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Something has to change. It just has to.
“Do me,” I say to Sean, driven by a fast and furious wave of rebellion.
“You wish,” Natasha mutters under her breath before turning toward her friend in the other row, bored with the conversation since I joined. I blush a little, but Sean just ignores her; instead he starts typing on the keyboard.
“Don’t you need a picture?” I ask.
“I have one,” he says quietly, eyes on his phone. Relief floods through me.
“Here,” he says after a few seconds. “That’s actually the best match I’ve seen yet.”
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. When I take the phone from his outstretched hand, I gasp at the picture on the screen. The girl really looks like me. Like us. For a second I think it’s actually Betsey or Ella, but then I realize that she looks a little older, and her face is rounder. But we all have the same eye and hair color, and the same curls.
“That’s unbelievable,” I say, handing Sean back the phone just before Mr. Ames tells him to put it away. There’s a heavy feeling creeping through my stomach; a crazy thought trying to overtake my brain.
Is she the Original? Is she Beth?
“I can message her if you want,” Sean says, glancing back at me.
“Huh?” I ask, distracted.
“Twinner doesn’t give out names, but you can message people, and if they want to meet you, they can write back.”
“Oh,” I say, taking out my notebook and feeling like my head’s on two planets. He probably thinks I’m mental. Pulling it together, I say, “That’s okay. It’s a little creepy.”
“If you say so.”
Mr. Ames finishes writing on the board and moves to the podium.
“Sean?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“I still want to explain,” I say. “About yesterday. It’s not what you think.”
There’s a long pause; I think he might not answer. But then he does.
“I’ll listen.”
The day turns out all right. Sean assures me when the bell rings that his after-school plans are legitimate—he’s going to take pictures with his mom—and not some excuse to get out of talking to me. After we say goodbye to each other at the end of the English hall, I walk to my locker feeling lighter than I did earlier. No one gets kicked in the head at cheer practice. And, when I get home, Mom’s on her way out for work, so I don’t have to deal with talking to her.
The hours pass, and eventually Betsey returns home.
“So, what’s this about?” Bet asks when we’re settled on couches. “Did you discover the meaning of life?”
“Funny,” I say, not laughing. “No, this is sort of serious.”
Ella and Betsey both give me their full attention. I’m not sure of the best way to tell them the things I’m thinking. I start with the office space.
“The day Mom and I got in that fight, remember I followed her?” I ask. Both of them nod in unison, synchronized like they’re doing it on purpose.
“How could we forget that day?” Ella asks. Her tone is joking, but it stings nonetheless. Betsey smacks her on the arm.
“Anyway,” I say, “Mom said she was running errands, but she wasn’t.”
“What’d she do?” Ella asks, face scrunched up in confusion.
