The Stand-In, page 1
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2021, 2022 by Lily Chu
Cover and internal design © 2021, 2022 by Sourcebooks
Cover design and illustration by Leni Kauffman
Internal design by Jillian Rahn/Sourcebooks
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Originally published in 2021 as an audiobook by Audible Originals.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For Auntie Bernie
One
My day is tidily laid out on my new LifePlanX app. It’s a work of art, to be honest. Here, the Life of Gracie Reed is beautifully organized and color-coded in neat little rows, a guarantee against indecision and inaction.
This Gracie has it together. This Gracie is a boss. Totally unlike the real, pathetic Gracie who just stepped out of the lawyer’s office and promptly started blubbering like a spineless wuss. You waited until you were outside, I congratulate myself. You didn’t cry in front of him. Small wins are still wins.
I tap my phone screen so that meet with lawyer is emphatically crossed out, which makes me feel a teeny bit better even though nothing’s actually changed. But according to my latest self-help read, just saying the word done is supposed to deliver a shot of that sweet drug dopamine, and I’ll take all the satisfaction I can get.
It’s not yet noon so I decide to sneak in a coffee break, which is not on my schedule and is therefore verboten by the LifePlanX app people. Their whole premise is that each minute of your day should be allocated to predetermined tasks without any wavering or add-ons. You only do what you log admonishes the tagline. In an effort to keep me on my path to success, the app sends me chipper reminders of where I should be at particular points of the day—and usually am not.
Screw it. I deserve sugar and caffeine. I toss the phone into my bag, jam a baseball cap on my head, and head over to my favorite café.
“Looking glum, friend.” Cheri looks up when I enter to the discordant accompaniment of bells. “Want your usual?”
I could actually go for something special as a pick-me-up—maybe one of those bougie frappes with fancy flavors like salted honey or sage caramel—but since she’s already started making the latte, I nod before leaning over to inspect the shelf of muffins. “I need chocolate, too.”
“Oh, we’re at chocolate levels of glumness.” She wrinkles her nose. “Sorry, babe. Loni took the last one for her kid.”
When Loni sees me look over, she gives a friendly wave, so I hastily attempt to morph my involuntary death stare into a matching reciprocal smile. I don’t succeed in time. Her eyes widen and she unconsciously leans against her wife as if seeking protection against my disproportionate muffin wrath. Her wife wraps a loving arm around Loni’s shoulders, and I suddenly feel stupid for thinking that baked goods would make me feel better.
“Can’t be that bad,” says Cheri, cleaning the espresso machine with a cloth. Then she frowns. “I have to stop saying that,” she scolds herself. “It can totally be that bad. You might have a broken heart. You might have received a terrible diagnosis. You might have been catfished or lost your true love or witnessed an accident.” She pauses as if considering the vast opportunities for sadness the world has to offer, then shakes her head.
It’s none of those things, but it’s still pretty awful. Thirty-eight minutes ago, I took my courage in hand and gave Fred the Employment Lawyer several hundred dollars to tell me exactly what I suspected: I didn’t have any proof my boss, Todd, was a fucking sexual predator, and without proof, I had no case.
“Have you gone to your HR department?” he asked after I’d outlined the situation.
“No.” Why would I have bothered when I already knew they wouldn’t believe me?
Fred looked at me over his bifocals. “That’s usually the first step unless you fear retaliation.”
“I did. I do.” Todd is malicious, and I don’t want to take the risk of having more of his nastiness and spite focused on me.
“Did you tell anyone at all?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Then we need proof. Emails. Voice recordings. Witnesses.”
“He’s smart about it.” I sat stiffly in the chair, humiliated at having to tell another human being about how I’d let this level of harassment happen to me. I’d had so much on my plate that at first it was easier to simply ignore Todd’s behavior and tell myself it wasn’t that big of a deal.
“Then you need to be smarter.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s how the law works. Once you get me that proof, we can nail his sorry ass to the wall. Can you quit?”
Not an option, not right now. I can’t jeopardize my employment, and so far I haven’t been able to find a new job. I let out a long sigh. Definitely not problems that can be solved by a chocolate muffin.
“I’ll take the Bluebell Blueberry Bomberama,” I tell Cheri, directing my attention to a decision I can control. It’s vegan and bran, more of a refueling puck than sweet treat, but thanks to Loni’s selfish toddler, it’s the only muffin left except for cardamom squash. Which is also bran.
