Double Identity

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  This is ironic: I’m terrible at sharing, everyone knows that, and now I’m expected to share not just my parents but my very self with some dead girl? I remember when I was five and Gretchen Dunlap from across the street just wanted to touch my Cabbage Patch doll….

  My Cabbage Patch doll, I think. Oh, no. Revelation is breaking over me, and it’s horrifying. I clutch Joss’s arm, and cut off whatever she was starting to say.

  “They gave me Elizabeth’s toys,” I say weakly. I’ve just realized this. My Cabbage Patch dolls and My Little Pony videos and my original, unenhanced Uno game hadn’t been antiques, lovingly reclaimed from the past just for me. They’d been Elizabeth’s. Yesterday, I’d creeped myself out thinking about Elizabeth’s possessions boxed up in my basement or my attic, just a floor away from me. But they hadn’t been boxed up and stored away. They’d been in my hands. I’d cradled her dolls in my arms when I was little, I’d snuggled up in bed with her stuffed animals practically every single night of my life.

  “Lots of kids get hand-me-downs,” Joss says mildly, trying to sound casual. “I had a friend in college who was the youngest of nine. She didn’t own anything that hadn’t belonged to one of her other siblings first.”

  “But your friend knew that,” I say. “She knew what she was getting. She knew she wasn’t the … the original owner.” That word, “original,” hangs in the air. I have to make myself talk past it. “I didn’t know anything about Elizabeth,” I say.

  I think about the elaborate way Mom and Dad presented me with my collection of antique toys: the first Cabbage Patch doll arriving on my fifth birthday, the Uno game that same Christmas. I think about Mom saying they wanted an “exact copy” of Elizabeth; I think about my science teacher saying people are shaped by their environment as well as their genes.

  “Oh, no,” I moan. “Were they using the toys to try to make me just like Elizabeth?”

  Joss is hugging me tight now; it feels like she’s holding me together.

  “They didn’t make you take gymnastics lessons, did they?” she asks.

  They didn’t. In fact, they refused to let me become a gymnast. I hold on to that. But gymnastics was something Elizabeth had that I didn’t—it’s not much of a consolation.

  “Was she … Did Elizabeth …,” I can barely get the words out. “Did she like to swim?”

  Joss blinks down at me.

  “No,” she says. “Elizabeth hated swimming.”

  Relief floods over me. Here, finally, is something of mine that Elizabeth can’t touch, can’t ruin from beyond the grave. But the relief washes away quickly, leaving me still huddled in fear.

  “Why?” I ask. “What’s wrong with swimming?” I hate the way I’ve said that, as if whatever Elizabeth thought was the proper view. “What was wrong with her?” I say, a little too viciously.

  Joss winces.

  “Elizabeth almost drowned when she was really little,” she says. “At the Sanderfield pool.” Her voice slows down, as if she’s straining to dive back into the memory. “Elizabeth got knocked down or shoved under—no one was ever quite sure how it happened. But then she was underwater and trying to breathe, and no matter how hard she tried to pull in air, she couldn’t; she could only choke. Elizabeth could make such a scary story out of it. I can remember Elizabeth telling that story at sleepovers and around the campfire at gymnastics camp.”

  “Did they have to give her artificial respiration?” I ask. “The lifeguards? Or … Mom?” Somehow I can’t imagine Mom responding very well in an emergency like that.

  “Oh, no,” Joss says. “It never got to that. Later on, Mom and Aunt Hillary always said Elizabeth exaggerated the whole story, that she couldn’t have been underwater for more than a second or two. But Elizabeth refused to put her face in the water after that. Every year Aunt Hillary signed her up for swimming lessons, and every year Elizabeth stood on the side of the pool and wouldn’t even dip her toe in. And then we got into gymnastics and Aunt Hillary stopped trying to make Elizabeth swim.”

  “Did you learn to swim?” I ask.

  “Not until after Elizabeth died,” Joss says. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but swimming was kind of my declaration of independence from Elizabeth memories.”

  It can be mine, too, I think. I swim, and Elizabeth didn’t. There’s no way I’m her done.

