Doppelganger (17 page)

Don't ever wish you could be happy or even think that you are—that's just when something or someone will come along to make sure that you aren't.

The next day started off well enough. A plan had been brewing in my head all night, and when I left the house that morning with Barry looking as dark and lost as he had on Saturday, I was pretty sure of what I had to do.

Instead of getting on the bus, I headed in the opposite direction, toward the main part of town. Using the address from one of Barry's pay stubs, I found the place less than an hour later—a concrete building at the edge of the industrial park with a big sign in blue letters over the door:
MITCH'S HEATING AND PLUMBING SUPPLY
.

A little bell chimed as I walked in, and an older guy with thinning hair and glasses came out of the back. He gave a quick smile when he saw me and met me at the counter. The name “Bill” was stitched over the pocket of his blue shirt in red curvy letters.

“Haven't seen you in a while, Chris. How you doing?”

“Okay,” I said. “Is Mitch here?”

His smile faded and he nodded, pointing to the room out back.

“How bad was it?” I asked.

“Pretty bad,” Bill said. “He and your dad got into it pretty heavy on Friday. Worse than usual. I told your father to keep his mouth shut, but he wouldn't listen. He never does. That's the problem.”

“Mind if I go talk to him?”

“Suit yourself,” Bill replied, and sort of shrugged. He didn't make me feel too hopeful.

I walked around the counter toward the back, where the offices were, and paused at the edge of the hallway. For a second I almost turned around and left, but when I looked back, Bill was still standing at the counter watching me. I took a deep breath and kept going.

There were four rooms off the hallway—a break room on the left, with a room across from it full of file cabinets and shelves, followed by a pair of offices. A little sign said “Barry Parker” outside one office. The other belonged to Mitch Reynolds. I stepped up to the doorway of Mitch's office and looked in. A big, beefy man sat behind the desk eating a doughnut and reading the newspaper, with his sleeves rolled up past the elbows. He looked older than Barry but younger than Bill, and even sitting there reading the paper and eating a doughnut, he looked pissed off. No wonder he and Barry butted heads.

I gave a little knock on the open door. He glanced up. As soon as he saw me, he sort of groaned and shook his head.
Good way to start,
I thought. He lifted one arm and waved me in.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, “don't tell me he sent you.”

I sat down in a chair across from him, my backpack on my lap. “He doesn't know I'm here,” I said.

“Want a doughnut?” he said, holding up the box beside him.

“No thanks.”

“Let me guess,” he growled, “you want me to give your old man his job back.”

“Mr. Reynolds,” I said, “Dad's had a tough time lately. All of us have. My mom's not around, and then there's me. I've been kind of a screwup.”

“Why the hell did you quit the team, anyways? Jesus Christ, you were a goddam killer.”

There it was again. They just wouldn't let it go.

“Anyway,” I said, “the point is, there's a lot going on at home.”

“Big deal,” Mitch snapped. “All of us have problems. But you should hear your father. Acts like he's the goddam boss around here. I mean, it's my business, and here he is calling
me
an asshole and crap like that. And it's not just these last few weeks. It's been all along. If he hadn't made me so much money, I'd have canned him a long time ago.” He paused and shook his head. “Everyone has their limit, kid.”

“You're right about all that,” I said. “But Dad feels really bad. He knows he screwed up. I mean, you should have heard him all weekend. All he talked about was how sorry he was. How stupid he was for what he'd done.”

“Yeah, right,” Mitch snorted.

“Sure he did,” I said. Of course he hadn't, but I couldn't tell Mitch that. Besides, Barry was sorry—in his own sort of way.

“Just give him another shot,” I said. “Please, Mr. Reynolds. He needs this job. He needs you.”

I was slinging it pretty good, and Mitch bought it. I could see it in his face.

“Go to school, Chris.”

“Just think about it,” I said. “I know if he comes back, it'll be different.”

“It better be,” Mitch grumbled as I stood up.

