The Invisible World

Chapter 7: I Melt With You

Jenny looked up at me with a grin on her face and a dumbfounded curl on her lip. "You were right. There is a doppelganger living in your house."

"You thought I was lying about that?" Jack marched up the stairs until he was on the step below me. "Alright, Katie. What are you doing in my house?"

What was I supposed to tell him? Were there any words he would understand that I could use to describe how out of place I felt in this world? Perhaps I should explain it to him in the simplest way possible. "I have nowhere else to go. I don't know where I'm supposed to go."

Jack threw his arms in the air. "Come on! I've already had to deal with someone like you. Your memories have to come back eventually."

"You don't think I already have my memories back, idiot?"

"Hey!" Jenny marched up the stairs as well. "Nobody calls my friend an idiot and gets away with it!"

"Well, that's just it," I explained. "I'm nobody."

"Nice try, Odysseus. We both know your name is Katie Tatulli."

"That's my name," I told Jenny, "but I'm not sure if it's really who I am, if it's who I am anymore."

"You're not convinced?" she asked. "Then wait right there." She slipped past me and ran up the stairs to the ground floor, leaving Jack to cross his arms and stare me straight in the eye.

"Well, ma'am, it's just you and me, so you better get talking, or I'm calling the police," he said.

I crossed my arms as well. "You didn't call the police on that other girl, did you?"

"Well, she didn't try to set up camp in my basement..." He stopped, as if he had just realized something. "Wait, how do you know about Misty?"

"It's the first thing I remember." I walked down the stairs to touch the cold concrete of the basement floor with my foot. "Lying on your basement floor with her in front of me, watching her climb those stairs while I was still too tired to stand."

Jenny reappeared at the top of the stairs. "See? I have it right here!" She ran down to me. She was holding that orange carton with my face on it, those big, wide eyes boring holes into whatever soul I had left. "It was on this carton. Katie, people have been looking for you!"

"Have they?" I took the carton. "My face is on the carton, and yet I haven't heard people talking about me."

"You're right. That is weird."

Jack joined us at the bottom of the stairs. "It makes no sense. I know the Tatullis. They don't have a daughter named Katie. At least, I don't think so." He took the carton back from me. "And now that I think of it, her face wasn't on this carton before things started disappearing."

"It wasn't?" Jenny asked in disbelief. "Then whose was?"

"It was a boy, I remember that for sure. I didn't notice Katie's face on there until you pointed it out to me."

"Still referring to me in the third person, are you?" I groaned. "I have been dealing with that for weeks now, and you know what, I am tired of being invisible to everybody." As if commanded by some god with a sick sense of humor, my hands vanished at that exact moment. "Jesus Christ."

"Now, we have proof that Katie's the doppelganger," Jack said. "Now the real question is whether she actually came back from the void."

"Hello! I'm right here!" I yelled since they didn't hear me the first time.

Jack and Jenny both looked towards me with big, startled eyes. "Oh," Jack mumbled. "Sorry." He wiped the surprise off his face and stood up straight. "So, Katie, where did you come from?"