Just Like Me, Only Better Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgements

  More praise for the novels of Carol Snow

  Here Today, Gone to Maui

  “Smart, funny, and as breezy as a Hawaiian night . . . I loved it!”

  —Jill Smolinski, author of The Next Thing on My List

  “The book strikes a right note in its quick, pop-culture references . . . [and] bitingly funny insights into a tourist’s day in Maui.”

  —Honolulu Star-Bulletin

  “This fun, fast-paced story has a light romance and a titillating mystery. As the heroine makes some disappointing discoveries about her boyfriend, she also faces some realities about her own lifestyle. A nice coming-of-age story—even if the age is thirty-two.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Snow’s novel is breezy, funny, and entertaining with authentic settings and details . . . This one stands out.”

  —Marylin Hudson, Orange Coast Magazine

  “This is easily Carol Snow’s best book to date—and that’s saying a lot because her other books have been wonderful.”

  —Curled Up with a Good Book

  Been There, Done That

  “Snow’s humorous, wise debut serves up romance with a bit of social commentary on the state of singledom and the benefits of maturity in a youth- and romance-obsessed society.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] witty, entertaining read.”

  —Kim Alexander, XM Satellite Radio

  “Often hilarious, frequently poignant . . . This is a wonderful book, with well-developed characters and interesting plot twists that make it a joy to read.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Been There, Done That is a totally unique story with heartbreak, a look at what your college student is really doing, and how friendships and relationships change before our eyes. A book that will make you think, Been There, Done That will introduce you to a different sort of romance.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Using humor as a delightful way to lampoon contemporary life, Carol Snow provides . . . a terrific investigative tale filled with pleasant but surprising twists.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Carol Snow dares to explore some ‘what ifs’ of college life in a novel full of zany adventures, reflecting the wisdom of an adult revisiting the past and trying not to make the same mistakes. The author’s subtle digs at ethics in journalism are right on target . . . Been There, Done That is insightful and fun, with a hint of mystery and romance.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Getting Warmer

  “With its entertaining combination of a realistically flawed heroine, sharp writing, and tart humor, Getting Warmer is absolutely delightful.”

  —Booklist

  “[Snow] cleverly combines wit and drama in a page-turning novel. Readers will be drawn to the primary characters with their effortless charm and unique ability to reinvent themselves when meeting new people. Snow’s charismatic writing style is superb, making this a true winner.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Carol Snow does a wonderful job creating realistic, likable characters. Natalie is genuinely flawed, and readers can’t help but like her for it . . . I’ll be waiting on pins and needles for her next release.”

  —Curled Up with a Good Book

  Titles by Carol Snow

  HERE TODAY, GONE TO MAUI

  BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

  GETTING WARMER

  Teen Fiction

  SNAP

  SWITCH

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2010 by Carol Snow

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / April 2010

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Snow, Carol, date.

  Just like me, only better / Carol Snow.—Berkley trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18662-6

  1. Lookalikes—Fiction. 2. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. California—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.N66J87 2009

  813’.6—dc22

  2009022373

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my brother and sisters, Tom Snow, Kim Snow, and Susy Snow Sullivan

  Chapter One

  I remember the exact moment when Haley Rush’s fame reached its tipping point. I was in the produce department of Ralph’s supermarket, desperately trying to concentrate on school lunches and the price of bananas, when all I could think about was my husband, Hank Czaplicki, who days earlier had announced—well, mentioned, really—that he had found his soul mate, and she wasn’t me. An image of Hank kissing Darcy DaCosta, aka “North Orange County’s #1 Realtor!1” flashed through my brain just as a skinny prepubescent girl with blue braces and a high ponytail appea
red at my side and blurted, “Can I have your autograph?”

  Speechless, I stared at her, tears making my vision the slightest bit blurry, and shook my head with confusion.

  “Kitty and the Katz is my favorite show!” she squeaked.

  I blinked furiously, as if trying to hit the reset button in my brain, when, suddenly, I understood. There was that girl—what was her name? That actress who everyone said looked like me. The one who could sing. She’d been in a sitcom as a teenager, and now she had her own show on one of those kids’ cable networks. Bailey? Kayla? Something like that.

  “I’m not who you think I am,” I told the girl with the blue braces, my voice tight from the force of withheld tears.

