Eleven
When I woke the next morning, I experienced one perfect moment of peace. One serene, crazy-free moment, until yesterday’s events slammed me with avalanche force: iPod Man, neuromatrices, programmed memories. A false past, a false mom and dad.
Everything about me, false, false, false.
It was like being buried alive in a landslide of hopelessness and despair. Except I wasn’t alive. That was the problem.
I dug my fingers into the mattress, squeezed my eyes shut, gasped in tiny, frantic breaths that, according to some stranger, I didn’t need, but that felt as natural to me as the sun rising. If I let these feelings consume me, what would I have left?
Nothing.
I needed to focus on something positive. I needed to get dressed, go to school, and try to get on with my life . . . whatever that entailed. Talk to Kaylee, talk to Hunter.
Hunter.
The memory of the almost-kiss flooded me and, despite the horror of yesterday and the questions flashing through my head, I felt the stirring of those same crazy flutters.
If I could feel that same breathless hope and anticipation over a boy Kaylee and Ella and even Parker talked about, then surely I was more teen girl than Mom thought? Someone, somewhere, had gotten it wrong?
Ultimately, those were the thoughts that propelled me out of bed and into my closet to forage for clean clothes.
After getting dressed, I followed the scent of warm toast into the kitchen. See? Hunger pangs. So normal, there couldn’t possibly be a reasonable explanation for a nonhuman to feel them.
“MILA contains just enough human cells to simulate biological functions.”
The voice could not have been referring to food and . . . stuff. No way.
My plunk into the chair at the counter made Mom spin around from the refrigerator, wielding a jar of strawberry preserves. “Good morning,” she said, her voice wary. Like she was testing the waters to see if my mood was stable.
Though she was dressed in clean jeans and a blue long-sleeved tee, and her hair was pulled back into that tidy ponytail, the hollows under her eyes looked deeper than usual. Her walk to the back counter to grab the plate of toast lacked her usual efficient pep.
“Morning,” I replied in a neutral tone and spread jelly on my toast.
Mom settled into the chair next to me. She yawned before propping her chin in her hands, watching me devour my breakfast. “How are you feeling this morning?” she asked.
Hunter. Think about Hunter and seeing him at school. Nothing else. “Great,” I said, taking another bite.
Her mystified stare followed my movements as I chewed and swallowed. Obviously “great” wasn’t the response she’d been expecting.
Her lips parted, but no sound came out. She gave her head a tiny shake instead, slapped her hands on her sensible, faded work jeans, and stood. “Good. But if you change your mind and want to talk . . .”
“I won’t,” I said, wiping my mouth on a napkin.
I placed my empty plate in her outstretched hand and watched her carry it over to the sink. “I understand that you’re not ready yet,” she said. “But when you are—”
“Ever.” My voice was steady even as my insides trembled. “I don’t want to talk about yesterday ever.”
Amid the clank of dishes and the smell of green apple soap, I looked up at the pig-shaped clock that Mom called kitschy and I called lame. Then I wondered—was that the real me who’d come up with the term, or the programmed me? Or were they one and the same?
I closed my eyes and managed to block out the clock, but not the uneasy train of my thoughts. “Can you do those after you drop me off at school? I don’t want to be late.”
The clanking paused for a moment before resuming. “You aren’t going to school.”
The words blindsided me. I sat there, speechless in my shock until one crucial question surfaced. “Today?” I said, fighting off the gut-twisting burst of panic. “Or ever?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“What? Why?” That last shriek was probably twitching the horses’ ears back in the stable.
Hunter’s face popped into my head, and I clung to the image with everything I had. No school meant no Hunter, and I couldn’t give him up. I wouldn’t.
My question didn’t interrupt Mom’s steady scrub-rinse-dry cycle of clearing the stained porcelain sink.
As the pile of cheerful daisy-rimmed plates and silverware grew on top of the rooster-print dish towel, so did my urge to smash them to the ground. How could she drop a bombshell like that and not even bother to look at me?
The screech of my chair interrupted the cycle. Mom dried her hands and finally turned to give me her full attention.
As I looked at her, I wondered how it could all be a lie. Her slim, wiry figure, her blue eyes, the sound and smell and feel of her. The way she fiddled with the nosepiece of her glasses on the rare occasion she struggled for words, like she was doing right now. All of that felt so real, like I’d known her for so much longer than months.
“I’m sorry, but after what happened yesterday, we just can’t take the risk. Not now.”
“You mean the risk that I might actually have a semi-normal life—that risk?”
She yanked off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I know this is difficult. But we’re in a very precarious situation here.”
“And whose fault is that? Not mine, but I’m the one being punished!” I stopped, took a deep breath. Reason, I had to reason with her. “Anyway, you’re being paranoid. Who’s going to come looking for us in the middle of nowhere?”
