Jake

All throughout the day, Josh would not stop bugging me to go talk to Kathy for him. It got much worse after classes ended though. He continued bothering me and preventing me from leaving the school that I somehow ended up stationed outside of Kathy’s locker waiting for her to get here. A part of me was extremely nervous about this. Despite having seen her around, I had never actually talked to her before now. What would she think of me? Would she recognize me at all? Why am I even worried about what she would think? It shouldn’t matter to me.

I suddenly noticed her approaching her locker with her head down, so I took the opportunity to study her. She had just finished working out since her beautiful blond hair was still stuck to her face in places. My breathe caught in my throat, which is when she looked up at me with her incredible green eyes, finally noticing me standing next to her locker.

“Can I help you?” She asked me politely.

“I’m Jake, one of—”

“Tom’s friends, I know. I have seen you around,” she said, reaching past me to get into her locker, annoyance slowly creeping into her voice. She didn’t seem impressed with me at all.

I held up my hands, hoping to calm her down and have her see that I really am a nice guy, “Look, I’m sorry for bothering you because I know you’ve had a rough afternoon. Josh told me what happened in your history class.”

Her eyes were lit with fire as she turned and glared at me, “So that’s public news now is it?” Despite her fierce glare, she seemed almost… nervous. As if she was hiding something.

“Yeah, word travels fast around here. But Josh wanted to talk to you himself, but he was a little scared of you, so he begged me to talk to you instead.” I explained.

“What did he want?” She sighed.

“He wants to take you to homecoming.”

She turned her head away from me as her eyes shadowed, almost as if it was painful for her to think about the dance. “I’m not going,” she said and slammed her locker shut. Without another word, she turned and walked away from me.

I stared after her as she walked down the hallway and I couldn’t help myself. She kept invading my thoughts. It made me wonder who this girl was, and why I was slowly becoming obsessed with her.

I was sitting on my bed with my laptop, having finished my homework and had just gotten off the phone with Tara, when a message from my friend Kathy popped up on the screen. From the sounds of things, today had been a really hard day at school for her, and wanted to talk to someone since her boyfriend was busy and couldn’t talk.

Jake: i dont see why this dance is such a big deal

Kathy: well, for one thing, i have a bf and it doesnt feel right to go with anyone but him

Kathy: plus you know that i am not really into going to parties and dances and stuff

Jake: well if you really wanted to go, im sure your bf would understand and not hold it against you

Kathy: youre probly right, but that still doesnt tell me what i should be doing about my explosion in history class

As Kathy and I talked, I couldn’t help but feel an unsettling case of déjà vu. Her situation seemed strangely like the one of the Kathy that Josh was so obsessed with and I couldn’t stop thinking about. When I finally closed my laptop and went to sleep, I couldn’t help but think about the two Kathy’s that I knew and the similarities between them. As I finally drifted off, my last though was that maybe these two girls were the same person.