Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance)

by Dan Rix

  Unfortunately, he had a chronic inability to stay away from trouble.

  ***

  “So how was the water, Buddy?” said Aaron’s best friend, Buff Normandy, as the six-foot-four, two hundred and forty pound, curly-haired and baby-faced rugby player squeezed into the adjacent desk before first period. “Heard you took a dip on Friday.”

  “You should have been there,” said Aaron. “Dominic Brees was working the crowd.”

  “No bullshit, Breezie was there?” said Buff. “Tell me you punched him in the face for me?”

  “I kind of had my hands full,” said Aaron.

  “You heard about that missing kid, right?” said Buff. “He’s the one who dropped that pass during the finals last year, Justin Gorski. Cost Corona the game. I bet Breezie snuffed him out because the season’s about to start.”

  “Couldn’t have been a rugby player,” said Aaron, “Gorski was last seen with a girl.”

  “No bullshit, Breezie put her up to it,” said Buff. “Hey, are you still trying out for rugby this year?”

  “Yeah, now that the volleyball team’s whole starting lineup is eighteen,” said Aaron, “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

  “Not sure why you’re even bothering . . . ” Buff grinned and glanced at his phone “You’re up in twenty-six days.”

  Just then a girl came through the doorway, her dark hair sailing in slow motion behind her. Emma Mist. She glanced at Aaron briefly, then let her hair fall over her shoulder to block him from view.

  “Yep, she hates you,” said Buff.

  “It’s that obvious?” said Aaron. He had recently broken up with Emma because his birthday was coming up. It was the right thing to do—but standing her up the night of winter formal after she’d already done her hair and makeup was the wrong way to do it.

  “Please turn in your essays on quantum mechanics and the discovery of halves,” said Mr. Sanders, walking in just as the bell rang.

  As the sounds of shuffling papers and sliding desks filled the room, Buff produced a crumpled sheet of notebook paper covered with barely legible scribbles. He glanced at Aaron, whose hands were still jammed in his pockets, and gave a disappointed headshake before he ambled to the front.

  Aaron tried to catch Emma’s eye, but she was decidedly oblivious, twirling her hair around her finger and gazing firmly out the window. If she would just let him apologize . . .

  Ten minutes into lecture someone knocked on the classroom door, and Mr. Sanders paused to let in another girl who hated Aaron. Tina Marcello. Today she wore big sunglasses and chewed bubblegum.

  “Ms. Marcello, I’m glad you’re here,” said their teacher with a smile. “I didn’t think it was fair for us to talk about you behind your back.”

  She stopped chewing and brushed her straight, highlighted hair out of her eyes. “Huh?”

  “Take a seat, Tina.” Mr. Sanders went back to his lecture. “ . . . so although quantum entanglement was well documented by 1935, we credit Schrödinger with the discovery of halves. Mr. Harper, why does he get all the credit?”

  Tina sat right in front of Aaron. As usual, she glowered at him as she walked toward her seat, chewing her gum like it didn’t taste good.

  Aaron mouthed, “Bite me.”

  “Aaron, how did he prove it to the world?” said Mr. Sanders.

  Buff kicked the side of Aaron’s calf, making him wince.

  “Prove what?” he said.

  “That every human is born with a half.”

  “Uh—he used an aitherscope?” said Aaron.

  “Wrong. Aitherscope technology wouldn’t exist for another decade.” Mr. Sanders swept to the chalkboard. “Schrödinger said if humans formed in quantum entangled pairs, then in every case we would find that the halves were born simultaneously . . . therefore all we have to do is look at birth times.” The chalk made a nasty scrape on the board.

  “Nice one, Aaron,” Tina said under her breath. She was putting on makeup.

  Aaron kicked her desk, causing her to smear her lipstick.

  “Jerk,” she said, wiping the smudge with her tank top.

  Their teacher scanned the classroom for the source of the commotion, and his eyes settled on Aaron. At the same moment, Amber’s cell phone went off in his pocket, turning all the heads in the classroom with a shrill, hip-hop beat and a chain of rapid-fire cusswords.

