Wanted! by Caroline B. Cooney

dealerships, just looking and touching. I wasn’t old enough to drive.
    Rob was old enough to drive, and he didn’t even care. How could this guy I called Twin be so different from me he didn’t care about cars? I couldn’t stand an engine that didn’t sound perfect, and I believed in a constant program of preventive maintenance. Rob figured if the car started, and he arrived without a tow, that was plenty.
    I could never stand a crummy car. Or a crummy body.
    But Rob ate enough to keep going, and exercised enough to cross a street, and then he was done.
    Alice’s mind jumped in and out. Who cared about this? This was more than twenty years ago!
    Daddy, you have to help me! she cried. I obeyed you! I took the Corvette and the disks and I went to meet you. You can’t let me down. Daddy, I need you now, not twenty years ago talking about your twin who wasn’t even a twin!
    Alice scrolled quickly, stopping now and then to read a paragraph.
    I had short hair because of wrestling; you didn’t want to give a guy a grip he could break your neck with, but short hair was not “in” when we were in high school. I had to develop muscles to offset short hair. Believe me, I did. You wanted a great body? Got it. You wanted a great car? Got it. From the time I was born, I knew I had to have a great car and I did yardwork and I washed windows and dishes—about all a kid under sixteen could do—and I never spent a cent. You never found me buying a candy bar or a record. (Cassettes were just coming in. I didn’t buy any because I wasn’t willing to spend my money on a cassette player.)
    She was hungry and tired and deeply afraid and this was a waste!
    The disks had nothing to do with it.
    Her father had let her down. He hadn’t meant to. He had not known that her life would depend on this disk, that she had no other place to go than inside his disk. But there was nothing here.
    She dragged the arrow to the end of the file—skipping dozens and dozens of pages—and looked at the final paragraph. Here Dad was talking about Mom and her flaws, and that Alice definitely could not look at. That was what the fake-confession-writer had said—that Alice and Dad were fighting about Mom in the first place!
    She could sit here no longer, she could stay calm and collegiate not another minute, she could not stare at a computer screen and think; she had to move on.
    She’d moved the pointer to the little box that would close TWIN. Her long strange fingernail was ready to tap. Then she decided to print the file, to read later, in privacy. Not that she knew where to go, where she’d be alone and safe and could turn on a reading lamp.
    It took forever to print. Maybe there were too many people in here doing the same thing, or maybe the computers looked good, but were actually ancient, three or four years old.
    The printer clicked and buzzed and rattled. It had a continuous feed, and the roll lapped out as if it would never end, and Alice wanted to run screaming out of the room, because it was futile, it was pointless, she had expected a clue, a place to go, a number to call—and all she got was Dad wishing his brother were still alive.
    “What are you printing, a book?” asked somebody irritably.
    “It’s a very long term paper,” said Alice. Really, the human body was remarkable. Who would have thought Alice could still speak, and sound rational?
    “How many pages were you required to write?” said another voice.
    Alice had no idea what length college papers were supposed to be. “This is an independent study.”
    The printer stopped, in the complete way of computers, as if it had died. Alice tore the last page free, stuck the enormous printout into her stolen backpack and left.
    She bought a candy bar from a vending machine, and that would have to be lunch and dinner. Chocolate made her feel a little better. She tried to think of nothing but its silky taste.
    Exiting Stefan R. Saultman was easy. Maybe this was always true: Leaving