Page 1 of The Charade
1
Ava
"I'm goingto miss you girls so much," my mom said, gathering my twin sister, Elyse, and me into her arms for one last hug before she left us at the entrance of our new private boarding school.
My sister and I hugged our petite mother, our five-foot-nine-inch frames towering over her barely five-foot one.
"Sure you can't just take us with you?" Elyse asked our mother when we pulled away from the hug, the look of apprehension in her expression mirroring how I felt.
"Yeah," I said. "I mean, isn't online schooling all the rage these days?"
Mom shook her head as she gazed at my sister and then at me. "I won't have you miss the last opportunity to be kids." But even as she said it, the tears at the corners of her dark-brown eyes told me she hated saying goodbye as much as we did. "You're going to love it here. Some of my best memories were made at this school when I was your age."
I looked behind us again, feeling so small next to the hundred-year-old castle-like building that would be my home for the next nine months.
I'd been so on board with the dream of my mom finally making it big in the fashion world, since I loved fashion and couture almost as much as she did. But if I'd known that getting her own fashion show in New York this past year would soon lead to her traveling the world—necessitating that Elyse and I attend a boarding school to finish our senior year—I would have told her to hold off on that dream a little longer. Because I wasn't ready for thethree amigosto be separated.
But ready or not, my mom's dreams had finally come true and now we were starting our last year of high school on the outskirts of Eden Falls, Connecticut—a world away from the tiny house in Ridgewater, New York where we grew up.
My mom had attended Eden Falls Academy when she was our age—her family being wealthy property developers in Israel and wanting to give her the study-abroad experience.
So now that she could afford to send us here, there were apparently no other options worth considering. After all, if her strict Jewish parents had felt safe sending their only daughter half a world away to school here, then it was most certainly good enough for us.
So here we were with our suitcases already delivered to our room, ready to start our senior year at a high school whose tuition and board for a year cost more than my mom used to make annually.
I was thankful my mom cared about us so much that she would do anything to give us all the things she felt we'd lacked the first seventeen years of our lives. But as a rabble of butterflies fluttered around in my ribcage when I looked up at the huge iron doors surrounded by vines with pink flowers, I couldn't help but think that staying at Grandma Cohen's home in Israel would have been a much less daunting prospect. At least I’d been there before, so it was somewhat familiar.
What if no one liked me here?
What if all the social groups were already so tightly knit that there wasn't extra room for new faces?
But since I knew this was already a hard enough goodbye, I forced myself to stand up straighter, pulled my shoulders back, and said, "I'm sure once we're settled, we'll like it." I looked at my sister, whose golden-brown eyes were the same color and shape as mine. "Elyse and I will watch out for each other."
"Yes, I'll make sure Ava gets at least some of her homework done in between flirting with all the guys," Elyse said, shooting me a smirk.
"And I'll make sure Elyse has a little fun as she's maintaining her 4.0 GPA," I countered back with a wink.
"Just look out for each other and everything will be fine." My mom glanced at Elyse and me. "And remember, I'm only a phone call away if you need me."
She gave us each one last hug, and before we could shed too many more tears, she waved goodbye and climbed into the black car waiting for her on the cobblestone drive.
And there she went, the great Miriam Cohen, the woman who had clawed her way back up to the top after her father had disinherited her when she had Elyse and me out of wedlock.
I hoped that someday I could be half as strong of a woman as my mom was.
Which meant that I needed to practice being strong now, even though I was afraid.
Elyse and I linked arms and waved as we watched the car holding our mother drive away, a cool fall breeze causing the leaves of the towering trees nearby to rustle.
Once the black car disappeared down the tree-shrouded path and through the tall iron gates, Elyse turned to me and asked, "Ready to go back inside for our tour?"
"I guess."
And so, instead of putting off the inevitable, we walked side by side up the few steps that led to the entrance of our new school.
A girl wearingone of the school's blue blazers and plaid skirts was waiting for Elyse and me when we made it back into the school's lobby. She had long, dark auburn hair and looked so much like a younger Lily Collins that I couldn't help but wonder if they were related.
"Ready for the grand tour?" she asked us when we got closer.
