B00B9FX0MA EBOK (8 page)

I wove my way toward the registration table. I didn’t feel any better, and neither the swirly, dizziness-inducing carpet pattern nor the stale scent of deodorant combined with the clinging odor of salmon dinners from conferences past were doing me any favors. I wasn’t sure where to look. If I looked down, I felt nauseous; if I looked up, I felt nervous. I concentrated on the red exit sign over the ballroom and made my way to the front of the line.

“Hello?” A woman with a neat blond bob and black-framed glasses glanced up at me expectantly. Farther down the table, I noticed Adam checking in. I yanked my gaze away. I couldn’t worry about him. I needed to focus on myself.

“Hayley …” I croaked, then swallowed. “Sorry. I’m Hayley Westin,” I said.

“Ah, the infamous Hayley.” The woman nodded and checked my name off in red pen. “You’re at twelve thirty. You can head into the auditorium now, and if you need to leave, please make sure you do so after someone has finished their interview. Here’s the program with the biographical notes.”

I stiffened. What had she meant by
infamous
?

I sat in the back of the auditorium, paging through the program. Adam was scheduled at one, just a few candidates after me. I hunched down in my seat, hoping he wasn’t looking for me. I didn’t want to have to make conversation or pretend everything was fine.

Quickly, I flipped to the bios, relieved that even though it had looked crowded, there really weren’t more than fifty students. I could beat fifty. I flipped to my bio, anxious to see how it would read compared to the rest of the competition.

Hayley Kathryn Westin: In addition to striving to be the best in everything she does, including latte drinking and pantyhose wearing, Hayley also finds time to watch and collect chick flicks — the cheesier, the better. Her greatest ambition is to head to an Ivy League university. There, she’ll continue to pad her résumé with impressive-sounding activities and acting like she’s better than everyone else.

I blinked. This wasn’t my bio. Not even close. How had the Ainsworth committee allowed this? Didn’t they
realize
it was a cruel joke? That someone had hacked into my e-mail and sent this to sabotage me?

I stood up, ready to march out of the auditorium and explain to the glasses-wearing lady at the registration desk that there was a
major
problem, when a short suspenders-wearing man strode onstage. The lights dimmed. I was stuck.

“Welcome to the semifinals of the state Ainsworth competition. I’m Dr. Peter Schorr, chancellor at the University of New Hampshire and a proud member of the Ainsworth selection committee. It goes without saying that all of you have made significant achievements and are a credit to your homes,
schools, and communities. It is the goal of the Ainsworth Institute to recognize the individuals who have the most potential to achieve …”

Seriously? How could everything be proceeding normally? Didn’t anyone realize or care that there was a
major
problem? I felt like I was in a nightmare. I dug my fingernails into my wrist, feeling a jab of pain. Nope. Definitely wasn’t in a dream.

Around me, people burst into applause, indicating that Dr. Schorr’s speech was done. My head snapped up. Down the row, I noticed a blond girl looking curiously at me.

Are you okay?
she mouthed.

I nodded, even though I was in full-on crisis mode. I scanned the crowd for Adam, but I couldn’t make out his head in the sea of people in front of me. He’d done this. He had to have. It had been him all along, seeming sympathetic, pretending we were in this together. I would kill him. I would rip his head from his skinny neck. But before I destroyed him, I needed to save myself.

“Jane Jensen, can you please come up?” Peter Schorr asked, naming the first candidate as he headed to his place at the long table reserved for the ten judges.

From the middle of the auditorium, a small girl sprang up and practically skipped down the aisle. Once onstage, she adjusted the microphone and blinked out at us, her huge eyes covered by a heavy curtain of brown bangs.

“Hi there. I’m Jane Jensen from the Meadow School, right here in Concord,” she said in a babyish voice. The Meadow School was a notorious private school, famous for classes like Honors Improv and History According to Jon Stewart. Students weren’t called by their first names, but rather chose a
moniker that described their inner lives, like Peace, Tranquility, or Chaos. The school had no admissions policy, and was someplace I’d joke about with people from debate camp. Whenever someone made a mistake, we’d ask if they came from the Meadow School. But even Meadow School students didn’t have a bio as stupid as mine.

“I was going to sing a song I wrote?” Jane’s voice lifted into a question.

