She's No Beauty Queen

Dinner was a quiet, awkward affair due to Eddie's lifelessness. He put Aria in her high chair and let the housekeeper feed her a smaller more toddler-friendly version of what they were eating. Lily dug in—the food here was fantastic—but she noticed he only pushed his food around on his plate. Poor guy.

The housekeeper took the messy little girl away after dinner to bathe her before putting her to bed and everyone else got down to business. Eddie set a contract down on the table and cleared his throat.

"The premise of this contract is fairly simple. You will stand in for Angel at all of her Miss California events either until she is found or there is conclusive evidence that she…won't be coming back. The competition is two months away but you will not be required to compete if she isn't found before then.

"In exchange, all of your student loans accrued to this point and the remainder of your school expenses will be covered by me in full. You cannot tell anyone about this. The only three people in the know are you, me, and Mark. If the contract is broken or any harm comes to Angel's reputation because of your actions I will sue. Any questions?"

Lily's eyes widened. "Whoa whoa whoa. I'm doing you a serious favor here and you're threatening me if I don't know how to act like a pageant queen?"

"Mark will be with you every step of the way," Eddie said dully. "He'll make sure you know what to do and say. He's already prepared a video playlist of all of Angel's recorded public appearances so you'll know how to imitate her. As long as you do what he tells you, you should be fine."

That wasn't comforting in the slightest. She was stuck with this mood killer as her lifeline?

Technically Lily didn't have to go through with this. The contract wasn't signed yet. She could back out now and put this whole mess behind her. She didn't know anything about being girly or popular! How was she supposed to pull this off without getting sued?

"Don't worry, I won't let you get sued," Mark said as if he was reading her mind.

That was somewhat comforting considering how businesslike he was. He probably knew his stuff. And if she went down, he would too so he would do everything in his power to prevent that from happening.

With a sigh, she signed the contract and pushed it back towards Eddie for him to sign as well. She was officially trapped pretending to be her twin sister for the time being.

How long would this take? There was still so much to do for school…the events themselves would cut into her study time a lot and that didn't even include training to become more ladylike.

Lily felt like she was in over her head already. She desperately hoped they were able to find Angel soon. She didn't want to rub salt in a wound but she did feel the need to know what was going on with the investigation.

"Have you filed a missing person report?" she asked.

Eddie shook his head helplessly. "No because the police would have to dig into her life and would find out about Aria. If that news got out her career would be destroyed. Not to mention we're technically doing something illegal by having you masquerade as her.

"We're going to have to find her ourselves. I've already hired a hacker that is supposedly able to find anybody. He's going through security footage from the library where she was participating in a fundraiser the night she disappeared as we speak.

"Finding out who she talked to is the first step to figuring out where she went. She may have had a seizure but I've already called every hospital in the city looking for someone fitting her description and came up with nothing."

He looked so discouraged that Lily was tempted to give him a hug but didn't think that would go over well. They hardly knew each other and he hadn't been all that touchy-feely even when he thought she was Angel.

"I'm sure she's still out there," she tried reassuring him. "Call it my twintuition."

Mark tried and failed to stifle a laugh and it ended up becoming a snort. "Did you come up with that pun on the spot?"

"Yes, yes I did. Is that a problem?"

"Nope."

Lily did believe Angel was still out there though. Maybe it was naïve optimism because she had been missing so long with no sign of her but she meant what she said. She wasn't only trying to make Eddie feel better.

He raised an eyebrow. "Twintuition huh? I want to believe that too but even if she is out there why hasn't she come back yet? She wouldn't leave Aria. And if she is stuck out there somewhere she hasn't had access to her medication in over a week."

Her heart sunk. She hadn't thought of that. Not having your medication wasn't necessarily a death sentence but it did tend to cause seizures and those could be fatal in the wrong situation.

Even if her seizures were minor and didn't cause any serious injury they would still make her weak. Was that why she hadn't been able to come home or contact Eddie at all? Because she was too sick?

"We will find her," Mark said firmly. "If she needs extra medical care once we do so be it. Don't lose hope so quickly sir."

Eddie gave a sharp nod before changing the subject. "Right. I'll take care of this; your priority is getting ready for the community service event tomorrow."

Lily's heart nearly stopped. "Hang on, tomorrow? I have to get all of her mannerisms and so on down by tomorrow?!"