My Double Life

CHAPTER 6

  I saw frustratingly little of Kari during my training, and I never got to see her without Maren carefully observing everything I said. It made it hard to have any sisterly bonding time. So one day I convinced Maren that I needed to observe Kari directly, to make sure I had everything down before my first public debut.

  Maren drove me down to the recording studio so I could see what went on during a session. She told me that when Kari was finished, we could both go back to Kari’s house so I could study her firsthand. It was a bigger deal than I’d imagined. Before we arrived, Maren made Kari’s bodyguard and personal assistant clear anyone with a camera out of the parking lot. Maren didn't want to clue in anyone from the press that she had a Kari double with her.

  She phoned ahead and told Kari’s staff and the music technicians that I was an actress working on a movie about Kari’s life, but even then, I wore no makeup and had my hair pulled up in a baseball cap so I looked as little like her as possible. We didn’t want the staff to put two and two together when I started doing events for Kari.

  "Her driver will take both of you back to her house when she's done recording," Maren said as we walked into the studio. "Don’t let Kari do anything stupid.”

  "Like what?”

  "Like going out together in public.” After a moment's thought, she added, "Also no skinny-dipping where paparazzi might be present, no driving to Vegas, and no going online to try and refurnish her house with antiques from Italy. Returning stuff overseas is awful.”

  We walked to the control room, and Maren spoke to Kari's assistant for a few minutes, then left to run errands.

  I stood among half a dozen people watching Kari through a large window. Kari’s staff pretty much left me alone. Every once in a while, her bodyguard sent stony glances in my direction, but he did that to everyone, so I didn’t take it personally. Kari stood in the recording room, earphones on, swaying to the music as she sang into the mike.

  I’d heard her songs on the radio, but it was still odd to see her creating one. It made it seem more real, more amazing. She had a beautiful voice, deeper and richer than mine.

  I wondered for the hundredth time what it would have been like to grow up knowing we were sisters. I imagined Kari and me on camping trips, at amusement parks, running through waves at the beach, with our arms flung around each other making silly faces for the camera. She would have given me fashion tips and told me how to act around guys.

  Instead of those memories, all I had was an empty aching spot. I wanted to somehow make up for everything I’d missed out on even though I knew it was impossible.

  After a couple hours of Kari singing and stopping and changing backup singers, and rewriting parts, and then resinging parts, she decided to call it a day. The tech guys weren't happy about this. Apparently she hadn't made any progress.

  It didn’t matter. Kari took off her headphones and walked into the control room unapologetically. Even in jeans and T-shirt, she was all flash and confidence. She dismissed her staff, telling them she was going out with me, then nodded in my direction. "You ready to ditch this place?"

  I glanced at the clock. I’d heard Maren tell Kari more than once that she needed to get this album done. She was supposed to debut some of her new songs at a mega concert in San Diego on May 6. "Won’t Maren be mad if you leave now?”

  Kari rolled her eyes and grabbed her purse. "I’m not making this album for Maren. I’m making it for my fans, and they’ll be a lot madder if it's garbage.” She put on her sunglasses, then walked out of the door and motioned for me to follow. "You can’t beat a dead horse,” she said over her shoulder, "and I've not only beat this one, I've dragged it through eight octaves and a chorus. At this point, the dead horse could sing better.”

  "That’s not true.” I hurried to catch up with her. "You have a great voice.”

  I had thought a driver was taking us to her house, but there was no sign of one. She walked to a silver Porsche, took out her keys, and unlocked it. "I’ve got a good voice, but you can find good voices in every high school chorus and church choir. I want to be a good songwriter too. It takes real talent to write hits. Not many singers can do that.”

  "You've done it before."

  She opened the door and slid inside. "My dad helped me write the songs on my last CDs.”

  "Oh.” I got into the passenger side, casually letting my hand run across the seat. I had to. I wanted to know what a Porsche felt like.

  "I wrote most of my hit songs," she said, and started the car. "My dad would just come along and change a chord. Add a bridge or something. Redo a few lyrics.”

  "Well, I’m sure he’d help you again if you asked."

  "I'm not asking him.” She checked for traffic, then pulled out of the parking lot, going too fast. "I can do this by myself, and I'll prove that to him and everybody else. I don't want to live underneath his shadow anymore.” Her expression was terse for a few moments, looking ahead fiercely. Then she sighed and slid me a glance. "Sorry for snapping at you. It’s just . . . you have no idea what it’s like to grow up with a dad everybody loves and thinks is perfect."

