Read Online Stranger With My Face by Lois Duncan - Free Book Online Page B

don’t want to hang out
     with them. It’s insulting.”
    “They’re your friends,” I said.
    “If they’re mine, they’re yours. At least, they’ve tried to be.” He regarded me worriedly. “What’s going on with you, Laurie?
     When we’re together I don’t feel like you’re really with me. It’s like your mind’s off somewhere else.”
    “I’m with you now,” I said, and kissed him to prove it.
    That always worked with Gordon. His mouth came down so hard on mine that I could feel my teeth cutting into my upper lip.
     I guess it was what you would call a passionate kiss, but in the middle of it I realized that he was right—my mind was detaching
     itself—moving away from the two of us as though it had business elsewhere. Somehow I seemed to be standing back, looking at
     this boy and girl kissing, thinking what a good-looking couple they made, like something out of a movie, perfectly cast, with
     the boy’s fair hair so nicely contrasting with the girl’s dark mane.
    This is how Lia must feel, I found myself thinking. She stands apart and watches.
    The thought was so terrifying that I shivered convulsively, and Gordon broke off the kiss to draw back and stare at me.
    “I must really turn you on! That’s good for the ego, you know.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “You know it wasn’t that.”
    “Then what the hell was it? That’s what I mean—your mind’s never here anymore. I don’t know what your problem is, Laurie,
     but if you can’t get it together, we’re going to have to break up. Things can’t go on the way they are.”
    “No,” I agreed, “they can’t.”
    It wasn’t just our relationship that I was referring to. As important as it once was to me, it was overshadowed now by other
     issues. Helen’s suggestion had been absurd, but I would have to confront it in order to discard it. As she herself had said,
     I had no alternatives to offer. My parents might laugh at me, or be hurt and angry, or get worried and haul me over to the
     mainland to see a psychiatrist, but any of that would be better than worrying over the strange little lump of doubt that had
     been planted at the corner of my mind. If there was really a Lia, and if she was really my sister, I had to know.
      
    The next afternoon when I got home from school, I went up the stairs to Mom’s studio.
    I entered without knocking, which is what she prefers (“Banging on the door is the last thing you want to do when somebody
     has a brushful of paint in her hand,” she always said). The room was filled with the slanted, golden afternoon light which
     is so much mellower than the blue-white light of morning. Mom was seated at her easel with her back to me. On the canvas before
     her there was the first rough outline of beach and ocean and the figure of a child. I could tell by the lines of the sturdy
     body that it was Megan, bent forward, hands on knees, gazing intently at something that had been washed up by the tide. The
     sky was gray and foreboding, as though a storm were rising in the distance. Mom always painted her skies first and then worked
     her way into the foreground of her pictures.
    I drew a long breath and let her have the question.
    “Do I have a twin sister?”
    For a long moment Mom gave no sign of having heard me. She continued to sit motionless, the hand that was holding the brush
     frozen in midair a scant half-inch from the surface of the canvas. Then, slowly, she turned to face me.
    “Why would you ask such a thing?”
    “Because I need to know.”
    “You don’t come up with a question like that out of the blue. Something or somebody had to inspire you to ask it.”
    “Does that really matter?” The fact that she had not given an immediate denial was answer enough. I stared at her, incredulous.
     “What happened to her? Where is she? How could you never have told me?”
    “There didn’t seem to be any reason why you should know,” Mom said. Her face was very pale, and her eyes had