The Shadow Twin

GOLDEN BOY

Chapter 4: Golden Boy

MARIANA'S POV

The bathroom door opened at seven in the morning. Like who uses the bathroom all night. Thank God the bathroom was seperated from the restroom. Else, I would have pee on myself.

My roommate walked out in a cloud of steam, her red curls still damp, a towel wrapped around her shoulders.

She stopped when she saw me sitting up on my bed and for a second she just looked at me the way she had looked at me last night, like I was a problem she had not yet figured out how to deal with.

Then she sighed.

"I am sorry about last night," she said.

I looked at her.

"I was rude and I did not say hello and I just shut myself in the bathroom." She sat down on the edge of her own bed and rubbed the back of her neck. "I had a fight with my parents on the phone right before I got here and I was in a terrible mood and I took it out on you which was not fair."

I studied her face for a moment. She looked genuinely uncomfortable saying all of that, like apologising did not come naturally to her but she was doing it anyway because she knew it was the right thing to do.

I understood that feeling very well.

"It is fine," I said. "I know how that goes."

Something in her shoulders relaxed. "Yeah?"

"Family stuff has a way of following you even when you are trying to leave it behind," I said.

She nodded slowly, like I had said something that made more sense to her than she expected. "I am Nina."

"Mariana."

She smiled for the first time and it changed her whole face. She went from looking like an angry bird ready to defend its nest to someone who was actually quite warm underneath all of it. "Are you a freshman?"

"Yes. You?"

"Same." She reached over to her desk and picked up a flyer, holding it out to me. "Did you see this? They were handing them out downstairs this morning."

I took it. It was printed on thick cream paper, the St. Aldrich crest at the top and below it an announcement about a welcome gala for freshman and returning students at the end of the month. A bonding event, it said, an opportunity for new students to meet the wider university community in a formal setting.

"Sounds expensive," I said.

"It is," Nina said. "But apparently the golden boy is going to explain everything at the freshman assembly today so maybe there are bursaries or something." She reached over and tapped the bottom of the flyer. "They always do this at St. Aldrich, one big welcome event at the start of term where the scholarship kids quietly panic about the dress code."

I handed the flyer back. "The golden boy?"

Nina's eyes lit up in a way that told me I had just asked exactly the right question. She pulled her phone out and turned the screen toward me. It was an i********: page, the kind with over a hundred thousand followers and a blue tick beside the name. The photo at the top was of a guy at some kind of formal event, dark hair, sharp jaw, the sort of effortless confidence that came through even in a photograph.

"Sebastian Grant," Nina said, in the tone of someone announcing something important. "Third year. Captain of the rugby team. His family donated the entire science wing of this university. He basically runs this school without having any official position that would require him to do so."

"So he is just rich and popular," I said.

"He is not just anything." Nina took her phone back and looked at the photo with great appreciation. "He is also incredibly good looking and from what I have heard, incredibly difficult, which somehow makes it worse."

"Difficult how?"

"Rude. Demanding. The kind of person who has never had to apologise for anything in his life because everyone around him just absorbs whatever he dishes out and says thank you." She paused. "But have you seen his jawline?"

"I will take your word for it," I said.

Nina gave me a look like I had said something personally offensive to her. "Mariana. Look at the photo."

"I saw it."

"And?"

"And he looks like someone who has never been told no."

Nina burst out laughing. "Oh, you are going to be so much fun to live with." She got up and started getting dressed. "The assembly is at ten. We should go early if we want seats that are not at the back."

I got up and started getting ready too. I was not particularly interested in any assembly or any golden boy or any gala I almost certainly could not afford.

I had more pressing things to think about, like the fact that the registration desk had flagged my file yesterday and told me someone from the administration office would be in touch to clarify some details about my scholarship application.

I knew exactly what those details were. I had been waiting for that conversation since I got on the bus two nights ago and I still did not know how it was going to go.

But there was nothing I could do about it right now so I got dressed, ate the cereal bar I had packed in my bag and followed Nina out of the door.

The campus looked different in the morning light. Less intimidating somehow, or maybe I was just less overwhelmed than I had been yesterday.

We walked the path toward the main auditorium and Nina talked the whole way, pointing out buildings, naming people we passed, explaining the unofficial social hierarchy of St. Aldrich with the confidence of someone who had done extensive research before arriving.

I listened and said very little and watched everything.

We were almost at the auditorium doors when I saw her.

She was standing near the entrance with two other girls, laughing at something on her phone, her auburn hair catching the morning light.

She was dressed well, better than I had ever seen her dress, in clothes that did not come from the kind of shops we had grown up shopping in.

My feet stopped moving.

Nina took two more steps before she noticed I was no longer beside her. "Mariana?" She turned around. "What is it?"

I was staring at my sister.

Olivia had not seen me yet. She was still laughing, still scrolling, completely at ease, like she belonged here, like she had every right to be standing outside the auditorium of the university whose scholarship she had stolen.

"Mariana," Nina said again, her voice lower now. "You look like you have seen a ghost."

I could not answer her. I could not move. I just stood there on the path staring at my twin sister and trying to understand how this was possible.