DupliKate Read online

  “Okay,” he said, pulling the book away from me and looking down at the now-splotchy pages 176 and 177. “Well, good for you. I guess that’s your essay topic right there.”

  “I’m actually thinking something about how my lab partner is a huge pain in the ass.” I took out my calculator, then sighed. “All right, what the hell are we doing here?”

  Jake shrugged, then scooched his chair back and put his feet up on the table. “You’re the smart one—why don’t you tell me?”

  I gingerly picked up one of the robot arms that we’d started putting together yesterday. It immediately fell apart in my hands.

  “You just killed our robot. Guess you’re not the smart one after all.” Jake sighed dramatically.

  “I’m going to answer that by throwing this at your head,” I said, grabbing one of the Ping-Pong balls out of our supply box. And I did.

  After the last bell of the day rang, I took out my phone to turn the sound back on and noticed a text from my mom. The text said, Are you sick? Call me. Weird.

  I called her back. “Hey Mom, no, I’m not sick, I’m just leaving school now.” I headed for the parking lot, shifting my bag to my other shoulder and almost dropping my phone in the process.

  “Oh, okay,” my mom said, “because Marta, you know, next door called, and…” Dammit. I already knew where this was going. Our next-door neighbor is a retired college professor and she’s home most of the time. She must’ve seen Rina. Which meant that Rina left the house.

  “It must’ve been someone else,” I said flatly, making a beeline to my car and a plan to wring Rina’s neck. “I’ve been at school all day,” I continued. “You can call the attendance office and ask for my record if you want.”

  “I believe you, honey,” my mom said. “You don’t have to sound so defensive.”

  “I’m not being defensive!” Except that I was totally being defensive. Paranoia and panic tend to do that to you, and fury doesn’t exactly help you cover it up. I reached my car door and started a one-handed search through my bag for my car keys, finding lip gloss, a crumpled-up to-do list, and three pens first. I swore under my breath before finally closing my fingers around my scratched-up mini-flashlight key chain.

  “Okay, well, I just wanted to check,” my mom said. “Marta’s getting pretty old,” she added, laughing a little. “I guess she made a mistake.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  But Rina had made a bigger one.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “ALL RIGHT,” I DECLARED. “HERE’S HOW IT’S gonna be.”

  “Okay,” Rina said. She didn’t sound happy, but she also seemed resigned. It was late that night, and we were both sitting on the floor in my room, leaning back against the side of my bed. What had started as me screaming at her as soon as I walked in had fizzled when she swore to me that she hadn’t left the house. Apparently, my neighbor had seen her through the window and while Rina probably should have closed the living room curtains before plunking down to watch TV, she hadn’t technically gone anywhere. So I couldn’t really be mad at her.

  But I still was.

  “One,” I said. “Only one of us can leave the house at a time. End of story. If I’m at school or wherever, you’re in here. Curtains closed.”

  Rina nodded, then continued plowing through the chicken-flavored cup o’noodles I’d brought up for her. For good measure I got out a yellow legal pad and started writing the rules down.

  “Two,” I continued. “This doesn’t mean you can never leave.” Rina immediately brightened, but I refused to smile back at her and instead kept going. “I know it sucks to be inside twenty-four seven, so it’s probably okay for you to go running every once in a while and just pretend to be me. So if you wanna do that, fine, just let me know first, and I’ll stay in here. You can borrow my workout clothes.”

  “Aaaaaghh!!! Thank you!” Rina leaned toward me like she was going to give me a hug, but I frantically waved her off. “Quiet! My mom’s sleeping!”

  “Sorry,” Rina whispered. She went back to eating her noodles.

  “Three. When we’re both at home, one of us stays in this room. Four. When we’re both in this room, one of us stays in the closet.”

  “We’re breaking that one right now,” she pointed out.

  “I know,” I said impatiently, “because my mom’s asleep, but the second we hear her door open…” We both cocked our heads to listen, suddenly paranoid. Rina scooted toward the closet so that she was sitting half inside it and half out.