  Lovely.

  ***

  Over the next six hours, Clive called Amber’s cell phone so many times that Aaron found himself humming the ring tone between periods. When it rang for the twentieth time on his way to volleyball practice, he picked up.

  “Clive, this is Aaron—”

  But the caller hung up before he finished. Aaron lowered the phone from his ear, and his heartbeat felt heavier than usual. He had just made a huge mistake. Now Clive Selavio, Amber’s abusive boyfriend, thought she and Aaron were hanging out.

  He had to get the phone back to her. Soon, before the guy did something to her. Maybe if he ditched practice and drove straight to Corona Blanca High School, he could catch her before she went home.

  Don’t go near her again, Clive had said.

  Too bad.

  There were still cars in Corona Blanca’s parking lot when Aaron rolled in around four. But how to find her . . .

  From what he remembered, Amber looked athletic, probably played a sport and stayed after school for practice. If she had a car, it would be here.

  Outside, he slid on his sunglasses and leaned against his Mazda, feeling oddly nervous about talking to her again. At the campus entrance, a bronze statue of the Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, glinted in the sun. Its shadow crept closer.

  The man who changed everything.

  Just then Aaron saw her coming out. A smile pulled at the corners of his lips when he saw Amber approach a bright, Crayola-style powder blue Volkswagen Beetle. Same color as her cell phone.

  She wore a white tennis skirt and a green tank top with ‘Corona Blanca Varsity Tennis’ written in white cursive along the front. Her skin was damp with sweat, and a few wisps of hair had escaped her ponytail and stuck to her forehead. She walked slowly, her eyes downcast.

  He waited until she reached her car before he called out her name.

  ***

  Amber glanced up, saw him, and froze. “Aaron?” She combed her damp hair off her forehead.

  “What’s up?” he asked. “Lousy practice?”

  “Why are you here?” she said, and when Aaron pushed off his car and came closer, she narrowed her eyes, tracking him.

  In the daylight she was even more stunning. Once again Aaron found himself lost in her green eyes, not sure what he had been about to say.

  Luckily, a distraction behind her snapped him out of his daze. The rest of the girls’ tennis team came into the parking lot, chatting and giggling. They paused, and after a few wary glances in Amber’s direction, continued on their way.

  Aaron dug through his pocket. “You left this.” He tossed the phone to her, which she caught. “Does Clive always call you that much?”

  Without even a thank you, Amber keyed in her passcode and thumbed through the list of missed calls. “It’s because he’s worried,” she said.

  “Worried about what?”

  “You. He’s worried you might have a crush on me,” she said, slipping the phone into her backpack with a hint of a smile, “and that you’re going to wait by my car after school with some lame excuse about having to return my cell phone just so you can talk to me again.”

  “Oh?” Aaron raised his eyebrows. “So he’s not worried about the fact that you left the phone in my shoes on purpose then?”

  She didn’t take her eyes off him. “Did that make your day, Aaron?”

  “Actually, I was kind of dreading this,” he said, “since our first conversation resulted in me freezing my ass off with some sea lions while your boyfriend threatened to kill me if I ever went near you again.”

  “Then you probably shouldn’t be ne
ar me. Why did you race him, anyway? It’s not like anyone was impressed.”

  “It’s a guy thing.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said doubtfully. “You know, he’s done things to guys like you before.”

  “Like me?”

  “Egotistical and stupid.”

  “Why, is that your type, or something?” said Aaron, returning her glare. When it got ridiculous, though, he gave up trying to outstare her and squinted into the horizon. “So you really think Clive is your half?”

  “You sound jealous,” she said.

  “Just confused,” said Aaron, pushing his sunglasses halfway up the bridge of his nose. “Halves don’t treat each other like that . . . and I could tell he was nervous when I told him we had the same birthday.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “I forgot.”

  Aaron peered sideways at her, but this time she broke eye contact first.