The room exploded into laughter and I felt my jaw unclench slightly.

“This isn’t a talent competition,” an angular judge said.

“I know, but it is my talent. And I know the Ainsworth is about creativity and intellectual freedom, so I thought it would be acceptable,” the girl argued.

“Is that Hayley Westin?” I heard a girl whisper in front of me.

“I thought they said her name was Jane. I guess we have two idiots in the competition.”

They laughed and I felt my face burn. But what could I do? Leaving would admit defeat. I couldn’t argue the bio when I had the interview coming up. All I could do was wait.

“No song,” the judge said firmly. “Instead, I want you to discuss the trope of the stranger in nineteenth-century fiction.”

“Well, fiction is all about strangers, because the characters aren’t real. So because the characters aren’t real, that means none of us know them….” The girl trailed off and blinked again. The audience rustled in their seats. Jane was bombing, big-time, but it didn’t comfort me. I’d already looked at her bio, and despite the fact that she preferred if people called her Willow, the paragraph made her sound normal enough. When it came time to make decisions, of course the committee would
look back to the bio. No matter what, my words would be seared into their memory.

Finally, after Jane mumbled a few more things about imaginary friends, she wandered offstage. A few more people went, talking about technology, history, and what social media had in common with eighteenth-century yellow journalism. They were all topics I could speak to, but I was getting more and more panicked with every student. What would I say when I went up there? Should I pretend no one had read my bio, even though I knew everyone had? Admit that someone had tried to sabotage me? It was the most obvious choice, but it came with risks, not the least of which was the committee wondering what type of person would prompt someone else to sabotage them. It would be hard to paint myself as sympathetic.

I glanced up at the stage. A blond girl was gesticulating wildly as she explained how some complicated physics principle related to why people were obsessed with cute kitten photos. Ordinarily, she would have been my competition. But now, I barely cared, drifting back to my feverish thoughts — until she edged back into my row.

“Was I all right?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m sure I won’t be worse than that Hayley girl. So there’s that,” she said, clearly eager to gossip now that her interview was over.

“Hayley Westin?” the judge called.

A hush fell over the auditorium. I took a deep breath, stood up, gave my blond seatmate an ice-princess stare, and threw my shoulders back as I walked toward the stage.

“Oh, God, that’s her!” I heard a few people whisper as I walked by. I stared straight ahead, stepped onto the stage, and centered myself in front of the microphone. I didn’t have any other option but perfect. And I was ready.

“Miss Westin, we’re thrilled to meet you in person, especially after reading your colorful biography,” Dr. Schorr said, not even bothering to look at me. Instead, he glanced at the audience, where he was rewarded with a wave of laughter. I smiled politely.

“Dr. O’Connell, the question?” He nodded to a frizzy-haired woman at the end of the table.

“Yes. Hayley, what does it mean to ‘take’ someone’s car?” she asked, enunciating each word.

I paused, allowing the question to sink in. It was similar to the ones Adam and I had discussed. On the surface they were simple, but they became complicated once you tried to actually intellectualize the answer.

And then, I had a genius idea.

“I’m so glad you asked that question. As many of you noticed, and as Dr. Schorr so kindly mentioned, my biography is colorful. Everyone who’s seen it assumes that’s who I am, and I’d assume that, too, if I read it. As humans, we take information at face value and assign ownership based on assumption. If someone is in a car, we assume they have ownership, or, at least temporary custody of the vehicle. If someone has biographical information attached to their name, that’s
their
identity. And this is a system that worked for a long time, when there could be a one-to-one relationship. But now, we’ve become a society of shape-shifters,” I ad-libbed, noticing how some of the
professors were nodding appreciatively. My stomach had stopped rumbling. Was this
working
?

I continued to talk about ownership being fleeting in our Wikipedia- and Pinterest-obsessed society. I couldn’t help smiling at the committee. And then, I took a step forward to directly address the panel.

“Finally, I hope I didn’t interrupt the Ainsworth process with the biographical submission. While it’s not one that I wrote, I will take responsibility for it….” At this, I made eye contact with Dr. Schorr.
Witty remark. Bring it home,
coached the calm, detached debate-champ voice in my head. “But I’d prefer to take the car.”

The room erupted into applause and I smiled into the crowd. The house lights came up, and all of a sudden, I froze.

