“Jake. Stop,” Allie demanded. Fiona was standing apart from the three of them now, looking massively uncomfortable. At some point, she, Melissa, and Fiona had shed their heavy backpacks and dropped them on the sidewalk, but Allie had no recollection of when. “None of us knows for sure what’s going on here. This could be a trap!” And stop looking at her like she’s your long-lost love!
She glared at Melissa. “How could Mark Jones possibly have hidden you from his wife, when she was supposedly the one who performed the procedure on you? You had to have been unconscious, right? She had to have been monitoring your vitals over a period of several days.”
“All I know is what Mark told me,” Melissa answered. “He said that he sneaked me out of the building. He said he wanted no part in anything his wife has done. He feels horribly guilty, because last December, he downloaded her mind into Suzanne’s brain. Back then, he hadn’t realized that Jennifer was criminally insane. Now that he does, he’s hoping to get psychiatric help for her, but he decided the least he could do was protect me from whatever Jennifer had in mind for me.”
“Which was what, exactly?” Allie asked.
“He told me he didn’t know why Jennifer did what she did.”
“Oh, come on!” Allie scoffed. She searched both Fiona’s and Jake’s expressions and was surprised at what appeared to be blank acceptance on their faces. “See what I mean, Jake?” Allie asked. “She should be just like me when you came to check up on me after I left the hospital.” Allie made a sweeping gesture at Melissa. “Does that sound even remotely like me back then? That I’d simply accept ‘I don’t know’ for an explanation of why I awoke in some other girl’s body?”
“No, but your experiences when you regained consciousness would have been vastly different.” He returned his attention to Melissa. “How did you find out you were in another girl’s body?”
“Dr. Jones was calling my name...’Ellie,’ over and over again. When I awoke, he told me that my appearance was completely and permanently altered. That he had intervened and was going to help me through this difficult transition as best he could.” She paused and glanced at Fiona and Allie for a moment. She shifted her pleading gaze to Jake. “Eventually, he told me about...Ellie and you, and that he didn’t know where you or another guy who’d helped you two were now...Daniel Peterson was his name. But one thing he did discover, eventually, was that Ellie had gone back to Albany to live as Alexis. Dr. Jones gave me ten thousand dollars to help me get a fresh start.”
Jake turned toward Allie. “Her story sounds plausible to me, El— Allie.”
“But it’s at least equally plausible that this is Melissa Cooper, and that Jennifer paid her a boatload of money to feed us this phony story.”
“This isn’t phony,” Melissa said, a note of desperation creeping into her tone. “I can prove I have your memories. The name of my first grade teacher was Ms. Provost. I had a stuffed dog named Leo, and I gave him a haircut, when—”
“Stop.” Allie remembered telling that story to her mother after she’d awoken in Alexis’s body. “Jennifer probably bugged my grandmother’s house. She could have told you about that.”
“Allie?” Fiona said. “Maybe you—”
“Or you’re here to lure us into a trap,” Allie interrupted. “Mark could have been lying to you. He could be pretending to be on the outs with Jennifer, while remaining her partner in crime. He might have set you up, expressly so that Jennifer can dupe you into doing what she wants by letting her husband act as her go-between.”
“My last memory was of the gunman’s boot,” Melissa said once more. “He’d shot my father in the head, and shot me in the back. I crawled up the stairs. He followed me. He was wearing black boots, and there was a diagonal slash in the leather.”
Allie was staggered by this revelation of Melissa’s, but still didn’t want to accept Melissa’s words. “Jennifer could have told you that, too.”
Melissa crossed her arms and regarded Allie for a moment. “But only I know about my secret crush on Tommy Alspach. I’ve never told a single person about that. And I’ve never written it in a diary.”
Allie felt a little faint. Tommy was the brother of one of Ellie’s friends. She’d known him for six years and pretended to dislike him because she’d felt certain that he was far too cool to have had any interest in her. She’d never told a single living soul that.
