I can’t pinpoint the exact date in our teen years that Gracie got the bright idea to become her favorite popstar. All I know is, once that lightbulb turned on, there was no switching back. She had a shoebox full of makeup, a passing resemblance, and a plan nobody could talk her out of. Not even me.
In the beginning, we thought it was a phase. The transformation occurred in stages; first, she was just doing her hair like Solea Santos; then, she was dressing like Solea Santos. But then came the birthmark drawings, the bra stuffing, the tilt at which she always remembered to hold her chin. When her laugh changed, then her whole voice, every word flickering in and out of Solea’s lilt like bulbs on a blown-out marquee—that’s when I started freaking out. The girls at school had a field day, of course. They giggled and side-eyed and posted side-by-side pics of Solea and Gracie, and everyone commented, pretending they couldn’t tell them apart.
“Yo, your cousin is crazy as shit,” this cross-eyed girl in my chem class informed me. So I said “Yea, so is your face.”
Maybe it would have been different if we grew up in some bumfuck suburb where there was nothing to do but idol worship, but this was New York! You could be anyone you wanted, as long as you were yourself. Lookalikes, doppelgängers, wannabes, whatever you call them, these were internet phenomena. In the culture of our city, glazing celebrities was the lamest kind of faux pas.
Our mothers were mystified, too. “You want to be a ‘content creator?’” “You want to live in LA?” Our roots in Flushing spanned generations—neither me, nor our grandparents, NOR our great-grandparents learned to drive because we had the subway. How a girl of our clan could burnish such artificial dreams escaped us all. My question was, why couldn’t she choose an Asian popgirl to impersonate?
“Like who?” she snapped, flipping honey-blonde clip-on bangs out of her eyes.
If this were any other oddball relative, I would’ve just distanced myself, but Gracie was my “twin cousin,” both of us ’97-born and forever entangled like the chains at the back of my jewelry box. My blood, my first friend. So I tried to hype her up. Liked all her music video recreations and Solea Santos cosplay vlogs, and pity-followed her accounts across various platforms, watching as they slowly muscled up on engagement, gaining traction over the years, though mostly from trolls or offended Sol-Mates. The fandom’s contempt actually seemed to fuel her project. Gracie just metabolized their hate into more views, more attention.
“This doesn’t bother you?” I asked one time, a rock in the pit of my stomach after reading her comments section.
“No way, they’re paying my bills,” she smirked, mirthfully hearting each directive to kill herself.
Money wasn’t even her incentive, though. That would have made some sense, at least. No, Gracie considered what she did to be art. Looking alike was a coincidence, a stroke of genetic fortune. To sculpt that likeness into a carbon copy took actual skill. This was no basic study—teaching herself the angles of her face, which to enhance, what to erase, how to stretch her vowels till they retained a broader shape, pummel the muscles of her grin to force a dimple where it hadn’t been, and memorize the mosaic of freckles so completely, she could etch the entire starry smattering without consulting a reference photo. Creating a good enough impression to convince any given stranger at Disneyland, this was hard work. “I’m getting so close,” she’d tell me on FaceTime, the pleasure in her eyes blazing through a haze of hazel contacts, as she recounted how some girls at Erewhon had nearly run her down, begging for pictures. Close to what? I didn’t ask, but thought I knew. By the time we were twenty-one, she was on the brink of complete metamorphosis.
I couldn’t just say I missed her. I had to give her shit. Last time I visited, it tore the breath from my lungs when she opened the door, and the girl standing before me was a girl in a magazine, nobody I knew from real life. Growing up, people always called us twins, but here she was, identical to a billboard. We sipped matcha at a cafe in Silver Lake, and I was so embarrassed by her false laugh, I said, “Why are you like this? Why do you have to pretend to be someone you’re not?”
And she shot back, “Oh, like you know who you are? At least I have a purpose. I have direction.”
That stung. I’d just been fired, was living with my folks again. I felt like that game we used to play, Chutes and Ladders. Like life had kicked me down a chute and dumped me somewhere I’d outgrown. To her credit, Gracie tried to apologize mad times. Tried to be friendly, suggested our favorite movies, wanted to treat me to dim sum etc., but I went cold for the rest of the weekend.
“I’m still me, Jenny,” she said, hugging me at the airport. “You may not get it, but this is the most me I’ve ever felt.”
“You’re crazy.” I pulled away. We didn’t speak for a long time after I got back to New York.
When Solea Santos died (helicopter crash, one of those tragic, terrible stories), I worried she’d keep up the facade. But she already knew. She knew that part of her went too. Now that she’s back home, I help box dye her hair, a new color each month streaming down the drain. We go thrifting and try on different styles, this or that aesthetic, searching for a look that feels like her.
We’ll keep going till we find her.
I had a cousin who was only a few months older than I and went through the same; first the Beatles, then rap, than a hippie phase, etc…However, I feel the narrators cousin was on point, we are all searching for who we are, weird or not. Great story, great message.