by Eric Bower
“You just had to come back, didn’t you?” said W.B. as he shook his head in disgust. “You wouldn’t disappear quietly, would you? Well, you can’t say that I didn’t give you a chance. It didn’t have to end this way.”
“It still doesn’t have to end this way,” I told W.B. “Look, why don’t you just go back to where you came from, and go back to being whoever it is that you actually are? Then I can go back to being me, and we can forget about this whole thing.”
I thought it was a decent offer, and if I were W.B. (the other one, not me), I probably would have taken it. Yes, I’m a bit lazier than the average villain, but I like to think I’m a lot more sensible than the average villain as well. In all of the adventure stories I’ve read, the hero always ends up winning in the end, so if the villain would simply give up when he was given the chance, then he could avoid all of the unnecessary trouble.
“I don’t think so,” W.B. told me. “You see, I have a plan that can only succeed if there’s only one W.B. around. And that W.B. has to be me. So you’re going to have to disappear. For good, this time.”
He glanced over to the slanted edge of the cliff. I glanced over towards the edge as well, and suddenly felt very dizzy. In fact, I became so dizzy that I started to fall. As I fell, I quickly reached out and grabbed W.B. to steady me.
That surprised W.B., who tried to push me off of him, but I had thrown him off balance as well, and soon we were both falling. We dropped in a clumsy heap and then the slanted ground caused us to roll towards the edge of the cliff. W.B. gasped as he reached out and caught an overturned tree to save himself from going over, dropping his gun in the process. The gun continued to tumble and roll over the side of the cliff, falling all the way to the bottom of the valley. We never heard it hit the ground.
I was still holding onto W.B. as tightly as I could, with my legs dangling helplessly over the edge of the cliff. Though I was exhausted and weak from a lifetime of being exhausted and weak, I needed to summon all of my strength in order to get myself out of that jam. W.B. groaned as I pulled myself up by using his legs, and then walked across his back and his head, making certain to squash his spine with the sharp heel of Aunt Dorcas’s boots.
Served him right.
“How can you stand being in this body?” he moaned at me from the ground as I squashed him. “It’s so useless and uncoordinated! I can’t stop losing my balance!”
“Yeah, well, I’ve had to deal with it a lot longer than you have, so I don’t have a lot of sympathy for you,” I said, and then I turned and ran.
I had to get away, and I had to get away quickly. If I could reach the Baron Estate before W.B., then I could tell my parents about everything that had happened. I could warn them that the W.B. who they thought was me was actually an impostor, an evil stranger who was trying to get me out of the picture.
Unfortunately, Aunt Dorcas’s dreadful dress and pointy boots struck again. I hadn’t taken more than a half dozen steps before I tripped and fell in a tangle of poofy lace. I tried to untangle myself and stand so I could continue to make my getaway, but that lousy W.B. had caught up to me. He tore off one of the sleeves of my aunt’s frilly dress and tried to use it to tie my hands behind my back.
“You tore my dress!” I yelled angrily, as I yanked my wrist from his grip. “Now you’ll have to buy me a new one! And it had better be pretty!”
The funny thing about battling yourself is that it’s really hard for you to get the upper hand. You’re just as strong as yourself, so you can’t really overpower you, no matter how hard you try. W.B. was grunting in frustration as I caught his wrist and tried to push him away.
“Stop fighting back, and let me kill you!” he ordered.
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Well, first of all, you didn’t say please!”
We continued to wrestle each other, with W.B. getting me in a headlock, me elbowing him in the stomach, him smashing my head into a cactus, me throwing a handful of sand into his eyes to blind him, him stuffing pebbles up my nose to congest me, me jamming a tumbleweed into his ear because no one likes a tumbleweed in the ear, until soon we were both completely covered in sand, sweat, and bruises.
W.B. poked me in the eye, which he knew I hated, and so I responded by sitting on his head, which I knew I hated as well. He wrapped the torn sleeve of Aunt Dorcas’s dress around my neck and tried to strangle me, so I pulled on his suspenders and let go so they would thwack him hard against the chest. We grabbed each other’s noses and began to pull, both of us whooping as we dropped to the ground and spun around, pulling and whooping and spinning like a crazy propeller made of angry ferrets.
“Nyyyaaaaahhhhhh!” we both cried through our pulled noses.
We wanted to keep fighting, but the desert sun was really beating down on us, and slowly stealing our energy. Even in the wintertime, a sunny afternoon in the Pitchfork Desert can have you sweating like a pig in a fur coat, especially if you aren’t in the shade. We were panting so heavily that we could barely speak.
“You’re . . . you’re so out of shape,” W.B. gasped as he wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Oh my gosh, I feel like your heart’s going to explode . . .”
I wanted to say something nasty back, but I couldn’t speak, because quite frankly I felt the same way. My heart was pounding so loudly that it was beginning to give me a headache. W.B. and I lay there in the sand, desperately trying to catch my breath, when suddenly we heard the sound of footsteps. It sounded like a pair of people had randomly discovered us fighting in the desert. I sat up and attempted to wave to them, letting them know that I was the one who was in danger.
