Double Identity

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “Well, then …” Joss says. “Want to go trick-or-treating, Bethany?”

  I stare at her in disbelief. One minute I’m being asked to decide Big Questions; the next, I’m supposed to shimmy into some infantile costume and collect candy from strangers?

  “No, thanks,” I say. And yet, back home, I’d been planning to go trick-or-treating this Halloween. I’d gone last year; my friends and I dressed up like Powerpuff Girls, “Going retro” we called it, just because my friend Molly had been really into the Powerpuff Girls when she was three or four. I’d fought with my parents because my dad insisted on walking with us. “Nobody else’s parents are going!” I’d screamed at him. I made him stay several paces behind us, and I’d laughed harder than anyone when Molly joked that he was dressed up to be a stalker “or maybe an undertaker, with that scary face of his.”

  I was just a kid, last year.

  Myrlie is whirling around the kitchen, grabbing bagged salad out of the refrigerator, muttering, “Chicken patties are quick.”

  “It’s going to be a long night,” Joss says. “Mom always gets dozens and dozens of trick-or-treaters.” She washes her hands and takes a tomato out of Myrlie’s hand to begin chopping.

  “Can’t you just turn out the lights?” I say. “Pretend no one’s home?”

  Myrlie looks horrified.

  “Oh, no. The kids are counting on me,” she says.

  “But at a time like this? When my parents are … ?” I can’t finish the sentence. I don’t know what my parents are, besides missing, and I can’t bring myself to say that.

  Myrlie stops zooming around long enough to pat my shoulder.

  “Believe me, honey, if I thought I could do anything else to help your parents right now, I’d do it. But just sitting in the dark waiting, pretending to be … absent … that’s not going to help anyone.”

  The doorbell rings again and Myrlie rushes out to answer it.

  “This is her way of dealing with everything,” Joss says, sliding the tomato into the salad. “I was so mad at her when I was thirteen, that first year after the accident, when she still wanted to celebrate Christmas and birthdays and Easter and the first robin that showed up in the spring. But … it does help. And short of calling the cops, what else are we going to do? You should pass out some of the candy too. It’ll cheer you up.”

  “Only in a mask,” I say bitterly.

  “No problem,” Joss says evenly. “By the end of the evening, Mom will probably be in full costume.”

  And, strangely, Joss is right. An hour later, after we’ve gobbled down our chicken patties and salad—interrupted six times by trick-or-treaters—Myrlie is wearing an enchantress’s gown and peaked hat, and Joss is dressed like a scarecrow; the trick-or-treaters who come to the door are oohing and ahhing over them as much as Myrlie and Joss ooh and ahh over the trick-or-treaters. Then Joss goes back into the kitchen to wash the dishes and Myrlie says, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Can you answer the door the next time it rings?”

  “Um …” I say. Since dinner, I’ve spent most of my time slumped down on the couch, out of sight of the door, pretending to watch TV.

  “Here,” Myrlie says, tossing me one of those fake noses with the dark glasses attached. It’s followed by a Raggedy Ann wig that she’s dug out of a box. “You need to get into the spirit of the holiday.”

  I put the glasses over my glasses and arrange the red-yarn hair over my hair, and somehow that does make me feel better. More anonymous, anyway, and anonymous is good right now. When the doorbell rings again three seconds later, I pick up the huge bowl of candy Myrlie left on the table and open the door.

  “Trick-or- … Wait a minute—you’re not Mrs. Wilker,” a pumpkin with arms, legs, and a head says.

  “No, but I’ve got the candy,” I say. “Want some?”

  I drop a Milky Way and a Snickers and a package of Sour Skittles into his bag. He beams at me from beneath green construction-paper tendrils that are evidently supposed to be his pumpkin vine.

  “Wow! Thanks!” he says.

  After that, Joss and Myrlie and I take turns passing out the candy. Most of the time, Myrlie knows the kids, and makes a game out of trying to guess who’s behind some of the masks: “Now, I know that wouldn’t be Timmy Rogers in such a scary costume…. What’s that? It is? Wow, Timmy, that makes me feel a whole lot better, because I know you’d be a nice monster.” She chats with the parents, too, and it’s like she’s truly an enchantress, holding court. It’s childish and silly, but I can see why she didn’t want to miss Halloween.

