Doppelganger

My main character is a female. My main character is a pastry chef. An archetype in my story is
Shadow. A key object or symbol is beach ball. My story is set in a gym. My story is about levity.

They say everyone has a doppelganger, an exact twin, somewhere in the world. Mine’s a high school student
in south Florida.

Who am I? I’m Hildy Milton. I do pastries for a living. You want your crepes, your éclairs, or just your plain
donuts, I got ‘em. Yep. Pastry chef. Now that you’re done laughing, pastry is a serious business. Everybody
eats the things. My business, Sweet Tooth, is booming. I and my four assistants turn out 10,000 pastries a
day. At two bucks a whack—well, you do the math.

I make enough to take vacations. I was on one in Florida when I saw my twin. Actually, she bounced a beach
ball off my head. Emerging unscathed from the affair, the beach ball bounced and rolled down the beach as
Sherri and I stared at each other.

Oh, yeah. Her name is Sherri—Sherri Willis. She was about fifteen years my junior, but there was no
mistaking the resemblance. She was like a long-lost sister, or the daughter I never had.

Well, one thing led to another, and before you know it, I found myself accepting an invitation to attend a
basketball game at the local high school which Sherri attended and where she rah-rahed as a cheerleader.
The boys’ team was playing a neighboring high school on the other side of the city. A grudge match, I
gathered, though I didn’t really pay attention. Basketball’s not really my thing, you know? But Sherri asked,
and I couldn’t refuse.

Sherri had been strangely reticent about her life, though I happily prattled on about mine. By game time, she
knew the name of my business, where it was located, how much I made, and much of my day-to-day routine.
Well, what’s to know? I wake up, I go to work, I make pastries, I come home.

Just before she left me sitting in the bleachers, Sherri said something strange. She said, “Hildy, whatever
happens, don’t panic, just keep your eye on the pom-poms.”

I blinked, but she’d already left before I could ask her what she meant. I saw her come out on the court
sometime later, with the other cheerleaders. She was dressed in a skirt that looked as if it might contain
enough material to cover a rat’s a---uh, hiney, but I doubted it. Sherri was carrying two gold and black pom-
poms. They covered more than the skirt. I waved to her.

The cheerleaders began a cheer.

            Rocky, Rocky, he’s our man!
            If he can’t beat ‘em, no one can!

I watched Sherri, but her lips seemed to be saying something else besides the cheer. Then she winked at me
and slid the pom-poms into my line of vision.

Next thing I knew, I was holding pom-poms and feeling a draft up the back of my legs clear to my rear end. I
stared at myself getting up and out of the bleachers, heading toward the door.

What the--!

I dropped my arms, pom-poms dragging the floor as I tried to figure out what was going on. The girl next to
me executed a turn and stuck her pom-poms square in my face. Naturally, I returned the favor, still dazed and
confused.

“What are you doing, you freak!” she hissed, and smacked me with the pom-poms again.

Never one to let the meek inherit the earth, I waded in with both pom-poms blazing. As the whole team
paused in amazement, a basketball floated my way and I added that to the mix. Let me tell you, a basketball
bounced off the head hurts way more than a beach ball.

I also noticed that I was younger and faster than I’d been, so I made ample use of that.

The upshot was that I, or rather, Sherri, was expelled from school. Somebody named Jerry drove me home. I
certainly didn’t know the way. Sherri’s mom read me a lecture, and her dad grounded me for a month after I
told her mom where she could put her lecture.

I decided I’d better try to blend in to the teen world a little better if I wanted to get my old life back. Sherri was
probably running my business into the ground about now and spending all my money.

So, here I am, going to school at age thirty, the rest of my life before me.

Wait. Maybe Sherri Wilson just did me an enormous favor.

If I could skip all the obnoxious crap of growing up and making the usual mistakes, I could be an entrepreneur
at age fifteen instead of thirty.

Look out world, here I come.

Again.

                                                                          end