Mom turned to the cupboard and took plates out. "No. Definitely not.”

"She said I'd be paid between ten and twenty thousand dollars a month.”

Mom’s mouth dropped open. "To do what?”

"Be Kari's double. She didn't say exactly what that was, just that I’d have to move to California. She wants to hire someone immediately.”

Mom shook her head and slid the plates into their places on the table. "You can’t move to California. You’re not done with high school.”

"I could work something out with the school.” At least I hoped I could. All the zeros in the salary danced around in my mind. "You know how I've said, 'If only I had a dollar for every time someone tells me I look like Kari Kingsley’? Well, I think this would cover it.”

Mom let out a grunt and went back to the cupboard for glasses. “Celebrities. They think they can buy anything they want, even people. Well, you’re not for sale.”

Her reaction didn't make sense to me. "It’s a job,” I said. "You’re supposed to get paid.”

Mom put the glasses next to the plates. "Lexi, you don't understand about stars. They're pampered, selfish tantos— with egos so big they need extra luggage to carry their self-importance around.” Without giving me a chance to say anything, she turned toward Abuela and called out, "Tell your granddaughter it’s a bad idea to take money from celebrities. Rock stars, especially, should be avoided like lepers.”

I expected Abuela to agree. It had always bothered her that I looked like Kari Kingsley. She would find Kari Kingsley pictures in grocery store tabloids just to complain about them. She especially hated one where some buff shirtless guy draped his arms around Kari. "Mira esta chica,” Abuela had said with scorn. "Boys see that girl doing those sorts of things, and they’ll think our Lexi is no better.” Abuela did a lot of head shaking. "Somebody ought to smack that girl good and hard with a Bible.”

Leave it to my grandma to use the holy book as a weapon.

But this time, instead of her usual Kari Kingsley commentary, Abuela gave my mother a knowing look. "You had a different view of singers once.”

Mom glared at her and jangled the silverware onto the table.

Which made me remember—when Mom was my age, she'd been wild about this country-western band—the Journey Men. She wanted to drop out of school and become a roadie. Seriously. She still had a couple of their posters on the top shelf of her closet. She also had every CD they'd ever made, and I had to endure listening to them whenever Mom felt nostalgic for her high school years.

But what I wanted to do wasn't the same as dropping out of school to become a roadie, because I’d be paid a lot more.

"It's time for dinner," Mom said in that tone parents use to tell you the subject is closed.

I didn’t want to let the subject drop, even though I knew it was pointless to argue right then. She was too upset about it—though I didn't understand why. Wouldn't most parents think it was cool to have their daughter make a lot of money doubling for a star? I tried to make sense of her response while we waited for Abuela to pull herself off of the couch and shuffle over to the table.

Probably the thing that upset Mom was the idea of me dropping out of high school and working. College was a sticking point for her. She hadn’t gone because she’d been pregnant with me. She'd moved to DC with my aunt, my tia Romelia, and gotten a job with a hotel there. She'd spent the last twelve years taking a class here and there, until she was finally at the point where she was almost finished with her degree. She'd always told me to do it the right way. Four years straight through.

But what did it matter if I left high school a few months early or put college off for a year? I'd still get my degree. She should know that.

Abuela sat down at the table. Mom stared at the food and held a fork in her hand, tapping it between her thumb and finger.

Abuela glanced over at her. "Stop worrying, Sabrina.”

"Who knows how many people have seen that picture?” Mom said. "Anyone could have seen it.”

"Yes, but what are the chances that he'll recognize her for who she is?"

Mom didn’t answer. She turned to me and said, “Lexi, would you say the prayer?”

I looked back and forth between Mom and Abuela. "Who's he?" But as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew the answer. "Oh. You mean my father.”

My mother had never told me who my father was. She always said we’d have a talk about it once I graduated from high school and went out on my own. She thought then I’d be mature enough, and if I wanted to contact him, it would be my choice. Which I didn't think was fair. A person should know who her father is all along. I'd grown up feeling like I didn’t really know who I was, like a big chunk of me was missing.

Here is the sum total of what I'd been able to squeeze out of my mother in all of my years of trying: My parents met the month before she graduated from high school. He was very handsome—tall, sandy blond hair, blue eyes, and I did look like him, even though I inherited Mom's brown hair and brown eyes. She thought she loved him. They had a very short relationship and were never married. Mom insisted she hadn’t kept his identity a secret because he was a convict, a lowlife, or something else that I would be horrified to find out about. She kept his identity a secret because she thought it was for the best.

The only other thing she’d told me about him was that he didn't know I existed.

When I was young, I’d fantasized about him showing up one day out of the blue. I used to imagine him holding the reins of a tawny brown horse with a pale tan mane—a gift for all the years he’d missed in my life. He would smile, excited to meet me. As I grew older, his gifts became other things, but the smile and the dream remained the same. He was out there, looking for me, finally wanting to be a real father. I knew it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true, but still I wanted it.

So I’d heard almost nothing about my father from Mom. Abuela knew things about him too, but she remained surprisingly quiet on the subject. I'd been able to get some information from her because keeping her mouth shut was not her strong point—but Abuela put her own spin on everything, so I wasn't sure how much of it was true.

According to Abuela, my father had money and Mom had contacted him to tell him she was pregnant. She was brushed off, though, told she was a gold digger. Mom decided not to press the matter after that. She had her pride. She would raise me on her own. We didn’t need handouts.

Since Mom’s and Abuela’s stories didn’t exactly mesh, I went back and forth as to which I believed. Mostly I wanted to believe that any day a nice man with sandy blond hair and blue eyes would show up with my horse.

1 looked at Mom across the dinner table. "Why do you care if my father sees the picture? I thought he didn’t know about me."

Mom stopped tapping her fork. "Lexi, please say grace.”

"Do I look so much like him that he'd recognize me from a picture?"

Abuela folded her arms and let out a martyred sigh. “I'll say grace. Otherwise we’ll starve.”

She shut her eyes without waiting to see if Mom and I followed suit. "Our Father, we thank you for this food and ask you to bless it. We also ask you to bless Lexi and keep her far away from those trampy girls who live out in Hollywood, where sin lies like a lion waiting to devour them all. Amen."

I glared at Abuela, but she picked up her fork and ate without paying attention to me. I turned to Mom. "If I worked for Kari Kingsley for a year, I could go to any college I wanted, not just a state university."