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“Maybe,” Dr. Linda continued once it was clear Caleb wouldn’t say anything else. “Maybe you could bring one of your duplicates to our next session. Do you think that might help you better express yourself?”
Caleb shook his head. “Oh no, I don’t think so. With another one of them here, I don’t think I’d get a word in edgewise.”
Back in his room, the duplicate wasn’t happy with him.
“Talking shit about us to your therapist. That’s real cool, bro.”
It was the same duplicate as before—the aggressive one. He’d started to think of this one as Kyle, like his brother. The duplicate paced back and forth, agitated, while Caleb again sat on the foot of his bed.
“You’ve always been a tattletale,” the duplicate growled. He shook his head in mock bewilderment. “Look. This is getting pathetic. You should let me take over for a while. Watch how much better I make your life. You’ll love it.”
“I don’t know. I think Dr. Linda might be right,” a second duplicate said. This one stood next to Caleb’s bookshelves, perusing the small collection of paperback sci-fi novels he’d amassed. The reasonable one. He didn’t show up too often. Caleb was glad for his presence.
“Dr. Linda’s a goddamn quack,” said Aggressive-Caleb, striding over to glare at his fellow duplicate.
“On the contrary,” Reasonable-Caleb countered. “She seems like she knows what she’s doing. I’d say there’s a fair chance that we’re simply figments of Caleb’s imagination made manifest. Or aspects of his personality that he’s repressed. You’ll recall that his childhood—our childhood—didn’t have a lot of room for expression.” Reasonable-Caleb turned to smile gently at his counterpart. “Perhaps it would do you good, friend, to consider your own existence with a more open mind.”
Aggressive-Caleb responded by punching the other duplicate in the face.
And then they were brawling. The duplicates knocked over Caleb’s books and went crashing into his desk. He couldn’t tell which one was which anymore. Caleb sighed and stood up.
“Okay, enough,” he said, concentrating briefly so that he could reabsorb the duplicates. “It’s time for dinner.”
Caleb preferred to eat early, before the dining hall got too crowded. As soon as he sat down at a table in the back with his tray, he noticed Taylor across the room. Normally, she would eat with Isabela or Kopano, but tonight she was alone except for the huge textbook spread out in front of her.
Here was the opportunity Caleb had been waiting for. They were both alone and in a casual, no-pressure setting. Why shouldn’t they eat dinner together? He could ask her all the questions he’d been cataloging in his head—what music did she like? What movies? What was it like growing up in South Dakota? Caleb’s heart fluttered at the possibilities.
And then, he was sitting down across from her. He was actually doing it! Taylor smiled up at him—casual, relaxed, happy to see him—and he could smell her shampoo from across the table. She was like an oasis in this desert of foreign weirdos and mutant teenagers; a girl just like the ones from back home. The ones he never got up the nerve to talk with. But this was a new Caleb.
“Hey there,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied. “How’s it going? Caleb, right?”
“That’s me.”
Except it wasn’t.
Caleb watched as his duplicate settled in across from Taylor. He could see from the duplicate’s eyes and hear through the duplicate’s ears. Doing so created a disorienting echo effect, but Caleb had long ago gotten used to that.
“How you making out so far?” the duplicate asked Taylor. “Pretty big change from back home, huh?”
“Oh, that’s right. You said you’re from . . .”
“Nebraska.”
“Right, right.” Taylor closed her textbook and smiled at Caleb. “It’s pretty nuts. A lot different than home, that’s for sure.”
“No kidding,” the duplicate replied with a casual good humor that Caleb envied. “I’d never even been to Canada before this and now we’re in like the world’s biggest exchange student program.”
Taylor chuckled. “I was really intimidated at first. I didn’t want to be here at all. But I’m starting to get used to it.”
A dinner tray thunked on the table in front of Caleb, startling him. Nigel took a seat with his usual cocky smile. Caleb blinked at him.
“Evening, my good man,” Nigel said. “Up for a bit of roommate bonding?”
Caleb had noticed how lately Nigel seemed more social. The Brit was making a point to invite Caleb to watch movies with him and Kopano, or to eat together, or walk to class. Caleb suspected this was Dr. Linda’s doing. If she’d gotten Nigel to finally forgive him for what happened on the island—what his uncle made him do—then that was a relief. But this was really bad timing.
