by Kate Norris
“Here, go wash your face,” her double said. She handed Winnie a washcloth, careful not to accidentally brush fingers with her.
“I don’t think I’ll really be able to pass for you,” Winnie said.
Her double smiled faintly. “I guess we’ll see.”
* * *
• • •
After Winnie washed up, her double sat her in front of the mirrored dresser and draped a towel around her neck. Winnie touched one of her long braids, which had been wrapped around her head to tuck them out of the way during the day. She hadn’t cut her hair in years, enjoying the way it cascaded over her shoulders when she loosened her braids at night. She could imagine herself Rapunzel up in her attic hideaway, trapped, but with the promise of escape. But now, seeing her doppelgänger, she thought her twin braids make her look silly, younger than her sixteen years. Why hadn’t she realized it before?
Winnie watched in the mirror as her double carefully combed a section of hair straight and began to snip away. Wisps of dark hair fell and settled on Winnie’s shoulders.
“Did you and Scott come up with a plan beyond hiding—a way to get you home?”
“Not yet. First we need to figure out how I got here.”
Her double sighed. “I don’t understand why you won’t let us tell Daddy.”
Winnie frowned. Father was clearly a different sort of man here. But in what ways—and why? She was curious, but not curious enough to risk meeting him, and maybe being given up to Hawthorn.
This wasn’t something she thought her double would understand. How could she explain the tangle of hate and love, guilt and fear, she felt toward Father to a Winnie who called him “Daddy”?
To a Winnie who didn’t even know he wasn’t their father at all . . .
“I’m more worried about Hawthorn than your father,” Winnie said, “but your father works for him.”
“He is able to keep a confidence though. It isn’t like he’s so wild about Hawthorn anyway.”
Winnie was glad to hear that, but ultimately, it didn’t make a difference.
“I still don’t want him to know. So, can you keep a secret?”
“Yes—if I understand why.”
This frankness surprised a laugh out of Winnie. Of course her double would be the type of person who wouldn’t blindly agree to something without knowing why! And although it was inconvenient, Winnie recognized they had at least that much in common, and if she were being honest, she’d be disappointed—and disconcerted—if her double weren’t like that.
“All right,” Winnie said, nodding her head resolutely. She would have to tell her double some slice of the truth, even though such openness went against her natural inclination. But she needed her double to trust her. And Winnie wanted to trust her double too. After all, she had to trust someone in this strange other reality, and who better to trust than herself?
“In my world, Scott’s friend James has gone missing—and Hawthorn is either responsible, or he’s covering it up.”
Her double’s eyes widened in concern. Winnie couldn’t help but notice that it made her look even prettier.
“That’s terrible! But how do you know Hawthorn’s involved?”
“Well . . . I don’t know. But Scott was sure of it. Do you need more evidence than that?”
Some things—most things—required proof. But not Scott.
After a moment, her double shook her head. “Okay. I won’t tell Daddy about you,” she said.
“And don’t tell Scott about James—please. I’ll explain it to him myself when we’re planning our experiment.”
Scott would need all the details, since it was likely that James’s disappearance was linked to Hawthorn’s experiments. When James disappeared, Scott had done everything he could to try to find him.
Would Dora do the same for Winnie? Would anyone else even miss her? Brunhilde, maybe. She wasn’t sure about Father. Her life suddenly seemed very small, considered like that.
Scott had made it feel bigger.
Did her double know how lucky she was? Winnie had thought she appreciated Scott as much as humanly possible, but now that he was gone, she felt every wasted moment keenly. She should have told him how she felt. She’d assumed there would be more time. She’d thought they had a future together, perched out there on the horizon, waiting for them. As if futures didn’t vanish as easily as fog!
Now that future was gone, and she’d never even shared the idea of it with Scott, the one person who could have made it real.
Winnie’s chin began to tremble, and her eyes welled with tears.
“What is it?” her double asked, recoiling from her a bit. “What’s wrong?”
“Scott died in my world,” Winnie said. It was a little bit easier to say, this time. She took a few breaths to calm herself and waited for her tears to recede before she continued. “He died in the same accident that transported me here. We’re going to try to figure out a way for me to go back in time to stop it, but . . .” Winnie trailed off with a helpless shrug. “As it stands now, he’s gone.”
“Oh,” her double said softly. “That’s—” she started, but then broke off. “If I saw Scott die, I’d want to disappear too,” she finished simply.
“I didn’t want to—”
Winnie fell silent. Hadn’t she?
When she saw what happened to Scott, she remembered thinking that she didn’t want to live in a world without him. And now here she was.
“Well, I guess I kind of did,” Winnie said. “Father was doing an experiment, and something went wrong, Scott got hurt, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.” Winnie took a shaky breath. “And the next thing I know, I’m here, and Scott’s here, and he’s fine.”
“But he’s not your Scott,” her double said, her eyes narrowing slightly. “He’s a different one.”
“Yes,” Winnie said, then shrugged. “But the two of them—it’s not like with you and me. Scott here seems just like the one back home. It’s as if they’re identical.”
