.

He planned her life for her, refusing to allow her the grace to fail when failure is inevitable because my sister is human and no one can be perfect all of the time.

The very first time I pretended to be Penelope was a couple of months after Reginald’s death. I found her sobbing and completely inconsolable because she had a math test coming up and she was terrified that she would fail it, ruin her grade point average, and lose everything. By that point, my parents had brainwashed her into believing that her entire worth was tied to the inheritance, and she was starting to buckle under the pressure. So, I suggested that just that once, I could take the test for her.

I assured her that no one would know it was me. I even joked that she was so popular that most of the people at our school didn’t even know she had a twin. Back then, I thought I was just being a good sister. I had no idea how that one event would change everything.

A sound just outside the door has me freezing, not breathing for fear that whoever is on the other side will hear me.

When I took that first math test for Penelope, I’d thought it’d be a one-off, but it wasn’t. The day I found this room, I’d just finished taking my third pop quiz in two weeks while pretending to be my sister, and I’d been so flustered that a teacher would realize it was me and not her that I’d darted from the room the moment the bell rang, hoping to get somewhere out of sight before the corridors filled with kids.

In my haste to find somewhere I could hide, I’d fallen over my own feet and straight into this door. When I’d reached for the handle to help pull myself up, it had twisted and the door had opened. This room has been my sanctuary ever since. After I’d hidden in here ten or so times, I noticed a set of keys hanging from a hook. I wasn’t expecting any of them to be the key for the darkroom, but there it was, old and tarnished and just begging me to lock the room and see if anyone noticed.

They didn’t. Not when I left traps to see if anyone else used the room, not when I added stuff to make hiding in here a little more comfortable. That was three-and-a-half years ago, and up until now, no one has ever tried to come in while I’ve been in here.

More noise comes from outside, and the door rattles. Lurching into motion, I grab my backpack and dart behind the couch, crouching down and clutching my things to my chest as I make myself as small as possible. A long moment passes as I wait, holding my breath, while I listen for the sound of a key in the lock, but nothing happens.

After several long moments curled into a ball in the tiny space behind the couch, I push up onto my knees and peer over the top of the leather. The room is still empty, the door still closed and locked. A relieved rush of air bursts from me, and I crawl out from my hiding spot and wilt down onto the couch, the old leather cushions almost swallowing me.

Checking my watch, I sigh. I need to get back to class. Not that my attendance really makes a difference, because I miss almost as many of my classes as I actually attend. My situation at GAA is complicated. I’m a registered student, and the office, principal, and I’m assuming all of the staff know that both Penelope and I attend. In theory, we both have our own class schedules, but only me, Penelope, and our parents know that I switch places with my sister almost on a daily basis to make sure she stays the perfect little student.

Sliding my backpack on, I walk to the door, twist the lock open, and slowly turn the handle until the door unlatches. The bell is due to ring any minute, but for now, the halls should be empty, and I probably don’t need to sneak around, but old habits die hard.

Pushing the door open an inch, I peer around the edge, scanning the hall for anyone watching. It’s empty, but I still wait another moment before I open it any further. Creating a gap just big enough to squeeze through, I immediately close the door behind me and lock it. As I slide the key into the inside pocket of my blazer, I draw in a calming breath. Every moment here is a pretense, but I’d rather spend my time pretending I’m invisible than acting like my sister. Stepping away from the door, I drop my gaze to the floor, let my hair shield my face, and blend into my surroundings. Invisible, unimportant, forgettable.