She was sitting at a table across the café. Sipping her drink innocuously, expression placid. Nothing about her was wrong, exactly. She wasn’t behaving in a particularly unusual manner, not really doing anything to warrant my attention. But something about her was unsettling. An eerie feeling settled over my skin and made it prickle with goosebumps. And there was also something so…familiar about her. Did I know her? I didn’t think so. “Gem? Earth to Gem.” Lisa waved a hand in front of my face and I blinked. “Sorry,” I mumbled, trying to shake off the unease. “Are you okay? Where were you just now?” she asked. I considered telling her about the girl, but I didn’t want her to think I was off my rocker. Heck, I thought I was off my rocker.
I shook my head. “Nowhere, just…tired, that’s all.”
She nodded, but she was still looking at me funny. “Okay. Well, I gotta go.” She grabbed her backpack. “I’ll see you later, babe.”
“See you,” I muttered as she left.
I looked across the café for the girl, but when my eyes landed on her table, she was gone.

The bell on the door jingled as I entered the music store. “Hey there, Gem,” said Darren. “Here for that baby grand again?”
I smiled sheepishly. “Yeah. Is that cool?”
He smirked. “Of course. It’s practically yours now.”
“Yeah, if only I could afford it.” I sat down at the glossy, black, piano and placed my fingers gingerly on the keys. As I began playing the first notes of Clair de Lune, Darren glanced over and smiled. He was used to the routine by now.
“You know, not that I don’t appreciate the sounds of Claude Debussy wafting through my store, but you usually only come once a day.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, my fingers still flying over the keys. “I have only been here once today.”
He frowned. “Gem, you came in a couple hours ago and played.”
I stopped abruptly, my fingers slipping off the keys and creating an unpleasant clash of notes. My blood went cold. “Darren…,” I breathed. “No, I didn’t.”

“Okay, so Darren thinks he saw you twice. The guy’s not exactly sharp. Maybe he just saw some chick that he thought was you,” Lisa reasoned. She went through the clothes on the rack, the hangers making a metallic clicking noise as she pushed them aside.
“He swears that I came in yesterday, played Clair de Lune, and even talked to him, two hours before I even got there.” I browsed the dresses with disinterest.
“Maybe you were sleepwalking,” she said suddenly, her eyes widening in excitement. “You know, I’ve seen this kinda thing on TV. You have no idea the kind of stuff people can do in their sleep.”
“Yeah, that’d be a good explanation, if I’d slept. It was the middle of the afternoon, I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Well, what if you dozed off and didn’t know it?”
“I’d know. Lisa, I wasn’t sleepwalking. Something weird is going on.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I mean, there was this girl at the café the other day and…”
“What girl?”
“Just some girl, I don’t know. But there was something weird about her, I’m telling you.”
“Like what? Peg leg, glass eye, bad Christmas sweater?”
“No, nothing obvious.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s me. I’ve been really tired lately.”
“Yeah,” she piped up. “I’m – I’m sure it’s just stress, you know?”
I nodded and tried to smile convincingly. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s nothing.”
But as I said it, I saw a group of people pass by the window. One of them was a young woman and I couldn’t be sure – the windows were frosty from the cold – but I swear it was her.

“Can I get a bagel and a caramel latte, please?”
The cashier nodded and I handed him the cash. I headed for a booth in the back. As I made my way to it, I heard a smooth voice behind me say “A bagel and a caramel latte. That’s all, thank you.” My skin went frigid. It wasn’t uncommon for someone else to order those items. But that voice. Something about it put me on edge. I turned slowly to find that it was her. Again. She was everywhere I went. Last night, I’d even had a dream about her. Was she following me? Did she want something? I studied her face, to see again if maybe I knew her. Again, so familiar. But I didn’t know her. I scrutinized her features. She was pretty, I suppose. Her dark hair fell around her like a shroud. Her deep, dark eyes were beautiful, but a bit too far apart. Her teeth were a pearlescent white, but she never smiled. Her familiarity was so overwhelming, it hurt, but I couldn’t tell for the life of me who she was. I shook my head. This was too much, too strange. I ran to the bathroom, feeling sick. I went to the sink and splashed water on my face, trying to wash away the past few days, the weirdness of it all. When I looked up at my reflection in the mirror, I gasped. There she was, behind me. She stood completely still, not saying a word. And I don’t think she had to. Because suddenly, looking at her face next to mine in the bathroom mirror, it hit me. Why I recognized her, why I thought I knew her. In a way, I guess I did. That face that was so familiar, the face that had haunted me around town for days…was my own.