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Back The Copycat Save as PDF
Chapters (68)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Chapter One
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Chapter Two
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Chapter Three
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Chapter Four
  19. Twelve
  20. Thirteen
  21. Fourteen
  22. Chapter Five
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. Chapter Six
  26. Seventeen
  27. Eighteen
  28. Nineteen
  29. Chapter Seven
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-One
  32. Twenty-Two
  33. Chapter Eight
  34. Twenty-Three
  35. Twenty-Four
  36. Twenty-Five
  37. Chapter Nine
  38. Twenty-Six
  39. Twenty-Seven
  40. Chapter Ten
  41. Twenty-Eight
  42. Twenty-Nine
  43. Thirty
  44. Thirty-One
  45. Chapter Eleven
  46. Thirty-Two
  47. Thirty-Three
  48. Thirty-Four
  49. Thirty-Five
  50. Chapter Twelve
  51. Thirty-Six
  52. Thirty-Seven
  53. Thirty-Eight
  54. Chapter Thirteen
  55. Thirty-Nine
  56. Forty
  57. Forty-One
  58. Forty-Two
  59. Chapter Fourteen
  60. Forty-Three
  61. Forty-Four
  62. Forty-Five
  63. Forty-Six
  64. Forty-Seven
  65. Chapter Fifteen
  66. The Following Summer
  67. About the Author
  68. About the Publisher

Teddy’s name made Digger wince. Ali didn’t know much about the rest of the Sloane family, but she knew Teddy had died three months before Alfie was born and four months before she was. His death was the reason the Sloanes didn’t speak. Alfie’s mom had moved back home to England right after the funeral, where she gave birth to Alfie, and Ali’s parents had left Saint John. In fact, Ali knew so little about the Other Sloanes—the name she used to refer to the Sloanes she’d never met—that they’d become characters from a fairy tale in her mind, a family separated by an ancient curse or a wicked spell.

Digger stood up. “I’ve got to get supper ready.” He patted her on the head like she was a puppy and disappeared into the kitchen.

Ali wasn’t surprised by Digger’s escape; when he didn’t want to talk about something, he disappeared. The thing about Digger was that he was always home, and yet his mind was often somewhere else. Still, she’d seen his excitement when she’d mentioned Alfie. Her plan to end the Sloane Family Feud would work. Digger didn’t know it yet, but she was going to fix everything.

ALI’S DIGGER RULES

  1. Don’t tell anyone that Digger is a Copycat.
  2. Don’t mention Teddy Sloane.
  3. Don’t force Digger to talk when he doesn’t want to.
  4. Don’t complain. It won’t change things.

Five

Gigi’s great joy was feeding the neighborhood’s critters. When she stopped in to share her news, Ali wasn’t shocked to find a chubby red squirrel nose-deep in a pile of sunflower seeds on Gigi’s outstretched palm. Digger wasn’t a fan of the practice, probably because it was hard for him to control the urge to chase them. He called them rats with bushy tails. Ali worried that they’d bring strange germs inside with them. But it was Gigi’s house, and the family lived with her rent-free. She could do what she liked. To placate Digger and Ali, Gigi kept her bedroom door closed. So far, no pesky creature had tried to move in, but why would they when there was so much food in Gigi’s room?

Gigi’s room was magical, so different from the cruddy apartments Ali had grown up in, with their secondhand couches, torn upholstery, wobbly chairs, and mattresses of questionable origin. There were no scratched tabletops here; Gigi’s tables were covered with colorful scarves collected during her travels to Istanbul and Morocco. Oriental rugs overlapped on the floor, and the Oz-green walls were covered with paintings and photographs from the places Gigi had visited. One wall was a shrine to Gigi’s favorite old-time movie star, Walter Pidgeon, who was born in Saint John and was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1940s.