DupliKate (6 page)

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8

• Essay! I MEAN IT THIS TIME!
  
• Yearbook meeting
  
• E-mail Carmen re help w/ volleyball flyers
  
• E-mail prom committee re DJ vs. band (google local DJs? student DJ?)
  
• Finals—amendment list for govt, French vocab & essay Q’s, bio diagrams
  
• SAT practice at least 4 sections
  
• Robot calculations (possibly do this Sunday if really rocking out on SAT crap)
  
• Essay critiques for Renner
  
• Work out? Probably not
  

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9

• ESSAY! UNLESS YOU GOT IT DONE YESTERDAY, IN WHICH CASE YOU ARE A ROCK STAR!
  
• School board meeting
  
• Dinner/study
  break
  with Paul
  
• Study break with girls? Did I say yes to this?
  No
  
• English paper
  
• All the stuff on Saturday you were supposed to do but probably didn’t
  
• AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
  

(Quit being so melodramatic)

MY MOM WAS STANDING IN OUR KITCHEN,
peering into the freezer. “Kate?” she asked. “What happened to all the frozen pizzas?” She was dressed in her usual “it’s Saturday but I’m still going to the office” outfit of black pants and an untucked button-down, and her face was puzzled.

I looked up from the kitchen table, where I was nursing a cup of coffee and staring into my biology textbook. I knew exactly what she was talking about: two days ago there had been six Stouffer’s frozen French bread pizzas in the freezer, and now there was only one.

“Yeah, sorry, I’ve been stress-eating,” I said. That wasn’t exactly a lie—I definitely had been. But my stress-eating was confined mostly to candy bars out of the school vending machines, whereas the pizzas were all Rina.

“Oh, to be seventeen and have that metabolism again,” my mom said.

“Yep, that’s me,” I said. “Burning calories like a jackrabbit.” I got out of my chair and hopped up and down to illustrate my point, then walked over to the sink to rinse my coffee mug. My mom smiled and wrote “frozen pizza” on the grocery list stuck to the fridge, then picked up her purse and car keys from the kitchen table. She swung her coat over her shoulder and called, “Might be home late!” as she walked out the door.

I closed my bio book and smiled to myself. Rina and I had gotten used to sharing my room, and she’d made a cozy little space for herself in the walk-in closet with my sleeping bag and a flashlight for reading. But with my mom gone all day, we both had the run of the house.

“Be back in an hour or so!” I yelled up the stairs. I couldn’t fathom why our yearbook advisor, Mr. Butler, had picked the weekend before finals to discuss sales strategies for the ad pages, but four student editors couldn’t exactly stage an uprising against a teacher.

“Okay!” Rina’s voice came floating down from the upstairs hallway, followed by the sound of running feet. She appeared at the bottom of the staircase just as I was on my way out. “Here,” she said. “I noticed you like flash cards, so I made you some for government.” She handed me a stack of index cards.

“Oh! Oh my God,” I said, flipping through the cards. They were numbered one through twenty-seven on one side
and had neatly printed descriptions of the constitutional amendments on the other. “Wow, these are great. Thanks.” I put the cards into my bag.

“You’re welcome!” said Rina. “You’ve got so much to do. I figured it would help you out a little. By the way, do you think after your Yale visit is over, we could talk about me going to journalism school?”

“Um…what?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I can’t just sit around our room the rest of my life, can I?” Rina asked cheerfully. “Maybe not journalism, maybe poli-sci or prelaw—I’m not sure yet.” She waved at me and went into the living room, and I heard the muffled noise of the TV clicking on as I went into the garage. I mean, I
had
planned on figuring out what to do with Rina once hell week was over, but I was aiming more along the lines of sending her back into the computer game, not getting her into college. I had my own getting-into-college problems.

The yearbook meeting, however, was no longer one of them. “Canceled,” said my coeditor Liza, who burst out of the school door to the parking lot just as I was reaching out my hand to open it. “Butler moved it to next week, time TBD. He’s gonna e-mail us.”

My eyes widened and I turned around and followed Liza, who had whooshed by me and was now briskly walking toward her car. “He moved it to
finals week?
” I asked.
“Oh my God, I’m so screwed!” The last thing I needed was an eleventh-hour change to my study schedule.

Liza looked back at me quizzically. “What’re you talking about? This is awesome. Now we don’t have to be in school on a Saturday!” She got in her car and took off, yelling, “Canceled!” out the window at an arriving car, which promptly turned around and left. Suddenly I was alone, staring at a bunch of empty parking spaces as the wind whipped my hair around my face.

