9. Erika
ERIKA
“Again!” Her sister jabbed the remote at the TV. On screen, Anneliese froze mid-red-carpet, caught in a moment of effortless perfection—shoulders back, chin lifted, smile from a magazine cover.
Erika tried to mirror the posture. Her shoulders hunched. Her chin jutted forward.
“Christ.” Olivia circled her, stilettos puncturing the white carpet. “You’re folding in on yourself like you’re trying to disappear.”
“She’s right, Bean.” Anneliese shifted in her nest of pillows on the sofa, wincing as her cast caught on the velvet.
“The real performance—the part you can’t fake from behind a keyboard—comes down to three simple pillars: The Look, The Walk, and The Talk.
” She pointed the remote at the screen. “We start with The Look. Presence. Stillness. The way you hold space before you ever open your mouth.”
On screen, frozen Anneliese radiated calm authority.
“Imagine a string pulling you up from the crown of your head,” Anneliese said. “You’re not standing. You’re arriving.”
Erika’s cramping fingers found her pen. Her notebook page had become a frantic taxonomy of her sister: Chin tilted fifteen degrees when smiling. Hands NEVER fidget. Right eyebrow slightly higher than left.
“The Walk,” Anneliese commanded, switching the input. Red carpet footage filled the screen—Anneliese in white silk, moving like the frame was hers. “You own that carpet. Photographers don’t capture you; you allow yourself to be witnessed. You’re not a celebrity—you’re the sun.”
Olivia gestured toward their makeshift runway between sofa and windows. “Fireplace to window. Be the sun.”
Erika crossed the room like a marionette someone had abandoned. Her shoulders hunched forward as if bracing for impact, arms swinging in desperate counterbalance. Three steps in, her hip collided with the marble side table. The Ming Dynasty vase teetered. Shit.
Olivia lunged, catching the porcelain treasure against her chest with a sharp inhale. “For God’s sake! Your shoulders are practically apologizing for existing!”
“Jesus Christ.” Anneliese pressed her fingertips to her temples. “You’re walking like you’re searching for a contact lens in a minefield. The sun doesn’t shuffle—it blazes.”
After Erika’s third failed attempt, Anneliese slapped the remote against her thigh. “Moving on. We’ll circle back to The Walk.” She switched the input again. “The Talk.”
On screen, Anneliese sat perched on a white couch across from Mikey Rhodes, who leaned toward her with the eager posture of a retriever. He said something—Anneliese cranked the volume just in time to catch it: “So what’s the secret? How do you stay so grounded?”
TV-Anneliese’s head tilted back. Her laugh spilled out—two perfect notes that made Rhodes’s face light up as if he’d won a prize.
“There,” Anneliese said, freezing the frame.
“First, the bright note—” she demonstrated, a crystalline sound that seemed to hover in the air “—then the intimate follow. Like we’re sharing a secret.
” The second note dropped lower, softer, drawing you in.
“The laugh is everything. It’s the hook that makes directors remember you after they’ve seen fifty identical blondes. ”
She jabbed at the remote, rewinding. “See my hands? How do they float? Never still, never jerky. And here—” she tapped the screen where her fingers grazed her collarbone “—that’s a deflection move. Vulnerable and camera-ready at the same time.”
Erika’s pen scratched across her notebook: Laugh = crystal, not strangled cat. Hands = butterflies, not spiders. Hair tuck = secret weapon. This wasn’t impersonation—this was character rigging.
“Your turn,” Olivia said. “The laugh. Two beats. Go.”
Erika inhaled, closed her eyes, and produced something between a honk and a death rattle.
Anneliese’s hand flew to her chest. “My God, Bean. That was . . . was that on purpose? You sounded like someone choking a squeaky toy.”
“This is insane. How is any of this real?”
“Darling, it’s not fake, it’s curated.” Anneliese’s smile was both. “Again.”