  “And rule number five,” I said finally, after a few more moments of listening to see if my mom had woken up. “You will not be having any contact with anybody I know, including my friends and most especially my boyfriend.”

  Rina’s eyes practically bugged out of her head. “You have a boyfriend?” she squealed.

  “Yes,” I said. “His name is Paul, and you can go ahead and focus on the part about you not having any contact with him.”

  “Is he hot?” she demanded. She was done with her noodles now and set the foam cup and spoon off to the side, staring at me eagerly.

  I rolled my eyes a little, but couldn’t help smiling. “Completely irrelevant, but yes, he’s hot. He’s like six three, brown hair a little lighter than ours, blue eyes….”

  “Do you have pictures?”

  “Of course.” I went over to the dresser and picked up my phone, then noticed the little text icon on the screen. A message must’ve come in and I hadn’t heard it. “Hang on a sec,” I said, checking the text. It was from Josh and it was hours old. All it said was hey where are u? I sighed and very nearly slapped myself on the forehead, suddenly remembering my promise to help him with ad layout after school. Sorry I typed back, my face flushing slightly with embarrassment at forgetting even though I was in my own house. Didn’t get this till now. Something came up, will help u tomorrow at lunch ok? I closed my phone, mentally reshuffled my schedule since I had been planning on studying for my government final during lunch, then went over to the computer and e-mailed myself a reminder to go to the newspaper office instead. I found a few pictures of Paul and handed the phone to Rina so she could take a look.

  Her eyes widened as she clicked through the photos, some of Paul, some of Paul and me together. “Niiice,” she said, squeaking in approval. She held out her hand for a high five.

  “Thank you,” I said. I high-fived her and smiled.

  “Man,” she continued wistfully, now scrolling through random pics on my cell, including some candids of me and Kyla goofing around in the hallway at school, and a few posed pictures of a bunch of us all dressed up for homecoming a few months ago. “Your life out here is so exciting.”

  “Uh, no.” I sat back down and leaned against the bed, stretching my legs out in front of me. “Trust me, if it were that exciting I’d already have something to write my personal statement about.”

  “This looks pretty exciting,” she said dryly, extending the phone toward me. It was a picture from last August of Paul doing a body shot off my stomach.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t exactly write my essay about that, can I?” Hmmm. Or maybe I could?

  “Well, either way,” said Rina, “I’d totally rather be swamped with finals and the SATs and all that stuff, as long as I got to go to school and hang out with my friends, and the hot boyfriend is just a bonus. A huge bonus!” Her whole face lit up, and it was almost cute how much she clearly, genuinely, thought my life was awesome.

  I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Yeah, that part’s not bad, I’ll admit.”

  “And it’s way, way better than just sitting around the house with nothing to do for four years.”

  “Oh come on,” I said, nudging her with my foot. “Is that really what happened?”

  “Of course. What the hell did you think happened?” she asked. “You didn’t even give me a car.”

  “I was in eighth grade—I couldn’t drive,” I explained. “I mean, I only played that game for a few weeks. It got really b
oring really fast, no offense.”

  “None taken,” Rina said. “Anyway, you were the one in charge. You could’ve made it exciting if you wanted. But instead you just…bailed.” Her voice had gone soft, and she pulled her legs up with her arms and rested her chin on her knees, her eyes toward the floor.

  “I didn’t bail,” I said defensively. “Well, I did, but it’s not like I knew you were, like, alive in there.”

  “I know, but still. I was. And you just left me all by myself. I didn’t have anything to do. I didn’t even have anything to read—you didn’t put any books in my house.” Rina didn’t sound angry, just resigned, and as I looked at her bummed-out face I was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt.

  “I’m sorry, I guess I just…didn’t really know what the deal was,” I said lamely.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what it was,” she answered. “Thanks for giving me a TV, at least. Although a DVR would’ve been nice. A lot of shows are on at the same time.”

