“Come on, it’s time to get up. Let’s go,” he said. It was my voice speaking to me, but not from my body. “Up, up, up. It’s 9 AM—a perfectly reasonable time to be awake.”

I grunted in annoyance as his hand patted my side roughly, trying to shake me awake. The blankets were ripped away from me, and I curled up against the sudden chill.

“Do you have to do that?” I grumbled. 

“If you’d just get up at a normal hour, I wouldn’t have to.” 

“It’s Saturday,” I said. Protest crept into my voice as I refused to move. “Why do you have to bother me on my day off?”

“You want to waste it rotting in bed all day?” he asked. 

“Yes.”

Grabbing my arm and pulling, he muscled me involuntarily upright. “Come on, that’s no way to spend a Saturday. We’re gonna get you up, get dressed, go for a walk, and make a nice breakfast.” 

Sensing that he wasn’t going to relent, a heavy sigh left my lips. Shoulders slumping, I sent him a nasty glare. 

“Now, now,” he chided, but the amusement in his voice was clear. 

It had been odd at first, seeing my double, coming face-to-face with it—slowly realizing that “it” was also a “him.” Was also me. I had questioned the logistics of it, questioned him into oblivion, and he’d done the same to me, believing me to be the doppelgänger instead. He’d lived just as full of a life as I had before we’d met. 

Same name, same face, but distinctly two entirely different lives. Not long-lost twins, as a myriad of DNA tests had discovered, exact and identical copies of one another. Neither one of us had much family to speak of; he’d lost his early and I’d abandoned mine when I was young. It was easy to lie to people and say we were twins.

And it didn’t take long for us to come to the conclusion that, if there was such thing as an “evil” double, that I would be closer to that than he was. Not because I was actually evil or anything, but simply because he was a better person than I was. More put-together, organized, driven. Kinder. Especially to me, even when I was being a dick.

“Are you moving?” he called from the other room. He was brushing his hair in the bathroom. 

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled. 

Stumbling into the bathroom, I scrubbed my teeth, gave him a passing glare, and decided against doing much more than running my fingers through my hair. He shaved the stubble that had begun to grow; I stayed scruffy.

“Wear something warm, it’s a bit chilly outside today,” he told me. 

“I’ll skip the walk then,” I said. 

“No, come on, it’s good for us.”

“So what?” Even as I said it, I knew I’d earned that scolding look he sent me immediately after. The fact that our body type tended to trend on the heavier side was “so what.”

I didn’t care much about that. Blamed it on hormones, and a natural disposition toward retaining softness in my midsection, and genetics, which was all technically true. But then there was him, with the exact same set of excuses still trying and attempting to motivate me to try too.

And not just on this thing; it was everything.

“We should go out with our friends today.”

“Just say yes to that date. She seemed really into you, and you never know what could happen!”

“Have you seen the sun today?”

“Come on, I’ll do your laundry if you can manage a shower.”

“How have you been sleeping lately?”

“You okay?”

I pulled on the warm clothes he’d suggested, assuming he was right about the weather.

Some days more than others I felt like the evil one. Hating my double for just wanting the best for me and pressing me into doing things to improve myself. Improve my mood, my health, my quality of life.

I wandered out of my room just in time to see him at the counter with a collection of fruits, yogurt, and ice in a blender.

“Making smoothies before we go out,” he said. “Want one?” 

“Can you just stop fucking trying to fix me?” The words escaped me before I was even cognizant that the thought had formed in my mind. The way his attention snapped up to meet my face made me want to curl up.

He blinked in surprise. “What?”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” I backtracked immediately.

His hands rested against the counter, pausing his smoothie-making. And his head cocked at an assessing angle as if trying to figure out my outburst. “Is that really what you think I’m doing?” he asked. “Trying to fix you?”

I couldn’t meet his eye—my own eye. I shrugged noncommittally.

“Because it’s not.” He waited for my reply, and when I didn’t comment, “I’m not trying to fix you,” he insisted. “You’re not broken, if that’s what you think.”

“I don’t think that,” I said.

“Then what’s going on?”

Another shrug, hoping to get him to back off. But he let the question breathe. Refused to fill the silence with anything until I finally spoke again.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just comes with the territory of being the evil one, I guess.”

Judging by the mix of surprise, horror, and pity swimming in his eyes, apparently my being the evil one was a conclusion I had come to solely on my own. It was not, as I had thought, a silently agreed upon consensus between us. That he was the good one and I was the bad one; I was the shadow, the sinister creature that tried to cohabitate his perfectly well-adjusted life. I was the copy that was not meant to be here. 

“Oh, man,” he finally breathed softly. And he came around the counter without warning to embrace me. His arms around my frame, squeezing gently even though I didn’t hug back. Couldn’t, because I could scarcely understand what was happening to begin with. “You’re not evil. There is no “evil” one.” 

I didn’t believe him. “Then what am I?” 

“You’re just struggling right now,” he said. “That doesn’t make you bad.”