Chapter 3

Thursday, December 18, 2014, 9:24 p.m. Rebecca bent at the waist, hands on her knees, and breathed deeply through her mouth. Her head swam and her ears rang. Her stomach felt assaulted by a 24-hour bug from Hell.

Busy with homework, Younger-Rebecca hadn’t witnessed her arrival. Rebecca pushed upright and gazed around her room. The clock on her nightstand advanced to 9:25 p.m. as she watched. It was her bedroom, of course, and she was Iris, the uninvited guest. Twin Sister also, she realized. Spotting the empty Diet Coke bottle on Younger-Rebecca’s desk, she wet her lips. She was so effing thirsty.

“Fuck,” Younger-Rebecca muttered disconsolately. The fingers of her left hand played with a spray of hair that had escaped from behind her ear. She recited words in a low, dull monotone that Rebecca couldn’t quite make out. She jumped as her younger self slapped her hand on the desk. “I don’t even know what I’m writing, anymore!”

“Fuck it then!” Rebecca advised. “Grove’s such an asshole, anyway.”

Younger-Rebecca shrieked and spun around, almost tipping over the chair. She calmed down a bit sighting Rebecca. Blinking rapidly, she gasped: “You scared me! Where did you come from?” Her eyes involuntarily snapped right to the bedroom door.

Rebecca glanced at the door as well and cocked her head. “This is crazy,” she muttered. “I can’t remember everything my older self said.” Younger-Rebecca stared at her, open-mouthed. “This must be one of those paradox thingies,” she muttered. “Do you know who I am, Rebecca?”

Not awaiting an answer, she stepped away from the gate. “Don’t go through here,” she warned as Younger-Rebecca’s eyes flashed to the thin-lined, floating oval. Crossing to the bedroom door, she continued: “I’m going downstairs for a Diet Coke. I’ll bring you one too. We need to talk, Becs.”

Flustered, Younger-Rebecca choked: “What is that thing? How did you get in here, anyway?” She rose from the chair, looking uncertainly from Rebecca to the gate, and back again.

“Don’t mess with it, Becs. It’s dangerous as hell. I’ll explain everything when I get back.”

Not awaiting an answer, a second time, she opened the bedroom door and went through it into the hallway. “Hey!” Younger-Rebecca called after her indignantly. “Who are you?”

“Look in the mirror,” Rebecca muttered, closing the door.

Downstairs, she avoided her mom in the living room and headed directly for the kitchen.

“Becca?”

“Just getting a soda, Mom!” She prayed Mom wouldn’t decide to come have a look-see and discover her black eye and busted lip. She hadn’t during the 1st iteration, she guessed. Opening the refrigerator door, she remembered inspecting the oval in Iris’s absence, and wondered what Mom would make of unexplained footsteps from the second floor as her younger self moved about. Alarmed, she grabbed two bottles from the six-pack ring and hurried back upstairs.

“Here.” She tossed Younger-Rebecca a bottle and locked the bedroom door. Twisting off the lid, she pitched it into the trashcan beside the desk as her older-self had done. Younger-Rebecca stared at her dumbly.

“It’s okay to drink. You need the caffeine, Becs.” She held out her hand, watching it shake.

“Have we met before?” Younger-Rebecca blurted.

“Once, yeah,” she admitted, “for about 5 minutes.”

Her face was barely recognizable, she imagined, battered and puffy like it was. More importantly, a person doesn’t observe her reflection in the same manner she regards the face of another person. Nobody expects to see her own face, worn by a stranger.

Younger-Rebecca frowned, eyeing her battered eye and lower lip. “Did some guy do that to you?”

Rebecca watched her younger self twist the lid off her 20 oz. bottle and toss it at the trashcan, as she had done the first go-round. As before, the cap ricocheted off the rim, bouncing under the bed. It occurred to her that when able, Younger-Rebecca hewed to the script. She grinned as her earlier-self advised: “You should complain to the school counselor, you know. What school do you go to, anyway?”

She couldn’t recall how her older-self had replied. Taking an experimental sip of soda, she flinched, and went with: “I’m fine. It was a girl that punched me, anyway.”

Younger-Rebecca winced. “Do you at least have a name?”

“Iris,” she said immediately. “And yes, I’m wearing your clothes.”

Younger-Rebecca blinked, looking down at her own, less rumpled outfit. “Wait a minute! How--?”

Rebecca made a chopping gesture, exactly as Leda had done. “That thing is a portal, Becs. It puts you a thousand years into the future. The year 3109, to be exact, although, really, I have no way to verify that.” She looked around, spotting the Bizzy K ball cap on Younger-Rebecca’s desk. If Iris had pitched it into 3109, why hadn’t she found it upon arriving 5 minutes later? Bothered by this, she crossed to the desk, grabbed the cap by the bill and flung it a 2nd time through the portal.

“Hey!” Younger-Rebecca objected, eyes bugging on cue as the hat winked from existence.

Rebecca slapped her hands to her cheeks in mock dismay. “Where’d it go?”

“That’s not funny, dammit!” Younger-Rebecca cried hotly. “Where DID it go?”

Rebecca watched, amused, as her younger self rushed around behind the oval to examine the floor. Her smile faded as Younger-Rebecca underwent the eerie refraction that she had noted earlier with the gate.

“You better get it back! Amy got that for me, dammit.”

“Don’t want to piss off Amy, do we?” she muttered. Everything was so alike, she thought, yet subtly different than last time.

Younger-Rebecca stormed out from behind the oval. “You need to tell me what’s going on! Right now, dammit!”

“Or what? You’ll blacken my eye?” She laughed again, making a sweeping gesture toward the gate. “Let me explain what’s going on.”

Wait, she thought ... what if Younger-Rebecca didn’t pass through the gate this time? Would this later version of herself, in the guise of Iris, cease to exist? Suddenly panicked, she paraphrased the encouragement Iris had given her, the first time around.

“You should see what the other side has to offer, Becs. It’s crazy there, but you can come back any time you want. You might not want to come back, though: Imagine never having to kowtow to that sorry-ass Amy anymore?” She laughed, imagining that herself. “I’d miss Gunther, yeah...” She snapped her fingers, excited. “But if I could get him over here and get him to go through the gate too! Come with me!” she gushed, sticking out her hand.

Younger-Rebecca exploded. “I’m not going through that thing! No way!” She thrust a finger at the gate. “Get my hat back, dammit! No! Get out of my room! And why are you wearing the same clothes as me?”

Rebecca grabbed her hand. “Please come with me, Rebecca!”

Younger-Rebecca yanked her hand away. “Leave me alone, dammit!”

“Yeah, leave her alone, dammit!” a third voice shouted in agreement.

Startled, Rebecca snapped her head toward the gate and discovered her bedraggled twin standing before the oval.