“Oh yes.” She had gone from ecstatic to deflated in an instant. “All booked. So we need to figure out something in the next forty-eight hours, or Vogue will be photographing us in an empty space.”

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Franny

A day after the big DNA reveal, I was snuggled into the corner of my couch, laptop nestled on my thighs, plugging numbers into a budgeting app in an attempt to plan for the rest of the year. I’d taken a break a few minutes ago and smeared a green mud mask all over my face, as if skin care could somehow solve my problems. All it did was dry so tightly on my face that my lips could barely move, which made it that much harder to eat the Wheat Thins and cheddar slices I’d grabbed from the kitchen earlier.

I reached for a cracker, and the plate, perched precariously on the edge of the couch, began to slide toward the floor. Shit. I caught it just in time, and once again admired the way the plate matched not only the vibe but the bright and cheerful colors I’d used to decorate my apartment. It was vintage ceramic, part of a set purchased off a website and sent to me from a small secondhand store in San Francisco. I’d been obsessed for months with finding these plates: hand-painted Italian majolica, covered in bright-orange peacock feathers that spiraled outward. They were pricey, but I excused them as a birthday present to myself, and every time I grabbed one I felt endless pleasure and awe over their beauty.

What would my half sister think of these dishes? I wondered. Would she like them? I dropped my head onto the cushion and let out a quiet moan. I still hadn’t written her back, even though I’d been googling her nonstop.

On Instagram, Anna’s design firm had almost sixty thousand followers. I found photos of her at Fashion Week in Milan all over the internet, balancing in heels as if her feet didn’t hurt. It was like looking at photos of myself misshapen in a fun-house mirror. Olive skin, curly dark hair, the same serious set of eyebrows. Just living a much more glamorous, accomplished, better-dressed life.

I forced my brain back onto work stuff, but that only made me feel nauseous with anxiety. Anytime I tried to sit down and think through what it would take to truly work for myself—the budget, the hours, the money I’d need to make to pay my bills, the clients I’d need to have to actually make said money—I was overcome with imposter syndrome, which had only gotten worse since I learned about my cooler, more successful Italian doppelgänger. This was the dark, murky hole of insecurity that I fell into the second self-doubt came knocking at my door.