Stranger With My Face

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name.”
    “But I saw you!”
    “How could you?” I asked, trying to be reasonable. I fought to keep my voice steady. “There’s no moon tonight. It was totally
     dark.”
    “But there was a light—some sort—there had to have been. It was like—like it was coming from inside—but that’s impossible,
     isn’t it?” Helen’s hand gripped mine tightly. “It wasn’t you, Laurie. There was a girl here, and she looked like you. On the
     surface she did. She had your features, your hair—but her eyes—” She broke off the sentence and started to shake her head
     frantically from side to side. Her red hair flew back and forth. “It wasn’t you—it was somebody else.”
    “A nightmare,” I said again, tentatively, but we both knew that was not true. The mirror girl had been there, and Helen had
     seen her, not as a shadow, a formless voice in the darkness, but in my shape and form.
    “Her eyes?” I whispered. “What about her eyes?”
    “That’s what scared me,” Helen said in a choking voice. “I wouldn’t have been scared to wake up in your house and find you
     by the bed. That would have been normal enough. People get up in the night, stumble around, try to find the bathroom, come
     back half-asleep to the bed they’re used to. What scared me were the eyes. They were evil eyes, Laurie, just plain evil! When
     she stood looking down at me, all I could think was—this person is going to kill me!”

We talked about it during the weeks that followed, first in that shaky, self-conscious way people do when they are afraid of a subject, and later, when we had some
     distance, more objectively. Who could the girl have been? How could she have gotten into the room and left it so quickly?
     What did it all mean?
    Of course, by then I had told Helen the entire story, not just the part about Gordon and Natalie.
    “I’ve been scared I might be going crazy,” I said, admitting that to myself for the first time. “The dreams—and that’s what
     I kept telling myself they were—were taking over my life.”
    “You’re not crazy,” Helen said firmly. “And that girl you call Lia isn’t any dream. Have you ever actually seen her?”
    “No, not really. As a shadow, maybe. As a reflection. Not as a real person.”
    “I saw her clearly,” Helen said. “Either I’m more attuned to things like that than you are, or else she’s getting stronger.
     If that’s the case, she’ll be able to appear anywhere soon, even in broad daylight.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked nervously. “You can’t be talking about—about that ‘astral projection’ thing. I told you. I can’t
     do that.”
    “But Lia can,” Helen said. “There is a Lia, Laurie. She’s not just somebody your mind has invented. If she were, I wouldn’t have seen her too. Somewhere in the
     world she exists, this girl who looks so exactly like you, and she has learned how to project herself.”
    “There can’t be somebody who looks that much like me,” I objected.
    “An identical twin would.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I don’t have a twin.”
    Helen regarded me thoughtfully. “Are you sure?”
    “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said vehemently. “Of course I’m sure.”
    “Do you have a better idea?”
    “No, but any other explanation would make more sense than that.”
    I would have given anything to have been able to discuss the subject with Gordon, but the one time I tried to broach it, he
     shut me down quickly.
    “When Helen slept over at my place—” I began.
    “I don’t want to talk about Helen,” Gordon interrupted. “You’re so wrapped up in that weirdo, people are starting to talk
     about it. Mary Beth says you don’t even eat at the table with the islanders anymore. You go off and sit with Helen in a corner.”
    “Why does that matter to you?” I asked him.
    “I just told you why—because people are saying stuff. You’ve got nice friends, and you act like you

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