The Goddess Twins Read online

  Leo squints in disbelief, taking in Aurora and me with Devin wedged between us. “What is this?! Get up from the floor, Aurora, Arden! Are you animals?” Leo growls. I have never seen him this furious, and I have known him my entire life. “I cannot believe what I am seeing! A house party? And who is this man in your room?”

  Leo slaps his hands in anger, like he wishes he was slapping any one of the three of us. Aurora is breathing hard as we all get up from the ground. I wonder if she’s going to hurl.

  Devin steps forward. “I’m very sorry, sir. Things got out of control. This is my fault.” Devin holds out his hand in contrition. Leo, however, looks right through him, focused on us.

  “I’m speaking to you, Arden. Who is this man in your room? And why is he still here?”

  “He’s one of the guests, Leo,” I smooth my hair with a shaky hand. “We just met. I didn’t invite him. I didn’t invite anyone.”

  “Way to throw me under the bus, bitch,” Aurora sputters, reaching her hand around Devin, attempting another slap at me. I block her with my arm.

  “Aurora!” Leo yells. “Is this how you speak in my presence? Are you intoxicated, girl?”

  “Maybe,” she says, indignant as ever.

  Leo turns his shaking head away from her, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “I think it’s best if I go.” Devin squeezes my arm and whispers, “I’ll see you again, soon.”

  I look away as Devin exits. Under the weight of Leo’s piercing gaze and Aurora’s jealousy, I feel overwhelmingly guilty. I will put him out of mind, I tell myself with zero conviction.

  Then Aurora crumbles to the floor in a drunken heap.

  “Come on, drunkie, stand up.” I nudge her with my foot, and she grunts, unmoved.

  Leo wipes his face with a handkerchief, then runs his hand through his pepper-gray beard. “As I see, you’ve been taking good care of your sister tonight, huh, Miss Arden?” Leo says, cutting his eyes on me.

  I look down at my twin now playing with the fringe of the mermaid rug. At this point, taking care of Aurora would require a rope, a shovel, and a burial plot. I stand silently, waiting for Leo to ream Aurora out. But instead he continues staring at me, stewing on my face alone.

  I shake my head as I realize the actual biggest frustration in my life. Having someone who looks exactly like me running around saying and doing things I would never, ever say or do, and then being implicated in the consequences.

  “And how is your mother?” Leo asks me softly after a moment of eerie calm. I bite my lip once again, continuing the dunks in my bath of shame. I haven’t even thought of Mom for hours. I thought about her earlier, but then … she dissolved from mind, buried deep under all this boy-mindreading, sister-drunk drama. But Mom … yeah. She would have landed already. A while ago, actually. She’s probably with the opera right now. I scratch my head as I calculate the time difference.

  “She landed earlier, right? I’m sure she’s swamped and will call us soon from the hotel.” I smooth my hair.

  “Oh really?” Leo’s eyes squint at me. “What if she had been trying to call you just now? Like you would hear the phone through all the partying and wrestling with boys? Why do you think I’m standing here? I’ve called you both about a thousand times this evening! You don’t even know what’s going on with your mother!” He’s breathing heavily now, his voice close to tears. “Something has happened.”

  “Oh god, Leo. What’s wrong?” I grab his arm and find myself immediately sucked into viewing the last hours of Leo’s life. I see him yelling into the phone. Dialing my phone number while running to his car. Screaming a voice mail to Aurora as he speeds on the freeway. I feel Leo’s confusion, panic, and desperation. I gasp at the crushing fear as I receive the phrase “mortal danger.” Mom is in mortal danger. In a flash, I am back in my bedroom, holding Leo’s arm.

  “Your mother is missing,” Leo says evenly, covering his cold hands over mine.

  “What?” I shake my head, rejecting his words. “No. No.”

  But Leo nods, “Yes, I spoke to the police in London. She’s been missing for hours.” He takes a jagged breath. “She exited the private plane at Heathrow and then just vanished. Vanished! There is security footage showing her exiting the plane, but then she disappears behind a blind spot. The opera, the hotel, the chauffeur—no one has heard from or seen her!”

