All her life, she had lived in anger. Anger of her parents, of her sister, of her friends and of her lovers. She was tired of it. Tired of everything. She didn’t want to be angry anymore. She didn’t want to be who she had been for twenty years.

After her sister’s untimely, but predicted death, she had moved. Far from the people who thought of her as the evil twin sister, away from everything that made her hurt inside.

Her initial stop had been Vegas. But it had been too flashy for her. In fast-paced New York, she had felt lost. In materialistic L.A. she had nearly lost herself. But in Nashville, Tennessee, she had felt comfortable and she had stayed. In the land where country music ruled the charts and country singers were always about, she felt at home. She had found work as a secretary for a big record label in her first week in Nashville. And she had moved from a cheap Motel 6 room to a two bedroom apartment after she landed her job.

She had a roommate, a young woman her age who aspired to be a country singer. Quinn Forest was everything she was not and more like her sister than she would ever admit. But for reasons she would not bare to think of, she enjoyed having Quinn around.

She sighed as she looked in the mirror in the bathroom. Her long, straight, black hair had been layered just yesterday when she had gone down to the salon with Quinn. In the six months since she left home, she hadn’t changed herself physically, even though she had changed psychologically. Yesterday’s make over had completed her evolution from a bitter child to a wise adult.

But everything that had happened, she still wouldn’t change. What she had told her brother-in-law before her departure had been true. She didn’t regret much of what happened. There was a part of her that still blamed her sister for the past, but moving out to the large, cruel world, she realized she had been at fault as well.

Dabbing the lip gloss onto her full lips, she studied her reflection. Once, she had felt ashamed of it because her sister had looked her mirror image. But now, she felt a little loss at the thought that she was the only one to possess these features that added up to this particular face. Where her sister had natural beauty that was enhanced by her inner beauty, she had the sex appeal that caused men to stop and stare, enhanced by cosmetics.

Tears glittered her eyes. She wasn’t sweet and innocent Aubrey. No, she was only Aimee. The daughter her parents had resented and the sister her twin had despised. Well, her sister was dead, her dad had remarried, her mother had moved and her friends had moved on. Now it was her time to shine. She was going to show everyone who she really was. Aimee Winsiri.

Author’s note: I didn’t plan on writing this story. I was reading a novel and the character name was Aimee as well and I got to thinking about Essence of Fantasy and how I felt like the story wasn’t done, completely. I realized, after reading it for the first time since I finished writing it, that I didn’t get to tell the story of Aimee. I just wrote her as the evil twin and didn’t give her much thought. She deserves more because I don’t think any sister could be so cruel. She also seems like a tragic character, much more sad than Aubrey ever was. Alone in the wild world when for most of her life, she’s been sheltered. So here’s Aimee story. She’s still not sweet as Aubrey, but she’s not as evil, because she might have just met her match. As they said, what goes around comes around.

Ellie