DupliKate by Cherry Cheva

I’d told Rina to let the answering machine get everything. Should I go back to my car and pull into the garage, knowing that Rina would hear it and retreat to the closet? Yes, that was probably the best plan. I grabbed my bag and started to get up from my crouching position, and as I glanced through the window I saw Jake and Rina again.
    Except this time they were kissing.
    Aaaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    I actually yelped in horror, then sprinted back around to the front of the house. What? How? A million thoughts flew through my mind, but first I had to stop the atrocity in my living room. Immediately . I looked at Jake’s car and wondered if it had an alarm, then eyed the big decorative rocks around one of the trees in the front yard and wondered if I had the balls to throw one through his car window. No. I didn’t. Instead, I rang the doorbell ten times in a row, which made absolutely no sense but at least would distract them; then I hid at the side of the house. A few moments later, Jake got in his car and drove away. As soon as he was out ofsight, I sprinted in the front door and found Rina still in the living room.
    “WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?!?” I screamed at her. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?”
    She looked taken aback. “Oh my God, calm down,” she said, stepping away from me as if she was afraid I was going to hit her. Smart girl.
    “I will not calm down!” I screamed, pacing around the room and looking for something to throw. I settled for punching a couch cushion. “Do you realize what you just did?”
    “Yeah, I just kissed a boy for the first time!” Rina squealed. “And it was awesome !”
    “You can’t kiss that one!” I yelled. I picked up the cushion I’d just punched and gripped it tightly in my hands to keep from punching something else—namely, Rina’s face.
    “Why not?” she asked. She looked confused. “He’s not Paul. You just said to stay away from Paul.”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “So what’s the problem?” she asked, sitting down in the armchair next to the couch. “Jake’s cute! And really easy to talk to! He came by to drop off your physics stuff, and—”
    “He thinks you’re me!” I yelled, spiking the couch cushion onto the floor and then kicking it. I was this close to slamming her head into the coffee table.
    “That’s great!” Rina said. “That means he likes you !”
    “No,” I said, my voice icy with anger, “That means he thinks I’m a girl who cheats on her boyfriend! And it also means that he thinks I like him ! Do you not get it? What the hell part of this don’t you get?”
    Rina stared at me, wide-eyed. “Oh,” she said finally. “Right. I’m sorry.”
    “Not as sorry as I’m gonna be if—oh my God, what if he tells someone? Paul’s gonna break up with me!” I felt a moment of sheer, blind panic, and I frantically looked around the room as if help were magically going to arrive from somewhere, bursting out of the walls or materializing in the fireplace. “If anybody hears about this, they’re totally gonna tell, and it’s gonna get back to Paul somehow, and then he’s gonna—”
    “Nobody’s gonna hear about it,” said Rina. “Don’t worry.”
    “How the hell do you know? Jake could be telling half the world by now!” Oh my God, I had to text Paul. No, I had to call Paul. But what was I going to say? I opened my phone, saw the picture of Paul that I have as a background, freaked out, and closed it again and threw it onto the couch. No. No panic-texting , I told myself. That’s even worse than drunk-texting . Calm down. I just had to calm down.
    “Jake won’t say anything,” Rina said. “He just doesn’t seem like that kind of person, you know? You should know. Didn’t you used to be friends?”
    “You guys talked about that?”
    “Sure,” Rina shrugged. “We talked about a bunch of stuff. Did you know he wants to go to art school?”
    “Yeah, I think so,” I said distractedly. “He likes