Dead Sleep by Greg Iles Page B

wouldn’t be fair to me. Ultimately, we were incompatible, he said. When I asked why, he said, ‘Because you have something I don’t.’ ‘What?’ I asked.”
    â€œA future?” Lenz finishes.
    â€œRight. Two nights later, he went down to the creek and managed to drown himself. The coroner called it an accident, but David had enough scotch in him to sedate a bull.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    My eyes seek out the porthole again, a round well of night. “I like to think he was unconscious when he went under the water. He probably thought his death would end the scandal, but it only got worse. Jane had a breakdown brought on by social embarrassment. My mother just drank more. There was talk of putting us in foster homes. I went back to school with my head high, but it didn’t last. My Star Student award was revoked. Then my appointment book went blank. No one wanted me shooting their family portraits. I’d done a lot of the senior pictures, but people didn’t even pick them up. They had them reshot elsewhere. When I refused to abase myself in contrition, various mothers told the school board that they didn’t want their daughters exposed to a ‘teenage Jezebel.’ They really called me that. Before long, the ostracism bled over onto Jane. She was cut dead a hundred times on the street by parents who thought she was me. At that point, I did what David should have done. I had three thousand dollars in the bank. I took two thousand, packed my clothes and cameras, rode the bus to New Orleans, got a judge to emancipate me, and scratched up a job developing prints for the staff photographers at the Times-Picayune. A year later, I was a staff photographer myself.”
    â€œDid you continue to support your family financially?”
    â€œYes. But things between Jane and me only got worse.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œShe was obsessed with being a Chi O. She thought—”
    â€Excuse me? A what?”
    â€œA Chi Omega. It’s a sorority. The apogee of southern womanhood at Ole Miss. Blue-eyed blondes raised with silver spoons in their mouths. Like that song, ‘Summer time’? ‘Your daddy’s rich, and your mama’s good lookin’ . . .’ ”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œSeveral of her cheerleaders friends were going to pledge Chi O. Their sisters were already in, or their mothers. Like that.”
    â€œLegacies,” says Lenz.
    â€œWhatever. Jane really thought she had a chance. She thought I was the only obstacle to her getting it. She claimed active Chi Os had seen me around Oxford on my bike, looking ratty and saying whatever I felt like, and thought I was her. That probably did happen. But the truth was, she never had a chance. Those bitches wouldn’t have given her that. They got their self-esteem from excluding girls like Jane, who wanted it terribly but had some flaw. And Jane had several. She had no money—therefore no high-end clothes, car, or any of the other trappings; her father had been a celebrity, but not the right kind; and then there was me. Jane was prettier than all of them, too. You hear beauty is its own aristocracy, but that’s not always true. A lot of attractive women fear beauty.”
    â€œInteresting, isn’t it?” Lenz’s eyes play over my body in a strange way, not lustfully, but in a coldly appraising manner. “Jane broke down after the scandal over you and the teacher?”
    â€œShe wouldn’t leave the house. But when they started talking about making us wards of the state, she went back to school. She graduated salutatorian, but she never got to be a Chi O. She pledged Delta Gamma, which was considered decent but definitely second tier.”
    â€œYou’ve asserted how beautiful Jane was. You’re her identical twin. How do you feel about your own looks?”
    â€œI know I’m attractive. But Jane cultivated her looks in a way I never have.