Free Just Like Me, Only Better by Carol Snow

wanted.
    When he finally came barreling in (at one-thirty), he was all apologies: Traffic! Phone calls! Putting out fires! So sorry, so sorry, so sorry, I recognize that your time is incredibly valuable, blah, blah, blah.
    “No worries,” I said pleasantly. (A hundred dollars an hour!)
    “Have you eaten?” he asked, clapping his hands together.
    “No.”
    “Good! Because we’re going to dress you up as Haley and send you out for coffee.”
    My stomach fluttered. I didn’t realize I’d be making my debut today. Plus, I was pretty hungry.
    “Great,” I said. “But how about sending me out for a sandwich?”
    Jay shook his head. “Haley never eats solids in public. Though maybe she should . . .” He considered, and finally shook his head again. “Some other time. First, we have to get you dressed.”
    I glanced at my clothes: jeans, a long-sleeved black T-shirt, sneakers. “I wasn’t sure what to wear.”
    “You can wear whatever you want driving over here,” he said. “But when you’re being Haley, you’ve got to wear Haley’s clothes.”
    What had Haley worn in all of those tabloid shots I’d seen of her? I vaguely remembered some cowboy boots.
    Cowboy boots were the least of it. Once I’d gotten over my astonishment at the size of Haley’s closet, which was at least as big as my entire living quarters and had a door at either end, I started focusing on the individual pieces. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was looking at the wardrobe of a rodeo queen, not a pop star. There were cowboy hats, cowboy boots, fringed jackets, checked shirts, and white leather skirts. There were spurs and studs and spangles.
    “Haley’s from Montana,” Jay said.
    “I can see that.”
    “Though she’s actually been in L.A. since she was nine—her mother brought her here after she won a local talent contest. Anyway. Simone should be here any minute. She was supposed to be here an hour ago. I’ll call her.”
    He left me alone in the closet. I felt uncomfortable, like I was invading someone’s personal space. Which I was.
    The door on the far side of the closet swung open and Haley stepped inside.
    “Sorry!” I said. “Jay just told me to . . . I’ll go.”
    “You don’t have to,” she said. At first, I took that to mean that we’d get a little bonding time. But as Haley started to rifle through the racks, I realized that she was just really, really good at ignoring people. Finally, she plucked out a velour track suit—identical to the one she was wearing, only baby blue instead of pink—and retreated to her bedroom. I glimpsed an enormous log bed. What a surprise.
    Once I got over the sequin shock, I started noticing Haley’s other clothes: a rack of filmy sundresses, a row of exquisitely cut gowns. There was an entire wall of jeans and more pairs of shoes than I could count.
    I heard Simone’s spike-heeled boots clicking on the wood floors before she entered the closet. She looked at the clothes before she looked at me. Her nostrils flared. “I’d set fire to all of the Western duds, but there’s so much artificial material, I’m not even sure they would burn.”
    I smiled. She looked at me but didn’t smile back.
    “Size six,” she said in her flat voice. She was wearing a different gray sweater today. The sleeves looked like wings.
    I cleared my throat. “Sometimes I can fit into a four.”
    “Vanity sizing,” she announced. “You’re a six.”
    She clicked over to a rack, still tiny even in her enormous heels. She muttered something about “Vegas cowboy crap” before pulling out a denim miniskirt with a frayed hem. She peered at the tag and thrust it at me. “You’ll have to suck in your gut.” She crossed the closet to the shirt wall and came back with a black tank top and a lose-knit tan sweater.
    “Thanks.” I waited for her to leave. She didn’t.
    I cleared my throat. “Is there a, um, restroom I can use?”
    Simone shot her enormous eyes to the ceiling. She