  By seven thirty, the constant parade of trick-or-treaters has trickled off, and Myrlie, Joss, and I are sitting on the couch with our feet propped up on the coffee table. Myrlie’s huge bowl holds only a sprinkling of candy bars.

  “I guess it’s safe to eat one now, because we’re not going to run out,” Myrlie says, unwrapping a Snickers. “Want some, Joss? Bethany?”

  Joss grabs a Three Musketeers. I start to reach into the bowl, then freeze. What would Elizabeth have chosen? If Elizabeth loved Sour Skittles too, will Joss and Myrlie tell me? Did Sour Skittles even exist twenty years ago?

  The doorbell rings again, and Myrlie and Joss groan.

  “I’ll take care of this one,” I say, glad of the distraction. I grab the bowl of candy and head for the door. I open it, thrust out the bowl and start to say, “Here. Take two of whichever kind you …”

  It’s not a trick-or-treater at the door. It’s a man, dressed in a business suit.

  “Hello, Bethany,” he says.

  So much for being disguised. I draw the candy bowl back against my chest, holding it like a shield. I squint at the man through my two layers of glasses. He’s got close-cropped, graying hair and a heavily lined face. He’s a big man—not fat, but bulky. I don’t recognize him, exactly, but I know his voice.

  He was the man in the car the night before at town square. The one who scared me.

  “Tell me,” the man says. “Is your dad around?”

  I glance frantically back over my shoulder. Joss is already up from the couch, coming to my rescue.

  “Who are you looking for?” Joss asks, stationing herself by my side.

  “Bethany’s father,” the man says. “Walter.”

  I notice he doesn’t say a last name.

  “Walter’s not here,” Joss says, raising her chin defiantly.

  “Where is he?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Joss says. “Would you like to leave him a message?”

  “Just tell him I stopped by,” the man says. “He’ll know why.”

  The man turns around and begins walking away. He’s on the steps down from Myrlie’s porch when Joss calls out, “Wait a minute—who are you? What’s your name?”

  The man looks back at us, his eyes narrowed.

  “Walter knows who I am,” he says, then turns away from us again. He finishes descending the stairs, walks down the sidewalk, opens the gate, begins to slip into the shadows.

  “Dalton?” I whisper. I raise my voice, shout out after the man, “Is your name Dalton?”

  The man hesitates, just for a moment. He seems startled. But then he keeps walking away from us, into the darkness.

  “That’s it,” Joss says. “I’m calling Bridgie.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  It takes the policeman more than an hour to get to Myrlie’s house.

  “Sorry,” he says, easing into a chair at Myrlie’s kitchen table. He takes a sip of the coffee she’s placed before him. “It being Halloween and all, I had to deal with an egging over on Vine Street. And some kids toilet-papered Mrs. Wade’s trees again. Now. What seems to be the problem here?”

  Myrlie and Joss give him an extremely abridged version of the last five days. They don’t say anything about my maybe being a clone or about my father sending $10,000 and fake birth certificates through the mail. The only parts they quote from his letter are the first three sentences: He is chasing me. He is hunting me down. I though
t he would stay in prison. They don’t offer to show Bridgie the letter.

  Bridgie listens carefully, the furrow in his brow getting deeper and deeper.

  “Okay,” he says when Joss and Myrlie are done. He looks puzzled. “You want me to put out a warrant for Dr. Krull on child abandonment charges?”

  “No,” Myrlie says. “Walter is just a little … troubled right now. It’s the man in the car we’re worried about.”

  Bridgie flips back through his notes.

  “It’s not illegal to offer someone a ride,” he says. “It’s not illegal to put an ad in the paper, if he’s even the one who did it. It’s not illegal to knock on someone’s door and not leave your name. It’s not illegal to look for somebody, and if Dr. Krull feels like he’s being chased or hunted, if he’s already in some kind of an, uh, unstable mental state already, changing his name and all, well, then that’s not this guy’s fault.”