In the semidarkness, the entire audience had been fuzzy. But now, everyone was thrown into crystal-clear relief. And my eyes landed on me, or at least a girl who looked exactly like me: the doppelgänger that had been haunting my Facebook page and my dreams. She was sitting on the aisle seat in an empty rear row, wearing a pair of jeans and resting her feet on the seat in front of her. Her hair was pulled into a messy ponytail that skimmed her shoulders. She looked half-bored, half-amused.

I blinked again, but the figure had stood up and was hurrying out of the auditorium. Not bothering with another thank you, I barreled down the stairs, up the aisle, and into the lobby. The only people there were a few name tag–wearing greeters.

“Did a girl just leave?” I demanded.

A woman looked up and shrugged. “Lots of people have been in and out. Haven’t noticed anyone in particular.”

But I had.

I ran out into the parking lot. No one.

“You okay?” the doorman asked, glancing at me.

“Did you see …” I trailed off. What was I supposed to ask?
Did you see me?
No. Because what if the girl
wasn’t
real? What if she was a figment of my imagination, a sign that my grip on reality was becoming less and less firm? The headache and stomachache, which had disappeared due to adrenaline, had returned in full force. My knee buckled. I knew Adam had his interview coming up, but I couldn’t wait for him. I needed to leave
now
.

“Can you get me a cab?” I asked.

“Sure.” The doorman pulled a phone from his pocket and I sat on the edge of the curb.
Don’t think.
The more I thought, the crazier I felt. I needed to hang on to whatever sanity I had. I tried to remember the first and last names of every character Reese Witherspoon had ever played. Tried to count how many kisses in the rain occurred in Nicholas Sparks movies. Tried to think of anything
but
the obvious.

“Hey.” I looked over my shoulder. It was the blond girl from the auditorium. “I’m Leah,” she said.

“Hi,” I said tightly. Couldn’t she tell I was in the middle of a breakdown?

“I just wanted to say good job. And I’m sorry about that comment. It was just … you know. Anyway, I just mean that we’re all in it together. So —”

“It’s fine.” I cut her off.

“Cool. Well, good luck,” she said dubiously as she shifted from one foot to the other. Her hair was blowing in the breeze and a few golden strands were sticking to her ChapStick-stained
lip. Outside the auditorium, she didn’t look like a threat. She looked scared.

“Thanks.” I pulled out my phone so we wouldn’t have to keep talking.

“Listen, I was thinking about getting lunch. There’s a bagel place down the street that I passed when I came. Do you want something … or want to come? You look pale,” she said, biting her lip.

I shook my head.

“Okay.” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but just then, a white car pulled up to the curb,
BUDDY’S LIMO SERVICE
emblazoned on its side. I climbed in and fell into a dreamless sleep, not waking until we reached my house.

“That’ll be a hundred bucks,” the driver said.

“Hold on,” I said. I ran into the house and to my room, crossing my fingers that my cash — the money I’d saved from hours of thankless shifts at the Ugly Mug when I was a sophomore — would be there.

It was.

I flew back down the stairs, paid the driver, and collapsed on the couch.

W
ell, I’d like to raise a toast to Comet!” Geofferson said loudly.

“Thanks.” I shifted to the side in the cracked red vinyl booth at Armenio’s, the pizza place in the center of town. Around us, babies were shrieking, and the waiters were dodging knee-high kids who were too antsy to sit still. My five-hour nap had been filled with bad dreams: me in a mental hospital, me losing the Ainsworth, a weird mash-up of cars and unicorns that I think came from all the Ainsworth answers. Awake wasn’t better. Now, I was worried I was losing my mind, and unsure whether I should tell someone, or keep it a secret until it became all too apparent. You know, just the normal concerns every seventeen-year-old worries about.

“You haven’t told us anything about it, Bunny,” Mom pressed as she hooked her blond hair behind her ears. “What was it like?”

“There’s not much to say.” I picked at a ragged cuticle. “I mean, I won’t know anything until they announce the finalists, so it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a point in discussing it.” I’d had a few missed calls from Adam, but I’d ignored them. I didn’t want to compare how we’d done or pick apart judge observations. I didn’t want to lie about why I hadn’t watched him. And I didn’t want to hear any congratulations. What I’d done up there had been good. I knew that. But it had also been a stroke of dumb luck. And dumb luck didn’t win competitions.