  I stared at her, horrified. I’d never thought about it this way before. Why would I? It was a game. But I’d clearly screwed Rina over, and now I was doing it again, trapping her in the jail cell of my bedroom. My face went somber, mirroring the expression on hers, but after a few seconds she seemed to shake off her gloom. She shook her head, flipping her hair around a little. “So what’s the story with all these people?” Rina asked. She picked up my phone again and took another scroll through the pictures. “Tell me about them.” Her voice was back to its normal cheeriness now, and she sounded eager and curious.

  I grinned and rolled my eyes. “Oh, man, do you have a while?”

  “Um, yeah,” she answered, in a very “duh” tone.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Well, I have to do another two practice sections and work on my essay a little. But I’ll tell you a few stories when I’m done, okay? You good with the Harry Potter till then?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Or, oooh, actually, do you have more pictures?”

  “Yep,” I said, getting up and gesturing for her to follow me over to my computer. I clicked open my pictures folder. “Here, go nuts.”

  “Awesome,” Rina said, already staring wide-eyed at all my photos. They were mainly of Paul and my friends, and most of them were from the past couple years, but there were some baby pics and some of my mom in there as well. Rina couldn’t help squealing at practically every new photo she clicked on—“Oooh, you’re at the beach!” “Oooh, Halloween!” “Oooh, look at that hat!”—and I smiled. “Glad you like ’em, but keep it down a little, okay? You’re going to wake up my—”

  We suddenly heard my mother’s door open and then the sound of her footsteps coming down the hallway. In a flash, Rina vaulted over the bed and retreated into the closet, and I sat down at my computer just as Mom stuck her head in the door.

  “Sorry, was I being too noisy?” I asked, leaning casually back in my computer chair and giving her an innocent look. “I was just on the phone with Kyla.” I suddenly realized my phone was over on the floor by the closet, and I prayed my mom didn’t notice how far away it was from where I was sitting.

  “This late?” she asked, stepping inside a little and leaning against the door frame. I shrugged and nodded. “No, I just wanted to get some water and decided to check in on you,” she said. “How’s the essay going?”

  I made a sort of “eeeeuughhhh” noise and she smiled. “Well, I’m sure it’ll turn out great. Night, honey.”

  “Night, Mom.” She closed the door behind her. After five full minutes, Rina cracked open the closet door and peeked out.

  “Coast clear,” I said, still feeling a little paranoid. That had been waaaay too close.

  “Cool.” She came out and went back to looking at the photos on my computer as I gathered up my SAT practice book, a notebook, and some pens and pencils.

  “What’s going on with Kyla and these four guys?” Rina asked, indicating a picture of Kyla in a green flapper dress being held horizontally in the air by four of our guy friends, as Paul stood off to the side, half out of frame, cracking up, and our other friend Sam blurrily ran through the back of the shot with a feather boa wrapped around his head.

  I laughed. “Oh, that. That…was an incident at our homecoming after-party. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back upstairs.” I headed for the door.

  “Aw, come on!” Rina pleaded.

  “Suck it up and wait till I’m done with all my work.” I suddenly thought of something. “Actually, you know what? Suck it up and wait till tomorrow after school.”

  “What? No, don’t make me wait till then!”

  “No, I think you’ll like this,” I said. I had suddenly realized how I could make up for Rina’s four years of utter boredom inside SimuLife—well, for a tiny fraction of it, anyway. “I’m taking you shopping.” Paul might have canceled, but there was no reason I couldn’t go anyway. I still needed to get Christmas shopping done, after all. More important, after hearing how Rina had spent the last four years doing nothing, I wanted to take her outside.

  Rina’s eyes practically bugged out of her head. She opened her mouth, was too overjoyed to actually say anything, and instead did a series of enthusiastic fingertip claps.

  “Shopping!” she finally whispered. “Together, though? What about rule number one?”

  “We’re breaking it,” I said. “Just this once. Because you cannot keep dressing like that,” I added, eyeing the black short shorts with a silver cat logo she was wearing. Probably another Hot Topic find. The cat logo itself even looked slutty somehow.