Split-Winnie just stared.
Winnie realized how pathetic she must sound—speaking longingly of someone else’s boyfriend. It would be bad enough in any scenario, made worse here by the fact that that someone else was a better-off version of herself.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Winnie’s double continued her work on Winnie’s makeover. Less than an hour later, Winnie looked in the vanity mirror, and her double’s reflection stared back at her. But when she reached a hand up to tuck her hair behind one ear, the reflection moved too.
Split-Winnie had shown her how to do her makeup, coaching Winnie as she blended away the dark circles crying had left under her eyes and sketched in strong brows that seemed to change the structure of her face. They hadn’t had time for her double’s usual pin curls, so Split-Winnie had brushed out her own curls and styled them to match the waves Winnie’s braids had left in her freshly cut bob.
Winnie looked sharp and mysterious, like someone who might have interesting secrets.
She smiled faintly at the thought. That was one thing she did have—being from a whole other reality was one doozy of a secret.
“It’s eerie,” Split-Winnie said. “You look just like me, and it’s like—who even am I?” She said it lightly, but the unsettled expression on her face belied her tone.
Her double seemed as disturbed by the success of Winnie’s transformation as she was.
“You’re still you,” Winnie said.
The words were meant for both of them.
* * *
• • •
Winnie’s double helped her pack a bag with enough clothing to tide her over for several days, then the two snuck downstairs. They stood, somewhat awkwardly, by the front door. What’s a proper way to say goodbye to yourself?
“Well,” her double began, “I’ll call to let
Dora know you’re on your way.”
“Do you think her parents will wonder why I’m spending so much time there? Although maybe they won’t notice. Where I’m from, her parents are . . .”
Winnie trailed off. She couldn’t think of a polite way to express what Dora’s parents were: her father, a profligate heir seemingly bent on burning through the massive amount of money he’d inherited; her mother, a flighty, shallow socialite who seemed much more interested in jaunts abroad than her daughter.
Split-Winnie’s expression confirmed that Dora’s family situation must be similar here. “Don’t worry about the Vandorfs. They’re on safari, or on a cruise, or skiing in Switzerland, complaining about what a bear it is to get their favorite caviar during wartime.”
“Yes,” Winnie said, cracking a grin, “that sounds about right.”
She was excited to see Dora. The thought of staying with a friend, even if it wasn’t exactly her friend, was comforting. And she felt reassured by the fact that Dora was friends with her in this world too. It seemed like a sign that maybe, at their heart, she and her double were more alike than different.
“I’ll see you soon, right?” Winnie asked. “So we can start planning how to get me home?”
“Yes,” her double said, returning Winnie’s smile. “We can meet at Scott’s after school tomorrow.”
Her double pulled her into a sudden hug. Although Winnie knew it was meant to be a comfort, it was unnerving. Her double’s body—her body?—felt both intimately familiar and completely foreign in her arms. Her waist was so small, and she could feel the curved cage of her ribs under the flesh. The delicate jut of her shoulder blades felt like calcified wings.
Looking at her double, touching her double—it was like coming home to find your bedroom full of a stranger’s things. Winnie knew she was slender, but feeling the slip of herself right there in front of her, perfectly face-to-face, she was newly aware of just how vulnerable her body was. How vulnerable everyone’s body was, she supposed. After all, she’d just seen Scott killed by nothing more than electrons.
Winnie extricated herself from the odd embrace. She met her double’s eyes, and although she wanted to look away after a moment, she found she was unable. There was a jerk in her stomach—the feeling of falling—then a roaring in her ears. It sounded like the approach of an oncoming train. Split-Winnie began to look panicked, so Winnie was fairly certain that whatever was happening, her double felt it too.
Blood began to drip from Winnie’s right nostril just as it dripped from her double’s left. They each raised a hand to their nose to stanch the blood in eerie, mirrored unison. Winnie was finally able to tear her eyes away from her double’s with great effort.
Her double retreated to the living room to grab a tissue for herself, and wordlessly passed another to Winnie.
“What was that?” her double asked in a shaky voice.
“Whatever it is, it seems to get worse the closer we are to each other.”
“You should go,” Split-Winnie said, her voice shaking. “We can figure it out later.”
There was nothing to do but comply, although the thought of going off into this new world was terrifying.
Winnie left the house and her double shut the door behind her, averting her eyes as if from something monstrous.
* * *
• • •
Winnie heard her double throw the bolt behind her and knew she was really alone.
She was still shaken up about her and her double’s nosebleeds, and what had happened to her double’s arms after Winnie grabbed her. Would they be all right if they stayed away from each other? Or would strange things keep happening to them for as long as Winnie stayed in their world? It was hard to believe she’d actually thought it might be a good idea to stay in this reality before she and Scott realized she might be able to go back and save his double.