  Well, she was right about that.

  “I can write hits," she said. "I just need some inspiration. Songs never come when you're under stress. They come when you’re having fun, when you’re in sync with life . . .” She paused for a moment considering her own words, then switched lanes. "Which is why I’ve decided that instead of going to my house so you can study me like some sort of science project, we should go do something fun.”

  "Okay," I said, a little nervous about what that might mean. "But we can't go out in public together, or go skinny dipping, drive to Vegas, or buy Italian home decor. Maren's orders.”

  Kari took her gaze from the road long enough to give me a conciliatory smile. "I bet it’s a ton of fun living with Maren. Does she give you a schedule and a whole list of rules to follow every day?"

  I sat up straighter. "She said I had to because that's how you lived."

  Kari snorted. "That’s how she wants me to live. The woman has no concept of what an artist's life is like.” She switched lanes again and slowed for a light. "Luckily she has the hots for my dad, so she never gets too mad about anything I do. She wants to stay on my good side.”

  I'd been right. My stomach twisted. I'm not sure why. I knew Alex Kingsley had dated lots of women, but I didn't want him to ever date Maren. She was so cold and judgmental. How could he like her when he hadn’t been interested in my mother, who was warm, funny, caring, and whose beauty came not in the form of practiced poise, but was just there naturally?

  I kept my voice even. "So are they an item?"

  "Not yet. Dad doesn’t have a clue, and I'm not about to tell him. If she gets in good with him, then she’ll stop working for me altogether.”

  My expression must have shown I wasn’t happy. Kari looked at me and said, "Sorry she’s such a downer. Now I bet you wish she had a crush on your dad.”

  Unfortunately she already did. The light changed, and we moved forward. I asked, “So what did you want to do to have fun?"

  She pursed her lips, thinking. "We could go find some drunk guys—just show up and start talking to them. They’d think they lost their minds seeing two Kari Kingsleys in front of them.”

  I laughed, but shook my head. "No. We’re not going to torment drunks.”

  She thought for another moment. "You speak Spanish. We could fly to a small South American country where no one knows who I am and be tourists.”

  "Kari, you have a huge following in South America. You’ve sold a million CDs in Argentina alone.”

  "Really?” She glanced over at me. "How do you know that?”

  "Maren makes me memorize those kinds of facts because I’m supposed to know everything you know.”

  "Oh. Then it’s ironic I didn’t know that.” She let out an amused laugh, but I didn’t join in. Long hours of being quizzed on Kari trivia will suck the humor right out of you. She tapped her thumbs on the
steering wheel. "What do you usually do for fun?”

  "I used to hang out at the mall or see a movie with my friends. Sometimes we'd go to a school game and then go to Dairy Queen." It sounded low class, but I’d been trapped in dance studios and fitness rooms for too long. I missed my old life more than I thought I would.

  "I can't do any of that stuff," Kari said. "I’d be trampled by fans.” She said this wistfully, as though she’d like to be anonymous for a while.

  I stopped being jealous of her right then—well, a little bit anyway. What must it be like to not be able to hang out in public places?

  “Let's go horseback riding,” she said. "I've got some great horses, and the stable is really good about working with celebrities. I call them up and tell them I'm coming with a guest, and they get everything ready for me. No questions, no leaks to the paparazzi.”

  I perked up in my seat. "Horseback riding sounds way better than hunting down drunk guys or fleeing from fans in South America.”

  We drove to the stable where two of Kari’s horses were boarded. As we went through the private entrance, Kari told me that she actually had three horses. Her third, a gelding named Chance, lived at her dad's ranch in Hidden Valley. Chance had been a gift from him to Kari when she turned twelve years old. And—unbelievably—he was tawny brown.

  When she told me this, I snapped right back into jealous mode and came close to doing something psychotic like kicking a random bale of hay and yelling, "I can't believe he gave you my horse! You got a dad at your birthday and a horse!" But I didn't. Chalk one up for self-control.

  I climbed onto this huge black horse and hoped he was gentler than he looked. Kari gave me a crash course in riding and then we followed a trail into the nearby hills. Wearing helmets and sunglasses, and with our hair pulled back into ponytails, we weren’t recognizable. We might have been any two sisters out for a ride.

