DupliKate (11 page)

“You know what, forget it,” Jake said. “It’s not like it matters.”

“Then why’d you bother asking?” I snapped. What was the deal with him passive-aggressively ripping on my future?

“I don’t know,” he answered with a shrug. “I guess I just wanted to see if…” He stared into space, zoned out for a second, and then snapped back to attention. “It’s not important. We should get back to work.”

“But—”

“Back to work, Miss Rina,” Jake said in a mock stern voice.

“WHAT?
!”

Jake laughed as my eyeballs threatened to liberate themselves from their sockets. “Hey, you were the one who renamed yourself for a month in eighth grade, remember? Something about it being a cooler nickname than Kate?”

“Oh,” I said, nearly collapsing with relief. “Right.”

“Or I guess it was Katie back then,” Jake continued. “So back to work, Miss Katie.” He smiled, dusted red pow
der off his hands, and went back to our lab table. I stared at him for a moment. No one had called me Katie since we were kids. Where was all of this coming from? And why was it bothering me so much?

But he was absolutely right about one thing. We’d already taken too long a break.

“Do you care if I play music?” Jake asked as I leaned down to inspect Douchebag. I shook my head. He started the MP3 player on his phone, and for the next half hour we worked to the sounds of Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and for some reason the sound track to
Wicked.

“Shut up,” Jake said, when I gave him a look. “My mom borrowed my computer and the phone somehow sucked that on there, and I haven’t figured out how to take it off yet.”

“Hey, I didn’t say anything,” I laughed. “Feel free to enjoy your show tunes.” I paused for a beat. “I mean, I think it’s great that you’re actually a twelve-year-old girl….”

Jake reached over and hit his phone. The song switched from
Wicked
to the
Legally Blonde
sound track. Jake sighed as I smirked at him. “My mom’s not gonna hear the end of this,” he muttered, before hitting the phone again, and swearing when “One Day More” from
Les Mis
started playing.

“I actually like that song.”

“Yeah, me too,” Jake said with a small smile. “I take
full responsibility for that one.” But he’d already hit the phone again. “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys started, and Jake gave me a sort of triumphant “
now
are you happy?” look. I smiled, nodding and fake-dancing for a second as he fiddled with one of the robot’s arms. Two of the three trajectories had each worked ten times in a row and we just needed the third.

“Okay. Let’s try it,” Jake declared. He picked up one of our Ping-Pong balls from the floor and set it at the center of the table.

“Fingers crossed,” I said. Jake crossed his right-hand fingers, then his left-hand fingers, then entwined his arms for good measure. I followed suit before hitting the remote control.

Douchebag rolled over to the Ping-Pong ball, picked it up, and threw it at target number three. Direct hit.

“Yes!” we both yelled, jumping up and throwing our arms in the air.

We attempted to high-five, half-missed each other in our excitement, then stumbled forward and hugged. Unfortunately, the image of Rina and Jake in my living room chose that moment to flood into my brain. I could feel myself blushing. From the look on his face, Jake remembered too, and we quickly stepped apart, both of us staring uncomfortably at the windows, the ceiling, the walls—anything but each other.

But the robot worked! We put another Ping-Pong ball in the center of the table and tested it again. Ten successful throws later, we were done and, with our kick-ass write-up, sure to get an A.
Thank God
. Jake and I both stared at the robot happily, breathing sighs of relief.

Finally Jake broke the silence. “We’re still calling him Douchebag though, right?”

“Oh yeah,” I said quickly.

Jake and I grinned at each other, put Douchebag and our lab report on Mr. Piper’s desk, packed up our stuff, and walked out the door.

BY THE TIME I GOT HOME FRIDAY NIGHT, MY
mom had gone to bed and left me a note saying, “Good luck on SATs, fridge has waffles & PB.” I might have missed my pretest relaxation with Paul, but at least Mom had remembered to stock my favorite breakfast. Having eaten vending machine junk food for dinner, I made myself a waffle and took it up to my room.

“I beat Mom home, but just barely,” Rina whispered when I came in. She’d already been hiding out in my closet for a while. She was wearing pajamas and sat curled up on her sleeping bag with the last Harry Potter book.

“Cool,” I whispered back. “I’m going to bed. Tell me about you and Paul and the movie tomorrow, okay? Everything’s fine with him, right? He’s not mad at me anymore?”

“Nope, he’s good,” said Rina. “It was totally fun. By the way, last chance to have me take the SATs for you.”

I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Had to try.” She smiled. “I even studied, just in case.” She moved the Harry Potter aside to show that she had a few of my SAT practice books in the sleeping bag with her. I shook my head disbelievingly as she grinned and closed the closet door.

