DupliKate Read online

  But first, I needed coffee.

  I went downstairs to the kitchen and glanced at the empty French press. Nope. Starbucks it is. My workout regimen had been nonexistent as of late, so I changed into running clothes and sprinted out into the cold. The snow that I’d seen falling last night had settled into a thin layer of white frost on the ground, and the icy air washed past my face, shocking me awake and clearing my head.

  My feet pounded the sidewalk as I headed for Starbucks and mentally formulated a plan. First, I would look on the Internet again for an old SimuLife disk. If that didn’t pan out—and I didn’t have high hopes that it would—I would call the company that designed the game to see if there was any back stock in a storage warehouse somewhere. Beyond that, I didn’t really have any ideas. But at least I was caffeinated now, walking briskly toward home with a steaming-hot mocha warming my hands.

  A car horn honked behind me. I turned around to see Jake idling in the middle of the street. He was wearing a thick winter coat and a blue fleece hat. He had apparently had a coffee craving as well, judging from the cup he was sipping from with one hand as the other rested on the steering wheel.

  “You. Need a ride home,” he said, grinning.

  “Need? No,” I said, blushing slightly at my post-run sweatiness. “Will accept? Yes.” I walked toward his passenger-side door as he reached across and opened it for me. A few minutes later we were in my driveway.

  “You wanna come in?” I asked.

  “That depends on whether your kitchen has breakfast foods.”

  “It does.”

  “Then yes.” Jake grabbed my physics notebook from the backseat. “Here, by the way. It got stuck with some of my stuff in lab the other day.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said, taking it as he followed me into my kitchen. He shrugged out of his coat and took off his hat, which had given his short black hair the faintest hat-head. He realized this when I smirked at him, and quickly ran his hand over his head to fix it.

  I took off my fleece and warmed up some frozen waffles, then settled into the chair across from him. “I may burn this,” I said, plunking the physics notebook onto the table.

  “Don’t you need it for second semester?”

  “Okay, fine, I guess I won’t burn it.” I looked at the cover, where Jake had drawn a cartoon version of me beating our stupid robot to death with a baseball bat. I laughed. “Nice work.”

  “Thanks,” he answered. “Originally it was going to be both of us beating him to death, but I think you were the one with more resentment by the end. Plus my pencil broke.”

  I laughed again. “By the way, what the hell are you doing up so early?”

  “Haven’t been to bed yet,” Jake said cheerfully, and I suddenly realized how tired he looked. His brown eyes were shadowed, and his angular face was pale. “Told you, as soon as we finished that robot I got started on Call of Duty, so my sleep schedule’s all screwed up. You, on the other hand, look totally awake. For the first time in…ever.”

  “Are you saying I looked bad before?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he answered simply, then grinned as I kicked him under the table. He took a huge swig of coffee. “Now my turn to ask a question—why are you even home? Aren’t you supposed to be at Yale?”

  Oh, right.

  “Yeah,” I said glumly, taking a sip of coffee. “I canceled, though. Things have been sort of…weird lately.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Jake said.

  He’d noticed?

  I looked up at him and he kept talking. “Not to bring up a subject you said was dead, but ever since last week…”

  Right, the kiss. I shuddered inwardly.

  “…it’s like…sometimes you acted one way and sometimes you acted another way, and it was all you, but it also, like, wasn’t. If that makes any sense.” Jake half-shrugged and took another swig of coffee, the cup obscuring his face so I couldn’t quite read his expression.

  My eyes widened. If only he knew how much sense it made.

  “Yeah, so…anyway,” Jake said, putting his cup down. He looked a little embarrassed at having brought up the subject. His face was tentative, and the tips of his ears were pink. I nodded, partly for encouragement and partly because I was dying to know what he was about to say. “So, um, last week when I was here…” he continued.

  “Yeah…” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. But I couldn’t help leaning forward a little.

  “You were really nice and that was, I mean it was great, but it was also weird, and then when we, you know…”

  I winced.

