Chapter Twenty-Six Mary
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mary
Three and a half years ago
You have no idea what “going viral” means until it happens to you.
It’s like being in a car traveling at ninety miles an hour down a long, twisting, narrow road.
On a steep mountain. With no guardrail. And no brakes.
You have no control over your speed and no ability to stop.
You’re having to navigate hairpin turns as well as the occasional passing car.
It’s both thrilling and terrifying, and it’s nothing I would have ever chosen for myself.
And yet there I was.
There we were.
Turns out that the entire ten weeks we spent together out there in the woods and away from civilization, our teammate Naomi wasn’t just documenting her adventures; she was also documenting me and Sam.
From our “origin story,” to the near disaster on the river, and plenty of snapshots in between.
Her dispatches from the backcountry blew up almost overnight.
Out there, away from all mainstream communication and technology, we had no idea of the tsunami building with hashtags like #WildernessTwins and #SistersFound trending across all platforms of social media.
I don’t think Naomi herself expected the kind of interest—the kind of obsession—that brought out hundreds of people to greet our returning van.
When I looked back at some of the extensive video posted from those first hours back at the NAWA headquarters, I could see so clearly the loop of emotions that Sam and I had been experiencing.
Over and over again, we cycled through confusion, suspicion, terror, and incredulity.
That moment was a game changer—but it was the People magazine cover story that launched us to a whole new level.
Pictures of us together spread across several glossy color pages, telling the story of how we came to find each other.
The guy from the college ID line was quoted, as were the manager of the hotel where we lived for three months and that asshat Richard, who got booted from our team for punching Sam.
Even Leo offered a statement on behalf of the North American Wilderness Academy talking about how, despite moments of “typical sibling discord,” we had been stellar team members who proved ourselves to be tough and resourceful in the most challenging of situations.
Uh-huh.
Sam certainly had been “resourceful” when it came to Leo, but all that fell away almost immediately as we were caught in the powerful undertow of instant celebrity.
Dubbed “The Serendipity Sisters,” we had an agent to handle all the requests for interviews and appearances.
Good Morning America, The Late Show, 60 Minutes—we were everywhere.
At her suggestion we made the move to LA, where we rented a loft apartment on Wilshire Boulevard.
It was a long way from our initial plan to stay there in Oregon working as guides, but it wasn’t without its pluses. Like Brad.
I met him in the lobby of our building when the elevator doors started to slide shut before I could reach them.
He stuck out his hand—still clutching a cell phone—at the very last second, triggering the sensor.
When they opened again, I was face-to-face with my tall, broad-shouldered, green-eyed neighbor.
By the time he got off on his floor—two below ours—we had a date set for the next night.
An entertainment lawyer, Brad dealt with celebrities—and the intricacies of their very unique world—on a daily basis.
Over enchiladas and sangria, he regaled me with hilarious antics of unnamed actors and directors.
The next night we continued the conversation over dumplings and sake, and the night after that, over chicken marsala and wine.
And the morning after that, over breakfast in his apartment.
Reluctant to introduce him to my sister, I made all kinds of excuses for my evenings out—yoga, coffee with friends, a play.
But there was no getting around it when she caught me sneaking in at five in the morning like some wayward teenager after a night of swilling hard seltzer and groping in the back seat.
Within a month I was in love, and Sam was incensed—not that she had any right to be. Reveling in our newfound pseudocelebrity status, she’d taken to clubbing all night and sleeping all day. Our home became a revolving door of “stands” ranging from one night to one week.
She definitely had a type—men old enough to know better and usually too smug to care.
I woke regularly to find some strange guy not much younger than my father standing in our kitchen, drinking my organic OJ and eating my Eggos in his underwear.
I wasn’t thrilled about any of it, but I tried to keep my thoughts to myself.
She, however, had no problems disparaging my new boyfriend openly and frequently.
It was becoming a growing source of tension between us because, while my twin wanted to be free to do as she pleased with whomever she pleased, she’d become very possessive of me.
If I wasn’t going to go out and party with her, she liked to know I was at home in my pajamas and fluffy slippers—streaming romances rather than experiencing them.
“I just don’t like him,” she complained again and again.
“I just don’t care,” I replied again and again.
What seemed to bother her most was the fact that Brad, unlike virtually everyone else we knew, could tell us apart on sight from day one and every day thereafter.
“Of course I can,” he said when I commented on this fact. “You’re the most beautiful woman in any room. In every room. I could pick you out of a thousand identical women.”
As far as I was concerned, Brad wasn’t going anywhere.
And who had time to argue anyway? Within a year of completing the NAWA course, we’d been featured in a few local commercials, which led to a runway show, which led to bit parts in an Adam Sandler movie.
That became the springboard to our biggest deal yet, the Mirror Image fashion brand, who hired us for a huge national ad campaign.
The night that the first ad was set to air, the three of us sat on the couch in our apartment, watching the wall-mounted TV for signs that the show was about to cut to commercial.
Next to me, Brad had an arm draped loosely over my shoulder.
He smiled, giving me a quick squeeze as my sister scowled from the other end of the sectional.
“You guys are going to be amazing!” he said.
“Okay, okay—shut up, you two,” Sam barked when the screen finally faded to black.
And suddenly, there we were, standing, facing each other through a mirror frame, both dressed in the same strapless pink dress.
Then I stepped out of the “mirror” and turned toward the camera, except now I was wearing boot-cut jeans with a white cowl-neck sweater.
Sam did the same thing, appearing to step out of the mirror, but now she was wearing a tight, short black cocktail dress.
