I’ve always had the prettiest eyes at school. Everyone says so. Other people in my family have the same, boring brown ones, but mine are green with gold flecks. Everyone says I should be a model when I’m older, and I probably will.
All through school, I’ve dated all of the most popular guys. I love watching them watch me. For Homecoming, I’m planning to go with Lee Tucker, the running back. He’s already getting calls from a bunch of SEC schools, and I’ve caught him staring at me a bunch of times.
There’s only one problem: the New Girl.
Her name is Illiana, and she has my *exact* same eyes. I saw it the minute she arrived at school. There they were, like looking in a mirror, the same green luster, the exact same gold flecks in all the exact same places. Except that she has this pale, blank face. It made me sick to look at, honestly, like putting a two-dollar frame around the Mona Lisa.
Worst of all, no one else seemed to notice how ugly she is. She’d barely been at school two hours when I saw Lee and some of the other football players chatting her up at her locker. The whole time they were talking to her, though, she just stared down the hall at me, like she was in a trance or something.
After school, I saw her sitting on the front of her car in the parking lot, waiting for me. She drives this Frankenstien of an old Camry, complete with a driver’s side door with no paint. It’s basically the opposite of my cute little BMW. My dad got it for me, of course–he’s one of the top five pediatric surgeons in the country, so he can afford it.
“You must be Alice,” said Illiana. “I was wondering if we could go get some coffee.” She blinked, and TBH, it kind of made my stomach turn, because it was like she was blinking my eyes.
“Why would I do something like that?” I asked.
“Come on,” she said, smiling. “We’re connected. You can tell that, right? We should be friends.”
“I’ve got friends,” I said.
Then I got in my car and peeled away while she stared at me in this super creepy way.
At dinner, my dad could tell I was moping, so he asked me, “What’s wrong, pumpkin?” And then I told him about Illiana and how she talked with Lee and about her stupid eyes.
My dad practically choked on his chicken parm.
“You stay away from that girl,” he told me. “Don’t even speak to her.”
I told him he was kind of freaking me out, but he just repeated himself and then got his worried dad look and said he had to make some phone calls.
So, with dad acting totally psycho, I grabbed my phone and decided to do a little light Instagram stalking. Lee is kind of basic in terms of his Instagram game, but I can’t help scrolling through his pics. Except this time, I found like five pictures of him and Illiana chowing down on enchiladas at Senor Taco! I screamed and tossed my phone, which totally cracked on the marble floor. Oh well, time for an upgrade, I guess.
After that whole incident, I decided that Illiana and I needed to have a little chat. I tracked her down at her locker and asked if she wanted to grab Starbucks after all after 4th period, and she was totally up for it.
At coffee, she kind of stared at me like a shy puppy, looking at me with my own eyes. Everyone once in a while, she peeped out little questions like, “Do you have any brothers and sisters?” and “What’s your dad like?”
“Why did you move here?” I asked after playing nice for a few minutes. “Did something bad happen at your last school?”
She shook her head.
“This might sound silly, but I moved here for you. I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” she said.
Uh, psycho, we just met.
“Yeah, cool,” I said, casually finishing my latte. “I, uh, better get back to my dad.”
“Say hi for me,” she said.
“Yeah, sure.”
Dinner that night turned out to be weirdly tense, especially after I mentioned my coffee with Illiana.
“I told you to stay away from her,” my dad said, squeezing his fork so tight his fist turned white.
“Why?” I said. “Is she like your love child or something?”
“No,” he said. “She’s just–” His pager went off. “Just stay away. She could be dangerous. I need a few days to figure out why she’s here.”
I really wanted to do what dad advised, but the next day at school I walked into the cafeteria to find Lee and Illiana fully making out at the corner table. I fully dropped my salad, which got dressing all over my best Jimmy Choo boots.
I walked over to them, going full Real Housewives psycho.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” I shouted at Illiana.
“I just wanted to see what you like about him,” she said. “Why you picked him, you know? Or maybe I wanted to know what it was like to kiss him. You’ve been given so much in your life… sometimes I think you don’t even realize it. The car, the boy, the money. But are you grateful for any of it?”
“You realize you and I aren’t dating, right?” interjected Lee.
I uncapped the Green Machine juice I was drinking and flung it all over them.
