The Opposite of Me (3 page)

“Mom,” I cut in. “Are you at the hospital?”

“Yes,” Mom said.

Pause.

“Um, Mom?” I said. “
Why
are you at the hospital?”

“I’m visiting Mrs. Magruder. Remember, she had a hip replacement? She won’t be able to manage stairs for six weeks. Last time I was here I noticed the waiting room only had copies of
Golf Magazine
and
Highlights
and I thought, No sense in me having two copies of
O
magazine. Maybe someone else can enjoy it. And there’s a recipe for low-fat cheesecake with whipped cream—the secret is applesauce, of all things—”

“Mom, I’ll take care of it.” I cut her off just before the pressure in my head began boiling and shrieking like a teapot. “I’ll call Oprah’s office directly.”

Matt stepped into my office, one eyebrow raised. He was wearing a black blazer, which looked good with his curly dark hair. I’d have to tell him black was his color, I thought absently.

“Thank you, honey,” Mom said, sounding the tiniest bit disappointed that she couldn’t milk it a bit longer. “It’s so nice to have a daughter who knows the right people.”

“Tell Stedman we should go fly-fishing again sometime,” Matt stage-whispered as I made a gun out of my thumb and index finger and shot him in the chest.

“By the way, did you hear about Alex?” Mom asked.

I should’ve known it would be impossible for us to end our conversation without a mention of my twin sister. If she compliments me, Mom has to say something nice about Alex. Sometimes I wonder if Alex and I are as competitive as we are because Mom is so scrupulously fair in the way she treats us. Probably, I thought, feeling comforted that I could reliably blame my personal failings on my parents.

I sighed and squinted at my watch: fifty-eight minutes.

“Oprah,” Matt croaked, rolling around on my office floor and clutching his chest. “Rally your angel network. I’m seeing . . . a . . . white . . . light.”

“The TV station is expanding Alex’s segments!” Mom said. “Now she’ll be on Wednesdays and Fridays instead of just Fridays. Isn’t that wonderful?”

When people learn I have a twin, the first thing they ask is whether we’re identical. Unless, of course, they see Alex and me together, in which case their brows furrow and their eyes squint and you can almost see their brains clog with confusion as they stutter, “Twins? But . . . but . . . you look
nothing
alike.”

Alex and I are about as unidentical as it’s possible to be. I’ve
always thought I look like a child’s drawing of a person: straight brown lines for the hair and eyebrows, eyes and nose and mouth and ears generally in the right places and in the right numbers. Nothing special; just something to pin on the refrigerator door before it’s covered by grocery lists and report cards and forgotten. Whereas Alex . . . Well, there’s no other word for it: she’s flat-out gorgeous. Stunning. Breathtaking. Dazzling. Apparently there are a few other words for it after all.

She started modeling in high school after a talent scout approached her at a mall, and though she never made it big in New York because she’s only five foot six, she gets a steady stream of jobs in our hometown of Bethesda, in suburban Washington, D.C. A few years ago, she got a part-time job for the NBC affiliate covering celebrity gossip (or “entertainment,” as she loftily calls it). For three minutes a week—six now that her appearances are being doubled—she’s on camera, bantering with the movie review guys and interviewing stars who are shooting the latest political thriller film in D.C.

I know, I know, I hear you asking what she looks like. Everyone wants to know what she looks like. Alex is a redhead, but not one of those Ronald McDonald—haired ones with freckles that look splattered on by Jackson Pollock. Her long hair is a glossy, dark red, and depending on the light, it has hints of gold and caramel and chocolate. She can never walk a city block without some woman begging her for the name of her colorist. It’s natural, of course. Her skin defies the redhead’s law of pigmentation by tanning smoothly and easily, her almond-shaped eyes are a shade precisely between blue and green, and her nose is straight and unremarkable, the way all good, obedient little noses should be. My father can still fit into the pants he wore in high school; Alex got his metabolism. My mother hails from a long line of sturdy midwestern corn farmers; I got hers. But no bitterness here.

“I’ll call Alex later and congratulate her,” I told Mom.

“Oh, and she booked the photographer for the wedding,” Mom said, winding up for another lengthy tangential chat. Alex’s upcoming wedding could keep our phone lines humming for hours.

“I’ve got to run,” I cut her off. “Big morning. I’m going after a new account and the clients are flying in from Aspen this morning.”

“Aspen?” Mom said. “Are they skiers?”

“The really rich people don’t go to Aspen to ski,” I told her. “They go to hang out with other rich people. My clients have the mansion next door to Tom Cruise’s.”

“Are they movie stars?” Mom squealed. The woman does love her
People
magazine. And so does Dad, though he’d never admit it.

“Even better,” I said. “They’re billionaires.”

I hung up and took a bite of blueberry muffin, but it tasted like dust in my mouth. It wasn’t the muffin’s fault; it was the unpleasant thought tugging at me like an itch. I’d told Mom about my presentation so the message would get back to Alex:
You’re prettier, but don’t ever forget that I’m more successful
. Don’t get me wrong; I love my sister—she can be generous and outspoken and funny—but no one can push my buttons like Alex. Around her, I light up like a skyscraper’s elevator control panel at rush hour. We’re complete opposites, always have been. It’s like our DNA held a meeting in the womb and divvied up the goods: I’ll trade you my sex appeal strands for a double dose of organizational skills, my genes must’ve said. Deal, Alex’s genes answered, and if you’ll just sign this form relinquishing any claim to long legs, you can have my work ethic, too.

