ONE | Hadley

My life peaked at free Wi-Fi and half-off banana bread.

It's 10:47 PM, my socks are wet inside my sneakers, and my back is doing this fun thing where it spasms every time I breathe too hard.

Welcome to the glamorous existence of Hadley Russell: coffee-slinging, book-shelving, twenty-something years old disaster with a chronic caffeine addiction and the emotional range of a half-squished goldfish cracker.

"Double whip, half-caff, soy latte with a pump of organic lavender and three ice cubes." The customer blinks at me expectantly, as if she didn't just order a beverage that sounds like it belongs in a fairy tale written by a yoga instructor.

"Coming right up," I chirp, even though my soul is actively trying to abandon my body.

I've been on my feet since 7 AM. Seven. A. Freaking. M.

The espresso machine wheezes like it's dying in solidarity. I jam the portafilter in with more aggression than necessary, foam the milk with the last shred of my patience, and slide the monstrosity across the counter with the dead-eyed smile of a girl who has seen some things.

The girl takes one sip and frowns. "It's not sweet enough."

Neither is life, Maddy.

Fast-forward through another hour of scrubbing caramel off the countertops and pretending I don't hear the manager passive-aggressively muttering about the closing checklist, and I'm finally out. Brief freedom.

Then: shift number two.

The library is blessedly quiet. My coworkers are too busy re-alphabetizing the YA section to notice I'm running on fumes and spite. I slip behind the returns desk, scanning barcodes and watching the pile shrink at the pace of a glacial breakup.

There's a girl crying in the corner with a copy of The Bell Jar in her lap. Same, babe. Same.

By midnight, my hair is in a claw clip that's lost the will to grip, my shirt smells like steamed milk and existential dread, and my body feels like a broken IKEA chair someone tried to reassemble using gum and trauma.

I clock out, shuffle my stuff into my knockoff tote, and brace myself for the walk home.

It's raining. Of course it's raining.

The kind of rain that doesn't pour so much as it seeps—insidious, slithering into your shoes and spine and thoughts. I tug my hood up, not that it helps. My jeans are already wet at the ankles, and I can feel the chafe starting. Sexy.

My apartment building isn't even an apartment building, not really. It's an old Victorian carved into six "units," each one more cursed than the last. Mine is Unit 5A, a glorified closet with creaky floors, yellow-tinted lighting, and a bathroom that occasionally leaks mysterious fluids. Rent is obscene, naturally.

I'm halfway up the porch steps, digging through my bag for the key, when I freeze.

There's someone sitting on the top step.

No—lounging. Legs crossed, head tilted, like she's posing for a Vogue spread in the middle of my decrepit porch. Her clothes are drenched, clinging to her body like a second skin. High-fashion, high-drama. Sunglasses—sunglasses—are perched on top of her rain-slicked head like it's not pitch-black outside.

She looks like a fever dream conjured by insomnia and unresolved trauma.

Then she speaks. "Hey, Hadley."

I blink. Once. Twice.

"Harper?"

My twin sister. The one I haven't seen in ten years. The one who dropped off the face of the planet after foster care chewed us up and spit us out in different zip codes. The one who became... someone. A name. A brand. A freaking tabloid regular.

She smiles. It's dazzling. Familiar. Dangerous.

"We need to talk," she says, like we're just two sisters catching up over brunch.

And I—soaked, exhausted, emotionally constipated—can only stare.

Of course. Of course the day my student loans send me a friendly reminder that I owe them my kidneys is the day my estranged, I*******m-famous twin shows up like a wet hallucination on my porch.

Awesome.

Cue: nervous breakdown in 3... 2...