The DoppleGanger

Eye of Truth

Miss. Jacklyn Miller, or simply 'Jackie' to herself, stood beside the window of the third-floor classroom and gazed upon the students below. She was a woman who had just crossed the threshold from her twenties to her early thirties and had only recently accepted the notion of approaching middle age. Her hair wasn't unique by any measure, a classic mid-length cut by the stylist's suggestion. The mannequins and the stock photos adorning the local 'treasure hunt' budget clothing store walls designed her outfits. Jackie was an adjunct English Literature Professor for a local community college. The campus' name being of such low importance that locals would've been excused for forgetting its existence.

On this day, Jackie noted many things from her perch high above. She could watch the comings and goings of the student body. The chatter of students transitioning between classes was a whisper to her. The masses below were too absorbed in their particular struggles to even register the true beauties in life. For example, the crunch of a fallen leaf beneath their feet or the sun setting early into evening as fall transitioned to winter. Lost in the stressors and turmoil of everyday life, everyone focused on themselves. Nobody would ever give a second thought to Jackie. To them, college life was a precious balancing act of education, personal time, family struggles, and everything leading up to their future. A teacher they'd have for merely one semester was only worth the grade they received.

To everyone, Jackie was nobody. Who could blame them?

To Jackie, everybody was somebody. Who would blame her?

Unknown to anyone, Jackie developed a hobby that had quickly dominated every minute of free time. In the past Jackie enjoyed taking a second to secretly observe the goings-on around her, something anyone with time and loneliness could manage. However, in recent months, her inclination to watch people had taken a much more obsessive turn. Lately, it was like somebody had flipped a switch that she couldn't turn off, and this once novel act of being a passive outside observer had morphed outside of her control. It used to be enough to catch a faint smile after someone received wonderful news, or a grimace of anger as someone's awful day just got that smidgen worse. That wasn't adequate anymore. Now Jackie needed to know everything.

Whenever Jackie couldn't keep up and became overwhelmed with information, she would scribble notes in a hasty scrawl across her rapidly wearing journal. She always carried one closely and replaced them frequently as their pages filled up. It was a compulsion of Jackie's, chronicling each detail her five senses could detect, no matter how minuscule or obscure. A shift in gait, tone of voice, grades, or relations. To anyone who was somebody, nothing escaped Jackie's sharp Eye of Truth.

Jackie wasn't naive. On some level, she directly linked this strange habit to a terminal diagnosis she had received shortly after she had finished filling out her first notebook. Her need to exist through the lives of others had turned into a nightmarish fixation in the same month that her doctor informed her something untreatable was breaking down her brain. Jackie knew that wasn't a minor coincidence.

Jackie grieved for her suddenly shortened life, more particularly for the life she'd never be able to lead. She, like everybody, had dreams now painfully abandoned without ever having a chance. Jackie wept for the 'what ifs' and 'could-have-beens.' Taking inventory of a lifetime of missed opportunities made the isolation that characterized her life all the more painful. In all this time, by either cruel fates or her own decisions, she was utterly alone. To anybody, Jackie was nobody. The most difficult fact for Jackie was that she'd pass with nobody but herself. Jackie didn't have any family or friends to lean on, confide in, and breakdown to.

Jackie was truly alone.

The remaining relief granted to Jackie in the face of her terminal diagnosis were the snapshots of lives being led around her. Watching from her third-floor roost, Jackie could find solace in her vicarious daydreams. Anyone who'd chance over her notebooks would quickly conclude she was becoming a stalker. Yet, in Jackie's head, which was cemented into anything but reality, she'd call it a duty. If she wouldn't appreciate their lives for them, who would? They could ignore life that passed before them, but she never did. She'd fantacize about walking a mile in their shoes and experience their stories for them, make their fantastical dreams a reality.

A reality now denied forever for her.

"Downright Criminal," Jackie muttered darkly to herself while penning another observation in her notebook. She closed the notebook and set it aside on a nearby empty desk. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one leg. Sick of documenting those below her, it exhausted her mind that now pleaded for a respite. Despite her need to document everybody, today Jackie cared little for anybody that was somebody. Jackie positioned herself dutifully at this window for one specific person. Someone special in ways that not even Jackie could figure out.

Jackie had also gained an ever consuming sense of paranoia. She was aware of someone watching her these days. She'd graduated from the observer to the observed. Whenever she'd be alone in her house, preparing for class, picking up groceries, or even watching others, she'd often feel all the hairs stand up on end as an unknown observer seemed just as curious about her as she was of everybody. It initially frightened her considerably, but as the days changed to months with the events increasing in frequency, she looked forward to these occasions. It offered Jackie a perspective about her hobby that she'd never appreciated before.

She felt noticed.

Jackie'd grown fixated on that sensation when it arrived despite being unable to locate the source. And when the invisible attention faded, the world collapsed around her. To Jackie, without this unseen attention, she didn't even exist at all. Like an addict fiending for a fix, Jackie would count on the presence to return and despair at the next time it would leave her. She considered this a warning that she wasn't well, but she couldn't bring herself to care. This was all she had left. Knowledge that someone finally wanted to learn about her day.

Nothing stole that euphoric sensation quicker than the student who'd just appeared in Jackie's view, Isabelle. Seconds before she saw Isabelle, Jackie felt her mood plummet as the presence watching her vanished, and Isabelle walked across the campus. Whatever was watching Jackie clearly preferred Isabelle to her, and Jackie obsessed over that. No matter how much Jackie searched for that one thing that made Isabelle different from anybody else, she couldn't. Isabelle had long blonde hair, always perfectly straight and so smooth that it defied even the strongest winds. She was conventionally attractive and fashionable based on the limited knowledge Jackie had on recent trends. She didn't appear to have a sadistic streak nor a specific trend of saintliness either. Isabelle, for all intents and purposes, was just an ordinary young woman pursuing an education, just like anybody else strolling along the campus grounds.

Jackie needed to identify why Isabelle was more interesting than her. Jackie continued to find excuses to examine her, add to the notebook, and then keep studying. She knew if she continued watching, she'd discover that something that made Isabelle so different.

"Look at me. Dammit. I'm right here." Jackie whispered aloud, a plea for any relief to the painful emotions that had taken hold in the presence's absence.