Doppelganger

chapter FIVE

Getting to school wasn’t too hard. I just stood out on the corner with a bunch of other kids my own age, and pretty soon a bus came by and picked us up. I was a little nervous when I first showed up and some of the kids started talking to me, but after a while I began to relax. It was kind of like a warm-up for the rest of the day.

Some guy asked me where I was yesterday, and I told him I was sick. Another asked with what, and I said it was my stomach. And blahbitty, blahbitty, blah. It’s surprising how easy it is to fake it with most people, especially if they think you’re who you appear to be and don’t know any better. You just sort of keep your mouth shut for the most part, and spend the rest of the time agreeing with whatever the other person says. “You bet!” “You’re right!” “Totally!” People like it when you agree with them. And if anybody notices anything different about you, you just say something like, “I’m just really tired,” or “I don’t feel so hot today,” or “I think I’m coming down with something,” and people pretty much let it slide. Besides, most of the stuff people talk about is meaningless anyway. Any moron can talk.

Pretty soon the bus dropped us off, and I found myself being ushered along with the crowd into a big brick building with a sign out front that said “Bakersville High School—Home of the Sharks,” which I thought was pretty funny since we weren’t anywhere near the ocean that I could tell.

I’d seen plenty of high school movies and TV shows before, so the scene inside wasn’t too strange. The kids looked pretty much the same, all standing in clusters here and there along the hallways, talking, laughing. Even though it was first thing in the morning, it was a Friday, and people were excited for the weekend.

As I walked down the hall, kids kept saying “Hi!” to me as I passed, patting me on the back, or giving me a little punch on the arm. The girls were especially friendly. They kept giving me these smiles and saying “Hi, Chris,” in this weird singsongy voice that made me feel a little prickly in a good sort of way. When Chris told me everybody liked him, I hadn’t believed him, but it seemed now that he’d been right, and for the first time it felt good to be Chris Parker. So good that by the time I found Josh and Steve with a bunch of other jocks, I was brimming with confidence.

“What’s up,” Steve said, grinning and holding out his hand. I held out my hand too, and he grabbed it and did some weird little move that involved clapping and snapping and something else that I couldn’t catch in time.

“What’s up,” I replied. That’s another little trick I figured out—if someone says something to you and you’re not sure how to respond, just repeat it back to them. Half the time they don’t even notice.

“Missed you yesterday, Parker,” Josh said. “Coach was mad. You better lay low at practice.”

“Planning on it,” I said.

“Hey, where’s your jersey?” Steve said, giving me a little shove. One of the things I’ve noticed about human males, especially the jocks, is that they’re always touching each other. They make a big deal about not being “queer,” but between the shoving and punching and slapping, not to mention the headlocks and butt smacks, it’s like they can’t keep their hands off each other.

I quickly realized the rest of the guys were all wearing their football jerseys.

“In the wash,” I said, hoping it would stick.

Steve shook his head. “I do not want to be you at practice today.”

Great. The last thing I needed was to call attention to myself.

I stood around with the other guys for a while and half listened to them talk about football. From what I could gather, they were wearing their jerseys because of the game against Waterbury tomorrow, but I was more interested in finding Amber. Shouldn’t she have met me by my locker? Isn’t that what high school girlfriends are supposed to do?

By the time the bell rang for first period, any confidence I’d gained had vanished. I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was supposed to go. Fortunately good old Josh saved the day.

“Let’s go, Parker. We got history.”

“You’re right,” I said, and followed him down the hall. After about a dozen steps he stopped, then I stopped, and we both just sort of looked at each other.

“Aren’t you going to get your books?” he asked, gesturing toward the bank of lockers behind me.

Oops, I thought, following his gesture. This could be bad.

“Um,” I tried to stall. “Ah, screw it,” I suddenly said, and sort of shrugged my shoulders like I was tough and all, and to hell with school.

Josh just sort of shook his head and snorted. He pushed by me, went up to a locker, and banged twice. It opened to reveal a pile of books.

“Come on,” he said. “You know how Johnson can be. Not that it matters—we’re just going to be watching a video like we do every other day.”

“All right,” I said. I went up to the locker and peered in. There was a picture of some girl taped to the inside door that looked like it had been taken out of one of the magazines in Chris’s closet. I looked over Chris’s books as students continued to rush by on their way to class.

“Hurry up,” Josh barked, “we’re going to be late.”

Finally I just grabbed the whole stack and followed Josh down the hall. We made it to class just in time, taking the last pair of seats as the bell rang. Mr. Johnson called the class to order, and I was off—my first day of school had officially begun.