Mom’s hands froze on her eyes for the briefest of moments. When she replaced her glasses, her voice was quiet. “You have no idea . . . and I’d like to keep it that way. But we need to take precautions. Then, if it’s safe, you can go back.”
She turned back to the pile of dishes, patting away nonexistent wet spots with a dish towel. Pretending.
Both of us, always pretending.
The sight of her, returning to some mindless, completely insignificant activity instead of actually talking to me, pushed me over the edge. “You’re lying. You’re never going to let me go back, are you?” I shouted.
Mom whirled. “Mila!” she started, cutting off when she saw me blinking in rapid succession. “Mila,” she said, more gently, stepping over the mess and reaching for me.
A trap. Just like everything else.
I scrambled out of reach. “Why? Why even steal me in the first place, if you were never really going to let me live?” I whispered. Just before I turned and bolted for my room.
I slumped on my bed and stared at nothing. When Mom came to check on me an hour later, I rolled onto my left side and refused to look at her.
The mattress creaked and lowered.
“I know you’re upset, but will you just talk to me for a minute?”
A head study of a bay horse hung on my wall, right next to the checkered green-and-white curtains. The brushstrokes captured the face so well, I could almost imagine the horse was staring back at me. I wondered how the artist did it, how he breathed the illusion of life into a blank piece of paper. The paper horse stared, and I closed my eyes.
Ultimately, that’s all it was. An illusion.
The bed creaked again as Mom shifted her weight, trying to find a comfortable position. Good luck with that—under these crazy circumstances, I seriously doubted one existed.
At least ten seconds ticked by before I blurted, “Why even risk letting me go to school in the first place? Why take a stupid job? Why not just hide out in a cave or something?”
When Mom answered, her voice was thick. “Because I do want you to live, Mila. I want you to have everything this time. And if that means hiding you in plain sight, so be it.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t even make sense! This time? What this time? What else are you hiding from me?”
I felt the soft stroke of her fingers, down, down, down my hair. Slowly, like she was savoring every inch. The strangest image flashed into my head. A little girl with long brown hair, squirming through a haircut while a younger version of Mom stood behind her, wielding a pair of scissors in one hand and a lollipop in the other.
But this memory was blurry, fragmented. Nothing at all like the crystal-clear ones of Dad. Maybe some of them were starting to go bad. Maybe, one by one, they’d all bleed away, until I had nothing left to remind me of my fake family.
I curled into a tighter ball.
“I think you’ve had enough revelations for now.” The bed creaked again. “I came in here to tell you that I have to go out on a call—Mr. Danning’s gelding just went lame. Stay inside the house or barn, but no rides today. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
When I didn’t respond, she stood with a heavy sigh, closing the door softly behind her.
The second I heard her car reverse down the gravel driveway, I was up. I couldn’t live like this, trapped like an animal in a cage. Going to school couldn’t hurt. I’d prove it to her.
Bolstered by the image of Hunter’s warm blue eyes, I gathered my backpack and set off on foot for Clearwater High.
Strike number one—I was late to homeroom.
Thanks to a squeaky door, my arrival drew curious looks from the majority of my classmates. I hesitated just inside, tempted to bolt but curbing the impulse. I wanted this, I reminded myself. To go to school, to be normal. Still, their stares felt like an accusation during my walk down the middle row to hand Mrs. Stegmeyer my yellow tardy slip. Like they knew something about me was different, and they were trying to pinpoint what it was.
I’d never enjoyed being the center of attention before, but now it seemed downright dangerous.
Strike number two—the desk under the window was empty. No Hunter.
Strike number three—I couldn’t even sit in my own seat.
Leslie, a girl I’d never seen Kaylee exchange more than a few brief greetings with, lounged in my spot, looking far too comfortable with her red head tilted toward Kaylee’s. A girl who always reeked a little of the nail polish that she was constantly using to decorate her notebooks—a habit that usually had Kaylee rolling her eyes.
When I made eye contact with Kaylee, she gave me a small, no-teeth smile. Her fake smile.
That couldn’t be good. Especially not when combined with the conspicuous shortage of texts.
Or maybe that was just paranoia talking. Mom’s stress, crawling under my skin and writhing there until I was just as jumpy as her.
Writhing under my bioengineered skin among wires and plastic and everything else that wasn’t human.
Stop it.
I forced a smile that was way more cheerful than I felt and headed for the far back corner where Leslie usually sat, sneaking texts to her friends and defacing her notebooks. And the desk, it looked like, from the bright splash of purple along the inner edge.
Leslie glanced my way. But it wasn’t her overly bright smile that made the paranoia swamp me again. It was the focal point of her attention. My arm. The same one I’d injured yesterday.