  Bridgie taps his papers with his pen, almost jauntily.

  “The man hesitated when I asked if his name was Dalton,” I say softly. “I think he’s Dalton Van Dyne.”

  I’m standing behind the policeman, trying to stay out of sight because we’ve all taken off our costumes now. But when I say this he turns around to peer at me. I bend my head forward so my hair covers my face.

  “Uh, right,” Bridgie says. “We get a lot of ex-con embezzler millionaires retiring to Sanderfield.”

  I decide that if Joss and Bridgie really did date in high school, I hope it was Joss who broke up with him. I hope she broke his heart.

  “I know this all sounds a little … strange,” Myrlie says. “But isn’t there anything you can do to help us?”

  “Just as a favor, I’ll check with the Reporter about that ad,” Bridgie says. “And I can check with Chicago about the terms of Dalton Van Dyne’s release. There might have been some stipulation about him having to stay in the county, or something like that. I can’t say I’d mind getting a commendation for finding him here. But … it’s not very likely that it’s him, you know?”

  Bridgie gulps down the last of his coffee and stands up. Joss walks him to the front door. Myrlie shakes her head sadly at me.

  “Maybe we should have told him everything,” she says. “I don’t think he took us very seriously. But at least he’s helping some.”

  I shrug and drift out into the hall. I lean against the wall feeling utterly drained. I’m not really trying to eavesdrop, but I can hear Bridgie and Joss talking by the front door.

  “Doesn’t it freak you out having that girl around?” Bridgie is saying. “Looking so much like Elizabeth?”

  I wince, as if he’s hit me. I thought I was hiding so well, I thought my hair always covered my face, I thought he hadn’t even noticed.

  “It’s not Bethany’s fault,” Joss says.

  That makes me feel better, but I strain to hear Bridgie’s reply.

  “I guess,” Bridgie says. “You’d think, after all these years, it’d be easier than this…. But I still think about her. Every time I go to an accident scene, I think, ‘If only those state troopers had gotten to Elizabeth a little faster….’ Elizabeth was the first girl I ever kissed, you know that?”

  “You didn’t really think you were picking out the love of your life when you were seven years old, did you?” Joss says.

  I can’t hear his response, I’m so horrified.

  Wonderful, I think. Bridgie wasn’t Joss’s childhood sweetheart He was Elizabeth’s.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I wake up again in the middle of the night. This time I can’t blame the cut on my leg—it’s the nightmares that jolt me out of sleep. I’m being chased, and I’m screaming, “Daddy! Mommy! Help me!” But there’s no one there. I’m all alone. All I can hear are the footsteps behind me, just like the other night when I was lost—big, heavy footsteps. A man’s footsteps.

  It wasn’t Joss I heard, I tell myself. It was that man chasing me.

  In the no-man’s-land between sleep and full alertness, I’m so certain. I can see exactly how it must have been: The man was chasing me, and when I ran he got into his car and followed me to town square. And then he sat there in the shadows, out of sight, listening to everything Joss and I said. So he could choose the exact right moment to slide up beside us and offer us a ride….

  I’m out of bed and rushing for the door because I’ve got to wake up Myrlie and Joss and tell them what I’ve figured out. They’ve got to call the police again and tell them about this, this is solid evidence we’ve got now….

  And then I’m standing in the hallway, blinking in the harsh light that Myrlie left on for me, just in case, and I’m finally fully awake. I don’t have any solid evidence. I just had a nightmare.

  I sag against the wall outside my bedroom door and the rest of my nightmare comes back to me.

  In another part of my dream a lot of different people were chasing me—Mom and Dad, Joss and Myrlie, gymnastics coaches and Tom Wilker and the grandmother from the videotapes. Even the policeman, Officer Ryan Bridgeman, Bridgie—except he kept changing. One minute he was a little boy, the next he was an adult, the next he was a decrepit old man turning into a skeleton, telling me, “You’re the love of my life…. We’ll be together in death….”

  And what I kept screaming at all of them, dead or alive, was, “I am not Elizabeth! I am not Elizabeth!”

  “I am not Elizabeth,” I whisper to the wallpaper.