Fortunately history turned out to be U.S. history, something I’d learned about already. Of course, it wasn’t a high school book I’d studied back at the cabin, but based on the questions Mr. Johnson asked us, it wasn’t that much harder. In fact, I don’t mean to brag, but I seemed to know more than most of the other kids in the class did. It was early in the year, and we were in the middle of the Revolutionary War. After a bit of discussion, the lights were turned out and we watched a video, while Johnson graded papers at his desk.

The video was a documentary on the Founding Fathers. It turned out I’d seen the whole series three times already on public television, so I used the period to go through Chris’s notebook and try to get a sense of what was going on. Fortunately his schedule was taped to the inside. History, study hall, science, phys ed, math, English—it all seemed pretty run of the mill. The only class that really raised a flag was Spanish 2, right before lunch. The only Spanish I knew was what I’d learned watching Sesame Street.

The bell rang and everyone headed out. Josh and I parted company, and I followed the door numbers until I found my next class.

The day went on like this. I kept a low profile, and nobody really called on me or anything. Even Spanish turned out not to be too bad. The teacher, Mrs. Olson, spoke mostly in English as we worked on conjugating verbs. At one point, though, she turned to me, rattled something off in Spanish, and waited. I just repeated it back to her and then held my breath as she gave me a sort of funny look and a few kids snickered. There was a long pause. Uh-oh, I thought.

“That was excellent, Chris,” she said at last. “Really, a good job.”

“Gracias,” I said, and smiled.

In spite of that, I found the period to be pretty stressful, so when the bell rang and everyone headed off, I went up to speak with her.



“I was wondering if it was too late to drop the class,” I asked.

She frowned a little and shook her head. “It’s still early enough in the year,” she said, “but I wouldn’t advise it. Remember, most colleges require at least two years of a language.”

“Well,” I said, “somehow I don’t think I’ll be going to college.”

“Now, Chris,” she said, “I know you’ve had your struggles in school, especially in my class, but you shouldn’t give up. I hear a lot of talk about how you’re due for a big football scholarship. Just stick with it. You’ve got a bright future ahead of you.”

Yeah, really bright, I thought. “Thanks,” I murmured. I suddenly wanted to disappear, to shrivel up and blow away or crawl into some dark hole. I wondered if that culvert Chris was in had room enough for two.

“Besides,” she said, “I’ve never heard you speak so fluidly as you did today. It was beautiful—I think you may be turning a corner.”

“Maybe,” I said.

I turned and left the room, resisting the urge to break into a dead run and keep on going right out the front door. Instead, I ducked into the boy’s bathroom and splashed some water on my face. All of a sudden, I wasn’t feeling so good.

“Keep it together,” I said, looking in the mirror, watching the water drip off my face.

That was when I saw it.

It started with just a little twitch in the corner of my right eye. As I leaned in to check it out, both eyes swelled to watery, yellow bulbs, both pupils drew into slits, and there I was, staring into doppelganger eyes. I jumped back and gasped.

It only lasted a moment before fading with no more than a ripple.

A toilet flushed, sending my heart into my throat. I dried my face with my shirt as one of the stall doors opened and a tall boy with a shaved head came out.

“Come on, Parker,” he said, barely looking at me as he headed for the door. “You’re going to miss lunch.”

I followed him to the cafeteria and went to the end of the lunch line. It was pretty straightforward—get your tray, get your food, swipe your card, find a seat. I fumbled a little before finding the right card in Chris’s wallet, but pretty soon I was through the line, looking desperately for a seat amid the sea of students. Steve flagged me as I drifted by.

I sat down, nodded to everyone at the table, and began picking at my food. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an appetite. I did. I hadn’t had that much to eat these last few weeks and it was all starting to catch up with me. But suddenly I didn’t feel like eating. It’s like I couldn’t swallow right or something. Meanwhile, Steve started going off on all the kids around us, making nasty comments about this guy’s face or that girl’s tits or which freshman he’d like to bang. Really gross stuff. I tried to ignore it for a while, but toward the end of lunch I just sort of lost it.

“Dude, will you shut up?” I said. I was practically yelling. I knew I shouldn’t have said it, but I was still feeling pretty lousy from my talk with Mrs. Olson, not to mention freaked out by what I’d seen in the bathroom. A few heads turned.



Steve seemed pretty taken aback. He kind of shrank for a second.

“What’s your problem?” he snipped. Then he looked up over my shoulder. “Oh, I get it,” he said. He picked up his tray and left. So did everyone else.

