The Silver Heart

9

At first I thought the house was empty. The garage certainly was, and it wasn't time for my brother, John, or my sisters, Anna and little Lizzie, to be home from their afternoon activities yet.

I tossed my backpack and folder to the floor and looked around. I knew Grandma had asked me to take a nap. But just now I wanted food- and lots of it. Mom hadn't wanted me to raid the snack cupboard, so I headed over to the fridge. I opened the cheese drawer and pulled out a bag of shredded mozzarella. I grabbed a large handful and was just about to shove it all in my mouth when I heard a cough from the direction of the living room.

My cheese-filled hand froze. I craned my neck to peer around Mom's desk. Then I screamed, threw my hands up, and ran. Cheese went flying everywhere.

There was another person in the house, and from the three-second glimpse I'd had, I knew that whoever they were, they certainly weren't a member of my family. They were too small to be my dad, and all my other family members were blonde.

The other person, whoever they were, screamed too. "Dang it, Melissa, you scared me!" The voice was female.

I paused my frantic tugs at the front doorknob. They knew my name? That voice sounded really, really familiar.

But then the moment of curiosity ended. I kept pulling. For some reason, the door wasn't budging. And I ran into the same problem when I tried to open the door into the garage.

I could try the back door. But that was in the sunroom, and to get there I'd have to pass the stranger in the living room.

"Hey."

I screamed again and started to run, but a hand caught my arm. I turned around slowly, praying that I wasn't about to get stabbed to death.

I'd have thought I was looking in a mirror if I couldn't still feel the other girl's hand around my wrist and if she wasn't wearing entirely different clothes than I was. Because she looked exactly like me. She had my hair, my height, my eyes, my face shape, my slightly round nose- we were identical right down to the last faint freckle.

Her shirt was beige, and it had a panda eating bamboo on it. I'd had a shirt exactly like that in kindergarten- just smaller. She was also wearing some kind of silvery necklace- looking closer, I realized it was my heart-shaped locket, which my sister had broken when I was eight.

And she was holding my favorite book.

I snapped out of my reverie, shook my arm out of her grasp, and lunged. "Give me that!"

She shook her head and held it out of my reach. "I was reading it." She even sounded exactly like me. "It's our favorite, remember?"

"Our? I don't know who you are. How the freaking heck did you even get in here?" I lunged for the book again, but she just backed out of my reach.

My double cocked her head to one side. It was a gesture I was familiar with- I did that whenever I was trying to sort through some sort of confusing problem. "I don't know. But I know you. And you do know me."

I shoved past her. "I'm calling the police."

I was halfway to the kitchen when I heard her response. "Would they even believe you? Just wait- wait a minute, Melissa, I'm Liss!"

Liss? Why did that name sound familiar? And then I realized: it was the name of my second self. The one I'd tried to have a written conversation with earlier.

Did Grandma have something to do with this?

I turned around and looked the girl- Liss- over. She did look exactly like me. She even had the same chipped fingernails and slightly uneven eyebrows. And yep- there were the weird curves.