Winnie’s double continued her work on Winnie’s makeover. Less than an hour later, Winnie looked in the vanity mirror, and her double’s reflection stared back at her. But when she reached a hand up to tuck her hair behind one ear, the reflection moved too.
Split-Winnie had shown her how to do her makeup, coaching Winnie as she blended away the dark circles crying had left under her eyes and sketched in strong brows that seemed to change the structure of her face. They hadn’t had time for her double’s usual pin curls, so Split-Winnie had brushed out her own curls and styled them to match the waves Winnie’s braids had left in her freshly cut bob.
Winnie looked sharp and mysterious, like someone who might have interesting secrets.
She smiled faintly at the thought. That was one thing she did have—being from a whole other reality was one doozy of a secret.
“It’s eerie,” Split-Winnie said. “You look just like me, and it’s like—who even am I?” She said it lightly, but the unsettled expression on her face belied her tone.
Her double seemed as disturbed by the success of Winnie’s transformation as she was.
“You’re still you,” Winnie said.
The words were meant for both of them.
Winnie’s double helped her pack a bag with enough clothing to tide her over for several days, then the two snuck downstairs. They stood, somewhat awkwardly, by the front door. What’s a proper way to say goodbye to yourself?
“Well,” her double began, “I’ll call to let Dora know you’re on your way.”
“Do you think her parents will wonder why I’m spending so much time there? Although maybe they won’t notice. Where I’m from, her parents are . . .”
Winnie trailed off. She couldn’t think of a polite way to express what Dora’s parents were: her father, a profligate heir seemingly bent on burning through the massive amount of money he’d inherited; her mother, a flighty, shallow socialite who seemed much more interested in jaunts abroad than her daughter.
Split-Winnie’s expression confirmed that Dora’s family situation must be similar here. “Don’t worry about the Vandorfs. They’re on safari, or on a cruise, or skiing in Switzerland, complaining about what a bear it is to get their favorite caviar during wartime.”
“Yes,” Winnie said, cracking a grin, “that sounds about right.”
She was excited to see Dora. The thought of staying with a friend, even if it wasn’t exactly her friend, was comforting. And she felt reassured by the fact that Dora was friends with her in this world too. It seemed like a sign that maybe, at their heart, she and her double were more alike than different.
“I’ll see you soon, right?” Winnie asked. “So we can start planning how to get me home?”
“Yes,” her double said, returning Winnie’s smile. “We can meet at Scott’s after school tomorrow.”
Her double pulled her into a sudden hug. Although Winnie knew it was meant to be a comfort, it was unnerving. Her double’s body—her body?—felt both intimately familiar and completely foreign in her arms. Her waist was so small, and she could feel the curved cage of her ribs under the flesh. The delicate jut of her shoulder blades felt like calcified wings.
Looking at her double, touching her double—it was like coming home to find your bedroom full of a stranger’s things. Winnie knew she was slender, but feeling the slip of herself right there in front of her, perfectly face-to-face, she was newly aware of just how vulnerable her body was. How vulnerable everyone’s body was, she supposed. After all, she’d just seen Scott killed by nothing more than electrons.
Winnie extricated herself from the odd embrace. She met her double’s eyes, and although she wanted to look away after a moment, she found she was unable. There was a jerk in her stomach—the feeling of falling—then a roaring in her ears. It sounded like the approach of an oncoming train. Split-Winnie began to look panicked, so Winnie was fairly certain that whatever was happening, her double felt it too.
Blood began to drip from Winnie’s right nostril just as it dripped from her double’s left. They each raised a hand to their nose to stanch the blood in eerie, mirrored unison. Winnie was finally able to tear her eyes away from her double’s with great effort.
Her double retreated to the living room to grab a tissue for herself, and wordlessly passed another to Winnie.
“What was that?” her double asked in a shaky voice.
“Whatever it is, it seems to get worse the closer we are to each other.”
“You should go,” Split-Winnie said, her voice shaking. “We can figure it out later.”
There was nothing to do but comply, although the thought of going off into this new world was terrifying.
Winnie left the house and her double shut the door behind her, averting her eyes as if from something monstrous.
Winnie heard her double throw the bolt behind her and knew she was really alone.
She was still shaken up about her and her double’s nosebleeds, and what had happened to her double’s arms after Winnie grabbed her. Would they be all right if they stayed away from each other? Or would strange things keep happening to them for as long as Winnie stayed in their world? It was hard to believe she’d actually thought it might be a good idea to stay in this reality before she and Scott realized she might be able to go back and save his double.
When Winnie was thirteen, she’d gone to see The Wizard of Oz with Dora. It was her first time seeing a picture in theaters. How entranced she’d been—the music, the costumes, the sparkling red shoes against the bright yellow brick road, all in vibrant Technicolor! Dora sang the songs for months after, and Winnie sang along, even though her voice was never very good. She and Dora didn’t know each other that well beforehand, but going to see that picture together and both loving it so much had cemented their bond.
When Winnie had teared up watching Judy Garland chant “There’s no place like home,” she couldn’t have guessed that one day, she would find herself in a similar situation—mysteriously transported to a foreign world, at a loss for how to get herself home again. But Winnie knew that here, she couldn’t go off on a quest to find some wizard to save her. Winnie would have to save herself.
She walked quickly down sidewalks that were disconcertingly familiar, half expecting to see something strange and awful around every corner—some other sign that this was a world entirely different from her own. She’d been transported to an alternate reality. The impossible had happened. Now anything might happen. If she bumped into a passerby, would their nose start bleeding too? Winnie quickened her pace.
Rush hour was long past, but traffic was still thick with canary-bright cabs. On the sidewalk, men in suits returning from a late workday mixed with couples heading out for the evening. Everything looked the same as it did at home, but rather than being reassuring, this similarity made Winnie uneasy. After all, which was more dangerous: the poisonous insect that announced its deadly sting with a bright-colored body, or the one that looked harmless?
The waxing moon had already risen and hung low in the sky. Was it the same moon she saw at home, or just one of a million others? And the stars, those pretty points of light people had navigated by for thousands of years, were they duplicated too? The vastness of the multiverse was too much to comprehend; just thinking about those infinite skies made her dizzy.
Soon, Winnie came to recognize at least one striking difference between her own world and this one: here, occasionally a young man would tip his hat at her with an expression that implied something more than simple courtesy.
Their attraction left Winnie flattered, but annoyed. Split-Winnie’s fine clothes and a bit of makeup made her more appealing than her own character ever had. Was that really all that mattered to people in any world—the surface?
A part of Winnie enjoyed the appreciative glances she was given, but mostly the attention made her nervous—like she was on display. She wrapped her double’s coat more tightly around her body and shoved her hands deep into the satin-lined pockets. The coat, navy wool trimmed in rabbit at the cuffs and collar, the grown-up haircut—Winnie knew she looked more like a woman than ever, even though she hadn’t felt this lost in the city since she was a little girl.
She was passing Central Park now. She was almost there.
She spotted some homeless men huddled on park benches. She knew her situation wasn’t anywhere near as bleak as theirs, but even after just a few hours of being displaced, she looked at them less with pity than despair. You could lose everything—home, family, friends—so quickly. You could lose them in the blink of an eye.
Just like Winnie had.