"You're too alike not to meet," he wrote.

I stared at the screen for some seconds, contemplating my reply, if there were to be one at all. How to say, "Yeah, I've heard and disproved that before. So many times, in fact, that I've concluded... Well, one of two things, really. Either most people don't know me as they seem to think they do, or there simply isn't anyone else in the world quite like me. Perhaps it's a bit of both. Sorry," without sounding like a pretentious twat. How, indeed.

I closed the email, filed it without replying. I made no effort to follow the proffered address to her site. Introduce myself? Why bother. It's the same scene every time. So what if I'm jaded and lonely, a cynical old curmudgeon at the grand age of 25. So what. As long as I can live with it, right?

In a time not terribly long before, I would have lunged at the opportunity to meet this girl, the one he insisted was so like me. Yes! Let's go! But every time I had, I shuffled home, disappointment my bitter companion. I never met my other self on all those outings. Though I anticipated it, each time telling myself, "This one will be the one. This time, it'll be different. She'll be like you. She'll understand what the rest of them don't. She'll play Castor to your Pollux, happily ever after."

Antares. Betelgeuse. Vega. Bright stars, all, but none my Castor. None my looking-glass self. None my other half. My better half. The other side of me. None.

"Incoming chat request!" the husky, female voice announced.

Geez, Louise, what now? Can't a girl do a bit surfing without every piece of technological garbage sounding alarm?

"Heya, doll!" His words formed quickly across my split screen view of the chat area. Non-buffered chat, gotta hate it. "Remember that site I sent you?"

"Yes... Er... Why?" I drummed my fingers against homerow, waiting. Email to be read, Babe up in five minutes, dirty dishes... What site is he talking about, and can it not wait ‘til later? I sighed, pushed my glasses up, rubbed my eyes.

"Well, she's here. She wants to meet you. You know, I guess she's tired of my talking about you so much. Hahaha."

Talking about me, indeed. Honestly. Next thing I know, my name'll be sky-written over Grand Central. Plastered in animated .gif format on the banner-adverts of every second Geocities Heartland site. "Backstory" as required reading for... I laughed out loud, to no-one, to the blinking cursor on my input window. Gage, dear, you're just about an order of fries short of a happy meal. Swear to god.

"Well, bring her on, then," I typed back, still not quite sure of who this person was, nor of the site that I was to have seen.

I remembered when she arrived. Her name, unforgettable, jarred the memoury of a day just two weeks prior. The email I'd never answered. The site that went unvisited. Her site.

At least she typed quickly. More so than I, to my chagrin.

"I'm working on an autobio," she wrote. "It's unfinished, as yet, but you can look at what I've got up, if you wanna."

Fascinating. An English major who says "wanna" without breaking stride. A redhead who plays blonde. A femme-y girly-girl with multiple piercings. An antithesis.

I followed the link to her autobio-in-progress. Dingy grey text on a stark black page. I lit a cigarette and settled down to read. By page three, I was lost. My cigarette had long burnt itself out in the ashtray. She stole this, every word of this, from me! I thought. Where could she have found it? Did I upload anything to my personal site?

And loudest of all: Who is this kid?

It was four pages, all told. When I'd finished, I went back, and read them again. Differences, yes. Here they are. She was 12 when he ripped the door off its hinges; I was 14. He was her biological father; Mine my mother's third husband. She did not run; I did.

A shiny new penny. The face and the tail. Part of the whole. A sum of its parts. An extreme and the other. So alike they are different; so different, they are the same.

Best Girlfriend and I have discussed this so many times, the conversation has taken on an air of rote. So alike they are different. Best Girlfriend was 12 when her step-father came onto the stage; I was just seven. She fought him at first; I was submissive in the beginning. She gave in later; I snapped under the strain of several brutal years.

File under "S" for "Sirius." Next case, please.

Yet, I have a new variable for the argument. A new puzzle piece. A triad, now. A girl who never knew anything else. A three-way loss. Early, middle, late.

"How does it manifest?" Therapy Dude might say. "What are the key components? How does any of this affect you?"

So different, they are the same. Not twins. Not a single person capable of being everything that I am not, and everything that I am all at once. A three-headed beast. An acid-spitting dragon... Nay, Hydra.

Gage, dear... Didn't that thingy, whatever it is... Didn't it have seven heads?

You just had to say that, didn't you?