  “She’s probably just shopping or sightseeing,” Aurora, still a heap on the carpet, slurs through her fog.

  Leo sighs again, rolling his eyes at her drunken state.

  “No,” I say, contradicting our drunk oracle. “Mom wouldn’t disappear without checking in with the opera first. She was so excited to be going back. This isn’t her. This is bad.”

  Leo nods at me again. “Exactly. Selene might be less than respectful of time, but it’s not like her to go missing on such an important night. She knows everyone is waiting on her. But the thing that makes this even more worrying is that the pilot reported she was extremely lethargic on the flight. They worry she’s been taken somewhere against her will.”

  “She’s probably just on an early honeymoon with our future stepdad,” Aurora giggles and hiccups to herself.

  “You think she was drugged and kidnapped by someone?” I deduce. “But who? Who would do this?”

  Leo shrugs helplessly.

  I stare into his heavy eyes and feel my consciousness slip into his mind. Maybe I can do this on purpose now? Try to read his memory, I say to myself, to see what he knows. I see a projection: Leo in his office. He’s talking to the airport security, yelling and pounding his fist. “What do you mean, she’s not showing up anywhere? How could someone disappear between the plane and the terminal? That’s what I’m asking. Did someone working for your incompetent company kidnap Selene? Well, it appears someone on your team must have helped, and I want answers!”

  “Of course we’re hoping your mother is fine,” Leo says out loud. “That this is all a misunderstanding, and she’ll turn up soon. That’s what I’m praying. But it’s not looking that way.” Leo’s voice breaks, and he clears his throat thickly. “The London police are on alert and the opera has dispatched their own detective to investigate.”

  “What can we do to help?” I ask, my hands wringing of their own accord. Mom is missing. Someone has kidnapped my mother.

  “The police are handling it,” Leo huffs, shaking his head. “They say we should just stay put in case she comes back here.”

  “Ugh. I’m kinda not feeling so great again,” Aurora scrambles from the floor and rushes to the bathroom connected to my room. Seconds later, I hear her retching.

  Leo and I shudder at the sound. “I can’t say I’m surprised Aurora wanted to throw a party in your mother’s absence,” Leo pinches the bridge of his nose. “But I’m disappointed that you let it—and her—get so badly out of hand.”

  “Me?” I tilt my head. “Are you seriously mad at me? I can’t control Aurora. She doesn’t listen to me. There was nothing I could do to stop her. She was determined to have this party!”

  “Is that right? And I just wonder what you could do with some determination of your own?” He raises his brow.

  I hang my head at the stinging comment.

  Leo sighs and lays his hand on my shoulder. “Arden, you are one of most emotionally intelligent people I know, yet you underestimate yourself over and over. Of course you cannot control her, but you can love her more than anyone. If you want to help your mother right now, be there for your sister. She needs you, you need her, and yet here you are fighting each other.”

  He delivers these words with soft intensity. Even so, they land hard. He is right. I know my sister better than anyone. Something heavy is going on with her right now. She needs me, and I have to be strong for us both. And Mom … I had pushed aside my feelings about her trip, denying my sadness about her absence. Yet, I felt that stabbing ache in the pit of my stomach all day. I knew something was wrong. Now I know what it is. Mom needs us.
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br />   “Wherever your mother is, she needs you both safe,” Leo says, embracing me. Everything suddenly clicks as his arms hold me still. Me, Aurora, and Mom. The three of us, standing, leaning together. We are like a triangle, each side holding up the other for balance. My sister needs my love, and our mother needs our help. Right now, the sides are scattered, and I have to make us whole again.

  Leo’s phone rings. He lets me go and glances at it with a groan. “It’s one of the contractors I work with; I need to take this call.” He walks downstairs, and I join Aurora in the bathroom, my head already beginning to swim with plans. And plans within plans.

  “I’M PRETTY SURE I need to pass out now,” Aurora grumbles. Her head is in her hands as she sits on the side of the tub.