  Then I remember how I fell in love with swimming after accidentally slipping into the water when I was three. I remember my parents’ amazement that I liked being underwater, that I begged to go under again.

  Were they trying to reenact Elizabeth’s experience? They expected me to hate it, to panic, to be like Elizabeth and never step foot in the water again. But … I took a breath before I went down. Was that the only difference? Could Elizabeth and I have the same genes, but she hated swimming and I loved it just because I’d had the sense to take a quick breath when I was three?

  And my parents let me be different, I think.

  Somehow this makes me feel good, that my parents hadn’t pushed my head back underwater until I choked, forcing me to be exactly like Elizabeth. But what kind of parents would do that, half-drown their child on purpose?

  I shiver in the night air, the sweat from my panicky run finally drying off. For the first time I realize that I left Myrlie’s house without so much as a jacket. My Greenleaf Swim Club T-shirt has long sleeves but it’s lightweight, virtually no protection against the autumn breeze.

  “We should be getting back,” Joss says. “Mom will be worried to death about us.”

  She stands up, groaning about her stiff, sore muscles. I try to stand too, but my leg throbs and I fall again.

  “I hurt my leg,” I say. “I’m not sure I can walk on it.”

  “Let me see,” Joss says.

  She crouches down and tries to roll up the leg of my blue jeans. But the jeans are caked with blood.

  “Ow!” I moan.

  “Sorry,” Joss mutters.

  I turn my head and see a black car turn the corner and drive slowly—no, crawl—down the street between us and the row of dark shops. It’s the first traffic I’ve seen in this silent, dead town square the whole time Joss and I have been sitting here. I’m puzzled: Did I hear the car coming from far off in the distance? Or was it sitting over on the other side of the courthouse the whole time? Did it just now start up and start rolling toward us?

  I can’t be sure.

  The car pulls to a stop in front of us, angled across four empty parking spaces. The passenger side window slowly slides down.

  “Is everything all right, Joss?” a man’s voice calls out from deep inside the car. “Anything I can do to help?”

  Joss turns around and squints toward the car. The man’s face is totally in shadows.

  “I’m sorry … do I know you?” she asks. “It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in Sanderfield, and—”

  “No reason you should remember me,” the man says. But he doesn’t tell her his name; he doesn’t lean forward into the light. “Need a ride? It looks like Bethany banged up her leg pretty badly.”

  At least this guy didn’t mistake me for Elizabeth, I think, feeling so relieved that I forget about the pain in my leg for a moment. But then I wonder, How does he know my name?

  “Um …,” Joss says. She’s looking back and forth between me and the man in the car. I can tell she’s debating whether it’s safe to go with him, whether she can get me back to Myrlie’s house without him.

  Another car turns the corner, much more quickly than the first. It toots a sort of siren-horn, then pulls in at the proper angle in front of the other car.

  This one’s a police car.

  “Looks like help has arrived and you don’t need me,” the man says. “Bye.”

  He rolls up the window, puts the car in reverse, and maneuvers out past the police car. He waves as he drives off.

  How did you know my name? I want to scream after him. Why did you drive off so quickly—were you scared of the police? HOW D
ID YOU KNOW MY NAME?

  Joss has turned her attention to the officer climbing out of the police car.

  “Bridgie!” she calls out delightedly.

  “That’s Officer Ryan Bridgeman to you,” the cop says.

  “Aw, come on,” Joss says. “I’m the one who caught you stealing cookies in kindergarten.”

  “And you convinced me to change my ways and turn away from my life of crime. Before I got in trouble with your mom.” Officer Bridgeman glances over his shoulder, his eyes following the car that’s driving away. He turns back to Joss. “We had several reports of someone running through town ‘in obvious distress.’ Those were Mrs. Wade’s words; remember our old English teacher? Is there anything I should be concerned about?”

  I wait to see what Joss will tell him. She’s the one who wanted to call the cops when my father sent all that money. Will she tell him the whole tangled story?

  Will she tell him I’m a clone?

