DupliKate Read online

  “Cool, twins,” he said lazily. “That’s kinda sexy.”

  We both smiled at him—Rina cheerfully, me sarcastically—as she dragged me away to the fitting room. She’d piled four different dresses, five pairs of jeans, and a few ruffly little tops on the bench inside. I moved them over, sat down, and started digging through my bag for a pen and my beat-up copy of The Sound and the Fury.

  Rina seemed taken aback. “You’re going to study?” she asked, kicking her shoes off. “Don’t you want to try on clothes?”

  “Of course I’m going to study,” I said. “And as long as you try things on, it’s the same difference, right?”

  “Oh my God, right!” Rina exclaimed. She immediately started changing into one of the dresses as I got out some colored sticky tabs and started making notes in my book for the English take-home final due Monday. I didn’t even look up as she methodically went through her stack, hangers occasionally clattering to the floor. When she found something that she liked, she told me to look up, and I’d glance into the mirror and see, well, myself, in a different outfit. We ended up leaving J. Crew empty-handed—not enough was on sale—but repeated our system all over the mall.

  “Eh,” I said to a black and white polka-dotted halter dress at Ann Taylor—the neckline was a little low. Actually, a lot low. I could’ve bought it for Kyla.

  “Maybe,” I said to a dove gray cardigan at Banana Republic. It was clearly very comfortable, and would go with a lot of stuff I already owned, but the ribbons at the neck and hem made it a little “librarian” for me.

  “Hell yes,” I said to the cute little red-and-beige faux-leather sneakers at a random shoe store. Mostly because they cost twelve bucks. Rina grinned and put her own shoes back on, and I stuck a bookmark in The Sound and the Fury and followed her to the counter. I happily handed her my wallet, psyched that I’d discovered how to shop while simultaneously doing work. This was time management—I felt more relaxed than I had in ages. Plus, Rina seemed overjoyed, and she was a quick study—she was now totally avoiding anything pink or skanky or goth, and pointing at stuff like fitted dark red cords and cute little black platform Mary Janes. By the time we were on the last store, she was only trying on things that I would have chosen myself.

  “Congrats,” I said to her, looking at the ribbed black tank top, cropped gray jacket, and low-waisted trouser-cut jeans she was checking out in the dressing room mirror. “You look great.”

  “Yay!” she said. “And that means you would too!”

  I smiled and inspected the outfit again, making a mental note that I should wear it the next time Paul and I went out, and I couldn’t help but stare at Rina in the mirror. It was weird and cool at the same time—looking at her was like looking at me. Except that Rina was having a better hair day.

  We were just leaving the food court to head home, cinnamon pretzels and multiple shopping bags in hand, when Rina elbowed me. “Did you notice people are staring at us?”

  “Of course they are,” I said. “Look at what you’re wearing.” After I’d nixed her earmuffs in the car, she’d decided to wear her scarf as a headband—her extremely woolly, fluffy, fringed orange scarf. But she did have a point—as we were walking, I caught a few randoms giving us slightly longer than usual glances, and as we passed by a mirrored window, I did a double take as well.

  “Okay,” I admitted, “I see what you mean. But I guess I sometimes check out twins in public too.” As if on cue, a little kid stopped dead in his tracks on the sidewalk and pointed at us. “Look, Mommy, twins!” he yelled.

  “Shhh,” his mom said, reaching out and pushing down his pointing hand. She looked at me and Rina apologetically, and we smiled at her. The kid was super cute, after all. Rina waved at him. He waved back. After a second, I waved at him too, and he smiled at us broadly, waggling both his mitten-clad hands back and forth so quickly they were a blur. Rina and I looked at each other and giggled.

  And then I froze. Because several feet past the little kid stood Anne Conroy.

  Uh-oh.

