Doppelganger (7 page)

“Are we going to do it or not?” she said at last.

“No!” I said, jumping up. “Jesus Christ!”

She shrugged, then picked her bathrobe up off the floor and put it on. She went and sat back at her desk, taking the barrette out of her hair and giving her head a shake. She looked sad all of a sudden. Even after everything she'd said, I wanted to make her feel better. I couldn't leave without trying.

“Maybe we could start over,” I suggested.

Big mistake. I saw her stiffen. Then she turned and looked at me and laughed in this way that made me wish I could just sort of disappear.

“Are you kidding me?” she said. “After all the shit you've pulled, you think we can just ‘start over?'” She shuddered. “You're so clueless, it makes me sick.”

Well, she was right about that.

“Sorry,” I said.

She got up from the chair and came over to me. “Sorry doesn't even begin to cover it, so don't even try. It won't work, Chris.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay, okay,” she said, mocking me. “Come on, Chris. You may fool everybody else, but you can't fool me.”

“What do you mean?” I said. She was in my face now and starting to freak me out with all her talk. I could feel my heart pounding, even harder than when she'd walked out in her underwear.

“I know who you are. Who you really are,” she hissed. “You're a fucking monster!”

“Shut up!” I hollered. Before I knew it, I'd reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders. She pulled away from me and shrank back against the bathroom door, covering her head with both her hands like she knew what was coming. I just kind of froze over her. I could hear myself breathing, huffing in that same weird sort of way Chris had done by the fire.

She sank to the floor and started crying.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Do it. I don't care.”

I turned and rushed from the room, down the stairs, through the empty kitchen, still bright with lights, and out of the house. Before I'd even left the driveway, I broke into a run.

I didn't know where the hell I was going, and I didn't care. I just kept running. And the whole time, I kept seeing Amber crouching at my feet, shielding herself, and thinking,
She's right. She's right. I am a monster.
I couldn't
tell who I hated more—Chris, for whatever he'd done to Amber to make her act that way, or myself.
Forget Chris,
I thought.
I'm just as bad. I'm worse. At least he was real. At least he never killed anyone.

As the hours passed, I forgot about the words echoing in my brain and just felt lonely. It was cold and the stars were out as I drifted through town with everyone asleep. I'd never felt so alone, not even when I'd left the cabin or when I'd walked in the train yard thinking about my mother.

Just as the eastern sky began to lighten and turn the world blue, I found my street. I crossed the tall, frost-coated lawn and let myself in, went straight to my room, threw off my clothes and collapsed onto Chris's bed. But as exhausted as I was, I couldn't sleep. I just started replaying the night's drama in my head.

So much for my first date.

It was a beautiful day. One of those fall days when everything is crisp and the leaves are changing and the sky is blue and there's that great smell in the air. It was that kind of day when things really started to go to hell.

It began with Steve coming by at around ten thirty. I had just fallen asleep after lying in bed all morning, staring up at the water stains on the ceiling, trying to forget about Amber. Next thing I knew, there was this banging on my bedroom door and in came Steve, all pissed off and yelling about how we were going to be late. It was game day—I'd forgotten all about it.

“Late night with the woman, huh?” Steve said, throwing clothes at me while I scrambled around in my boxers. “Was it wild?”

“It was wild, all right,” I muttered.

I could tell he wanted more, but I wasn't talking—not to him, anyway. Not after all the horrible stuff he'd said in the cafeteria yesterday. Besides, I don't think I could have gotten it out anyway. I mean, I was barely standing. I had
a terrible headache, and everything looked as fuzzy as my brain felt.

“Well, you better forget about that and start getting ready for today. You're going to need to be wild for Waterbury in a few hours.”

“Right,” I said.

 

It turned out I didn't need to be wild after all. Just before game time, Coach called out the assignments, and my name didn't come up. I didn't say anything, but some others did.

“What about Parker, Coach?” one kid asked. Everyone looked at me.

“Parker's warming the bench today,” Coach growled. “Any other goddam questions?”

No one said a word, but you could tell they were all kind of shocked. I just sort of shrugged and sat down while the others did their warm-ups on the field. I was relieved, to tell the truth. I almost asked Coach if that meant I could go home, but seeing that scowl on his face whenever he looked at me, I decided it wasn't a good idea. So I just waited, listening to the school's marching band bang out their crooked-sounding songs, the bass drum beating in time to my headache, and watching the cheerleaders do their cheers, jumping up and down in their little uniforms and smiling so that even the ugly ones looked sort of pretty. Of course, none of them looked as good as Amber. Even from where I sat, it was obvious. She looked at me only once, doing kind of a double take when she saw me sitting on the bench by myself. There were a few times when I thought I caught her watching me out of the corner of her
eye, but from a distance, it was hard to tell.

