Not Me

The leaves drifted softly down from the maple above me. I was watching them, so I almost walked right into her.  She had her coat drawn tightly around her, and a red scarf wrapped around her dark hair.  Her features were so familiar, I stopped walking and nearly dropped my purse on the ground.  They were familiar because I saw them as I brushed my teeth every morning.  I combed tangles out of hair like that, and rubbed moisturizer into those features every night before bed.  She shouldn't be standing there.  She should be behind the glass in my mirror.

Her face, like mine I'm sure, was drawn with bafflement.  She stopped.  We stood before one another, stock still. . . 

A sudden gust of icy wind blasted between us, catching our clothes, and blowing hair across our eyes.  In the same movement, we both swept our hair out of our faces, holding it back so we could see.

"Who are you?" We asked in unison.  I sighed, and she shook her head, in a familiar gesture from my youth.

"Where do you come from, then?" She continued softly, as the wind died down to a stillness almost unnatural.  I continued to gawk, I'm ashamed to say, but then managed to walk with her over to a park bench.  I sat down--before I fell down.

"I have an apartment near the river on Main Street."  I wasn't sure how to answer that question.  

"Is it Apartment 2D?"  Her face had gone white.

I could feel my jaw dropping.  "Uh. . ."

"It is, isn't it?"

I was glad I was sitting down.

"Well, It's a good thing Mom outfitted me. . ."I began.

"With two beds for the apartment. . ."  she finished.

I called my boss, blaming stomach flu for my absence.  Not because I wanted to get to know her. . . me. . . whatever. But we had lots of things to figure out.  She left a message on her boss's voicemail explaining her absence with a bout of the stomach flu. We went back to the apartment. (Difficult to decide whose it was, under the circumstances.  We owned identical things.)

Luckily, we had different jobs.  I had the accounting job my parents had insisted would be a good way to make a living.  She was a graphic artist.  She had pursued our passion.  So, our work lives shouldn't collide.

But where had she come from?  Clearly we had not been sharing the apartment.  Clearly our parents had not raised twin girls.  We were both called Rachel Karen Blanchard.  Born the same year, to the same parents, in the same location.  All of our memories matched up until high school.  They diverged when she plucked up the courage to ask out her/my crush, Johnny Stevenson, and he had accepted.  That's when we pulled out the photo albums.