DupliKate (12 page)

TO-DO LIST

• *** KILL EVERYBODY (i.e., Rina)
  

AT FOUR IN THE MORNING, I STILL COULDN’T
fall asleep, but it wasn’t a tossing-and-turning sort of night. It was a lying-dead-still-not-even-bothering-to-close-my-eyes sort of night. What would’ve happened if I’d been nicer to her? (Except I
was
nice!) What if I’d just realized earlier that Rina was completely and totally evil? (Except she’d done such a good job pretending!) The closet was silent. I had no idea if she was asleep in there, or if she was mulling over her recent victories, or perhaps plotting something even more nefarious.

I stared at the ceiling. I had no idea how I was going to prevent her from going to my Yale interview for me.

Unless.

Unless I left now?

I sat straight up, kicking myself for not thinking of this before. Of course! I would just leave before she did! Okay,
this was not a well-thought-out plan, but at least it was a plan. I swung my feet out from under the covers and quickly stood up, wincing as both my bed and a floorboard creaked. Almost instantly, the closet door cracked open.

“I heard that,” murmured Rina’s voice from the darkness, just loud enough for me to hear. “You’re not exactly the queen of stealth.” She flipped on the closet light, throwing a white-gold beam across the floor, then stuck her hand out the door, just far enough for me to see that she had my car keys in it. “I don’t know what you’re doing. But if you plan on going farther than the bathroom—like say, New Haven—you’ll probably need these.”

“Wrong,” I hissed at her, “There’s a spare set in the—” I stopped, realizing I had no idea where my mom kept my spare car keys.

“Kitchen drawer?” asked Rina innocently. She stuck her other hand out and I saw my spare keys dangling from her fingertips.

“What,” I said, my voice a whisper of controlled anger, “is keeping me from wrestling those away from you right this second?”

“Fear,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Because I would scream bloody murder, and your mom would hear.” She shut the closet door and after a moment, the beam of light under it disappeared.

I got back in bed, cursing the world for having Rina in
it. Granted, maybe it was better if she left. At least then she’d be impersonating me to strangers in New Haven, instead of to people I knew at home. I resolved to stay awake, in case a brilliant solution hit me before the morning, and I sat up in bed, prepared to rack my brain until it did. But I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in ages, and as dawn approached, my exhaustion got the better of me. I eventually drifted off into blackness—silent and devoid of dreams.

I slept for over ten hours. By the time I woke up, the house was empty. Mom was off on her business trip, and Rina had taken my car. She had also taken my backpack, my iPod, a bunch of clothes, and who knew what else, but I was delighted to the point of hysterics to find my cell phone buried under the covers of my bed. I hadn’t hidden it deliberately (although, in retrospect, I should have), but if she’d taken it, she would surely be wreaking havoc on Paul, and maybe even my other friends, from out of town.

“Thank God,” I said out loud, turning the phone over in my hands gratefully. I looked up at the ceiling and prayed briefly that Rina would somehow crash on the highway, and that the car would explode, burning away all the evidence.

Of course, that would leave me without a car.

I got up, my happiness fading and my daze of anger and confusion returning, and went downstairs to
get something to eat.
There’s always murder. It’s not like anybody knows Rina exists, so as long as you hid the body properly
…Yeah, right. My town didn’t exactly have a convenient water-filled gravel quarry to chuck a corpse into, and there was no way in hell I could dig a shovel far enough into the frozen ground to cover a whole person. I couldn’t even believe my mind had wandered as far as that sort of technicality.

But what was I going to do? Rina wasn’t going to murder me and then just live my life, was she?

Christ, was she?

That was ridiculous. I mean, the entire situation was out of control, but it wasn’t a
horror
movie.

I hoped.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the kitchen table, idly using the back of my spoon to crunch the flakes down so that they were all below the milk line. Now what? I didn’t have homework. There weren’t any flash cards that needed memorizing or lab experiments to write up. For the first time in years, I had nothing to do. And I couldn’t even enjoy it.

I took my cereal bowl back up to my room and sat down at my computer to check my e-mail. And there, on the computer desktop, I saw it. The icon for Rina’s college essay.

