Her name was Kimberly--at least, that was the name of the girl from Illinois, and this girl sure looked like her, or her twin, or her doppelganger. As I stood and gaped, she was asking the clerk about some particular book or other. I was too far away to hear her voice, but her mannerisms were all there. She gestured with her arm in that certain way. She had that same chuckling grin. She was wearing a baseball cap--as Kim always did--and as she grinned up at the clerk from underneath it I was reminded of the numerous times that Kim used to gaze up at me from beneath her Pittsburgh Pirates cap. That wasn't just a dead ringer I was looking at; it was Kimberly. Twelve hundred miles from home, in the same store in the same mall as I was.
Kim and I worked together in Illinois. We were translators for a group of Mexican minor league baseball players. She was half-Hispanic, and was able to maneuver her way between English and Spanish quite a bit easier than I could. Most of the players, when they had a choice, would go to Kim when they needed something translated. They tended to see me only when she was busy. She said that she loved it in the Midwest and had no intention of ever leaving. When I told her I was moving to Virginia, she said, "It's been fun, I'll miss you. Come back and see us sometime."

Her back was to me now, as she stood in front of the counter paying for a book that I couldn't see. I slowly, tentatively made my way towards her. She was wearing athletic shorts and a baggy T-shirt, and a pair of headphones hung around her neck--all of these were Kim trademarks. I stood directly behind her, inches away from her shoulder. I had no idea what I would say when she turned around and saw me. I had no idea if she'd even recognize me.

"Thanks for your help," she was saying to the cashier, and the voice sure sounded like Kimberly's. But what in the world would she be doing out here? It is a small world, as the Disney ride insists, but is it really that small?

My head was beginning to swim a bit. Surely, I began telling myself, this person at this bookstore in this mall is not the girl I knew three years and a thousand miles ago. The odds against that are more than astronomical; they're probably one in a billion. Occasionally, you read in the paper about two people in different corners of the world who are doubles. I'm sure that in Iceland or someplace lives a man who looks exactly like me. Perhaps this is just someone who looks and acts a lot like an old friend of mine, and nothing more.

"Do you have a card with us?" the clerk was asking. "At home," came the reply. "I'm from out of state." The voice was maybe a little higher-pitched, but the timbre could easily have changed over a couple years. She absently reached up to her headphones and fingered them, as if she were subconsciously debating slipping them over her ears. Kim always did that. Always did that.

The cashier was counting out the change and shoving the book into a plastic bag. In under ten seconds, Kim would be face to face with me. I began whirring through a dozen possible scenarios in my head: her mouth would drop and she'd let out a shout of surprise, or else she'd give me a curious sideways look and ask, "do I know you?" Or, she'd just look at me blankly and then, five minutes later as she was heading to her car, something would click and she'd remember. I asked myself if I intended to follow her around if she didn't recognize me at first.

"Thanks," she said. Kim's voice was just a bit deeper than that, maybe. "Thank you," the cashier replied. "And have a safe trip home."

She turned around. I did, too. For a full five seconds I stared at the best-seller rack on the wall. When I turned around again, she was gone.