But it wasn’t a pair of people. It was just a horse, my father’s horse, Geoffrey, to be specific. Geoffrey whinnied and neighed as he looked from me, over to W.B., and then back to me again.
“It’s me,” W.B. said to the horse, still gasping for breath. “Get him.”
I didn’t understand why he would bother saying that to a horse, but then again, my father always told me that Geoffrey was much smarter than the average horse.
In fact, Geoffrey then proved how smart he was by trotting over to me, picking me up by gripping the back of my dress in his teeth, and then he began to carry me over to the edge of the cliff.
“Woah, Geoffrey, stop it!” I ordered as I tried to wiggle free. “That’s a very bad horse!”
But my words had no effect on him. I managed to unbutton the back of Aunt Dorcas’s dress and slipped out of it. Once my feet hit the sand, I started running, but W.B. and Geoffrey were after me in an instant. W.B. might have been as slow as me, but Geoffrey the horse wasn’t, and before I knew it I was once again being led to the cliff’s edge.
“Please, I’ll give you carrots,” I said to Geoffrey, trying to bribe him into taking my side. “All the carrots you could ever want. Oats too. And hay, and sugar cubes, and anything else you want. I’ll even tell P to stop making those stupid hats for you.”
Geoffrey paused for a moment, seriously considering the last part of my offer, before W.B. told him to quit his lollygagging. Together, they dragged me the rest of the way to the edge of the cliff. And perhaps they would have thrown me over, which would have spelled the end for W.B. (the real one, which is me, in case you had forgotten), if we hadn’t heard a familiar voice call out:
“Both of you get away from my horse! Geoffrey, come here!”
W.B. and I let go of one another. Geoffrey the horse bowed his head and immediately trotted over to my father, who was clearly in charge. As my father stared at us he pulled a small, snail-like item from his ear, which I recognized as his Listen Up, Stephen Device. He must have been wearing that device and heard us all the way out here in the desert.
I also noticed that P was also holding two other inventions. One of the inventions was the Doppelgänger Device. I didn’t recognize the other one. My mother stood beside my
father and clutched his arm tightly, a look of terror on her face.
“W.B.?” she said to us.
“Huh?” W.B. and I both replied. Then I looked at myself and we both frowned.
Wearing a Horse’s Saddle Over His Nethers
That brings us to the present, where P is trying to decide which one of us to use the Gänger-Doppel Device on.
“Wait, McLaron,” said M. “Can’t we just tie them both up for six to eight hours and wait? Eventually, the effects of the Doppelgänger Device will wear off, and we’ll see who the real W.B. is.”
P shook his head as he handed M the Doppelgänger Device.
“I’m sorry, Sharon,” he said. “But I’m afraid that won’t work. Someone with a clever mechanical mind has fiddled with the original Doppelgänger Device and made it so the effects will be permanent. Without using the Gänger-Doppel Device to reverse the effects, we’ll never know which one is really our son.”
“That’s where you’re wrong!” a familiar and happy sounding voice called out.
We all turned and saw Shorty pull up to us in the horseless carriage. As she hopped out, she patted the buggy appreciatively on its side.
“That’s a mighty fine invention, Mr. and Mrs. Baron,” Shorty told my parents. “I can see why B.W. was so interested in stealing it from you.”
“B.W.?” my mother frowned. “But we haven’t seen him in a week. The poor dear is sick in bed with the Russian flu.”
Shorty looked from W.B., to me, and then grinned.
“No, he’s not,” she said. “He’s right here. I know for a fact that B.W. has been tinkering with your inventions without your permission. I’ve watched him sneak into your work garage and steal parts from your devices. And the last time I was here, I spied on him and watched him swipe three of your blueprints. One was the blueprint for this horseless carriage. The second was for a shield made of an invincible material. And the third was for your gun that actually builds bullets as it fires. I think he was planning on—”
“Putting the three inventions together so that the horseless carriage could become a vehicle used for war,” P finished, a lightbulb of realization clicking on over his head.
“Or crime,” M added. “You could use an invincible horseless carriage like that to rob any bank in the country.”
Suddenly, I had a brain sneeze. But luckily, I was able to keep it to myself this time. Sometimes it is best not to tell people when you’ve had an idea, or when something clever occurs to you out of the blue. Always let people think you’re a bit dimmer than you actually are. I live my life by that rule.
“B.W. wasn’t a sweet kid,” Shorty continued. “He was a criminal who was taking advantage of you. He needed to learn more from you, so you could help him build more terrible inventions meant for crime. He needed to keep stealing your blueprints and the parts from your devices. And once he learned about your Doppelgänger Device, he realized that he could pose as W.B. and continue stealing from you, without you ever suspecting him. I waited to tell you all about my suspicions because I wanted to know for sure what his evil plan was before I made the accusation. I finally put all of this together as my parents were heading to another clinic to get my father’s lip sewn up properly—the last clinic accidentally sewed it up backwards, so when he spoke, he sounded like he was speaking French with a mouthful of cheese.”
“Quel fromage,” P said as he shook his head.