  He stopped talking. “Sorry.”

  “No, no, keep going. I just feel bad about the whole—”

  “Yeah, see, that’s the thing,” he said. He picked up his hat, which was lying on the chair next to him, and started fidgeting with it. “That day, in your living room, you totally didn’t seem like you felt bad, even though knowing you, you would feel bad. But then later at school you felt terrible. I could tell it was killing you.”

  I nodded, feeling a tiny flutter of hope.

  “You were way more normal at school than you were here, for some reason,” Jake continued. “So it was all just…”

  “Weird,” I finished. Again, he had no idea how accurate his assessment was.

  “Very weird,” he agreed, putting the hat down and picking up his coffee again. “No offense.”

  “Yeah, no…” I said, trailing off. “None—don’t worry about it.”

  Jake drank his coffee. I would’ve drunk mine if there’d been any left. I couldn’t believe that my own boyfriend hadn’t noticed that he’d been hooking up with Rina for a week, when Jake, my freakin’ lab partner, a guy I hadn’t spoken to in years, had realized something was up right away. He didn’t know what was wrong. But he knew that I hadn’t been myself. I wanted so badly to tell him…everything. But who would believe my story?

  “Sorry I ditched you freshman year,” I said abruptly. Jake looked at me, surprised.

  “Uh…okay, thanks,” he said. “It’s not that big a deal.”

  “No, it is,” I said, sitting up in my chair. “It’s totally a big deal, and I totally suck. Just because we weren’t in the same classes anymore doesn’t mean we should’ve stopped hanging out. I mean, I got busy with school and stuff, but I could’ve called. Or e-mailed. Or something.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jake agreed. He shrugged, half-smiling. “We both suck, I guess. We were kids though—what’re you gonna do?”

  I sat up straighter. “We used to hang out all the time. You’ve been here before. In this kitchen.” I suddenly had a flashback to us as seventh-graders, toasting Pop-Tarts after school and then taking them down to the basement.

  “Yeah, I know,” Jake said, looking around. “You’ve still got that giant fork on the wall.” He smiled at the decoratively carved wooden fork my mom put up years ago, when she’d received it and the accompanying giant wooden spoon (which had since fallen off the wall and broken, thanks to an accidental bump by me) as a gift.

  “And I used to be at your house all the time too, although you moved, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered, “last year. Just a couple blocks over from our old house though.”

  “I heard about that. I don’t know where I heard it—not from you because we weren’t talking, but I guess…”

  “It’s a small school—word travels.” Jake shrugged.

  “True,” I agreed.

  We sat in silence again for a while.

  “Anyway,” I finally said, getting up to start some coffee now that both of our cups were empty. “Sorry if I’ve been acting strange. I’ve just been stressed out lately. You know.”

  “Oh, I know,” he said. “Congrats on surviving your hell week, by the way. Did you get your application in on time?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, trying to hide the anger in my voice as I replayed the image of Rina clicking the mouse for me.

  “And the SATs went well?”


  “Yeah, pretty well,” I said, watching the water begin to boil on the stove. At least I’d done the SATs myself.

  “Cool,” Jake said. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get into Yale. I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as you. So unless they’re total idiots, which is possible, they’ve gotta let you in.”

  I smiled wistfully. No, I thought, they’ll be letting Rina in.

  “What’s wrong?” Jake asked.

  “Oh,” I said. There he went, reading my mind again, or sort of, at any rate. “Nothing’s wrong. Except…”

  Huh.

  “…except that I might not want to go to Yale,” I said. I turned and looked at him as if he’d just said something insane, instead of me.

  Jake laughed a little. “What? Come on, that’s like your lifelong dream.”

  “But I think…I think actually it isn’t,” I said, again staring as if he were the one spouting nonsense. “Yeah. No. It isn’t.”