If Alex and I weren’t related, we’d have absolutely nothing in common. The thing about Alex is that she doesn’t just grab the spotlight, she wrestles it to the ground and straddles it and pins
its hands to the floor so it has no chance of escaping. And it isn’t even her fault; the spotlight
wants
to be dominated by her. The spotlight screams “Uncle!” the second it sees her. People are dazzled by Alex. Men send her so many drinks it’s a wonder she isn’t in AA; women give her quick appraising looks and memorize her outfit, vowing to buy it because if it looks even half as good on them . . . ; even cranky babies stop crying and give her gummy smiles when they see her behind them in the grocery store line.

If Alex weren’t my sister, I probably wouldn’t be nearly so driven. But I learned long ago that it’s easy to get lost and overlooked when someone like Alex is around. In a way, she has made me who I am today.

I pushed away my muffin and glanced over at Matt. He was sprawled on my couch, one leg hooked over the armrest, half-asleep. How he always managed to stay calm amid the chaos and frenzy of our agency was a mystery. I’d have to ask him for his secret. When I had time, which I didn’t right now, since I was due downstairs in forty-four minutes. Mason was letting me greet the clients, since I was presenting first, and Cheryl would get to walk them to their car afterward.

“Can we do one more run-through?” I begged.

“We did twelve yesterday,” Matt reminded me, yawning. He opened one sleepy-looking brown eye and peered up at me.

“You’re right, you’re right,” I said, lining up the pencils on my desk at a perfect right angle to my stapler. “I don’t want to sound overrehearsed.”

“Knock it off, OCD girl,” Matt said, pulling himself up off the couch and stealing a bite of my muffin. “Mmm. How can you not be eating this?”

“I had a bowl of Advil for breakfast,” I told him. “High in fiber.”

“You’re beyond help,” he said. “What time is the party tonight?”

“Seven-thirty,” I said. “Is Pam coming?”

Pam was Matt’s new girlfriend. I hadn’t met her yet, but I was dying to.

“Yep,” he said.

Tonight was our office holiday party.

Tonight was also the night the name of the new VP creative director would be announced.

“Nervous?” Matt asked me.

“Of course not,” I lied.

“Step away from the Advil,” Matt ordered me, slapping my hand as it instinctively went for my desk drawer. “Let’s get your storyboards into the conference room. You know you’re gonna kick ass, Madam Vice President.”

And just like that, the cold knot of anxiety in my stomach loosened the tiniest bit. Like I said, Matt was my only real friend at the office.

Two
 

 

WHEN THE STRETCH LIMOUSINE glided to a stop outside our building forty minutes late, I hurried to the curb and pasted on a welcoming smile. I hoped I looked okay. I’d gone for a professional, no-nonsense vibe, which was lucky, since those were the only kinds of clothes my closet was capable of coughing up. I was wearing a classic black Armani pantsuit with an ivory silk shell and black sling-backs. My hair was pulled up into its usual twist, and my earrings were pearls encircled by tiny diamonds—a gift to myself for my twenty-ninth birthday last month. Boring, yes, but safe, too. I wanted my clients to be dazzled by my work, not me.

“Mr. Fenstermaker? So nice to meet you.” I greeted the head of the Gloss empire like he was Prince William as he grunted and heaved his squatty body out of the limo.

“And this must be Mrs. Fenstermaker?”

As if I hadn’t read a half dozen magazine profiles about the Fenstermakers and studied their pictures so carefully that I could ID them out of a lineup of thousands. He looked more like a meat butcher from Brooklyn than a multimillionaire purveyor of glamour, but his wife—make that his third wife—more
than made up for it. She could double for a Bond villainess, the icy blond kind who could open a man’s jugular with a single swipe of a nail. He shook my outstretched hand, and she swept by me with a nod, oversize Prada sunglasses firmly in place.

“I hope you didn’t encounter much traffic on the drive in from the airport,” I said as we entered the building, crossed the gleaming marble floors, and stepped into the elevator. He grunted again, and she didn’t deign to answer. I hate awkward elevator silences, but apparently the Fenstermakers didn’t share my bias, which meant elevator silence was my new bosom buddy.

“I’ll be presenting our first campaign,” I said as we stepped off the elevator. “We’ll be joined by Mason Graham, our agency’s president, whom you already know. But first, let me offer you a drink.”

I led the Fenstermakers into our oval-shaped conference room, which has glass walls showcasing a gorgeous view of the city. Even though I’ve seen it countless times, it still takes my breath away. Directly below us were yellow cabs duking it out for lane space and globs of people buying hot, salty pretzels from street vendors and shouting into cell phones and ignoring traffic signals as they swarmed across the streets. Middle fingers were flying and tourists were snapping photos and pigeons were squawking and a crowd was gathered around two guys dressed in togas who were banging on overturned plastic buckets that substituted for drums. I’d heard them before; they were really good. If you squinted and looked farther north, you could just make out the green oasis of Central Park, filled with walking paths and dog parks and fountains and playgrounds and the best outdoor theater in the world. All of New York—the messy, pulsing, glorious city of possibilities—was at our feet. But the Fenstermakers didn’t even look at the view. They’d probably had a better one on the way in from their private plane, the one
I’d read was equipped with a massage table, a selection of rare single-malt scotches, and his-and-hers glass showers, each with six showerheads. Mrs. Fenstermaker had wanted a Jacuzzi, but the FAA told her the weight would endanger the plane. Apparently she’d reacted about as well as an overtired two-year-old to hearing the word
no
.