“Feeling better?” a girl’s voice said behind me.

Even before I turned, I knew it was her. I’d never heard her speak, but it was like I just knew. I looked up and saw her standing there in a cheerleading outfit, looking down at me. Her red hair was pulled partway back and hung around her like a fiery halo, and she was smiling, but in a weird sort of way. Her lips were tight, like she was trying to hold in a secret.

“Hi,” I said, a bit hoarsely. I moved over and she sat down. As soon as she did, the smile dropped. I reached forward to take her hand and saw her flinch. It was almost imperceptible—I don’t think anyone else noticed—but it made me pull back.

“I was looking for you this morning,” I said.

“Funny,” she said. Ouch. I could almost feel the ice crystals creeping up my legs from the bench we shared. I decided to just shut up.

“Where’s your jersey?” she asked after a bit.

“Forgot it,” I said. That goddam jersey.

“Great. At least we would have been matching. Now I look like even more of a dork in this thing,” she said, giving a tug at her uniform. “And I swear just about every guy in school has checked out my ass today with this stupid skirt as short as it is.”

“Can’t say as I blame them,” I said, trying to smile. I figured it was the kind of thing that Chris might say. I must have been right, because she gave me a nasty snort and rolled her eyes.

“So,” she said, after a little bit, “we still going out tonight or what?”

I froze as soon as she said it.

She sensed my hesitation. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine with me. I’d just as soon not go. But Cheryl’s been bugging me all week. Says she even got a DJ. I think it’s that jerk who graduated last year. Oh, what’s his name?”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Well, who cares, anyway.”

“I do,” I said. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind going.” I should have taken her up on her offer to bail, but for some reason, I didn’t.

She looked at me and rolled her eyes again. “All right, whatever,” she said. “Just pick me up at nine. You know how I hate getting there early.”

“How about you pick me up?” I suggested. I didn’t know how to drive, let alone where she lived. “My father needs the car,” I explained.

“You mean I get to drive?” she said. “How enlightened of you.”

The bell rang. Everybody around us started moving. She leaned in and fixed me with a glare.

“All I can say is, it better not be like last time.”

“You mean last time wasn’t good?” I asked. Big mistake on my part. As soon as I said it, she recoiled in disgust. I think if she’d had a knife, she would have stabbed me.

“You’re a bastard,” she said. She got up and left.

Way to go, Chris, I thought as I watched her walk away.

The last class of the day was English. The teacher, Ms. Simpson, was young and pretty, and you could feel the energy rise in the room the moment she walked in.

“All right, everybody, get out your Macbeths and turn to act two. We’re going to pick up where we left off yesterday.”

I pulled out the paperback and checked the cover.

Shakespeare. I’d heard of the guy, but my mother never brought any of his stuff home for me to read.

“When we started this play at the beginning of the week, what was our take on Macbeth?” Ms. Simpson asked. “Susie?”

“Well, like, he was a hero, right?”

“Yeah, he was the good guy,” a boy added.

“That’s right,” Ms. Simpson agreed. “Before we even saw him, we heard about his exploits. And, like you said, he was the hero. But what made him a hero? I mean, what was he doing, Richard?”

“Killing,” Richard said. “The bleeding sergeant describes him slicing that rebel dude in half and sticking his head on a pole.”

“That’s right. And how does Duncan, the king, react to the description?”

“He gets all excited,” a girl said.

“He does. And who can blame him? After all, Macbeth has just saved his royal rearend. But the point here is that, right away, Shakespeare’s showing us that the world of the play is a violent one, and that everyone is complicit in that violence, from the king on down. Most of all our hero—Macbeth is knee-deep in it from the start.”

“But even so, why does he turn around and suddenly go after the king?” a boy asked.



“It’s his wife, man,” Richard said. “You saw what she did to him. She totally manipulated him.”

“So what?” the kid replied. “He’s still responsible, isn’t he?”

“You both raise interesting points,” Ms. Simpson said. “What is it that leads Macbeth to do what he does? I want you all to think about that as we make our way through the scenes surrounding the murder. So let’s get started.”

I shrank in my seat as she went around handing out parts. Her eyes fell on me for a second, but she gave me a pass. I was glad—the last thing I wanted was to have to read in front of everyone on the first day. Not to mention the fact that all this talk about killing had me a little freaked out.

