DupliKate (9 page)

“FEEL FREE TO THANK ME NOW,” JAKE SAID,
lazily leaning back in his chair. “Start any time.” I was staring at the papers he had pushed across the lab table at me—his half of the project write-up, as well as a chart of all the test throws he wanted our robot to do.

“But I was going to make the chart,” I said, unable to hide the shock in my voice as I flipped through the neatly typed pages. I stared at him, wondering if maybe Rina had done some sort of voodoo on him yesterday.

“No big deal, I just got to it first.” Jake shrugged. “Don’t look so shocked.” He was wearing an ink-smudged white T-shirt, which smudged even further when he accidentally leaned forward onto his tabletop drawing of a dinosaur playing blackjack with a goat. After a moment of looking annoyed, he decided to roll with it, and started drawing on his shirt directly.

“Can’t help it,” I said. “Did you do a bunch of mood-altering drugs or something?”

“Perhaps,” he answered.

“Can you keep doing them?”

“Perhaps,” he said again. He shrugged, then grinned at me.

“Well, thank you,” I said, grinning back and shoving him a little. “Thank you!” This day had suddenly gotten way better. I’d kicked ass on my French final (I was pretty sure) and done okay on Euro (I wasn’t as sure, but it would have been waaay worse without Rina’s flash cards), but Jake being both cool
and
hardworking was a welcome surprise.

“Hey.” Anne appeared at our lab table and reached into our supply box. “So I can have these, right?” She held up a few lengths of gray rubber tubing.

“Sure,” Jake answered, at the exact same moment I said, “Huh?”

“You said yesterday you weren’t using these and we could have them,” Anne repeated, nodding toward the far side of the room, where her lab partner was fiddling with their egg-drop contraption. “Remember?” She fixed her pale blue eyes on my face and gave me a studied, measured look.

“I did?” I asked, genuinely confused as Jake looked at me weirdly.
Rina
. Duh. “Right,” I said quickly, blushing. “Sorry.”

“No problem,” Anne said lightly, looking a tiny bit triumphant. “I know you’re really swamped this week. I’m sure it’s not the first thing you forgot. Thanks.” She turned around, blond hair swishing, and made her way back to her lab table as I cursed myself for not grilling Rina about every detail from yesterday. These were the mistakes that we couldn’t afford, especially not with Anne paying so much attention. She was back at her own table, but, like she’d been doing the entire past week, she kept glancing over at Jake and me.

“You okay?” Jake asked.

I realized that one of my hands was gripping the edge of our lab table tightly enough to whiten my fingertips. “I’m fine.” I let go of the table and picked up a pencil. “Just sleep-deprived.”

“Maybe
you
need to do a bunch of mood-altering drugs,” Jake said.

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

After school, Kyla and Tess found me on my way to the parking lot and asked if I wanted to go to the mall. Of course I couldn’t go, not with tomorrow’s government/bio double whammy, but Rina could. I’d just have to make extra sure to get a full report.

“Wanna go shopping?” I called up to Rina as I walked in the front door. “Kyla went home to change, but she and Tess are gonna be here any minute to pick you up.” Rina sprinted downstairs and predictably flipped out (“Shut up!
No! Really? Yes!”) and I couldn’t help but grin. Being able to do my work while not disappointing my friends and making Rina ridiculously happy felt amazing. She practically jumped up and down, took the money I gave her, then ran out the front door to wait for Kyla’s car as I retired up to my room to tackle the remainder of this academic nightmare of a week.

Much later that night, after Rina had returned and carefully sneaked up to my room, I tapped on the closet door. Rina cracked it open and peeked out. “So did you have fun?” I asked

“Total fun,” she answered, opening the door all the way and sitting down on the floor just inside the threshold. “Kyla’s hilarious. Sometimes she talks so fast I don’t even know what the hell happened—”

“I hear you on that,” I said.

“—and Tess is really cool too. She looks like she could snap most people’s necks. Do you think she could snap most people’s necks?” Rina leaned back against the doorjamb, accidentally thumping her head. We both winced—sympathetically on my part.

“Probably,” I admitted. Tess works out a lot and is also naturally built like a tank. “She wouldn’t, but yeah, she definitely could,” I agreed.

Rina nodded and didn’t say anything.

“So what else did you guys talk about?” I asked. “Anything I need to be filled in on?” I didn’t want to miss out on any gossip, and I especially didn’t want to slip up on random information again.

“Not really,” answered Rina. Her eyes flitted toward her sleeping bag and she picked up her pillow and hugged it to her chest.

“Oh, come on, you guys were out for like three hours—you had to have talked about something,” I said. “Boys? Any new info on the Suarez situation?”