  I suddenly realized why I’d flown off the handle at Paul yesterday. He’d been talking about Yale like it was a foregone conclusion that we would go there together, whereas I…

  I must’ve realized somewhere along the way that I didn’t want it to be foregone. Yale was one option, but it sure as hell wasn’t the only one.

  Frankly, it didn’t have to be one at all.

  I almost giggled, thinking about how different high school would’ve been if I’d figured this out earlier. How many times had I sucked up an extracurricular I didn’t like, just to pad my résumé? How many times had I ditched out on something fun? If I went to Yale, it meant another four years of doing the same—four years of making myself miserable. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to have worked this hard just to sentence myself to the same thing.

  I mean, how glad was I that right now I was here, at home, instead of in New Haven, faking my way through a campus visit?

  Very glad.

  Ecstatic, actually.

  I looked over at the stove. In the pot, the water was at a rolling boil. In fact, some of it had boiled away.

  “Wow.” Jake had been watching my face. His eyes looked a little amused and a lot impressed.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, turning off the stove. “I don’t think Yale’s for me.” I suddenly didn’t want coffee. I couldn’t believe those words had just come out of my mouth. I’d said it out loud, and just like that, it was normal. Just like that, I wasn’t going to Yale, and that was fine.

  “You sure?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered, nodding. “Yes.”

  “Well, cool,” Jake said. “Now you’re free to come to art school with me.”

  “What the hell would I do at art school?” I asked.

  “Nude modeling,” he answered instantly.

  “Right, of course. What a stupid question.”

  “I know. Dummy.”

  We sat in silence again, sort of smiling at each other. Finally Jake got up. “I should get going.” He gathered up his stuff. “Thanks for letting me crash your morning.”

  “Likewise,” I said, following him toward the front door.

  “No need to show me out—I’ve been here a million times,” said Jake.

  “True,” I agreed. “Hell, we should probably go down in the basement and play video games or something, for old times’ sake.”

  “I actually would have no problem with that,” he answered, grinning and pausing for a split second to see if I was serious before opening the door. “Later.” He hopped off the porch and started walking toward his car.

  Wait.

  Video games.

  Which were like computer games.

  Which included SimuLife.

  I ran out the door, oblivious to the fact that I was now in the freezing cold in just my running pants and a T-shirt.

  “Jake!” He rolled down his car window and stopped backing out of the driveway.

  “What?”

  “You don’t happen to remember a game called SimuLife, do you?”

  Jake paused thoughtfully, and then smiled. “Yeah, actually. That game was so pointless. Although I kinda liked being a rock star–slash–bakery owner so I could get groupies and free cupcakes. And Bizarro You—if I recall correctly—wore a lot of body glitter?”

  Oh my God.

  “You don’t happen to still have a disk for that, do you?” I asked. Please have it. Please have it, please have it, please have it….

  Jake winced. “Yeek, I doubt it. Although when we moved we just chucked everything in the new basement, so it might be buried in there somewhere.”

  “I could…really use that disk,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from turning into an excited squeak.

  “How come?” he asked.

  How come indeed? I couldn’t come up with a convincing lie—or even an unconvincing lie—so I went with the truth.

  “Because the SimuLife version of me came out of the computer and I need to cancel my account and get rid of her,” I deadpanned.

  Jake laughed. “Well, you’re welcome to come over and look for it,” he said. “I’ll help you—I’m just warning you that my basement is a sty. And I might’ve thrown it out.”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind, I’ll come over,” I said, shivering a little as I bounced from foot to foot, making little prints in the dusting of snow. “Um, is now good? I’m kind of gross from running, but—”

  “Didn’t even notice,” Jake said. “Sure, now’s good, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He put his car in park and waited as I raced back into my house and threw on my coat. I took my hair down from its ponytail, finger-combed the waves, swiped some lip gloss on, and ran back out to the car.

  We drove to his house in comfortable silence. I waved hi to his mom, who managed to muster a “Hello, Kate” as if the last time I’d seen her was days, not years, ago, on our way down to the basement.