I shoved my arm under my desk and slouched into my chair, trying to act engrossed in my English lit book. I tried to tune everyone else out, convince myself that it was just my imagination. That Kaylee wouldn’t, couldn’t, have said anything.
Then I caught the whisper. Super low, but not low enough. At least, not for my ears.
“Can you tell?” Kaylee asked.
They could be talking about anything, I told myself.
But I didn’t really believe it.
When the bell finally rang, I was ready. I bolted out of my chair and hurried over to Kaylee, who still managed to beat me out the door, Leslie in tow. “Kaylee, wait!”
She didn’t stop, just fluttered aqua-blue fingernails over her shoulder. “Sorry, gotta run . . . later!”
As I watched her scurry away, the niggle of doubt exploded into a full-blown spasm, one that grew in intensity as every class ended with no sign of Kaylee. Plus in physics, the girl across the aisle poked her partner and then jerked her head toward me.
When the lunch bell rang, still no Kaylee. Or Hunter. I wove my way to my locker, fighting off the ever-present trapped sensation as a noxious blend of voices and smells and footsteps flooded the hallway around me. Every time someone glanced my way, my hands curled and my legs tensed, preparing me to bolt. Ridiculous, I knew that, and yet I couldn’t stop the fear from spreading. All it would take was one student, just one, to discover what I was, and my life was over.
I reached my locker, and no Kaylee there, either. After shoving my book inside, I clung to the door, focusing on the cool, slick feel of metal in an effort to generate calm. Okay, so Kaylee was a little shocked and yes, maybe angry, about finding out about my arm that way. She’d obviously expected me to tell her about the prosthesis long ago. I got that.
I closed my eyes. Of course, if I really had a prosthesis to tell her about, I wouldn’t be panicking right about now. Still . . . all I had to do was talk to her. Explain about my prosthesis in person and make sure she knew I wanted it kept a secret. An easy fix.
I’d just about convinced myself when Jim Dyson, a starter on the football team with a locker next to mine, bumped me with his shoulder. “Hey, did you really try to chop off your own arm and send it to your ex-boyfriend when he broke up with you?”
He leaned against his locker and stared down at me expectantly, his thick brown eyebrows almost merging into a single line across his potato-shaped face, his off-center nose suggesting more than one break.
My fingers tightened their grip on the metal. “What?”
He slapped one beefy hand on his thigh and ignored my question. “That’s warped, man. Warped. Do you have photos?”
This couldn’t be happening. “You’re joking, right?”
He leaned closer, bringing the smell of sour orange juice and deodorant with him. “Seriously, I won’t tell anyone. Just show me, okay?”
That’s when I realized that no, he wasn’t joking. Yes, he really believed I’d cut off my arm, and yes, he really wanted pictures.
I clenched the green door harder . . . and felt the metal give under my grip. I jerked back like the locker had stung my hand and slammed the door before I could see the damage. Before he could see the damage. I slipped under his meaty arm, fleeing both the locker and his hopeful stare.
Meanwhile, my heart—my something, whatever it was—pounded out a spastic beat. I had to find Kaylee and stop this before it went any further. Before she ruined any chance of me ever coming back to Clearwater High.
I zigzagged through the clusters of students blocking my path and headed straight for the cafeteria.
“Excuse me,” I said, cutting in front of a meandering, hand-in-hand couple. I repeated the words after darting through a narrow opening in a crowd of five varsity-jacketed guys, who were much too engrossed in rehashing a practice to walk at a decent speed.
“Watch it,” one grumbled, while another yelled, “Hey, you can jump out of my truck anytime!” Howls of laughter rang out, along with the smack of a high five, and I knew they were staring. I felt a burst of heat across the back of my neck.
Oh, god. This was worse, way worse than I’d thought. How many people had heard the rumors? What exactly were the rumors? Kaylee had to fix this. She had to.
The only thing keeping me from sprinting into the cafeteria was the knowledge that it would draw even more attention.
I made the sharp right that led to the gaping doorway of the cafeteria. Scores of kids already clustered around tables, pulling water bottles out of lunch bags, making faces at apples, peeling back foil and biodegradable wrappers to peer at their mystery sandwiches. I watched them talk and laugh and eat with friends, smelled the intermingled scent of teen sweat and hamburger meat sizzling on the kitchen grill, and it registered that maybe I should just take Mom’s advice. Go home, stay away from school.
Hide like a trapped animal. Away from everyone. Away from Hunter.
Away from life.
No.
I pushed into the room, past the six long rows of tables to the one by the back window where Kaylee sat, flanked by Ella and Parker. Our table. Except today, my seat was once again occupied by Leslie from homeroom.
