A Chalice of Wind by Cate Tiernan

standing up. “You two obviously have some figuring out to do. But right now I’m going to write you passes for your teachers, and you’re going to get to your first-period classes.”
    I consulted my class schedule. “I have American history.”
    Thais looked at hers. She still seemed shaken and pale, which made her birthmark stand out like red ink on her cheek. “I have senior English.”
    “You girls get going,” said Ms. DiLiberti briskly, handing us pink slips. “You too, Racey. And I can’t wait to hear how this all plays out.”
    “Me neither,” I muttered, gathering my stuff.
    “Me neither,” said Thais, sounding like an instant replay of me.
    “Me neither,” said Racey, and Thais looked at her, seeming to notice her for the first time. “I’m Racey Copeland,” she told Thais.
    “I don’t know who I am,” Thais said in a small voice, and suddenly I kind of felt sorry for her. And for me. For both of us.
    “We’re going to find out,” I said.
     
    Nan didn’t come home until almost six o’clock. When she works late, I’m in charge of dinner, which we call emergency dinners, because cooking is yet another domestic art I’m not strong at.
    Tonight’s emergency dinner was a frozen pizza and a salad. I ripped up a head of lettuce and got a tomato from the garden in back. Ta da.
    From the moment I’d walked in the door, I’d been wound as tight as a window shade. My shoulders literally ached. This afternoon I’d planned to see Andre—I’d finally been going to go to his apartment, and who knew what would happen? But now all I could think about was the fact that my double was walking around New Orleans, looking like me, sounding like me, yet not being me. I mean, it wasn’t her fault, obviously, but I felt like a Versace bag that had suddenly seen a vinyl imitation being sold on a street corner.
    So I just paced around the house, my jaw aching from being clenched, missing Andre and wanting to run to him and have him make me forget all about this and instead counting the minutes until my grandmother got home.
    Finally I felt her pushing open the front gate. I didn’t go meet her but waited while she turned her key in the lock and came in. She looked tired, but when she saw my face, she straightened up, very alert.
    “What is it?” she said. “What’s happened?”
    And that was when Clio Martin, stoic queen, non-crier in public, non-crier in general, burst into tears and fell on her shoulder.
    Nan was so startled it took a moment for her to put her arms around me.
    I pulled back and looked at her. “I’m a twin! ” I cried. “I have an identical twin!”
    To say I’d managed to take Nan by surprise was a gross understatement. I had absolutely floored her, and believe me, Nan did not floor easily. She’d always seemed like she’d seen everything, that nothing could rock her or make her upset. Even in second grade, when I’d slipped on a watermelon seed and split my head open on our neighbor’s cement porch, Nan had simply filled a dish towel with ice, told me to hold it in place, and driven me to the hospital.
    But this, this had really managed to stun her. Her face turned white, her eyes were dark and huge in her face, and she actually staggered back. “What?” she said weakly.
    Okay, now—most people, if they went home and told their grandmother they were a twin, the grandmother would laugh and say, “Oh, you are not. ”
    So this was not good.
    Nan wobbled backward and I stuck a chair under her just in time. She grabbed my hands and held them and said, “Clio, what are you talking about?”
    I sat down in another chair, still sobbing. “There’s another me at school! This morning they called me to the office, and there was me, standing there, but with a haircut! Nan, I mean, we’re identical! We’re exactly alike except she’s a Yankee, and she even has my exact same birthmark! I mean, what the hell is going on? ” My last words ended in a totally un-Clio-like