Erika stared at the woman on screen—her mirror image rendered in high definition, yet somehow a stranger. In her notebook, she added one more line: I AM THE SUN.
The letters stared back at her, ridiculous.
The next day, Erika stepped into the private VIP fitting room at Kristi LaDor on Rodeo Drive. A woman perched on a white leather chair like a sharp-eyed heron, all angles and energy, her pen attacking a design pad.
“Lily Martinez?” Olivia said, stepping forward. “We spoke on the phone. I’m—”
“I know who you are.” Lily didn’t look up. “And I know why you’re here.”
Olivia gestured for Erika to step forward.
Lily lifted her head, cat-eye glasses sliding down her nose as she surveyed Erika. The silence stretched until Erika’s skin prickled with sweat. Lily’s mouth pursed into a perfect crimson ‘O’. “Well,” she finally said, drawing out the word like taffy. “Hmm.”
Her heels clicked against marble as she circled Erika. “The fall must have been worse than I heard.” Her red fingernail tapped against her bottom lip.
Her throat had gone dry. She yanked her shoulders back, chin up, the way Anneliese had demonstrated a dozen times. “Long night.”
“Please.” Lily’s laugh was dry. “I’ve seen Anneliese Morgan crawl off a yacht in Mykonos after three days without sleep, still looking like she’d just stepped out of a magazine.
” She leaned in so close Erika could smell her jasmine perfume.
“But your eyes . . . they’re calculating measurements, not angles for the camera. ”
Erika’s stomach dropped.
Lily prowled around her. “Anneliese enters a room and gravity bends around her. You . . .” She paused, head tilted. “You’re apologizing for the space you occupy.”
Erika opened her mouth when Lily’s expression cracked into a grin.
“Oh, relax, darling.” She waved a dismissive hand at Erika’s stricken face. “Olivia told me everything last night. I just wanted to see if you could hold your nerve.” Her smile sharpened. “You can’t—but that’s fixable.”
Erika’s knees nearly buckled with relief. “You—you knew?”
“Darling, I’ve been dying to meet you.” Lily’s cat-eye glasses glinted as she resumed her orbit, but now her gaze was clinical rather than predatory. “A twin switch? On a Martin Blackwell set? This is the most fun I’ve had since I dressed that congressman’s mistress for his wife’s charity gala.”
She stilled, lifting Erika’s chin with one lacquered nail. “The question isn’t whether I can make you look like Anneliese. Any decent stylist could do that. The question is whether I can make you move like her. Breathe like her.” Her grin sharpened. “Now that’s a challenge worth my time.”
She snapped her fingers twice, the sound sharp as a camera flash.
“Jean-Pierre,” she said into her phone, “I need you at LaDor. Private suite. Bring the Anneliese kit and that experimental Japanese toner we’ve been saving.
” She hung up without waiting for a response and turned back to Erika.
“The dress is nothing. The woman wearing it is everything.”
An hour later, chemical fumes hung in the air. Erika sat rigid in the styling chair, watching her reflection as Jean-Pierre lifted a section of her dull brown hair. The scissors hovered above her head. Her throat tightened. In the mirror, her eyes had gone wide.
For a flash, she thought of Stefan’s gift—the sketchbook and pencils she’d thrown away. He’d seen that old photo. Seen her art.
At least if this all goes wrong, I’ll have great hair for my mugshot.
“It’s perfect.” Anneliese’s voice came through Olivia’s phone. Jean-Pierre stepped back with a flourish. In the mirror, honey-blonde waves caught the light.
“Phase one complete,” Lily said, sliding open a glossy black box.
Inside, balanced on crimson tissue paper, lay a pair of stilettos so tall and thin they resembled instruments of torture.
“These go everywhere with you. Shower. Bed. Toilet. When you can sprint down a hallway without counting steps, we’ll discuss wardrobe. ”
Erika lifted one shoe, its weight both substantial and impossibly delicate. Lily watched her with the calculating gaze of a general. For the first time since this madness began, she had a co-conspirator.
