Home Sweet Home
1146 Words
When we arrived in San Francisco there was a man waiting in the arrivals hall to collect us. He was holding a large laminated sign with ‘Cooper’ printed on it in large serious looking black letters.
I would have been excited about being greeted like that a few months ago, but now the sign was just another reminder that I had left Heather Wilson behind in Boston.
I nearly asked Brooke where we were going, but at the last minute, I thought of how that would sound to the driver. What kind of person has no idea where they live?
We were driving for so long that I started to worry that California was not our final destination after all.
The exotic-looking palm trees lining many of the streets we drove down already felt like a completely different world to the fiery fall foliage I was used to, but we could have been driving to another airport to fly to an entirely different country for all I knew.
I was relieved when Brooke nudged me after just under an hour in the back of the car and told me we were nearly there.
She sounded so enthusiastic - full of the joy and excitement a 26-year-old would be when they were moving into a new home to start a fantastic new job.
I managed to force a smile, but it felt fake and I knew it was convincing nobody.
Victoria was nearly 18, but the clothing and back story I had been given meant the similarities between the person I was on the inside and the person I was supposed to be now were confined to our age alone. She was the confident and popular young woman Tammie would probably have grown into.
At least that made it less suspicious that I wasn’t happy about the move - Victoria had left a thriving social life and a huge group of friends behind in Boston. Perhaps that is why they chose to give me her life.
Victoria and Brooke would be starting their new life together in San Jose. Right at the heart of Silicon Valley - a city at the cutting edge of innovation and technology, and filled with the kind of young go-getters and rich kids I would definitely not fit in with.
I didn’t know a massive amount about the area but I couldn’t help thinking about the future I might have there. I remembered from one of the many conversations I had with my father about my dreams and aspirations that it was known for being a hub for well-respected law firms handling patents. Heather had dreamed of studying criminal law at Harvard and following in her father’s footsteps; perhaps Victoria could attend Stamford and specialize in patent law, instead. She could help the trendy start-ups secure their groundbreaking new technology.
We finally pulled up outside of our new home. My mother would have politely described it as ‘modest’; Tammie would have made an overly dramatic gagging noise and refused to go in.
The shabby-looking apartment complex on the outskirts of the city was a far cry from the sprawling Colonial-style redbrick home I had grown up in, but it was a realistic place for a young teacher and her teenage sister to live.
My family home had been worth well over a million dollars, and my parents both had generous life insurance through my father’s work. It seemed deeply unfair as I traipsed up three flights of stairs dragging one of the suitcases that I would never see a cent of that. I guess my auntie and her family will be enjoying their unexpected inheritance back in North Carolina soon enough.
The apartment was just as modest inside as it looked from the outside.
It looked as if we had walked right into someone else’s living room.
I expected everything to be brand new, but it wasn’t. The furniture was worn, and there were trinkets and things around that made the place look lived in.
I froze when I noticed a framed photograph on a side table, and picked it up to inspect it close up.
It was me - a younger me. But rather than the straight blond hair and gray eyes from the original image, I had the same dark eyes and wavy brown hair as Victoria.
I recognized myself, and I could even remember the image that this had been manipulated from.
I wasn’t grinning next to my new baby sister in this version, though. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and an image editing wizard, four-year-old Victoria was stood next to a young Brooke with their childhood pet - a fuzzy little white cat named Bonbon.
The picture made me nauseous to look at, and I set it back down on the table.
“How does Chinese sound for dinner?” Brooke asked, shuffling through the take-out menus which were in a stack on the dining table.
I shrugged. I was used to my mother’s home-cooked meals; we never got take-out food.
“Fine, I guess.”
She handed me the menu, and I stared down at it in a daze. None of it sounded appealing. Deep-fried, greasy, and completely lacking in any real nutritional value.
Just the kind of food a normal teenager like Victoria and her cool older sister would enjoy.
Victoria chose her first meal in this exciting new city at random. I decided that whatever it ended up tasting like, it would be her favorite thing ever.
I decided that I would handle nearly every aspect of her personality that way; she was a character I would leave down to random chance.
Victoria’s favorite coffee was the latte with hazelnut syrup she had abandoned at the airport. Her favorite take-out was Chinese. Her favorite musician would be whoever happened to be playing the next time I turned on the radio. Fake likes and dislikes seemed appropriate enough for my new fake life.
The food arrived, and Brooke shoveled it onto plates for us before sitting down on the couch and flicking on the TV.
Victoria’s favorite TV show was now a reality show about some celebrity Heather only knew of thanks to Tammie.
I looked down at the plate. It didn’t look at all appetizing, and I must have screwed up my nose because Brooke asked me if I wanted to switch with her.
Whatever she had ordered looked and smelled exactly the same as my own meal, so I politely declined.
“Not bad, eh?” Brooke remarked, taking in the sight of the drab apartment. She did not sound sarcastic or insincere.
I forced yet another smile.
“Home sweet home.”
- Writer
