---

The Girl Who Came Before

By David von Allmen

When me and my family pulled into our driveway, my five best friends were waiting in our front yard, waving glittery poster-board signs that read “Welcome Home Sam!!!” and jumping around with full-on 13 year-old girl dorkiness.

It should have made me happy.

And it did. For the most part. It was all I’d wanted for the last year: to hang out with my friends somewhere other than a hospital room and go to school and talk without an oxygen tube in my nose.

But they weren’t my friends. Not really. They were her friends. The old Sam, the girl my body had been cloned from, the girl whose memories had been printed onto my brain. The girl whose life I was now supposed to live.

When they revived me, I’d woken up in my hospital bed. Her hospital bed. That was important, because if I had woken up in the technical center where they’d grown my body and imprinted my mind, we’d be too aware I was just a copy of the real Sam. No, they positioned my body in the exact same hospital bed where she’d spent the past fourteen months. That way my parents could come in and pretend their daughter had recovered.

Nobody ever literally claimed that Sam hadn’t died. If they did that, they’d know they were in denial, and that would ruin the fantasy they could only hold onto so long as they didn’t think about it too much. Yes, technically, that body had died, sent off to be cremated like any other amputated limb, but their daughter wasn’t dead. Not really dead. She’d been revived. Wasn’t it fantastic? We should all be so thankful that Sam had (for all intents and purposes) pulled through after all.

Sam’s friends ran circles around me, talking over each other, making plans for us together. We were going to do so many things now that I was healthy again. First thing, after band practice, we were going to sneak off to Starbucks even though Tina’s mom didn’t let her have caffeine and we were going to drink Frappuccinos until we got sick.

This was what I remembered normal feeling like a lifetime ago, the life I’d wished so hard to get back. I’d spent months too weak to move, knowing I’d never step foot outside the hospital again. To be walking around in this body now… I was just playing a virtual reality game called Sam’s Life Before She Got Sick.

I did want to go to Starbucks with my band nerd friends and get sick on caffeine and talk away the afternoon. But also I didn’t. I wanted to not want these things. If I only liked what Sam had liked, if I only wanted what Sam had wanted, I was nothing but a copy of Sam. Not a real person. Not even a human. Just a very realistic mannequin, my arms and legs animated by what some other girl used to want.

My mom watched us with tears in her eyes, makeup carefully done up for this special occasion. My nine year-old sister, Vic, had been staring at me with wide eyes all day. She seemed like she wanted to get caught up in my friends’ happiness, but still couldn’t quite believe it was all real. My dad stood behind them, a few steps back. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was: this person, whoever she is, whatever she is, she’s not Sam.

“Have you played your clarinet, yet?” Janie asked. “You have to make symphonic band next year so we all have practice together, Sam. You have to.”

“I, uh…” I began. “Could you call me Samantha from now on? Instead of Sam?”

Janie’s smile grew. “Uh, okay. Why?”

“Cause Sam is a boy’s name,” I said.

I didn’t want to tell her the real reason. I didn’t think I could explain it well enough to make anyone understand.

---

Four nights later, while I was getting ready for bed, mom came in my room to put away laundry. She was too focused on neatly folding sweaters into my dresser to notice I’d stopped brushing my teeth and was staring at myself in the mirror.

I turned to talk to her, but before the word “mom” came out of my mouth I stopped. There wasn’t even a word for what she was to me. But I guess it would be weird if I called her anything else.

“Mom. I don’t feel right.”

That made her stop and look up. “Are you feeling sick?”

Of course. Her mind immediately jumped to cancer. If I was just like the original Sam, then I was likely to get the same disease that killed her.

“No. I’m just not comfortable. I mean, with who I am.”

She blew out a sigh of relief and went back to folding.

“That was a big disruption, all those months in the hospital. We’ll get back to normal. Principal Stephens said if you need the school to get you a tutor to catch up, she’d be happy to make it work around band practice.”

“That’s not it. I mean, what am I supposed to do now?”

“You finally get to live like a healthy person,” mom said without looking up.

