21
MIA HAD FORESEEN it in her dream: no one would notice if a clone replaced me, not even Mia herself. Although she was the only one who gave me a searching look now and then, as if she guessed that there was something wrong with me. So far, however, she hadn’t looked as if she was planning to smother me with a cushion again.
It had been a strange week. The strangest part was that I’d survived it. And no one had noticed that it wasn’t the real Liv but a horrible clone getting up as usual every morning, drinking Lottie’s grapefruit juice, going to school on the bus, having lunch with Persephone, doing her homework in the evening. I had locked the real Liv and her broken heart up in a dark place where she could feel as miserable as she liked about Henry, and her lost love, and cry her eyes out to her heart’s content. I didn’t care.
Clone-Liv did me good service that week. She even got an A on the French test. Clone-Liv’s great advantage was that she felt almost nothing. For instance, she couldn’t care less about Florence’s withering glances. And when the Boker called and Clone-Liv happened to answer the phone, whereupon the Boker simply rang off, she just smiled and dismissed it with a shrug of her shoulders. She even stood up well to the piercing detective look in Mia’s eyes.
Every day, I expected Secrecy to announce in her blog that Henry and I weren’t together anymore, but the revelation never came. Maybe that was because the students in their last year at school (including Secrecy?) had been doing exams all week and didn’t have lunch in the cafeteria, where it might have been obvious that we weren’t still a couple. Or maybe it was because my clone hadn’t yet thought it necessary to tell anyone, so no one could pass the gossip on to Secrecy. Although mind you, no one had asked, not even Grayson, who had heard our quarrel. However, since I wasn’t crying all the time and staggering around like a blotchy-faced zombie (that part was reserved for the real Liv in her dark hole), he presumably thought that everything was all right again. Which meant that Henry hadn’t said anything either.
He and I had seen each other only once, at school by our lockers in the middle of the week. At the very moment when I was confronted with him, Clone-Liv failed me and the real Liv took over. Apart from a hoarse “Hi!” I hadn’t uttered a word, because everything I’d successfully suppressed over the last few days came right back at the sight of him. My sense of overwhelming grief simply deprived me of speech.
Henry didn’t seem to have any such problems. Probably because I wasn’t his first ex-girlfriend. He even smiled at me.
“You look as if you’ve been sleeping better,” he said. “It suits you.”
“Thanks,” I wanted to murmur, but I couldn’t get even that out. In fact, I had the general impression than I’d never be able to speak again. Clone-Liv was trying with all her might to push real Liv aside and keep her from bursting into tears, while Henry got his things out of his locker and went on talking cheerfully.
“Biology exam coming up—cross your fingers for me,” he said, winking as if we were good friends.
And then, at last, after a hefty nudge in the ribs, real Liv slunk away and Clone-Liv was back in charge. “Sure, I’ll do that, and good luck,” she said just in time, before Henry disappeared around the corner.
Like I said, it was a strange week. I’d really thought I would never be able to close my eyes again, but in fact, I slept almost as if I were in a coma. Every evening, I was just waiting to go to bed as early as possible without anyone noticing. But only to sleep. I kept strictly away from my dream door. Senator Tod could practice on someone else—I was no longer available.
I did have a guilty conscience about Anabel, though. Sure, she was a lunatic who had tried to murder me, but she still didn’t deserve to be sedated and isolated by her own psychiatrist, using heaven knows what methods. So last Sunday I had looked up Anabel’s father’s number in the phone book and made out that I was Anabel’s friend Florence Spencer calling to find out how she was. When Mr. Scott said I was the third person today to ask after her, Anabel’s friends Henry and Arthur had called, too, and he was just off to the hospital himself to see with his own eyes that his daughter was all right, I felt relieved.