  My heart constricted and I instantly stopped waving. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was her, but whoever it was was heading directly toward us, her high, tight blond ponytail swinging above the wide collar of her blue and green coat. I stepped behind a lamppost, but even if I had been thin enough to fully fit behind it, that wasn’t going to help. “Rina,” I said in a low voice. “Run.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Run,” I repeated. “Toward the car. Go! Now.” She looked at me and then, without asking any more questions, she took off at a sprint. Which, in a crowd of holiday shoppers at an outlet mall, actually attracts more attention than if we’d just casually wandered off. Great. Good call, me. The girl who was probably Anne whipped her head in our direction a little weirdly, as did about five other people. Panicking, I ran too.

  At first I took off in the same direction as Rina. Then I realized that getting closer to her was the exact opposite of what I wanted, so I abruptly turned around. I took a deliberately large loop around a corner of the parking lot, nearly getting hit by a minivan, then turned back toward my car, struggling to get my keys out of my bag. I’d just slid behind the steering wheel when Rina appeared out of the dark, her breath puffing in the frosty air. She ran full speed at the passenger-side door and just barely stopped herself from slamming face-first into it.

  “Go, go, go!” I yelled, unlocking the door at the same time as she tried to pull the handle, which screwed us both up. We tried again twice before we finally managed to un-sync enough for it to work. She got in and chucked her bags in the backseat, and I peeled out of the parking lot.

  “What the hell was that?” Rina asked, fighting to get her breath back as she put her seat belt on.

  “I thought…I thought I saw someone I knew,” I said, heading toward the highway. Luckily traffic was light, as I was in no state to navigate any bumper-to-bumper.

  “Oh my God! Who?” Rina actually looked as scared as I felt. Maybe all my talk about us being thrown into a government testing facility had finally gotten through to her.

  “My friend Anne, although I’m not totally sure it was her,” I admitted. “But after Kyla saw you at the mall there’s no way I was taking any chances. Especially since Anne would—I mean, she’s my friend, but not the kind of friend who…” I struggled to figure out how to explain the Anne situation and then gave up. “It would be bad if she saw us. Really bad.”

  Rina looked at me. “Wait a minute. So your big plan was to tell me to run away? I totally thought there was a guy with a gun and we were about to get shot or something.”

  “Yeah,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “I sort of realized halfway through that it wasn’t a good idea, but you’d already taken off, so…”

  “And then I couldn’t remember where the car was, so I ended up running in a circle and all these people were staring at me like they thought I was crazy!” Rina started laughing too.

  “Believe me, the same thing was happening on my end,” I said. “I tripped on my shoelace at one point. It wasn’t cute.” I pressed my foot on the gas. Our narrow escape (or possibly just idiotic sprint through the parking lot) was several minutes behind us, and I was beginning to calm down. Of course, since the panic had subsided, my general feeling of needing to constantly study was back. Especially since I had no idea how much work I’d end up having to do on the robot this weekend. Jake had promised to take a crack at the calculations and then drop them off for me to review, but for all I knew he’d give me drawings of tap-dancing giraffes. When I’d asked him when I could expect his contribution he’d shrugged and said, “Sometime,” which wasn’t exactly conducive to my idea of time management—or anyone’s, for that matter.

  “Um…wanna quiz me on some more French?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Rina, getting out the flash cards again. She picked one up and turned to me. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “maybe that wasn’t Anne. Maybe that was just Anne’s mysteri
ous twin that came out of the computer.”

  “Oh, you bitch,” I smirked.

  “Just sayin’,” she answered, grinning. She shuffled my deck of flash cards.

  So this was life with a sister?

  It wasn’t too bad.

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8

  Essay! I MEAN IT THIS TIME!

  Yearbook meeting

  E-mail Carmen re help w/ volleyball flyers

  E-mail prom committee re DJ vs. band (google local DJs? student DJ?)

  Finals—amendment list for govt, French vocab & essay Q’s, bio diagrams

  SAT practice at least 4 sections

  Robot calculations (possibly do this Sunday if really rocking out on SAT crap)

  Essay critiques for Renner

  Work out? Probably not

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9

  ESSAY! UNLESS YOU GOT IT DONE YESTERDAY, IN WHICH CASE YOU ARE A ROCK STAR!