“I gather that’s true,” Jake said, studying Allie’s features. “Can you ask her other questions that nobody but you could answer?”
Of course. I can ask her about a thousand thoughts and feelings that I never want to share with anybody! But now I am sharing every last one of them! No matter what I do, there are two of me who have my every private thought and memory!
“What item did I shoplift from the store in Cape May, and what became of it?” Allie asked, praying against all odds that Melissa would be wrong.
“A tiny ceramic cocker spaniel,” Melissa replied without hesitation. “I hid it behind a napkin and left it on the booth seat at the Denny’s where we stopped for lunch on our trip home. I felt too guilty to keep it.”
Allie cursed to herself in silence. Melissa did indeed share her memories. There was no other explanation. Her heart was pounding so hard, she was feeling woozy. Jake and Fiona looked at her expectantly. She didn’t want to team up with her duplicate. She just wanted to be happy. Why was that too much to ask?!
What would happen if I tell them it was a packet of M&Ms, and that I gave it to a girl at a rest stop? No one would know I was lying except Melissa. She’d have no choice then but to leave us alone.
Chapter 4
Allie clenched her fists, frustrated at her awareness that she was always such an overachiever when it came to heaping guilt on herself. The last thing she needed was a second conscience in another person’s body. “That still doesn’t prove anything,” Allie said. “Jake, what if Melissa has been brainwashed by Jennifer? She could have discovered some sort of...method to read my memories straight from the device.”
She realized even as she spoke that her excuse sounded feeble.
“I’m sorry, Allie,” Melissa said. “This is as difficult for me as it is for you. The only difference is that I’ve had more time to adjust to the concept that there are two of us now who have identical minds and memories, except for the last six months.”
“You may have my memories, but you’re not me,” Allie declared. “I know how I would react to various situations! I’d have never given myself a damned note!”
“I’m sorry. It was a stupid, spontaneous decision. I saw you looking so happy at something on your cell phone. I happened to have my Sticky Notes and a pen right in my pocket. I wrote it in two seconds and stuck it on your backpack.”
Allie held up her hand. “I can’t listen to this any longer.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Melissa said, searching each of their faces. She settled once again on Jake’s.
“Where are you staying?” Jake asked Melissa, his voice maddeningly gentle.
“At the Benton Inn.”
Oh, great! That’s precisely where I advised Jake to book a room! Jake loves her mind, and Eric loves her body, and they’re going to be right next to each other in a hotel. Can this possibly get any worse?
“Allie?” Fiona said, “Let’s go to my house and decompress for a while, okay?”
Allie didn’t know what to do. She felt frozen with indecision. She would turn into an ice statue where she stood, then melt with the heat. Melissa/Ellie would live out whatever destiny she’d been given. Nobody would miss her. She’d been rendered redundant.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Jake said to Melissa.
Blushing, Melissa looked at Allie, whose cheeks were burning. She knew they shared the same thought—that Allie didn’t want Jake to be alone with her—yet that was her, in a way. Two minds with but a single thought, her parents had used to joke when they’d started to say the same thing at once. This was: two brains wi
th but a single mind. And Melissa and Allie shared that memory of what her parents used to say.
Allie felt nauseated by the permutations and complications. She gestured at Melissa to go ahead and get into Jake’s car, just as Melissa was starting to decline the invitation.
Melissa went ahead and got into Jake’s car. That was precisely what she would have done herself. She also knew that Melissa would sit there in silence, in a stifling hot car, and would not glance at Allie and Jake, no matter how long they stood on this godforsaken sidewalk.
Do I even like myself, now that there are two of me?
Fiona, too, gave Jake and Allie some privacy without their having to ask. She headed toward the elm.
Allie looked at Jake, trying to silently urge him to put his arms around her. “I’ll be back soon. I want to check into my room,” Jake said. “Then I’ll get something to eat, and give you a call, okay?”
This is getting worse! Now they’re going to be at a hotel together!
