The Bloodwater Mysteries: Doppelganger (2 page)

Roni stared at the age-progressed photo.

The boy in the photo stared back at her.

Roni’s mouth slowly fell open.

“Impossible,” she said.

A large pink strawberry-flavored blob dripped onto her keyboard.

She knew him.

a real scar

Brian Bain sat at his desk admiring his picture from the
Bloodwater Clarion,
now pinned up on his bedroom wall. He had decided not to call Roni about it—he would wait for her to stumble across it on her own. He looked at the phone, willing it to ring, and—amazingly—it did.

He checked the caller ID. It was Roni. Perfect.

Brian picked up the phone. “Bain Aviation.”

“Brian? It’s me. Are you online?”

Brian touched a key on his laptop and the screen came to life.

“Yep. Hey, did you see the paper?”

Roni ignored him. “Go to this site,” she said. She gave him the web address.

Brian typed in the address. “Did you see the paper?” he asked again.

“No. Has the site loaded yet?”

“Wait…here it is.” The missing-kids website popped up.

“Now type ‘Bryce Doblemun’ into the search box.” She spelled out the name.

Brian typed it in and hit the search button. A little kid’s photo came up.

“What do you think?” Roni asked.

“About what?”

“Scroll down.”

Brian scrolled down to the age-progressed photo.

“Look like anybody you know?” Roni asked.

Brian stared at the face on his computer screen. It looked vaguely familiar. “Not really.”

“It’s
you
!” Roni said.

“You’re crazy,” he said. “Look how fat his cheeks are.”

“Just like your cheeks,” Roni said.

Brian’s eyes went from the image on his computer to the article tacked on the wall.

“I do not have fat cheeks. Besides, I’m not missing.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, do you actually remember anything from before you were adopted?”

“I was, like, six months old!”

“Are you sure?”

Brian didn’t say anything for several seconds. The question bothered him more than he cared to let on.

“You still there?” Roni asked.

“His eyes are squinty. I do not have squinty eyes.”

“You do when you laugh.”

Brian decided then and there to give up laughing,
especially when he was around Roni. It wouldn’t be easy. Roni could be pretty funny.

“He’s older,” Brian said.

“You’re both thirteen. His birthday’s on the twelfth, yours is on the twenty-first. That could just be a typo.”

“You think all Asians look the same,” he said.

“I do not!”

“How many Asian kids do you know?”

“You mean besides you? Lots.”

“Name three.”

“Cynthia Lee. Denis Nguyen. Aaron White. And none of them look anything like you.”

“Cindy’s a girl, and she’s from China, Denis is eighteen years old and only half Vietnamese, and Aaron White is Native American.”

“What
ever
. Are you still looking at the picture? Look at yourself and compare.”

Once again, Brian looked at the photo of himself in the newspaper, then back at the image on his computer screen.

“He does look Korean. But his ears are different.”

“Not
that
different. And what about his name?”

Brian looked again at the missing kid’s name. Bryce Doblemun. “What about it?”

“
Bryce?
Brian?
Pretty close, don’t you think?”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” he said. “I think you’re insane.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m crazy enough to call the missing-kids hotline and tell them I’ve found Bryce Doblemun.”

Brian felt his insides lurch. How come every time he talked to Roni, everything got so scary and complicated?

“Don’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because…because I need a donut.”

Roni laughed. “
Now
you’re speaking my language!”

“Bratten’s Bakery? Twenty minutes?”

“I’m on my way.”

Was there really a resemblance?

Brian stared at the face on his computer screen. Bryce Doblemun’s image swam in and out of focus. One moment he felt as if he was looking into a crazy mirror, a second later it was like staring at a complete stranger.

Maybe they were somehow related. Brian’s parents had told him that his South Korean mother had given him up for adoption when he was just a few months old. He might have cousins, or even a brother or sister. He would probably never know. His biological relatives were six thousand miles away in a country he did not remember. The weird thing was, when he tried to recall his distant past, sometimes he thought he remembered living with another family when he was little—a few faint glimpses of a previous life: A big man who laughed a lot. A little dog. A lady with red hair.

