Chapter 4

The burgundy dress is waiting for me when I wake up.

It's draped over the back of my desk chair, the jersey still holding the faint crease marks from the last time I tried it on and decided against wearing it out. That was three days ago. Today is different. Today is Wednesday, and Wednesday means the open mic at The Daily Grind, and tonight I'm going to read.

The guilt hums when I think about it—that low, familiar note behind my ribs. But it's not the sharp reproach of the first night, or even the quiet companion of the bookstore shift. It's something else now. Something smaller. Something I can hold in my palm and examine with a kind of amused detachment.

You're going to stand up there and read her poetry, the guilt whispers. You're going to steal her words and her voice and the applause that should belong to her.

I know, I tell it. That's the point.

The guilt doesn't have a response to that. It never does anymore. It just settles back into its corner and purrs.

I swing my legs out of bed. The sheets are soft against my smooth calves—my calves, I don't even think the word "hers" anymore unless I stop to correct myself—and the morning light through the window is grey and thin. Winter light. The kind that makes everything look like a photograph taken with the wrong settings.

Ava is already in the kitchen when I pad out in my robe. She's hunched over her laptop, the same position she's been in for weeks now, except today there's a stack of framed prints leaning against the wall and a roll of bubble wrap on the counter. Progress, maybe. Or just a different kind of stress.

"Coffee?" I ask.

"Please." Her voice is hoarse. She's been talking to gallery directors again. "There's a new bag in the cabinet—the one Madison sent. It's supposed to be fancy."

The coffee is fancy. It smells like chocolate and something floral, and when I pour us both a mug, Ava wraps her hands around hers like it's a lifeline.

"Are you reading tonight?" she asks.

I blink. "What?"

"At the Grind. You always read on Wednesdays." She looks up at me, her hazel eyes tired but warm, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I was thinking I might come. If that's okay. I've never actually seen you read—I always say I will and then something comes up."

The guilt stirs. I pat it down.

"Yeah," I say. Chloe's voice, sweet and slightly breathless. "Yeah, that would be really nice."

Ava's smile widens. "Okay. What time?"

"Eight. But Derek likes to start late, so probably eight-fifteen."

"I'll be there." She turns back to her laptop, and I can see her mentally rearranging her evening—shifting the prints, the emails, the hundred small tasks that are eating her alive. She's making space for me. For Chloe.

She loves you, the guilt whispers. She loves her sister and you're not her sister.

I know. That's also the point.

The afternoon is for preparation.

I lock my bedroom door—the click is a ritual now, the sound of the world falling away—and open the closet. The jewel tones spill out: plum, forest green, mustard, burgundy. The dress is already waiting, but the rest of the outfit needs thought. Tonight matters. Tonight I'm not just wearing Chloe's clothes; I'm wearing them on stage, under lights, in front of an audience that includes her sister and her best friend.

I pull out the brown tights first. Microfiber, opaque, with a control-top waistband that hugs my middle. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I gather one leg and slide it up—cool silk at first, then warming against my skin. The second leg follows. I stand and smooth the waistband into place, feeling the gentle compression settle around my hips.

The bra is nude lace, underwire, hooks in the back. I fasten it without thinking—my fingers know the motion now, the twist and catch, the way the straps settle into the grooves they've worn in my shoulders. The panties are burgundy cotton, bikini cut, soft against my skin.

The dress goes over my head. The jersey slides down my torso like water, cool and smooth, and I shimmy it past my hips until the skirt falls to just above my knees. The side zipper closes with a soft zzzip, and the bodice hugs my ribs, my waist, the swell of my breasts. I look down at myself—the fitted burgundy, the flare of the skirt, the brown tights disappearing into my ankle boots.

The cardigan is last. Mustard yellow, chunky knit, the sleeves too long. I button the top button and let it hang off my shoulders, oversized and cozy. The silk scarf—Chloe's grandmother's, smelling faintly of old perfume—gets tied loose at my throat. The locket with Ava's photo settles at my collarbone. My glasses go on last.

I turn to the mirror.

The girl in the glass is ready. Wild dark curls tamed with a decorative clip. Tortoiseshell frames. Dimples deepening as I smile at myself. The burgundy dress fits like it was made for this body—which it was. The cardigan softens the look, makes it approachable, bookish, Chloe. But the eyes behind the glasses aren't Chloe's. They're mine. Hungry. Possessive. Ready.