“How do I decide what to do. Or what I even want to do?”

“What do you mean?” she said. She rested the empty laundry basket between her palm and hip, standing halfway out the door like she wanted to leave. “I don’t know what to tell you. Why wouldn’t you do the same things you did before you got sick?”

All I said to that was “okay.”

With a big smile, she put the basket down and hurried into the bathroom to wrap her arms around me, pulling me as deeply into a hug as she possibly could.

“You’re a gift,” she whispered. “A miracle.”

As good as her hug felt, as good as her words felt, I couldn’t stop anger from boiling up in me. I wasn’t sure why. But one thought was clear in my head: you did this to me.

I forced a smile as she said, “I love you I love you I love you,” and kissed me goodnight.

When she was gone, and I was putting away my hairbrush and face cleaner, I spotted a bottle of purple hair dye. My friends and I had each bought a bottle at the drug store one afternoon right before I had to be hospitalized. I hadn’t really wanted a bright purple streak in my hair, I just wanted to do something crazy with my friends. I think we all knew none of us had the guts to go through with it, so we all just kind of pretended to forget about it for as long as it took to actually forget.

But no, that wasn’t me who didn’t have the guts to go through with it. That was Sam.

---

The next morning, I eased into the kitchen, where mom moved from one simmering breakfast pan to the next. Vic sat at the kitchen island, frowning at her attempt at drawing her favorite cartoon character, while dad sat next to her reading a magazine. When Vic spotted the colorful streaks of hair framing my face, her happy gasp caused dad to look up, too. His face tightened, as if he was studying something he couldn’t quite understand. I’d gotten used to that look. Mom never wanted to let me out of her arms, but dad always seemed like he was only hugging me out of obligation.

“It’s just for fun,” I said. “I’m probably not going to keep it long.”

I was off to a pretty lame start in my attempt at being my own person. If you’re going to rebel, you shouldn’t be seeking the approval of the people you’re rebelling against.

“It’s cool,” Vic said.

“You can do whatever you like, Samantha,” dad said.

“You can still call me Sam,” I said. “If you want to.”

Mom turned around and her eyes focused on my hair. “What…?” was all she managed at first.

“It’s no big deal,” I said, all matter of fact, like I could Jedi-mind-trick her into thinking it really was no big deal. Jedis had never met my mom.

Mom’s face went slack for a second, but she recovered pretty quick. “All the child psychology books say it’s normal for teenagers to want to experiment with their identity,” she said. She went back to cooking. “It’s fine that you want us to call you Samantha instead of Sam, and redecorated your room, and—”

Dad’s cell phone rang. It was sitting on the island and he snatched it up as quickly as he could, but not before I read “Dr. Abbas” on the caller ID. Abbas was the doctor who treated me while I was sick. Why was my father getting a call from him now? Was he worried I’d get sick again? Had they already found cancer growing in my new body? Would they even try to save me, or would they throw me out and try again with another new Sam?

My father’s eyes met mine. He looked like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He spun off his chair and rushed from the room with his phone still ringing.

I told mom I was going to the bathroom, but hurried down the hall on tiptoes, sneaking to my parents’ door. I dropped to my stomach and pressed my ear to the crack underneath.

“I’ve told you, I understand all that,” my father said. “I understand that it’s standard procedure and I understand that her mother signed the forms. But that’s my daughter, too, and I have rights here.”

There was silence while my father listened to whatever Dr. Abbas was saying.

“If you cremate the body you’ll have a lawsuit, do you understand? I just want to bury my daughter in the same cemetery as the rest of my family.”

I ran to my bedroom and shut myself inside. I stood in the middle of the room, hands over my face, wishing the world would go away. That’s what I’d always done when I was little and things became too much for me. But back then, all the bad things were outside my bedroom. Now, all the things I wanted to hide from were inside of me.

---

School that day went past in a slow fog. My thoughts went nowhere but in circles.

