Dead Ringer
by Jessie Rosen
Release Date: November 11th 2015
Summary from Goodreads:
From the moment Laura Rivers steps foot into Englewood High, she notices the stares—and they aren’t the typical once-overs every pretty new girl endures. The students seem confused and…spooked. Whispers echoing through the halls confirm that something is seriously off. “That new girl looks just like her,” they say.
It turns out Laura has a doppelgänger, and it isn't just anyone—it's Sarah Castro-Tanner, the girl who killed herself by jumping into the Navasink River one year ago.
Laura is determined not to let the gossip ruin her chances of making a fresh start. Thanks to her charming personality and California tan, she catches the eye of Englewood’s undisputed golden boy, Charlie Sanders, and it’s only a matter of time before they make their relationship official.
But something is making Charlie and his friends paranoid—and Laura soon discovers it has to do with Sarah Castro-Tanner.
What really happened to Sarah? Why is Charlie unraveling? And how does Laura Rivers fit into it all?
After all, she’s the dead ringer for a dead girl.
September 1
Laura
Deep
breath, big smile, and remember: it’s all about swag.
Laura laughed at her
reflection in the little compact she kept in her bag for touch-ups and pep
talks. The word “swag” sounded so ridiculous. That’s what made it the perfect mantra
for day one of her senior year of high school—the very first time she would be
“the new girl.”
Laura had been dreaming
about her entrance into Englewood High since it was decided that’s where she
would spend this year—three thousand miles away from her previous home. The
move was a big change, but she welcomed the clean slate. It was time to focus
her energy on everything but the
demons of the typical high school girl—the kind she’d been her whole life: a
wallflower and a pleaser. She was over the precarious balance between wearing
something trendy but not so “out there” that people might talk. She was tired
of being meek because battling the Queen Bees seemed too scary. And the days of
hiding her natural smarts were over. Laura felt like high school was a tricky
series of hoops she had to jump through before she could finally live on her
own. So if high school isn’t for me,
she’d decided, why let all its silly
rules run my life?
That was Laura’s final
thought as she stepped out of her vintage, black BMW convertible and glanced
around at the other cars in the student parking lot. She’d debated the car
purchase as soon as she arrived on the East coast. Convertibles are so obnoxiously California, she’d thought, but then
she reminded herself that worrying about what everyone else thought was exactly
the spiral she was trying to avoid. Besides, she worshipped that car and had
saved every penny she could for almost two years to buy it. So what if people
assumed it was a gift from her parents? She’d inform them that she bought it
with a combo of waitressing tips from Joe’s Café right on the Pacific Coast
Highway in Malibu, and money saved from fit modeling for the Rosefox denim line
in downtown LA. No one would expect that. From what Laura knew of Englewood, most
of the other BMWs in the lot would be brand-new sweet-sixteen gifts.
And yet the very first
thing that caught her eye when Laura drove into the senior parking lot was
another old car with its convertible top down. This one was cherry red and
looked like it drove right out of a 90s music video, but it was in almost
perfect condition. Apparently at least
one other person in this town had to buy their own ride, Laura thought as
she gave her reflection in the car window one final check.
For the first time in
forever, she had decided to wear her long, blond hair down and parted on the
far-left side so a waterfall of curls danced over her right eye, the slightly
bluer one—the one that usually made her self-conscious. Today she let the curls
do their thing instead of making sure every piece of frizz was locked down with
an army of gooey hair products. She wore simple makeup paired with a shocking
pink lipstick she’d seen on the girls strolling the pier all summer long. It
was wild, but it made her feel powerful. Her first-day outfit was a 1960s
floral shirt belted over a flirty, white sundress to make sure her tan legs
showed, because why not milk the Cali-girl vibe? On her feet were cork-soled
wedges in a neon-colored, striped print from 1989—one of her favorite vintage
finds besides the car, of course. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t look like
anyone at this posh, brick-and-ivy-covered, suburban New Jersey school, and she
loved that fact. She was ready to start out on a totally new foot.
But just as Laura’s first-day
confidence finally locked in, it vanished.
