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Editor Note: The images used for this story were purchased and used under royalty-free license* from Istockphoto.com . ~Sephrena
Author Note: Please email me at AngelJediGirl (at) gmail (dot) com before posting this story to any other site. Posting to a pay site is prohibited.

Comments and suggestions are also welcome at the above email address.

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Chapter 29 - It's 'Not' a Secret to Everybody

"Emily!" I screamed hysterically. "What are you doing here?"

This was bad. This was really bad! I had just promised Dad that she wouldn't find out about Sarah until after the concert. I didn't even make it a day before she learned the secret!

Before I could figure anything out, I was wrapped in a hug. That was the LAST thing I expected Emily to do when she found out the truth! I figured she would be mad! This was huge! And I had kept it from her!

"No wonder you couldn't tell me!" she said excitedly. I just stood there, mouth agape as she let go of the hug and stepped back. "Wait until Ethan learns about this! He has a major crush on you, or Sarah."

Oh great. As if this wasn't bad enough already...

"You aren't mad?" The words popped out of my mouth before I even knew they were coming. The one question I seemed to have for her required immediate answering.

"Of course I'm mad!" Emily exclaimed. "But I know you wanted to tell me! I could see it eating you up inside every time we talked about your music career! Now I know why! Wow! You're Sarah Carerra!"

Her excitement level at learning my secret far outweighed my own. I could feel the tears start to spill out of my eyes.

"What's wrong?" Emily asked, the concern in her voice very apparent.

"I just feel so relieved," I confessed. "Keeping this secret from you was the hardest thing I ever had to do. But now you know! I can finally share this with you!"

She wrapped me in a hug again, and the two of us connected at that moment. We'd been friends for a long time, but this was different. We were girl friends now, and that meant something even more. I stood there with my arms around her too. The feeling of peace, comfort, and calm that was washing over me was one of the most amazing things I had ever felt.

Dad cleared his throat, ruining the moment. The great feeling I had been enjoying almost immediately turned to despair. He had threatened that I would be looking for a new agent if Emily or Ethan found out before the concert.

"Megan," he said. I looked over at him, and he looked upset. There was a pained expression on his face that could only mean he was following through with his threat.

"I'm sorry."

I couldn't believe he was doing this! He was my dad! Even if he dropped me as a client, he couldn't get rid of me! I didn't want another agent! I didn't want another manager! How could he dump me like this?

"I never should have made you keep this a secret from your friends," he continued, surprising me! "I won't hold this against you. They deserve to know. Emily, I'm sorry. You mean more to Megan than her music career. I can see that now."

He wasn't dropping me as a client! I expected he would be as mad at me as I thought Emily was going to be. Instead, he was okay with her finding out! The relief I felt at his words was indescribable.

"It's okay, Mr. Campbell," Emily replied. "I'm sure you had your reasons."

She didn't ask for any more details, for which I was grateful. Her rage would probably overcome the happiness she was feeling if she found out why my dad had kept the secret from her.

"Please give my apology to Ethan when you tell him," Dad said to me. Mom, who had moved beside him during the ordeal, gave him a hug. I realized that this was a big moment for my dad too. He was finally starting to realize that I wasn't just another one of his clients. Our business relationship would have to be special, or it wouldn't last. It would tear our family apart.

"I will," I told him. I was unable to keep the smile from my face. The day had finally come when Emily and Ethan would learn the truth about Sarah Carerra.

"We'll leave the two of you to catch up," Mom said before dragging my father down the hall toward their bedroom.

I stood there in silence with Emily for a moment. I didn't want these happy feelings to go away. But then I remembered how to make it even better.

"Want to see the 'Green Room' now?" I asked Emily with a large smile on my face. "You're going to like it."

"Okay," she replied, perhaps a bit warily.

I grabbed her hand and led her down the hall to Sarah's room. I opened the door and stepped inside, turning to see the look of surprise that washed over her face as she saw the room for the first time.

"Welcome to Sarah's room," I said. She looked around, wide-eyed. Dad had spared no expense when he furnished the room, and it showed. She walked around, touching everything as she went. I think she was trying to confirm that the room was real and not a dream or illusion.

When she reached the armoire, which was still open, she glanced inside at the many wigs sitting on their foam heads.

"These are all Sarah's?" she asked. I nodded. "I've never seen her, you, with anything other than the one you have on."

"I've never used any of the others," I explained. "Julia wanted my image to be set in stone before we start playing with it."

