The Originals

by Cat Patrick

  Sean looks at me, and in his eyes I can tell that he’s conflicted—both wanting to hate me and wanting to move forward like nothing happened. In the few seconds he considers his next move, Natasha flashes me a look that screams Back off! But I persist.

  “You’re totally app-sessed,” I joke, smiling warmly at him. It’s silly, but it does its job: His face softens and he turns his body so both Natasha and I can see the screen. Class is going to start any moment; I only hope that before it does, I can melt the iceberg enough to get him to talk to me for real later.

  “Anyway, this app’s awesome,” Sean says, looking at the screen, then Natasha, then glancing at me. “It’s called Twinner. You know, like Twitter but with twins?”

  “Got it,” I say.

  “Cool,” Natasha says, a little too flirtatiously.

  Sean goes on with the explanation. “You upload a photo of yourself and it uses facial recognition software to find your twin from all the photos on the Internet,” he says as he holds the phone out so we can see it a little better. “See? We just found Natasha’s.”

  On the screen, there’s a picture of a girl with similar facial features but completely different hair and body type.

  “She does look like you,” I say to Natasha.

  “She wishes,” Natasha says, arching her back a little. Trying to control the look on my face, I think of my mirror images, Betsey and Ella. I can’t help but wonder why anyone would want to feel less individual. Then I think that this app is Mom’s worst nightmare.

  Mom.

  I think about how Mom’s the reason I don’t have my own, full identity in the first place. She’s the reason I can’t go out with Sean, the reason he’s hurt and mad at me right now. She’s hiding something from us—and I’m starting to feel like it’s bigger than just a personal office space. It seems like my mom’s more concerned with keeping herself out of trouble than she is with us.

  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.

  “She went to a small office building,” I say. Bet’s face scrunches up, too. “I thought maybe she had an appointment or something, but then she got out and unlocked the door. With her own key. Like the office is hers.”

  “What?” Bet asks. “Why?”

  “I have no idea,” I say. “But it’s weird, don’t you think?”

  “Are you sure you don’t just think you saw her unlock it?” Ella asks. “Maybe—”

  “She unlocked it.”

  “That’s so strange,” Ella says. “I mean, she already has an office here, and probably one at the hospital, too.”

  “Why would she need another one?” Betsey asks, finishing Ella’s thought.

  We’re all quiet; there are only so many times I can say “I don’t know.” I let it sink in before bringing up the second thing. I tell them about the Twinner app, and about how I let Sean use a photo of me to find my twin.

  “Lizzie!” Ella shouts. “That was really stupid!”

  “Maybe,” I say, “or maybe not. But that’s not the point. The point is that a match came back. She looks like us; older, but otherwise just like us.”

  I listen to the clock tick; we stare at one another. Finally, Betsey speaks.

  “You think it’s her, don’t you?” she asks excitedly. Betsey’s always been the one most fascinated by the girl we call Beth. “You think she’s the Original.”

  “Probably not,” I say. I hesitate. “But what if she is?”

  “Impossible,” Ella says. “That would mean that Mom lied, which doesn’t make sense. Why would she tell us so much about how we were created but lie about the fact that the Original was dead?”

  “Maybe she didn’t want us to be able to find her,” Betsey offers. Her dark eyes are sparkling like she’s been given a mission. “Maybe there’s something about her Mom doesn’t want us to know.”

  “Maybe you’re bonkers,” Ella says, reaching over to grab a handful of tortilla chips.

  “Well, maybe Mom doesn’t know, either,” I say. “Maybe the clients lied to the researchers about the Original being dead. Maybe they just wanted a spare for—”

  “Ew,” Betsey says, “a spare kid? Like a spare tire?”

  “There are messed-up people in the world,” I say, shrugging. “You never know. But honestly, my money’s on Mom being the one who lied to us.”

  “You’re just pissed at her about Sean,” Betsey says. “You don’t really think that.”

  “Don’t I?” I ask sarcastically. “She’s hiding an office from us; what else is she hiding? It’s entirely plausible that she lied about the Original, too. That the baby didn’t die and for some reason, she doesn’t want us to know.” I pause, and a thought hits me. “For all we know, she could be hiding
Beth in that weird secret office of hers.”

  “Come on,” Betsey says, rolling her eyes. “This is Mom we’re talking about.”

