Spliced

by Jon McGoran

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a gift. In mythology, chimeras were part ram, part lion, and part snake.”

  “I know, the ancient Greeks.”

  “Exactly.” She looked down with a shy shrug. “So you’re, like, an honorary chimera.”

  “Thanks,” I said, putting it on my shirt. Honorary was fine.

  Del coughed, a dry hacking sound.

  “He sounds thirsty,” she said. She opened the other bottle, and dribbled some water between his lips. He didn’t quite wake up, but he reached up and grabbed the bottle with one hand and guzzled it down. When it was empty, he coughed again. Then his arm went slack and he was asleep once more.

  “Guess he was,” I said.

  For the next half hour, we sat there in silence. Thoughts buzzed through my head. What would Del be like when this was over, not just physically, but as a person? Would we still be friends? Where would he live? What would his dad do? And what would happen to me?

  I was already in trouble. I wondered how much worse it could get.

  Part of me wished Ruth would leave me alone, but part of me was really glad to have her there, especially when Del went through another rough stretch. It started with a twitch running across his face. Then he began coughing and convulsing. His limbs shook violently. Horrible clicking, grinding noises came from deep within his body. It was difficult to watch, difficult to be near. It could have been my imagination, but when he settled back down, his forehead seemed to be bulging more than before. I wondered if it was swelling or if that’s just how it was now. The cuts at either corner of his mouth had gotten deeper.

  Ruth smiled down at him, warm and sympathetic, and I was ashamed that what I felt was revulsion and sorrow and anger that he had done this to himself. But I couldn’t help it. This was crazy.

  She put her hand on my arm. I was relieved that it looked normal. “You should take a break,” she said. “I can be here with him.”

  “No, I’m okay,” I replied.

  I did want to get out of there, desperately, but I didn’t want to tell her that. I looked down at Del. “He’s still sweating,” I said. “Okay if I open a window?”

  Ruth looked up at me. “Sure,” she said, her sympathy directed as much toward me as toward Del. “That would be great.”

  I wrestled it open and cool air flowed in, making me realize just how stuffy the room had been. I put my head through the window and breathed deeply. When I pulled myself back inside, Ruth looked up at me again. “He needs more water.”

  “I’ll get it,” I said quickly. “Where is it?”

  “On the kitchen table.”

  I nodded and glanced at Del, then went downstairs.

  The guy with the goatee was asleep in the living room, still hooked up to an IV. The girl who had been crying was gone. The dining room was empty, but there was a candle burning on the kitchen table and a case of water next to it. I went in and grabbed two bottles. Two eyes flashed in the darkness, and a voice said, “Jimi, right?”

  It was Ryan, standing by the back door. “How’s Del doing?”

  “Um . . . okay, I think. I don’t know.”

  “He’ll be fine, you know. In a couple hours he’ll be laughing about it, geeking out over his new self.”

  He smiled, but I couldn’t smile back. “Right.”

  “I’m going to get some air,” he said, opening the door. “You look like you could use some too.”

  I shook my head and held up the water. “No thanks. I should bring these up.”

  He gave me a gentle smile, like he understood. Then he slipped outside.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Back upstairs, Del was wheezing loudly, and I felt an intense pang of guilt for having left his side.

  “Is he okay?” I asked, my heart pounding. What I meant was, Is he dying?

  “He’s fine,” Ruth said soothingly. She took one of the water bottles and put it to his lips, but he turned away.

  I sat on the floor and put my palms against my eyes.

  “Are you okay?” she asked as she put the cap back on the bottle.

  “Yes, I’m okay,” I said, more defensively than I intended. “Sorry. I just don’t know why Del would do this to himself.”

  She moved over next to me. “It’s a big decision.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Yes, it is. And I don’t think he’s thought it through. This changes everything.”

  “Maybe he wanted to change everything. Not you, maybe, but everything else. I talked with him while he was waiting to see the genie. He told me about his dad, showed me his arm. He needed to get away.”