When my alarm clock rang the next morning, I almost took her up on her offer. The last thing I wanted to do was leave the cozy warmth of my soft flannel sheets to drive through the cold to fill in little circles for hours—again. By the time I finally forced my eyes open, Rina was already dressed and waggling a handful of number two pencils at me. It was very tempting. But having her help me out with schoolwork and certain aspects of my social life was one (already somewhat shady) thing. Having her cheat for me on a national exam was entirely different, and entirely not cool. And possibly illegal—not that I had any idea what the criminal punishment for something like that would be.

So I sucked it up, got dressed, stuffed my face with coffee and peanut butter waffles, and drove to school. After all, this time I knew exactly what to expect, from the slightly too-warm testing room (a blocked-off section of the auditorium) that had me stripped down to my tank top by the third section, to asking for one of those wooden boards they give left-handers even though I’m not left-handed, because it expanded the surface area of my tiny little foldout desk.
I sailed through all the sections, and by the end I was pretty sure that I’d beaten my last score (as long as I didn’t get totally screwed over by whoever was judging the essay). I looked at the clock. Four minutes left and it would all be over. Hell, it was already sort of over, but I started checking my answers anyway.

And suddenly, it hit me. My essay topic. I knew what I was going to write. The words sprang clearly into my head, almost as if the thing had written itself already and was just waiting for me to transcribe it onto the computer.
Finally
. I actually couldn’t wait to start typing.

After I turned in my booklet and gathered up my stuff, I texted Mom that I was going to go work at Starbucks, and called Paul and told him the same thing. They both wished me luck with the writing. Paul added that he couldn’t wait until I hit “send” on that application at midnight so he could finally have his girlfriend back.

“We hung out last night!” I pointed out, then immediately wished I hadn’t. I had no idea what had gone on during the movie date. Paul and I weren’t fighting anymore, but what had he and Rina talked about? I didn’t even know what movie they’d gone to see. So much for due diligence.

“Yes, and it only makes me want more,” Paul replied. “So hell yeah, forgive me if I’m doing a countdown.”

“Okay,” I said. “Count away. I’ll call you if I finish early.”

I hung up, returned the high-five of a random kid who was high-fiving everyone on his way out of the building, and drove home to get my laptop. I told Rina where I was going and asked her to lie low all day.

The blast of freezing cold air that hit me as I walked from my parking space to the door of Starbucks helped wake me up. I bought a venti vanilla latte to stave off the test-taking adrenaline crash I felt coming on and settled in at a large table in the back corner. Then, finally, I started typing.

I chugged some coffee. I wrote about how there had essentially been two versions of me over the past several years—the super-hardworking girl doing everything in her power to get into college, and then the totally exhausted kid underneath. I wrote about how the driven, Ivy-bound me had gradually taken over as I’d gotten older, had pushed the carefree me out of the way. I knew what I wanted and was working to get it. But it had a cost, paid with a skipped party here and a bailed-on movie there, and dozens of very un-lazy Sunday afternoons. I wrote about building the robot, how two different working styles had clashed, yet made something worthwhile. The two sides of my personality
were similarly battling it out: the lighthearted kid had been buried by the worker bee, but was beginning to claw to the surface. I didn’t know if any of this was what Yale was looking for, but it was a straightforward and honest record of my high school experience. And that would have to do.

The afternoon stretched into evening. I wrote and rewrote, trying to figure out the best balance between super serious and kind of humorous, then just writing what felt natural. I fixed typos. I rewrote some more. And finally, I typed the last few words:

NO, I’M NOT….

That was it. I paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then scrolled back up to the beginning to look the whole thing over. Was it unique enough? Was it well written and captivating and all the things it was supposed to be? Would it draw the readers in? And then hold on to them? Most importantly, would it get me into Yale?

Stop psyching yourself out.
This was it. This was the essay. It was infinitely better than all my previous half-baked ideas, and I’d truly felt inspired. If that wasn’t good enough, well…I didn’t really want to think about it.
I saved the file and e-mailed it to myself as a backup. I chucked my fifth coffee cup into the trash and headed outside, walking toward my car with a sense of triumphant calm.

All I had to do was get home, attach my essay to my application, send the whole thing in, and I would be done. Free. Well, free to drive to New Haven tomorrow for my interview, but I wasn’t worried about that anymore. I just had to show up and not do anything stupid (which would be easy, as I wasn’t planning on dropping acid with my host students or entering amateur night at a New Haven strip joint). I pumped up the radio on the way home, laughing when I heard a commercial for the touring production of
Wicked
as I remembered the look on Jake’s face when the sound track had come blaring out of his phone last night.

