Doppelganger

chapter EIGHTEEN

When I got to school the next morning, there was a note taped to the inside of my locker, written in Amber’s round letters: “I’m sorry about yesterday. Meet me in the parking lot after fourth period.”

As soon as I read the note, I felt better. In fact, I went practically the whole morning without feeling like I was going to crack out of my skin—the first time in three days.

Fifth period was when I normally met Amber for lunch, so instead of going to the cafeteria after fourth period ended, I went to the main office to sign out.

“I have a dentist appointment,” I said.

“Didn’t you just have one last month?” the secretary asked. She was a heavyset woman with dyed hair that matched the color of her skin, making her look like a bronzed statue someone had dressed in frumpy clothes as a joke.

Damn, I thought. How do you remember that in a school with a thousand kids?

“Well, I have another one,” I replied.



“Do you have a note?”

“My mother forgot to write me one. I’ll bring one in tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“Then I’ll bring one in on Monday.”

She gave me a sort of frown and glanced back at the principal’s office. For a second I thought she was going to bust me, but then she handed me the clipboard.

“Floss,” she said as I signed my name on the sheet.

“Excuse me?”

“If you floss, then you won’t get cavities.”

“Thanks, I’ll try to remember that.”

“Forget the dentist; you should see a doctor,” she said as I started to leave.

I stopped and looked back. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“You don’t look so good,” she said, and brushed her neck a few times, nodding in my direction.

I reached up and felt the side of my neck. The skin was all bumpy. I didn’t even have to look to know the rash had spread. Not only that, I suddenly realized my hands were all blotchy and chaffed. I turned and practically ran out of the building.

Amber was waiting in her car. When I came up beside her and knocked on the window, she jumped. But when I got in, I could tell she was relieved to see me.

“I was starting to worry you might not show.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “It’s all I could think about.”

As she started the car and drove out of the parking lot, I pulled down the visor in front of me and glanced in its mirror. Sure enough, the right side of my neck was covered in little red welts. I flipped the visor back and turned up the collar of my jacket.

For a long time, we didn’t say anything. She just kept driving with this real serious look on her face.

“Where are we going?” I asked her as we headed out of town.

“It’s a surprise,” she said.

Pretty soon I could tell we were heading toward the lake where she’d taken me a couple weeks ago—the day I’d revealed myself to her. Only, once we got there, instead of going into the parking lot, she kept driving before turning onto a road about a half mile past the park. Soon the road started to climb, twisting back and forth up this steep hill.

“Discovered this place yesterday afternoon when I was driving around,” she said. “I was so busy thinking, I went right past the park. Next thing I knew, I was making my way up the hill. Can’t believe I never thought to drive up here before.”

A minute later the road came out of the trees and ended at a lookout over the lake. I could see Bakersville in the distance. For a second it reminded me of the mountains where I’d grown up, except all I’d been able to see there were trees.

“Wow. Nice view,” I said.

I looked over at her and saw she was smiling, and all of a sudden I forgot about my itching, about the sheganger, about the Parkers. I forgot about everything.

“Let’s go,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

We got out of the car, and while Amber rummaged in the trunk, I walked over to the edge of the lookout and glanced down. The cliff dropped almost straight into the water about a hundred feet below. Suddenly I felt a little woozy and stepped back.

“Don’t let yourself go.”

I turned around and saw Amber standing there with a blanket tucked under one arm, holding a basket.

“Why would I?” I said.

She shrugged. “I read once that the reason people are scared of heights isn’t because they’re afraid of falling. It’s that they’re afraid of jumping.”

“You think people want to die?”

“Maybe a little part of them.”

“What about you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m a teenager,” she said, and laughed. “We all think we’re going to live forever, right?”

“What’s in the basket?” I asked her. I wanted to change the subject.

“I made us a picnic,” she answered.

“It’s a little cold for a picnic, isn’t it?” Even though the sun was out, the air had a bite to it.

She shrugged again. “You’ve got to take your opportunities where you can,” she said, looking down. I knew what she meant—neither of us knew what was going to happen.

I helped her spread the blanket out, and pretty soon we were eating lunch. She’d gone all out—gourmet sandwiches, fresh salad, stuffed olives. Some of the best food I’ve ever tasted.

“Thanks for bringing me up here,” I said after we’d finished eating. “This is really nice—the food, everything. It’s great.”