The thing I didn't like was the crowd behind me. By the time the game started, the stands were packed with people. It seemed like half the town had showed up—including Barry, and Amber's parents—and I could only imagine what they were thinking seeing me on the bench all by my lonesome, my helmet in my lap.

Screw them
, I thought. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on how warm the sun felt on my face and arms.

“Parker.”

I opened my eyes and saw Ballard, the assistant coach, standing over me. He reached down and squeezed my shoulder a little bit.

“What's up?” I said.

“Don't take it too hard, kid,” he said. “Coach is still a little mad you missed Thursday's practice. But he mostly wants to send a message to the other guys about the importance of commitment. Don't take it personally.”

“Okay,” I said. I wasn't about to tell him I didn't care, since he was being nice to me and all.

“Besides, we want to save you for Springfield. That's the game that really matters, you know. Coach figures if he keeps you out today, you'll be even hungrier next week.”

“Right,” I said. “Sounds like a good idea.”

He sort of grimaced and shook his head. “You're a brave kid, Parker. Real brave.”

“Thanks,” I said. I wasn't sure what I was being brave about, but if that's what he wanted to believe, it was fine by me.

No one else talked to me for the entire game. All the other kids kept their distance, even on the bench. I caught
a few of them giving me forlorn looks now and then, but no one would look me in the eye. Like last night in Amber's room before our fight, I was invisible. Today, it was just what I wanted.

The game dragged on forever. I tried paying attention so that I would know what to do next time, but between being tired, my head pounding, and Coach running back and forth screaming at this person or that after every other play, I got a little lost. I just remember that pretty soon everyone was huffing and puffing and sweaty and tired. In fact, they probably looked worse than me.

Finally it ended. In spite of all the cheers of the cheerleaders and the hollering of the crowd and the honking of the band, we lost. Back in the locker room, I kept catching the other guys giving me dirty looks, like it was my fault or something.

Don't blame me
, I wanted to tell them.
I didn't even play.

It was only later that I realized that that was why they were mad. I figured it out as I was walking home alone from the game after everyone took off without me. The stupidest part of the whole thing was that I actually started to feel guilty. I mean, I wasn't feeling particularly good to begin with, but even though I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, I still felt like I'd let the team down. Ridiculous, I know. But there it is.

 

“Pass the potatoes, please,” I said.

Sheila handed me the bowl from across the table without even looking up, then went back to her food. Dinner had started out okay, what with the bustle of plates and bowls as everyone loaded up, but that soon ended, and the
four of us had settled into quiet. I was pretty nervous. Barry was cutting his steak with a sloppy sort of viciousness—hacking off chunks that seemed way too big for any normal-size mouth—and sucking down beer. As for Echo, she kept screeching her knife on the plate every time she tried to cut her meat, drawing nasty looks from Barry. Sheila remained oblivious, engrossed in spearing her peas with rapid, futile jabs.

What made me so nervous was that under the silence I knew something was lurking, something ugly. I knew it the second I got home and saw Poppy, the Parkers' dog, take one look at me, crawl under the desk as far as she possibly could, and curl up into a ball. Heck, I knew it even before that, when Barry sped by me on his way home from the game without stopping to pick me up. For the rest of the afternoon, I felt it settle over the house, like the storms that used to roll down off the mountain and break over the cabin, soaking everything in sight. Every time I came out to the kitchen, I'd look into the backyard and see Barry out there scraping furiously at the leaves with a plastic rake missing half its teeth, then stuffing the gathered piles of brilliant yellows and oranges into plastic bags with a vengeance.

“Don't go out there,” Sheila said the third time I looked out. I glanced over to where she sat at the table, puffing on one ultralight after another. I hadn't seen her smoke until today, but she seemed to be making up for it pretty good.

“What's his problem?” I asked.

She just sort of frowned and shook her head as if I should know better than to ask, stabbing out one butt before lighting up another. After that I went back to my
room and didn't come out until dinner.

And now here we were. One big happy family.

“Goddam it, Echo, would you stop it already!” Barry hollered, reaching over and snatching her knife away. He slammed it down beside him on the table and went back to his steak.

“But how can I cut my meat?” Echo said, her voice practically a whisper.

“You can't,” Barry said. “That's the idea.”

“Here, I'll do it,” I said, reaching over to Echo's plate.

“Don't you dare touch that,” Barry snapped, pointing his knife at me.

The hackles rose on the back of my neck. Looking across the table, I could see Sheila staring at me in confusion.

“What's the big deal?” I said, and reached over again.

“That's it!” Barry said. He jumped up and grabbed my plate and Echo's, lurched over to the sink, and threw them in. At the sound of breaking ceramic, Sheila put her fork down and buried her head in her hands. I looked over at Echo. She just sat there with a blank look on her face, but I could see her shoulders droop a little. In fact, her whole body looked like it was shrinking.