“Eh…” Rina mumbled, looking at her sleeping bag again. Was she being evasive on purpose? Or was she genuinely just really tired?

“Which stores did you go to?” I pressed, changing tacks. “Did you buy anything good?”

Rina shrugged. “It was just the normal places, you know…and I didn’t see anything I liked, actually, so here’s your money back.” She reached into her pocket and handed me a crumpled twenty and a ten. I raised an eyebrow. I’d given her forty. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot!” she said. “Here.” Rina reached up and into the pocket of the coat she’d worn to the mall, and pulled out a little plastic case holding three lip glosses. “I thought you’d like these colors.”

“Aww, thank you!” I said, opening the case and turning the gloss tubes over in my hand. I did like the colors. One
was a shimmery beige, one a sort of silvery peach color, and the last was pink with very subtle gold flecks.

“You’re welcome!” Rina said cheerfully. “I tried one on and it looked good on me, so I figured—”

“Of course,” I said, grinning. “And you can borrow anytime.”

“I was planning on it.” Rina grinned back.

I half-successfully tried to stifle an oncoming yawn and then glanced over at the clock. It was past one. I shrugged. “Well, if you guys really didn’t talk about anything else, I guess I’ll just study some more….” I didn’t move toward my computer, waiting to see if Rina had anything to share.

“Yeah, totally,” Rina agreed quickly. “Do you need help with anything?”

“Nah,” I said. So much for giving her the third degree. I stood up and stretched, then paused before leaving the closet. “Do you want something to read in there?” I asked.

“No thanks,” she answered, “I’m actually pretty zonked.”

“Okay, good night,” I said. But Rina had already curled up in her sleeping bag. She was out before I even finished shutting the door.

I POKED RINA AWAKE WITH MY FOOT. IT WAS
rude, but I was trying to get my black cardigan sweater off the hanger above her head, and it had gotten snagged and required both my hands.

“Morning,” she said finally, opening her eyes when my gentle foot-poking turned into near-kicks. “What’s up? Did you want me to go to school for you?”

“No, I’ve still got finals,” I said. “My last two, woo-hoo! But Paul has Spanish tomorrow and I promised I’d study with him, so I was wondering if you could—”

“Of course!” Rina said, wiggling out of her sleeping bag and leaping to her feet. I shushed her. My mom was still puttering around the house.

“Okay, can you hang with him in the library after school? I chose the location on purpose so we would definitely study, otherwise we might—”

Rina giggled.

“—get distracted,” I finished lamely, blushing a little. “Anyway, after physics we’ll switch behind school. Okay? Then you’ll go back in and study with Paul, and I’ll come home and work on my essay.” Stupid essay. I figured I had a better chance of concentrating if I was home alone. But if there were any sort of unique life experience I should be writing about, having my identical twin come out of the computer and wreak havoc on everything she touched was kind of a no-brainer. Of course, that wasn’t an option. At least not without Yale thinking I was crazy.

Although a crazy person would really round out their freshman class….

With my luck, they’d probably already admitted one early.

“Got it,” said Rina. She started looking around the closet, picking out an outfit.

“By the way,” I added, “make sure to sit at one of the tables in the main room, not in a study room.” I didn’t need Paul having any excuse to get snuggly.

“Sure,” Rina agreed. “But will Paul think it’s weird that I’ll need a ride home afterward? Since you’re going to have the car?”

“Oh, good catch,” I said. Damn logistical issues. “Um…”

“You know what? I’ll just say Mom thought you looked too sleepy this morning to drive yourself.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Unfortunately, it’s probably true. So…what should we wear?” If we were going to do this, I’d rather avoid stripping down in the parking lot. We both started trying to figure out what I had multiples of. In a sad commentary on the variety of my wardrobe, it actually wasn’t that hard.

“Jeans and T-shirts it is,” I said. We both pulled on jeans and a navy blue tee, and then I topped off my outfit with this really loud rainbow-colored argyle sweater my mom got for me a few years ago because she thought it was funny. As long as Rina put that on later, no one would question her identity. I pulled on sneakers, and she pulled on the older, more worn-out version that I still had lying around. We looked at ourselves in the mirror. Yep. Same person. Except for the sweater…and my visible exhaustion.

“Concealer?” Rina suggested. I sighed and took the tube she handed me.

After surviving my double final day, I escaped to the far corner of the parking lot, where the cement turned into the soccer fields and several large oak trees turned into the edge of the wooded nature center. A little farther back, a hiking trail curled around a well-hidden little duck pond. Rina stepped out from behind a tree just as I arrived.

“Here,” I said, taking off the rainbow sweater.

