Page 106 of A Shade of Myself
“I wasn’t pushed into the same track as my sister, was I?” Laughing bitterly, she shoved her drink away so violently that dark sticky soda sloshed over the rim to splash on the cheap laminate table. “I know how the dance world works. If I didn’t have a teacher in my corner in the early days or a mother who—” She let out a soft gasp.
“Your mom was wrong about you,” I said. “You can’t let the opinion that talent overrides hard work rule your life. You did this on your own.”
But maybe I didn’t believe in that statement as much as I needed to, and maybe Giselle caught wind of the lie.
She toyed with the “G” pendant on her necklace then closed her fist around it. “Thank you for all your help.”
“We’re not finished yet.”
“Yes, we are.” She stood up, but I grabbed her arm.
The employee once more looked over but when I glared at him, he sulkily wandered back into the kitchen.
“You’re going to let your sister, the real Giselle, remain in that hell? And what about you? That feeling like your life switched tracks? The itch in your brain?”
Giselle wrenched out of my grasp and leaned forward with a snarl. “I love being a dancer and I’m not giving it up.”
“No one is saying you have to.”
“You think my sister is going to let me keep dancing with the company in her name? Or that anyone else would want me when word gets out that I’m a fraud?”
My indignation seeped away. I’d held the truth up as some paragon of absoluteness, but truth was a many-layered prism, reflecting different aspects depending on how you viewed it.
Watching this distraught young woman pierced by the truth of her actions and grappling with her world crashing down, I questioned what I’d unearthed. I’d sought the truth in this case for its healing nature, but all I’d done was destroy.
“I know it’s not simple,” I said, “but the two of you need to return to your real lives.”
“Why? According to whom?”
I opened my mouth and then shut it. I didn’t get to be the final authority on the twins, but keeping the illusion up wasn’t right. “Do you want to live a lie?”
“There’s no other way for me to live. Wake up. My sister can’t just pick up where she left off. She hasn’t danced in three years.” She braced her hands on the table, her head bowed, before raising glistening eyes to mine. “Her career is over.”
I blinked and sat back slowly. I hadn’t considered that. Gigi would return to the death of a dream she’d trained for her entire life, not to mention the mental trauma when she realized what had happened to her.
Giselle shook off her sorrow, her voice hard. “You understand now? The only thing to do is keep everything as it is.”
“Do you feel any remorse at all?” I said dully. “You ruined her life.”
She flinched, then crossed her arms. “What’s done is done.”
“But—”
“No.” There was a wild desperation on her face like a cornered animal. “You did what I asked and I got my answers. It’s over.” She strode out of the pizza place, her back ramrod straight and her head held high.
I stared vacantly out the window, my faith in humanity destroyed. Giselle had all the facts and yet she was determined to cling to this illusion. No wonder the demon hadn’t bothered to hide his work from me. The people he dealt with didn’t want these false realities broken.
Where did my responsibility end? Tatiana would say that I’d done what the client wanted and now I should walk away, but how was I supposed to leave Gigi with Edvin? She was a trophy piece for a demon. What happened when he got bored of her? Would she be consigned to some physical torment to go with the mental one she was living?
But would returning Gigi to her “true” life be worse than what she suffered now? She thought being a dancer was a delusion she suffered from. How much harder would it be to know that her own twin had stolen everything from her?
To cap off this awesome meeting, Nav called to find out if the plan was to go for the demon first or the victims?
I lied and said I hadn’t met with the client yet and would get back to him shortly.
“Please don’t rush to help these poor women on my account. Take your time,” he said snidely and hung up.
I dragged myself back to the KH. I wasn’t in the mood to watch Pyotr taste his chicken and cornbread, but his excitement at seeing the food broke through my despondency a bit, so I stuck around long enough for him to try his first bites.