"Julia?" Emily asked.

"My image consultant?" I prompted. Emily had met Julia the week before when Julia had come over to take me shopping.

"Oh, yeah," Emily remembered.

I stepped over to the two doors on the wall next to the armoire and pulled them open. Dad had used the large walk-in closet in this room as a storage area before he converted it into Sarah's. Now, it was filled with all kinds of clothes and glam.

"Wow," Emily said when she stepped into the closet behind me. "This is amazing! I am so jealous of you!"

I could definitely understand why. If I thought that Megan's wardrobe was impressive, which I did, Sarah's was divine. High end dresses and name brand labels were hanging next to shiny pieces of glam made up of vests, jackets, shoes, and many other types of accessories. Any girl would die for a closet like this.

The only thing that would make it better would be the knowledge that I didn't have to pay for it. Unfortunately, that was a wish that wasn't going to come true. I knew that the account holding the assets of Sarah Carerra was already into six figures, but it was money that I wasn't going to see much of anytime soon. Dad told me my money would be kept in a trust fund that only gave me access to a certain amount every month, but I still didn't know how much that would be.

We spent most of the next hour in Sarah's closet. We held our own fashion show and I showed her some of my favorite pieces. She even managed to teach me a few things that Julia hadn't.

But most of all, I got to include her in Sarah's life. I told her about everything that I had done up to that point. I told her about the songs. I told her about my date with Josh. I even told her about the concert. The relief that I felt at finally being able to share everything with her was tremendous.

"Can I come?" was her obvious first question.

"I don't know," I told her truthfully. "I think my dad said the show is already sold out. I don't know if I could get tickets for you."

"But you're performing!" she argued.

"I know," I replied. "But I'm filling in for another band. They already gave out their tickets to people before they backed out."

"That sucks," she said. I agreed.

"I'll talk to my dad," I told her. "But we'd still have to work out travel arrangements."

Emily nodded and looked at her watch. She looked really surprised at how late it was.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "We're supposed to be meeting Ethan in 15 minutes!"

Then she grinned with a sly, evil little smile.

"I have an idea," she said and pulled out her cell phone. Her gleam made me suspicious if I would enjoy this idea of hers, but I could only listen as she convinced Ethan to meet us at my house instead of her own.

When the doorbell rang 10 minutes later, we both started giggling. After she had told me her plan, I was convinced. This was going to be fun.

"Wait here," she said before quickly exiting the room and heading for the front door. Despite myself, I couldn't stay away from the cracked door to Sarah's room, listening to what was happening in the front room.

"Ethan!" Emily squealed excitedly. "You'll never guess who's here!"

"Who?" Ethan asked. He sounded intrigued at her enthusiasm.

"Sarah Carerra!" Emily replied. From the large intake of breath I could hear from all the way down the hall, I realized that Emily had told me the truth. Ethan had a big crush on me, Sarah, whomever. I hoped he didn't hate us after today.

"Come on," Emily said, and I was sure she must have grabbed his hand and started pulling. But the urgent "No, wait!" from Ethan had me laughing right along with the mirth I could hear in Emily's voice. As they turned down the hall I quickly made my way over to the couch and pretended to be watching whatever show was on the TV.

"No!" I heard once again. This time it was quite louder and obviously right outside of the room. When Emily pushed the door open, there was an immediate change in Ethan's stance. He went from trying to pull away from Emily to standing up straight and trying to look normal.

He was nervous. Very nervous. I'd never seen him look as anxious as he did standing there in the doorway.

"Sarah!" Emily practically yelled as she continued to pull him into the room. "Sorry to bug you again, but Ethan, the guy I told you about, is here."

Ethan's eyes opened wide at her words. I stood up from the couch and approached them. I tried to keep a smile on my face. It wasn't hard since I was about to break out in laughter myself.

"Hi, Ethan," I said to him. "It's really nice to meet you. Emily and Megan have told me all about you."

I may have overdone it at that point when I licked my lips, but it was worth it to see the expression on his face. I had a bad feeling that this would come back to bite me later.

"Uh," was his undignified response. He seemed to be at a loss for words. I smiled at him, which didn't help.

"Ethan," I said a moment later. I was supposed to continue the charade, but I couldn't. He looked like he was going to pass out from meeting me. Talking to me might give him a heart attack, and he didn't deserve that. "It's okay. Calm down for a moment. I have something I need to tell you."

He certainly didn't seem any calmer. In fact, it looked almost like he had become even more anxious as I started talking to him.