Of course, as soon as we started reading, things only got worse. Don’t get me wrong, the play itself was great. I mean, I didn’t understand half of what the characters were saying, but somehow it didn’t matter. I understood enough, and Ms. Simpson explained the tougher parts. The trouble was that the play was almost too good. It was really creepy—all that darkness in the old castle and the weird hallucinations with the dagger and the blood. Shakespeare didn’t depict the actual murder, but I wish he had. All I could see were my hands around Chris’s throat, and that look of confused terror in his eyes. I can only imagine what he must have been thinking when that old man strangling him suddenly turned into a slimy monster. What a way to go.

At one point I almost bolted from the classroom. It was the part where Macbeth has just come back from Duncan’s room, fresh from the murder, and there’s this weird moment of confusion with his wife—they’re both jumpy as hell, big surprise. And then Macbeth looks at his hands, and they’re all covered with blood. “This is a sorry sight,” he says. It’s like I could feel the panic in him, the instant regret, and it made me feel all panicky. Once again I got that weird rush, that sick sort of full feeling, and I thought I might throw up. I looked around at the other kids. A few were looking at the ceiling or writing notes, the rest were reading along, but none of them seemed particularly bothered by any of it. None of them had done what I’d done.

The scene after that was better. That bit with the gatekeeper was pretty funny. Ms. Simpson called it comic relief, which I guess is a good name for it because it made me feel relieved. Then there was the discovery of the body. Pretty soon you’ve got the characters running around upset, and in the middle of it all you’ve got Macbeth trying to act like he’s all outraged by the killing, but doing an awful job of it, to the point where Lady Macbeth has to step in and pretend to faint to distract everyone from his guilt. Listening to that I suddenly hoped I was doing a better job pretending than he was. Macbeth just wasn’t good at it. He talked too much.

When we finished, Ms. Simpson asked us what we thought, and a few kids talked about it for a while. I looked at the clock—only a minute to go. At that point I was more than ready to get out of there. Then somebody asked Ms. Simpson a question.

“But I still don’t get it,” the girl next to me said. “Everybody loved him. He was, like, the big hero. Why did he feel he had to go and kill like that?”

Ms. Simpson nodded. “Good question,” she said. She looked around the room for a second and then her eyes fell on me again. This time she didn’t let me go. “So why does Macbeth do it? What do you think, Chris?”

Everyone turned and looked at me.

I shrugged. “Maybe that’s just who he is,” I said. “Even if a part of him doesn’t want to do it, it’s just what’s in him.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Interesting. I think that’s what Shakespeare might be suggesting. That’s the horror of it. Even more horrible is the thought that, in the right circumstances, any one of us could wind up in the same position. It’s easy to sit there and say, ‘Oh, isn’t it awful what Macbeth did,’ but maybe Shakespeare’s trying to tell us we all have a little bit of Macbeth in us. We just have to hope it never comes out.”

The room was quiet for a moment. Then the bell rang. Everyone jumped to their feet.

“Have a great weekend, everybody,” Ms. Simpson chirped.



I was stumbling numbly toward the buses lined up in front of the school, looking forward to going home and collapsing in front of the TV, when Josh grabbed my arm and spun me around.

“Wrong way, pal,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I can see why you’d say that, but if we head over now, maybe we can get you changed up before Coach sees you’re not wearing your jersey.”



He laughed again, but he seemed all nervous and scared. At that point I was too tired to share the sentiment.

“Good thing I got you to watch my back,” I said.

“Screw you,” he said, “I just don’t want him to get pissed off and take it out on all of us.”

I sighed. The last thing I felt like right now was going to practice, but I figured I had to. From the way everyone acted, it seemed that Chris was some big-time player and sooner or later I’d have to face it. To be honest, it wasn’t just that I was tired. I was nervous, too. After watching the game yesterday afternoon on TV, I thought I understood the basics pretty well, but how could I be sure? All those positions, and everyone moving every which way at once, like they all knew where they were supposed to go—it looked confusing.

I decided to probe Josh a bit as we headed for the locker room. From what Barry had said, I knew that I was a linebacker, but I didn’t have a clue what that meant.

“So what do you think of our positions, anyway?”

“What do you mean?” Josh asked, screwing up his face.

“I mean, do you like them? Do you wish you were somewhere else?”

He shrugged. “I can’t speak for you, since I’m not a linebacker. As for tight end, I don’t mind it. Get to catch a pass now and then—or drop one, more like it.”

“Have you ever thought of being a linebacker?”

He looked at me. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

“Just answer my question. I mean, boiled right down to its simplest form, what does being a linebacker mean to you?”

“Well, it’s pretty simple, really. Whoever’s got the ball, you go after them and take them out. That’s your job.”

