Double Identity

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

“I’ve thought of a lot of things,” Myrlie growls. “The next time Walter calls, I have a million questions for him.”

  Joss is still examining the envelope. She peers down into it, then looks up, her expression more troubled than ever.

  “Um, Mom, did you see this?” she asks.

  “What?” Myrlie asks, distracted.

  Joss reaches into the envelope and pulls out something wrapped in more paper. This paper, though, only reads, “In case Bethany needs anything.”

  Joss pulls the paper off, revealing two thick wads of more paper.

  Cash.

  Hundred-dollar bills.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Joss reacts as if she’s suddenly discovered a poisonous snake in her hand. She gasps and drops the money.

  We all stare at the two bundles of money on the floor for a few moments, then Myrlie bends over and picks them up.

  “One, two, three….” she mutters, counting the bills without breaking the paper bands holding them together. Joss and I do nothing but watch her until she finally finishes and announces, “There’s ten thousand dollars here.”

  Joss and I still don’t say anything.

  All the money has that crisp, new look to it that you see in movies, when kidnappers demand suitcases full of cash, or when drug dealers buy off someone’s silence. My own father sent that money to Myrlie, and I’m still thinking, This can’t be legal Did he steal it? Did he kill someone for this money?

  “Why would Uncle Walter send that amount of money through the mail?” Joss asks, finally breaking the silence. “Why didn’t he just hand it to you Thursday night, in person?”

  Myrlie shrugs helplessly. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asks.

  Then they both seem to remember that I’m standing right there, that it’s my father who baffles them, that the money is, I guess, technically mine. Myrlie gathers all the papers into a neat stack and places the two bundles of cash on top.

  “I’m sure there a perfectly, uh, rational explanation for all this,” she says. “It’s a little hard to understand right now, but surely, when your father tells me what’s going on, everything will make sense.”

  Myrlie is trying so hard, it makes me want to cry.

  “Mom,” Joss says. She darts her eyes toward me, then away. “You’ve got to consider all the possibilities. Uncle Walter sent you forged documents.” Myrlie starts to object, but Joss persists. “You know at least three of the birth certificates are false, because how could Bethany be four people at once? So there’s forgery. That’s a crime. And he sends you this huge sum of money, through the mail, uninsured. That’s pretty suspicious, don’t you think? What if you’re arrested for receiving stolen goods? What if opening that package makes you an accomplice?”

  Myrlie’s shaking her head, refusing to accept Joss’s version.

  “No,” she says. “Walter’s not a criminal. He wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  “You don’t know Walter anymore,” Joss says. “You’ve barely seen him in twenty years.”

  It’s been just four days since I saw my father, but I feel like he’s become a stranger to me, too. Evidently he’s always been a stranger, keeping secrets I can’t begin to comprehend.

  “He’s gone crazy,” I whisper. Is it better to believe my father’s insane than that he’s committed a crime? It’s like that board game, Dilemmas, where you have to choose between two bad alternatives. Would you rather be blind or deaf? If you were executed, would you choose lethal injection or the electric chair? I’m not very good at Dilemmas, because my answer is always, “Neither. I want a different choice.” I don’t want my father to be crazy or a criminal.

  Myrlie sighs heavily.

  “You think I should go to the police, don’t you?” she says.

  Joss frowns apologetically at me, then nods.

  “Not until I’ve had a chance to talk to Walter,” Myrlie says. “I want to hear his explanation first.”

  I’m amazed at Myrlie’s sense of loyalty.

  Does my father deserve it? I wonder, as my head spins with questions. Or does he deserve to be caught, to be punished, to be sent to jail?

  I can’t think of any punishment for my father that doesn’t also punish me.

  “You didn’t see Walter that night,” Myrlie is telling Joss. “When he dropped off Bethany. He looked so …” She glances at me as she searches for the right word.

  Go ahead. Say it, I think. Tortured. Tormented. Distraught. Even—

  “Pitiful,” Myrlie finishes. “He’s a broken man.”

