Doppelganger (10 page)

“Come on, guys. Hurry up!” Steve shouted.

We all followed him deeper into the woods, stumbling down the dark road.

It was Friday night, the night before the “big game,” and I was out with the guys. My first time, unless you counted the night I killed Chris, which I didn't.

I wasn't going to go at first. Amber was with her friends, so I didn't see any point in it. But I also didn't want to leave Echo home alone. I mean, I wasn't too worried—Barry hadn't seemed particularly distraught when he stumbled into the kitchen this morning and read Sheila's note. He just crumpled it up and pitched it toward the garbage bin like it was a losing lottery ticket or something. At first I thought that maybe he was too ashamed after what had happened last night to get upset, but it was probably that he was just too hungover to care.

No, I wasn't as worried about Echo as I had been last night, but I didn't want to take a chance, either. It was Friday, after all, and who knew what he'd come home like.
So I decided to stay behind. You know, to keep an eye on things. But when I got home from practice, there was a message on the machine from Echo—she was going over to her friend Zoë Simon's house for a sleepover. Said she might be there all weekend.
Just as well
, I thought. That's when I decided to go out. Maybe some time alone in the house was what Barry needed.

Steve and Josh picked me up before Barry got home, and the three of us went out for pizza. After dinner we went to the park in the center of town, where a few hundred kids had gathered for the pep rally. People cheered for us, and everyone gave speeches. You'd think we'd already won the game.

“Going out with the guys” basically meant piling into a couple cars afterward and just driving around, drinking a few beers. Actually, it was kind of fun. Everyone was all pumped up for the game with Springfield, and there was a nervous sort of excitement in the air. Even I felt it. It wasn't like the party I'd been to the weekend before. Sure, we had beers with us, but nobody got stupid—everyone looked out for one another, and even if they hadn't been, guys knew better than to get too wasted and risk letting everyone down. Still, there was a lot of energy hanging around, and even before we headed into the woods, I knew it had to go somewhere.

At first a few guys suggested we go down the tracks, which was the last place I wanted to go. It wasn't so much that I had bad memories of the place—even though I did—I just didn't know what kind of shape Chris would be in. I'd wrapped him up pretty tight in that plastic the night I killed him, but I still didn't know what to expect. I mean,
what if we went out there and he was stinking the whole place up? I'd started to feel a little uneasy about the whole body situation in general these last couple days, but there was so much other stuff going on, it wasn't at the forefront of my mind. Until now.

“We just went there last week—there's nothing down there. Let's go somewhere else,” I said.

They all kind of looked at one another for a minute before Steve piped up.

“How about Parson Woods?” he said. Even though I was supposed to be sort of the ringleader, he was the quarterback and was used to making decisions.

“Sounds good,” I shouted. I didn't know where Parson Woods was, but it beat the tracks.

Some of us jumped into Steve's crappy Ford Escort, a few others into a Pontiac that belonged to another guy's father, and we headed off.

We took our time driving around, weaving in and around town, honking when we saw someone we knew, even yelling stuff out the windows once or twice and squealing our tires. Steve and the other kid took turns in the lead, passing each other back and forth. Apparently there weren't any police in this town. Either that or they decided not to bother us the night before the Springfield game. I just sat in the backseat plugging my ears as discreetly as I could against the blasting music and wishing I were with Amber.

I'd caught a glimpse of her an hour ago at the pep rally. She and her pals were all dressed up in their outfits, shaking their pom-poms and short skirts around and getting everyone in the “spirit.” That was the big word of the night, after all.

“We've got spirit, yes we do. We've got spirit, how 'bout you? SPIRIT!”

I don't think she saw me, but I didn't care. It was enough to watch her twirl in the middle of her pack. Just like at the party last weekend, she stood alone in the crowd. It's like she was on fire or something. It's funny how when you realize you're in love with someone, they seem totally different all of a sudden, like they even look different. And all you want to do is just be around them and stare and notice how strange and wonderful they are even though they're just the same person they always were and it's really you who is different.

“Where's the flashlight?” Josh asked as the trees rose on both sides.

“Forget it,” another kid said. “We don't need it.”

It was sort of true. The moon wasn't quite full yet, but it was getting close. From its spot above us, enough light came down so that the road shone, and all the white stripes and numbers on our jerseys made us glow like a pack of dancing skeletons.

A bunch of guys started running, hooting and hollering down the road, disembodied voices chasing shapes in the moonlight. Pretty soon everyone had joined them, including me. It was kind of liberating in a weird sort of way, like we were all together, but still each one alone. In fact, I got so caught up in it, I practically ran right into Josh, who had stopped along with everybody else. Then I saw it too.

“What's that doing all the way out here?” Steve asked.

The station wagon gleamed where it sat off to one side of the road. It was a white Subaru Legacy, an older model. Everyone sort of walked around it for a minute, wonder
ing where it had come from, wondering what it was doing out here, wondering if the owner was coming back anytime soon.

Everyone but me. I'd seen that car before—they'd shown a picture of it on TV, or one just like it. Apparently none of the other guys watched the news. Seeing it shining there under the moon, I felt all prickly. Suddenly I wanted to get out of there, and fast.

“Come on, guys, let's head back,” I said.

No one seemed to hear me. They were all pumped up from the night and started walking around it, looking in the windows, kicking the tires and laughing, then kicking the doors, then things really started to get out of hand.

Crash!

One of kids had taken his beer bottle and thrown it at the passenger's side window. The window cracked but didn't break. Everyone laughed, as if the sound of smashing glass was hilarious.

Then
crash
! And
crash
,
crash
! Three more bottles hit the window, and this time it broke to cheers from all the guys. Then:

Boom!