You look beautiful, I think at my reflection. You look like a poet.

The reflection smiles back. We both know the truth.

The poem I choose is the one about Ava.

Not the one I read last time—the autumn one, with its quiet ache. This one is different. This one is a love letter disguised as a character study, all careful observation and unsaid tenderness. My sister carries a camera / like a shield / and a heart / and I don't know / which one protects her more. Chloe wrote it six months ago, sitting at the kitchen table while Ava edited photos on the other side of the room. The memory surfaces easily—Ava's hair in a messy bun, the click of her mouse, the way Chloe kept glancing up and writing another line.

I practice reading it aloud. Standing in the middle of my room, one hand holding the notebook, the other resting on my stomach to feel the vibration of my voice.

"My sister carries a camera..."

Chloe's voice fills the space—sweet, slightly high, trembling on the longer words. But it's my voice too, now. I've been speaking with it for two weeks. The strangeness is gone. The gap between hearing and recognizing has closed. When I say "my sister," I mean Ava. When I say "camera," I see the vintage Nikon on the kitchen counter. The words belong to this body, and this body belongs to me.

I read the poem three times. The first time I stumble on a line break. The second time I nail the rhythm but my voice is flat. The third time, I find it—the emotion that lives in the words, the quiet ache and the fierce love and the fear of being known too well. Chloe's emotions, drawn from her memories. My performance, drawn from my own need to be believed.

By the time I close the notebook, my heart is beating faster. Not from nerves. From anticipation.

They're going to love this, I think. They're going to love me.

The Daily Grind is already crowded when I arrive.

The front room is full of students hunched over laptops and couples sharing muffins and a girl with blue hair reading a graphic novel in the corner. The back room—the open mic space—is smaller and darker, with mismatched chairs arranged in crooked rows and a single microphone on a stand. Fairy lights are strung across the ceiling, the same kind I have in my bedroom, and the smell of coffee and old wood hangs in the air.

Maya is saving me a seat near the front. She waves when she sees me—her auburn hair loose around her shoulders, a rust-colored sweater making her look autumnal and warm. Her tote bag is at her feet, overflowing with thesis research she's clearly been ignoring.

"You look amazing," she says, pulling me into a hug. Sandalwood and vanilla. Her arms squeeze my narrower shoulders with the easy, unquestioning intimacy of someone who's hugged this body a thousand times. "Is that the dress you wore to the book launch?"

"Different one," I say. Chloe's memories supply the book launch—an indie press event six months ago, a green dress, Maya spilling wine on her sleeve. "That one had a stain."

"Oh my god, I forgot about the stain." Maya laughs and releases me. "Ben says hi. He wanted to come but he's got a study group. I told him he's missing the best poet in the room."

The warmth of her words settles in my chest. It's real—her affection, her pride, her unshakable belief that Chloe is talented. And it's stolen. Both things are true. Both things are delicious.

"You're biased," I say.

"I'm right." She squeezes my hand. "Are you reading the one about Ava? Please tell me you're reading the one about Ava."

"Maybe."

"You are. I can tell. You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The 'I'm about to make everyone cry' look." Maya grins. "I'm going to get tea. Do you want chai?"

"Please."

She disappears toward the counter, and I scan the room. Derek is at the mic, adjusting the stand with the weary efficiency of someone who's done this a hundred times. A guy in a beanie is hunched over a notebook in the corner, muttering to himself. A girl with a guitar case is tuning her strings. The audience is a mix of regulars and newcomers—college students, older locals, a couple in matching scarves who look like they're on a date.

And Ava. She's near the back, in her cream sweater and messy bun, a to-go cup in her hand. She catches my eye and waves, a small, nervous gesture. I'm here. I came. The sight of her—tired, stressed, showing up anyway—sends a spike of something through my chest. Not guilt. Something fiercer.

She's here for me. She has no idea.

The thought is a hot coal in my palm. I cup it carefully, feeling the burn.

Derek calls my name at eight-twenty-three.

"Next up, we've got one of our regulars," he says into the mic, his voice gravelly and warm. "You've heard her before. You'll hear her again. Please welcome Chloe Vance."

The applause is polite but genuine—the regulars know me, the newcomers are curious. I stand up, and Maya squeezes my arm, and I walk to the microphone on legs that feel steady and sure. The light is warm on my face. The audience fades into a blur of shadows and coffee cups and expectant faces.