  Her shiny smile faded, just a little bit.

  “I’m not her,” I said, more forcefully this time.

  The smile dropped, her cheeks flushed pink, and her eyes clouded with disappointment. “Sorry,” she mumbled, slouching away to rejoin her mother by the bagged salads.

  A few minutes later, I stood at the checkout line, clutching my cart for support, wondering what I had forgotten to buy. I’d gotten milk for Ben, bananas for Ben, Lunchables for Ben. If not for Ben, I would have crawled into bed and stayed there forever. My five-year-old son was the only thing standing between me and a complete breakdown.

  When the woman at the checkout counter looked at me funny, I thought maybe tears had smudged my mascara. But no: I hadn’t bothered with makeup since the day Hank walked out.

  The checkout clerk pointed to the magazine display to my left. There was that actress on the cover of a glossy weekly—Haley Rush, that was her name. She was on a beach somewhere, wearing a ridiculously small white bikini, her skinny arms wrapped around the glimmering body of a sculpted young man. Above the picture, three-inch-tall block letters read, “Haley & Brady: HOT!”

  Below that, Haley’s self-satisfied face gazed at me from the cover of a fashion magazine. A third magazine cover showed her and the pretty boyfriend with the caption, “Haley Rush: All Grown Up and Head-Over-Heels in Love.”

  I looked back at the checkout woman and shrugged.

  “That Brady Ellis is pretty cute,” she said.

  I nodded and tried, unsuccessfully, to smile.

  “So . . . that’s not you?” she asked.

  I looked back at the magazine covers and sighed. “Only in my dreams.”

  Chapter Two

  A year later, I was used to it: “You look just like Haley Rush.”

  I couldn’t see it. We’d both started off with the same light brown hair, wide, pale eyes set a fraction too close together, and paint-splatter freckles, but in the past year, Haley Rush, “All Grown Up” and increasingly successful, had embraced Hollywood glamour: platinum-blond tresses, elaborate makeup, huge sunglasses, and shiny spike heels. I, on the other hand, had mastered the classic look of a depressed, divorced suburbanite: messy ponytail, baggy clothes, puffy eyes.

  Not that Haley’s life was perfect. According to the tabloids, she was having a terrible time choosing a gown to wear to the Grammy Awards!!! And the last time she went to Hawaii, she left buff boyfriend Brady Ellis at home!!! And when the barista at her local Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf spilled her caramel latte, she burst into tears!!! And on the way home from a nightclub recently, she ran her Escape Hybrid into a median divider!!!

  Good thing she had a hit record, the highest-rated television show in the Betwixt Channel’s history, and legions of adoring fans in the desirable eight-to-twelve-year-old age bracket. And, oh yeah—her net worth was estimated at fourteen million dollars. So I figured she’d be okay.

  If only I could say the same thing for myself.

  It was Sunday evening, and Ben was waiting for me in Darcy DaCosta’s echoing, two-story foyer. Oh, sorry—in Darcy and Hank’s foyer. California is a community property state, after all, and Darcy and Hank (if the tabloids paid any attention, they’d call them “Dank”) had been married five months. Ben spent Wednesdays, Thursdays, and alternate weekends at their neo-Spanish gothic colonial mansion.

  “I went swimming!” Ben crowed before I’d even walked through the tall front door (which had a caged little window that always made me think of a prison). Ben’s blond hair was damp, his Ninja Turtles backpack stuffed and zipped and bouncing on his skinny frame.

  He continued. “And I opened my eyes underwater and we had pizza for dinner and then I ate ice cream and I made a puddle of water on the kitchen floor but Darcy said it was okay and Darcy said that next time I come she’s going to rent Ironman and we can watch it in the theater room and I can invite Carson!”

  Just once when I picked up Ben, I’d like him to say, “I hate it here and I want to come home.”

  “Ironman is rated PG-thirteen,” I said to Ben—but really to Darcy, who was standing right behind him wearing black yoga pants that looked nicer than the clothes I wore to my job as a substitute teacher.

  “Oooooh! Sorry, buddy.” Darcy tapped Ben’s shoulder. “Guess we’ll have to wait a few years for that one.”

  Ben gave me one of his possessed-by-the-devil looks and crossed his arms over his narrow chest. We hadn’t even left Casa Darcy yet, and I was already the bad guy.