  “No, you didn’t,” he said.

  “I think I would know,” she said, rolling her eyes. Though now she was blushing.

  “Well, have you thought about—”

  “Just drop it,” she said.

  “You don’t buy it, do you?”

  “Buy what?”

  “Halves. The whole bit.”

  She set her gaze on him and the sudden force of her green eyes jolted him. “We’ve known about halves for barely eighty years. We don’t even know what causes it . . . I mean, nowhere does it say we’re meant to be soul mates. We just assumed.”

  “Yeah, because that part was obvious.”

  “There’s another explanation.”

  Aaron nodded to the bronze statue. “One your man over there didn’t think of?”

  “You know . . . ” she said, without looking back, “Schrödinger kept a mistress.”

  “Ouch,” he said. “Alright, let’s hear your theory.”

  “Halves are more like siblings. Like cosmic twins . . . which would make this all incest.”

  “You are aware most people say its love at first sight when they meet their half.”

  “Easy.” She held his gaze. “Power of suggestion.”

  “You’re saying it could be anybody?”

  “I think that depends.”

  “On what?”

  “The person,” she said, watching him with a tinge of daring, “and what they believe.”

  “Most people believe halves are perfect biological matches,” he said.

  “That’s what scares me,” she said. “What happens to the human race if we no longer evolve through natural selection, but instead allow ourselves to be artificially bred by a force we haven’t even begun to understand?”

  “You think it’s breeding us?”

  She shrugged. “I wouldn’t be the first.”

  A few students walked past them, and Aaron chewed his lip, waiting for them to pass out of earshot. Like the tennis players, their eyes darted between the two of them but lingered on Amber, and then Aaron remembered—

  “What happened to Justin Gorski?” he said, changing the subject.

  Amber glared at him as if he had just asked the stupidest question on Earth, and Aaron regretted asking her; the poor girl had probably gotten nonstop stares at school, and it was still only her first week.

  Yet part of him doubted her innocence. “Weren’t you the last one with him?” he said.

  “He offered me a ride home, which I didn’t take,” she said, “and I wasn’t the last one with him.”

  “Then who was?” he said, ignoring her look. “Was it your boyfriend, Selavio, jealous maybe? Am I next on his hit list?”

  “It was Dominic Brees,” she said, “and that’s because they’re both on the rugby team and they carpool home after practice.”

  Aaron turned away from her and closed his fist. “Just like Buff said,” he muttered.

  “Why do you even care? You don’t go here.”

  “One more thing,” said Aaron, as he recalled Friday night, still believing Clive was somehow involved. “What was in that vial your boyfriend brought to the beach?”

  “What are you, Aaron, some kind of private detective?”

  “He said it was liquid clairvoyance.”

  Amber pulled her keys out of her backpack and reached for her car door. “I’m kind of done talking to you,” she said, “and for your information, it was just a glow stick.”

  She slammed the door in his face.

  Well, that went well, Aaron thought, as her tires squealed on the asphalt and left him in a puff of burnt rubber.

  ***

  “It’s too suggestive,” said Amber’s mother.

  Amber stood on a pedestal wearing the dress, still fuming inside from her conversation with Aaron. Just who did he think he was? At the moment, a dozen people were looking her up and down.

  She felt André’s hands on her waist. “We want to display her athletic figure,” he said. “The fabric accentuates movement, lightness. Step down, Amber, try walking around a bit.”

  She stepped off the stool and walked a few feet then turned around. The group murmured its approval.

  “And what are those ruffles, André?”

  André smiled. “It’s a fabric, Mrs. Lilian. It has to move.”

  “Can you tighten that up along the side?”

  “Quit nitpicking,” said her father. “He’s done a fine job.”

  “You have no idea how camera flashes can amplify these imperfections,” said her mother.

  “Imperfections?” scoffed Dravin, one of her parents’ friends, as his vulture-like eyes inspected Amber favorably from behind his glasses. “All I see is perfection.”