“I drove all over the place yesterday afternoon,” she said. “I thought about what you said, about what you were going through, how hard it must be. It made me feel horrible. All of a sudden, I just felt so selfish.”

“No, Amber,” I said. “You were absolutely right. I should have told you before. I should have trusted you. I just didn’t want to think about it myself, let alone worry you about it.”

“Well, I do worry,” she said. “I want to worry. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re with somebody.”

“You’re right,” I replied. “I guess I’m just not used to having someone that I can tell things to. I’ve been alone my whole life. Even when I was with my mother, there was all this space there between us, in spite of that tiny little cabin. I never knew who she was going to come home as, who she was going to be next. And for the most part, she did her own thing. I just knew enough to stay out of the way.”

“See, that’s what I mean,” she said. “Hearing that makes me sad.”

“I never thought so growing up,” I said. “It never even occurred to me that I should. That’s not how doppelgangers think.”

“Then that’s even sadder,” she said.

“I guess,” I said. “I think what it comes down to is all of us hate ourselves. The doppelgangers, I mean. Not just the way we look—we can’t help that—but because we feel that way about how we look. And because we’re dependent on our urge to become something other than what we are.”

“Well, that may be true,” she said, “but you’re not alone. Lots of people want to be someone different than who they really are. I mean, look at half the kids in our school. Same thing with hating yourself. I know I did for the longest time when I was with Chris. And like you said that night when we buried him, so did he. It makes me mad because it didn’t have to be that way. It could have been better. It could have been more like…”

“More like this,” I said. She nodded.

The wind picked up and it was starting to get colder, so we fetched another blanket from the car and wrapped up together. For a long time, we just sat and watched the lake, watched the seagulls as they wheeled over the water, and didn’t say anything. She sat in front of me, leaning back a little against my chest, and I could smell her hair like I’d been able to the night I slept in her room. All of a sudden, I wished we never had to move. I wished we could just freeze right there like a single statue that would forever be the same.

A long time passed before she broke the silence.

“So what are we going to do?” she asked, taking my hand under the blanket.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Pretty soon I’ll have to let go of Chris.”

“Will you become somebody else?” she said. It was the question I’d hoped she wouldn’t ask.

“Maybe,” I said. “I mean, probably. At some point.”

She leaned forward and turned around to face me.

“We could run away,” she said. “I could go with you. You know, help you find people to become. We could find the bad people, people no one would miss.”

“You mean like Chris?” I said.

Amber didn’t reply. She just glanced at the ground.

“I don’t know if there are such people, Amber. That’s what makes human beings different from doppelgangers. If one of us disappears, no one’s the wiser. None of the others care. People are different.

“Besides,” I added, “you can’t leave. You’re only sixteen.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got a life. You can’t just leave it.”’

“But I have you,” she said. “You’re a part of my life.” She hesitated. “Then, promise me you’ll come back. Promise me you’ll keep coming back. I won’t care who you are.”

“Let’s just forget about it,” I said. “I don’t want to think about it right now.”

There I was, going right back into denial mode. But talking about the whole thing was starting to make me feel really depressed, and it wasn’t the right time or place to feel that way. I figured there’d be more than enough time later.

She frowned but didn’t say anything.

“My parents are going away for the weekend,” she said after a few minutes. “They’re leaving this afternoon.” She took my hand again. “I was thinking you could come over. Spend the weekend with me, you know?”

My heart started pounding. Suddenly I felt all nervous.

“Okay,” I said.

“What’s that?” she said, reaching for my neck. I drew back for a second and put my hand up, thinking she meant my rash, but she pushed my hand aside and pulled the chain out from under my shirt.

“Just a necklace.”

“I don’t remember seeing it before. Where’d you get it?”

I hesitated, remembering how it sparkled around the old man’s neck in the moonlight. “I found it a while ago,” I said. “A long ways from here. It’s the only thing I have that’s really mine.”

She turned the medallion over and examined it up close.

“St. Jude,” she said, reading the back. She looked up at me. “The patron saint of lost souls.”

“Figures,” I said, and tried to laugh. She let go of the necklace and looked down at the lake.

A few minutes went by and we didn’t say anything. Then she turned back to me.

“You know you could stay around, stay with me and not be Chris. Not be anybody. Just yourself.”

“How’s that?”

