Chapter 17
17
I’m about to shit myself.
And it’s not because of the diet tea. (Okay, maybe it’s a little because of the diet tea.) It’s because I’m nervous.
I’m in my Uber, staring at the event space that Bella Marie rented. It’s a swanky hotel that has views of Central Park. I smell like hair spray mixed with Santal 33 and I can barely breathe due to the three shapewear sets strapping my core. But most importantly, I’ll be surrounded by people Chloe knew.
Why did I even come here? This is such a mistake. I should have kept a low profile. Moved to Switzerland and rebranded to cottagecore so I don’t have to interact with anyone IRL.
Why did I do this to myself? Am I insane?
Okay. Maybe I am. I did take my sister’s identity after she died. That’s dictionary-definition insane.
“Getting out, ma’am?” the Uber driver asks me.
I take a deep breath, wishing Fiona was here to walk me through this. “Yup.” I open the door and step out, my pulse thrumming.
I take a few calming breaths before I head into the building. My Louboutins make me lumber around like Bigfoot incarnate. Paparazzi wait for the arrival of legitimate celebrities. (I swear I see an Armie Hammer look-alike. But wasn’t he canceled for being a cannibal or something?) Some of the paps take photos of me and call my name—er, Chloe ’s name—like I’m famous. I stand and pose for them awkwardly, unused to the pops of cameras and lights, before rushing into the building. The guard scans the invitation for the Belle by Bella Marie launch event and points me across a large hotel lobby, which is perfumed like an expensive Abercrombie, and into an elevator that is reserved for the event. A guy in a red bellhop suit waits in the corner, his sole job to press buttons. The door is about to close when someone yells, “Wait!”
The professional button-pusher obeys.
Out of breath, the woman utters a brief “Thank you” while straightening her black slip dress. She fingers her blond hair before stepping into the elevator. Her jaw drops, recognition flooding her hazel-green eyes.
“Oh my god! Chloe!” She squeals so loud it could break glass. Even the button-pusher cringes. She envelops me in a hug and kisses my cheeks like we’re French, her air a plume of sugar and bergamot.
“You!” I squeal, trying to match her energy while scanning through my mental Rolodex of people Chloe follows. I watched every Instagram story to get a vague gist of who was in attendance via #getreadywithmes. But damn, there are too many blond-haired, hazel-eyed, lip-plumped white influencers in this world. Differentiating them is an Olympic sport.
The elevator door slides shut, and we head up.
She scans my outfit with a wide and adoring smile. “That embroidery! Don’t tell me. Are you wearing Slate Stan?” I notice her snaggletooth, and it clicks. Amid the other influencers with razor-sharp veneers, her smile sticks out from the crowd.
@AngeliqueGray11. She has half a million followers on YouTube and TikTok and one million on Instagram. Her bio reads: “ Author of #1 NYT bestseller Healing Through Dessert. Survivor with C-PTSD. ” I skimmed an article about her. She had abusive parents who starved her to the point of malnourishment. Now she’s a pro baker making up for all the sweets she couldn’t eat as a child. Pretty inspiring. Unsurprisingly, her internet niche is baking videos and recipes. Her feed also features clips of her famous hockey-player husband, Sommer. He’s broad-shouldered with a chiseled jawline and has eyes that say he’s gotten a concussion or two.
But most importantly, she is thought to be the most recent addition to the Belladonnas.
I laugh, glad I figured her out, and show off my dress, sucking in my stomach. “The one and only.”
She puts a hand to her heart. “Obsessed. Like, so obsessed. You look gorgeous. Stunning. And your skin! It’s that Korean in you, glass skin all day! Tell me your secrets.”
I’m Chinese and only a few days ago, I used Dove bar soap for face wash and body lotion as serum. (Now I’ve switched to SkinCeuticals and La Mer.)
“It’s all Kare Kosmetics.” I laugh, glad she’s not asking anything personal.
She laughs too. Hysterically. Like she also knows that no one who shills Kare Kosmetics uses it. “I am so obsessed with you.” She gasps, clapping her palm to her mouth. “Oh no! I’m not being insensitive, am I? I heard about your twin. I’m so sorry about that. Remind me of her name again?”
“Julie.”
It’s so easy to say that now. The guilt isn’t tangible anymore.
Julie Chan is dead. Julie Chan is dead. Julie Chan is dead.
See? Nothing.
In a way, Julie Chan is dead.
I’m not her anymore. Can never be her again. Julie Chan will never return.
“R.I.P. Julie,” Angelique says. “She’s in my thoughts and prayers.”
I want to say , You don’t even know her. Instead, I say, “Thanks.”
