FOUR

After leaving Ulta, Angie returned to Shayla’s apartment. She studied herself carefully in the floor length mirror hanging on the wall of her sister’s bedroom. The mirror was thick and expensive, edged in a frame of lovely brass. It had always served as the perfect frame for Shayla’s beauty. Seeing the mirror prompted Angie to remember something Jeff had told her. He had been watching Shayla brush her hair in this mirror. He told Shayla that she looked like a living painting hanging on the wall. He had been close to tears as he recounted the memory to Angie.

Angie’s curves rounded out the red velvet of the Juicy sweat suit nicely, though the waist band pulled a bit on her middle. The pants legs were a bit too short as well. “Hey Angie, the flood’s over!,” she could hear her sister’s teasing words in her mind. Angie turned to get the rear view and saw that the bulky purple band of her underwear was exposed above the red velvet. It was true. Shayla’s hips were not as padded as Angie’s. Her rear was more toned from all those hours she spent in the gym. Shayla’s breasts were also symmetrical and full, unlike Angie’s lopsided droopers. “Thank god for Victoria’s Secret push-up angels!,” Shayla had always joked at her sister’s expense. Retracing Shayla’s words now made Angie’s head pound again.

She closed her eyes and took a long, slow, deep breath. The question “What would Shalya do? What would Shayla do?” began to run like a ticker ribbon through Angie’s mind. Her slow and careful breathing continued as she prepared herself for what was about to come next.

“You are Shayla.” Angie opened her eyes and stared at herself in the mirror. Angie’s eyes were chocolate brown with flecks of orange; Shayla’s were robin’s egg blue.

“Your name, is Shay-la.” Angie said to herself, more determined than before. “Shayla.”

Angie glimpsed robin’s egg blue flash momentarily in her own eyes. “Shayla.” The blue flashed again, longer this time, then longer still. Angie reapplied the Slowburn, which she had in the pocket of the jacket, and blew herself a kiss. She was ready.

“Hello. My name is Shayla.” With a winning smile just like her sister’s, Angie extended a hand to her own image.

She then turned from the mirror and began to search Shayla’s bedroom for more clues. Feeling the air for existential impressions and image footprints, she retraced her sister’s freshest movements through the bedroom. That’s when she saw it.