Stranger With My Face Read Online Free Page B

subtle to be immediately recognized. She had stood, motionless, just as I did now, inspecting the room. My eyes tracked the
     route hers must have taken, moving from one of my possessions to another. The silly Sesame Street throw rug, left over from
     my early childhood. The environmental posters on the walls—the one of the redwood forest in California—the one of the fuzzy
     baby seal staring morosely out to sea. The yellow and green throw pillows. The clutter on my dresser. The jewelry box Gordon
     had given me the month before for my birthday—his picture stuck in the border of the mirror—my hair dryer and brush, a tube
     of mascara, a bottle of nail polish.
    My eyes moved farther, to the desk with my laptop on it, to the shelves along the far wall, lined with books. She had crossed
     the room to stand in front of that shelf and read the titles. How did I know this? She had moved from there to the bed and
     seated herself on it and reached out her hand to run it over the surface of the pillow. The spread was smooth and taut. There
     was no indentation to show that someone had rested there.
    But I knew. I knew .
    Abruptly I flung open the door and lunged back into the hall. There were footsteps on the stairs above me. I caught my breath,
     afraid to raise my eyes, and then I looked up.
    The familiar figure in jeans and a paint-spattered T-shirt was only my mother.
    “Laurie, what’s the matter?” she asked as she caught sight of my face.
    “Someone’s been in my room!” I announced, meeting her at the landing. “Someone’s been in there going through my things!”
    “Oh, hon, I don’t think so,” Mom said. “Neal doesn’t do things like that, and Meg’s over at the Burbanks’. She called after
     school to say she was going to be playing with Kimmie.”
    “I didn’t mean to accuse them,” I told her breathlessly. “It was somebody else—somebody who—who—” I let the sentence trail
     away, because I didn’t know how to finish it. How could I say the words that had been in my mind: It was somebody who looks like me?
    “Now, dear, you know there’s been nobody here today but Dad and me,” Mom said reasonably. “Mrs. DeWitt doesn’t come to clean
     until Thursday. We can ask Neal—”
    “It wasn’t Neal.” I followed her down the stairs to the living room and then down the second flight to the kitchen. “I’m sure
     it wasn’t Neal.”
    “Oh, yuck,” Mom said, glancing around at the remains of breakfast. “I didn’t even rinse out the cereal bowls, did I? I just
     hate to waste that good morning light. There’s going to be so little of it from now on with the days getting shorter.” She
     plucked the bowls up and put them in the dishwasher. “Your father could at least have cleared the table.”
    “Do I hear somebody using my name in vain?” Dad called from the office. At the end of the afternoon he worked with the door
     open so he could hear Mom when she came down from the studio. My parents work in separate areas of the house all day without
     ever seeing each other, and at the day’s end they always have this big reunion.
    “Hi, Jim,” Mom called back, as pleased as though he had just gotten home from a long journey. “How did it go today?”
    “Oh, not too bad,” Dad said, emerging from the office hallway. “I managed to get the spaceship landed in Chapter Twelve. Alien
     invaders now slither through the back alleys of Chicago, spreading diseases the like of which you’ve never imagined. I stopped
     because I ran out of symptoms. I bet this one makes ‘Movie of the Week.’”
    “Dad,” I said, “did you see somebody go into my room today?”
    “Just you,” Dad said.
    “You couldn’t have seen me. I wasn’t here. I felt well enough this morning to go to school, and I only got home about twenty
     minutes ago.”
    “Really? That’s odd.” He wrinkled his forehead the same way Neal does when he’s perplexed. “Well, if you weren’t here, I couldn’t