The elevator door opens, and live music bounces into my ear. Bella Marie hired a whole symphony orchestra. There must be fifty people in tuxes jamming out to classical renditions of pop songs. I feel like I’m in Bridgerton . The event space is airy and wooden, decked out with an open bar and a million flower arrangements. In the center of the room are three long, rectangular tables holding golden candelabras, each with about thirty seats. A smaller table is at the head of the room with ten seats. Kind of like a wedding reception. There are little place cards in front of each dinner set, names written in elegant calligraphy. Thank god. I need those. I glance at the cards closest to me and discover that a handful of them are for reporters from major news and magazine outlets, their designation printed in small serif font under their name. From Vogue to Vanity Fair , The New Yorker to Forbes , the list goes on and on. And they aren’t just fashion writers or small-time editors: the guests in attendance have titles like Editor in Chief and President. Bella Marie is better connected than I thought.
A server approaches us with a tray of golden champagne glasses and asks, “Would you like a welcome drink? It’s freshly squeezed lemonade with imported water from Ville-d’Avray, Marie Antoinette’s choice of water. We have alcoholic and virgin options.”
This shit is so fancy I don’t understand half the words coming out of the server’s mouth. Either way, the last thing I need is a drink. It can push me toward itchy anxiousness, and my Asian glow will make me a human bull’s-eye. “I’ll pass.”
The server tips her head. “Are you sure? We have a virgin option if you’re alcohol-free.”
I smile. “I’m sure. Thanks.”
“But everyone else is having a glass. Bella Marie insists.”
“No. I’m good.”
Her eyes go buggy, almost frightened, before turning to Angelique.
“I’ll take a virgin,” she says.
“Are you sure you don’t want one?” the server asks me after handing Angelique a glass. “It’s very tasty. You won’t regret it.”
Christ. She’s persistent. I grab one to get rid of her. I’m relieved when she moves on to the next guest.
Angelique turns to me with a glint in her eye. “Want to know a secret?” The way she says it, low and slow, makes my heart hammer with nerves. Did she notice I’m a fake? That I’m not really Chloe? She draws out the silence. The music swells in the background.
“I’m pregnant.”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but this isn’t the worst.
I turn to her and gauge how I should feel. Being pregnant isn’t always a good thing.
She’s smiling… I think? It’s a tight smile. Like she’s trying to be happy, but something inside her is pulling her down. Or maybe I’m misreading it.
“Congratulations?”
“Thank you.” She nods and looks away, her voice soft.
Okay. Maybe it isn’t a good thing. Warm pity threads through my heart. I barely know this girl, yet I feel concerned for her. She seems sweet.
After putting down my drink, I follow Angelique through the swinging glass doors to the giant balcony that overlooks Central Park. Staff members, stationed between heat lamps and manicured evergreen bushes, eagerly offer to take our phones to help us capture photos. I studied some of Chloe’s signature poses and I try to replicate them as best I can—a task more arduous than it sounds. Sucking in my core and smiling is a form of endurance exercise. I select the best of the photos and send to Fiona to Facetune. She replies: GORG!
Angelique brings me around and we mingle with a few other influencers. Thankfully, she opens conversations with Oh my god! So-and-so! and I don’t have to play the name-guessing game. Everyone recognizes me as Chloe.
No one suspects a thing. Which is… surprising.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to get caught. But a part of me feels sad for Chloe. None of these influencer “friends” truly know her. Their conversations are about brand deals, the algorithm, the show they are watching, or the newest social media scandal. Few ask questions about me—perhaps because they are so self-obsessed—and even when they do, they don’t bat an eye when I make something up.
Eventually, two Belladonnas join Angelique and me. I recognize them instantly. The woman with sleek black hair is Kelly Hart. @harts4kelly. Four million on Instagram, twelve million on YouTube, thirteen million on TikTok. She’s a social media veteran and one of the few creators I used to watch in middle school. She started filming videos when she was fourteen in her mom’s basement and went viral at seventeen after teaching girls how to curl their hair with a straightener. (Thanks to her, I singed a section of my hair off.) Like most early creators, she fell off everyone’s radar, including mine. Since then, she’s shifted her content to reaction videos, aka saying Damn, that’s crazy over and over and repeating what’s said in the video, but louder. Essentially, she makes brain-dead content for overstimulated iPad kids. But this content has revived her career and tripled her following. Now, she’s decked out in so much designer gear she might as well be a department store mannequin.