As I mentally resign myself to a healthy dose of insoluble fiber, a blinding flash of light explodes to my left. Stars dance in my eyes for several seconds and then slowly fade away to reveal a small man wearing a Pink Panther-esque trench coat and trilby hat. “Smile, beautiful.”
I automatically obey with a reflexive grin that falls off right away, because what the fuck? He takes another picture, then a tsunami of clicks wash over me as his camera snaps and the flash pings in rapid succession. I squeeze my eyes shut and throw up my arms, holding the muffin in front of my face as protection.
Cheri chucks her dirty dishcloth at the photographer, who yelps indignantly when it lands smack on his chest, covering his raincoat with coffee grounds.
“Yo, Ansel Adams. Get the hell out of my store and stop hounding my customers. You’re trespassing.”
He opens his mouth to argue, but she threateningly grabs a pot of freshly brewed coffee and leans over the counter as if daring him to mouth off. With an angry shrug, he blows me a kiss and saunters out.
I turn to Cheri. “Ansel Adams?”
She puts down the pot and hands over my latte with a half-turned smile. “Couldn’t think of another photographer.”
“Ansel Adams did landscapes, didn’t he? Not people?”
“Like I said. Couldn’t think of another one. Also, that’s very judgmental talk coming from a woman who used a muffin as a shield.”
I bristle. “He sur
“Right.” Safe in her victory, Cheri complacently pats her magenta curls. “What was that even about? You caught up in some naughty scandal?”
Deeply skeptical, I check my phone. The only alert is a notification from LifePlanX about the second load of laundry I should be doing. “Nope.”
“Huh. Must have mistaken you for someone else. Makes sense—there’s always a lot of filming going on in Toronto. Oh, speaking of, did I tell you I saw Keanu Reeves last week?” She wipes the counter with passionate strokes. “What a god. There’s no one else as gorgeous as him around here.”
“Uh, Cheri?” It’s Loni, who is packing Little Loniette into her stroller as her wife tidies the table. “Outside.” She points.
We look out the front window. “Shit,” I say. “There are two of them.” Inspector-turned-paparazzo Clouseau now has a buddy standing with him outside the café. They’re both sporting seriously intense cameras around their necks and gesturing wildly.
“Quick. Go out the back way,” Cheri advises in a hiss.
This is bizarre and not on my to-do list. I hesitate, wondering who on earth they think I am, before I duck into the hall and sneak out, feeling pleasantly important. The buzz of acting like a celebrity lasts until I step right into an oil-slicked puddle that smells like raccoon pee. Damn it. There’s a patch of grass at the end of the alley, so I walk over and wipe my shoe. Once reasonably clean, I sip my latte as I decide what to do. I faked being sick to get out of work so I could meet the lawyer, which means there’s no need to go to the office. That I’m Todd-free the rest of the day lightens my mood.
I tap through my phone to the LifePlanX app. According to my schedule, I’m due to go home and spend some time doing chores. Plan the work and work the plan, that’s the saying. I wish it were always that easy, though.
I think I’ve tried every system available to humanity that’s supposed to get your life under control, but none of them have helped. My bullet journal bit the dust last winter, when I finally accepted Mom’s dementia was too bad for her to live alone. It was a beautiful notebook full of carefully hand-drawn calendars and lists, which slowly devolved into roughly scribbled pages of names and phone numbers in different color inks, a written microcosm of my resentful journey through the healthcare system.
Once Mom had been moved to Glen Lake, I put that notebook aside and turned to an award-winning, minimalist online tasker. That was abandoned five months ago, when checking through the previous weeks, I finally realized that my to-do lists confirmed what I had only dimly suspected up until then—that I was getting assigned my own projects less and less in favor of taking on tasks for others…or for one other person in particular. Todd, my marketing department manager, was blocking my advancement by giving my projects to his slimy protégé, Brent.
I turned to journaling as a release, diligently recording my feelings every day until Todd grabbed my arm during a company event and held on a little too long, while his other hand grazed my hip. No big deal, right? It was a crowded room. Just a mistake, no need to make a fuss, so I tried to laugh it off. I did the same thing the next week when he backed me into a table after I gave him the projections I’d printed out, joking that his bad eyesight meant he had to lean in close. I said nothing when he spent an entire meeting staring at me before saying he liked exotic-looking girls. That’s when I put the journal away. I had no desire to relive my days with a written record.
“Stop it,” I say softly to my phone. “Stop.”
