Sure enough, when the next slow song came on, Henry sauntered over and asked if I’d like to join him on the makeshift basement dance floor. He offered me his left hand and I hated Sasha, in that moment, for the thoughts about Henry and his hand that she’d just put in my brain. I grabbed his hand anyway, and off we went.

I don’t remember much after that. I know the song had something to do with the color blue, and that Henry stepped on my foot at least three times, but beyond that it gets a bit fuzzy. Henry started spinning me around, and I was laughing, and said, “Spin me faster!” like some kind of moron in a bad prom movie. The last thing I saw clearly was the concrete basement wall rushing toward my face. When I came to, I was sprawled out on the floor and could feel blood dripping down my forehead.

“Oh my god,” someone said. “What do we do?”

“Call 911!” someone else yelled.

“Don’t call 911, idiot! Get Sasha’s mom!”

“Oh my god,” another voice squealed. “There’s so much blood on her face.”

It was blurry all over, like the party was remade in watercolor. Sasha came in and out of focus as she hunched over me, telling me to stay awake, asking me to say something, demanding that I be OK.

“If you die at my birthday party I will resurrect you just to kill you again,” she said, and I think I laughed, though the blood inside my mouth made it sound more like a gasp for air.

As Sasha’s mother, then the paramedics, came running down the stairs, my eyes briefly focused on a girl standing by the refreshment table with her hands by her sides, staring at me. I had no idea where she’d come from—she wasn’t there when the party began, and there weren’t enough people around for a stranger to slip in unnoticed.

“It’s her!” I said to Sasha. “My twin.”

“Shhh,” Sasha said. “Stop talking. It’s all right. You’re going to be OK.”

The girl kept her eyes—my eyes—on me and touched her own forehead. When she brought her fingers down, they were covered in blood. She shook her head no, and then the room went black again.

****

The last time I saw her was three weeks ago, the day my heart was broken by Max, who I’d been dating for about four months. He decided we were just “too different,” which I guess is true, in that he never seemed interested in anything I loved, not even on a basic politeness level.

I spent most of the afternoon at Sasha’s, staining her comforter with mascara tears and eating various chocolate-marshmallow products, and took the long drive home so I could wallow some more alone in my car, with Blur’s “Tender” on repeat and a giant Cherry Coke in the cup holder. I didn’t want to go home—I didn’t want to go anywhere, really, except maybe back in time—so I drove around side roads for hours, listening to the same lyrics—“Come on, come on, come on, get through it”—and guzzling fountain soda until my bladder surrendered and I had to pull into a McDonald’s to use the bathroom.

There is something especially depressing about a fast-food restaurant bathroom; I think it’s the smell of the pink-goo industrial soap that comes standard in most of those places. It has a chemical-floral odor that overwhelms the air and sticks to the skin, even hours later. Like someone who breaks your heart, it’s gross and it sucks and it’s relentless and the only thing you can do is let it fade away and try to avoid going near it ever again.

She was standing by the sink when I exited the stall, her back to the sink, the water running.

“It’s you,” I said, but what I was thinking was, It’s me.

The girl said nothing. I noticed a small scar on her forehead in same place as mine, a souvenir from my first dance.

Already broken down from a day of crying, I was at a point where exhaustion overrode fear, and I reached toward her and tried to touch her, but she took a reverse step, toward the tiled wall. She looked scared, but she didn’t run away.

“Who are you?” I said.

She said nothing.

“Why do you have my face?” I realized this was a weird question as soon as it left my mouth, but weird situations call for weird queries. And really, you should jump at the opportunity to ask someone why they have your face, if ever you have the chance, because I don’t think it comes around all that often.

She just stared at me, her eyes wide.

“You know, you’re kind of a dick,” I said. I was done with people. My heart hurt. My stomach hurt. My brain hurt. This girl had been creeping me out for seven years. She had my face. She owed me an explanation, if nothing else.

The girl winced a bit, like the words struck her, but then I saw her lower lip quiver. She started laughing—my laugh, high-pitched and giggly—and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say sorry.

I’m not sure why, but I started laughing, too. Maybe because I had already cried too much that day. Or maybe because I thought I was going mad in a McDonald’s bathroom. Or maybe because I’d never noticed how funny my laugh was until I heard it come out of someone else’s mouth. The girl sighed and cautiously reached toward me. I took her hand and held it for a solid five minutes, both of us staring at our own faces, feeling familiar skin and our own blood pumping through a stranger’s body. Finally, she spoke. “You’ve got to leave me alone,” she whispered. “You’re freaking me out.”

“You’re freaking me out!”

“The dreams are so creepy,” she said. “I go to sleep and there you are, just, like, staring at me.” Frightened, I let go of her hand and started backing toward a bathroom stall.

“How did you get that scar?” I asked.

“I fell off my bike,” she said. “When I was 14.”

“And how did I get my scar?” I ask, pointing to my face.

“Dancing, I think,” she said. “I had a dream about it while I was in the hospital after my bike accident.”

“The hospital?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I had a concussion and stuff. Pretty brutal.”

“But what about Williamsburg? You were there, when my family was on vacation, you were by the garbage can.”

“I remember that! I was watching you—well, I thought I was watching me, drinking lemonade with my mother and brother. There was some war going on, maybe? I remember being scared that we were just sitting there while battles were taking place. I wanted to tell you to run, but nothing came out of my mouth. My mother says I woke up screaming.”

“I don’t believe you,” I told her.

“I guess you don’t have to,” she said, shrugging. “But I have to wake up now.”

She smiled—her crooked teeth now straightened by braces, just like mine had been—and then she vanished, leaving me with nothing but the stink of industrial soap, the sound of running water, and a sudden rush of warmth in my veins, like someone had restarted all of my organs and reminded them how lovely it was to exist. ♦