Well, nothing to do but go home.
It’ll be fine
, I told myself as I unlocked my driver’s side door. The reschedule would clearly put a dent in next week, but at least it meant I had an extra hour right now, which I could use to work on my essay. And I had to admit that it would be nice to go up to my room, kick off my shoes, and change back into sweats.

Except that as I turned the corner onto my street and drove toward my house, I noticed a strange car in the driveway.

This could not be good.

I parked a few houses away—if there was someone in there with Rina, the last thing I wanted to do was alert them to another me arriving on the premises. I then inched toward my house from an angle, in case anyone suddenly came out the front door, and sneaked around to the backyard. I edged up to the living room window and peeked
in. The curtains were slightly open, a point against Rina, since she was supposed to close them, but at least I could see inside.

Someone
was
in there with Rina.

It was Jake.

What the—?

I instinctively ducked down, crouching in the dead grass and wincing as my knees bonked against the outside wall of the house. Then I peeked my head up over the windowsill again. They were sitting on the living room couch; Jake in ratty jeans and an even rattier T-shirt, Rina in yoga pants and one of my tank tops. His feet were resting on the coffee table; hers were curled under her. The TV was on, but they weren’t watching it; they were talking. And from the smiles on their faces, they were both having a dandy time.

Weird.

I kept watching, feeling like a creepy voyeur, but not even considering looking away. Jake was leaning toward Rina, apparently really interested in what she was saying, and Rina was smiling and twisting locks of her hair around her fingers. What could they possibly be talking about? Physics? It had to be physics, right?

Suddenly Rina laughed and shoved Jake a little. Then, instead of backing away to her original position, she stayed close.

Oh my God. Was she flirting?

I blinked in disbelief, then looked at them again. Rina was relaxing so far into the cushions of the couch that her head was practically on his shoulder. Christ, she
was
flirting!

I looked down at my phone, then at my car keys, trying to figure out the best way to stop this as quickly as possible. Should I call the home number? No, I’d told Rina to let the answering machine get everything. Should I go back to my car and pull into the garage, knowing that Rina would hear it and retreat to the closet? Yes, that was probably the best plan. I grabbed my bag and started to get up from my crouching position, and as I glanced through the window I saw Jake and Rina again.

Except this time they were kissing.

Aaaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I actually yelped in horror, then sprinted back around to the front of the house. What? How? A million thoughts flew through my mind, but first I had to stop the atrocity in my living room.
Immediately
. I looked at Jake’s car and wondered if it had an alarm, then eyed the big decorative rocks around one of the trees in the front yard and wondered if I had the balls to throw one through his car window. No. I didn’t. Instead, I rang the doorbell ten times in a row, which made absolutely no sense but at least would distract them; then I hid at the side of the house. A few moments later, Jake got in his car and drove away. As soon as he was out of
sight, I sprinted in the front door and found Rina still in the living room.

“WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?!?” I screamed at her. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?”

She looked taken aback. “Oh my God, calm down,” she said, stepping away from me as if she was afraid I was going to hit her. Smart girl.

“I will
not
calm down!” I screamed, pacing around the room and looking for something to throw. I settled for punching a couch cushion. “Do you realize what you just did?”

“Yeah, I just kissed a boy for the first time!” Rina squealed. “And it was
awesome
!”

“You can’t kiss that one!” I yelled. I picked up the cushion I’d just punched and gripped it tightly in my hands to keep from punching something else—namely, Rina’s face.

“Why not?” she asked. She looked confused. “He’s not Paul. You just said to stay away from Paul.”

“Yeah, but—”

“So what’s the problem?” she asked, sitting down in the armchair next to the couch. “Jake’s cute! And really easy to talk to! He came by to drop off your physics stuff, and—”

“He thinks you’re me!” I yelled, spiking the couch cushion onto the floor and then kicking it. I was this close to slamming her head into the coffee table.

“That’s great!” Rina said. “That means he likes
you
!”

“No,” I said, my voice icy with anger, “That means he thinks I’m a girl who cheats on her boyfriend! And it also means that he thinks
I
like
him
! Do you not get it? What the hell part of this don’t you get?”

