My Copycat Stole My Life, So I Shaved My Head for Revenge

§01

The video was going viral.

Of course it was.

It had all the ingredients for a perfect social media storm: a screaming match, a horrific accident, and the unhinged arrogance of the super-rich.

I watched it for the fourth time, my knuckles white as I gripped the phone.

My finger traced the outline of the woman on the screen.

Her long, dark hair, a perfect imitation of mine.

Her Chanel haute couture little black dress, stolen from the back of my closet.

Her voice, a shrill, desperate copy of my own, spitting venom at the grieving parents and the shell-shocked police officers.

“I broke up with my boyfriend, okay? I’m in a bad mood! It’s their fault for getting in my way. They deserved it!”

The woman, my roommate Kinsey, leaned against the door of my purple Lamborghini Aventador SVJ.

It was my eighteenth birthday present from my father, the only one of its kind in all of Austin.

She took a long, leisurely drag from a cigarette, a perfect performance of bored indifference.

Behind her, under the harsh glare of streetlights, paramedics were desperately trying to revive a family of three she had just sent flying across a downtown intersection.

They failed.

In my past life, I was asleep when this happened.

Blissfully unaware.

I woke up the next day to an energetic call from Kinsey.

She’d urged me to wear that same dress, to let my hair down, to drive that same car to my boyfriend Linden’s birthday party.

I’d agreed, of course. Eager to please, desperate to make him happy.

The moment I pulled out of the parking garage, I was ambushed.

The victims’ family, their faces twisted into masks of grief and rage, doused my car in gasoline.

They sealed the doors with tire irons.

They lit a match.

The memory of the fire was not a memory; it was a physical sensation.

The smell of burning leather and my own flesh. The sound of their righteous screams barely audible over the roar of the flames. The sight of bystanders, their phones held high, their faces illuminated by my funeral pyre.

“Serves her right!” they’d shouted, their voices dripping with scorn. “Rich bitch thinks she can get away with murder.”

No one knew I was innocent.

And then, I woke up again.

Gasping for air in the silk sheets of my bed in my luxury off-campus apartment.

It was the day after the accident.

The day of Linden’s party.

The day I was supposed to die.

I looked back at the phone screen.

Kinsey was still performing for the cameras, loudly proclaiming her identity to anyone who would listen, cementing the lie.

“Don’t you know who I am? I’m a Redding! My father owns half this city! You think you can touch me? I’ll have you all rotting in jail for this!”

She was my copycat.

My shadow.

For years, she had mirrored my style, my speech, my life.

And now she was about to learn that stealing a life comes with a price.

This time, I was wide awake.

§02

The phantom heat of the fire licked at my skin.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing the screams back down my throat where they belonged.

Panic was a luxury. Revenge was a necessity.

Kinsey’s plan was brutally simple.

She had spent years becoming my perfect double, and now she would use that counterfeit identity to trade her life for mine.

She would walk away with my inheritance, my boyfriend, my future.

And I would become a hashtag, a ghost, a cautionary tale of an heiress who got what she deserved.

Not this time.

My phone buzzed, pulling me from the past.

It was my father’s personal assistant, a man made of loyalty and discretion.

I answered before the first ring finished.

“There’s a situation,” I said, my voice steady, cold as ice. “I’m handling it. But I need your best crisis PR contact. Now.”

There was a half-second pause, the only sign of his surprise.

Then, a quiet, “Understood, Miss Redding. The information is on its way.”

He didn't ask questions. That’s why he was the best.

Next, I scrolled through my contacts and found the number for "Antoine's," Austin’s most exclusive, high-end salon.

A place where secrets were kept as well as hair.

I made an appointment for an hour from now.

A small, cold smile touched my lips.

Kinsey thought my long, signature hair was her greatest weapon in this charade.

She was about to find out it was her fatal flaw.

I stood up, walked to my closet, and pushed past the rows of vibrant designer clothes that represented my former life.

I chose a simple, high-necked long-sleeve shirt and a pair of nondescript black jeans.

And a beanie.

I pulled it on, covering every last strand of my eighteen years of meticulously cared-for hair.

It felt like putting on armor.

Then, I grabbed my keys, my burner phone, and walked out the door.

The plan wasn't just forming.

It was already executing.

§03

Antoine's salon was an oasis of white marble, minimalist furniture, and the subtle scent of money.

I was led to a private suite, a single leather chair facing a wall of flawless mirrors.

My stylist, Antoine himself, a man whose hair defied gravity and age, looked at me with polite confusion.

“A trim, Miss Redding? Or perhaps a deep conditioning treatment?”

“Something more drastic,” I said, setting up my burner phone on a small tripod I'd brought.

I started a livestream on a brand-new, anonymous Twitch account.

A quick, encrypted message to the crisis PR firm was all it took.

Within minutes, they had pushed my stream onto the feeds of every major news outlet and gossip blog in Texas.

The title was simple, effective, and utterly misleading.

“Redding Heiress’s Shocking Transformation for Charity.”

The viewer count exploded. Ten thousand. Fifty thousand. One hundred thousand.

I smiled warmly into the camera on my burner phone.

“Hi, everyone,” I said, my voice dripping with rehearsed sincerity. “For those of you who don't know me, my name is Carys Redding. For a long time, my hair has been… well, my thing. But recently, I was reminded that some people aren’t so lucky. People fighting cancer, people who lose their hair during chemo.”

I let my voice tremble just a little.

“So today, I’ve decided to donate all of it to ‘Crimson Locks for Hope,’ a local charity. And for every hundred thousand viewers on this stream, my family’s foundation will donate fifty thousand dollars to the Austin Children’s Hospital oncology ward.”

The live chat erupted in a flood of praise and heart emojis.

I turned to Antoine, whose jaw was practically on the polished floor.

“Shave it all off,” I said, my voice a quiet command. “Down to the skin.”

“But mademoiselle,” he whispered, horrified. “Your hair… it is a masterpiece!”

“Masterpieces can be rebuilt,” I replied. “This is a demolition.”

He nodded, defeated but professional.

The electric razor buzzed to life.

Just then, my real phone rang. Kinsey. Right on schedule.

I put her on speaker, loud enough for the stream's microphone to pick up.

Her voice was a sharp, anxious whisper.

“Hey, Carys, where are you?”

“Hey, Kinsey! What’s up?” I replied cheerfully, feigning ignorance. “You know Linden’s birthday is tonight. I’m just out getting a little surprise for him.”

I winked at my livestream camera. The chat went wild with ‘666’s and laughing faces.

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