  “Quiet,” said her mother. “André, do you have any brighter lights? I can’t see anything properly in your cave of a studio.”

  André brought out two halogen lights on stands and they, like the eyes of her dozen admirers, were trained on Amber’s body.

  “Congratulations,” said her mother. “You’ve wrapped her in vinyl.”

  “There needs to be luster,” said André.

  “Can it be charmeuse?” she said.

  “Mrs. Lilian, the dress is done,” he said. “We’re just making the final adjustments.”

  “Then do it again,” she said.

  “But there isn’t enough time,” he muttered.

  “Can we put padding in the cups?” said her mother.

  André scowled.

  “Ignore her,” said her father. “The dress is flawless.”

  “It is not flawless,” said her mother.

  While they bickered, Amber wandered into the corner and stared at herself in a mirror. Her hair was pinned up so every part of the dress could be seen, admired, and scrutinized for flaws. Just like her.

  The silk was whisper-light on her skin, barely touching her, but not so loose they couldn’t see what she was shaped like underneath. It was André’s most appealing design so far—and probably the one she’d wear on her eighteenth birthday, although the thought made her stomach squirm.

  She couldn’t stand the idea that once she met her half—once she belonged to him—she would never again be considered her own person. Irresistible as she was in André’s dress, she felt the urge to rip it off and don baggy sweatpants. The worst part, though, was she doubted there was even a single seventeen-year-old in the world who could empathize with her.

  Well, maybe one seventeen-year-old.

  Amber realized she was about to start thinking about Aaron all over again and sighed in frustration. She had thought about him way too much ever since he came to her school last week. But that wasn’t because she liked him. He was a jerk.

  She just couldn’t figure him out, and though she didn’t trust him at all, she wished she had told him what she knew about the missing boy from her high school—at least to get it off her chest. Now he probably thought she was hiding something. Which she was.

  And why did she care what Aaron thought? For all she cared, he could curse her name in his sleep.

  Dravin appeared behi
nd her, his half at his side. “He’ll be lovesick when he sees you, sweetheart.”

  “Fine. As long as he doesn’t puke on me,” said Amber.

  He ignored her tone. “With you at his side, he’ll be chosen as the heir.”

  “Dravin, please do your scheming with my father,” she said.

  Amber caught his half’s eye in the mirror and regretted it immediately. There was a reason Dravin usually left his half home when he visited. The woman’s unfocused eyes lolled between them, only loosely timed with their speech.

  Amber averted her gaze, but not before her lips curled with disgust. Dravin must have read her expression.

  “That’s not polite, sweetheart.”

  “She’s gross.”

  If the comment stung, Dravin didn’t let it show. “I was born in the early days, sweetheart. Before they understood premature contact. We first touched when we were only three days old; her body wasn’t ready . . . her channel tore open and she lost most of her clairvoyance.”

  The detachment in his voice chilled Amber. “Aren’t you even upset about it?”

  “You were almost like her, you know. Only your parents were more . . . skittish.” He said it like an insult.

  “Yeah, well not everyone’s perfect,” said Amber. Despite her biting tone, her face flushed.

  He was right.

  Dravin and his half were victims of juvengamy. They had been forced together as infants.

  So had Amber’s parents.

  And as a pureblood, descended from an unbroken lineage of juvengamy halves, so had Amber.

  At least that’s what they told her. She and her half were separated before she could remember. Before any permanent damage could happen to her channel . . . she hoped.

  Amber heard shouting behind her and turned around. Her parents were yelling at each other now.

  André sat in the corner while his half, the studio’s other designer, massaged his shoulders, throwing mutinous glances toward Amber’s mother. André and his half were both men. Homosexual halves did occur, though not as often as heterosexual halves.

  Suddenly, Amber’s mother slapped her father and marched toward the exit, toppling one of the halogen light stands. The tripod crashed to the floor and the bulb popped. On her way out, she shouted over her shoulder, “I don’t care if you don’t sleep, André. I want another dress next week.”