I nodded. “Good answer,” I said, and slapped him on the back.

He glanced at me with kind of an odd look. “What are you, kidding me?”

“What?”

“You sound like you’re still drunk from the other night or something.”

“Yeah, I’m just kidding. Just messing with you,” I said as we turned into the locker room.

I found the locker with my name on it and got changed. The pads were a little tricky, but after a bit of fiddling, I managed to get suited up. I just copied what Josh, Steve, and everyone else was doing. Of course, I had to be careful—a boys’ locker room’s not the kind of place you can stare too much. The only bad part was the smell. Doppelgangers have real sensitive noses, and that place stunk even before practice. As soon as I opened Chris’s locker, his smell swept over me, that odor of sweat, aggression, and fear—just like the other night—and for a moment I had to turn away.

At one point the coach—whom everyone called “Coach!”—poked his head in.

“Hurry up, you Sallies! We haven’t got all day!” he barked, then disappeared.

Coach Ballard, one of the assistants, seemed a little more laid back. He came in clapping his hands and actually smiling.

“Let’s go, guys,” he said as everyone scrambled for the door. “Big game tomorrow. Got to get ready!” He stopped me as I passed by. “Good to see you back, Parker.”

“Thanks,” I replied.



“You missed a big practice yesterday. Went over a lot of stuff. Get ready for Coach to ride you pretty hard.”

“But I was sick,” I said. Jesus, these football people were uptight.

“Just giving you a heads-up, that’s all.”

“Thanks,” I said, and followed everyone out onto the field.

Practice wasn’t too bad, at least at first. Coach gave me a scowl as I came out of the locker room, but he didn’t say anything. We formed up and ran around the field a bunch of times, then did warm-ups and grunted like gorillas. It was actually sort of fun. I felt like one of the guys. I just fell in line and moved when everyone else moved, like in those aerobics infomercials I’d seen on TV. And I guess all that walking I’d done over the last few weeks paid off, because I didn’t really get that tired.

The second part of practice was tougher. We had to do all these different kinds of drills with weird names like “bull in the ring” and “monkey rolls.” I mean, who comes up with this stuff? I did the best I could, but I didn’t have a clue what was going on—there are limits to faking it. Coach was on me every second for one stretch, standing over me and screaming every time I made a mistake. It was like he was waiting for me to screw up so he’d have an excuse to blow out my eardrums. He seemed like an even bigger jerk than Chris’s father. It pissed me off at first, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming right back at him, but after a while I just tuned him out. I think he wanted me to get mad. He kept telling me I needed to be “more aggressive!” over and over. More, more, more, more, more! Screw him, I thought.



In the end missing practice the day before turned out to be the best thing I could have done. It gave me an excuse for being clueless. Every time I screwed up, Coach would scream, “If you’d been here yesterday, you’d know what the hell was going on!” and I’d just nod and try it again. After a while he got tired of hassling me and moved on to someone else. Not long after that, practice ended.

What really got me through the whole thing, oddly enough, was Amber. I just kept thinking about her, and every time I did, I forgot about all the other crap. While the autumn sun cast long shadows on the field and we all huffed and hollered and banged each other around, her face kept popping up in my mind.

After a while it kind of annoyed me. I mean, sure I found her attractive—anyone would. But with Amber, it seemed to be more than just the fact that she was hot. There was something else. I just didn’t get it. Why was I thinking about her at all? I mean, I didn’t even know her. Why did I pull that stupid card out from under Chris’s bed and read it again this morning, just like I’d done last night before going to sleep? Worst of all, why was I still feeling this way after our encounter at lunch? She hadn’t been particularly upbeat or nice. In fact, from what I could tell, she seemed to hate my guts—or Chris’s guts, at least—and I had no idea how to dig myself out of that hole. Not that it really mattered, since who knew how many more days Chris Parker would be around, anyway. I’d have to take off eventually, and right now, between Barry and Coach, I imagined that day would be sooner rather than later.

The point is I was all screwed up, and I knew it. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about her as I walked off the field, as I showered and changed, and as I headed home to wait for her to pick me up.

That’s one of the weird things about doppelgangers. Just because we’re not human doesn’t mean we’re not attracted to them. From the way my mother talked, it’s like we’re all supposed to look down on human beings—they’re weak, after all, and we’re superior. But the truth is, we’re drawn to them. We have to live among them, we have to be them, just as much as we have to kill them. They’re equal urges. Maybe that’s why doppelgangers despise human beings so much—we hate the fact that we’re so obsessed with, so dependent on, what we desire. That’s our weakness.