Across the parking lot, she
caught the glance of two girls getting out of a shiny, white Corvette. Laura
smiled in their direction, but something was off about the way they both looked
back at her. Their faces were frozen in a strange, almost confused look that
made her instantly uncomfortable. It was more than just the usual
new-kid-in-school stares.
It wasn’t until the
shorter, curly-haired girl glanced back and quickly turned away again that
Laura saw the real feeling behind her eyes: she was scared.
* *
*
“Rivers? Do we have a Laura Rivers?
Hello, hello? Miss Rivers?”
Laura slipped into first
period AP English just as the bell rang. Ms. O’Malley stood at the front of the
room, just as skinny and evil-looking as all the online reviews claimed. She
barely looked up from her attendance sheet as she barked. If she had, she would
have seen twenty-four sets of eyes staring directly at Laura, and she would
have also noticed that something was off.
As with those girls in the
parking lot, there was something about these stares that gave Laura instant
goose bumps. It was like everyone who saw her had the exact same thought. The
only way she could think to describe the looks on their faces was spooked.
“Yes. Hi!” Laura said,
trying her best to push through the awkward moment.
“Try to get here before the
bell rings tomorrow,” Ms. O’Malley said. “I have you all seated alphabetically,
so go take a seat behind…hmm, let me see…”
Laura scanned the room for
empty desks. There were two open seats where students with last names beginning
with R might fall. One was directly
behind a way-too-friendly looking cheerleader type. She gave Laura a fairly
convincing fake smile, but Laura took it with a grain of salt. Girls like that
were skilled at the art of playing instant besties.
Then Laura’s eyes hit the
person sitting behind the only other open chair, and instantly locked. It was
as if there was a magnetic field around him; if you stayed far enough away it
wouldn’t suck you in, but once you looked, you were done.
“Charlie Sanders,” Ms.
O’Malley finally bellowed. “Charlie, raise your hand for the new girl to see.”
That wasn’t necessary—Laura
had already found him. In the time it took him to lift his hand, she’d already
stared through his dark-brown eyes, his knife’s-edge cheek bones, his
messy-but-not-on-purpose chestnut hair, and his wide, toothy smile. She had to
clench every muscle in her body to stop herself from giggling as he smiled
politely in her direction.
But in the time it took for
Charlie’s hand to fall back at his side, that smile was gone. Laura saw the
switch go off in his head and the confusion land on his face. It was the same
creeped-out reaction she’d prompted so far that morning. Charlie’s version of
the gaze was by far the most intense, but it was also the shortest. He almost
instantly reverted back to a wide, comfortable smile. Either he has better manners than the rest of my classmates, Laura
thought, or he’s the best actor.
“I’m Charlie,” he said as
she took her seat.
“So I’ve heard,” she
teased. “I’m Laura…the new girl.”
“So I’ve heard,” Charlie
shot back. “Welcome to Englewood. It isn’t all that bad. Where’d you move
from?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Oh. In that case, this
place sucks,” Charlie said.
“Way to welcome the newbie…”
Laura joked, and Charlie smiled back. Then Ms. O’Malley demanded all eyes on
the front of the room and started rambling about the fact that Shakespeare was
probably a woman.
Laura breathed a sigh of
relief. For the next forty or so minutes she didn’t have to worry about what
Charlie was thinking of her, or try to hide what she was thinking about him. It
wasn’t until Charlie tapped her on the shoulder to pass him a copy of the
homework assignment circulating around the room that Laura’s heart started
pounding again. She caught him off guard when she turned around, and he had
that same instant reaction to her face. For the first time, Laura put her
finger on what was so strange about it.
He was looking at her like
he knew her.
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About the Author
Jessie Rosen is a writer, producer, and performer. She grew up in New Jersey, attended Boston College in Massachusetts, and began her writing career in New York. Her live storytelling series Sunday Night Sex Talk has received national attention. She was named one of “The 25 Best Bloggers, 2013 Edition” by TIME magazine for her blog 20- Nothings, which was also named in “The 100 Best Websites for Women” and “The Top 10 Best Websites for Millennial Women” in 2013 by Forbes.
Rosen is the oldest of four girls, which gives her a special window into the minds of teenagers. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she’s working on film and television projects, as well as her next novel.
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