  “If you’re so convinced, follow her again,” Ella says between crunches, like stalking our mother is the most normal thing on earth. I look at her funny. “Seriously. I mean, you’re probably wrong—it’s probably something totally innocent. Maybe she was taking care of a colleague’s office while they were traveling or something. Just follow her again and you’ll know for sure.”

  In the middle of the night, when I’m still awake envisioning talk show–style reunions with our long-lost DNA donor, when I’m still conjuring up images of what could be happening at Mom’s secret office, I pull on a sweatshirt and tiptoe out of my room and into the hall. I listen at doorways to see if anyone else is awake; when all I hear is nothing, I move quietly down the stairs. For a moment, I consider acting on Ella’s advice: driving back to Mom’s office and trying harder to get in. But the horror movie–style scary factor of that gives me the chills inside my warm house. I opt to poke around Mom’s office at home instead.

  Nothing’s different from the last time I visited—even the emergency money stash is still forty dollars low. I pull open the bottom drawer and see the stacks of correspondence from Wyoming. The same feeling of curiosity overtakes me that I had the last time I was here. I take out one of the stacks and remove a bank statement from its neatly ripped-open envelope.

  Back before we moved, Mom talked on the phone a lot to a guy we jokingly call the Wizard. She won’t tell us anything about him, just that he’s a friend and he helps her sometimes. One such time was when he advised her to filter money through a corporation in another state; hers is called Trifecta, Inc., and it’s based in Wyoming. We have a double layer of protection—the fake corporation and new identities. Two new identities, of course: one for her and one for the three of us.

  Mom said she was paid well for the cloning, which is why she’s been able to provide for us. But she’s always maintained that she needed an outside job, too. However, as I look at the bank statement from the last month, something strange catches my eye: Twenty thousand dollars was deposited on the first of the month.

  I open another statement and my jaw drops: Another twenty thousand dollars was deposited on the first of that month, too. I find another statement and another twenty grand. There must be more than twenty statements, all revealing deposits in the same amount.

  Excitedly, feeling like I’ve caught Mom at something, I put everything back and run upstairs. I turn on my computer and do an Internet search for ER doctors’ average salary. When the results pop up, I’m disappointed. They can make around $250,000 a year: Even math-challenged me knows that’s more than twenty thousand a month.

  I laugh a little at myself for getting worked up over nothing before turning off the computer and climbing back into bed. Even though the fact remains that I saw Mom unlock that office, maybe Ella’s right that it’s something completely benign. Maybe she really is watering someone else’s plants.

  Feeling silly, I push thoughts of Mom from my head and think of Sean until I fall asleep.

  twelve

  Creative writing is a work period and in the middle of class, Sean asks if I want to hang out after practice. He says it so easily, reminding me that hanging out after school is what most kids do. Most kids don’t rush home so the evening clone can leave the house.

  “I… can’t,” I say. Sean looks at me hard, like he can’t figure me out.

  “Okay,” he says before refocusing on his writing project. “I thought you wanted to talk.”

  There’s a shift in the air between us. I want to say something, to explain. I want to tell him that I’d like nothing better than to spend the afternoon with him. But I can’t, so I look down at my own work.

  “I’m not really into games,” he says quietly. I look up to see that he’s still facing front, but his chin is a little to the right so I can hear him.

  “I’m not playing games,” I whisper.

  “It seems like you are,” he says, less angry and more stoic. He sighs. “I don’t get you, Lizzie.”

  It feels awful, but what am I going to do about it in the middle of writing class? In the middle of my third of a life? So far, from his perspective, I’ve alternated between flirting with him—even telling him to kiss me—and being seen with David… or not at all. I can see how he’d think I’m playing games.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur, meaning it.

  Sean doesn’t talk to me for the rest of the period, and when class is over, he says “See ya” with no feeling, confusion written all over his face.

  I’m completely distracted at cheer. Morgan slams into me at one point, because she moves when she’s supposed to, but like I’m stuck in the mud, I do not.

  “That’s your spot,” Morgan says, pointing at the ground a few steps to the right. “This is mine,” she says, pointing at where I’m standing. She blows her bangs out of her eyes, frustrated, and rubs her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m having a day.”