I opened the file.

Nebraska? What was she talking about? The essay was a chronicle of how Rina had apparently applied high school academics to surviving a solo cross-country road trip. Expectedly, but annoyingly, the thing was good. Hell, it was great—funny, but touching, easily weaving a high school career’s worth of academic achievement with a lifetime’s worth of street sense and wry wit. It was serious in parts and flippant in parts, but every single sentence sparkled with intelligence. Only it was all a lie—as
if
Rina had ever been on a road trip by herself! As
if
she’d used obscure knowledge from the AP chem test to help conjure a gasoline substitute when her car broke down in Tennessee! But the essay was believable—it was totally believable. And readable, and memorable, and oh-so-annoyingly unique.

It was way better than mine, and it was probably going to get me into Yale.

Or rather, her.

I resisted the urge to slam my head face-first into my desk. Rina had done me a favor by sending in that essay. Except that she hadn’t meant to. She’d done
herself
a favor, unless I figured out some way to get rid of her. But assuming
I got in, I’d be going to Yale on the strength of something I hadn’t written. This was exactly the scenario I’d wanted to avoid when Rina had first suggested doing my homework for me. I’d expected today to feel like a coronation—finally accomplishing everything I wanted. But this was exactly what I
didn’t
want.

My phone rang. Paul.

I let it go to voice mail, not knowing what I might blurt out if I actually picked it up (perhaps something along the lines of “Hi, you don’t know you suck, and it’s not your fault you suck, but you still suck”), then listened to the message.

“Hey, it’s me. Thought I might come over—call me back.” Wait, what? He knew I was supposed to be out of town. I texted him back. I wanted to see him but didn’t trust what I would say. Twenty minutes later, Paul was at my front door.

“Hi there,” he said, grinning and bending down to give me a big hug.

“Hi,” I said, reluctantly letting his strong arms squeeze me tightly. All I could think about was the sight of him and Rina together, and the memory made me dizzy. I closed my eyes for a moment, then finally mustered the willpower to arrange my face into a happy expression. Sort of. The smile I managed to paste on looked totally fake when I glimpsed myself in the mirror across from the coat closet, but Paul didn’t seem to notice.

“So,” he said, leaning toward me. “We’ve got the house to ourselves….”

I backed away from him. “Yep. Mom’s not here. True.”

Paul tilted his head and gave me a weird look. “Is something wrong?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. I headed for the stairs and started walking toward my room. “I’m supposed to be in New Haven right now, remember?” I couldn’t believe that he’d forgotten my campus visit. I’d been giving him the benefit of the doubt earlier, figuring he’d just had a temporary brain freeze or gotten the date mixed up, but this was ridiculous.

Paul followed me into my room, sat down at the foot of the bed, and stared at me for a second, confused. “Oh, right,” he said, shrugging out of his coat. “Right! I totally forgot! Wait, then why are you here?”

“I just—I don’t really feel well, so I rescheduled,” I said. I sat down next to him, pulling my knees up to my chest, and watched as he took off his baseball cap and ran his hand through his hair. “Yesterday was…” I paused, waiting to see whether he would say anything that would give me a clue as to what had gone on between him and Rina.

“Yesterday was what?” Paul asked. “Great? You seemed really good last night. When I left you were going to send in your application. You did turn it in, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I turned it in,” I said, picturing Rina’s hand clicking the mouse button for me. “I just…” I looked down at my bedspread and suddenly realized that the last time Paul had been in here, he’d been in here with
her
. I shivered, hopefully not noticeably, and scooched away from Paul a little bit.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, the look on his face genuinely worried now, instead of just confused. “Did something happen?”

A lot of things happened,
I thought to myself.
Way too many things.
“No, nothing happened,” I said.

“Well, if nothing happened, why’d you reschedule?” Paul looked at me, his blue eyes skeptical. “Do you really think that’s a good idea? I mean, I hope you at least
told
them you got majorly sick. If they think you’re blowing them off, it might hurt your chances.”

