A preschool teacher in Ohio suddenly wakes up in a death row cell, chained, and called by a different name. Prison staff think she’s “faking amnesia.” Meanwhile, the real death row inmate is free outside… in the teacher’s body – caring for children and living a life that isn’t her own. Just three days later, a child in the class screams…
The jarring clang of metal jolted Sarah Jenkins awake.
Not the gentle, chick-shaped alarm clock from her suburban Columbus apartment. Not the aroma of the hazelnut coffee she usually brewed before driving to Sunny Days Preschool.
What met her eyes was gray. A gray concrete ceiling. Cold iron bars. And a lidless metal toilet bowl in the corner.
Sarah sprang up, her head throbbing. A wave of nausea rose in her stomach. She looked down at herself. Her pink silk pajamas were gone, replaced by a bright orange jumpsuit with bold lettering on the back: DOC – DEATH ROW.
“Hey! Is anyone there?” Sarah yelled, her voice hoarse. She lunged to the bars, gripping them tightly. “Open the door! There’s a mistake! I’m Sarah Jenkins! I’m the preschool teacher!”
A large prison guard, baton dangling at his side, walked past. He stopped, a sneering smirk on his face.
“Awake now, Mara?” He tapped his baton against the bars. “You’re putting on a show. ‘Kindergarten teacher’? Yesterday you threatened to gouge my eyes out with a plastic spoon.”
“Mara?” Sarah gasped. “No… I’m not Mara. I’m Sarah! Please, check my fingerprints! Call my principal! Call my mother!”
“Enough, Kovic,” the guard snapped, his patience wearing thin. “Your lawyer will be here in 10 minutes. Don’t play the insane game to delay your execution. This Friday is your day in the electric chair. Don’t make things difficult for us.”
He left, leaving Sarah to slide down onto the cold concrete floor. Mara Kovic. The name sounded familiar. She remembered seeing it on the evening news a few days ago. Mara Kovic – the “Chameleon Killer,” who murdered five wealthy men in Ohio and evaded the FBI for three years thanks to her masterful disguise. She was arrested last week and sentenced to death on an emergency basis due to the gruesome nature of the crime.
Sarah trembled as she touched her face. Her nose, mouth, cheekbones… everything was hers. But why did they think she was Mara?
She looked into the opaque stainless steel mirror on the wall.
In the mirror was her face. But something was different.
On her neck, just below her collarbone, was a faint X-shaped scar. Sarah frantically rubbed it. She had never had this scar.
The iron gate opened. A man in a cheap suit walked in, carrying a briefcase. The appointed lawyer.
“Alright, Mara,” he said wearily, sitting down in the chair opposite the bars. “The appeal regarding the multiple personality disorder was rejected. The judge ruled that her sudden self-identification as ‘Teacher Sarah’ was just a ploy.”
“Listen to me,” Sarah whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. “I was kidnapped. Last night… I remember I was at home. There was a knock on the door. I opened it… and I saw… I saw myself.”
The lawyer sighed, not taking any notes.
“She looked exactly like me,” Sarah continued, her voice trembling. “She was holding a syringe. She laughed and said, ‘Twins should help each other, right?’ Then I passed out.”
The lawyer paused. He looked up. “Mara, you’re an only child. Your adoption records state that.”
“No! Do a DNA test! Do something!”
“We did a fingerprint test when you ‘passed out’ this morning upon arrival at the facility,” the lawyer said coldly. “The fingerprints match 100% with Mara Kovic. You’re not getting away with this. Spend your last days repenting.”
Sarah was speechless. A fingerprint match? How could that be? Unless… Mara Kovic really was her long-lost twin sister, and she’d been planning this impersonation scheme for a long time.
Sarah screamed in despair as the lawyer left. But here, her screams were just meaningless background noise.
Fifty miles away, in Columbus.
“Ms. Sarah! Billy’s eating glue again!”
Mara Kovic – in her sweet floral dress and Sarah-style ponytail – winced slightly. The children’s screams, the pungent smell of urine from the bathroom, and the on-playing “Baby Shark” song were driving her crazy.
“Alright, alright,” Mara said, trying to mimic the sickeningly sweet voice of her idiotic twin sister. She walked over to Billy, snatching the glue bottle from his hand with more force than necessary.
“Ow! You hurt me!” Billy whimpered.
“Stop crying,” Mara whispered, leaning close to his ear, her eyes flashing with a razor-sharp glint. “If you cry again, I’ll tape your mouth shut.”
Billy fell silent, his eyes wide with horror. He had never seen Sarah like this before.
Mara straightened up, smiling brightly at the parents picking up their children through the glass door.
A perfect plan. She had found Sarah Jenkins six months ago thanks to a DNA genealogy website. A perfect copy, living a dull, clean life. Mara had spent half a year observing, learning her gait, her voice, and even had plastic surgery to remove the X-shaped scar on her own neck and create an identical fake scar on Sarah’s neck when she drugged her.
Fingerprints? Mara had been using mild acid to obscure her fingerprints for years to practice her trade, and she had implanted artificial fingertip skin mimicking Sarah’s fingerprints – something police records hadn’t revealed.
There was no way it would match because Sarah had never committed a crime. What the police compared in prison was Sarah’s current fingerprints (the one they thought was Mara’s) against Mara’s old data. They didn’t match, but she had hacked into the police database last night and swapped the records. A bit of underworld skill.
Now, the real Sarah would die in the electric chair on Friday. And Mara would sell Sarah’s apartment, drain all her savings, and flee to Mexico by the weekend.
