Page 4 of Mirror Image

“Murder.”

And there it is: the reason this man would contact me ten years after our relationship—and, very nearly, my career—imploded. My rage recedes into something colder, sharper. I realize he is absolutely right: I can relate to this woman better than the majority of practitioners out there.

Because I, too, know what it is to have a twin. And what it is to lose one and have the whole world watch the fallout.

Chapter Two

Mary

Five years ago

The day my life finally made sense was on a Monday in August. It was orientation week at South Central Florida College, and there must have been five hundred freshmen stuck in various queues under the vinyl tent city erected in the north parking lot. Seriously, they couldn’t have done this inside? It was ninety degrees outside, and in the forty-five minutes it took me to reach the front of the line for a student ID, three people had passed out from heatstroke. I was a sweaty, sticky mess by then, but I just didn’t care. Having my picture taken was the last thing I had to get done. Then I could go back to my new apartment and finish unpacking.

A disinterested-looking guy with dark curly hair took my paperwork without bothering to look up from the laptop monitor. He waved toward a gray backdrop just behind him.

“Stand up there in front of the screen,” he directed, punching my info into the computer. A moment later he got up and came around to stand behind the digital camera. “Make sure your toes are on the line, and look straight ahead at the spot on—” He stopped mid-sentence, then straightened up from behind the lens to peer at me.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Why are you here?”

“Umm . . . I’m getting my ID? Did I get it wrong? Do I need to be in a different line?”

I looked around, wondering if I’d missed a sign somewhere, dreading the possibility of yet another hour in yet another line.

“You were just here,” he said, irritated.

“Um . . . no . . .”

He nodded. “Uh, yeah! Not twenty minutes ago! I already told you, no do-overs. If you don’t like your picture, you can come back next week after classes start. But for now you’re just gonna have to live with it. Jeez, it wasn’t even that bad!”

I stared at him blankly. “You kidding? I haven’t been here before. I was just in that line for like an hour. You haven’t taken my picture yet—”

“Really? Do you think I’m dim or something?”

I put my hands on my hips and tilted my head the way my mother did when she was irritated with me. “No, but I’m starting to think maybe you’ve been out here in the heat for too long.”

“June nineteenth, right?”

“What about it?” I asked cautiously, unsure where he was going with this.

“Your birthday, it’s June nineteenth.”

“Well, yeah, it was on that paper I just handed you.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. I know that because I just did your ID twenty minutes ago! I made a comment about it being my mother’s birthday too. You said that made her a Gemini.”

This guy was starting to creep me out. “Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about . . .”

He came back out from behind the camera and returned to his computer, where he seemed to be searching for something. When he found it, he beckoned me closer to the screen. “Right there. Samantha Kay Kinski,” he declared triumphantly as he tapped an image on the screen with his index finger.

I leaned over his shoulder to get a better look and stopped short.

Then he looked between me and the screen, then back again. “Oh, shit . . . Maybe that’s not you. You have long hair. But you . . . And her . . .”

I reached past him to touch the screen—and the girl who shared my face.

It turned out Samantha Kay Kinski lived in the Kappa dorm. Getting inside wasn’t hard. I just loitered near the side entrance, pretending to be looking for something in my backpack. Eventually one of the residents came along with a key card, and I trailed in behind her, slipping into the stairwell and up to the second floor. According to the sticky note the ID guy had given me, I was looking for 219, clear on the other side of the building. Much like the Zeta dorm, where I was housed, there were corkboards affixed to each door, and many of them were already decorated with bumper stickers from the occupant’s home state, cartoon drawings, and inspirational sayings.