I did the only thing I could do to help calm the situation. I reached up and grabbed my wig. We'd unpinned it and my own hair before he arrived for this exact reason.

I pulled the wig away from my head, letting my brown locks fall from underneath.

"I'm Sarah Carerra," I told him. He couldn't take it anymore. What happened next was the only time I had ever seen Ethan faint.

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"You girls are cruel," Ethan grumbled while we sat around a table in the food court of the local mall half an hour later. Emily and I giggled at his statement.

"You have to admit," Emily said. "It was pretty funny. When are the two of you going on your first date?"

I blushed furiously at her suggestion, but Ethan's response surprised me. He put on the required scowl at the idea of dating me, but for a brief moment beforehand I saw a glimpse of something else. Something that worried me.

I knew that he had a crush on Sarah, but he didn't have one on ME, right? Right? I didn't know what I would do if that was the case. He was my best guy friend! I didn't know if I could handle that! I mean, we grew up together as two boys!

Ethan hadn't said much about my revelation since he regained consciousness, and I didn't know if his silence about my alter ego was good or bad. He seemed to be bottling it all up inside, and that worried me even more. Any attempts to get him to talk about it ended in failure.

There was some ribbing and joking around as we finished our food, but thankfully no more discussion on the subject of crushes or feelings came up. The plan for the evening was to get something to eat and then go to a movie. With the food portion of the evening accomplished, we decided to stroll through the mall until the movie started. We had about 45 minutes to kill.

Unfortunately, Ethan would not let us enter any clothing stores. He said something about not wanting to wait around for us being the driving force behind this decision. Whatever. Instead, we were walking around trying to find some mutually acceptable store to enter. We'd finished walking around the first floor and decided to see what was on the level above.

We stepped onto the escalator with the other shoppers. It was an uneventful ride. But at the top, I came to a distinct and sudden halt. I almost fell when my feet hit the end of the moving stairs, and again when people behind me started pushing me out of the way.

There, right in front of me, was a large poster of myself. Well, Sarah to be exact. It was hanging in the window of a music store that we often frequented. I'd been told on two separate occasions during the day about the posters, but this was the first time I had seen one. And every single person who came up that escalator was going to see it too. It was unnerving to realize just how public my image now was.

"Haven't you seen it before?" Emily asked from behind me.

"No," I replied while shaking my head. "I didn't even know they existed until this morning."

I stepped closer to the poster and out of the flow of traffic that seemed to be upset with where I was standing. The poster showed me wearing the red dress that I had worn at the beginning of the second photo shoot. While the pose wasn't sensual or seductive in any way, the overall poster provided an allure that left me feeling slightly uncomfortable when I looked at it.

"That's the good one," Ethan said. The smile on his face didn't make me feel any better. I scowled, and his smile retreated quickly.

"Of course," he said quickly and sternly. "It's coming down tonight, right after I get home. First thing I do."

I'd known Ethan a long time. I knew him well enough to know when he was lying, and he was lying pretty badly right then. Even after finding out that I was Sarah Carerra, he still seemed to have the hots for her.

"Come see the others," he said in an effort to sidestep my ire. He quickly walked toward the store entrance and walked inside, leaving Emily and me next to the poster.

"Give him time," Emily said. "He's been talking about Sarah since Thursday. He heard your song Wednesday night after we left your house, and we saw the posters when we came to the mall after school on Thursday. He really has a thing for Sarah. Finding out that Sarah is one of his best friends must have been hard for him."

"I know," I told her truthfully. "But I'm scared about his reactions to Sarah. He's been my best guy friend since kindergarten. Emily, I don't know how to handle feelings like this from him."

"We'll figure it out," Emily soothed. "Whatever happens, we can deal with it. Who knows, maybe you'll develop feelings for him. He's probably a lot better boyfriend then Josh Holliday."

I started blushing again. I had told Josh Holliday last Saturday that we should start as friends, but my actions on Wednesday night when I gave him my cell number could certainly be construed as wanting more. I'd certainly acted like I wanted more. I think I did want more.

But Josh didn't know me before I started living as Megan. He didn't even know that I was Megan! Ethan did, and that made a big difference.

"Come on," Emily said and pulled me toward the store entrance. "The last thing we need is to make him feel even worse. Let's just act like everything is normal for now and work it out when he is ready."

Unfortunately, her statement made sense. Despite my desire to immediately understand what it all meant, I would need to wait. I followed her into the store and we made our way over to Ethan who was looking through the different posters the store sold.