I pull the notebook from my bag. Open it to the right page. Take a breath.

"Hi," I say. Chloe's voice, amplified, filling the room. "This one is about my sister. It's called 'Shield.'"

The room settles. I begin.

My sister carries a camera / like a shield / and a heart / and I don't know / which one protects her more.

The words come out exactly as I practiced—sweet, trembling on the long vowels, steady on the hard consonants. I feel the poem in my throat, in my chest, the rhythm of it vibrating through bones that used to belong to someone else. The room is silent. The girl with the guitar has stopped tuning. The guy in the beanie has looked up from his notebook.

She frames the world / in rectangles of light / and calls it work / but I've seen the way she holds the lens— / gently, like something breakable / like something she's afraid to lose.

I glance up. Ava is at the back, and she's not moving. Her hand is pressed to her mouth. Her eyes are wet.

She doesn't know / that I've been watching her / the way she watches the light— / patiently, quietly, / waiting for the moment / when everything aligns.

The poem ends. The silence lasts a heartbeat longer than it should, and then the applause comes—not polite, not routine, but real. Someone in the front row says "wow" under their breath. Maya is beaming, her eyes bright. Derek nods at me with something like respect.

And Ava.

Ava is crying. Quiet, dignified tears, the kind she'd never let anyone see if she weren't so tired and so proud and so completely undone. She's still pressing her hand to her mouth, and when our eyes meet, she shakes her head—a tiny, almost imperceptible gesture. How did you do that? How did you know?

I lower the notebook. The applause washes over me like warm water. And the feeling that spreads through my chest is not humility, not gratitude, not any of the things a real poet would feel. It's triumph. Pure, glittering, possessive triumph.

I did that, I think. I took her words and her voice and her sister's tears, and I made them mine. They're clapping for me. They don't know. They'll never know.

The guilt purrs in its corner. It's not even pretending to object anymore.

Afterward, Maya tackles me.

"That was incredible," she says, her arms wrapped around me, her voice in my ear. "I've heard you read that before but that was—something was different tonight. You were so present. Like you were really inside the words."

If only she knew.

"Thank you," I say into her hair. "I felt... different. I don't know. It just clicked."

"It clicked. That's one way to put it." She pulls back and holds me at arm's length, her brown eyes searching my face. "You're glowing. Seriously. Whatever you're doing differently, keep doing it."

The irony is so thick I could choke on it. I just smile—Chloe's smile, dimples and all—and let her pull me toward the refreshment table.

Derek stops me on the way. "Strong set," he says, his beanie slightly askew. "The last line especially. 'Waiting for the moment when everything aligns.' That's going to stick with me."

"Thanks, Derek."

"Seriously. You've been holding out on us." He claps me on the shoulder and moves on to the next poet—a girl with a ukulele who looks about sixteen and terrified.

I watch him go. The triumph is still humming in my chest, a low, warm current underneath everything else. He has no idea. None of them have any idea. I walked in here with a dead girl's notebook and walked out with their admiration, and the theft is invisible, and the invisible theft is the sweetest thing I've ever tasted.

Ava finds me by the pastry table.

She doesn't say anything at first. She just pulls me into a hug—tighter than Maya's, longer, the kind of hug that communicates everything words can't. Her cream sweater is soft against my cheek. Her hair smells like coffee. Her heart is beating fast against my ear.

"Chloe," she says. Her voice is thick. "That was—I don't even know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything."

"No, I do." She pulls back and holds me by the shoulders, her hazel eyes still wet, her freckles standing out against her flushed cheeks. "I've been so stressed about this stupid gallery show that I haven't been paying attention to you. To what you're doing. You're—you're a real poet, Chloe. You're not just messing around with notebooks. You have something. That poem—" She shakes her head. "How did you see me like that? How did you put it into words?"

The question is a knife, if I let it be. But I don't. I let it be a crown instead.

"I just wrote what I saw," I say. "You're my sister. I pay attention."

Ava laughs—a wet, shaky laugh—and pulls me back into the hug. "I'm so proud of you. I'm so, so proud."

The guilt is silent. Not because it's gone, but because it's been transmuted. The wrongness is the point now. The theft is the spice. I'm standing in a coffee shop back room, wrapped in a dead girl's sister's arms, being praised for a poem I didn't write, and I have never felt more alive.