“Coats,” she reminded me, and I traded her my red winter coat for her black one. Then I followed from a distance as Rina walked back toward the edge of the woods, crossed the parking lot, and seamlessly blended in with the crowd of students heading toward their cars. If anyone had been stalking me, which they weren’t, they would’ve seen me go into the woods for a bit, then stroll back out and return to school. Nothing suspicious there.

“Hey!” A thin blond figure waved at me from the parking lot. “Kate!”

My heart froze as I waved back at Anne from the edge of the woods. Oh God, she hadn’t seen anything, had she?

“Hey,” I said as I reached the parking lot. Her car was only a few spaces over from mine, and I wondered how long she’d been standing there.

“What’s up?” she asked. “What were you doing out there?”

“Uh…cig break?” I asked, trying to sound jokey.

“You don’t smoke,” she pointed out. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Was Jake out there, too?”

My eyebrows shot up. “Huh?”

“I noticed you two having a private little convo in the hallway the other day, so I thought maybe—”

“What?” I choked out a totally not-suspicious laugh-
cough. “Oh.
Nooooo
. I mean, yeah, I talked to him. But it was just physics stuff.” So she hadn’t seen Rina, but I was thoroughly annoyed at her implication. “There’s nothing going on,” I said firmly. “Nothing.” I didn’t want this line of questioning—or any other line, for that matter—to go further.

“Really?” Anne’s face looked innocent, but her voice had a sharp edge. “Because you guys seem pretty friendly in class. And Paul’s mentioned that you’ve been too busy to hang out with him lately, so—”

“That’s totally not true,” I snapped. “And I’m thrilled that Paul is talking to you about me, but it’s really nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

“Why wouldn’t he mention it to me? He’s my friend,” Anne said sweetly.

“Well, he’s
my
boyfriend,” I shot back. I felt a smidge of satisfaction as anger flickered across her face, darkening her features.

“Of course he is,” she answered evenly. Then she looked straight at me and added, “I don’t want Paul to get hurt, and you’ve been acting kind of weird lately.”

“Well, it’s been a stressful week,” I reminded her. “But it’ll be worth it when I get into Yale.
With Paul
.” Anne’s face went sour again, and I quickly faked a big, bright smile. “Anyway, see ya tomorrow!”

“Sure, see ya,” she responded coolly. “Can’t wait for
physics.” She waved a little, then got in her car and drove off.

What the hell
was
that? I got in my car as well, feeling nauseated. Because she wasn’t
totally
wrong—Rina
had
kissed Jake. And while she didn’t have any actual evidence that I was cheating, I wouldn’t put it past her to try to convince Paul anyway.

The idea made my skin crawl.

At home, my writer’s block relented enough for me to string a few ideas together. The essay became a semi-snarky look at how much I’d kicked my own ass over the past four years. It was a typo-ridden jumble of half-formed thoughts, but I doubted anybody else’s application contained the line “I’m so tired from high school that I might sleep my way through college (in the not-bothering-to-get-up-for-class way, not the sex way).” I patted myself on the back after I typed that, figuring that it at least qualified as “unique.” Upon further reflection, I realized that it did not, however, qualify as “good.”

Luckily, Rina came home that evening positively giddy. “He’s so awesome, Kate, you are sooo lucky!” she squealed. She flitted around my room, yammering about how hot Paul was, how pretty his eyes were, how nice he was, and then some more about his hotness.

“I know, Rina,” I said patiently. “He’s my boyfriend. What’d you do, spend the whole time looking at him instead of studying?”

“What?” Rina asked. “It’s not like
I
had to study. So yeah, maybe I glanced over a few times while I was pretending to work. Did you know that he does this thing where he leans back and stretches and then you can totally see his abs?”

“Yes, I knew that,” I said. Paul does it all the time, inadvertently displaying his six-pack to distracting effect.

“It’s awesome,” Rina said, shaking her head in disbelief. “The abs look awesome.”

“I’m glad you think so,” I said, smiling at her and then looking back at my computer monitor, “because they feel even better.”

“Dammit, I knew you were going to say that.” Rina fake-pouted at me and I laughed. I liked hearing her gush over my boyfriend, although a tiny part of me wondered if I should be jealous that she’d spent all afternoon with him. Should I be annoyed? Or was I just the coolest, most un-neurotic girlfriend in the world? Hey, it wasn’t like he was with some random. He was with, well, not me exactly, but my double. Wasn’t that kind of the same thing?

Either way, I didn’t have time to overanalyze.

“Well,” Rina said dreamily, “I hope that Paul played SimuLife once too and his twin is about to arrive any day.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna hope against that,” I said dryly. “No offense.”

“Some taken.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

I faux-glared at her. She faux-glared back.

We both giggled.