Jake searched Allie’s eyes. “I’ll find another hotel, of course,” Jake said, as if reading her mind. “A different one than Melissa’s.”
Allie was so hurt, she caught her breath. How could Jake fail to realize the significance that she should be the one he was taking to a hotel room—to his room. She’d have to state that flat out in order to get through to him. “So now you’re driving her instead of me to a hotel.”
He met her gaze with anguished eyes. She knew that this was hard on him, too, but she couldn’t help but be angry. He should have been open with her months ago. “Allie,” he said softly. “You’re the one I’ve been to hell and back with. You’re the girl I’m in love with. Nothing’s ever going to change that. I just met Melissa five minutes ago.”
“If you don’t take into account however long Eric has known Melissa.”
He sighed. “We’ll get through this, Allie.” He gave her a peck on the forehead and turned away.
That was it. Their first kiss after a three-month absence. The kind of kiss you’d give your kid sister. If you were forced to kiss her. She grabbed her backpack. It felt heavier than ever.
She and Fiona started heading for Fiona’s house. They were silent for most of the now-dreary trek.
“Do your parents know he’s here?” Fiona asked, her voice subdued. She was referring to Allie’s parents.
Allie shook her head. “I was keeping it a secret. Originally, I mean...when I first heard he was coming. They keep such a constant eye on me.”
“Can you blame them?”
“No. But still, I wanted to...be intimate with Jake for the first time.”
“Oh. Right.” Fiona didn’t look at her.
“I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”
“You shouldn’t give up that easily.”
“There’s nothing easy about discovering some random girl you’ve barely met has a duplicate of your brain. Not to mention that the ‘random girl’ now occupies the body that your love’s host body is in love with.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” Fiona said. “In fact, that’s probably the biggest understatement in the history of time. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be in your shoes right now.”
Nobody could imagine that, Allie thought. That was why she was so horridly alone in this. Her shoulders ached from the weight of the backpack. She had too much to bear in general. She had convinced herself to accept the fact that Jennifer McGavin had gotten away with slaughtering her family. That it was good enough to know that she’d helped Jake to put a stop to Jennifer. Jake had given all of his research and his design’s prototypes to the investigators.
Now those dormant emotions overwhelmed her. The shock and rage she’d felt at witnessing her father’s death. Of the hideous memories of the masked gunman breaking into her house, killing her father, then shooting her in the back as she tried to escape. Learning that her mother and grandmother had been killed as well.
To make things worse than ever, Melissa’s arrival meant that they hadn’t put a stop to Jennifer after all!
During the course of the last six months, she’d discovered the pointlessness of resisting Alexis’s fuzzy memories as they slowly returned in little snippets. Alexis had had her own share of tragedies, and the memories of her older sister’s sudden death last year from natural causes were, unfortunately, her clearest.
They trudged along in the stifling heat.
“This is going to be fine,” Fiona said after another long silence. “It’s like discovering you’ve got an identical twin sister you never knew existed, is all.”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“Well, it’s as if your sister was your mind’s twin instead of your body’s twin.”
“Melissa could still be Jennifer, you realize,” Allie said, in an effort to convince herself of that unlikely possibility. “She could have had her husband do a mind transfer procedure on herself in Suzanne Jones’s body. Maybe she figured out a way to...replay my memories from the brain-storage device.”
“Is that scientifically possible?”
Allie shrugged. “Even if I were a neuroscientist, I’d say that none of this was possible in the first place. Maybe Jennifer figured out how to do a partial transfer.”
Allie started dragging her feet as they reached Fiona’s house. She felt talked out and utterly drained. She’d probably be best off to curl herself in a ball in her own room. Fiona stopped on her walkway and turned. “Aren’t you coming in?”
“No, I’m going home. I need to be home as much as I can tonight, since I’ll be trying to see Jake, behind my mother’s back, later.” Allie started to head off alone.
“I’m not going to let you run away again,” Fiona declared.
