My Sister's Voice Read Free

in choppy waves, framing the face, and the impostor was wearing glasses. Green and trendy, with diamonds flashing on the stem. Her smile mocked Lacey with slightly straighter, whiter teeth, and from what Lacey could see of her blouse and jewelry, she wasn’t a thrift store shopper like Lacey. But there was no doubt about it; it was her face. Somebody had stolen her face.
    Lacey pressed her hands against the glass and peered in to read the name on the book. Monica Bowman. The name meant nothing to her. Lacey tried to remember if she had ever cut her hair like that, owned glasses like that. No. Did someone (Robert?!) steal Lacey’s picture off her Web site, Photoshop her face? Or was Monica Bowman so ugly she couldn’t put her own mug on the cover of her book?
    She was going to get to the bottom of it, that was for sure. And once she caught the little cranial thief, there might even be a modest amount of green in it for her. Not that she was greedy, but if this Monica Bowman wanted to flaunt her face, it was going to cost her. She wasn’t going to be a jerk about it, though, and who wouldn’t be slightly flattered?
    Lacey was often told she was beautiful. She was as thin as she was in her teens, and in addition to her thick black hair, her mysterious gene pool had blessed her with blue eyes so pale she’d earned the nickname Ice. Deaf people used name signs to identify themselves, and Lacey’s name sign was the letter L making the motion of the wind. That name sign was given to her by Margaret Harris, her house mother at Hillcrest Children’s Center.
    You’re like the wind, Margaret used to say. Your moods sweep in and blow everything around . As a child, Lacey wanted her name sign to be something cute, like the letter L on her dimples, but once Margaret introduced the wind sign, it stuck. It was the first thing Lacey did as an adult, change her name sign, but this time instead of the L on her dimples, it was the L and the sign for “paint.” Many Deaf friends still called her Ice. Deep down, it didn’t feel like her name, it felt stolen—like she now felt about her face.
    She stared at the poster again, willing it to disappear. It did not. There had to be an explanation. Was this a local look-alike contest? Not that Lacey even came close to being a local celebrity, but her picture had been in the paper last week announcing her upcoming art show. Someone must have seen the article, Googled her, and cut and pasted her face from her Web site.
    That was it. The author had seen Lacey’s picture in the paper, and then had the nerve to steal her face. Maybe Robert hadn’t orchestrated this prank, maybe he was just alerting her to the fraud.
    Because there was no doubt about it, this was her face. There were probably plenty of women who looked a little bit like Lacey, resembled her in some ways, but not down to the exact icy irises, slope of her nose, height of her cheekbones, curve of her chin, depth of her dimples. Except for a tiny freckle to the left of her chin, which Lacey found herself touching; poster girl didn’t have the freckle.
    It was almost laughable, that someone would try to get away with this. This wasn’t a doppelganger, someone who looked eerily like her; this was her face with different hair and glasses. She should text Alan.
    She slipped her BlackBerry out of her purse and stared at the screen. What would she say?
    Alan. Benjamin Books. My face in window.
    Alan, I wrote a best seller!!
    Alan, I’m famous.
    Alan. I look good in glasses and feathered hair.
    Alan, I have a twin—
    The word slammed into her like a wall of jagged ice, and a shudder that started in her solar plexus spiked out like a starfish, electrifying her limbs. For the first time, it didn’t feel like a joke. A hand landed on her shoulder, and Lacey jumped as if she’d been attacked. People should never, ever, sneak up on a person like that. If they weren’t a mugger, they were going to get it. She whipped around to find