  “No. You’re going to wait on doing that. Do you know why? Because the night is not nearly over for us.” I’m pacing the pink floor tiles, in full-on strategy mode. It’s like I just overturned a 10,000 piece puzzle, and I’m itching to solve it—processing information, making connections, forecasting possibilities.

  I’m not going to wait until this plays out badly. Aurora and I need our mother, and we have two options now: we can take the easy way and wait for news, or we can become active players in our own lives. We can take the hard way.

  “What do you have in mind m’lady?” Aurora asks as she moves to the toilet bowl.

  I smile, knowing she feels too horrible to put up a big fight against what I’m about to say.

  “We’re going to London to find Mom.”

  2

  Aurora

  UNDULATION

  Arden is pacing back and forth in the bathroom, crafting Operation Mom Rescue in hushed tones. I’ve heard her crack her knuckles a dozen times, popping her fingers one by one. She won’t stop moving her feet, her hands, or her mouth. Me? I’m here literally and figuratively failing to rise to the occasion. Yup. Action Packed Aurora! Now available to sit on the side of the tub while the world seemingly falls apart! Any movement beyond my eyeballs brings waves of nausea, though I have nothing left in my stomach but regret.

  But honestly? I don’t believe Mother is in danger. She’s probably off being “spontaneous” or “free spirited,” as she calls it. I call it unreliable. Arden is worked up over nothing. I mean, look at my twin—her cheeks flushed, forehead glowing with perspiration like she swallowed poison and her system is losing the battle. If she doesn’t calm down, Leo’s going to have to take us both to the ER.

  Leo. Our big-hearted, long-suffering godfather. He’s the closest thing we have to an actual father, and he sounded like he wanted to knock our skulls in just now. This must be the worst day he could ever imagine. He’s been in our life since the beginning, tutoring us half the year wherever we were stationed, vacationing with us during Mother’s down time. He always makes himself available to do anything Mother asks, and I see the look he saves just for when Mother laughs. I’m convinced he’s been in love with her forever. It’s no wonder he’s gone berserk because she hasn’t checked in with him or us.

  But it’s all going to be fine. I don’t get why we should assume it’s something sinister this time. Mother is just being flighty. I bet she lost track of time shopping. Or decided to escape with some fans on a getaway. She has missed many important moments in the past due to romances that consumed her focus and energy. She probably met a man on the plane and decided to follow him to his hotel.

  Or, and I wouldn’t put it past her because she loves pulling petty moves, maybe Mother is paying me back for being pissed at her for leaving this morning. Like, icing us all out, making us all worry, just to prove she’s in control. Oh, I bet this is what she’s up to! This is so her style, passive-aggressive as hell. She gets to punish us, have her fun, and then pretend she’s all peace, love, and togetherness when we confront her. There’s nothing wrong with Mother. She will turn up any minute with a lame explanation. She’s perfectly fine, doing whatever. As she always does.

  SO, THE DEAL with our mother? She’s an opera singer. A very famous one. The kind who gets bombarded in public by fans, who has a whole team to coordinate her movements and demands. Selene, first name only, was discovered when she was just a young girl, plucked from a Jamaican orphanage to train with the best voice coaches around the globe. After a successful début, years of touring followed, along with albums and even some movie musicals. When she got pregnant by one of her many lovers, she refused to name him or to slow down. Instead, she continued, bringing her twin girls along as she gobbled up fame and success like a Hungry Hungry Hippo.

  Thus Arden and I grew up bouncing across the globe. We were tutored from box seats; we lived out of suitcases in various hotels and homes of friends of a friend. We played backstage with ropes and pulleys and learned to apply lipstick and eyeshadow from the opera’s own makeup team. Cities morphed from one to another, but the theater was our home. The crew was our family. And our mother was the star around whom everyone orbited, including Leo. We created our own universe from what remained constant, which was each other. Everything else seemed to slip away just as I touched it, like a fistful of sand held underwater. We were experts at adaptation before we understood the word.

  Arden and I were sixteen when Mother took a sabbatical to lecture at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. We settled into a home for the first time, ever. It was then that my life as Aurora, not just one half of Selene’s twins, really began. The teen culture in our suburb fascinated me, like a chess set I want to master. I was ignited by the social scene that develops when you stay long enough to actually be a part of the picture.