“Who knows,” he said just as I started to go, “maybe you'll be working here someday.”

I didn't say anything. I just shook his hand and got out of there as fast as I could.

 

I was feeling pretty good about myself by the time I got to school. I figured Barry would probably screw it up again, but who knew? Maybe he was serious about changing. Fact is, I was doing it more for Echo than for Barry—she had big trouble ahead if things didn't turn around at home. Still, it felt good to do something for somebody else, even for a guy like Barry. I felt like I'd spent the first few weeks making a mess of everything. Maybe life would be different now.

I signed in at the main office and went to math. It was late morning, and I was eager just to get through the next few classes so I could meet Amber at lunch. I hadn't seen her since Friday night, and I'd been missing her all weekend.

For some reason I didn't notice it when I first walked into school. But as I headed out of math class, something stopped me in the middle of the hall, and I just stood there while the swarm of kids flowed around me. I wasn't sure
what it was, to tell you the truth. A scent, maybe? Or just the echo of a scent? Something out of place but oddly familiar. Whatever it was, it seemed to hover in the hall, swirled along by students scurrying to their next class.

Someone gave me a sharp push from behind.

“Move it, loser,” a voice said.

I turned around to see Josh grinning at me. He was one of the only guys from the team who still talked to me.

“Hey,” I said.

“What's the deal? You look lost.”

“I was just thinking about something, that's all.”

“Chris Parker deep in thought. The world must be coming to an end,” he said. “Where were you this morning?”

“I had to run an errand.”

“Errand, huh? Sounds better than oversleeping, I guess.” He walked by me and headed down the hall. “You'd better hurry, errand boy, or you'll be late for Spanish.” He gave me one last grin, then turned into a classroom.

I actually was late for Spanish, but I didn't care. Neither did Mrs. Olson, who let me slink into the back of the room and take a seat. I tried to pay attention, but it was tough. Even in the room I could still feel it, still smell it, subtle but present, like a whiff of smoke from some faraway fire. Whatever it was, it was spreading throughout the building, only nobody seemed aware of it but me.

Lunchtime came, and I found Amber at our usual table. Nobody joined us. It had been that way for a while now. I was just as glad—I didn't really want to talk to anyone else anyway.

She smiled at me as I sat down, which made me feel
pretty good. To tell you the truth, I was a little worried that after Friday night things might be weird between us. After all, not many couples do what we had done. Then again, there probably aren't many girls out there like Amber. If there are, I haven't met them.

“How was your trip?” I asked.

“The usual. My grandmother spoiled me rotten and picked on my mother most of the weekend. Then on Saturday, all the aunts and uncles came over. Everyone had too many cocktails and started arguing at dinner and getting all weepy. As always, it became this big scene. And I was the only person there my age….” She paused. I glanced over to see her staring at me.

“What's wrong?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You keep looking away toward the door.” She hesitated. “Oh, my God, I'm boring you, aren't I?” She sounded less angry than afraid.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It's just…I don't know. There's something in the air. I keep catching bits of it here and there. Don't you smell something funny?”

She shook her head. “This building's a piece of crap. Air circulators are loaded with bacteria, I'm sure of it. Something probably just died in a duct somewhere.”

“Yeah, you're probably right,” I said.

But I knew she wasn't. I'd smelled decay before, and this wasn't it. This had a bite to it, a bitter-edged tang with a sweetness underneath that both drew me in and frightened me.

I reached across the table and took her hand.

“By the way,” I said, “I pretty much spent my entire life
in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Don't ever worry about boring me.”

She smiled and continued telling me about the weekend, and I did my best to forget about the scent. It was a little easier in the cafeteria—the smell of Tater Tots and chicken fingers mostly drowned it out.

But after lunch, as we headed out of the cafeteria and said good-bye, there it was again, stronger than ever. And it only got stronger as the day went on, until I could barely sense anything else. By the time I walked into English class, I could feel it heavy in the air around me, like a fog enveloping everything, sticking to my skin. What drove me crazy was that everyone else was walking around talking and laughing like normal, as if there was nothing going on at all.