And we went on like this for a few more rounds of different outfits until we stopped, turned, and walked away from the camera, arms around each other, pausing once to look back over our shoulders.
The company logo popped up on screen with a voiceover from a young-sounding woman with a gravelly voice.
“Mirror Image. Fashion that suits every side of you.”
“Oh my God!” my sister squealed, when it was over, jumping off the couch and onto her feet. “That was amazing!”
I looked up at her, grinning so wide that I thought the corners of my lips might actually touch my ears. “I know, right?!”
Sam held out her hands, and I took them so she could pull me up to my feet and have an impromptu dance party right there in the middle of our living room.
“I’ll crack open the bubbly!” my boyfriend declared, getting up to pull the bottle out of the fridge. Then he poured it into flutes, handing one to each of us before taking a glass for himself. “To Hollywood’s newest ‘it’ girls!” he declared, lifting for a toast.
Sam rolled her eyes but clinked glasses anyway.
“So how ’bout you try sleeping in your own bed tonight?” she suggested to Brad.
“Great idea!” I piped up before he could respond. “The TV in his room is huge, and I love curling up in there with a bowl of popcorn to watch The Late Show.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed on me. “I was hoping we might have some time together. You know, alone,” she said pointedly.
Brad set his glass down on the coffee table and held up his hands in surrender. Always the “bigger man,” he made a point of not engaging in any of my sister’s petty assaults. “This sounds like a discussion for you two ladies to have privately,” he said.
“Gee, thanks, Captain Obvious,” she snarled.
He just shot her a smile before giving me a quick kiss. “Call me later and let me know what you want to do. I’m fine with anything—if you want to be on your own or come over or whatever.”
“Thanks, I will,” I agreed, waiting for the door to close behind him before spinning on my twin. “This has got to stop!” I spat.
“Yes,” she agreed, “it does. That guy is nothing but a leech.”
“A leech?” I countered incredulously. “He’s got more money in the bank than both our earnings combined! And he knows every A-lister in town. What on earth do I have that he could possibly leech off?”
She looked pouty that I’d called her on her BS.
“Emotions,” she said finally.
I picked up Brad’s glass and took it, along with mine, to the kitchen, setting them in the sink. Sam followed me, cornering me against the cabinets.
“Emotions?”
“Yes. He’s an emotional vampire. I know the type, Mary. You need to ditch him before he drains you dry.”
I put my hands on my hips and quirked an eyebrow. “Of my emotions.”
She nodded somberly. “Absolutely. Trust me on this, the guy’s bad news.”
“And what about you and all your hookups? They’re not emotional vampires?”
“No! They’re just sex. I know how to separate the emotional from the physical.
But not you. You give yourself over completely, and that’s just .
. . well, it’s naive, Mary. And it’s going to get your heart broken.
Take it from me—you don’t want to hang your happiness on anyone else because, in the end, they’ll let you down when you need them most. Every. Time.”
I took a step forward so we were only inches apart, and when I spoke again, it was with a softer, gentler tone.
“Sam, what happened to you?” I asked for about the hundredth time.
“Who hurt you—who betrayed you so badly that you won’t trust your heart to anyone?
That you don’t want me to trust mine to anyone either? ”
Because that’s what it boiled down to. I didn’t, for a second, think that Sam Kinski was innately opposed to love. But I believed she was honestly concerned something awful might happen to me too. This wasn’t about Brad specifically; it was about men generally.
She recoiled backward, as if I were a snake about to strike. “Stop trying to change the subject!” she demanded, not quite able to hide the warble in her voice. This subject always rattled her. “You know I’m right about him!”
“I know you’re out of your mind,” I countered coolly.
That was the button—the one that made her turn fifty shades of scarlet.
“One of these days, Mary, I’m going to show you just how out of my mind I can get,” she threatened.
I quirked a challenging eyebrow. “Really? You mean it gets worse? ’Cause you seem pretty unhinged to me.”
That was when she slapped me.
“You really are out of your mind!” I spat, palm pressed to my stinging cheek.
“Go ahead, Mary, Mary, quite contrary!” she taunted. “How does your garden grow?”
She also knew exactly which buttons to push. I felt my resolve to remain calm crumble to dust at my feet as I shoved her shoulders hard enough to send her stumbling back several feet across the tile floor.
“You bitch!” she screeched, lunging for me.
But I ducked out of the way just in time, and she hit the counter with a grunt before rounding to find me already back in the living room, coffee table between us and phone in hand.
“Come near me again, and I’m going to call the police,” I threatened, thumb poised over the big green button that would connect me to a 911 operator.
That was when she dove at me across the table, dragging me forward by the collar of my shirt and sending the phone flying under the couch.
We hit the floor, rolling around, pulling hair and throwing punches, scratching, and cursing.
All around us lamps, books, and assorted crap rained down from the tables and shelves above whenever we crashed, tumbled, stumbled, or fell.
Neither of us paid any attention to the pounding on the door, and I remember thinking vaguely that someone had probably called the police.
I didn’t care. At least, not until the moment the door flew open with so much force that it banged against the opposite wall with a cracking noise that stopped us both in our tracks.
Sweaty and panting, I found myself staring across the room at two pairs of shoes. As my eyes traveled upward slowly from feet to shins, shins to thighs, thighs to waist, I grew more certain of what—or rather, who—I was going to find when I finally ran out of body parts.
“Hello, Mary,” my mother said stiffly. Then she nodded at Sam, who lay flat on her back, chest heaving. “Samantha.”