Confused, Allie pivoted and met Fiona’s gaze. “I never ran away. All I did was—”
“You tried to stop Jennifer. And you nearly got yourself killed in the process. This time she knows you personally. She knows exactly what you look like now. It’ll be that much harder for you to succeed. If you get yourself killed, it’ll kill your parents, Allie. It’ll kill me.”
“I have to stop her, Fiona. I’ve stayed put for six months now, never mentioned Jennifer’s name...tried to pretend she was out of my life forever. All it got me was that a boatload of troubles came looking for me.”
Fiona shook her head. She let her backpack drop and strode up to Allie. “Make different choices this time, Allie.” Fiona grabbed both of her arms and stared directly into her eyes. “Tell Jake goodbye. He’s got Melissa. He’ll be happy. You can live a normal life. You can choose to be happy. Please. Go to the prom with Mike on Friday. Take your exams next week. Stay here and be my friend. Please, Allie. Please choose to be happy.”
Live a normal life. Forget Jake. So easy for Fiona to say. She doesn’t understand. Nobody does. Except Jake. And now Melissa. But now I’m supposed to give her Jake so they can be happy and I can be miserable.
Despite her best efforts, Allie felt tears running down her cheeks. “In other words, be Alexis Bixby?”
Fiona’s eyes were brimming with tears as well. “Yes,” Fiona answered in a near whisper. “Is that so bad?”
“Yes, it is. Because I’m not Alexis. I just happen to look like the person Alexis used to be. But I feel mostly like Elony Montgomery. I don’t really have any choice, Fiona. I’m the proverbial square peg in the round hole. I can’t turn away from Jake. He’s the only person in the world who knows what I’ve been through and how it all feels, and who loves me even so.”
She started to cry openly. “And I can’t stand competing with myself to keep him. And I can’t stand having my best friend tell me that I should just brush Jake aside and pretend to be someone I’m not.”
“Okay, okay,” Fiona cried. “I can’t stand it either way. I can’t support you when you’re doing something hurtful, but I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ll never suggest that you leave Jake again. And I’ll do my best to help you. In whatever way I can.”
Allie was too
choked up to continue talking. She and Fiona shared a wordless hug. Afterward, Allie dried her tears, then trudged toward her house alone. She was battling terrible memories as she walked the block and a half.
Her cell phone rang, and she swept it up, praying that it was Jake.
The caller wasn’t Jake. Her eyes filled with tears of gratitude even so. It was the only other guy she wanted to talk to when she was this sad—Daniel Peterson.
Chapter 5
“How goes it, Allie?” Daniel said, his deep, sonorous voice sounding typically carefree. She could picture his sparkling blue eyes as he grinned. “Am I interrupting your reunion with Jake?”
“No,” Allie replied, too upset to hide the bitter tone in her voice. “He left with my brain clone, Melissa Cooper.”
There was a pause. “Did you say: your ‘brain clone’?”
“Yeah. She claims that her last conscious memory was of her and my dad getting shot. Then when she awoke a couple of months ago, Dr. Mark Jones told her that it was all Jennifer’s doing. Melissa’s the new girl in my school. She also happens to be occupying the body of Eric Sterling’s former girlfriend.”
“Wait,” Daniel said. “So this girl is.... You’ve got a...there’s another version of you who—” He paused as if to collect his thoughts. “When did all of this happen?”
“I found out about an hour. From Melissa’s sticky-pad note.”
“That must’ve been one hell of a note,” Daniel said under his breath.
“Yeah. And it’s been one hell of a day, too.” Trying to joke, she said, “Let me tell you, it sucks to be me times two.”
“Damn it all! This had to have been McBitch’s handiwork. Jake and I were worried she’d come after us when we found out she wasn’t staying put in Aruba like we’d hoped. But we figured she didn’t have any motive to seek you out.”
Mind Echoes (Book 2 in the Body Shifters Trilogy) Page 3