Then I turned the corner toward my house and abruptly stopped laughing. I also abruptly stopped driving, slamming on my brakes in the middle of the street.

There were two people on my front porch. Even at a distance, I recognized Paul and Rina. And even at a distance, I saw that they were kissing.

I stopped breathing. This wasn’t happening. I was hallucinating again, right? I willed the image on the porch to go blurry and rearrange itself into something normal, something decent, something not completely nightmarish.
It was impossible to believe that this could actually be real.

But they kept kissing, her arms around his waist, his fingers twined in her hair. And then Rina took Paul’s hand, opened the door, and led him into the house.

What.

The.

F?!

IT TOOK ALL OF MY STRENGTH NOT TO FLOOR
the car toward the porch, ram it through my front door, and run over them both. I tightened my hands on the steering wheel until I could feel my fingers getting numb from lack of blood, then screamed. Flat-out screamed. My windows were rolled up and nobody on the street had their house windows open, so I doubted anyone could hear me. But if they had, they would’ve heard the sound of fury mixed with…well, more fury. Sprinkled with some anger, swirled in with a dollop of murderous intent, and topped off with a healthy dose of rage.

But there was nothing I could do. Running through the front door and kicking everyone’s ass was a delightful thought, but not an option without dragging Paul into the madness of the past two weeks. I took a few deep breaths to calm down (it didn’t work), then parked my car at the
curb. I walked over to my garage door and peeked in the window—my mom’s car wasn’t in there. Great. Just great. Paul and Rina were
alone
in my house.

I wiped away the tears of anger that had somehow trickled down my face without my noticing and semi-stealthily walked around the outside of my house. The curtains were all pulled, and the only lights on were in the downstairs hall and my bedroom. Oh my God, they were in my room! My evil twin was in my room with my boyfriend, while I was trapped outside my own house, in the cold and the dark.

“Wow, it’s the best day ever,” I said out loud, my voice cracking with hysteria. Where was my mom? Where the hell was my mom? I texted her. She was at work, of course, and texted back that she was going to have a late night prepping to go to Kansas City tomorrow. Great. I’d forgotten about my mom’s business trip this week, but I bet Rina hadn’t. I bet this was part of her master plan. But while my mom leaving town tomorrow was bad, what was happening right now was worse. There they were, in my room together, and my mom wouldn’t be home for hours.

Wait a minute.

My mom wouldn’t be home for hours, but I could make it sound like she was.

Duh! I sprinted to my car, fired up the engine, and drove into my garage, smiling as the garage door clanged
on its cold hinges. As I cracked open the door leading into the house, I saw Paul coming down the stairs, followed by Rina.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t say hi to your mom?” he was asking, his fingertips lightly twined with hers. Ugh.

“No, she’s probably zonked from work,” said Rina, “and it’s not like she hasn’t said hi to you before.” She smiled, all flirty and playful, and I almost threw up. When he bent his head to kiss her, I actually gagged, holding my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound. Thankfully, he quickly slipped out the front door toward his car, because the rage in my stomach had traveled to my fists.

I stormed into the front hall and shoved Rina so hard she backed up a few steps and hit the wall. “You SLUT!”

Rina stumbled, surprised and off balance, but quickly recovered. “Kate, there you are! I’m sorry, but it’s nothing, really. He just stopped by and—”

“You’re
lying!
” I yelled. “My boyfriend cheated on me! With YOU!”

“No,” Rina said. “No, that’s not what happened. I mean, obviously I had to pretend to be you and go along with—”

“You didn’t
have
to do anything! What did you do, call him? I told him I was gonna be working all day. I told you that too, and you—” I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. Suddenly I could see exactly what had happened. “You knew I was gonna be gone and you took advantage of it! What did
you tell him? Did you say you finished the essay early? What the
hell
is wrong with you?”

Rina’s expression changed. Her eyes went from wide-eyed and innocent to narrow and calculating. She gave me a tight little smile. “Fine,” she said quietly. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I did. Happy?”

“No!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “No, I’m not happy! I won’t be happy till you leave! Get out of here! I don’t care where you go; I don’t care what you do. I don’t care if somebody finds you and we both get locked up. This is my life, not yours, so—”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” Rina said calmly. She walked over to the stairs, sat down, and looked up at me, her brown eyes unblinking.

“Except that you are,” I said, grabbing her arm, and hauling her to a standing position.

