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Amber stared at her hands, an extreme sense of Deja-vu threatening to overwhelm her. She had once again awoken in a parking lot behind the steering wheel of a car, with blood and cuts on her hands and arms and no clue how she gotten there. She was going crazy. She wanted to go to the hospital and talk to Dr. Abernathy. Dr. Abernathy would help her she was sure, but the thought of going to the hospital made Amber feel like she’d swallowed a brick. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt that something bad had happened and Dr. Abernathy would blame her for it.
She’d been having a nightmare, a man covered in blood. Beaten to a bloody pulp and sitting quite still on a floor with those tacky black and white squares of linoleum on it. Blood had been pooling around him. Then there had been a big knife and someone had used it to cut his head off. In her dream, the head fell into the man’s lap with incredible slowness.
Dr. Abernathy had told her she couldn’t have dreams about people she’d never met, the brain didn’t work that way. But Amber didn’t think she recognized the man. Where had she met him that allowed him to invade her dreams?
She wanted to go home and take a shower, but something told her she couldn’t do that anymore than she could go see Dr. Abernathy at the hospital. Was this Caroline’s idea of a joke, forcing her to wake up in strange places covered in blood and cuts that she couldn’t explain? She wanted to ask her, to yell at her, but she couldn’t.
Amber realized her hands were shaking and she hurt all over. She got out of the car and found her knees felt rubbery, like they might not hold her for very long. She stared at the car. It wasn’t her aunt’s car. It was a car she had never seen before, a black sporty, luxury car, maybe. Amber didn’t know much about cars, but she thought it might be a BMW. She stared at the tinted windows for a moment or two. Why did she think it might be a BMW? What did she know about BMWs? She walked around to the front. It was not a BMW, it was a Jaguar. Not a new Jaguar, an older model, it was kind of boxy shaped. Maybe a 1990s model Jaguar. But it was very clean. There were no scratches, dings, or dents on it.
Amber walked into the park. Caroline had now stolen a car and Amber was going to go to jail for it. She felt sick. She sat down on the first park bench she came to. How would she explain to police that it hadn’t been her but some parasitic twin that had stolen the car, a twin named Caroline that didn’t have her own body and made Amber do things. Amber sat on the bench and tried not to cry. This was all Caroline’s fault. She took out her cell phone, she had three missed calls from her aunt. She ignored them and just held the phone in her hands, fighting tears. Maybe she should turn the stolen car in. Maybe that would keep her out of trouble.
A woman sat down next to her on the bench. She was young, pretty, attractive, with a big, goofy looking dog. It reminded her of something that wasn’t a dog, but Amber couldn’t remember what it was. She stared at it. The dog came over and sat directly in front of her. It held up a paw. Amber just looked at it.
“Are you okay dear?” The woman asked.
“Yeah, I think so.” Amber answered. “My sister keeps getting me into trouble and I’m not sure what to do about it.”
“She wants to shake,” the woman said pointing to the dog. “She’s very intuitive. She wanted to stop here, I think she could tell you needed a friend.”
Amber took the dog’s paw and shook it. The dog responded by licking Amber’s hand and then nuzzling against her leg.
“I just need my sister Caroline to stop being mean to me.” She said after a few moments of silence. “Do you have a sister?”
“I have five siblings, two sisters and three brothers. When we were young, they could be trying, especially the youngest. He would break things and then blame someone else. But surely you’re old enough that your parents know better.”
“I don’t have parents, I live with my aunt. My aunt is a really nice woman, but Caroline is trying to kill me and my aunt doesn’t seem to care, she says I must make allowances for Caroline, because there is something wrong with her.”
“Oh, is she autistic?” The woman asked.
“I don’t think so, she doesn’t have a body for some reason. She steals mine and makes me do stuff I wouldn’t do. Like drive a car. I’m too young to drive, I don’t even have a learner’s permit yet.”
The woman looked at her blankly for a minute. Amber didn’t notice she was staring, Amber was petting the dog. She looked like Falcor off the Neverending Story, the luck dragon, a big, golden-white dog with floppy ears, a big tongue, and soft curly hair.
“Come on, Rainy, let’s go.” The woman said after a moment. “I hope you get things worked out with your sister.”
“Thanks,” Amber said as the woman started to walk away.
Amber sat almost completely still for another couple of minutes, trying to think. She wasn’t going crazy, she was crazy. Finally, she opened the browser on her phone and found the non-emergency number for the Tallahassee police department. She called it. The line rang twice and then a man with a nasally voice answered the phone.
“My sister Caroline stole a black Jaguar. It’s at Rockhill Park,” Amber hung up. Then she stood up and started walking. An animal control vehicle with flashing lights came roaring down the road past her, along with a police car. Both of them were speeding Amber noted, as she moved closer to the grass that bordered the sidewalk on the side of the park. She wondered where they were going. Then her feet stopped moving.
“Are you fucking kidding me!” Brexton asked after a moment. “Why didn’t you stop her, Martha!” Brexton tried not to yell, but it was hard. Brexton was mad at all of them. What was Martha doing. Martha was supposed to be in charge of Amber and Caroline. It was Martha’s responsibility to keep the two younger girls from having massive freak outs and doing things like calling the police to report this kind of activity.
Brexton pulled the baseball cap out of their bag and put it on their head, tucking their hair up under it. At least Amber had grabbed the damn bag, Brexton thought. Amber was trying to make sure they all died in prison, Brexton decided. Martha needed to take control of Amber, Brexton couldn’t save them if Amber was working against him.
