<div class="floatleft">(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk137/HaibaneR/Mistaken%20Identity/Amber_Beryl_Stonley_Av_11.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Beryl Stoneley<br/><br/><strong>Location:</strong>School dining hall entrance, near the sandwich counter<br/><br/><strong>Doing:</strong>Meeting some strange enthusiastic woman!<br/><br/><strong>With:</strong>Carmen Redgrave<br/><hr/><br/>I had a pastrami on rye in one hand and a chicken, salad and mayo club in the other, each in their card and plastic containers and was literally weighing them up in my balanced palms. Lifting one and thinking, then lifting the other and thinking more. I probably looked like some weird gastronomic juggler about to start her act. I just couldn't decide. Since coming to America a few weeks back I had already become addicted to the strongly flavoured smoked and spiced Italian meat which we just didn't get in England but I was worried it would leave an after taste or smell on my breath. It wasn't that I was specifically planning to put my mouth near anyone's face later, or let them put theirs near mine but you could never tell. The future was a foreign land and we all travelled there unprepared. Chicken was a safer bet but a bit bland. Grr, decisions, decisions…<br/><br/>When I heard a woman's voice call out "Amber!" I instinctively turned around and smiled in the direction of the sound. It's the conditioning that happens after seventeen years of identical twinism. Twinism? Is that a word? Oh, well, I just invented it, so it is now! Samuel Johnson would be proud of me! Oh yeah… Sam, is he around yet?<br/><br/>A dark-haired and very pretty woman stepped towards me and began talking away happily. She looked really pleased to see me and she was giving off all kinds of friendly body language. I relaxed and grinned back, running my fingers like a comb through my wayward fringe.<br/><br/>"Class was good," I replied honestly, though a bit confused. I was mentally frowning and thinking<em>Who the hell are you?</em>but outwardly I tried my best to smile and chill and not let the stranger think she was bothering me. "Tests and quizzes? You call them quizzes here? Ha! That's something we have in pubs in Britain. Winning team gets a bottle of wine or two free rounds of drinks, it's quite a social sport back home."<br/><br/><em>What the frigging hell are you saying? You're talking bollocks girl!</em>To be honest I was a bit off balance but as my mind rambled to fill in the gap with any old crap that came out of my mouth my brain did a little twist of situational assessment and a small light bulb came on in my head.<br/><br/><em>You're Carmen! You're Amber's friend!</em>It was a satisfying moment, like when you stare at one of those online 3D visual trick puzzle things and then suddenly after five minutes you see the cat on the tree branch or the camel in front of the pyramids and it suddenly becomes a recognizable something instead of a meaningless jumble of nothing. I do love those eye-brain tricks.<br/><br/><em>Carmen! Yeah! I know now.</em>Then suddenly<em>You're the lesbian!</em><br/><br/><em>Fuck. Girls licking girls. Ew.</em><br/><br/>Or rather.<em>Yay!</em>was what I should be thinking. Because Carmen clearly thought I was Amber. She'd called out sis' name and was beaming at me happily so obviously to her I wasn't Beryl, but my sister. And of course my sister was queer. Small problem.<br/><br/>However I suddenly had a wicked thought. Amber and I had enjoyed many, many hours of fun in our youth, both with our pals in school and our teachers. We had even tricked our parents once or twice if we wore identical outfits. The many fun times we'd had deliberately pretending to be each other meant we'd practiced it specifically in front of our bedroom mirror, and almost without really meaning to but with a little grinning demon-in-red-with-a-pitchfork-on-my-shoulder mood, I let a sunshine beam of happiness light up my face. I put my head a bit to one side in just the way Amber does.<br/><br/>"The tests were cool, Carmen, really easy. I must be getting into the swing of American school already."<br/><br/><em>This might be fun… As long as she doesn't want to get into the licking thing right away…</em>I dropped the tasty but pungent pastrami sandwich back on the shelf, grabbed a little plastic bowl of salad and a can of diet Pepsi and paid for them along with my safe but sweet-smelling chicken sandwich.<br/><br/>I paid and turned back to the strange woman. Then she grabbed my free hand. I fought away the urge to tug it back and cause her to get confused and let her hold it. She had nice cool hands.<br/><br/>“I go to Dresden Park every Friday afternoon, I play some guitar, I write some poetry… would you like to come with me and perhaps be the object of a poet’s desire?” she asked.<br/><br/>"Uh… the park? Where is that? But… yeah… sure, if we can get there and back before the bell."<br/><br/>I let her lead me away from the dining hall and the throng of arriving students.<em>Where's Sam? I'm supposed to meet him. He'll get cross at me for not showing up when I said I would. Then again going with this Carmen person might be quite nice too. She thinks I'm Amber. Ha! I'll have to send Amber a text and tell her what's going on…</em><br/><br/>Carmen was talking again and as we walked I grinned back at her. She was quite tall so I had to look up a bit. She kept hold of my hand and almost dragged me along and my other arm cradled my lunch. The sandwich counter lady had dropped my items into a brown paper bag with a string handle so I was able to slip my wrist through the loop and get my phone out. One-handed I sent Amber a text.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">&lt;&lt;Got mistakn 4u by Carmen! If u see Sam make out yr me! Txt bk. Let me kno wots happening.&gt;&gt;</span><br/><br/>Amber hadn't told me anything much about this Carmen woman. She played guitar and wrote poetry. She talked a lot. And she licked pussy. I was building up a profile, some of it useful, some of it scary.<br/><br/>We exited the campus, had to run across the road between the traffic and turned down the pavement – uh,<em>sidewalk</em>towards some trees I could see a short distance away.<br/><br/><em>Is that Dresden Park? Had Amber gone here before with her?</em>The way Carmen had mentioned it, it sounded like she hadn't, so I decided to play it that way. The sun was out and suddenly I was in a very playful mood. This could be fun!<br/><br/><em>It's just the… yeah. The licking thing… um…</em>