  But I don’t really know that; I don’t know exactly what it would mean to be a clone. Ever since my mother’s bizarre phone call, my mind has shut down in horror every time I’ve edged close to certain thoughts.

  “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” I whisper to myself.

  I tiptoe over to the stairs and ease down them, clutching the railing the entire way. I remember to skip over the squeaky second step.

  Downstairs, in the dark, I turn on the laptop computer and a table lamp. The computer hums itself to life and I stand there in my pool of light, staring at the icons on the screen.

  It’s just pixels, I tell myself. Digital bits of information. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but megabytes can never hurt me.

  I sit down at the computer and type two words into a Google search: “Human cloning.”

  Any computer teacher, any media specialist I’ve ever dealt with, would be proud of me, because I am so efficient gathering my information. I learn about replacing the nucleus of one cell with the nucleus of another; I learn about rabbits and sheep being used as low-tech artificial wombs for other animals. I do not even feel faint because it is all so scientific and remote. I did not know I could do this so completely, separate my brain and my emotions, so I can think without feeling a thing.

  I take a break from cloning research because I am thinking so well now that I have a genius moment. If I want to find out if the man who came to the door tonight really was Dalton Van Dyne, why don’t I just look at the embezzler’s picture online? Okay, it’s not exactly a genius moment—the policeman would have thought of it, if he’d taken us seriously. Joss and Myrlie would have thought of it if they hadn’t been so upset. But I’m the one who’s actually typing the words into the search engine. I even get fancy because I don’t want to waste any time: I limit my search to pictures taken in the last year.

  Nothing comes up.

  Well duh, I think. He’s been in prison. It’s not like he’s been at summer camp, where they take pictures constantly and splash it all over the Web so your friends back home can see what you’ve been up to and get jealous.

  Still, I’m a little surprised, because the newspaper and TV stations made such a big deal about his getting out of prison. I’d have thought someone would have aimed a camera at him coming out. I’d have thought he would have had a news conference.

  I rewrite my search request, looking for coverage of him leaving prison, but every Web site I can find uses old photos, from before he was sentenced. And staring at those photos… I just can’t tel
l. Dalton Van Dyne was a handsome man thirteen or fourteen years ago, with thick chestnut-colored hair, chiseled features, and a way of looking at the camera as if to say, “Oh, yeah, look at me. I am Somebody Very Important.” I am not surprised to see that some of the pictures come from People magazine, when he was named one of the world’s most eligible bachelors—years ago, before I was born.

  The man who stood on Myrlie’s porch had the right height and the right build and maybe even the right features, if I am remembering him correctly. But he looked so worn and weary and worried.

  Maybe that’s what prison did to him, I think. Or … just age. Images flicker in my mind of the stooped, anxious father I’ve always known, compared with the young, carefree father in all the videotapes with Elizabeth.

  I read more about Dalton Van Dyne because I can’t quite bear to go back to my cloning research yet. No matter how good-looking he was, he doesn’t sound like a very pleasant person. He was ruthless running Digispur, taking over smaller companies and putting them out of business, laying off scads of employees. He closed down a factory in Tennessee the day before Christmas, and bragged about it. He fired a secretary for spilling coffee on his desk. One of the articles I read calls him “vainglorious,” and for the first time since I’ve arrived at Myrlie’s I decide I’ve discovered a new word I like. “Vainglorious” is perfect for such a conceited jerk.

  I am almost enjoying reading about what a horrible person he was, because I’ve pretty much decided that he has absolutely nothing to do with me or my parents. My father never would have worked for such a narcissistic, heartless braggart.

  And then I find a Dalton Van Dyne quote online that makes my heart stop. An interviewer had asked him about Dolly the cloned sheep:

  “Of course I think it’s wonderful,” Mr. Van Dyne said, “I wish some of my boys had figured it out, But sheep-that’s nothing, Just a dumb farm animal that’s going to spend its life standing around eating and pooping, Human cloning’s the real deal, The first person who can show off a human clone-with proof-will be hailed as a modern god, He’d replace God, I’d do it in a heartbeat, You know me-I love adulation.”