Will You Be My Friend? by P.J. Night Page A

been searching for. I saw her in Glenside when I touched her picture just now.”
    â€œYup,” said Elizabeth. “She ran away from me too. Just a few weeks ago. Which brings us to clone number six.”
    â€œMe,” Beth said. “I’m number six. You gave each clone a nickname based on your name—Elizabeth.”
    â€œGood thinking, Beth,” said Elizabeth. “You’re a smart one. We’re going to get along great.”
    â€œAnd that’s why nothing happened when I touched the sixth picture,” said Beth. “Because it is of me. Instead of seeing through someone else’s eyes, I just saw my own experience, which at that moment was simply me touching that picture.”
    â€œYes,” said Elizabeth. “And because some of the clones ran away, I asked my mother to do something special for number six. My mom and her assistant implanted a homing chip in your body so that I could find you if you ever escaped.”
    â€œSo it was no accident that you tracked me down and ran into me that day near Glenside,” said Beth, feeling the skin on her arm for a chip. “You tracked me, and followed me to the school so we would meet. You needed a new friend.”
    â€œYes,” answered Elizabeth. “Your ‘mother,’ Nancy Picard, was proving difficult. She was supposed to take care of you until I had need of you, but when the time came, she didn’t want to give you back. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get you, but you made it so easy when you went off that day by yourself. It was only a matter of getting you to the hospital and under my mother’s care. It was me who shook the ladder that day and caused you to fall.”
    Beth grew frightened. She wondered how far Elizabeth would go to get what she wanted.
    â€œBut I still don’t understand why I don’t have any memories,” remarked Beth.
    Elizabeth nodded. “When you were created, you were twelve years old. Any memories you had from the time you were ‘born’ in the lab to the time my mother’s assistant took you away for safekeeping were erased with a drug. Until I needed you, you would have no idea who you were or where you came from.”
    â€œMy mom was your mom’s assistant!” Beth said, the whole terrible truth dawning on her.
    â€œYes, your mom was, and still is, a brilliant research scientist,” Elizabeth explained. “She worked closely with my mom on developing and refining the clones. When she agreed to take you home for safekeeping, she signed a contract saying that she would return you when the time came.”
    â€œSo the day we moved into the new house was the day she brought me home from the lab,” said Beth.
    Beth hugged herself tightly. She no longer cared about the pain in her rib. Everything she knew about her life was wrong. She now understood why her mother had acted so strangely the other day when she left. She knew that she would never see Beth again, that Beth now belonged to Elizabeth, and like Elizabeth she would never grow any older.
    Of course she had no memories of her childhood. She had never had a childhood. She came into existence at twelve and would always be that age.
    Elizabeth put her arm around Beth.
    â€œWill you be my friend?” Elizabeth asked.
    Beth wanted to run, to flee the building, to get away and never come back. But because of her homing chip, she knew that Elizabeth would find her, maybe even “get rid of her.”
    â€œS-sure,” said Beth. “I’ll be your friend.”
    â€œGreat!” said Elizabeth, smiling brightly and pulling her phone out of her pocket. “We’ve got twenty-one more games to get through and all the time in the world to play them!”

EPILOGUE
    FIVE YEARS LATER . . .
    â€œWhat do you mean you’re bored, Elizabeth?” Beth asked as the two girls walked through a park.
    â€œDon’t get upset, Beth,”