"That one, dude!" a masculine voice said as a tall, tanned surfer looking guy stepped out of an aisle and stood next to Ethan. Ethan stopped what he was doing, and the surfer spoke again. "She's so hot."

Ethan raised his eyebrows at the guy, but stepped back to let him get closer to the poster.

"B4," the guy continued and then scanned the small compartments below the poster stand for the appropriate slot. He found what he was looking for, pulled a poster out and started heading for the cashier. "Thanks, dude."

Ethan was left with a perplexed look on his face.

"Hey, dude," Emily joked as we approached. We apparently caught Ethan off-guard, because he jumped slightly before letting out a laugh.

"That guy was nuts," Ethan replied, getting a return laugh from us.

"What poster did he buy?" I asked curiously. He seemed to be pretty excited about his purchase. I stepped over to see what poster was still on display, and I nearly choked! It was another poster of me!

The one still on display was quite different to the one hanging in the window, but still seemed to be too sensuous for my liking. I was wearing a white dress, which meant it was another photo from the second shoot. I remembered the dress well. It was the first dress I'd ever worn that hinted at cleavage. The padded pushup that I had worn did its job well, and I looked much bigger than I really was. Coupled with the dress were silver jewelry and a silver headband that they had put in my hair. The pose had me facing the camera with my head tilted slightly upward. Coupled with the white dress and silver headband, I looked slightly angelic. The poster seemed to scream naughty and nice at the same time.

I loved it and I hated it at the same time.

It was an amazing picture. The stark differences that played out in the poster drew my attention and made it hard to look away. But it was me in the photo, and there was a definite sexuality to the poster that I didn't really feel comfortable sharing with other people. I was still getting used to the idea that I truly was female. I wasn't sure I was ready for this.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Emily said.

"It's beautiful," I replied, running my fingers over the plastic covering the poster. I really didn't know what else to say. I was speechless. I had never seen a picture of myself that I liked that much before. Finally, I decided that I liked the picture, despite any other thoughts that entered my head since I first looked at it.

"Who would have thought that a wig could make you look so much different," Emily mused. I agreed. I knew that I was still attractive as Megan, but Sarah was somehow more exotic looking. Wait, wig...

"You two need disguises!" I told them excitedly.

"Disguises?" Emily asked incredulously. "What do we need disguises for?"

I grinned at her and lowered my voice. "You'll need them if you want to come with me to the studio on Wednesday!"

All thoughts of going to the movie were thrown out the window as we made our way to the same wig store where Sarah's wigs had been purchased. Much like Sarah's, both Emily's and Ethan's disguises would need to be excellent to prevent anyone from recognizing them.

"That's perfect!" I told Emily a short while later. She was wearing a wig that had changed her from a beautiful blonde into a fiery redhead. It actually looked really good on her. Her smile told me that she agreed.

But Emily was the easy one to disguise. Ethan was another matter entirely. He'd tried to put on a fake mustache, but it looked incredibly hokey. It wasn't until he finally agreed to put on a wig that we found something that would work. Following in my own footsteps, we had converted Ethan's short, dark brown hair into a stylish blonde cut that fell to the bottom of his neck. I'd never seen Ethan with long hair (longish for any boy I knew personally, at least), and he really looked different.

With disguises in hand, I made a call home. After the events of the day, Dad was more than willing to pay the bill from Sarah's funds. I had one of his credit cards (for emergencies), and he told me to use it and he would pay off the debt from Sarah’s earnings. Even though I did not have direct access to my own money yet, at least I was able to spend some of it with his approval.

We then started a crawl of the mall. Ethan wasn't able to keep us out of the clothes stores this time. We needed a wardrobe change for the two of them if this was going to work. We had to be just as careful with their disguises as I was with Sarah's, but in the end it would be worth it. They would be there with me whenever they wanted to come.

We went with a more refined, high-fashion look for Emily. She looked almost like she could be a model when we were through with her. Ethan got shoved into a preppy look. He didn't really like wearing the collared shirts and polos we'd purchased, but he definitely didn't look like himself anymore.

By the time we were done and were ready to head for home, it was nearly as hard to recognize my two friends as it was for them to recognize me as Sarah.

"Thank you, guys," I told them as I wrapped them both in a hug. "I was so scared I was going to lose you this morning."

They both returned the hug before we separated. With a smile, Emily said the best thing I had heard all day: "Friends forever."

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