“Let me see you,” she said. “The real you. I want you to show me.”

I shook my head and looked away.

“I don’t care what you look like,” she said. “I’m not shallow, you know.”

“It’s not even a matter of that. You’ve never seen a doppelganger before. Trust me, we’re repulsive.”

“How bad can it be?”

“Just imagine the ugliest thing you can think of in the whole world,” I said. “Whatever it is, it isn’t even close. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

She looked down for a moment. “All right,” she said at last. “But I won’t ever care what you look like.”

“Thanks,” I said. I really did believe that she believed it. And who knows, maybe she would’ve been able to handle the sight of me, but I wasn’t ready to go there.

“I do love you, you know,” she said, looking back up.

“I love you, too,” I said. “I have probably since the first time I saw you.”



“Isn’t it strange that way?” she said. “How you know before you know?”

I kind of laughed. But the funny thing was, I knew exactly what she meant.

“Oh!” she suddenly said. “I almost forgot. I have a present for you.”

She pulled a small box wrapped with red ribbon from her jacket pocket and handed it to me. “I got it last weekend when we went away. I was too mad to give it to you earlier.”

Nobody had ever given me a present before. I opened the box and looked inside at the little silver square. “What is it?” I said.

“It’s a cell phone,” she said, laughing. She took it out, unfolded it, and handed it to me.

“Now we can talk to each other no matter where we are. See, my cell number’s already in here—just press this button,” she said. She showed me how to answer a call, and how to make one. “Don’t worry, it’s already paid for. And look, it even takes pictures.”

She scooted up beside me and held the phone out in front of us as far as she could.

“Say cheese,” she said, and laughed. The next thing I knew, there we were, the two of us smiling together on the little screen.

I turned it over. There was an inscription on the back, engraved in fine letters: “Gabriel.”

“What’s this?” I asked, holding up the back of the phone.

“That’s your name,” she said. “I thought you needed one of your own, so I made one up for you. Gabriel. You know, like the archangel?” When I didn’t respond, she quickly added, “If you don’t like it, we can choose another.”

“No,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Gabriel is perfect. Even better than the phone.”

“I’m glad you like it,” she said. “I was a little worried you wouldn’t. I wasn’t even sure if you wanted a name.”

She smiled and leaned back so that she was resting on her elbows. I could tell she was relieved. A breeze came up and blew a strand of hair across her face.

I held the phone up so that she was framed in the tiny screen and pressed the button like she showed me. The strand of hair, blazing red in the sun along the edge of her smile, froze on the screen.

“Perfect,” I said, and closed the phone.



“Could you pass the mac and cheese?”

Echo handed the bowl over to me.

“Does anyone else want some?” I asked, holding up the bowl. Everyone shook their heads, so I shoveled the rest out onto my plate and dug in.

“Jesus, you’re hungry tonight,” said Barry.

I looked up and realized everyone had pretty much finished their dinner and was watching me. I shrugged. “Didn’t really eat lunch today,” I said. Of course it wasn’t true. The picnic lunch Amber had made more than filled me at the time, but all of a sudden when I sat down at dinner, I realized I was starved. It was weird—it felt like I hadn’t eaten in days. I think I was using so much energy to keep my form, my body just couldn’t keep up.

“He always eats a lot when it’s yellow meal,” Echo said.



“Chris, if that rash isn’t better by Monday, we’re taking you to the doctor,” Sheila said. I looked up and saw the worry on her face.

“I’m all right,” I said. The last thing I wanted was to see the doctor. Who knows what kind of tests they’d try to do.

“Well, the way you keep squirming, even I’m starting to itch,” Barry said. “Looks like you rolled in a patch of poison ivy or something.”

I looked down and realized my knee was cycling up and down like a piston. I forced myself to be still.

“So,” I said, to change the subject, “hot date tonight, huh?”

Barry glanced over at Sheila, who blushed slightly. Echo giggled.

“Just going to a movie,” Barry said, lighting up a cigarette. “No big deal.”

Barry and Sheila looked at each other for a second but didn’t say anything. Barry went back to his cigarette.

“Dad, could I borrow your car?” I said, finishing my plate. “Josh and I are going out tonight. I’ll probably stay over at his place. I’ll have it back tomorrow.”

Before he could say anything, Sheila stepped in.