  “Wow. You meant it,” I said, surveying the scene from the bottom of the staircase. Even in the dim lighting, I could see it was a nightmare.

  “You’re damn right I did,” Jake answered, flipping a few switches. The rest of the lights came on, brightly illuminating the whole room, which was first of all gigantic, and second of all the messiest, most cluttered thing I’d ever seen. Boxes were piled floor to ceiling. A bunch of old furniture was in one corner. There were stacks of books, papers, old CD cases, board games, art supplies, and sports equipment everywhere, and the Ping-Pong table was littered with stuff as well. “Welcome to hell,” Jake said cheerfully. “You got a while?”

  “I have all day,” I said. Hell, I had all night too, if that’s what it took to find the disk.

  “Well, let’s get started.”

  Jake and I both grabbed boxes, practically choking on the thick clouds of dust as we started going through the stuff inside. The first few boxes yielded nothing but old clothes, so we moved them against the wall and kept going.

  “So much for lucking out,” Jake said.

  “It’s still possible…” I answered hopefully.

  Yeah, well.

  After an hour, Jake’s dad came downstairs with trash bags and said that while we were at it, we might as well do them a favor and start chucking anything that clearly wasn’t needed anymore. After three hours, his mom came downstairs with a pizza and a six-pack of Coke. After four hours, Jake was about to pass out from having been up for a day and half straight, despite all the Cokes and the sour gummi worms he was eating by the handful. But he’d finally stumbled on a group of three boxes labeled “computer games.” We held our breath.

  They contained books.

  After five hours, we found actual computer games, in a group of boxes labeled “Jake schoolwork.” The first box also had a bunch of old photos, one of which I held up.

  “Wow,” I said innocently, showing Jake a picture of himself as a toddler. He was sporting a shiny black bowl cut and a pink apron over a striped shirt and corduroy pants, and he was holding a spatula.

  “Wow yourself,” Jake answered, picking up
an old eighth-grade class photo, in which he looked more or less the same as he did now, whereas I was wearing head-to-toe pink, with my hair frizzed out in a triangle around my head. “Besides,” he said, snatching his baby pic out of my hand, “you know you want a man who can cook.”

  “I actually want a man with a bowl cut,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, that can be arranged.”

  We kept on looking. It very much sucked. Jake fell asleep and I had to kick him awake. Then he fell asleep again and I threw a stuffed bear at his head. And then, suddenly, halfway through my search of a giant wooden toy chest, I screamed.

  “Found it!” I was holding the SimuLife disk in my hands. “FOUND IT!” I impulsively hugged Jake, who was sitting back on his heels next to a box labeled “crap.” He lost his balance and we tumbled over into a dusty pile of papers. We both sneezed, and a spider skittered out onto the floor next to my head. But I was far too happy to be particularly squicked. I just disentangled myself from Jake, stood up, and waved my arms around while my feet did a happy dance.

  “Thank you!” I said to Jake. “Thank you thank you thank you!” I twirled in a circle, dramatically brandishing the disk.

  “You’re welcome,” Jake said, amused. He got up and dusted off his hands. “So are you gonna tell me why you need that?” he asked.

  “Yes, at some point,” I said breathlessly, gathering my coat and my bag. “But you’ll think I’m insane and right now I gotta go thank you bye!” I raced up his basement stairs, sprinted out the door, realized that I hadn’t driven, then raced back up the sidewalk to his porch and rang the doorbell.

  “Uh, can I get a ride home?” I asked sheepishly when Jake opened the door. He laughed and nodded and showed me the car keys he was already holding.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was in my room in front of my computer. I took a deep breath, then stuck the SimuLife disk into the drive. The game booted up and started.

  Yes.

  “Welcome to SimuLife!” said the window. As annoying background music played and some rather cheap-looking graphics swirled around on-screen, I clicked on “options” and then went to “cancel account.” I clicked it and held my breath. Please let this work. Please.