My Double Life

Other titles by Janette Rallison

Son of War, Daughter of Chaos

Blue Eyes and Other Teenage Hazards

Just One Wish

Masquerade

My Double Life

A Longtime (and at One Point Illegal) Crush

Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws

Playing The Field

My Fair Godmother

My Unfair Godmother

All’s Fair in Love, War, and High School

Fame, Glory, and Other Things on my To Do List

It’s a Mall World After All

Revenge of the Cheerleaders

How to Take The Ex Out of Ex-boyfriend

Slayers (under pen name CJ Hill)

Slayers: Friends and Traitors (under pen name CJ Hill)

Erasing Time (under pen name CJ Hill)

Echo in Time (under pen name CJ Hill)

What the Doctor Ordered (under pen name Sierra St. James)

Kindle Edition, License Notes

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To my dad, who was a lways there for me. When I didn’t think I was good enough to be a writer, he proved me wrong by sending an essay I'd written to a magazine. It was my first sale and my first step on this very fun road I now travel. Thanks, Dad!

And to my mom, who is the most avid reader I know. It's an honor to be your favorite author!

CHAPTER 1

I didn’t want to write this. Really, there’s a lot that’s happened in the last few months that I’d rather forget. But Mom says I need to have an autobiography on hand, that I need to record all the facts, in case someone writes a trashy tell-all book about me. Mom also told me I should describe her as ten pounds thinner, looking like a fashion model, and being an immaculate housekeeper. So here's the disclaimer: Whatever else you might think about the events in this story, please keep in mind that my mom is gorgeous and our bathrooms were always clean.

Because autobiographies have pictures, I’m supposed to go through my photo album and come up with some representative snapshots that show what I was like before my life got swept away in stardust and celebrity glitter. None of the photos I have are truly representative of me though.

A snapshot couldn't reveal what it’s like to grow up half white, half Latina in small town West Virginia, or how missing your father your entire life changes everything. I could put in a picture of me sprawled on my couch with my best friend, Lori, but you wouldn’t catch the crucial details: that everything I’m wearing and the couch itself are secondhand. My brown shoulder-length hair always looks the same, not because I have a no-nonsense style, but because it was the only style my mother knew how to cut. I was too poor to go to a salon.

Since I don't have a picture, I will describe a scene from my life, a day at the end of February when I asked Trevor Wilson to the Sadie Hawkins dance, the day that set so many other things in motion.

It started with Hector Domingas trailing me around the library. Since I’m bilingual, teachers always assigned me to sit by the Spanish speaking kids who struggled with English. That way they had someone to explain anything they couldn’t understand. In world history that person was Hector.

I helped Hector a lot. And because the Morgantown High staff might someday read this, I won’t say more about his homework or any part I played in the completion of several five-paragraph essays.

The thing about Hector was that the last couple of days he’d been acting strange. He'd say bizarre things to me and then wouldn't explain himself. He’d show up outside my classes and watch me walk past him. It was beginning to creep me out, and I wanted to spend as little time with him as possible, but on this day Hector needed help on our latest writing assignment: Leaders Who Changed the World. He wanted to do one about Cesar Chavez. Unfortunately, Hector couldn't find any books on Chavez, and our teacher said we had to use books, not Internet sites.

I fingered the book I'd picked up on Churchill. "Choose someone else,” I told him. "Solo escoge un libro del estante.” Just pick a book off the shelf.

“Deben tener Chavez." They should have Chavez. He folded his arms over a T-shirt that was too big. Hector never seemed to fill out his clothes. He was shorter than me— and, granted, I’m five foot eight, but with his skinny arms and large brown eyes, he looked like a freshman instead of a senior.

"You can ask the librarian to find a book for you,” I said. I knew he wouldn’t. He hated conjugating enough English verbs to pull off a conversation with a teacher. He scowled at me, then turned and disappeared down one of the non-fiction aisles.

I did a quick check around the library to see where Trevor was. He sat at one of the tables in the middle of the room taking notes. His blond hair stayed perfectly in place, even though he was bent over a book. It was like his hair just knew what to do to make him look good.

My plan had been to sit down at the same table and strike up a conversation. I walked several steps toward him, felt my stomach bang into my ribs, then made a U-turn and hurried over to the table where Lori sat.

She had several books spread out in front of her but shook her head with disappointment as I sat down. She’d watched me head toward Trevor's table and then bail out.

"Sadie Hawkins is nineteen days away," she said.

She had reminded me to ask Trevor to the Sadie Hawkins dance every day for the last week. She kept suggesting cute little ways I could do it, like bringing him Chinese food and engineering a fortune cookie with a slip of paper that said I’d be fortunate if you went to the dance with me. Please say yes.

Personally, I think asking a guy out is hard enough without turning the whole thing into some sort of reality show event. If you make it into a treasure hunt and he decides he doesn’t like the treasure, well, how humiliating is that?

Lori hadn’t asked anyone to the dance yet either. She wanted to double with me but couldn’t decide between three guys who kept calling her. Picking one guy would mean choosing a favorite and thus offending the other two. Lori's life is so hard.

"I’ll ask him,” I said. "I just need to do it my way. You know, really casually”

She leaned toward me over her books and papers. "You’re waiting for someone else to ask him so you don’t have to. You're afraid to talk to him.”

I glanced at Trevor, then quickly glanced away so he didn't catch me staring. "I am not.”

She took a Seventeen magazine from her bag and slid it across to me. "Exhibit one: the flirting quiz.”

I never should have taken that stupid test. Lori wasn’t going to let me forget that I flunked it.

Apparently if you see someone attractive staring at you, you're supposed to either A) smile back at him playfully or B) send him a wink, not C) assume you have a wardrobe malfunction and check to make sure everything is zipped and buttoned.

And if a guy comes up to you and stands too close—it might mean A) he's interested in you, instead of C) he’s trying to intimidate you by violating your personal space and you have every right to shove him away.

Luckily, Seventeen also wrote a "Rev Up Your Flirting Skills” article to remedy my near-hopeless situation. Lori made me read it. Three times.