The Pretenders

by Rebecca Hanover

  All this time, the Similars have lobbied to be treated exactly like the rest of us. They’ve made the case for themselves as regular teenagers. Only, they aren’t. A few weeks ago, I witnessed some disturbing evidence that the clones at Darkwood possess a kind of super strength that, IMHO, makes them dangerous, to us and our community at large. I’ll spare you the specifics, but I will tell you this: they were able to break metal as if it were as flimsy as thread. They are preternaturally strong, and it’s clear to me that they were born this way, although when challenged, they dismissed their strength as something they trained for on their island. But I can assure you—no normal teenager could do what I saw, no matter how much they trained.

  Regardless, this otherworldly strength is frightening, and there’s no denying that the Similars are an inherent threat to everyone at our school. What’s most concerning, however, is the fact that, when pressed, the clones denied everything. What’s more, for the last year, they’ve felt no obligation to divulge to anyone here at Darkwood the truth about what they’re capable of. And who they really are. Which begs the question: Are they even human?

  I throw the tablet down on my bed, sitting up and sliding my feet into my flip-flops. The patronizing tone of Harlowe’s essay makes me want to scream. She’s twisting the truth, or at the very least, spinning it in favor of her bigoted agenda. I know, in an instant, why she’s done this: because of what Maude did yesterday, one-upping her with the midnight session.

  Pru and I don’t change out of our pj’s. We head directly to Pippa’s room. A crowd has formed in front of her door.

  “What’s going on?” I murmur to Pru as we hurry toward the little knot of kids, probably ten or twelve students, who are all trying to get a look at something.

  “No idea,” she answers. We push our way through the group of our classmates to get to the front. There, on Pippa’s door, spray-painted in messy red letters, are the words, GO HOME, CLONE.

  I don’t have to look at Pru to know how upset she is. She raps on the door, which is slightly ajar. When no one answers, she pushes the door all the way open. The kids around us whisper and watch, wide-eyed, as we tread lightly into Pippa’s room. When we reach her bed, we see rumpled blankets but no Pippa. She’s not here.

  I send a buzz to my friends, asking them to meet us outside the library. I don’t know if they’ve seen the blog post yet, or if they know about the hate speech scrawled across Pippa’s door.

  When we arrive at the library’s front steps, Maude and Pippa are already there, talking quietly to each other. Ansel moves up with Jago, followed by Theodora. Ollie’s right on their heels.

  “We saw it,” Maude says brusquely, before I can even ask. “It’s payback, of course, for what I did to Harlowe yesterday. Embarrassing her in public.”

  “It was bound to come out,” Ansel says softly. “I’m surprised no one found out sooner. You did,” he addresses me. “That day at the lake last year. But—”

  “But I didn’t tell a soul,” I remind him. “I would never.”

  “We know,” Pippa says, brushing away a tear. “And yes, I saw my door. It wasn’t only me. There were messages for all of us.”

  “I’ve already told my mom,” Ollie jumps in. “She took pictures, and she’s informed the administration. She won’t tolerate this.”

  “But can she stop it?” I ask. “Harlowe’s not the only one who thinks this way. She’s getting all this ammunition and encouragement from her parents, probably. And lawmakers who want clones to leave the country, permanently.”

  “So we’ll fight back,” Theodora says.

  “Or we’ll ignore it,” Maude says sternly.

  “Look at this,” Jago says, pulling a scrap of paper from his pocket. “It was in my bag when I woke up.”

  He shows us a message, written in messy scrawl.

  Like it here? Great. Enjoy it while u can

  That’s all it says, but I instantly get the subtext.

  “It’s a deportation threat.” Jago sighs.

  “An empty one,” I remind him. “As long as you’re here at Darkwood, you belong in the States.”

  “But we graduate in seven months,” Pippa interjects. “And what happens after that? If we even make it that long.”