Rina stared at me, wide-eyed. “Oh,” she said finally. “Right. I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I’m gonna be if—oh my God, what if he tells someone? Paul’s gonna break up with me!” I felt a moment of sheer, blind panic, and I frantically looked around the room as if help were magically going to arrive from somewhere, bursting out of the walls or materializing in the fireplace. “If anybody hears about this, they’re totally gonna tell, and it’s gonna get back to Paul somehow, and then he’s gonna—”

“Nobody’s gonna hear about it,” said Rina. “Don’t worry.”

“How the hell do you know? Jake could be telling half the world by now!” Oh my God, I had to text Paul. No, I had to call Paul. But what was I going to say? I opened my phone, saw the picture of Paul that I have as a background, freaked out, and closed it again and threw it onto the couch. No.
No panic-texting
, I told myself.
That’s even worse than drunk-texting
. Calm down. I just had to calm down.

“Jake won’t say anything,” Rina said. “He just doesn’t seem like that kind of person, you know? You
should
know. Didn’t you used to be friends?”

“You guys talked about that?”

“Sure,” Rina shrugged. “We talked about a bunch of stuff. Did you know he wants to go to art school?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said distractedly. “He likes drawing.”

“Painting too. He said he might want to be a storyboard artist for movies or something. Oh, and he drew this little cartoon of me. Or you.” She dug a Post-it note out of the couch cushions and held it out, a little ink drawing of a wavy-haired girl wearing a minidress and a cape, done vaguely anime style. It was super cute.

Christ.

I sank down onto the end of the couch that was farther away from Rina, hugged a throw pillow to my chest (both for comfort and to have it ready to chuck at her head if necessary), and closed my eyes.

“Kate?” asked Rina in a small voice.

“Yeah,” I answered flatly, keeping my eyes closed.

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that already.”

“I know, but I really am,” Rina said. “I wasn’t thinking. I mean, it’s just—he was flirting with me, and—”

I opened my eyes and sat up. “
He
was flirting with
you?
Because from what I saw,
you
were the one getting all up in his face.” I pasted on a goofy grin and twirled my hair in my fingers, imitating what I’d seen her doing.

“Yeah, but he was all, you know, smiley and nice, so I figured—”

“Smiley and nice? Jake is never smiley and nice,” I snapped. “He’s occasionally not a jerk, but it’s usually, like, grudgingly. Begrudgingly. Whatever.” Through my still-simmering rage, I mentally cursed Jake for not texting me before dropping off the robot specs. How rude was he, just swinging by my house like that? Or maybe it was my own fault. I should’ve made him set a specific time instead of agreeing to play it by ear. Then none of this would have happened.

Wait, why was I blaming myself? This was all on Rina. “Why the
hell
did you open the door?” I yelled.

“Maybe you should try being nicer to him,” Rina said, ignoring my question. “It was pretty mean of you to ditch him just because Paul thought he was a slacker.”

“That is
not
how it happened.”

Rina shrugged. “According to him it was. So I was like, yeah, sorry about that. And then he kind of warmed up and got friendlier….”

“Yeah,” I snapped. “I saw.” I felt absolutely sick. The things Rina had said to Jake, Jake now thought
I
had said. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it. There was also nothing I could do about the image of them kissing—which was pretty much a visual of
me
and Jake kissing—that was now permanently burned into my eyeballs.

Rina suddenly got up. “I know what’ll make you feel better!” she said, running upstairs.

“You never coming back down because you’ve somehow disappeared?” I called after her.

“Don’t be mean!” came her muffled reply. In a minute she returned with some papers in her hand. “Here,” she said, giving me the thin, neatly stapled stack. “I was saving it for tomorrow, but—”

“What is this?” I asked. I looked at it. It looked like an English paper on
The Sound and the Fury
. I scanned through the pages. It
was
an English paper on
The Sound and the Fury
. It was due Monday, actually, for my take-home final, except I hadn’t written it yet.

“I wrote it for you!” Rina said cheerfully. “I saw in your planner that it was due Monday, and you’ve been so stressed, so yesterday I looked at your notes from class, and the stuff you highlighted in the book, and then I wrote it for you!”

“What? Why the hell would you do that?”

“You’re stressed,” she repeated. “I thought it would help you out. You know, like the flash cards.”

I flung the paper aside. “No! I mean, I can’t. Flash cards are one thing, but a whole paper is just…sketchy.”

“Then let me help you some other way,” Rina insisted. “Please? I know I screwed up, so if there’s anything I can do, seriously, anything—”