Steve had taken a rock almost the size of a football and managed to heave it through the windshield. This brought even bigger cheers, and before you knew it, they were all going crazy, scratching the door panels with stones and pieces of glass, slashing the tires, snapping off the antenna. I just stood back and watched in awe as they transformed the wagon into a broken-down husk. I wondered what the police were going to think when they finally found the car. If they ever found it.

When they'd finally exhausted themselves on the car, they all stepped back, still giggling. Then Josh turned to me.

“What's the matter, Parker, a little property damage too much for you?”

Actually, I didn't really see the point in the whole thing, but I wasn't about to tell them that.

“I was just having too much fun watching you guys,” I said.

They all hooted at that one, and before long we were heading down the road back to the cars. Before we left, I took one last look back at the station wagon. I didn't know why it had been left there of all places, but I didn't like it. All I knew was that the one who'd left it there probably wasn't coming back for it. The only question was—where was that person now?

 

“All right, you Sallies, get your asses out there!”

That was Coach in his usual lovable game-time persona, which didn't actually differ much from his off-the-field persona.

The air had changed. It was a cold day, and clouds had moved in over the early morning hours, turning the sky into a single dark, angry bruise. I knew that because I hadn't really slept much last night after the guys brought me home. When I came in, Barry was passed out in front of the blaring TV. I turned it off and left him snoring on the couch. I was pretty tired myself, but after I got into bed, I suddenly started thinking about the game, and pretty soon I was wide awake again. I was nervous as hell, which pissed me off. Why should I care about this game, just because everyone else seemed to?

As the hours drifted by, I just looked out the window, watching the moon sink farther into the sky before the clouds rolled in and ate it up. And pretty soon the sky lightened a little and it was dawn, and there I was, still awake.

The funny thing was, I wasn't tired now as I ran out onto the field with the other guys. I don't know if it was the cold air or the nervousness twitching through me or the shouting and cheering coming from the packed stands, but I was pumped. Who knows, maybe it was that partially incoherent speech Coach had given before game time—the one where he sounded like a cartoon bulldog who'd swallowed an air horn—that had me revved. I'd understood only about half of it, but he'd yowled with such conviction I had to believe he meant every word.

The game had just started. Springfield, the visiting team, had won the coin toss and had gotten the ball first. They'd run it up to their thirty-yard line on the kickoff, and our defense, of which I was supposedly the starring member, was out there to stop them. I knew enough by now to know where I was supposed to line up, and I also knew what my job as linebacker was—I was there to take out whoever had the ball. If the running back or some other back got it, my job was to tackle him. Otherwise, I went after the quarterback.

The first play was terrible. It's one thing to tackle in practice; it's another thing altogether to do it for real. The noise was what got me the most—all those helmets and pads cracking together and everyone yelling and grunting and crying out. I pretty much froze up and barely managed to get a hand out to brush the running back as he took off
by me down the field for twenty yards before a safety brought him down.

The next play wasn't much better. As the quarterback dropped back to pass, the left tackle moved up to block me. I sort of slapped at him a few times, but I didn't go anywhere. The pass was caught. Touchdown.

Coach had an earful ready for me as I came off the field.

“What the hell was that out there?” he screamed as I headed for the bench. I was already pretty tired and just wanted to sit down, and here this guy was yelling so loud I could feel my eardrums rattle.

“I don't know,” I snapped. “They just got by us, I guess.”

“I'll say they did,” he screamed. Then he launched into a tirade about how I was this miserable failure and he'd been wrong to think I was ever going to be a big star someday and how I was an embarrassment to the team. It was like my mother and Barry rolled into one, and listening to him, I could feel myself getting madder and madder.

He finished chewing me out just in time to turn and see our halfback fumble the ball near the fifty.

“Goddamit!” he cried, and threw his hat down on the ground. He turned back to me and grabbed me by the face mask. “All right, you useless piece of crap—get back out there and try it again.”

He hurled me in the direction of the ball. As I ran out there, I just kept thinking,
I'll show that creep. He wants a tackle, I'll give him a tackle. I'll prove him wrong.

Of course, in the back of my mind I knew that's exactly what he wanted me to think, but I didn't care. I was so pissed off at this point that I just wanted someone to pay.

“Hut, hut, hike!”

The quarterback took the snap and handed off to the running back. This time I had it picked up from the start. Before the runner had a chance to get back to the line of scrimmage, I'd flipped the right guard aside and was into the backfield, flying through the air.

Crack!

I could feel the poor kid collapse under me as we hit the ground, like he was hollow or something. I'd nailed him so hard he never even had time to make a sound other than a little grunt as all the air blew out of him. I'm sure he never saw the ball go flying out of his arms and start skittering across the field into the hands of one of our players, who picked it up and ran it down the field into the end zone. I barely saw it, I was so distracted by what had just happened.

The next thing I knew, there were like five guys lifting me up off the ground and jumping up and down and hollering for joy and slapping me on the butt while in the background a steady roar rose from the people in the stands.

As for the running back, he was still on the ground. I guess I'd knocked the poor kid for a loop. It didn't take long for him to come to, but he had to be carried off the field. We all knew he'd be out for the remainder of the game.

The rest of the half went like that. With every play, I got bolder, more aggressive, getting closer and closer to the quarterback, knocking down the ball as it left his hands, knocking down the players. After a while I could see it in their eyes as we lined up across from each other—that fear
that I was coming after them. I forgot about everything else and just focused on how good it felt to push everyone around. It wasn't that hard—doppelgangers are strong, stronger than we look. In fact, if you ever tangle with one, don't ever try to wrestle it or anything. The best thing to do is to go for the eyes, then run like hell. It's probably your only chance.