“I don’t think so.” Rina shook me off. “I mean, you kind of owe me.”

“I owe you?
I
owe
you?
” I shrieked.

“You wouldn’t have gotten through this past week if it hadn’t been for me,” Rina retorted. “I went to class for you so you would have time to study. I made you flash cards and organized your notes. I woke you up when you fell asleep doing work. I took care of prom and yearbook stuff you were totally slacking on. I wrote your English final, for chrissakes.”

“What are you talking about? I totally did that myself! You saw me typing it!”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t see me switch it. With the one I wrote. Which was better.”

My jaw fell open and I stared at her. “When did you—”

“Before you woke up. It’s not like it was hard. A bomb could go off in that room and you wouldn’t know it, you’re so sleep-deprived.” Rina rolled her eyes. “You’re welcome, by the way. Mine got an A, and I’m sure yours would’ve gotten a B-plus at best. Your 4.1 would be shot to hell if you’d turned that thing in.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” I said softly, backing away a little. “I didn’t want…I never wanted—”

“Please,” Rina scoffed. “You
so
did.” She crossed her arms and stared at me. “I hung out with your friends because you asked me to. I hung out with Paul because
you asked.
He was mad at you for bailing on him all the time. He might’ve broken up with you by now if I hadn’t been around to help.” I winced, just barely, but she noticed it and smiled. “And
now
you’re mad?” she asked. “Do you really think that’s the first time he wanted to hook up with his girlfriend this week?”

My mouth fell open. Rina stared at me and I stared right back. She couldn’t…. They hadn’t….

My legs suddenly felt like they were going to give out,
and I had to sit on the floor, leaning against the wall. Rina rolled her eyes and laughed. “I can’t believe you fooled yourself for so long,” she said, looking down at me, her voice mocking. “You are seriously delusional if you thought you could’ve made it through this past week without me, at least not without losing your precious class rank or getting, like, a
2
on the SATs. You’re a mess. You’re about one thread away from totally snapping, and you definitely would’ve if I hadn’t shown up. I mean, look what time it is—you’re about to miss the Yale deadline.”

I looked at my watch and my eyes widened.
Eleven fifty-six
. My application was due at midnight. No.
No!
My wobbly legs were suddenly strengthened by adrenaline and panic. I sprinted up to my room, barely registering Rina behind me. I rushed to my computer, downloaded my essay from e-mail, and opened up my application. I tried to attach the essay, but the window froze. Dammit! It was now eleven fifty-nine. I tried again, shaking in fear that I wouldn’t make it in time. Suddenly Rina’s hand grabbed the mouse, moved it to the “send” button, and clicked.

“What did you just do?” I screeched.

“Sent my application to Yale,” Rina said calmly. “Your essay wouldn’t attach because I already attached mine. See?” She indicated an open document entitled “Crossed Country.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Your college application essay,” Rina answered. “Or rather, mine. Read it if you want. It’s genius, if I do say so myself.”

“What are you talking—”

“Please, I read that half page of notes you wrote the other day. They were pathetic. And I doubt the one you wrote today is any better. But mine? Mine’s getting us in.” She threw a triumphant look at the computer and then a scornful one back at me.

I stared at her, numb with shock. I had no idea what was going on anymore—I had no idea what to do or say. If it were possible, I would have forgotten to breathe and keeled over dead. And I think Rina knew it. She got up, went over to the mirror to fix her hair, and calmly kept talking. “Oh, and since I wrote the essay, I’ll be the one driving to New Haven tomorrow for the on-campus interview. I’m pretty sure you’d just try too hard and screw it up.” Rina glanced at me, then moved her eyes over to my jewelry box sitting on the dresser. She opened it, picked out some delicate gold vintage-style earrings that my mom had given me for my birthday, and put them on. She admired her own reflection. “So I’ll be taking your car tomorrow,” she continued. “And I’m also taking our favorite jeans.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Rina glanced back at me. “Don’t look so surprised,” she said lightly. “I got sick of waiting for you to help me figure out
my life, that’s all. But I guess that’s not surprising, since you couldn’t even handle yours.”

We suddenly heard the sound of the garage door opening.

“Mom,” I rasped, unable to make my voice any louder. I wasn’t crying—not really—but my body was so tense I was surprised I hadn’t shattered. “She’s home,” I tried again, my voice hoarse and tired and still much too quiet. “You can’t—you have to—”

“Hey, I know the drill,” Rina said. “Don’t have to tell me twice.” She smiled coolly and strolled over to the closet. “Night, sis,” she singsonged, stepping inside and closing the door. “Wish me luck for tomorrow.”