Replaced

Chapter 10

Roman's POV

...

"Psst, Logan!" I hissed from the sidewalk. He didn't hear me from his crouched position in front of his house. I roll my eyes. "Logan!"

He whipped his head around. All I could really see was a slight shimmer from the streetlight on his glasses. "Roman?"

"Yeah." I came up from behind him and ducked underneath the window he had been peeking through. I lifted my head just a bit to see what he was looking at. "What are you doing?"

Logan sat up a bit taller to look back inside his house with me. Inside, his clone sat in between his parents on the couch, watching a movie with them on the TV. Logan's little sister sat on the clone's lap with him braiding her hair. Logan adjusted his glasses as he watched. "I don't know."

"Why haven't you gone inside?"

"I don't know." Logan sent a pierced look at me.

I held my hands up in defence. "Okay, gotcha."

"He's been with someone all night, I haven't been able to get him alone." Logan sighs, frustrated. He hadn't expected switching back to be so hard, since he was always independent. Logan turns and looks at me as if just noticing I was next to him. "Wait, why are you here?"

I ran a hand through my hair, rubbing a growing headache. "It's a long story."

"How is it a long story?" Logan questions. "All you had to do was shut your clone down, and it'd be over with."

"I don't know." I shook my head. It made sense it theory, but something stopped me from following through with it. Was it because we looked so similar? "It's hard to explain."

Logan took one last look at his gathered family surrounding his clone and then sat down on the ground beside the window, indicating that he wasn't going anywhere. "Try."

"Okay." I sit across him. Still trying to process everything that had happened, I pushed my fingers through the grass, picking a few pieces to move between my fingers. "Well, first off, I literally walked in on my clone about to kill himself."

Logan obviously hadn't expected that answer. "That's... odd."

"I know."

"But." He wrinkled his nose. "That's, nothing like you. You would never have done that."

I nod. "I know."

"What else happened?"

"I stopped him."

Logan closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, did you just say you stopped him?"

"Yeah." I frown. "What was I supposed to do, just let him die?"

"Yes." Logan agreed simply, staring at me like that made perfect sense to him. "He's not even a 'he', he's an it. He was only ever alive because of you."

I drop the grass shreds on the ground. "Does that mean I have the right to let him die?"

"What has got you so defensive over a clone?" Logan seemed confused, but really, so was I. I didn't get it either. Logan sighs. "If he... it, was so willing to die, why didn't you just... put it out of his misery?"

I shrug and shake my head. "I told him how I could just shut him down... and he was just going to let me."

"So why didn't you?" Logan raised an eyebrow. "It's a good thing that it was just willing to deactivate without a problem. That should have made your life easier."

"Lo..." I start, sighing. "You haven't met your clone yet. It's... weird. He.... He felt like a real person."

He shook his head, disbelieving. "But it looks just like you."

"I know that," I agree. "But it's like... he doesn't. When I look at myself in the mirror, it looks different to me than when I look at him. I know we look the same, but there's just something about him that made him different."

Logan paused, studying my face in that uncomfortable way he does when he's trying to figure out what I'm thinking. I was his first friend in kindergarten, and for the longest time, his only friend. That and the fact that he sucked at understanding emotions gave him all the practice he needed to try and figure out at least what was going through my head.

I groan, hating his invasive stare, despite being used to it by now. "Whaaaat?"

"Nothing." He turns his head, but from his expression, I could tell he had a hypothesis.

I wrinkle my nose at him, hating how he could sometimes know more about me than I did, but then keep that information from me. I knew better to even ask. "What about you?"

"What about me?" He turned back.

I jerked my thumb at the window. He looked and sat up to peek through the window again. "How can he just sit there with them for so long?

Sitting up as well, I look through the window. The clone was laughing along with his family at the cartoon movie they were watching, his little sister now laying sprawled in his lap. He tucked the blanket around them, making her visibly giggle at the ticklish touches.

I looked at Logan, trying to gauge his reaction. He pursed his lips. "I never hang around my family much. My sister doesn't even like to spend time with me."

We watch for another minute before Logan takes off his glasses to rub his eyes. "I don't even stay up this late normally." He put his glasses back on and looked at me. "I thought these clones were supposed to be just like us?"

"That's what I thought too..." I look back through the window, watching firsthand as my best friend's clone acted completely unlike him. "But I guess not."