  School board meeting

  Dinner/study break with Paul

  Study break with girls? Did I say yes to this? No

  English paper

  All the stuff on Saturday you were supposed to do but probably didn’t

  AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

  (Quit being so melodramatic)

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8

  MY MOM WAS STANDING IN OUR KITCHEN, peering into the freezer. “Kate?” she asked. “What happened to all the frozen pizzas?” She was dressed in her usual “it’s Saturday but I’m still going to the office” outfit of black pants and an untucked button-down, and her face was puzzled.

  I looked up from the kitchen table, where I was nursing a cup of coffee and staring into my biology textbook. I knew exactly what she was talking about: two days ago there had been six Stouffer’s frozen French bread pizzas in the freezer, and now there was only one.

  “Yeah, sorry, I’ve been stress-eating,” I said. That wasn’t exactly a lie—I definitely had been. But my stress-eating was confined mostly to candy bars out of the school vending machines, whereas the pizzas were all Rina.

  “Oh, to be seventeen and have that metabolism again,” my mom said.

  “Yep, that’s me,” I said. “Burning calories like a jackrabbit.” I got out of my chair and hopped up and down to illustrate my point, then walked over to the sink to rinse my coffee mug. My mom smiled and wrote “frozen pizza” on the grocery list stuck to the fridge, then picked up her purse and car keys from the kitchen table. She swung her coat over her shoulder and called, “Might be home late!” as she walked out the door.

  I closed my bio book and smiled to myself. Rina and I had gotten used to sharing my room, and she’d made a cozy little space for herself in the walk-in closet with my sleeping bag and a flashlight for reading. But with my mom gone all day, we both had the run of the house.

  “Be back in an hour or so!” I yelled up the stairs. I couldn’t fathom why our yearbook advisor, Mr. Butler, had picked the weekend before finals to discuss sales strategies for the ad pages, but four student editors couldn’t exactly stage an uprising against a teacher.

  “Okay!” Rina’s voice came floating down from the upstairs hallway, followed by the sound of running feet. She appeared at the bottom of the staircase just as I was on my way out. “Here,” she said. “I noticed you like flash cards, so I made you some for government.” She handed me a stack of index cards.

  “Oh! Oh my God,” I said, flipping through the cards. They were numbered one through twenty-seven on one side and had neatly printed descriptions of the constitutional amendments on the other. “Wow, these are great. Thanks.” I put the cards into my bag.

  “You’re welcome!” said Rina. “You’ve got so much to do. I figured it would help you out a little. By the way, do you think after your Yale visit is over, we could talk about me going to journalism school?”

  “Um…what?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, I can’t just sit around our room the rest of my life, can I?” Rina asked cheerfully. “Maybe not journalism, maybe poli-sci or prelaw—I’m not sure yet.” She waved at me and went into the living room, and I heard the muffled noise of the TV clicking on as I went into the garage. I mean, I had planned on figuring out what to do with Rina once hell week was over, but I was aiming more along the lines of sending her back into the computer game, not getting her into college. I had my own getting-into-college problems.

  The yearbook meeting, however, was no longer one of them. “Canceled,” said my coeditor Liza, who burst out of the school door to the parking lot just as I was reaching out my hand to open it. “Butler moved it to next week, time TBD. He’s gonna e-mail us.”

  My eyes widened and I turned around and followed Liza, who had whooshed by me and was now briskly walking toward her car. “He moved it to finals week?” I asked. “Oh my God, I’m so screwed!” The last thing I needed was an eleventh-hour change to my study schedule.

  Liza looked back at me quizzically. “What’re you talking about? This is awesome. Now we don’t have to be in school on a Saturday!” She got in her car and took off, yelling, “Canceled!” out the window at an arriving car, which promptly turned around and left. Suddenly I was alone, staring at a bunch of empty parking spaces as the wind whipped my hair around my face.