  Darcy ran a hand over her short blond hair. “Didn’t mean to make trouble.” Maybe she meant it, maybe she didn’t. It was hard to read Darcy’s expressions because her Botoxed face hadn’t moved since the last millennium.

  Yes, Hank had left me for an older woman. Believe me, I feel bad for women whose husbands leave them for younger, fresher meat—well, I feel bad for women whose husbands leave them for anyone—but my situation was especially humiliating. I was about to turn twenty-nine, Hank was forty-two, and Darcy was fifty-four. If I couldn’t keep a man in my prime, what hope was there for me later down the line?

  “So Ben had dinner, then,” I said.

  “Pizza,” Darcy said. “With carrot sticks. And one-percent milk.”

  “And he went . . . swimming?” Ben loved Darcy’s rock pool: the cave, the waterfall, the slide, the Jacuzzi. But this was January. Southern California is warm—but not that warm.

  “We told him to stay in the Jacuzzi, but . . .” She held her pointy shoulders up in defeat. “You know how kids are.”

  Darcy’s two previous marriages had been childless.

  A door shut somewhere in the bowels of the house. Sneakers squeaked on the travertine tiles, louder and louder until Hank, wearing basketball shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, jogged into the foyer. “Hey, little man—give your dad a hug good-bye!” He dropped to his knees next to Ben and shot me a smile. “Hey, Roni.”

  I nodded hello and tried not to feel anything as Hank gave Ben a suffocating hug while Darcy looked on, misty-eyed. But I couldn’t help it. I felt something: sadness mixed with jealousy mixed with longing.

  I didn’t miss Hank. Really, I didn’t. I was glad to be rid of his chronic television watching, his too-loud voice, and his beer mug collection. But I missed being a family. I missed being a part of the Sunday night pizza routine.

  Plus, there was something about seeing Ben with Hank. They had the same light, spiky hair (Hank’s flecked with gray, I noticed for the first time), the same Slavic cheekbones and down-turned blue eyes. They shared a tendency to talk too much, to yell at the television, to laugh in their sleep.

  Back at the minivan, I sighed with relief: another handoff completed amicably. I didn’t worry that Darcy or Hank would be anything but sweet and gushy. They were the nicest adulterers I’d ever met. It’s like they thought that if they smiled enough, maybe I’d forget that . . . Wait a minute! Didn’t Hank used to be married to someone else? Like . . . me? Oh my gosh—that’s right! And Darcy—wasn’t she the woman who ruined my life?

  No, I didn’t worry about Darcy and Hank’s behavior; I worried about my own. I was afraid I’d yell or cry or do something else to indicate that maybe I wasn’t so happy with my newfound independence.

  Ben was snapping himself into his car sea
t and I was opening the minivan’s driver-side door when Hank came dashing out of the house. He’d lost weight in the past year, his beer belly finally beaten into submission by Darcy’s personal trainer (a man, naturally; Darcy was no fool).

  As Hank crossed the driveway pavers, I climbed into the driver’s seat, shut the door, turned the ignition key, and put the window down. Whatever Hank had to say, he could make it fast.

  “Next weekend,” he said, smiling, at the window. Was he wearing cologne? With his gym clothes?

  “It’s my turn to have him,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I was wondering—could we switch? I take him next weekend and then you get him the two weekends after that? Because one of Darcy’s clients gave her front-row seats to a Ducks game, and—”

  “The Ducks! The Ducks! The Ducks!” Ben yelled from behind me, kicking my seat in time to his words. Sometimes I wondered if Hank and Darcy slipped Ben a double espresso before handing him off to me.

  I cleared my throat. “Saturday is, um . . .”

  He raised his eyebrows, eyes wide, smile quivering. Since the divorce, Hank always looked vaguely nervous around me, like he was afraid I’d cry. Or pull out a gun.

  “My birthday,” I finished.

  His mouth dropped open. “Ohmigosh, of course! Saturday will be January . . .” He froze, trying to remember the date.

  “Twenty-third,” I supplied.

  “I know.” (Did he?) “I was just trying to figure out what today was. Never mind, then. Of course Ben should be with you.”

  “What about the Ducks?” Ben wailed.

  “Some other time, buddy.” Hank reached through the window to tap Ben’s knee. “Your mom’s birthday is more important.”