I never say those words to Todd. When it first started happening, I convinced myself this was my issue, not his—I was overreacting or being too sensitive. I’d been too self-conscious to do anything but laugh, not wanting to cause a fuss and embarrass him or needlessly put my job at risk.
The decision to see Fred the Lawyer came to me as I curled up in bed one morning fighting nausea because of another job rejection. It wasn’t normal to cry myself to sleep every night. Something had to give.
My phone dings with yet another LifePlanX notification, triggering a Pavlovian instinct to accomplish something, anything. The message flashes on my screen. Not on track? Sit with that, said the coyote to the bear.
What the hell does that even mean?
I decide I don’t need the additional pressure of a phone that constantly reminds me of my failures. “Coyote this,” I whisper as I press the little shaky X in the app’s corner.
Yet the moment it disappears from the screen, I feel lost. I’m not proud of my dependence on these kinds of things to maintain focus (“It’s like you need a corset for your brain,” my über-organized friend Anjali said), but I do. I admit it. I love lists. I crave them. I draw visceral pleasure from anything I can put a line through, a check beside, or delete as a declaration that I have Completed a Task and am therefore a worthy, functioning human.
But until I download a new, shinier list maker, it looks like I’m on my own.
I walk to the nearest subway stop and briefly hesitate on the platform. Without the restrictions of my app-planned day, I can either go home and wallow in self-pity or visit my mom. Actually, going home isn’t even a real option, because Mom takes priority over pretty much everything.
Thirty minutes later, I’ve reached my stop and am walking the three blocks to Glen Lake. It’s a muggy June afternoon and layers of nasty, sweaty stickiness form on my skin, perfectly mirroring my internal state (level: trash goblin). I take a moment to breathe in deeply and force the negative energy away. Seeing Mom is hard enough without going in already dejected.
“You can do this.” I give myself a mini pep talk before pressing the intercom button at the main entrance. After all, it’s not like I’m the one who has to live here. I only have two jobs: to pay for Agatha Wu Reed’s single room and to look cheerful when I visit.
The door opens, but I linger at the threshold like a vampire waiting for an invitation. An older woman walks out and I step out of her way with a quick apology, immediately regretting it because I did nothing to be sorry for. It’s a bad habit that has become an automatic reflex. She’s followed by an elderly gentleman who reaches for her hand and lovingly tucks it up against his chest. I try to suppress the hungry look I know comes into my eyes as I stare at their intertwined fingers, because no one wants to broadcast their loneliness to others.
It’s not like I’m lonesome all the time or pining for a Prince Charming, but sometimes there’s a part of me—maybe twenty percent—that wants that kind of connection so badly it hurts. The other eighty percent is more sensible. I have too much on my plate to be thinking about relationships right now, and it’s much easier to only have my mom to care about. Putting another person’s concerns and needs into the mix would only make things harder.
Covering my sigh, I catch the edge of the door before it closes and step inside.
The woman at the nurses’ station looks up as I approach. We’re both familiar with each other at this point.
“How is she?” I ask.
“Eating well,” she answers in a brisk tone.
I wait, but that’s all the information that seems to be forthcoming. “How about her mental state?” I nudge politely, not wanting to nag or ask too many questions.
“Any word on the new home?” The nurse’s neat sidestep is answer enough. The entire floor knows I’m trying to get Mom into the Xin Guang private care home on the other side of town.
I shake my head. “Nothing open yet.” It could take another year for a room to open, which would at least give me more time to save. Private care is expensive.
The nurse nods with practiced sympathy, a gesture I’ve become intimately familiar with since Mom entered Glen Lake. “Something will come up,” she assures me. “It always does.”
That something will come up I have no doubt, but it means I need to have the money to pay for it, which means I need my job, which means putting up with Todd and the hell he’s making of my life. I finish signing in and head down the hall.
Glen Lake is clean, reputable, close to my apartment, and the staff are kind. Logically, I know I’m lucky to have found Mom a room here. I don’t feel lucky. All I feel is hate. I hate the omnipresent sickly smell of bleach and soup that permeates the rooms, no matter what’s served for lunch. I hate the colors—a faded mix of salmon and seafoam I’m sure someone thought was a soothing combination but instead gives the impression of a 1970s bathroom in desperate need of renovation. While I’m hovering above my pit of hostility, let me also drop in the bland, silver-framed art prints on the walls. They’re all still-lifes of snapdragons and landscapes or cutesy animal posters. In fact, there’s one by my mother’s room of an adorable little white kitten sitting next to a pink carnation that I see each time before I go in, and you know what? I hate that, too.