  Well, nothing to do but go home. It’ll be fine, I told myself as I unlocked my driver’s side door. The reschedule would clearly put a dent in next week, but at least it meant I had an extra hour right now, which I could use to work on my essay. And I had to admit that it would be nice to go up to my room, kick off my shoes, and change back into sweats.

  Except that as I turned the corner onto my street and drove toward my house, I noticed a strange car in the driveway.

  This could not be good.

  I parked a few houses away—if there was someone in there with Rina, the last thing I wanted to do was alert them to another me arriving on the premises. I then inched toward my house from an angle, in case anyone suddenly came out the front door, and sneaked around to the backyard. I edged up to the living room window and peeked in. The curtains were slightly open, a point against Rina, since she was supposed to close them, but at least I could see inside.

  Someone was in there with Rina.

  It was Jake.

  What the—?

  I instinctively ducked down, crouching in the dead grass and wincing as my knees bonked against the outside wall of the house. Then I peeked my head up over the windowsill again. They were sitting on the living room couch; Jake in ratty jeans and an even rattier T-shirt, Rina in yoga pants and one of my tank tops. His feet were resting on the coffee table; hers were curled under her. The TV was on, but they weren’t watching it; they were talking. And from the smiles on their faces, they were both having a dandy time.

  Weird.

  I kept watching, feeling like a creepy voyeur, but not even considering looking away. Jake was leaning toward Rina, apparently really interested in what she was saying, and Rina was smiling and twisting locks of her hair around her fingers. What could they possibly be talking about? Physics? It had to be physics, right?

  Suddenly Rina laughed and shoved Jake a little. Then, instead of backing away to her original position, she stayed close.

  Oh my God. Was she flirting?

  I blinked in disbelief, then looked at them again. Rina was relaxing so far into the cushions of the couch that her head was practically on his shoulder. Christ, she was flirting!

  I looked down at my phone, then at my car keys, trying to figure out the best way to stop this as quickly as possible. Should I call the home number? No, I’d told Rina to let the answering machine get everything. Should I go back to my car and pull into the garage, knowing that Rina would hear it and retreat to the closet? Yes, that was probably the best plan. I grabbed my bag and started to get up from my crouching position, and as I glanced through the window I saw Jake and Rina again.

  Except this time they were kissing.

  Aaaaaaaaagggggggghhhh
hhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  I actually yelped in horror, then sprinted back around to the front of the house. What? How? A million thoughts flew through my mind, but first I had to stop the atrocity in my living room. Immediately. I looked at Jake’s car and wondered if it had an alarm, then eyed the big decorative rocks around one of the trees in the front yard and wondered if I had the balls to throw one through his car window. No. I didn’t. Instead, I rang the doorbell ten times in a row, which made absolutely no sense but at least would distract them; then I hid at the side of the house. A few moments later, Jake got in his car and drove away. As soon as he was out of sight, I sprinted in the front door and found Rina still in the living room.

  “WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?!?” I screamed at her. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?”

  She looked taken aback. “Oh my God, calm down,” she said, stepping away from me as if she was afraid I was going to hit her. Smart girl.

  “I will not calm down!” I screamed, pacing around the room and looking for something to throw. I settled for punching a couch cushion. “Do you realize what you just did?”

  “Yeah, I just kissed a boy for the first time!” Rina squealed. “And it was awesome!”

  “You can’t kiss that one!” I yelled. I picked up the cushion I’d just punched and gripped it tightly in my hands to keep from punching something else—namely, Rina’s face.

  “Why not?” she asked. She looked confused. “He’s not Paul. You just said to stay away from Paul.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “So what’s the problem?” she asked, sitting down in the armchair next to the couch. “Jake’s cute! And really easy to talk to! He came by to drop off your physics stuff, and—”

  “He thinks you’re me!” I yelled, spiking the couch cushion onto the floor and then kicking it. I was this close to slamming her head into the coffee table.

  “That’s great!” Rina said. “That means he likes you!”