“Whatever.” I scooched back a little more. His tone had gone from skeptical to disapproving, which was irritating. “I just rescheduled for next month. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, hearing my defensiveness and backing off. He half-smiled. “Wow, did you get hit in the head or something? You’ve been so psyched about this interview forever.”

“No,” I answered, feeling a glimmer of hope. “Why, have I been acting like I got hit in the head?” Had he noticed that he’d been with an entirely different girl the past few
days? If he’d noticed, then…well, I didn’t know what, but I did know that I wanted him to have noticed.

“No,” Paul answered. “It was just a joke.”

Oh.

“So I haven’t been acting different lately?” I asked him hopefully. I didn’t really care that the question came out of nowhere. This conversation was already spiraling downward. No sense trying to steer it back. The brake lines were cut; the car was heading off the cliff.

“No,” Paul said, shrugging. “Same old you. Although you’re acting kind of weird right
now
.”

“What’s that mean?” I crossed my arms and backed away a little more. I was now sitting kind of far away from him, actually, almost on my pillow at the head of the bed. I watched as he realized it too, and gave me an odd look.

“I don’t know, the last couple days you were so fun and sort of, you know, carefree—”

“I was?”

“—and now we’re on vacation and finals are over, so you’d think now you’d be chilled out. But instead you’re acting extra crazy.”

“Am not,” I retorted like a four-year-old.

“You just postponed your interview. That’s a
little
crazy.” Paul gave me a look like he expected me to agree. “And quit getting mad, I’m just trying to help. I just want
you to get in.”

“What for?” I asked. “So I can follow you all over campus next year?” My voice had gotten shrill without me even realizing it.

“Of course,” Paul joked, then, noticing my daggerlike stare, shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want you to get in because that’s what
you
want.”

I stared at him, unable to answer for a long moment. “Yeah,” I said finally. “Right.” Of course that’s what I wanted. To go to an Ivy League school, preferably the one my boyfriend was at. What could be better? It was the
plan
.

“Okay then,” he said.

We were both quiet for a long moment. Paul stared into space. I stared at the floor. Finally, Paul broke the silence. “Should I just leave?” he asked.

“I guess,” I agreed flatly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him look over at me, but I kept staring at the floor, clutching my pillow.

“Fine.” Paul got up, and I blinked back a tear. How had this turned into a fight? No, I knew how. And I knew that I’d done it, but I desperately wished that I hadn’t. I wanted to rewind our conversation and start over. Paul saw the look on my face and his expression softened. “Hey,” he said. “It’ll be okay. I’m sorry—you’re just having a bad day.”

I clutched my pillow harder and nodded, willing the tears not to fall.

“I’ll leave you alone,” Paul said softly. “Is that okay? Or did you want me to stay?” He took a step back toward me.

I shook my head and he sighed. “Okay. I’ll see you later.” He turned to leave, and a few moments later I heard him drive off.

I was alone again.

I got up, walked to my window, and stared out into the pitch-dark late afternoon. The day had ended as badly as it had begun, and Rina wasn’t even around. But as I noticed a few tiny sprinkles of snow beginning to fall, I realized that she’d been right. She’d picked up my slack. She’d made it possible for me to do multiple things at once. Who knows what would’ve happened if she had never shown up? I might’ve stressed out and flunked all my finals. I might’ve lost so much sleep that I keeled over during the SATs.

And if I got into Yale based on her essay, that meant I probably couldn’t have done that without her either. She was the same person I was, sure, but the smarter and more efficient version (and the more evil version, but that was a side issue). She was the better version.

So what did that say about me?

I’d been awake for barely half a day, but I hit the lights and crawled back into bed.

AFTER SLEEPING FOR ANOTHER ELEVEN HOURS
straight (boy, I really
was
sleep-deprived), I got up determined to do something productive with my Monday. Namely, to stop moping, take advantage of the fact that Rina was gone, and figure out a way to get rid of her once and for all. I didn’t care if I had to go to the library to look up books on witchcraft and cast some sort of disappearing spell by the light of the silvery moon. I didn’t even care if that disappearing spell involved an animal sacrifice, as long as it wasn’t anything too fluffy and cute.

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?”