I didn’t feel like a copy of someone else. I could remember all my memories. I knew I was me. I knew it a hundred percent. But I also knew I wasn’t me. Both things couldn’t be true, and I kept trying to settle on one or the other just to be done with it. But I couldn’t get myself to stop believing I was me. And I couldn’t get myself to stop believing I wasn’t me.

By the time I got to band practice, I could barely play notes in the right order.

Why couldn’t I just pretend that this was my life? I should have been able to. I should have wanted to. Just live my life, like I had before I got sick. Mom was doing a great job of pretending. I wished I could be happy about all this, like her.

But even if I could, what would it matter? Dad didn’t want me. What was I thinking, putting the purple streak in my hair? All I was doing was reminding dad that I wasn’t really his daughter. If he didn’t want a clone of his daughter, why did he let mom do it?

I wanted to say to hell with him. But I knew that wasn’t how I felt. It wasn’t how I’d ever really feel, even if I lived to be a hundred years old. He’d always loved me. Or, well, he’d always loved Sam. Which made me feel like he loved me, once.

“Did you tell Leslie you were switching to percussion?”

I looked up to see Janie hovering over me. The band director had called for a break and Janie hadn’t even put her French horn down before coming to interrogate me.

“I said I was thinking about it, that’s all,” I said.

“Are you even trying to make symphonic band anymore?” Janie asked.

“Yeah, of course.” I rested my clarinet across my lap and pulled out my phone to scroll through texts. This was how I always tried to handle these moods from Janie, just not engage. I really needed that tactic to work, but it never had before and I knew it wouldn’t now.

“If you keep slacking off, we’re not all going to be in the same band practice next year,” Janie said. When I didn’t look up, she said, “Is that what you want?”

I used to answer Janie’s aggressive questions with an eye roll. I didn’t even have that in me, anymore.

“No, that’s not what I want,” I said. “I just haven’t gotten good sleep lately.”

“How does that make you late to practice?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just get off my case.”

“Okay, fine,” Janie said. “Just start acting normal again, please.”

“Normal? Right. Like there’s anything normal about my life.”

“It could be,” she said, “but obviously you don’t want it to be. You keep acting weird on purpose and telling us we should call you Samantha and refuse to eat mint chip ice cream anymore. Like, what’s that about? It’s ice cream, who gives a shit? I guess you didn’t get enough attention for yourself the whole year you were in the hospital because now you’re milking your near-death experience as an excuse to act like a complete weirdo.”

“I didn’t have a near-death experience,” I said. “Sam had a completely-dead experience.”

That shut Janie up.

“You think I’m trying to act weird on purpose?” I asked. “I’m doing everything I can to feel like a real person and be normal. But I’m not normal. And I’m not Sam. She died. Everyone wants to pretend she didn’t, but she did. And now you’re annoyed with me because it’s not as easy for me to pretend as it is for you.”

I grabbed my backpack and walked out, leaving my clarinet on the floor. Mr. Washington would kick me out of band for leaving in the middle of practice, but I was kind of glad. I didn’t have the energy to be around my friends anymore and I couldn’t imagine I ever would again.

---

“I got a call from Mr. Washington,” mom said as soon as I walked in the door. She tried so hard to make it sound casual. Normal. I couldn’t pretend life was normal, why should she get to? “He’s concerned because you’ve been a little less focused in practice than you used to be. I told him you’re just going through the same thing every teenager—”

“He didn’t kick me out?” I asked.

“What? No.”

“He’s a hard-ass. He would have kicked out anyone else.”

“Well, you’re a special student and I think he knows you work hard and everyone has an off day now and then.”

“That’s not true. The only thing special about me is that I’m a clone.”

My mom startled. It was almost funny, her reaction was what you’d expect if she was a character in a movie and finding out her daughter was a clone was the big third-act plot twist. I’d been trying not to do that to anyone, but now I wondered why. Why should I kill myself trying to protect them from reality? Why should I keep running in circles to make sure everyone else could keep pretending everything was fine?

“Did you really think that I’d just be happy to have my life and we could all go back to how things were before?” I asked.

