Page 4 of My Twin Sister's Ex

2

Jessilyn

Icame home from my dentist appointment and rummaged through my family’s spacious kitchen for something to eat. I grinned as I found my mom’s dark chocolate stash. She thought she’d hid it well enough behind the canisters of pasta and dried goods. I reached back farther and found a bag of M&Ms.

The dentist had just told me that I should stop eating so much sugar, but I couldn’t help it. I loved sweets. I was usually the perfect daughter—good grades, always obeying the family rules—but when it came to chocolate, the perfect daughter thing went out the window. I had zero respect for my mom’s secret stash. If she wanted to keep her chocolate safe, she was going to need to be a bit more creative with her hiding spots.

If she knew how many cavities I had, she would be even more upset to see me eating her stash. But there was something about going to the dentist and being told to stop eating sugar that only made me want to eat more. It went against everything I normally stood for.

Jackilyn called me stuffy. She was always telling me that I needed to learn how to live a little. But no matter how hard she tried, she’d never been able to corrupt me. She may look just like me, but on the inside, we were complete opposites.

I ripped open the bag of M&Ms and had just poured a pile into my hand when my mom came into the kitchen. I quickly shoved the entire handful into my mouth.

“Where did you get those?”

I smiled at her, my mouth full.

“Those had better not be from my secret stash.”

I chewed and swallowed. “Nope. I just found these in the pantry.”

“Those were mine!” I’d clearly inherited my mom’s sweet tooth.

I grinned at her and poured some more into my hand. “You really could learn a thing or two from Jackilyn about being sneaky. You’re terrible at it.”

She swiped the package from my hand. “Give me some of those.” She poured her own handful and dropped it into her mouth. We finished off the bag together, and then she noticed the bar of dark chocolate I’d swiped along with the M&Ms.

“You found my dark chocolate too?”

“It was in the pantry. That means it’s fair game, right?”

She opened her mouth like she wanted to protest but couldn’t think of anything to say. Laughter bubbled up from inside me.

“How did your dentist appointment go?”

I stopped laughing. “I have three cavities. I need to go back to get them filled.”

“Jessilyn,” she groaned. “You’ve got to lay off the sugar.” Her brow furrowed like she’d just realized what I’d come home to do after getting my teeth cleaned.

“Do you know where the note for my dentist appointment went?” I said, changing the subject. “It was right here on the counter, but I can’t find it now.”

“I noticed that you’d forgotten it, so I dropped it off at the school for you.”

“You did?” I’d been stressing about that note for no reason?

“I meant to text you about it, but I got a call from Mrs. Sandridge. She needed me to give her a ride to the grocery store.” Mom was always helping people in the community. Dad worked long hours as an attorney, and Mom chose to stay home with Jackilyn and me. But since we were in school, it left her with a lot of extra time on her hands.

Jackilyn’s car pulled up into the driveway, and she came in through the garage. She eyed the empty candy wrappers in front of us.

“Let me guess. You guys don’t have any more candy.”

“Nope,” I said. “You snooze, you lose.”

“Whatever. It’s not like I can’t buy more candy whenever I feel like it.”

“Did you get a job or something?” I worked at Shelley’s, the local grocery store, but as far as I knew, Jacki didn’t have a job. She was too busy hanging out with her friends and going to parties to work.

“It’s called an allowance.”

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