The night before the Bahamas flight, Anneliese’s closet was in motion.
Olivia and two assistants moved through the cavernous space in practiced rhythm, their hands turning couture into compact parcels.
Erika teetered in the center on six-inch stilettos, her calves burning from seventy-two hours of practice.
Her toes had gone from blistered to numb.
Anneliese reclined on her pink ottoman throne, cast elevated on velvet, scrolling through her phone while issuing commands.
“God, Tara, not those,” Anneliese said without looking up, waving a dismissive hand at the assistant’s selection. “The new Fordes—top shelf.” She tapped her good foot against the carpet, then glanced at Erika with a smirk. “How are those calves holding up?”
Erika attempted a pivot, wobbled, and caught herself against a shelf of handbags worth more than her rent. “Progress.” She straightened. “Only two near-death experiences today.”
Anneliese glanced up, her mouth quirking at one corner—a genuine reaction, not the camera-ready smile Erika had been studying. Then Anneliese looked away. “Ready to become me?”
Erika watched the assistant fold a scrap of silver fabric that barely qualified as a bikini. Tomorrow she’d be on a plane. The day after, on a film set. Pretending to be someone she wasn’t in front of people who did this for a living.
“I can’t breathe when I think about it,” she whispered. “One wrong gesture, one slip in my voice, and it’s over.”
“That’s why I exist,” Olivia said. “Rehearsals, fittings, stunt training. You’ll need it every day.”
“I’ll be your human shield for the first two days. After that, I have to fly back to orchestrate the ‘brave recovery’ narrative here while you miraculously heal there. Lily becomes your guardian angel when I’m gone.”
Anneliese shifted on her pink throne, wincing as her cast caught on a pillow. Then her eyes brightened with something like mischief.
“You know what you should really be nervous about?”
Erika tensed. “What?”
“Bradley Smart.” Anneliese leaned in. She bit her lip.
“There’s a beach scene in the script. His hands on your waist. His lips .
. .” She traced her own bottom lip with her fingertip.
“God, I’ve had that scene bookmarked since the script arrived.
I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat just for that. ”
Erika’s eyebrows shot up. “You’d trade your broken leg for public humiliation and career suicide? How generous.”
“No, silly.” Anneliese nudged her with her good foot. “Bradley Smart. The man who made America collectively swoon when he rescued that kitten during the Temmys red carpet.” She leaned forward, grimacing. “You’d better remember every detail for me.”
“Annie, this isn’t some fan encounter. He’s worked with Meryl Streep. Cate Blanchett. He’ll see through me in seconds.”
Anneliese’s face transformed, the girlish excitement crystallizing into something sharper, more calculating.
“Bradley sees what he wants to see,” she said.
She lowered her voice. “He’s brilliant on camera, but off?
He’s spent ten years playing the same character—the charming leading man who falls in love with his costar.
” She turned to Erika. “Just be the woman in his script. He’ll write the rest himself. ”
The door clicked shut behind the last assistant. Anneliese leaned forward on her ottoman, careful of her cast. She reached for something on her vanity—a small black case that looked like it might hold expensive jewelry.
“The final transformation,” she said, barely audible.
Erika’s fingers trembled as she opened it. Two azure discs gleamed up at her—contact lenses, the exact impossible blue of her sister’s eyes. She sat in the vanity. Honey-blonde hair. Sculpted brows. And those dark eyes—the last evidence of Erika Morgan.
The first lens balanced on her fingertip like a drop of stolen sky. She blinked it into place and her breath caught. Half her vision cooled, as though someone had adjusted the color temperature of the world. The second lens followed.
When she looked up, she didn’t see herself anymore. Anneliese Morgan stared back.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
In the mirror’s reflection, she caught Anneliese watching from the ottoman, tears sliding down cheeks that matched her own. Our face now, Erika thought. Not mine. Ours.