  “I was just out jogging,” I say, too loudly. “I tripped and hurt my leg.” I lean forward, letting the hair hide my face because if Officer Bridgeman knew Joss in kindergarten, he probably knew Elizabeth, too. But I want so badly to look up at Joss to see if she’s going to back up my story.

  Oh, no, I think. She’s a minister. What if she’s taken some oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth at all times?

  At the risk of being recognized, I glance up quickly. Joss and Officer Bridgeman are staring at each other, and I sure hope they had some sort of romantic past together—maybe they were high school sweethearts, before one of them broke the other’s heart. If not, they’re spending way too much time looking at each other without talking.

  “My cousin is quite the athlete when she’s not injured,” Joss says finally, a little faintly. “I’d ask you to give us a ride back to Mom’s house, but then you’d probably have to fill out a lot of paperwork, justify the trip to taxpayers and the Sanderfleld Reporter.”

  “I’ve got to drive out that way, anyhow,” Officer Bridgeman says. “So I can break it to Mrs. Wade that she’s not the next Sherlock Holmes. I don’t necessarily have to report in my paperwork that I have passengers.”

  I have the feeling that they’ve negotiated something I don’t quite understand. Officer Bridgeman and Joss help me into the police car. I sit in the back, behind the screen that’s supposed to separate the criminals from the cops. Joss sits up front.

  “Did you know that other guy who stopped? In the black car?” Joss asks.

  “No,” Officer Bridgeman says. “That was a rental car from out of town. The plates weren’t local, and there was a decal on the bumper. Why? He wasn’t bothering you, was he?”

  “Nooo …,” Joss says slowly. “He just offered to help.”

  I forget that my leg is throbbing because suddenly my head feels like it’s going to explode. It’s all I can do not to scream at Joss, right in front of the policeman, But he knew our names! How did he know our names?

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Officer Bridgeman takes forever helping me into the house, saying hello to Myrlie, joking about how kindergarten taught him everything he knows, saying goodbye to Joss, and telling her to stop by the station sometime if she ever gets bored visiting Myrlie. The minute he finally leaves and Myrlie shuts the door behind him, I burst out, “How did he know our names?”

  “Little Ry-Ry?” Myrlie says, looking confused. “Why, we’ve known the Bridgeman family since—”

  “Not Bridgie,” Joss says. “This other guy who drove up when we were sitting on the courthouse lawn.”

  Myrlie’s eyes look troubled as she bustles around getting antiseptic and gauze and bandage tape for my leg. But her voice is calm as she tells Joss, “Oh, you remember what it’s like living in Sanderfield. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. How old was this guy? It was probably somebody who knew your father or even your grandfather, a billion years ago.”

  “Bridgie said he had an out-of-town rental car. And the guy didn’t just know me. He knew Bethany,” Joss says. “Mom, how many people even know that Bethany’s here?”

  “Everyone at school, because I had to explain why I took the day off on Friday. Mrs. Sells next door, because she saw Walter’s car pull up Thursday night. And, of course, Ron Boesdorfer’s mom and Tammy Sligo saw her at the Y,” Myrlie says, distractedly. “Bethany, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to take those pants off before I can put this bandage on.”

  Embarrassed, I unfasten my jeans and ease them down. My T-shirt is long enough that it covers me practically down to my knees—I’ve stood in front of total strangers in less clothes than this, at swim meets. But I’m skittish after the conversation with my mom, the strange encounter in the town square. I’m half-afraid Myrlie and Joss will look at my knees and say, “Here’s our proof. Elizabeth’s kneecaps looked just like yours.”

  But Myrlie’s preoccupied with dabbing antiseptic onto the gash above my ankle, and Joss is still interrogating her mother.

  “How many of those people would remember Bethany’s name?” Joss asks. “How many would tell it to some strange guy from out of town, who just happened to be in town square—an otherwise deserted town square, I might add—at ten o’clock on a Monday night when Bethany and I needed help?”

  Myrlie eases a gauze strip over my wound.

  “Joss, I think you may be blowing this out of proportion,” she says quietly, cutting her eyes from Joss to me and back. “Walter never told me to keep Bethany’s presence here secret.”