  “Whatever,” she says in a way that feels about something more than the collision. She walks away, and I swear I hear her talking about me to a few of the other girls. I manage to hit my mark the next few times, but then at the end of practice the day devolves even more when a bunch of the girls decide to get pizza and invite me to go.

  “My mom asked me to come straight home today,” I say. “Next time?”

  “Sure,” Isla says, smiling. “Next time.”

  I know that there won’t be any “next time” until I get my life back—and that getting my life back isn’t a priority for Mom. Between that and being weighed down by the frustration of things with Sean, I drive through a haze of tears the whole way home.

  Mom’s car is gone and the main floor of the house is deserted when I arrive. I grab a snack and head upstairs; no one’s in the rec room. Ella’s door’s closed; when I knock, she doesn’t answer, so I peek in. She’s sitting cross-legged with books covering the entire top of her bed, bopping her head to music playing through earbuds. She doesn’t see me, and she looks so content that I don’t want to bring her down with my drama. I back out and close the door behind me.

  I glance into my bedroom, then Mom’s, in search of Bet. She’s nowhere to be found. I go back downstairs and walk through the kitchen and the living room, and finally end up in the office. At first, I don’t think she’s there, but then I see feet peeking out from behind the desk. I walk around and find Betsey with papers all over her lap.

  Bet screams when she sees me, which startles me and catapults both of us into hysterical laughter.

  “What are you doing?” I ask when I can breathe enough to talk. “Snooping, obviously,” she says. “I thought you were Mom!”

  “Hardly,” I say, scoffing. “Snooping for what?” I sit down next to her as she blushes and looks away. “Bet? What are you looking for?”

  “Okay, fine,” she says, “I admit that your little theory about the Original being alive piqued my interest. I mean, it is sort of weird that the girl on Twinner matched us exactly. I just thought maybe—if it was Mom who lied—maybe she kept something about Beth in the office.”

  “Probably not this one,” I mutter. It’s funny that Betsey’s snooping today after I did the same thing last night.

  “I guess that’s a good point,” Bet says, tossing her curly hair out of her face. Instinctively, I wipe away my own hair even though I don’t need to: Sometimes the others’ sensations are contagious like yawns. “Well, that was a pointless search. Guess I’d better put this stuff back.”

  “I’ll help you,” I say, grabbing a few stray papers and organizing them into a stack. Then I remember something about Twinner. “You know, Bet, Sean said that you can message the matches—maybe you should get an account and try it? I mean, you never know.”

  Betsey looks at me with excitement in her eyes. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it seems like
she needs something to preoccupy her right now, like maybe she’s as unsettled about our situation as I am.

  “Maybe I will,” she says. “Thanks, Lizzie.”

  I smile, happy to have done something to make her feel better. “Anytime.”

  I wake up at midnight, heart pounding, sweating, distressed after a nightmare about Sean marrying Natasha. Rationally, I know we’re teenagers and no one’s marrying anyone, but when in the dream he turned and looked at me from the altar and said, “This could’ve been you,” it felt like the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

  I take several deep breaths to try to calm myself, but when it doesn’t work, I get up for water. I walk into the hallway, and Ella’s opening her door, looking fearful.

  “What happened?” she asks, seconds before Betsey opens hers.

  “I just had a bad dream,” I say to both of them. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

  “Are you okay?” Betsey asks, coming closer and touching my arm. “You look really pale.”

  “Maybe I’m getting sick or something.” Truthfully, it’s more likely that I’m lovesick.

  “No, really, Lizzie, what’s up?” Ella asks. The concern in her voice brings tears to my eyes.

  “I’m just… I’m losing Sean,” I say, which doesn’t make sense, since I’m not allowed to date him in the first place. But somehow it does to me. And they can feel my emotion: It makes sense to them, too.

  “I’m so sorry,” Betsey says, hugging me. “I wish I knew how to solve it.”

  Something I’ve been thinking about but haven’t had the guts to bring up just falls out of my mouth now. “I want to tell him,” I say into her shoulder. Betsey pulls back and looks at me, surprised.

  “What are you talking about?” Ella asks, surprised, too, and a little snippy. “There’s no way that you’re saying you want to tell him about… us. Right?”

  I wipe under my eyes and look from Ella to Betsey without saying anything.

  “Wow,” Betsey mutters as Ella’s mouth drops.

  “You can’t be serious,” Ella says. “Mom would have a fit of infinite proportions.”