“I don’t know, Chris. You look really tired. Maybe you should just stay home and go to bed early.”

“I feel fine, Mom,” I said. “It’s been a long week, that’s all.”

Barry shrugged. “Just don’t do anything stupid,” he said.

“I won’t.”

Barry stubbed out his butt, and we all got up. The two of us cleared the table while Mom and Echo loaded the dishwasher, our new nightly ritual.

A half hour later, I came out from my room just as Barry and Sheila were putting on their coats. Echo came out too, and we all stood together in the hallway for a moment.

“Here you go,” Barry said, handing me his set of keys.

“Thanks,” I said.

Sheila came over and kneeled down before Echo.

“You going to be okay by yourself?” she asked.

“Of course,” Echo said. “It’s only a few hours, anyway.”

Sheila smiled and gave her a quick hug and a kiss. Then she stood up and gave me a hug.

“Bye, sweetie,” she said. “Have a good time.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

I watched them head out, then lingered by the door, looking through the window as they got into Sheila’s car, backed out, and drove off.

“I’ve never seen them go out before. Not together.”

I turned around to see Echo standing in the hallway watching me.

“Me neither,” I said.

“It’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s good.”

I went and took a shower. Afterward, as I stood in the bathroom and wiped away the steam from the mirror, I could see parts of the rash along my torso had turned white and the skin was starting to flake away. And there it was, underneath—the greenish gray of my old self, my real self, veiny, opaque, glistening. At that point I knew it was almost over. Chris was coming to an end.

It kind of made me sad all over again. I mean, even though I knew he was gone, in some ways it was like he wasn’t really dead—not totally, anyway. But once I let his form go, or once it let me go, it would be over for good.

I dressed in fresh clothes and headed out into the living room to say good-bye to Echo, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in her room, either.

“Echo?” I said.

She didn’t answer, but then I heard her voice, real faint like it was far away. I followed the sound into the kitchen and saw the cellar door was open, the light on.

I crept down the steps, then paused halfway down. The corner was gone—the sheets were piled on the floor, the tea set put away, the bunnies and bears piled on top of the toy box in the corner. And there was Echo, removing the pictures from the wall, singing to herself.

Before I could say anything, she turned around and, seeing me, started.

“Sorry. Hope I didn’t scare you too much,” I said, coming the rest of the way down the stairs.

“No,” she said. “Well, maybe just a little.”

As soon as I got closer, she cocked her head and gave me this look.

“What happened to you?” she said in this little voice. I could tell she was worried.

“What do you mean?” I murmured, as my heart started to pound. I reached up and felt my face and neck. It was a little bumpy, but the skin seemed to be holding.

“You look really bad,” she said, then added, “You’re all pasty.”

“I’m just tired,” I said.

“Oh,” she whispered. I could tell she didn’t really believe me—not completely anyway—but she wasn’t going to give me a hard time. She never did.

“Anyway, I’m heading out now. I just wanted to say good-bye.”

“Have fun with Amber.”

I froze. “What?” I said, forcing a laugh.

A little smile crept across her face. “You’re all spiffied up,” she said. She sniffed the air a couple times. “And you’re wearing cologne.”

I shook my head and smiled. “You’re too smart for your own good.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell.”

“Thanks,” I said. “So what are you doing?” I asked, looking around.

She shrugged. “Putting things away,” she said, looking around as well. “I don’t know, I just felt like it. Do you think it’s okay?”

“It’s fine, Echo,” I said.

She turned back to the pictures on the wall.

“Can I have one?” I asked, seeing her take down another drawing.

“’Course you can. You made them. They’re yours.”

She handed me the paper she was holding, the one with the bears dancing in the sunny meadow.

Then something really weird happened. The next thing I knew, I was crying. And not just a little. I mean, I was really bawling. I still don’t know why. Like I said before, doppelgangers don’t cry. Were not supposed to be able to. At least, that’s what my mother had always told me.

Echo didn’t say anything. She just came over and gave me a hug, and for a minute we stood there while I collected myself.

“Thanks,” I said, wiping my eyes as she stepped back.

“Don’t get your picture wet,” she said.

I folded the paper up and put it in the back pocket of my jeans.

“You’re a good sister,” I said.

“You’re a good brother.”

We just stood and looked at each other. Then I gave her a little wave and headed up the stairs. I could still hear her singing when I left the house.