But first, she had to survive these three damn days as a “nanny.”
“Ms. Sarah,” the Headmistress’s voice rang out from behind. “You seem… tired today? Did you forget the parent-teacher meeting this afternoon?”
“Oh, yes,” Mara forced a smile. “Just a slight headache. I’ll get ready right away.”
She watched the children running and jumping. Little hostages. If necessary, she would use them as shields. But it was best to disappear silently.
In Lucasville jail, Sarah had cried until her tears ran dry. She sat huddled in a corner, refusing her last meal. No one believed her. The whole world had accepted her as a monster. Despair turned into a cold hatred. She thought about the children. Would Mara harm them?
At Sunny Days School, the atmosphere was strangely tense.
Today was “Bring Your Pets to School.” The children excitedly gathered around cages of hamsters, turtles, and rabbits.
Mara was at her breaking point. Her suitcase was packed, her plane tickets booked for tonight’s flight. Only two hours left until the end of the workday.
“Ms. Sarah! Look at my rabbit!” A little girl named Emily thrust a pure white rabbit in Mara’s face.
The rabbit, frightened by the strange smell emanating from Mara – the smell of cold tobacco and the cruelty that animals perceive – bit her finger.
“Aaaarrgh!” Mara shrieked, and with the reflexes of a killer, she swung her arm with all her might.
Bang!
The rabbit was flung against the wall, falling to the ground, writhing before lying still. Blood trickled from the little creature’s mouth.
The classroom fell silent.
The four-year-olds stared at the rabbit’s corpse, then up at their “teacher.”
Mara gasped for breath, clutching her bleeding finger. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her mask of kindness had fallen off. “You damned beast!” she hissed.
Just then, Tommy – the shyest boy in the class, with mild autism and an extraordinary visual memory – stood up.
Tommy didn’t look at the rabbit. He stared at Mara’s arm.
When Mara swung her arm to throw the rabbit, her shirt sleeve was pulled up high, revealing her inner bicep.
There, a bright red tattoo of a snake coiled around a dagger was clearly visible. Mara had forgotten to use concealer that morning because she was in such a hurry to escape.
Tommy pointed at Mara and yelled something that made the other teachers in the next room rush over:
“THAT’S NOT SARAH! SARAH DOESN’T HAVE A SNAKE ON HER HAND! THAT’S THE BOBBY IN MY PAINTING!”
The other teachers swarmed in. They saw the dead rabbit. They saw Mara’s face contorted with anger. And they saw the tattoo.
“Sarah… your hand…” Teacher Jenny recoiled. “You always wear long sleeves… but last week when we went swimming, you didn’t have that tattoo?”
Mara realized she had been exposed. Her eyes changed. No longer confused, but filled with pure murderous intent.
She pulled a utility knife from her handbag – the one she intended to use to cut the security camera wires.
“Stay still!” Mara roared, lunging at Tommy and holding the knife to the child’s neck. “Anyone who moves, I’ll slit this brat’s throat!”
The sirens blared. The school was locked down.
Police surrounded the preschool. The SWAT team took their positions. Live news broadcasts of the shocking hostage situation in Ohio.
In the death row cell, the guard turned on the television in the common room. Sarah, lying there awaiting death, suddenly heard the news anchor’s voice:
“…The suspect, initially identified as teacher Sarah Jenkins, is currently holding a child hostage. Police suspect this is an imposter due to unusually violent behavior…”
Sarah rushed to the bars, screaming with her last ounce of strength: “It’s Mara! It’s my twin sister! Look! She’s left-handed! I’m right-handed! Check the cameras!”
This time, the guard didn’t laugh. He looked up at the television. The person holding the knife to the child’s neck was holding it with their left hand. He looked at Sarah – who was holding a glass of water with her right hand.
At the school, the confrontation was tense.
“I want a helicopter! And $5 million!” Mara yelled.
Detective Vance, the head of the negotiation team, said over the loudspeaker: “Mara Kovic. We know it’s you. We found your real fingerprints on the rabbit’s carcass.”
“I’m not Mara! I’m Sarah!” she still tried to argue, but her voice was trembling.
“Sarah Jenkins has a severe pollen allergy,” Detective Vance lied, a psychological tactic. “That classroom was full of lilies. If you were Sarah, your face would be all swollen by now.”
Mara froze. She looked at the vase on the table. She was perfectly fine.
Taking advantage of that momentary distraction, Tommy—the autistic boy with an extraordinary spatial awareness—bit hard into Mara’s knife handle.
“Ahhh!”
Mara let go. A
A deafening explosion rang out.
A sniper bullet pierced the glass, striking Mara in the shoulder. She collapsed. The SWAT team stormed in.
…
Two days later.
The prison doors opened. Not to take Sarah to the execution chamber, but to escort her to her mother’s car.
Sarah stepped into the sunlight, taking a deep breath. The air smelled of dust and gasoline, but to her, it was the smell of freedom.
She had been exonerated. The police had found the secret basement where Mara had undergone surgery and falsified records. Mara Kovic – the real murderer – was now in prison hospital, awaiting execution in place of her sister. This time, there would be no more confusion.
Sarah was taken home. But she knew her old life was over.
Every time she closed her eyes, she no longer saw her beloved children. She saw her own reflection in the cell mirror, with the eyes of a condemned prisoner.
And even more terrifying, that night, while watching the news about Mara’s transfer to a special detention center, Sarah saw her twin sister look directly into the camera, smile, and move her lips.
Sarah read the lip movements. It wasn’t an apology.
It was: “See you later, little sister.”