  “Does that mean you’re going to choose clothes for me tomorrow?” Rina asked.

  “No, I’m going to choose clothes for me,” I said. “But you can wear them if you want.”

  Rina shrieked with joy, then realized she’d shrieked and immediately retreated into the closet. She stayed there until I left for school the next day.

  Dear Diary,

  I. Am. Soooo excited to go shopping! Kate already said she mostly wants to get Christmas presents—she’s got a whole list with everyone she knows on it (she tries to be very, very organized). But hopefully we’ll also have time to get clothes for ourselves. After all, she deserves it—she works way too hard.

  And I deserve it too!

  The only bummer is that Kate thinks my taste in clothes sucks. But I’ve been studying her style and you know what her style is? Boring.

  Don’t tell her I said that.

  Love, Rina

  CHAPTER TEN

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7

  “WHERE ARE WE GOING?” ASKED RINA BREATHLESSLY as she got in my car the next day after school. She was wearing one of my old winter coats, an orange scarf, some very raggedy mittens, and some purple earmuffs that I’d probably last looked at in the sixth grade.

  I reached over and plucked the earmuffs off her head. “Nope,” I said, chucking them into the backseat and then backing out of the driveway.

  “But they’re such a cute color!” She turned around and looked at them wistfully, then sighed. “So where are we going?”

  “The outlets,” I answered, and her eyes grew wide.

  “Outlet shopping? Outlet shopping? Eeeeeeeeeee!!!!!” That was actually the sound that came out of her mouth, and it was extremely loud and extremely high-pitched. I rolled my eyes a little, but couldn’t help smiling at her giddiness.

  “Yeah, well, my money goes further at the outlets,” I said. “Plus, they’re almost an hour away, so the odds of us running into anybody are small.” At least, I hoped they were. I had briefly considered making Rina wear giant sunglasses the whole time, but that seemed a little ridiculous given that it was the middle of winter and we were mostly going to be indoors.

  “What stores are at the outlets?” Rina asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know, the usual,” I answered, trying to remember as I sped up the on-ramp and merged onto the highway. “Coach.” Rina squealed. “Banana Republic.” Rina squealed. I visualized the outlet parking lot and the signs I
always saw upon driving in. “Old Navy, um, J. Crew, some underwear store, a bunch of shoe stores…”

  Rina threw her arms around my neck. “Thank you thank you thank you so much for taking me!” she screamed in my ear.

  I quickly leaned my head away to preserve my hearing and almost bonked it right into the driver’s side window. “You’re welcome,” I said, gunning into the right lane. “And now, in return…” I sighed and indicated my book bag in the backseat. “Can you grab my French grammar flash cards out of that and quiz me? I may have mentioned yesterday that this has to be a working drive.”

  “Oh, yeah, totally,” Rina said. I gave her credit for not looking bummed out, since her hand had been in the air on its way to the CD player, and I knew she would’ve preferred to pump up the Guys and Dolls sound track and sing along all the way there. I knew that because I would’ve wanted to, too. But finals called.

  It was getting dark by the time we pulled into the extremely crowded parking lot, even though it wasn’t even four o’clock yet. “Where to first?” asked Rina, after another attempt to put on my old purple earmuffs and another forceful removal by me. I looked around.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I need to go to Coach for my mom and get a sweater or something for Paul, but other than that, you lead the way.”

  “Awesome! I wanna try on so many clothes!” Rina squealed.

  She then headed straight for the Pepperidge Farm store.

  A bag and a half of mint Milanos later, we finally made it to Coach, where I got my mom the cute silver wallet she’d told me months ago she wanted. After that, I got Paul a dark blue cashmere sweater at J. Crew, which I figured he would enjoy about a tenth as much as the rest of his present (Celtics tickets), but that I would very much enjoy seeing him wear.

  “Hey,” Rina said as I was paying for the sweater. “Can you come see these clothes?”

  “Yep, one second,” I answered, as the cashier, a sleepy-looking college guy, handed me back my change and receipt.