Mom didn’t answer, she just stood there with the same look of shock on her face.

“Well?” I asked. “Did you really think I’d just go back to my life?”

“Yes,” she said. “What’s so crazy about that? You’re the exact same person you were before. So why wouldn’t you go back to your life? How’s it any different than if you’d recovered the normal way?”

“I can remember hating me,” I said.

“Well it’s normal for teenagers to deal with feelings of self-hatred. I don’t see what—”

“No. I’m not saying I remember Sam hating herself. I can remember her hating me.”

Mom went still, staring at me the way one animal looks at another when it’s not sure whether or not its life is in danger.

“Did you think you were being sneaky? You cried and cried and the sicker she got the more you cried. And then one day you came into her hospital room and you weren’t crying anymore. You were calm. She figured it out real quick. She knew you were replacing her with a clone. She hated you for it. And then she hated me. You want to know why she stopped playing clarinet? It wasn’t just because she was getting weaker. She quit playing because making symphonic band, and doing that with her friends, was something she wanted for herself. She was furious someone else was going to get to live her life and she wasn’t going to do anything to help me enjoy it.”

By the time I finished talking, mom’s lips had pulled back like she was fighting to hold down a scream.

“We did all of this for you,” she said.

“You did it for me? You didn’t know me. I didn’t exist. You knew Sam. And you knew she was going to be dead and wouldn’t be here for any of this. So you didn’t really do it for her, either.”

Before mom could come up with an answer, a small voice said, “I know what you’re talking about.”

I spun to see my sister standing in the doorway.

“You don’t have to keep it a secret from me,” she said. “I know what happened to Sam.”

“Sweetie, Sam’s just upset right now,” mom said in a rush. “Why don’t you go play in your room and you and I can talk later.”

“I’ll try to be a sister to you,” I said. “I really will. But I can’t pretend your real sister isn’t dead.”

Vic’s face didn’t change. Mom’s flared with rage.

“How could you?” she screamed. “How could you?”

Because there were no answers for me. Because I couldn’t be Sam. Because I couldn’t not be Sam. Because I didn’t have the energy to pretend to be okay anymore.

“Because I’m tired,” I said.

I don’t think she had any idea what I meant.

---

Mom didn’t call me down for dinner that night or breakfast the next morning. I laid in bed, eyes open, the morning sunlight edging through my blinds, slowly growing brighter until I was sure school had started long ago.

It wasn’t until I heard the garage door that I realized my father was leaving very late for work. Then it occurred to me that he might be going somewhere other than work.

I darted down the hallway and out the front door, whipping past mom without even looking her direction. I waved frantically at dad, who stopped the car with the back half sticking out into the street. He rolled down the window.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

He paused, like he was trying to figure a way out of telling me the truth.

“I’m burying her today,” he said.

“I want to go with you,” I said.

Again, he paused, and I could see his mind working. He didn’t want me to come along.

“Please,” I said.

He exhaled a hard, shuddering breath. He reluctantly nodded. I ran around the car and got in the passenger seat.

---

We drove to the funeral in silence. There were only three of us there: dad, the priest, and me, still dressed in the clothes I’d fallen asleep in the night before. The priest said all the words priests are supposed to say over a casket that’s about to be lowered into the ground, but he kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

When the priest was about to flip the switch to lower the casket, I stepped forward.

“Wait. Can I…?” I reached for the casket lid. Dad grabbed my arm.

“I don’t think you want to do that,” he said.

“I know, but…”

He let go of my arm. I heaved the lid open.

Inside, there was a girl. She looked like me, only thin and sick and waxy. I knew everything about her.

She had loved her family, even her mom, who was overbearing sometimes. She had loved her friends, even Janie, who was too aggressive sometimes. She had never been good at sports but she had been really good at clarinet and she was grateful she had fun with the band nerds so she’d have a group to belong to when she got to high school. She hadn’t known what she wanted to be when she grew up, and that had worried her a little, but she had gotten good grades and had time to figure it out. She thought some of the boys were cute but she hadn’t been ready for kissing and all that, yet. She had known that when she got out of college and got her own place she was going to get two dogs, because one dog might get lonely left by itself all day. She was sometimes sad that her little sister was too big for cuddling anymore. She knew she’d have children of her own someday.

