The Waters & the Wild by Francesca Lia Block Page B

look pale. She wondered how much pain he was in all the time, pretending he wasn’t. A pale bluish halo of light surrounded his gray hair.
    â€œWhat does that mean?” he asked.
    She wanted to confide in him. She needed to talk to someone and he would understand better than her mom would, but it was difficult for her to say it.
    Finally she blurted out, “What do you know about doppelgangers?”
    â€œSupposedly Abraham Lincoln saw one. And Percy Shelley. John Donne. Your mom thinks it’s related to stress. They were all ill, under stress at the time. John Donne’s wife had a stillborn baby. I don’t know much more. That’s from Wikipedia.”
    She sat down on the grass and started pulling the heads off of the little daisies that bordered the wall of bougainvillea. Crushing them in her fingers until they felt wet, like with blood; tossing them aside.
    â€œWhy? What’s wrong? Too much stress at school?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t fit in. So boring. Every teenager feels like that.”
    â€œThat doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
    Really, she didn’t believe that she felt likeevery teenager at all. She was much more of a freak. Than anyone, probably, except maybe Haze.
    â€œI had an experience,” Bee said. It was a risk to tell Lew. He might tell her mom. But she couldn’t hold it back anymore.
    â€œDo you think this is something for your mother? Is it about boys?”
    She grimaced. “No. Not that. Don’t worry.”
    â€œOkay, sorry. Tell me, kiddo.”
    â€œI saw someone in my room last night.”
    Lew jerked forward so abruptly she was afraid he’d fall.
    â€œA girl,” she added.
    â€œIn your room?”
    â€œShe looked just like me.”
    â€œSo that’s what this doppelganger talk is about.”
    â€œYes, well. I don’t know. She was just standing there, and then she said, ‘You are me,’ and disappeared. I didn’t dream it.”
    â€œâ€˜You are me’? What do you think it’s about?”
    â€œI have no idea. Mom would say it’s a hallucination. Too much stress, like you said. Don’t tell her.”
    â€œWell, you are our little Gemini after all.”
    â€œVery funny. So says the astrologer.”
    â€œNo, I mean seriously, from a symbology perspective. Let’s say she wasn’t a real girl. What do you think the significance is? Is it about growing up?”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œAn identity thing. ‘You are me.’ Leaving one self behind for a new one. But the old self is always part of you, too. Does that sound right?”
    â€œNo. I don’t know.”
    â€œWho are you, then?”
    She scowled at him. Even if she pretended (I am a thirteen-year-old double Gemini girl—Scorpio moon—who lives with her therapist mom and her mom’s astrologer boyfriend in Venice, California; I go to school, where I get bad grades; I write poetry with my left hand, dance in my room, read books, listen to music, Google images of goblins and the tattoos my mom won’t let me get, dream of devouring my garden), she really had no idea.
    In some ways that was nearly as frightening as seeing the girl in her room.
    â€œSome people think you begin to grow up when you stop trying to figure out who you are,” Lew said.

3
Strange Fruit
    T he girl was singing to herself under the jacaranda tree, her eyes looking skyward and her full mouth unapologetic. She was singing about Southern trees with strange, bloody fruit, bodies swinging in the breeze. She wore a checked cotton dress, and her hair was in nappy braids. Kids stared ather, hurried past, snickered. It didn’t matter that her voice was rich and sweet as orange-blossom honey, Bee thought. It didn’t matter that only the setting made her strange. On a stage in a long gold satin gown, under a few lights, she would have been purely stunning.
    â€œStunning,”