  It’s a quiet, chilly walk to the dining hall to grab breakfast. We ignore the stares and comments from kids all around us, who’ve obviously all read the blog post. I’m not surprised; that kind of propaganda would have gone viral in minutes. Some kids give us a wide berth. Others can’t stop looking at us. It’s like the Similars have arrived at Darkwood all over again. Only this time, I feel like one of them. Because you are.

  We visit Jane in her office. She’s been here twenty-four hours and already looks the worse for wear. I hope she can handle the toll this job will take on her.

  “The dorm room doors are being scrubbed clean,” she assures us. “I’m sorry you had to wake up to something so despicable.”

  I’m alone in my room later that day. Pru’s off at crew practice.

  When Ollie knocks on my door, I’ve been curled up for so long that I’m not surprised it’s already four o’clock in the afternoon.

  “I brought sustenance,” he says, holding up a bag of M&M’s in one hand and Slushees in the other. The minute I see him, tears spring to my eyes, and I go into his arms, into that space in his chest that feels sturdier than it used to. Ollie wraps his arms around me, and for a second, I can almost believe it’s two years ago. Before everything changed so irrevocably.

  “Walk?” I ask him. He nods, following me out of Cypress to the grassy patch behind the dorms where we used to study, or pretend to, lying on our backs looking up at the cloud formations. That’s what we do now, only there’s no pretense of studying. He’s lying inches from me, like he always used to, and the grass is still green beneath us. It will stay that way for another month before the cold Vermont winter lays its gloved hand over our campus, rendering everything gray and withered.

  “Em. I need to tell you something.”

  My throat tightens, and I keep my eyes squarely on the sky. Don’t say it, Ollie. Please. Because I don’t know what I’ll do…

  “I know I’ve been putting on a happy face,” he says quickly. “But the truth is—I’m struggling. To make sense of everything that happened last year.”

  That gets my attention. It’s not what I was expecting, and I turn on my side, resting my head on my hand, my arm propped up on my elbow.

  “The thing is,” Ollie says, squinting up at the cloud cover and shading his eyes with his hand, “I can’t deal with the fact that my father is a murderer. Before you say anything. He is. He killed that boy, that Duplicate who had my DNA. Gravelle treated him like he was expendable. Not even human. Half of my genes come from him. From that monster who is my dad—”

  “Wrong,” I say emphatically. “That man is not your father. How many times do I have to say it?”

  “But he is!” Ollie says, sitting up and flexing his hands into fists. “I know he didn’t raise me. I didn’t get my values from him. Or my beliefs about right and wrong. The Similars got all that,” he mutters, and in that moment his face looks shaded and hardened, like he’s not a boy anymore, not really. “I was lucky,” Ollie goes on. “I had my mom and Booker. I don’t know what’s worse, honestly. Being Gravelle’s biological son, or being the kids he raised from birth. All I know is that the Similars can choose to distance themselves from him. They can eventually walk away. I can never walk away from his DNA—”

  “And neither can Levi,” I say, my heart lurching in my chest as I sit up too.

  “That’s the other thing,” Ollie presses on. “Levi’s there, on that island. I know what that’s like. How painful and lonely it is. And there’s not a damn thing I can do to help him, because I’m afraid. Of going there, and having to see my father again. So I’m here at school acting like
everything’s peachy, when the truth is, I’ve abandoned him. I’m letting the guy who’s practically my brother rot in that place!” Ollie stands, wrapping his arms around himself. I feel a pulsing in my chest and in my veins, like all I want to do is close the distance between us and make him not have to feel this, any of it.

  But I don’t do that. I simply watch him, my heart breaking for him.

  “And everything that’s happening with the Similars,” he goes on, pacing the grass. I’m instantly reminded of how Levi used to do that. He was always so pensive, never letting me in. “That’s all because of my father too. This is only the beginning, Emma. Do you see that? How Harlowe and those other kids are out for blood? My mom won’t be able to stop it. You can’t stop a freight train once it’s left the station, can you?”

  “We have to,” I say. “We can’t let them be deported. Ejected from the only home they have—”

  “I wake up every day thinking about my role in all this,” Ollie says, and beneath that shaggy hair and his lovely gray eyes is a face so somber, it’s painful to gaze at it. “Gravelle created the Similars in the first place to get revenge on my mom.”