Then there’s Lily Schmidt, a washed-up child-actress-turned-influencer. @lilyschmidt . Four million on Instagram, two million on YouTube, one million on TikTok. Two years ago, she made headlines after creating a series of videos about adopting a child with Down syndrome before returning him like a tampered bottle of Tylenol. She claimed, in a tearful video with melodramatic royalty-free music, that she wasn’t well equipped to take care of a kid on the spectrum and that he was better off in whatever country she originally shipped him from. A year later, she adopted a young, neurotypical girl called Wendy from Thailand. Now she makes mommy content.
“Lately,” Lily says, fingering her dirty-blond hair, “I’m just so tired all the time. Every day, I’m on the clock. Workout at five, meeting at seven, sponsored brunch at eleven, then I’m vlogging all day until six. Not to mention the emails.”
“The emails!” Kelly groans.
“I barely have time to make dinner for Wendy. Thank god I have my two nannies.”
Angelique blows a breath, shaking her head. “I feel for you.”
“Sometimes I wish I were an office worker. They can clock out every day at five p.m. and live their lives. But influencers? Work, work, work. All the time, every second. People don’t know how hard it is to be us.”
“I know, right?” Kelly’s satin red lips look like silicone Vienna sausages as she chews her spearmint gum. “It’s like, try being an influencer for a day.”
I arch my brow.
“So hard,” replies Lily.
“One hundred percent,” says Angelique.
They all glance at me. “Yeah,” I say. “Totally.”
“My brother is a consultant,” Kelly continues, “and he gets four weeks’ paid vacation. Guess what he actually gets to do? Vacation! If it were us, we’d have to be filming all the damn time, taking photos at the beach, reviewing restaurants. Ugh! It’s so tiring! We never get a break. Speaking of breaks.” Her spearmint-scented attention suddenly wafts my way. “I noticed you stopped posting. It’s very unlike you, Chloe. I mean, your sister died and here you are, still grinding away. But how was your break?” The three women stare at me, blinking with curiosity.
I wish I hadn’t put down my lemonade so I could sip and take time to think. “Uh, it was nice. I needed it.”
“Nice…” Kelly narrows her eyes. “Good for you.” There’s something about her that rubs me the wrong way. Suspicion? I don’t think that’s it. Her words are sharp and bristly—almost angry. Did Chloe and Kelly have a fight no one knows about?
“I did this video where I was a service worker for a day,” Lily says, changing the topic back to herself—thank god. “It was, like, low-key kinda easy.”
“I saw that video!” Angelique exclaims. “The one where you work a shift at McDonald’s?”
Lily nods. “The powers that be blessed me with that one. Six million views and counting. Surprising like-to-dislike ratio, though.”
“There are so many haters out there,” Kelly says.
“So many haters,” Angelique echoes.
“Personally,” Kelly continues, “I found the video very insightful.”
“Very insightful,” says Angelique.
Delete me from this conversation.
“I honestly don’t know why service workers complain all the time.” Lily’s Cartier bangles clink and clack as she talks with her hands. “They have it so easy. Like, ring up a few orders, count some cash, put some stuff in a bag. It was brainless. Sometimes, I think about quitting it all and just working at Mc—”
The music stops and someone announces the dinner is starting. Perfect timing. If I spent another second in that conversation, I would have jammed my finger into someone’s eye just to hear them scream.
As a group, we head into the main hall. I’m searching for my name amid all the place tags, when Angelique takes my hand and leads me confidently to the smaller table near the head of the room.
I’m about to tell her this is wrong, that I’m probably seated on one of the regular tables, when I see my name tag.
But that’s not all.
I’m seated next to the Bella Marie. One seat off from the center.
Like where a best friend would sit.
My research didn’t tell me Chloe and Bella Marie were particularly close. But this placement is evidence of their maid-of-honor-level friendship.
How is that possible?
I should have dived deeper, searched Chloe’s room for diaries, scoured through gossip forums down to page one hundred twenty-eight. I’m so unprepared. Bella Marie will know something is wrong. Everyone is going to notice I’m a fraud. Why the fuck did I do this to myself? What is wrong with me?
Police sirens blare outside. Are they here for me? I’m reminded of that wellness check years ago. The hostility, that feeling of hopelessness. My aunt staring at me, her shrill voice berating me. Bile swims up my throat. Sweat breaks out across my back. I’m spiraling. I can’t breathe.
I close my eyes and try to regain my composure. In the darkness, Chloe’s face appears. Her limp body, purple lips, bloodshot eyes. But now there’s wriggling maggots devouring her skin. Her teeth start chattering. Click-click-click. Suddenly, her pupils slide toward me. Dark and soulless. She parts her dry lips and whispers, Hoax . She lunges. Decaying arms reaching for me. Her fingers wrap hard around my upper arm.
I scream and yank away from her grasp.
But standing before me is not Chloe.
It’s Bella Marie.