I opened the brand new carton of milk and shot a grateful look across the lawn to Derek’s house before pouring it into my cereal bowl.
I’d been confused when he agreed to shop for me.
I’d been even more confused when I jerked awake to see his dark eyes searching my face.
Then he’d left abruptly, and I’d been completely and utterly flummoxed.
I had no idea what to make of Derek. He was this strange blend of asshole and knight in shining armor. A surly, caring, evil, nurturing enigma.
And maybe I was getting a little used to having him around.
I crunched my cereal thoughtfully. The image I’d tried to force on him - of con man predator exploiting my feeble grandfather - didn’t match what I was seeing at all.
And I knew better than any one else what a trap image could be.
I’d had an image when I performed on stage in front of thousands. But being Jane Doe wasn’t the first time I’d set my real self aside to play a role.
My very first role was that of ‘good daughter’ for an audience of two.
My parents. Gayle and Glenn Dolan.
When I was a kid, they were already old. Theirs were the only gray heads at the playground. And when they bothered to take me, they preferred to sit on the bench and watch, rather than engage in a raucous game of tag like the other parents in the square.
Most people, when they saw us together, assumed I was out with my grandparents. That the people I called ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ had already raised their family and moved on to the next generation.
I swallowed hard and pushed myself away from the table, consciously moving away from the memories that surrounded it. But they came flooding back anyway.
People who thought that my parents were done with raising kids were right.
In a way.
My sister Violet was fifteen years old when she sat in the back of her friend’s car. Fifteen years, nine months and two weeks old to be exact. Three months shy of sixteen, she was the youngest in her grade. Her friends were driving already, inexperienced sixteen-year-olds behind the wheel for the first time, flush with power.
They were on their way to a movie, heading through the back roads to one of the big chain multiplexes. It was tough being a young teenager in a tourist’s town like Reckless Falls. So my sister did what everything teenager does. She left. She piled into a car with far too many other passengers, and set out on the twenty-minute drive to the next biggest town.
But she never made it. A sudden summer’s storm blew up, and the brand new driver - hopped up on caffeine and freedom - was driving way too fast when they hit the curve.
Violet Marie Dolan was fifteen years, nine months and fourteen days old when she died.
One year and three months later, I was born.
I was my parents’ second chance. And they were never shy about letting me know that I was a do-over.
She was gone. I was here. We were two different people, but I never felt that way. I was raised in her shadow, in the space she used to occupy, and was never allowed to step out into my own.
Paging through old, dusty albums, I’d studied her face until it was more familiar than the one in the mirror. Violet was the original. I was a copy of a copy. A bad imitation of the real thing.
Violet was beautiful. And she was good, too. She was the standard I could never live up to, but also the yardstick I was measured against. Every one of my accomplishments was pitted against my dead sister's. Did I walk at fifteen months? Violet walked at twelve. Did I start speaking in full sentences at twenty months? I was showing off, since Violet didn't speak until two-and-a-half. Was I a good musician? It wasn't really important because Violet was better. Was I strong, tall, or beautiful? Violet was all these things and more.
Frozen in time at fifteen years, nine months and fourteen days, Violet became a saint. My parents put her up on pedestal that grew higher and higher the closer I got to her eternal age.
I lived my life alongside Violet’s for as long as I could. But the closer I got to fifteen years, nine months and fourteen days, the shorter the yardstick became. I couldn't see past that measurement. My life was laid out in front of me in terms of what Violet had accomplished, but what would it be like for me to surpass her? How could I be fifteen years, nine months and fifteen days?
I didn't mean to run away. It wasn't intentional. It was just that, my life followed Violet’s already beaten path. Suddenly, at sixteen, I had no path. I was left to wander the woods alone.
I left the day my license arrived. When I hit the road with my best friend Xavier to sneak into a forbidden out-of-town concert, I was convinced that a car would come out of nowhere and mow me down. Cut me off at the knees for daring to step out of my sister’s shadow.
But it didn’t. We made it clear of Reckless Falls, alive and suddenly free.
At a pit stop, I looked at myself in a grimy gas station mirror and saw myself for the first time. The wild, fierce girl I’d always wanted to be was looking back at me, her joy mirroring my own.
I’d laughed and cried at the same time, shouting, “That’s me! That’s me!” until the gas station attendant threatened to call the police. I grabbed Xavier and we ran back to the car in hysterics.
Buoyed by that triumph, we made it into the concert without a hitch. At that moment, I knew I was invincible. I was dancing and shouting and singing along with every word when I caught the eye of an older man watching me from behind the velvet ropes.
He waved me over. And flush with the headiness of escaping my sister’s fate, I obeyed. “Hey! What’s your name?” I’d asked him.
“What’s yours?” he shot back.
“Aria.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t like it. What’s your middle name?”
“Jane.”
He reached out and touched my face. “That’s right. You’re definitely a Jane.”
That night I stepped out from my sister’s shadow only to end up under Killian’s thumb.
But that moment in the mirror stayed with me. That fleeting moment where I’d seen myself for the very first time.
I stood up from the table and walked into the bathroom. The morning sunshine streamed in through the window, almost too bright for me to handle. I blinked. And then blinked again as I stared at the woman in the mirror.
Was that really what I looked like?
Fake hair. Fake smile - teeth capped with bright white veneers. Fake lips - plumped out with fillers. Fake skin - courtesy of Botox.
I’d stepped out from Violet’s shadow into Killian’s darker one. Now I was alone in the light for the first time since the gas station bathroom. That girl in the mirror had been fierce, brave, and wildly happy.
I wanted to see her again.
But I had no idea who she was.