  “On all the parents,” I remind him, wishing there was something I could do to take away his pain for good.

  “It all started with my mom, didn’t it?” he says. “They were married, and then they grew apart. He got angry, and that started scaring my mother, so gradually she let him see less and less of me. She used Gravelle’s angry outbursts against him in court, to get full custody. And that’s when Booker replaced him as my dad.”

  “None of that was anything you could help! You don’t even remember it! You were a little kid!”

  “But if I’d stayed in his life. If he hadn’t felt abandoned by all the people he loved,” Ollie says. “If I had found out who he was, and reached out to him…”

  “He faked his death, Ollie! You couldn’t have known that he was really alive.”

  “But before that. If I had figured out a way to let him know I still cared. Maybe he never would have cloned me, or the others. And everyone would have been spared all this pain.”

  Ollie is silent for a moment. I take in what he’s said. He’s not wrong; his logic isn’t faulty. But blaming himself—that’s so unfair.

  “I guess if you have monster DNA…” Ollie says, and I can’t be sure, but I think he’s fighting off tears. “You’re little more than a monster yourself.”

  I have no words. I have no idea what to say, so I do the only thing I can think of. I stand up and bridge the gap between us, wrapping my arms around him. I feel the softness of his gray sweater on my cheek, and his body underneath. I feel his breath mingling with my own as we both stand there, holding on for dear life.

  Then I feel his lips on mine. I’m so taken aback at first, I don’t react.

  Ollie’s hands are on my body, and every one of my nerve endings is standing at attention. He’s kissing me, and his hands are cradling my face. It’s the gentlest kiss I’ve ever experienced—not that I have much to compare it to, anyway—but all I keep thinking is that it’s so tender. He tilts his head slightly to the side, deepening the kiss, and the entire world becomes background noise as we stand there, our bodies closer than they’ve ever been in the nine years since we’ve been inseparable. But never like this. Definitely not like this. And he’s not Levi, and I know that, because Levi doesn’t feel like this… Familiar and knowable and constant, warm like the cookies Jane used to pull from her oven…

  I push away from him, flustered, confused, and utterly stunned—but it’s too late. I don’t know how many seconds passed while we were kissing, but enough that it happened. Enough to make that kiss real.

  I gasp for breath, the reality of this sinking in—you kissed Ollie you kissed Ollie you kissed Ollie.

  Is it possible to go into shock…from a kiss?

  “Levi?” I say, feeling like I’m seeing a ghost.

  “No, not Levi,” Ollie replies, his voice rough and low and, in a way I never noticed before, actually sexy. “Oliver.”

  “No,” I gasp. “I don’t mean that you’re… Look.” Ollie turns now to follow my gaze, and he sees for himself what I’m talking about.

  There, across the grass, standing in the late-afternoon light, is Levi.

  The Legacy Project

  Levi is here.

  Is my mind playing tricks on me? Levi can’t be here, at Darkwood. Not when Gravelle told me he wouldn’t be coming back here. Not when… I can’t even let myself think about it. Not when he saw you and Oliver kissing, seconds ago.

  Levi won’t know that Ollie kissed me, and not the other way around. It’s too mortifying to consider.

  So I come up with the only explanation that makes any sense: it’s not him. This must be another Duplicate, like the ones who came to campus to impersonate Tessa, Archer, and Jake. But I know in my heart that’s not the case, because the look on his face, on Levi’s face—it’s the look of a boy who saw me kissing someone else.

  I force words to form in my throat. “Levi,” I say quietly. “You’re—are you back?”

  “It would appear that way, wouldn’t it?” he finally answers. Now I’m even more sure that it’s him. Only one person sounds like that, like Levi, and he’s here, on the grass, standing right in front of me. Looking like the Levi I’ve longed for since I left him last April. Looking every bit like himself—but wearier. Battle-scarred. My mind flashes with all that he must have suffered there, at the hands of Gravelle, and an ache begins to fill my chest that nearly bowls me over. Levi’s standing there with his hands deep in his pockets, a slouchy sweater draped over his torso. He looks so…uncertain. The only thing I know for sure is that his eyes are focused on mine like some kind of direct link, and the rest of the world has vanished, and it’s just him and me.