  Unlike Arden, who hid in her stack of fantasy books, I built friendships. I collected plenty of enemies along the way, too, but honestly, they only made the landscape more intriguing. I went out on proper dates here, and I came to realize there’s really nothing about the guys themselves that keeps me at it. What I’m interested in is who I am with them, who I get to discover inside of me when I’m dating a new guy, who I transform into in front of a captivated audience of one. I like uncovering new sides of me—how I can be flirty or mysterious or vulnerable or dismissive. I date them to find out about me. I guess when you think about it, they’re basically just mirrors who pay for the tickets to where I want to go.

  Anyway, so when Mother wanted to get back on the road after a year, I refused. I didn’t want to give up my normal teenage life—the discoveries and freedom. I demanded we stay put. I said that Arden and I should be allowed to finish high school with our class. Arden mostly stayed out of the weeklong screaming fest that resulted in a standoff. She did interrupt a silent dinner on the eighth night to say that staying put for a few years wouldn’t end Mother’s career, not unless she wanted it to. After that evening, Mother conceded. She promised no trips, no performances, just family, for an entire year. A month later, she publicly announced her retirement from touring, though her statement left room for her to change her mind. Since then, things in our household have been calm, predictable, boring. Midwest basic, if you will. We’ve had months of actually getting along. That is, until our mother up and decided to abandon us before our biggest birthday. Because what is family compared to the glittering stage?

  I MASSAGE MY temples, willing my sister to stop talking. I know I can’t open my mouth without throwing up, but I can’t hear this anxiety spiral anymore. My head feels like it’s been hijacked by a tiny construction crew. I belch, and my mouth fills with the thick taste of licorice. Ugh. That would be the Jaeger. Those bombs probably weren’t the greatest addition to a night of keg stands, Jell-O shots, and rum and Cokes. Closing my eyes, I beg the universe to remind me to never drink again.

  Even if I weren’t drowning in an ocean of alcohol, I still wouldn’t be spinning in a wild state of worry over Mother. I know she wouldn’t worry for us. I’ve known it since Arden and I were seven and we spent a few months living in the Bahamas. My memories of that time are filtered by the bright sheen of sun, sand, and ocean. Mother was performing on a luxury cruise
ship. Leo was off somewhere, building his architecture empire. Arden and I practically lived outside near the water. Mother called us “beach babies” and joked she was going to send us off to be raised by mermaids. We had just learned to swim, which opened up a whole new universe. While Arden preferred playing in the sand, building sandcastles or digging for the center of the Earth, I was enticed into the clear water and undulating waves.

  One day, as I was swimming in the ocean, I got lost in the feeling of my body gliding so easily in the water, in rhythms of breast stroke and back stroke. Before I knew it, I was out so far I couldn’t see the shore in any direction. The ocean floor became a dark mystery below me. In a panic, I forgot how to swim. I splashed like an injured seal, yelling for Arden and Mother. My mouth filled with salt water. The sun blinded me. My body getting tired and weak, a chest-seizing terror trapped me. I was going under.

  Then suddenly, I felt strong arms wrap around me, lifting me upward, keeping me afloat. Too exhausted to open my eyes, I clung to the warm, curvy body that moved me swiftly through the water. Mother, I thought. Who else would save me? Who else would hold me with such care? I knew my mommy would save me, was my final thought before I passed out in her arms.

  When I came to on the sand, Arden was the only one there. She was frantic, shaking me.

  “Aurora, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

  I nodded, coughing as I slowly sat up. “Where is Mom?” I said, my throat burning with sea water.

  “I don’t know. But are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Mom carried me out,” I said.

  “No, it was someone … a woman I’ve never seen before. With long hair and skin so dark, it looked like midnight. She pulled you to shore, then she disappeared into the water so quickly, I couldn’t even say a word. But I’m just glad you are okay!” Arden embraced me tightly, and behind her back I looked out into the ocean, wondering who it was that rescued me.