  It’s all I can do not to gasp. “Pitiful” is so much worse than anything I expected her to say. The word seems to burrow under my skin, to sting at my eyes. I can’t look at Myrlie or Joss. I can’t look at the stack of documents and the money. I can’t let myself think about who I am or what my parents might have done.

  I am pitiful too.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Myrlie hides the entire package in a fire-safe box at the back of one of her closets.

  My father doesn’t call.

  The three of us eat dinner, and Joss begins to make noises about how she really should be getting back to St. Louis.

  My father doesn’t call, and Joss doesn’t leave.

  The hour hand on Myrlie’s kitchen clock swings past seven, then eight, then nine, and Joss and Myrlie debate possible plans for me for the next day. Should Myrlie take another day off work? Should I be left home alone? Should I be enrolled in Sanderfield Middle School using one of the birth certificates Dad sent us? (And if so, which one?) Should I go to work with Myrlie? Should I maybe even go to St. Louis with Joss?

  I listen to the conversation ping-ponging back and forth between Myrlie and Joss as if they’re talking about somebody else’s fate. Bethany Ronkowski’s, maybe? Bethany Stanton’s? I think that I really ought to tell Myrlie what my dad said about school and about it not being safe to leave me alone, but I’m mad at him now, getting madder by the minute. He abandoned me and he’s probably a criminal and I don’t care if I ever see or talk to him again.

  The phone rings.

  All three of us jump for it, but Myrlie reaches it first. Joss and I crowd in close, and I get a ridiculous image in my head of giggly girls at a sleepover, huddled together over a single phone crank-calling someone’s boyfriend. I’ve heard that those things happen, late at night, after I’ve had to leave.

  “Hello?” Myrlie says.

  I hear my mother’s voice coming through the receiver, sounding surprised: “Why, hello, Myrlie, I didn’t expect you to be there. Could I speak to Elizabeth, please?”

  Myrlie winces, but somehow manages to keep her voice steady.

  “No, Hillary, Elizabeth isn’t available right now. Could you put Walter on? I really need to talk to him.”

  “Sorry, Myrlie, I can’t do that. Walter doesn’t even know I’m calling.” Mom lowers her voice confidentially. I can barely hear. “I’m not supposed to call, you know. I just wanted to talk to Elizabeth….” Her voice trails off, like she’s about to hang up.

  I grab the phone out of Myrlie’s hand.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say.

  “Oh, Elizabeth, I’m so happy you could get to the phone,” she says. “Isn’t it nice that Myrlie could come and visit you in the hospital? Myrlie always loved you so—everyone loves you, you’re such a wonderful girl. I’m so sorry about what happened. I didn’t see that truck coming—I didn’t! And he didn’t see me…. Why weren’t the signs clearer? Oh, my poor, poor baby girl …”

  “Mom, it’s okay. It’s not your fault,” I say uncomfortably. I don’t want to keep impersonating Elizabeth, but I’m scared Mom will hang up if I say anything that brings her back to the present.

  Joss slides a note to me that says, “Keep her talking! I’ll have this call traced.” Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her searching through her purse, pulling out a cell phone.

  “I don’t have access to stuff like that on my phone,” Myrlie hisses at Joss, and Joss shakes h
er head frantically and hisses back, “It doesn’t matter—in an emergency I’m sure there’s a way….” Part of me is listening to them and thinking, Is this an emergency? and, I wish we’d known to trace Dad’s call that first day. But mostly I am straining to hear my mother’s breathing, straining to make sure she’s still there.

  “Everything’s okay, Mom,” I repeat into the receiver, but my voice comes out sounding timid and scared.

  “Honey, you don’t have to try to be brave for me,” Mom says. “I know you’re in a lot of pain, and the doctors say the end isn’t far away. But, listen, don’t worry. Walter says … your father says …”

  I see Myrlie’s finger inch forward, poised to press a button on the phone’s base. “Don’t cut her off now!” I want to scream, but I can’t get the words out. I see the three small letters above the button Myrlie’s pushing: REC. Myrlie’s not ending this conversation. She’s recording it.