  I’m sure Joss can read Myrlie’s expression as well as I can: It says, Calm down. Don’t upset Bethany. We can talk about all of this later. I suddenly realize I’ve spent my whole life watching that same look pass between my parents.

  “Joss isn’t blowing anything out of proportion,” I say. I swallow hard. I feel so naked and exposed in my underwear and T-shirt, in my body that might be an exact copy of Elizabeth’s. But I’m not going to be left out of this conversation. “Were you able to trace my mother’s call?”

  Myrlie shakes her head.

  “It turns out, if the phone company traces a call, they send the information to the police. So … I didn’t do that.” She won’t meet my eyes. She’s focused on pressing the bandage tape firmly across the gauze over my wound. Then she’s done and she has to look up. “The lady at the phone company said I could do ‘dialback,’ for a one-time fee, without anyone else knowing about it. I tried that, but it just rang and rang and rang…. And then the lady took pity on me and told me your mom must have used one of those gas station cell phones.”

  Is Myrlie’s news supposed to make me feel better? I remember a school assembly we had last year when some police officer came and talked about personal safety. He said there’d been a big campaign by some charity to put cell phones in ladies’ rest rooms in all sorts of public places, like gas stations and malls.

  “Runaways, abused women, kidnap victims—anyone can use those phones,” the police officer said. “And no one can tell where you’re calling from.”

  “Well, duh, if you’re being kidnapped, wouldn’t you want someone to know where you were?” one of the kids in my class yelled up to the stage.

  “I mean, no one outside of law enforcement,” the policeman said, like we’d all been stupid not to figure that out.

  Last year, I hadn’t thought those phones would ever have anything to do with me. I wonder, suddenly, if my mother could be considered a runaway, an abused woman, or a kidnap victim. Or maybe all three?

  “If we go to the police …,” I say slowly.

  “Not yet,” Myrlie says, avoiding my eyes again. “Let’s sleep on it. All of us. Joss, I hope you weren’t still thinking you’d drive back to St. Louis tonight. Is there any way you could wait until morning?”

  “I’m not going back to St. Louis,” Joss says. “I’ll call the church tomorrow and tell them I need to take some time off. I’m staying right here.”

  She stares down fiercely at Myrlie
and me, her dark hair flared out from her face like a helmet, the torn knee in her blue jeans hanging down like a badge of honor. I’m so glad that she’s not leaving. But her announcement scares me too. If she is staying, that means she believes there’s something to be afraid of. I feel like we are battening down the hatches, lifting the drawbridge, locking the shutters, preparing for some huge storm or battle or revelation. But I don’t know what’s coming. How can I understand what lies ahead of us when I don’t even know who I am?

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The wound on my leg wakes me in the night. It throbs, a pain and a reminder of pain. I sit up and click on the bedside light, then peel back the tape Myrlie used to seal the bandage. The gash on my leg is ugly and red and deep. Maybe I should have gotten stitches. Maybe Myrlie would have rushed me to the emergency room if it hadn’t meant using one of those documents my father had sent. If it hadn’t meant she had to decide which paper to use.

  I’m going to have a scar, I think. Mom and Dad won’t like that.

  And then it seems silly to worry about a scar, a little puckered skin, when I have so many other problems.

  At least it will be something different, I think. Elizabeth didn’t have a scar on her leg.

  If I cut my hair and dyed it, and got colored contacts, and pierced my eyebrow, and maybe carved a scar in my cheek, I wouldn’t look like Elizabeth at all anymore. Nobody would mistake me for her.

  But I wouldn’t look like me anymore either.

  I twist around in my bed, and my thoughts tangle as badly as my sheets and blankets. I don’t know if I’m mad at Elizabeth for looking like me or at myself for looking like her; I don’t know if I hate my parents or if I miss them; I don’t know why I couldn’t have been just an ordinary, normal kid with an ordinary, normal family, like everyone else.

  I hear a murmur of low voices downstairs, and this makes me mad too. Myrlie and Joss must be talking in secret, deciding my fate while they think I’m safely tucked away in bed, sound asleep. They must think I’m a child, too naive and innocent and stupid to hear all the facts.