My latest double shook hands the way I did—limp and floppy. He chewed on his lower lip like me too, and slouched the same way. He was like a living, breathing reminder of all my bad habits. Plus, he was huge. I’d like to think I wouldn’t judge somebody for their size, but since he looked like me in every other way, I couldn’t stop staring. How did somebody so much like me end up with a body so different from mine?
His cheeks spread into a grin that looked familiar, despite the extra padding. “This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘Interdimensional doppelgänger? What are you talking about?’ ”
I shrugged, hoping my shoulders weren’t shaking too much. “No, I pretty much get it. Parallel worlds and all that.” I shot a glance down the hall, just in case Meticulous or Hollywood was lurking there.
The Me looked impressed. “Well, that’s a first. Normally I have to talk new Mes off the wall. But I can tell you’re playing it cool. I try to play it cool the same way, you know.”
He hardened his jaw and scrunched his eyebrows. I felt my skin flame up. I’d been making that exact face.
He laughed a deep belly laugh, the way I laughed, just with more belly. “Lighten up. I’m only joking.”
This was getting more awkward by the second, so I changed the subject. “How did you even know I was coming here?”
“The SecureMe cam in the elevator lobby. I’m on Welcome Committee duty. Can’t believe I get to meet the Me from Earth Ninety-Nine. That’s the last Earth the elevator can reach, you know. Feels like the end of an era. By the way, call me Motor Me.”
“Motor Me?”
“Yeah, every Me at Me Con needs one.”
“Every Me needs a mobility cart?!”
His face went a shade of red that probably matched mine. Great, now I’d gone and insulted myself.
“Every Me needs a nickname, is what I meant,” he mumbled. “They’re how we tell each other apart, since we’re all Meade Macon. By the way, the other Mes aren’t plus-size like me. I’m a special case.” He pulled out a tube of cookies. “And on that note, want some?”
The package read CHEMICALLY FLAVORED CRUNCHIES.
“Weird name for a cookie,” I said.
“Oh, that.” Motor opened the pack, and the smell of artificial figs filled the air. “Marketing is a little different on my world. Companies use honest names. It’s the law or something.”
“ ‘Chemically Flavored’ doesn’t exactly make me hungry.”
Motor offered me the tube. “Never stopped me.”
Keeping an eye out for any sudden moves, I took a cookie. It looked like an Oreo, but with gooey fig filling inside instead of cream. “I’ve never seen a cookie like this.”
“I always pack a few things I can only get at home.”
I twisted apart the top and bottom wafers to scrape up the filling with my teeth. It wasn’t bad at all.
Motor clapped his hands together. “That’s how I eat them too!”
Maybe it was just the sugar talking, but this kid’s goofy good cheer was starting to rub off on me. “Duh! Didn’t you say you’re me?”
He laughed. “Differences do crop up. Like eating habits. The other Mes just bite into them whole, and only one at a time.”
“Boring.”
“I know, right? Why stop at just one?” Motor stacked three cookies atop each other and opened wide, sinking his teeth into the cookie sandwich with crumb-spraying bliss. He waggled his eyebrows as if to say, Top that.
With no hesitation, I grabbed the last five Chemically Flavored Crunchies from the tube, gripped them lengthwise between my thumb and forefinger, and took a huge chomp from the middle. The chain of cookies held together.
Motor’s jaw dropped. “I’ve always tried to do that, but it’s never worked!”
I did my gruff-old-coach impersonation. “Just the right amount of pressure and slack in the fingers, that’s the key.”
“That’s Tom Furst you’re doing, isn’t it?! The dude who ran the tennis camp? I haven’t thought about him for years!”
“You knew him?” Here was one good thing about Me Con already: an audience that got my most obscure references.
“Of course! Mom and Dad forced tennis lessons on me too.”
The thought of Mom and Dad—my real mom and dad—stabbed me with guilt. After-school basketball and theater practice would be wrapping up soon, and they’d expect me home for dinner. They’d freak when I didn’t show.
Motor glanced at a MeMinder on his lumpy wrist. “I came here to give you the standard meet and greet, but right now the opening party’s wrapping up and it’s every Me for himself when it comes to the cake. Grandma Sue’s recipe. You know the one.”
“German chocolate.” My mouth watered a little.
Motor launched the cart back in the direction he’d come from. “You can follow me or go back to your Earth. Either way, thanks for showing me the cookie trick.”
Swallowing the last of the fig goo in my mouth, I watched him leave. I wondered what to do next. Just because I shared a face and some memories with Motor didn’t mean I could trust him. Plus, I didn’t know what waited for me in that ballroom. On top of everything else, I’d eventually get ratted out by Hollywood once he came here.
Still, how would he and Meticulous know it was me? This sounded like the sort of crowd I could blend into, and Motor seemed like a decent guy. How could a person who ate cookies with so much gusto be all that bad? If other Mes were more like Motor and less like Meticulous and Hollywood, maybe this Me Con thing would be okay. Besides, I’d come all this way.
What was the harm in a quick peek?