“I was still eating,” I said as Barry plopped back down into his chair. Sheila looked up sharply in alarm. Echo shrank another inch.

“I don't give a damn about that,” Barry snapped, going back to his steak. “If you can't listen to me, you don't get to eat. Either of you.” He looked over at me. “Besides,” he sneered, “I can't imagine that you're hungry—it's not like you did anything to work up an appetite today.”

“I had to walk all the way home from the game,” I retorted.

“You deserved to walk home. Give you a chance to think about your screwup.”

“It's not my fault they wouldn't let me play,” I shouted. “Just because I miss one stupid day of practice—”

“Yeah, because you were too much of pussy to suck it up and go to school.” He was really starting to yell now. I could see his face getting all red and puffy.

Might as well get it over with
, I thought. Better than just sitting there with all that quiet, waiting.

Barry kept going. “Do you know how goddam embarrassing that was to sit there and see everyone staring at you on that bench while your team went out there and lost? Do you have any idea?”

“No,” I muttered.

“And that's not all. Who knows if there were any scouts out there today. What do you think that's going to do to your chances?”

I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

“Barry,” Sheila broke in, “he's only a junior.”

“So what?” he said, turning on her. “You think they're not already looking? Especially with the way he's played this year? And what would they have thought today? I'll tell you what they would have thought—that he's a screwup. That's right, Sheila. A screwup with a piss-poor attitude.”

Like father, like son,
I thought as Barry kept going.

“If you're sitting on a pile of dough that I don't know about, Sheila, please tell me, because there's no other friggin' way he's going to college without a scholarship. That's
just the sad fact of the matter.”

“All right, all right,” she said. She stood up and began clearing the table. I looked over to see that Echo had slipped away. Barry was the only one still eating. He didn't look at me or even seem to notice that Echo was gone. The only time he even really moved was to grab his beer when Sheila tried to take it along with the mashed potatoes.

I got up to leave, but as soon as I started to move, he banged his hand down so hard that the silverware on the table rattled. I guess he had been watching me after all.

“You stay there until I say so,” he said. “You like to sit—you can sit
there
for a while.”

I got up anyway. I was too tired to deal with this kind of crap, and I couldn't stay at that table for another second watching him eat. I pushed my chair back and headed for my room.

“Get back here!” he shouted.

I could hear the fury in his voice, but I just kept right on going into my room, slamming the door behind me. I waited, half expecting him to burst in at any second, but he didn't. Instead, I heard shouting in the kitchen as Barry and Sheila began arguing. Their voices were muffled coming through the door, so I couldn't hear what they were saying exactly. But I could tell it was about me.

This went on for about ten minutes.

Then things got really ugly.

I heard a loud crash and ran out to see Barry sprawled on the living room floor with the coffee table collapsed under him, the ashtray broken, the newspapers scattered. Sheila stood in the kitchen doorway, frozen with one hand over her mouth.

Barry stirred, pulled himself to his hands and knees, and shook his head.

“Echo!” he screamed.

I saw a bit of movement out of the corner of my eye. It was Echo. The noise had drawn her out of her room as well.

“What the hell are these doing here?” he hollered, reaching behind him and grabbing a pair of pink Rollerblades off the floor. Echo's face had lost all its color. She had that same look I'd seen on Amber's face when I grabbed her the night before.

Barry kept going. “How many times have I told you not to leave these goddam things on the floor? You come here.”

Echo yelped and turned to run.

“No you don't,” he cried, and grabbed at her.

She slipped out of his grip and bolted for her room with Barry in hot pursuit. The door slammed shut, and he began banging on it, hollering for her to unlock it or she was going to be sorry. The latch clicked. Barry yanked the door open, dashed inside, and shut it behind him. I just stood there, frozen, listening to him scream all this horrible stuff at her while she cried. Then there was a sound of banging and other noises too, and I could hear her begging him to stop.

A screaming noise erupted, sending chills along my back, as Poppy burst out from under the desk and began running back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, yelping the entire time as if she'd been kicked in the stomach, as if she were the one in that room with Barry.

I looked over to where Sheila now kneeled on the living
room floor, sweeping ashes into a dustpan. She glanced up at me for a moment, then began picking up pieces of the broken ashtray while Barry screamed and Echo cried, and Poppy ran frantic circles around us. Watching her go about it in the middle of all that noise was almost worse than whatever Barry was doing in the next room. It made me sick.

Suddenly I couldn't take it anymore. I ran back down the hall to my room, flipped on the TV, and turned up the volume until I couldn't hear anything else. And even then, I still covered my ears with my pillow.