Kaylee’s face was averted toward Ella, so I focused on her hair as I took the last few steps. Finding and counting the flyaway strands helped soothe my nerves. This morning when she got up to brush it, I bet she’d stuck out her tongue at her reflection, the same way she did every time she caught a glimpse of those unruly pieces in a mirror. Still the same Kaylee hair, which gave me hope that it was still the same Kaylee underneath.
The Kaylee who’d been generous and kind to the new girl in town. Not the one who’d forced her into the back of a pickup.
After a sudden squeal of laughter, Parker glanced over her shoulder, saw me, and froze with a carrot stick halfway to her mouth. She dropped it and nudged Kaylee. Not to be deterred, I rested my hands on the plastic table and waited.
I didn’t wait long. The other two girls ceased their chatter the second Kaylee twisted my way. Her thin, teeth-covering smile didn’t reach her eyes. “What?”
The distant tone in her voice sent a stab of fear into my gut. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“We’re kind of busy here.”
I looked around the table, to where Parker spun her Diet Coke and Ella inspected her nails and Leslie swirled a french fry in ketchup. Busy. Uh-huh. Why was she acting like this? Beneath the fear of all the attention, of having my secret discovered, another feeling sparked to life. Something hot and dangerous. “It won’t take long,” I said, curling my fingers to keep from shaking her.
Her long-suffering sigh was so obvious. “Fine. I didn’t want to say this, but . . . Mila, you have . . . issues . . . and I’d just rather not be around you anymore.”
I—what? “Issues? I have issues? Why, because I told you I didn’t want to sit in the back of the truck, but you insisted? Just so you could have some alone time with Hunter?”
Kaylee’s surprised brown eyes finally met mine—she obviously hadn’t expected to be called on that—while the other girls squirmed.
“Uh, we’re going to get some drinks. Do you want anything, Kayls?” Ella asked, her narrow face even more pinched than usual from worry.
“No thanks.”
I waited until they left before sliding into Parker’s empty chair. Keeping my voice low, I said, “Kaylee, why are you doing this to me? I thought we were friends.”
The left side of her lip curled. “You and Hunter looked cozy enough last night on the way to your house—I bet he’d be more than happy to be your friend.”
I reeled back. “Are you kidding me? I could have died, Kaylee, and all you’re worried about is that Hunter was nice to me?”
Where was the Kaylee I’d met when I’d first moved here, the one who’d welcomed the awkward new girl into her circle of friends? Because this version of her felt like a stranger.
Kaylee’s chair screeched back as she tottered to her feet. “Whatever. Parker told me not to trust you. I should have listened.”
Her high-pitched voice, attention grabbing to begin with, doubled in volume by the time she finished. It carried. Conversations muted; heads from four, five, six tables away turned to see what the commotion was all about.
“Lower your voice,” I hissed.
I realized my mistake when I saw her eyes narrow, saw the mutinous pucker of her lips. I tried to backpedal. “Kaylee, please—”
“Why?” Her shout drowned out my last-ditch attempt at curtailing drama. In a sweep of voluminous purple sleeves, she spread her arms wide. “It’s not like they won’t find out sooner or later,” she continued, at that same desperately loud volume. So loud that I wanted to shove my hand over her mouth and drag her out of the cafeteria. But that would only draw more attention. I had to act, though. Before she—
“Why not just tell them you’re a fr—”
My foot moved fast. In a blur of motion, I hooked her ankle, sweeping her legs out from under her. Her scream rang out as her head flew back. Her hands flailed wildly, and she smacked her cup on the way down, splashing Coke all over her lavender shirt. She hit the faux-wood floor butt first.
The stunned silence and gasps only lasted a second before the laughter started. A table of boys catcalled, and I heard a girl shout, “Good going, Grace!”
Dazed, Kaylee blinked up at me. Probably trying to figure out exactly what had happened. That made two of us.
The sight of her, sprawled across the dirty floor, in between chair legs with her shirt drenched in brown liquid, tore at my stomach. I’d done that. Without any intention, without any thought beyond making her stop. But how?
I shoved aside my disbelief and stepped forward. The least I could do was help her up. But as I moved, something flashed behind my eyes. Not a memory, not this time. Words. Luminous red words. They flickered, appeared only for a millisecond before vanishing, but oh, god, even that was a millisecond too long.
Target: Down.
The horror clenched my chest like a vise, squeezing until I only had one thought left.
Run.
And that’s exactly what I did. While Kaylee struggled to her feet, I turned and ran. Fled the room, my actions . . . and those flashing red words that I hoped with every fiber of my being were a stress-induced hallucination. Or a fluke. The likes of which I’d never, ever see again.
As the sound of my feet smacking linoleum echoed through the halls, I realized Mom had been right.
I never should have come back to school.
