Saturday night Mack drives the four of us to the party at the Yowells’ house on the Gold Coast where all the other “rivah” mansions are. Mack’s so full of himself, not that I blame him. He’s dressed up like Johnny Cash, sporting my father’s belt with the huge metal buckle from the sixties, black jeans, and a black shirt with little white metal snaps instead of buttons. Oh so cool.
Juliann walks around him in circles after he parks the car in Leonard’s side yard, next to the dozen or so vehicles already there. “Where’d you ever find that shirt? It’s so perfect for the man in black. Real rhinestones?” She peers closely at Mack’s chest, which sends him strutting around, right in character.
“Not very scary,” I say. “Halloween’s about ghosts and goblins, not rock stars.”
The twins come as one thing, a doppelgänger. They wear matching gray sheets and have big black circles around their eyes to make them look otherworldly and miserable. Their arms, covered in black stocking material like those black stretchy suits dancers wear, stick out from holes in the sheets. My mother would never have let us cut up perfectly good sheets. They spray-painted baseball hats and Meredith’s D on the front of the sheet is backward, to be the mirror image of Juliann’s. Pretty simple, but effective. Unfortunately the costume only works if they stay together, the opposite of what Mack and I were hoping for. And the opposite of what we’ll be doing our damnedest to have happen.
Mack’s building the right mood, working up from the compliment on his costume. “You know, a doppelgänger might not be so happy to have his shadow follow him, ah, her everywhere. She can’t have any real fun.”
Although Juliann giggles, she stops immediately as if she remembered who she was supposed to be. “Not shadow. Mirror image. Her missing half.”
“Doppelgängers don’t want to have fun.” I’m baiting him.
“You know, misery loves company,” Meredith chimes in.
When I pour it on, I can see Mack frown, like Why don’t you shut up. I pitch my voice low. “Doppelgängers wander the earth for all eternity. They don’t belong in either place. They’re meant to be miserable.”
“What if…” Mack puts his thumbs in the belt and sputters nonsense, caught between staying in character and thinking of a credible reason half a doppelgänger would go with the Man in Black and half would go with Captain Hook. “What if they’re really two separate people and the doppelgänger has taken possession of their bodies? June Cash, for instance. And…”
There’s no place for him to go with this. Captain Hook had no female admirers. We’ve been standing in Leonard’s yard for ten minutes it seems like and all kinds of other ghoulies have passed by with the appropriate whistles at Mack and shivers at the girls and me. Meredith whips off the hat and jams it on backward.
“This doppelgänger is unhappy because she isn’t getting to dance.” She grabs my hand and we’re gone. I can hear Mack and Juliann working painfully through the analogy until we’re inside and I’m introducing Meredith to the senator and his wife.
Senator Yowell’s shirt is starched, the collar a stiff castle inside his V-neck sweater. No suit jacket or sport coat. It must be a rare day when the senator doesn’t have to worry about impressing people. The insult, the inference that his son’s friends are not worth impressing, hits me a few minutes later when I’m pouring Meredith a soda after our first dance and feeling PO’d because Leonard cut in and I couldn’t think fast enough to say no. Heck, she could have said no.
I try not to stand there and stare at them. Leonard keeps swinging her under his arm with enough momentum to bring her crashing back into him. And she keeps circling away. I know Leonard has had dance lessons, so I know the excess swings are for a whole different purpose. Creep.
Guys are so single-minded. Except Holden, who had dance lessons with Sally or Jane and goes ape when Stradlater stays out late with Jane. Some of the kids I know at prep schools still do that debutante social thing. My parents couldn’t afford any fancy dancing classes and probably wouldn’t understand why anyone would think it was important. No wonder Leonard’s a way better dancer than me. First off, he’s probably had dance classes for three or four years. In the second place, he’s way more experienced with girls, period.
He’s so confident that people just assume he knows what he’s doing. To be honest, I could care less most of the time. It’s not that I want to be smooth; I’d just like to be able to dance with Meredith without looking spastic.
Stepford-Hanes would say I should simply seize the day. Carpe diem. She sees things so clearly. It never seems personal or critical because she can make you laugh. She’s one of those teachers you know from the first day of class that you won’t forget. She sees you, the real you, and not just twenty-five nail-biting, gutter-mouthed teenagers. I miss her class. I miss her.
Studying alone is not the same. There are no jokes, no cutups, no paper airplanes from the back row, no other fools to make you feel better. I miss her voice, too. It has that Northern pushiness that doesn’t allow for wasting time. Not harsh or mean, just let’s get to the important stuff.
I should go see her, talk to her about Holden and the hotel-room scene and how he tricks Phoebe when she comes with her suitcase, one of the few dishonest things he does in the whole book.
“Whoa, whoa.” Senator Yowell yanks my wrist to stop the soda flowing over the top of the plastic cup. There are chocolate-colored lines of bubbles on the cabinets and a puddle on the floor.
“Oh, jeez. I’m sorry, sir. That was careless of me. I was thinking about…just thinking, not paying attention.”
“Reinventing the wheel, I hope.” He smiles broadly and hands me a sponge.
The idea of him watching over his possessions, his house, his family, comes to me as I mop up the sizzling puddle and squeeze the sponge over the sink. He’s a father, too. Although he steps back through the doorway when Meredith comes in from the den, he doesn’t leave. Probably wants to be sure I’ve managed the mess, that there won’t be any slip-and-fall injuries on his watch. I’m not used to this kind of management from the sidelines. My parents have no image to maintain, nothing to guard against except whatever nature delivers. I’m not sure Dad would even notice if I poured something all over the floor.
Leonard follows Meredith into the kitchen. He elbows past his father. His costume is really weak, a baseball jersey over jeans. The newly ubiquitous button-down peeks out from the jersey. When I asked him who he was when we first arrived, he looked right at Meredith and said, “Barry Bonds on steroids.” Now he’s practically tripping on her doppelgänger sheet to stay connected. It would be funny if it didn’t piss me off so much.
Last year he had a girlfriend, Sarah Messimer. He’s had several, actually. Sarah’s father is a real-estate lawyer in town. Leonard and Sarah were a perfect pair. Her shoes matched her sweaters. No telling what Leonard did, but it ended abruptly and he refused to talk about it. Mack and I agree, chances are she just figured him out. Or he got too personal too fast. He has this entitlement thing, like how could any girl resist him?
Just because Meredith’s the new girl in town, he has to make this a contest, prove he’s the better man. It’s like Nick’s win-win obsession in soccer, except more twisted because Leonard and I are supposed to be friends. Friends don’t steal each other’s girls.
He turns and frowns at the senator. “I think we’ve got it under control now, Dad. Isn’t Mom waiting to watch the movie with you upstairs?”
When Senator Yowell starts sputtering, I have to look away immediately. He’s so shocked, his mouth is open, not any photo op he’s used to. Kid power. Or maybe it’s more about Leonard showing off for Meredith. Whatever Leonard meant, it comes across as an underhanded dig at his own father. I’m liking him less and less.