He scrolled up to the photo of Vera Doblemun, the boy’s adoptive mother. She was a thin, pinched-looking woman with light hair. The photo was black-and-white, and the
description did not include her hair color. Her face did not look at all familiar.

According to the website, Bryce and Vera Doblemun had disappeared from their home in Minneapolis. Roni would probably make a big deal out of the fact that Minneapolis was less than an hour away from Bloodwater. Roni could make a big deal out of oatmeal.

Brian closed his eyes. He thought he remembered a little curly-haired dog with a pointy nose, and a swing set. The memories were faint and disconnected, like a dream. He had always assumed that they
were
dreams—like the time he remembered Bugs Bunny visiting him in his bedroom.

How could he tell what was real and what wasn’t?

He remembered running on a sidewalk with the little dog, and tripping and hurting his elbow.

Brian looked at the old white scar on his elbow. That, at least, was real.

the rhododendron incident

Bruce Bain stood atop a rickety stool in his crowded, book-crammed study, trying to read the spines of the books that lined a sagging shelf just below the ceiling.

“Hey, Dad,” Brian said.

Bruce Bain flinched, but managed to retain his balance.

“One moment, son,” he said. “You haven’t seen my copy of
Somatic Empathy in Nematode Neurons,
have you?”

“Uh, not lately. Hey, did we used to have a dog?”

“A dog? Why do you ask?”

“I remember a dog,” Brian said.

“I’m allergic to dogs, son.”

“So…did you and Mom adopt me, or did you abduct me?”

“You’ll have to ask your mother, son. She keeps all the family records.”

Brian rolled his eyes. His father, absorbed in his own little world, had heard Brian’s words, but hadn’t really listened to what he was saying.

“Aha!” said Mr. Bain. “Here’s my copy of
Sea Snail Aquaculture Techniques
! I’ve been looking all over for that!”

“I’m going out,” Brian said. “If Mom comes home, tell her I’ve gone out to get my eyeball pierced.”

“I’ll let her know.”

Brian stopped his skateboard at the top of Grant Street and looked down the block-long hill. It was not the steepest hill in town, but he could get going about fifteen miles an hour by the time he reached the intersection with Third Street. On a skateboard, that was
fast.
The trick was to make a split-second decision in the final twenty feet before hitting the cross street, when approaching cars—if there were any—became visible. He would have about a tenth of a second to either go for the crossing or bail out into Mrs. Atkinson’s rhododendron bush. Brian had rolled down the hill lots of times before. So far he hadn’t had to bail out once.

He was standing with one foot on his skateboard getting himself psyched up when a small green Hyundai pulled up beside him. The driver was an Asian woman, maybe thirty years old. He had never seen her around town before, and he usually noticed people of Asian ancestry, since there were hardly any in Bloodwater. And this woman looked like she could be Korean.

She lowered her window. “You aren’t planning to go down that hill on your skateboard, are you?” she asked. She had a strong accent. Definitely Korean.

Brian shook his head.

“Good,” she said. She added something that sounded like a garbled version of the word
choosing.
Their eyes locked,
and for a moment Brian felt as if his chest were full of ginger ale.

She could be my real mother, he thought.

She smiled and nodded. The moment passed. Brian watched her drive down the hill and turn left.

What had she said? Brian replayed the strange word in his head, trying to remember if it was something he had learned at the Korean language camp he had attended last summer. Choo-Sing? Cho-Sun?

Suddenly he had it:
Cho-sim
. He knew that word. It
was
Korean, and he remembered what it meant.

Beware!

Beware of what?

Brian shook his head. This was all Roni’s fault. Every time anything unexplained happened, she assumed it meant something dreadful and mysterious. And now, thanks to her, every time he saw a Korean woman, he would wonder if she was his biological mother.

He looked down the hill and narrowed his eyes. Beware? Ha! He’d done this lots of times before.

He pushed off.