“Well, tell me everything. Was it fun? Did you enjoy yourself? How was Adam?” my mom asked. “Geoff, these academic competitions are always so fascinating. And Hayley always seems to have the best stories!”

I stared down at the menu, refusing to engage. Not like I needed to look at the menu. We always ordered a half-mushroom, half-peppers pizza.

A skinny waiter wearing a red Armenio’s T-shirt glanced at us expectantly. I put down the menu.

“I’d like the —”

“I think I’ll have the shrimp dish, and, Wendy, what do you think about sharing that with me?” Geoff asked.

I shot a disbelieving look at my mom. What had happened to this being
my
dinner? Besides,
no one
ordered actual entrees at Armenio’s. Most people were tipped off by the four-foot-tall fiberglass sculpture of a pizza slice out front. Or by the fact that the menus were circular and dotted with smiling cartoon pepperoni slices. But not Geofferson.

“All right,” the waiter said. “And you?” he asked, staring at me.

“Hayley, are you planning to eat with us?” Mom asked, enunciating each word as though she were speaking to a toddler.

“I thought we were having pizza,” I enunciated back to her.

“Well, if you’d like pizza, by all means order it,” Mom said, smiling through her teeth.

“Never mind. I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Shall I come back when you folks sort out what you’d like?” the server asked, looking confused.

“No, it’s fine,” Mom said. “I’m sorry. We’ll get the shrimp dish and then a pizza with mushrooms and peppers.”

“All right, then.” The server practically sprinted away from the table.

“I said I wasn’t hungry!” I snapped. I knew that I was behaving irrationally, but I was far too on edge to stop myself.

Geofferson cleared his throat, one of those eh-eh sounds that’s shorthand for
I will do anything, including stage a fake choking attack, to remove myself from this situation.
“It’s fine. She’s had a long day. I think the best thing we can do is give Comet her privacy and let her sleep,” Geofferson announced. He scraped his chair back and hurried off to flag down our waiter to make it to go.

“What’s wrong with you, Hayley?” Mom hissed, grabbing my wrist.

I yanked my hand away. “I don’t know.” I sounded like a belligerent teenager and I knew it.

Mom glanced at me, as though she were going to say something, but simply set her lips in a firm line and shook her head slightly.

“Let’s get Hayley back home and settled,” Geoff pressed. “I canceled the order. We can just get something on our own and let Comet chill out.”

I didn’t bother to say anything as I trailed behind them to Geoff’s BMW. He pushed down the front seat so I could squeeze into the back.

“Maybe she really is sick,” Mom murmured up front, sure that I couldn’t hear her, even though we were only separated by a few feet.

“Maybe,” Geoff said disinterestedly. “I’ll tell you what, I’d have gotten sick if we stayed at that pizza joint. My wine tasted like turpentine. I get that they want to be homey, but do they want to poison their guests?” he boomed.

Just then, my phone quacked, startling me so much that I dropped it. I groped the floor mat with my fingers, finally picking up the phone from under Geoff’s seat.

I had a new text from a blocked number.

I gasped.

“Hayley?” Mom craned her neck to glance back at me.

“Fine!” I said in a high, artificial voice.

“You know, she had to get up so early and she was studying all week. She’s been pushing herself a lot. And she’s never really been rebellious. It could be a stage. Let’s just give her some space.” Mom murmured to Geofferson in the front seat, as if I weren’t sitting two feet behind them.

Her words swam through my mind as I stared at the text. The screen darkened. I pressed the button on my phone and, again, the text lit up, as shocking as the first time I’d seen it.

“Sounds like those academic types gave you the smackdown, Comet. I thought I had it tough with football. I never knew the nerds … uh, I mean, the smart kids … were the real warriors,” Geoff boomed from the front seat.

“Right,” I said faintly. He had no idea. I’d been through a battle today, but this was war. And I had no idea who I was fighting.

Once we came inside, Sadie began barking and jumping all over me.

“What’s going on, girl?” I ruffled her fur as I surveyed
the kitchen. The messy pile of mail on the edge of the table, the breakfast dishes from this morning, the falling-apart cabinet door. All the same. I felt my breathing begin to return to normal for the first time since the car ride home.