“You’re dead,” I told Illiana. “Dead.”
She licked at a bit of the juice as it trickled down her face.
“I hope you don’t mean that,” she said. “I wanted so badly to like you, Alice. I wanted to give this whole process some time. Now I’m starting to think I should just get it over with.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I shouted, but by then the gym teacher, Mr. Lowry, was pulling me off to the principal’s office.
After that whole incident, I could tell people were starting to get the impression that I was the psycho bitch, so I decided it was time to control the narrative.
I jumped on TikTok and made a little video explaining how Illiana had come into school to steal my boyfriend and was probably wearing colored contacts to copy my signature look, and how basically she was probably trying to steal my whole identity.
I titled it “This Psycho Stole My Eyes” and posted it. Believe me, it got plenty of views, and the comments told me I was totally in the right.
Knowing that justice was on my side, I grabbed a large rock from the field by the parking lot and smashed it through the windshield of Illiana’s tragedy of a car, which honestly was probably an upgrade for that piece of junk.
As the rock rolled to the pavement, I looked back to see Illiana watching me with my eyes, and a slightly amused expression on her face. She mouthed words into the wind that I couldn’t hear. Before I had to look at her for even a second longer, I got in my car and drove home.
I woke up in the middle of the night from a really good dream about Lee and found someone in bed with me.
“Lee?” I whispered half asleep. “Did you… sneak in?”
“It’s me,” said a soft voice. “I thought it would be a nice surprise.”
I looked into my own eyes, blinking back at me.
“Illiana?” I asked.
“I know we’re not sisters,” she said. “Not all the way anyway. And we never got to be babies together. But we still have time.”
I started screaming as loud as I could. Over and over again.
“This isn’t how I wanted it to be,” she said. “I know it’s not your fault–the way you are, I mean. He spoiled you. But I wanted to at least get to know you before–”
“Dad!” I screamed. “Help!”
His room was only a few feet from mine. His footsteps should have been thudding down the hall by now.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “He can’t come. You see, this whole thing, it was really between him and me. I was just projecting a few things onto you. But you’re really just another victim here.” She got up and looked out at the full moon, examining something in her palm.
“I did have a sister when I was born,” she continued. “A real one. A twin. They said she died at birth, but something never quite made sense to me. You see, they lost her body at the hospital. It happens sometimes, they say. They get mixed up with other medical waste and then thrown into the incinerator. But my mom always said she heard two cries when I was born. She saw too healthy babies.”
Something was dripping down her hand, dripping out of whatever she was holding. I lay in the bed, my covers tight around me, like they’d protect me from the boogeyman.
“And would you believe that same night, at that same hospital, a little girl was born to one of the top pediatric surgeons in the country? Now, it may take some digging, but if you look at that little baby’s medical records, they’ll tell you she was born blind. Yet somehow those records later got altered to say her eyes were fine. Odd, don’t you think?”
She took a step toward me.
“Where do you think that little blind girl got her eyes?”
“No… I started to say… No.”
“You keep telling everyone I’ve got your eyes. I copied you. I’m here to tell you, yours are stolen.”
She exhaled sharply.
“But like I said, none of this is your fault. You’re just the beneficiary. And now the price is paid. We can leave as friends.”
She opened her palm to reveal what she’d been holding all this time, a pair of eyeballs, fully intact and dripping with blood. I knew from their dull brown color who they belonged to.
“Dad,” I said weakly.
“The price is paid now,” she said. “It’s possible he’s still alive if you hurry.”
She pulled open my clenched hand and put the eyeballs inside.
“Here,” she said. “You keep them.”
My dad didn’t end up making it. The funeral is coming up this week.
At least everyone at school felt bad for me. Lee even offered to take me out to a movie. I went, but I wasn’t really into it. I just spent the whole time looking over my shoulder, wondering if she was there.
The cops are still looking for Illiana, but they don’t have much to go on. Apparently, that wasn’t even her real name. The police have some grainy camera footage from Illiana at school, but it wasn’t really enough to get a description out to the media. I tried to describe what she looked like, but her features are so boring it was hard to even describe them.
“Just look at my eyes,” I told them, wishing I could rip their stupid faces off. “She’s got the same ones.”
“It’s just eyes,” said one of the cops. “Not really enough of a detail to go on. What else have you got?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”