She's out there – the real one, I guess. I don't know whether to get mad at her or get freaked out or feel sorry for her. Nobody was kind enough to tell me how this hoo-ha all got started.
I want to imagine that she had nothing to do with it. That somebody snatched her brush and figured out how to make me out of the DNA in her leftover hair. I would laugh trying to picture her searching for it, with a puzzled look on her face. Little did she know there was a whole other girl running around somewhere with the same strawberry blond hair – the kind that barrettes slid out of, and curled on a hot summer day. All because of a missing brush.
Or maybe she did know. Maybe mommy and daddy told her to get inside a suped-up copy machine, or another mad scientist's invention – just to see what would come out.
"It'll be fun," they would have told her, "and when we're done, you can have candy for being a good girl."
And she did do it, because candy is worth doing anything for.
Even getting cloned.
I don't think she knew, though. I didn't know, and that was long enough for me to think I was real. But life is funny like that. Sometimes, you can go on your merry little way, without a clue in the world about what you are.
That you're a photonegative. A song played backwards. A reflection in the mirror.
Something fake.
There's a lot I want to know – questions that a simple googling can't answer. Like, do we both write with our left hands? Does she like to listen to Sufjan Stevens on a rainy day? Or twirl her bangs while taking a really hard test? And chew on her pencil?
I don't care if I don't get any answers about those. Just so I can know what her name is.
Then I can step out of the looking glass.