Maybe I'm losing my mind
, I thought.

Then the bell rang and Ms. Simpson walked through the door. Only it wasn't Ms. Simpson. And that's how I knew I wasn't crazy—I'd found the source of the smell.

The pit that had been sinking in my stomach ever since I got to school deepened as the doppelganger strode to the front of the room.

“All right, class,” the sheganger said, “test time. Clear off your desks. You just need something to write with.”

As we followed her instructions, I knew for sure it wasn't her. The real Ms. Simpson would have been nicer. She would have asked us how our weekend was. She would at least have said hello.

The test was handed out and we all got to work, but I could hardly concentrate. I couldn't even think. There was this roar in my ears that kept distracting me. It took me a
while before I realized it was the sound of my blood pumping in my ears. I kept looking up to the front of the room where Ms. Simpson sat up on her desk, legs crossed, surveying the room. Every time she glanced in my direction, I looked away in a hurry.

Halfway through the period, she got down and started pacing the room. Again, Ms. Simpson never did this. Whenever we took a test, she always sat behind her desk correcting papers, leaving us alone to work. But this one kept going up and down the aisles real slow, her heels clicking on the linoleum tile like a metronome, a sound that echoed in my brain, booming with every step as she kept coming closer.

I sank down in my seat as she came up beside me.

Please don't notice
, I thought.

I breathed a sigh of relief as she kept on going. But two steps past me she froze, then slowly turned and stared down at me. I lifted my eyes only to glance at her, to see if she was really looking at me the way I felt her looking. It was enough—she caught my gaze and held it for a moment. A brief smile flickered across her face, then she let me go and kept on walking.

She didn't look at me again for the rest of the period as we finished our tests and handed them in, but when the bell rang and I sprang up with everyone else, she called me out.

“Chris Parker,” she said, eyeing the name on my test. Everyone froze. “Stay.”

Again, the oohs and aahs, but the nervousness I'd felt when the real Ms. Simpson had held me after class was nothing compared with now. I could feel the drops of
sweat along my forehead. I almost bolted, but I knew that it would probably just make things worse, so I sat back down.

After everyone left, she went and closed the door, then came over with that same grin she'd fixed me with earlier. She perched on the desk in front of me, crossing her legs like before, pulling up her skirt a little. I looked away.

“So here you are,” she said. “I found you at last.”

My eyes snapped back. “You've been following me?”

She shrugged. “I came across your trail in Springfield a few weeks ago. It was faint, but not faint enough. I've always had a nose for young blood.”

Springfield
, I thought. Suddenly it all made sense. Although, remembering the sight of that abandoned car glowing in the moonlight, I realized that, deep down, a part of me had known all along.

“So you're the one,” I said. “You're the Springfield Killer.”

“Springfield Killer,” she scoffed. “The names these humans come up with. So imaginative, aren't they? Still,” she said, sighing, “I suppose I deserve it. I got sloppy, you know. Didn't tie the weights on well enough—stupid girl popped right up and floated to shore as soon as I turned my back.”

“But why'd you have to pick
her
?”

“The Vitelli girl?”

“No. Ms. Simpson.”

“I traced you to the school. Figured you were probably a teacher, but this is just as good,” she said, her grin widening. “Maybe even better. It didn't take me long to pick this one. It's easier when they're single. Besides, it's a lovely
form, isn't it,” she said, leaning in toward me.

“You're not doing a very good job,” I told her. “You're nothing like the real Ms. Simpson.”

She shrugged. “I'm not really trying. I don't plan on sticking around.”

“Then what do you want?”

“You know what I want. Even if your mother never told you, you know inside, don't you.”

Trouble was, she was right. I did know. All of a sudden, I could feel it, but it wasn't what I wanted. I didn't say anything. I just looked away again.