  Kari talked about her album and its frustrations. She didn't want the studio to Auto-Tune her because if her fans were used to hearing songs that were perfected digitally, then her live performances would always suffer by comparison. She’d have to lip-synch them just to sound right. She also said a bunch of stuff about stylization in lieu of enunciation, and vibrato, and other stuff I didn’t understand. The girl might not have known when Saint Patrick’s Day was, but she knew a ton about music.

  Finally Kari said, "Sorry for dumping that on you. I was supposed to let you ask questions about the music business and stuff. So what do you want to know?"

  I had a lot of questions, but none of them were about the music business. Even though Kari had said it was hard to grow up with a father everybody loved and thought was perfect, I had a hard time convincing myself that those were bad things. Unless it was all image and no truth. "What was it like growing up with Alex Kingsley as your father?”

  Kari held the reins loosely, her posture casual enough that I could tell she was comfortable on a horse. "He stayed pretty busy with recording and touring. I traveled with him a lot when I was little, so I pretty much grew up on tour buses. I didn't know any differently—I thought every kid had an entire band sing them to sleep at night."

  This still didn't tell me what type of person he was, so I tried again. “Did he help you with your homework and teach you to ride a bike and stuff?”

  Kari cocked her head at me. "Maren told you to ask that question, didn’t she? She wants me to feel guilty so I’ll call and make up with him. Well, I’m not doing it, so tell her to forget it.” Kari snapped her reins and her horse picked up speed, but she still spoke loud enough over her shoulder for me to hear. "Remind Maren that he also volunteered to play at my prom so he could keep an eye on me—thus ruining prom night and embarrassing me in front of my friends.” She sent me a pointed look. "Also, the last time I asked him for a loan, he said that he wasn’t a bank. My own dad. So I’m not calling him. I’m not seeing him.”

  I urged my horse to go faster in order to catch up with her, too absorbed with what she said to worry about getting jostled in the saddle. I could see her point about prom night, but still, he seemed really nice. I tucked that knowledge away with both the pain and the pleasure it brought me.

  "We don’t have to talk about your dad if you don’t want to,” I said when I rode by her side again. "We'll talk about you." I should ask something normal, like how she decided which fans to give autographs to when a line of them were waving pens at her, or what she did when she was waiting to go onstage, but I kept wondering how she would react when she found out I was her sister. Would she be excited, or would she see me as an encroacher? Maybe she’d hate me. "Did you mind being an only child?" I asked. "Did you ever want a brother or a sister?"

  She turned to me, surprised, and laughed.

  "What?” I said, afraid she’d somehow guessed my reasons for asking.

  "It’s just a weird question. No one has ever asked that before. But sure, I guess when I was little, I wanted somebody to play with. As I got older, I realized brothers and sisters are a pain, though, and who wants that?" Her gaze returned to me. "Admit it, I bet there've been times you wished you were an only child."

  "I am an only child,” I said, and then wondered if I should have said it. It wasn't quite true.

  "Really?" She let out a huff of disbelief. "It’s wild how much we have in common."

  Which was the understatement of the year.

  "Do you sing?” she asked.

  "I've done some musicals at school.”

  "Have you ever had a boyfriend named Michael?"

  "Nope."

  "Good. Stay away from those. They're nothing but trouble."

  I laughed, and she went on asking questions about my life, looking for more similarities. They weren’t hard to find. We both loved swimming, and hated jogging. We loved comedies and romances, hated horror movies, sad endings, or anything where the dog dies. Loved hot choco¬late—really, anything that was chocolate—but hated the taste of coffee. It made me wonder how much of a role genetics plays in everything. I also wondered if our places had been switched if I would have ended up with her personality and she would have ended up with mine. Maybe she would have been the one in the National Honor Society and I would have been on YouTube insisting that animals were people too.

  With every question she asked, with every exclamation of something like, "I love Chinese food too!” I almost expected her to figure the truth out for herself. We looked so much alike, and she already knew that my mother had been an Alex Kingsley fan.

  She didn't guess, though, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. Not before I had a chance to meet with Alex Kingsley himself. Besides, while only I knew the secret, I felt powerful. I could watch Kari and learn stuff about my father—and neither could hurt me. Not really. Once they knew, the power would be in their hands. I wasn't sure which reaction I feared most—outright distaste or frozen, horrified silence.

  Finally, when she ran out of questions, I said, "Well, there is still one big difference between us. We both grew up only children, but I always wanted a sister."

  I hoped she remembered that when she found out the truth.