Bratten’s Café and Bakery, in downtown Bloodwater, was home to the best donuts in the county. It was also, as Roni had discovered a few weeks earlier, a Wi-Fi hot spot. On most days she could pick up a strong, unsecured wireless signal from one of the tenants who lived above the coffee shop. Roni was sitting at one of the outdoor tables with
her laptop, looking at the picture of Bryce Doblemun, when she heard the clatter of a skateboard. Brian rolled up to the table and kicked up his board. He had red scratches all over his arms and face, and his T-shirt was torn.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Got in a fight with a rhododendron bush,” Brian said. He took a newspaper from under his arm and plunked it on the table. “Where’s your Vespa?”

“Good old Hillary has a flat tire. She’s at Darwin Dipstick’s garage. Why were you fighting with a bush?”

“Don’t ask.”

“
You’re
in a mood. Better get yourself a donut.” Roni had already finished her raspberry-stuffed long john.

Brian pointed at the newspaper. “Page twenty-three,” he said.

Roni read the article about Brian’s paper-airplane triumph while Brian browsed the pastry counter. He returned to the table with a chocolate-covered cake donut—her third-favorite. When he sat down across from her, she stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. He looked different, somehow more exotic now.

Brian took a bite out of his donut, chewed for a moment, then noticed her staring at him. “Why are you looking at me that way?” he asked.

“I’ve never met an abducted adoptee airplane builder before.”

“Very funny.” He set his donut back on the paper plate.
Roni had never seen Brian take more than thirty seconds to devour a pastry. “I think my dad’s losing it,” he said.

“You’ve been saying that ever since I’ve known you.”

“I told him I was getting my eyeball pierced. I think he believed me.”

“Do you ever wonder about your real parents?”

“Real? You mean like not imaginary?”

“I mean
biological
.”

Brian shrugged. “Oh. Not really. When I think about it, which isn’t often, it’s more like a science fiction story, like I came from a different planet. Planet Korea.”

“I always suspected you were an alien.” She turned her computer so the screen faced Brian. “You think he’s from the same planet?”

“I don’t know, but he’s not me. I mean, even if I did live with another adoptive family when I was little, I don’t think my name was Doblemun, and”—he pointed at the picture of Vera Doblemun—“I don’t remember
her
at all.”

“Wait—you lived with another family?”

“I remember some stuff. But it was probably a dream. How much do
you
remember from when you were four?”

“Lots,” Roni said. But when she thought about it, she wasn’t all that sure.

“My parents did not abduct me,” Brian said.

“True, they don’t seem like the kidnapping type,” Roni said.

“I asked my dad about it.”

Roni laughed. “You asked your dad if he abducted you?”

“Yeah. He said I should ask my mom.”

“If she abducted you, do you think she’d admit it?”

“Look, this whole thing is stupid.” Brian stood up. “My parents would not lie to me. This is just some kid who, just because he’s my age and Asian, you think looks like me. Which he doesn’t.”

Roni looked down at Brian’s donut. “Are you going to finish that?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Roni didn’t wait for him to change his mind. She took a bite, claiming it as hers. So much for her one-pastry-a-week diet.

Brian said, “I’m sure my mom knows all about this kid. It happened here in Minnesota, and a kid getting abducted is a big deal, right?”

“Not so much if he gets snatched by one of his own parents.”

“Anyway, I’m sure she knows about it. I mean, it’s her job.”

“So are you gonna ask her?”

Brian shrugged.

“Where is she?”

“At the police station.”

a family matter

Brian sailed into the police department, waved at Agnes, who was behind the counter, and got his head rubbed by George Firth, one of the old-timers with the Bloodwater Police. He circled past the entrance to the jail and down the hall toward his mother’s office. Roni stayed close behind him. Brian loved these rare moments when he was the one in charge. Usually, he was trying to keep up with Roni, but the police station was his territory. He’d been coming here for as long as he could remember.

Detective Annette Bain was digging through a file cabinet and talking to herself. He heard her say something that sounded like, “Drat barn wigglesnoot trashooper!”

Sometimes she could be almost as weird as his father.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

Mrs. Bain shot a look at Brian, and then at Roni, then back at Brian. She stood up straight and asked, “What happened to you?”