DupliKate (5 page)

“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 study
ing 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 boring 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 bore
dom 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.

“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.

“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 men
tal 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 mysterious 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.