The apartment is quiet when we get home.

Ava is still a little teary, a little raw, in the way people get when they've been genuinely moved. She makes tea—chamomile for her, chai for me—and we sit on the couch in our usual spots. She doesn't open her laptop. She doesn't check her phone. She just sits with me, sipping her tea, occasionally shaking her head and saying, "I can't believe you wrote that."

"I've been writing about you for years," I say. Chloe's memories confirm it—notebooks full of Ava, the way a painter fills sketchbooks with the same model. "You just never read them."

"I should have. I should have asked."

"You're asking now."

She looks at me—at Chloe—with an expression so full of love it makes my chest ache. "I'm going to do better. After the show. I'm going to be a better sister."

"You're already a good sister."

"Not good enough." She reaches over and squeezes my hand. "But I'm working on it."

We finish our tea in comfortable silence. The refrigerator hums. The fairy lights from my room spill into the hallway. Eventually Ava yawns and stretches and says she should probably sleep before her early shift. She hugs me again at her bedroom door—one last squeeze, one last "I'm so proud of you"—and then she's gone, her door clicking shut, leaving me alone in the living room with an empty mug and a heart that's beating too fast for the lateness of the hour.

My room. The door locked. The fairy lights on.

I stand in front of the mirror—the full-length one on the closet door—and look at the girl in the glass. She's still wearing the burgundy dress, the mustard cardigan, the brown tights. The silk scarf has come loose at her throat. Her glasses are slightly crooked. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright, her lips parted like she's about to speak.

I don't speak. I just look.

The body is mine. I've been living in it for two weeks, and somewhere in the past few days the last traces of strangeness have worn away. The breasts are my breasts. The hips are my hips. The wild curls and the dimples and the soft, rounded shoulders—mine. All mine. If Chloe woke up tomorrow, she'd be the stranger. She'd knock on the door of her own life and I'd be the one opening it.

The thought should horrify me. Instead, it spreads through my chest like warm honey.

I reach up and untie the scarf. Let it fall to the floor. Unbutton the cardigan—one wooden button, then the next, then the next—and drape it over the chair. The dress is next. I reach for the side zipper and pull it down, and the jersey loosens around my ribs, slides off my shoulders, puddles at my feet. I step out of it, leaving it in a burgundy pool on the floor.

The tights come off next—rolled down my hips, my thighs, my calves, until I'm standing in just my bra and panties. The mirror shows me everything: the full, round breasts in their lace cups, the soft curve of my stomach, the flare of my hips, the dimples in my cheeks when I let myself smile.

I let myself smile.

This is my body, I think. This is my life. I took it, and I'm keeping it, and the taking is what makes it beautiful.

The hunger stirs. Low and warm and familiar. I trail my fingers down my collarbone, over the lace of my bra, across the soft swell of my stomach. The body responds—a pulse of warmth, a tightening deep in my belly that I didn't tell to happen. My breath catches. My heart beats faster.

I watch my reflection watch me.

The mirror is my only witness. The fairy lights cast gold across my skin. My hand moves, tracing curves that I know now, curves that belong to me. The build-up is slow—breath deepening, pulse quickening, warmth spreading outward from my core. I close my eyes and feel everything: the lace against my fingertips, the weight of my breasts, the ache that's building and building and—

The fairy lights are still on. The room is quiet. My breathing has slowed, and my limbs are heavy and contented, and the mirror shows me a girl with flushed cheeks and tousled curls and a small, satisfied smile.

I pull on my nightgown—a soft, worn cotton thing in pale lavender—and climb into bed. The quilt settles over my hips. The ceiling stars are invisible in the dark, but I know they're there. The refrigerator hums through the wall. Ava is asleep in the next room, dreaming about gallery openings and photo prints, and she has no idea that her sister is a thief.

The guilt is quiet. It's been quiet all night. Not because it's gone, but because it's become something else—a private spice, a secret ingredient, the thing that makes every stolen moment taste sweeter.

I'm never giving this back, I think. This body. This life. This sister. These words. It's all mine now. It's all me.

I close my eyes.

The darkness is warm and welcoming. The guilt purrs in its corner, content. And I fall asleep in Chloe Vance's body, in Chloe Vance's bed, wearing Chloe Vance's face, and for the first time since this began, I don't feel even a flicker of regret.