  “You’re safe.” I breathe out, never feeling more relieved in my life to see him standing here, his face and body unscathed. “But Gravelle,” I choke out. “He called me. He said—”

  “Things change.” He shrugs. There’s a double meaning to his words, and I know he’s referring to Ollie. To what he witnessed between us. That kiss. Oh my god, that kiss.

  “You’re here, man. Welcome back,” says a voice that’s outside of the two of us, infiltrating this moment we’re having. It’s Ollie. He’s striding over to Levi, fist-bumping and then pulling him into a stiff, but brotherly, hug.

  “Thanks,” Levi says, hugging back and offering Ollie a smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes, and I know why. He’s as confused and torn and conflicted as I am.

  For a minute, the three of us stand there, awkwardly. I’m sure Ollie doesn’t know what to say, and I certainly don’t. No way are any of us going to talk about what just happened. I can barely process it myself. The last thing I ever imagined was Levi, returning here, now.

  I’m brimming with questions, but I don’t ask them. I don’t know where to begin. All I know is that I can’t run into Levi’s arms, even though it’s what I’ve been dreaming about, and hoping for, all these months. Because of what just happened with Ollie, and because I have no idea where Levi and I stand. I’ve heard nothing from him in months. For all I know, Gravelle was telling the truth, and Levi doesn’t want me. Not in the way I want him.

  “Levi?” says a voice behind me. I turn, startled out of my thoughts, to see Maude standing there. Next to her are Pippa and Pru. And the others—Jago, Ansel, and Theodora—are a few paces behind.

  Levi makes eye contact with Maude, standing there like he is with his hands still firmly in his pockets. He looks like he always does. Stoic. Maybe I’m the only one who can see that under the surface, there’s more than meets the eye. He doesn’t breathe a word to Maude. But then, after a moment, a smile breaks over his face, and she runs to him, throwing her arms around him and holding him like a lifeline. The other Similars follow, one by one at first, and then in
a group, shouting, angling to get in a hug with him. Pippa’s outwardly crying, and Levi’s laughing, teasing her for missing him so much.

  “After all this time, Pip,” he says, his face looking considerably lighter than it did five minutes ago, “I didn’t know you cared.” I realize with a pang in my gut that this was the first time any of them had been separated from one another, for their entire lives. No wonder this reunion is so joyous and full of life, if bittersweet. I hug my arms to my chest, trying to harness some of that happiness myself. But my eyes can’t help but flutter to Ollie’s face. If he’s feeling anything besides happy to see Levi, he doesn’t show it. But I wonder: How does he feel, really, about Levi’s return?

  Everyone has questions for Levi. Everyone but me. Sure, I want to know it all too. How he got here. Why. If Gravelle let him go. But there’s only one question I really want to ask, and it’s the one question I can’t: Did you come back for me?

  As I watch the Similars pepper Levi with questions about whether Gravelle hurt him, and when he left the island, and how he got here, I feel like an onlooker to a private moment, one I’m witnessing but not central to. Some of the Similars even ask questions in Portuguese. Levi answers in English, though, so I get the gist of what they’re talking about, even though I don’t catch every detail. All the while, there’s that pull to Levi—that thread—that feels like it’s only ours. He doesn’t look at me now, or direct any of his conversation to me, but I feel like we’re both hyperaware of each other, and of the fact we haven’t hugged, or touched, or said anything to each other besides a few cursory words. I’m waiting until we have a chance to be alone. I wonder if he is too.

  “You look exactly the same,” Theodora’s saying, her hand squeezing Levi’s shoulder through his white T-shirt. Is it weird I feel instantly jealous of her, standing so close to him? Touching him?

  “You look good to me, man, but I guess I’m biased,” Ollie interjects, making us all laugh with that icebreaker.