Mom and Geoff were standing in the breezeway, their coats still on. Geoff had his arm slung protectively around Mom’s shoulders.

“Mom?” I asked, noticing she hadn’t moved.

“Oh, honey, I’m going to stay with Geoff tonight. You need your rest,” Mom clucked.

“No, I’m fine,” I said. I took a few steps toward the refrigerator and squinted at a photograph of a girl — me — fastened near the ice dispenser with a magnet. The refrigerator door had always been covered with photos of me as a child. But this one was new. The girl’s face was turned up, pink plastic sunglasses glinting in a beam of light. She looked like she was five or six, but she had long, tangled, sun-highlighted hair that fell past her shoulders.

That wasn’t correct.
When I was six, Keely and I had played endless hours of beauty parlor, meaning that both of us had uneven, bowl-shaped haircuts that hadn’t grown out until the third grade.

“Are you hungry now?” Mom asked, following my line of vision. There was a slight edge to her voice.

“Yeah, Comet, you should eat,” Geoff concurred. “And so should we,” he added, placing his hand on my mother’s waist and pulling her toward him.

“No. I’m fine.” I redirected my attention toward the cabinets, Sadie’s crate, somewhere, anywhere else. Now, I was questioning my own sanity.
Someone
had put that photograph there. It hadn’t been there this morning.
Had it?
I remembered how tired
and achy I felt, how it seemed I was moving in a foglike dream state, how I had to spend most of my energy convincing my mother I was okay. But
this
wasn’t. I wasn’t.

“Hayley, you’re exhausted. I respect that. We’ll give you some quiet time and you and I will talk in the morning. I don’t leave for Boston until Monday.” I waited for her to come over toward me and ruffle my hair or kiss the top of my head, but she didn’t.

“Mom …” I trailed off. At least Sadie had stopped barking. I sniffed the air, but the only scent was the wood smoke–tinged wind from outside. Still, my missing bracelet from this morning and the photograph on the fridge made it clear that someone had been inside the house.

Or they were still here.

I gasped, despite myself, a strangled cry that got stuck in my throat and caused my hand to fly to my neck.

“Hayley?” Mom asked. Sadie barked from the corner.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry, I just got … something stuck in my throat,” I lied. I didn’t want them to leave, but I didn’t know how to explain what was wrong. “You guys should go. Seriously, go,” I said, my voice taking on an urgent edge.

“Wendy, come on,” Geoff urged, his hand on the small of her back.

“If you’re sure,” Mom hesitated, and I saw her gaze flick over to the refrigerator.

“Go!” I practically pushed Mom out the door, feeling simultaneously relieved and terrified when the door clicked closed.

I heard the ignition of Geoff’s car and saw the swath of lights pan across the living room as he drove down the road. I was alone.

Or maybe I wasn’t.

“Hello?” I yelled. Sadie barked in response. My heart beat in
my ears. I raced up the stairs to my bedroom. I glanced around wildly, not sure what — or
who
— I was expecting to see. My bedroom looked the same as always. The window seat below the eave was covered with rejected blouses and tights from the morning. The hardwood floor was scattered with notebooks and highlighters, and socks that Sadie had dug from the hamper. I opened my drawer, but everything was exactly where it had been when I’d come in earlier.

I looked at the tray where I kept my jewelry.

And then, I screamed.

The bracelet was back, the ID plate glinting toward me like it was winking. I grabbed it with one hand, realizing I was holding my cell in a death grip with the other.

Grabbing my bag, I raced down the stairs, up the gravel path, and into the street. My legs were pumping, my eyes were flicking back and forth, and I wasn’t sure where I was going, only that I needed to get away, as far and as fast as possible.

Finally, at the corner, I stopped, resting my hands above my knees as I caught my breath. As my gasps slowed to uneven pants, I began to sort through the thoughts swirling through my mind.

I was safe. No one was chasing me.
Around me, everything was normal. It wasn’t even nine o’clock. Down the street, an elderly couple was walking a shaggy golden retriever. The house on top of the hill had all its lights on, looking warm and inviting. In contrast, the only light on in our house was the one in my bedroom.

I squinted at it. The room was empty.

And yet I knew I couldn’t go back inside. I needed to go somewhere with lights and people and noise where I could actually figure out just how crazy I was going.

And the only place I could think of was Alyssa’s barn party.