  “Your father says we can get you back,” Mom says. “If we save some of your cells, it’ll be like you never died.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. I’m gripping the phone so tightly my fingers are numb. I’ve lost all sense of feeling in my hand.

  “Oh, Elizabeth, it’s simple. Simple and fabulous.” My mother’s voice reverberates with joy now, all her sorrow washed away. “We’ll make a copy of you.”

  “A … copy?” I repeat stupidly.

  “Yes,” my mother says. “There’s another name for it. We’ll have an exact copy. A clone.”

  I drop the phone. I’ve never fainted before, but that’s what I do now, plunging straight toward the floor. Straight down.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I fight my way back toward consciousness through an awful darkness and a throbbing pain in my head.

  “—seriously injured?” Joss is saying.

  “I don’t think so,” Myrlie says. My hearing goes in and out, so I only catch part of her next words: “… in shock …”

  I have to get back to the phone, have to get my mother to take back those words she just said. You did not copy Elizabeth. You didn’t. You couldn’t. I manage to raise my head and reach my arm toward the phone, which is dangling by its twisty cord over the edge of the counter. But then I hear what’s coming out of the phone: the empty, monotonous dial tone.

  I drop my arm.

  “What happened?” Myrlie says. She’s hovering over me, her anxious face seeming to float above mine. Somehow I’ve ended up with my head in her lap. She is stroking the hair back from my face. “What did Hillary say?”

  I open my mouth but can’t speak. I probably look like a guppy.

  Joss crosses the kitchen, presses a button on Myrlie’s phone. My mother’s voice spills out: “Your father says we can get you back…. Oh, Elizabeth … We’ll make a copy of you…. A clone.”

  “It’s not possible,” I say, finding my voice at last.

  But Joss and Myrlie are both looking down at me now, and their faces say everything: Bethany looks exactly like Elizabeth, even down to the lopsided freckles on her cheeks. Bethany likes the same foods Elizabeth liked. Bethany’s voice sounds like Elizabeth’s. Could it be …?

  I scramble away from my aunt and my cousin, moving backward on my arms and legs like a frantic crab. I crash into a cabinet.

  “I’m not that much like her. She was a gymnast!” I yell. But I can hear my old gym teacher’s voice echoing in my head, You have a lot of natural ability…. I sag against the cabinet door. “Is it possible?” I whimper.

  Myrlie and I both look at Joss. Joss, the biology major.

  “They cloned the first sheep in Scotland when I was still in college,” she says slowly. “This wacko religious sect, the Raelians, claimed to have produced a human clone years ago. Everyone assumed that was a hoax. But maybe …”

  “Walter went into medical research after the accident,” Myrlie says.

  Joss frowns.

  “Oh, Mom, human cloning would have been such a long shot thirteen years ago. It’d be a long shot now, because there have been so many laws passed against it. There’s no support for it. For Uncle Walter to have cloned Elizabeth, it would have taken years of research, meticulous attention to the DNA, millions of dollars….”

  She stops, and I can tell that she’s thinking of those crisp one-hundred-dollar bills my father sent us.

  “I’m not a clone!” I scream. “I’m a real person, not just some—some Xerox of Elizabeth. I’m Bethany! Bethany Cole!” Then I remember that “Cole” might very well be an alias. How real can I be if I’m not even sure of my last name? “She was lying!” I scream, more frantically now. “My mother’s delusional!”

  Joss and Myrlie stare at me. And I can tell from their faces that one of my favorite words—“delusional”—had been one of Elizabeth’s favorites too.

  I leap up and flee the kitchen, as if I can run away from everything Elizabeth was. As if I can run away from myself.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I fling myself out the front door of Myrlie’s house, across the porch, down the stairs, out the gate. I am running blindly, stumbling over my feet, falling, scrambling back up. I’m not watching where I’m going. I find myself in the middle of the street, but it doesn’t matter, the only car lights are a block away. I dash back onto a sidewalk, force myself to pay enough attention to stay on concrete, not asphalt.

  My body takes over, working into a rhythm as natural as swimming. Running is not my sport, but I can do it without thinking, my feet pushing against the pavement, my arms pumping hard.

