Stranger With My Face by Lois Duncan

children’s room and my parents’—to my own bedroom door. I stretched out my hand and rested it on the knob. She was there. I could feel her on the far side,
     resting quietly, waiting. I knew it, but I was powerless to reach her. The knob would not turn.
    “Helen?” I whispered. “Are you awake?”
    “Mmmmmm.” There was the sound of her body shifting beneath the blankets in the bed across from me.
    “I need to ask you something.” I hoisted myself up onto my elbow. “Helen, do you think I could do it too?”
    “Do what?” The urgency in my voice must have gotten through to her, because she no longer sounded sleepy. “What is it you’re
     thinking of doing?”
    “Projecting. I’m identical to Lia. Isn’t it logical that whatever mind power she has would be available to me? A moment ago
     I was thinking about Cliff House, and I had this feeling that if I tried hard enough, if I could just figure out how to direct
     myself, I could will myself there!”
    “No!” Helen said sharply. “You should never try!”
    “Why not?” I was becoming more and more excited by the idea. “Think what it could mean! If I could free myself from my body
     the way Lia does, I could do anything! I could travel anywhere!”
    “Don’t talk that way, Laurie. I don’t want to hear it.”
    “But why?” I asked reasonably.
    “Because it’s unnatural.”
    “In the Navajo world it isn’t. You told me that yourself.”
    “You’re not in the Navajo world,” Helen said. “It’s not about your heritage. You haven’t been trained in this. You’d be messing
     around with something you don’t know how to handle.” There was a note of real panic in her voice. “It’s dangerous. You have
     no idea what might end up happening. I want you to promise you won’t even try.”
    “Then you believe it would be possible that I could learn?”
    “I guess it’s possible,” Helen said reluctantly. “But if you do, I just know that you’ll regret it.”
    “I don’t understand why you’re so scared by the idea.” I settled back on the pillow. My heart was pounding. “You talked about
     it so matter-of-factly when it was Luis’s father. If he could project himself to watch the birth of his son, why shouldn’t
     I do the same thing to find my sister? She’s somewhere in the world, a living person, not just a mirror girl. I could go to
     her the same way she has to me.”
    “There are better ways,” Helen said. “You’ve written to the adoption agency. Any day now you’re going to hear from them. Maybe
     they’ll send you an address. Then you could write or call her.”
    “I don’t think they’re going to answer,” I told her. “It’s been almost a month now. And if they do, you said yourself they
     might not be willing to tell me anything.”
    “Give them a chance,” Helen pleaded. “Give them a little more time. They might come through. We can’t be sure. Please, believe
     me, it would be so much better that way.” She paused, and when I didn’t respond she continued, “Promise me, Laurie. I want
     to hear you say it.”
    “All right,” I agreed reluctantly. “I promise. I’ll wait a little longer.”
    The letter arrived three days later. Helen brought it to school, and I read it standing in a stall in the girls’ restroom.
     It was the only privacy I could find.
    The writer, Mrs. Kelsey, was the daughter of Margaret Hastings.
    “Your letter was forwarded here to Phoenix,” she wrote me. “The agency was closed after my mother’s death. The records are
     sealed and have been placed in storage. I do recollect that there was once a case in which there were twins to place. It was
     an unusual enough occurrence that my mother used to talk about it. She was disappointed that they could not have been placed
     together. One child was adopted, and the other was reclaimed by her mother. Some years later the mother died, and the child
     was again brought to the agency. I believe she was placed in a