“I ran all the way back to the hotel in Pitchfork and found W.B.’s note, and then decided to come looking for him,” Shorty continued. “I got to the Baron Estate and found it empty, so I followed your tracks out here. And it’s a good thing I did.”
I realized that I hadn’t declared that I was the real W.B. in a while.
“I’m the real W.B.!” I cried.
“No, I’m the real W.B.!” W.B. (B.W.) cried.
Rats. I really thought it would work that time.
(By the way, I know it’s going to be really confusing, but I’m going to start referring to the other W.B—the fake W.B.—by his real name, which is B.W. And if you think you’re confused by that, then you should get down on your knees and thank your lucky stars that you’re not me—the real me, I mean. Because I guarantee you that I’m at least fifty times more confused than you are. In fact, I’d bet all the tulips in Tallahassee on it.)
“Alright, so we now know who the impostor is. But how will we figure out which one of these W.B.s is the impostor?” M asked Shorty.
Shorty walked over to me and B.W. She scrunched up her face and looked us both in the eye. B.W. and I stared back at her, not understanding what it was that she was looking for.
“We should ask them questions that only the real W.B. would know the answers to,” she finally announced. “Alright, W.B.s, what is my father’s real name?”
. . . Oh no.
I have a terrible memory. And B.W. knows that I have a terrible memory. We talked about it the first day that we met. Or was it the second day? The sixth day? Wait, what day is it today? I looked over at B.W. He looked over at me. We both shrugged our shoulders at the exact same time, and mumbled something that sounded like a combination between “Jasper” and “Sherman” and “Barold”, even though I’m pretty sure that Barold isn’t a real name. The point was, we didn’t know Shorty’s father’s name, which I could tell annoyed my little friend.
“W.B. has a terrible memory,” P told Shorty. “He certainly wouldn’t remember something like that. We should ask him something that he would actually know. Oooh, I’ve got it! W.B.’s, what is the mathematical formula I used to give the Baron Estate the power of flight?”
He grinned at us and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Huh?” said B.W. and I at the same time.
It was a trick question. I didn’t know the answer to that question, or to any question related to science and mathematics. And my former best friend knew that I didn’t know any of that stuff either, which meant that he wouldn’t attempt to answer any of the science questions asked by my father, even if he knew the answers. He certainly was a clever one, that B.W., clever and evil. Which was a dangerous combination. He was clever enough to know when to play dumb.
B.W. scratched his head in confusion.
“Don’t scratch my head,” I told him.
“Sorry,” he replied. “I thought it was my head.”
Well played, B.W., well played.
M stepped forward.
“Alright, W.B.s,” she said. “Whichever one if you is my son will certainly know the answer to this question: what is your favorite food?”
“All of it,” B.W. and I said.
“Except for spinach,” we quickly added.
“Why do you have a problem with squirrels?” P asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” B.W. and I replied awkwardly.
“What’s the loudest thing in the world?” M asked.
“Aunt Dorcas when she’s yodeling in the bath,” B.W. and I answered.
I looked at B.W. and realized that I had told him quite a lot about myself, and he obviously had a fantastic memory and a very clever mind. There likely wasn’t much about my life that he didn’t know about. That meant questioning us probably wouldn’t work. My parents continued to try though, asking us W.B. related questions for another hour, until they finally accepted that it was hopeless.
“Well, I’m out of ideas,” P finally said. “I give up. I guess we just have two W.B.’s now. Let’s look on the bright side. Now we have a spare in case anything happens to one of them.”
“No, we don’t have two W.B.s,” M told him angrily. “We have our son, and we have an evil little criminal who is posing as him. McLaron, please, think of a way to uncover the fake.”
“Alright, my little muffin.”
My father quickly slipped into his very weird looking thinking position. It was the positi
on he needed to be in when he had to think hard about something. He crouched down, stuck his tongue out, and scrunched up his face until he looked like someone who was suffering from both an upset stomach and a hideous rash.
Normally, my father would go into his thinking position, and a few moments later he would come up with a brilliant idea that would save the day.
But not this time.
Before he could think of what to do next, Shorty jumped six feet up in the air and shouted.
“Idea!”
When she landed, her face turned beet red.
“Sorry about that,” she said sheepishly. “I don’t know what came over me.”
I did. Brain sneezes. They happen more often than you think.
“What is it, Shorty?”
“I know how we can prove which kid is the real W.B.,” she said, walking over to Geoffrey the horse and taking his reins. “I want each of them to hop onto Geoffrey and ride him around in a circle.”
B.W. and I looked at each other and frowned.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Yeah, what’s that supposed to prove?” B.W. asked.
Shorty grinned mysteriously.
“You’ll see. Which one of you would like to go first?”
B.W. raised his hand. Shorty motioned for him to get on the horse, which he did.
As he rode the horse in a circle, I could see him swaying uncomfortably on the saddle, as though he was about to fall off at any moment. When he was finished riding, he hopped off the horse and landed flat on his face. My parents exchanged curious glances.
Shorty helped B.W. up, and then motioned for me to climb onto the horse next, which I did.