It was the next day. The day when Sandy was coming back.
They had agreed to meet up in town before Sandy was set to arrive.
At 12:04 the bus coughed up its handful of passengers, and the real Sandy, rumpled and unwashed from the overnight trip, stalked toward him along the sidewalk. Theo’s heart did a barrel roll.
For a second Sandy’s mind snagged—the resemblance was so perfect, so intimately eerie, that she felt her own bones shudder in recognition. Theo’s version of her wore her favorite hoodie, the one she’d lost in October, and had done something elaborate with the hair, gathering it in a high, shiny ponytail. The effect was uncanny. Even the posture was right: that slouch, the way the weight shifted to the left hip.
Theo’s lips curled into a sneer—her sneer, “You look like hell.”
Sandy shrugged, forcing a grin, “Didn’t sleep.”
Theo tilted his head, “Ready?”
Sandy took a breath.
If she hesitated now, she’d never go through with it, “Let’s do this fast. Bathroom?”
They slipped into a public bathroom.
Sandy hesitated, then started to peel off her layers: raincoat, the hoodie she’d slept in, and her jeans, wincing at the cold air against her legs.
Theo, not waiting for her cue, shimmied out of the borrowed hoodie and tugged the track shorts down with a flourish, revealing a perfect copy of Sandy’s thighs, freckled and muscular in exactly her own way.
She caught a glimpse of their reflections in the scratched metal of the paper towel dispenser. Two Sandys, identical save for the subtle difference in stance and the wild-eyed delight in Theo’s eyes—a look she’d never seen in her own.
They fumbled with their underthings in unison, Sandy stepping out of her battered sports bra and boyshorts, Theo unclasping the pale blue bra with the practiced flourish of a TV magician and tugging the latex breasts free. For a few moments, they were both naked in the harsh fluorescents. Their bodies, both slim and pale and scarred in the same places, were matching paper dolls.
“Impressed?” Theo’s Sandy-face smirked, standing with his arms crossed over his chest.
She examined him up close—examined herself, in a way she never had before. There was no tell-tale color shift, no rubbery edge; the mask didn’t even end at the neck. It dove seamlessly into the collarbone, and the chest, and—she stared, incredulous—down over the breastbone and the stomach, then beneath the elastic waistband of the shorts, which Theo now tugged down with theatrical aplomb.
She expected a flat matte patch, a cheap Halloween-makeup color, maybe a line of glue where the latex stopped. Instead, Theo had her hips. Her own hips. Her thighs, absolutely, and the birthmark on the right knee, and the odd, faintly bluish network of veins she’d always hated.
And when Theo cocked one leg and pointed, grinning, “Check it, they went all out—,” she almost laughed, because even the public hair—her own, coarse and sandy-blond—had been replicated, down to the way it thinned unevenly on the sides.
She blinked at the false vagina, this uncanny copy of herself, set into the latex with such anatomical devotion she half-wondered if her mother’s intern had studied photographs, or something more invasive. Sandy couldn’t stop staring, goosebumps prickling her arms; it was a violation, a marvel, a joke that grew more horrifying the longer she looked.
She circled behind Theo, unable to help herself, watching the way the musculature of Theo’s legs flexed beneath her own skin. She reached out and touched the small of his back, tentatively, then followed the seam up to the nape of the neck, where she expected to find a zipper, a ridge, any hint of artifice. There was nothing. It was a continuous, perfect sheath, and the only thing that told her it wasn’t flesh was the absence of warmth, a faint plasticky coolness beneath her fingertip.
“Mom’s intern is a psycho,” she whispered, running a finger along the seam at Theo’s jaw, half-expecting it to peel away like cheap Halloween makeup.
It didn’t budge.
“Okay, might as well,” Sandy said, her voice tight, her face flushed.
Without waiting for an answer, she balled up her own battered sports bra, still hot and clammy from her body, and lobbed it at Theo’s chest. He caught it against his collarbone and peered at it with bemused fascination, rubbing the hem between his fingertips.
Next came her underwear—grey cotton, faded, the waistband curled in on itself from years of use and barely held together by a single overstrained seam.
She hesitated, then shucked them down, careful not to meet her brother’s gaze, and tossed them over in a loose arc.
“Authentic,” he said, and, in an exaggerated gesture, pressed the bra to his chest and snapped the band behind his back. The fit was nearly perfect, the molded cups filling out against the latex breasts with a disturbing fidelity. Sandy shivered at the sight—her own shape, her own clothes, but animated by Theo’s impish glee.
Next, he drew on the panties with theatrical care, turning away just enough to keep her from seeing the mechanics of the process, but not enough to hide the latex buttocks as he wiggled them into place. When he spun around, sockless and bare-legged, the illusion was complete: a second Sandy.
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