“Um, I’d like to be alone, actually.”
Taylor raised a confused eyebrow. “Ha—but you sat with me?”
Caleb squinted. The duplicate had spoken the words he intended for Nigel. Through his clone’s eyes, Caleb could see Taylor now wore one of those weirded-out looks he was familiar with from back in Nebraska.
“Now isn’t a good time,” he told Nigel through gritted teeth.
“Sorry, I spaced out there,” the duplicate said to Taylor, talking fast. “My roommate is always blasting this crazy death metal in our suite. I was just thinking about that. I’ve got two older brothers, so I’m used to sharing a living space but man, our dad would’ve never allowed us to listen to music at that volume.”
“Oh. Got it,” Taylor replied with a benefit-of-the-doubt smile. She shrugged. “I’m an only child and I actually don’t mind the roommates, they—”
Caleb didn’t hear the rest of what Taylor said. Nigel distracted him.
“Not a good time?” Nigel asked with a laugh. “Looks to me like you’re sitting here by yourself having a wank. Of course it’s a good time.” When Caleb responded with silence, Nigel began looking around the dining hall. “Unless you’re expecting somebody else . . . ?”
It took Nigel only a moment to notice Taylor and the duplicate engaged in conversation across the room. Slowly, he turned back to Caleb with an openmouthed look of bewilderment.
“The hell are you up to, Caleb? This like one’a them old TV shows where the bloke hides in the bushes feeding his mate lines?”
“Please, Nigel, just be quiet,” Caleb pleaded.
“Some kinda weird hetero courtship ritual?” Nigel continued, laughing now. “You got your bloody clone over there talking you up? Is that it? He asking that bird—have you met my mate Caleb?”
Across the room, Taylor screamed, “I can see through you!”
At first, Caleb interpreted these words metaphorically—she’d spotted him and Nigel, discovered that he wasn’t man enough to talk to her on his own. But no, Taylor spoke literally—his clone had gone transparent, ghostlike, as Caleb’s concentration floundered. A moment later, the clone simply winked out of existence. Taylor screamed again.
“Uh-oh,” Nigel said.
Everyone in the student union stared in Taylor’s direction. Taylor, however, stared at Caleb, at last noticing him at his back table. Nigel worked a finger under the collar of his T-shirt and slid his chair innocently away from Caleb’s table.
“What the hell was that?” Taylor sh
outed at Caleb.
In response, Caleb got up from his seat and fled.
After dinner, as Nigel crossed the quad headed back to the dorms, the duplicate caught up with him.
“Hey! You really screwed that up for me, asshole!”
Before Nigel could turn around, the duplicate shoved him in the back. Caught off guard, Nigel stumbled a few feet and fell, landing hard on his hands and knees. He rolled over, skinny arms extended in defense, blood trickling from a scrape on his elbow.
“Oy! What the hell, Caleb?”
“I’m not Caleb, mate,” the duplicate responded, unblinking eyes staring down at Nigel. The duplicate’s fists clenched as he loomed over the scrawny Brit. “You like running your mouth. Maybe I should teach you—”
From out of nowhere, Caleb raced across the lawn and shoulder-blocked the duplicate to the ground. The duplicate bellowed as Caleb dove on top of him. Caleb began to pummel his mirror image, raining down punch after punch. The duplicate didn’t bleed; but Caleb’s fists left indentations in the thing’s head like he was slamming his knuckles into clay. Nigel watched all this wide-eyed, crab-walking backwards.
Caleb’s final punch thudded into the dirt. The duplicate went transparent and disappeared. Out of breath, he turned towards Nigel.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I . . . they’ve been out of control lately.”
Caleb stood, then reached down to help Nigel up. Nigel slapped away his hand and got up on his own, brushing himself off.
“You’ve lost the plot, mate,” Nigel growled. “I been trying to let bygones be bygones but you’re bloody mad, aren’t you? Got it out for me.”
“I don’t. I don’t have a problem with you. That—that wasn’t me.”
Nigel snorted. “Dr. Linda, she wants me to buddy up with you, thinks you need a friend. But you got friends, don’t ya?” Caleb flinched as Nigel tapped on his own forehead. “Your friends are all up here, eh? Bloody nutter. They should commit you.”