  I like to run and paint and read and watch TV and go to movies, Elizabeth had said on the videotape. Running was something else that belonged to her, then.

  Half-panting, half-crying, I slow to a fast walk. But walking is a mistake, because it makes it easier to think.

  Where am I going?

  I’m in a strange town and it’s dark and I’m lost now. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t find my way back to Myrlie’s. And I don’t want to go back to Myrlie’s; I want to go back to Greenleaf, Pennsylvania, back to my old life, back to six months ago when Mom didn’t cry (mostly) and Dad acted normal (mostly) and I didn’t know anything about Elizabeth.

  It’s not possible …

  I look around, searching for some recognizable house or street sign. But the houses are dark, the street signs covered in shadow. I can’t even see the moon or stars, just dark clouds pressing low, crowding down against the treetops. I have never before been outside by myself after dark, certainly not lost in a strange place like this, not when I’m already bewildered and distraught. I have no hope of navigating my own way to safety.

  I hear footsteps behind me, and it makes me think of all those things my parents have always feared for me. Young girls kidnapped from a dark street, young girls killed or left for dead … I take off running again, speeding through the darkness. My leg muscles cramp and burn; my breathing comes out ragged. I can’t run forever. Eventually I’ll have to stop; eventually I’ll be caught.

  Someone is shouting behind me: “Wait!”

  I trip and sprawl across the ground, a searing pain in my leg.

  “Bethany?”

  It’s Joss. She’s running toward me, breathing hard.

  “Are … you … okay?” she pants.

  I stop struggling to scramble back up. It feels good to give up, to lie still. Joss collapses on the ground beside me.

  “I was lost,” I blubber. “I didn’t know where I was.”

  “Town … square … now,” Joss says, still trying to catch her breath. “We were about ten blocks away when you started that sprint. Man, I’m feeling old.”

  I roll over and sit up. We are on the courthouse lawn; I just barely missed falling into those chrysanthemums that Myrlie was so proud of planting. What I tripped on, I realize, was one of the steps leading to the memorial to Thomas Wilker.

  “I thought I heard someone,” I say. “Chasing me.”

  “It was probably just me,” Joss says. “I didn’t want you
wandering around in the dark all by yourself.”

  Her face glows with concern, and in spite of myself I’m glad that she followed me. But I keep replaying those footsteps in my mind and they sound too heavy, too big, too ominous to belong to Joss.

  “Anyhow, you’re safe now,” Joss says. She reaches over and brushes the hair out of my face. She peers at me, her eyes brimming with sympathy.

  But is that sympathy really for me?

  Who do you see when you look at me? I want to ask her. Me, Bethany? Or Elizabeth, magically brought back from the grave?

  I remember what Joss said by accident, only the night before: Oh, Elizabeth, it’s so nice having you back! Is that how my parents felt, every time they smiled at me, every time they kissed my forehead, every time they hugged me? Did they ever love me just as me?

  I look around at the town square shops, dark and quiet and dead again. This time I don’t think of hibernation; I think of the villagers in “Sleeping Beauty,” who went to sleep for a hundred years while their princess slumbered. My brain shies away from the scientific implications of what my mother said, all that talk of cells and clones and DNA. But I can see my parents believing in something like the fairy tale ending, their beloved daughter magically revived.

  Their other beloved daughter.

  “It can’t be true, can it?” I ask Joss. “What my mother said … Tell me she was lying. Tell me. Tell me.”

  I’m begging now, as if Joss has the power to change lies into truth, truth into lies. But Joss is shaking her head.

  “I can’t tell you that,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

  “Oh, right,” I say. “You don’t know answers, just questions.” I choke out a bitter laugh. “Hey, guess what? I bet this is one question you didn’t ask when you were thirteen.”

  “Bethany …,” Joss begins, but I can’t listen to her right now.

  In the dim light, I look down at the palms of my hands, raw and red and scraped from my fall on the concrete. My hands, I say, but are they mine? Or are they Elizabeth’s, revived, recycled, restored? Can I not even claim my own body as mine?