When Winnie was thirteen, she’d gone to see The Wizard of Oz with Dora. It was her first time seeing a picture in theaters. How entranced she’d been—the music, the costumes, the sparkling red shoes against the bright yellow brick road, all in vibrant Technicolor! Dora sang the songs for months after, and Winnie sang along, even though her voice was never very good. She and Dora didn’t know each other that well beforehand, but going to see that picture together and both loving it so much had cemented their bond.
When Winnie had teared up watching Judy Garland chant “There’s no place like home,” she couldn’t have guessed that one day, she would find herself in a similar situation—mysteriously transported to a foreign world, at a loss for how to get herself home again. But Winnie knew that here, she couldn’t go off on a quest to find some wizard to save her. Winnie would have to save herself.
She walked quickly down sidewalks that were disconcertingly familiar, half expecting to see something strange and awful around every corner—some other sign that this was a world entirely different from her own. She’d been transported to an alternate reality. The impossible had happened. Now anything might happen. If she bumped into a passerby, would their nose start bleeding too? Winnie quickened her pace.
Rush hour was long past, but traffic was still thick with canary-bright cabs. On the sidewalk, men in suits returning from a late workday mixed with couples heading out for the evening. Everything looked the same as it did at home, but rather than being reassuring, this similarity made Winnie uneasy. After all, which was more dangerous: the poisonous insect that announced its deadly sting with a bright-colored body, or the one that looked harmless?
The waxing moon had already risen and hung low in the sky. Was it the same moon she saw at home, or just one of a million others? And the stars, those pretty points of light people had navigated by for thousands of years, were they duplicated too? The vastness of the multiverse was too much to comprehend; just thinking about those infinite skies made her dizzy.
Soon, Winnie came to recognize at least one striking difference between her own world and this one: here, occasionally a young man would tip his hat at her with an expression that implied something more than simple courtesy.
Their attraction left Winnie flattered, but annoyed. Split-Winnie’s fine clothes and a bit of makeup made her more appealing than her own character ever had. Was that really all that mattered to people in any world—the surface?
A part of Winnie enjoyed the appreciative glances she was given, but mostly the attention made her nervous—like she was on display. She wrapped her double’s coat more tightly around her body and shoved her hands deep into the satin-lined pockets. The coat, navy wool trimmed in rabbit at the cuffs and collar, the grown-up haircut—Winnie knew she looked more like a woman than ever, even though she hadn’t felt this lost in the city since she was a little girl.
She was passing Central Park now. She was almost there.
She spotted some homeless men huddled on park benches. She knew her situation wasn’t anywhere near as bleak as theirs, but even after just a few hours of being displaced, she looked at them less with pity than despair. You could lose everything—home, family, friends—so quickly. You could lose them in the blink of an eye.
Just like Winnie had.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Winnie was relieved to discover that the evening doorman at Dora’s posh Park Place high-rise recognized her—or thought he did. He smiled and let her in.
“Good evening, Miss Winnie.”
“Good evening, Ernie,” Winnie replied, in what she hoped was a normal tone. Her fixed smile felt as stiff as a mask. She felt like a fraud.
Winnie stumbled a bit over the edge of the doormat. Ernie put his hand on her elbow to steady her and she jerked away, remembering the uncanny prints she’d left on her double’s arm.
Ernie frowned. “Sorry, Miss Winnie.”
She must seem like such a snob! But it was better to seem snobbish than to risk hurting anyone else.
Her abili
ty had always been odd, and sometimes unwelcome. But she’d never been afraid of herself. Not until now.
The lobby elevator opened with a cheerful ding completely at odds with Winnie’s dark thoughts.
“Penthouse, please,” she told the operator.
He smiled a bit like he was laughing at her.
“Of course, Miss Winnie.”
Winnie blushed. She hadn’t been thinking. He wasn’t the same lift man employed by Dora’s building back home, but even though she didn’t recognize him, of course he knew her. What would she do if the same thing happened to her out on the street—if some acquaintance of her double approached her, and Winnie had no idea who they were?
This world was a minefield of ways for Winnie to mess up.
Winnie reached the Vandorfs’ penthouse duplex and knocked lightly on the door. After a few moments, it was opened by Louisa.
Winnie let out a breath; it was a relief to see a face that was familiar, but not in an emotionally charged way like her doppelgänger’s or Scott’s.
Winnie smiled tentatively, but this friendliness wasn’t returned. It was odd; Louisa was a formidable woman, but she had always been fond of Winnie.
“Did Dora tell you I was coming?”
“Of course. Come in. I had Martha prepare you some food. Dora said you’d want something. She’s waiting in the kitchen.”
“She shouldn’t have troubled you!” Winnie said, setting down her bag and quickly shrugging off her coat before Louisa could try to help her with it.
“No trouble at all,” Louisa said. She gave Winnie an odd look, then picked Winnie’s bag up off the floor and carried it upstairs to Dora’s room.
It seemed like Louisa noticed a difference in her, which was disconcerting, although Winnie was confident Louisa would never in a million years guess what caused it. It struck her that she and her double had spent all this time making Winnie look like her doppelgänger, but there had been no mention of how she should act. Then again, how do you explain how you are to someone who doesn’t know you?