None of the things she’d dreamed about would ever happen. Not for her.

---

Dad and I sat in the car for a long time after the funeral. Neither of us had any idea what to do next and I thought we might sit there in the cemetery forever.

Finally, I asked, “Do you want me to live somewhere else?”

“What?” he asked. He seemed honestly shocked. That was a relief for me. “No. No. Did I make you feel like that?”

“No. I don’t know. I know you didn’t want mom to clone Sam.”

“Yes I did,” he said. “It was my idea.”

I stared at him. I couldn’t make enough sense of that to respond. Tears formed in his eyes and spilled over, running down his cheeks.

“I just wanted you back so bad. I couldn’t live without you. I couldn’t. But then I felt like I abandoned her. Every time I looked at you and was so happy to have you back, I felt like I was telling her I didn’t care she was gone.” He stared at the gravestones. “She shouldn’t just be forgotten.”

“She knew you loved her,” I said. “It was just there, just a part of everyday life, so she didn’t stop to think about it. But she always knew. She always knew.”

His jaw clenched and he nodded. “I love you. So much. There’s just so many emotions and the harder I try to sort them the more tangled they get.”

“You’re telling me,” I said.

I hadn’t meant it to be funny, but dad looked at me and we both huffed out a small laugh.

“I’d like to go, now,” I said.

Dad started the car. “What are you going to do when we get home?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would you like to do?”

My brain started going round and round about what Sam would want and what I should want. I told my brain to shut up and just answer before I could do too much thinking. That was going to have to be good enough for now.

“I want things to be okay with me and mom.”

“I promise you, that’s all she wants,” my dad said.

“And I want to see my friends and hang out after practice and be a band nerd again.” I said.

Dad gripped my hand. “Okay. Good.” We sat for another moment, then he said, “You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Dad put the car into drive and we headed home.

---

Host Commentary

By Tina Connolly

And we’re back! Again, that was The Girl Who Came Before, by David von Allmen, narrated by Pine Gonzalez.

About this story, David von Allmen says:

I was inspired by the short story “Breaking” by Maya Chhabra, which appeared in Cast of Wonders episode 370, about a girl with a terminal illness whose memories were going to be imprinted on a replica of herself but she knew it would not be her mind and soul in that body. I wondered what it would be like to be on the opposite side of that equation.

And about this story, I say:

I really enjoyed this look at how the replacement kiddo feels. I know David has teenagers of his own and I think it really nails the thoughts of what this one particular 13 year old clone is going through. It also feels very natural to make this a story about a young teenager, as there are so many years around this age when kids are experimenting with who they really are anyway. So it’s just a common feeling, writ large by way of a science fictional twist.

The other thing I really enjoyed here is the relationship between Samantha and her father. As we see by the end of the story, everyone trying to pretend and sweep things under the rug is not an answer that tends to work with grief (or anything else.) Samantha and her dad going to the funeral to bury Sam together feels like such a necessary and healing step for saying, yes, this daughter is truly gone. And now we can appreciate this new daughter, and find out who she is.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please, go forth and share it.

How do you share it, you ask? Well! In addition to your social media of choice, consider rating and/or reviewing us on podcast listening sites, such as Apple or Google. More reviews makes for more discoverability makes for more Escape Pod for you.

Escape Pod relies on the generous donations of listeners exactly like you. And remember that Patreon subscribers have access to exclusive merchandise and can be automatically added to our Discord, where you can chat with other fans as well as our staff members. So! If you enjoyed our story this week then consider going to escapepod.org or patreon.com/EAPodcasts and casting your vote for more stories that look at their old selves in a casket.

Our opening and closing music is by daikaiju at daikaiju.org.

And our closing quotation this week is from Judy Garland, who said:

“Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.”

Thanks for listening! And have fun.