Why Can't I Be You by Allie Larkin

she’d never know the difference.
    She hung up and dropped the phone back in my purse. Then she shut the dryer off and pulled back the plastic shower cap on my head to check on the dye.
    “That was someone named Myra. I gave her the address. She’ll be here to pick you up in about twenty minutes.” She pulled the plastic cap all the way off. “Which is perfect timing actually. Let’s go wash this out.”

    The floor around me was soon covered in dark brown hair. I went from having limp, lifeless locks that fell past my shoulders, to a short, sexy bob cut just below my chin, with bangs that slid seductively in front of my right eye, so I could push them out of the way.
    “Oh my God!” Myra said, when she walked in and saw me, just as the hairdresser spun my chair around so I could see the back of my head in the mirror.
    I could see Myra in the mirror too. She held her hand up to her mouth, and I thought for a second that maybe the haircut gave me away. Maybe something about it made it completely obvious that I wasn’t Jessie Morgan, but then she said, “God, I always wanted your cheekbones, Jess. Killer.”

    We left the salon, and I silently promised myself I would tell Myra. I opened my mouth to say the words about six times over, but Myra was so excited about her call with Blackberry, and I didn’t want to spoil it.
    “So, they were, like, completely worried I wouldn’t want to do a line for them.” Myra unlocked her car. “Can you believe it?” she said, when we’d both climbed in. “Can you even believe it? They were nervous to talk to me!” She was beaming.
    “Well, of course,” I said. “You’re a brilliant designer.”
    “Really? You think so? It just means so much to me.” She told me all the details of the line she was planning, and I wanted to listen, but my heart was thumping so hard at the thought of telling her. I couldn’t quite catch my breath.
    I would confess when she dropped me off. Not before then. I wouldn’t want to find out I had some stranger in my car while I was driving on the highway with them. It would be scary. I didn’t want to scare Myra. I didn’t say a word. I tried to listen to her talk about the sketches for Blackberry, how she was thinking navy and pops of color and “like a modern take on forties beach clothes.” I watched the scenery and tried to figure out how far we were from the hotel, how much time I had before I needed to come clean. I tried not to imagine her reaction, but I kept picturing her big brown eyes filling with tears, the disgust that would edge into her voice, the panic. My hands shook. I hid them in the sleeves of my blazer.
    Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe if I stayed calm, she would too. I’d just say that I wasn’t Jessie and I was so sorry. I’d keep it simple. I would give her the red dress back and then she could drive away or go set up for the reunion and call her friend Heather and tell her about the insane Jessie Morgan impersonator she ran into, and it would be some kind of epic story that they’d all laugh about for years to come.
    But even though I only knew Myra, and I didn’t know the rest of her friends, the idea of them laughing at me stung. The idea of not getting to go to the reunion made me feel the same way I did when Ronnie McCairn invited every girl in our fourth-grade class except for me and Marta Combs to her roller-skate, pizza birthday party. Everyone knew Marta Combs picked her nose and ate it. Everyone. So it was basically like every girl in the class except for me got invited, because who was going to invite a known nose-picker to her birthday party? That’s the way I felt, thinking about not going to the reunion—like I was being left out all over again, which is silly, because I didn’t know these people. I didn’t know anything about them. I was left out because I didn’t belong. If they all decided to laugh at me for years to come, I deserved it. Who pretends to be another person? Like not even