  “I know, but this?”

  She gave me a patient smile to let me know she wasn’t taking offense but could have.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “But how’s he going to live? How’s he going to get a job?”

  “We manage okay. There’s jobs. Some people actually do hire us. Some of us grow food, some do landscaping. I clean houses sometimes. My best friend is a barista at New Ground Coffee Shop.”

  “What about college?”

  “College isn’t for everyone.” There was that line again. I wanted to tell her about how Del and I planned to go to school together, but it sounded somehow childish even before I said it. I switched tactics. “You know they’re trying to pass a law, right? If the governor signs it, anyone whose DNA isn’t one hundred percent human won’t legally be a person.”

  Ruth nodded solemnly. “I do know. And why would humans do that? It makes you wonder, what’s so great about being one hundred percent human anyway?” She shook her head, her voice getting louder. “You look at what humans do to each other, what they do to chimeras and to animals and to the planet. Chimeras are people, Jimi, regardless of any law, but for some of us, ‘human’ just isn’t a club we want to be a part of.”

  “Not all humans are like that,” I said, feeling defensive.

  She smiled, almost patronizingly. “Well, I sure hope not.”

  I thought about my frightening encounter with Simon, but before I could point out that chimeras weren’t all sweetness and light, either, Rex came up the stairs with a bundle under his arm. “I brought some crackers and some extra blankets,” he said. “I have to go out.”

  Ruth took the bundle from him. “What’s going on out there?”

  He shook his head. “Probably nothing. Ryan seems to have wandered off.”

  Ruth’s eyes flashed with fear. “Poachers?”

  “I doubt it. He went for a walk after talking that girl out of getting spliced.”

  I was taken aback. I thought he’d been trying to talk her into it. Rex gave me a small smile that lingered, just a second. I wondered if he could tell what I’d been thinking.

  “I just want to make sure he didn’t fall in a swimming pool or anything,” he said. “I’ll get Del something to help with the fever, okay?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Be careful,” Ruth said.

  “Of course,” he said. Then he turned to me. “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  He nodded back and left.

  A few seconds later, I looked out the window and saw him loping across the lawns in the moonlight, his bulk moving improbably fast.

  “What was that about?” I asked as he disappeared into the shadows. “Poachers?”

  “That’s what we call them. Chimeras go missing,” she said sadly. “Abducted.”

  “By who?”

  “By ‘one hundred percent humans,’ I imagine,” she said with a wry smile. “Although it’s a mystery which ones.”

  “Are you serious? Why?”

  “Who knows?” she said. “I don’t like to think about it. They do it to each other, too, so I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Abductions have been around forever, right? Especially kids. They used to put the victims’ pictures on milk cartons, in the olden days.”

  “Have you told the police?”

  She laughed, covering her mouth, emba
rrassed to be laughing at me so openly but incredulous that I could be so naïve.

  “I’m sure they already know,” she said.

  I could feel my face going hot. I’d seen with my own eyes how the police treated chimeras. I couldn’t see Officer Cantrell rushing to help if a chimera went missing.

  She opened the crackers and passed them to me. “Luckily, we have Rex,” she said. “He makes sure nothing bad happens. Rex is really good. I don’t know what we’d do without him.”

  “Have you known him long?”

  “A few years, I guess. Since right after I changed. It seems like forever.”

  I put a cracker in my mouth. It was stale, but I was starving. I passed the box back to Ruth and for a few minutes we were quiet except for the crunching.

  “So, why did you?” I asked quietly. “Get spliced, I mean.”

  She studied my face as if trying to decide if I really wanted to know or I just wanted to judge her. She shrugged, as if maybe it didn’t matter.

  “Partly what I said before,” she said. She had a far-off look, like she was remembering something from a long time ago. “I wanted to protest what humanity has done to the natural world, to do what I could not to be complicit, and to show my allegiance to the animals we’re wiping out. But people have all sorts of reasons. For some it’s just a fashion thing, others are trying preserve at least a part of a species that’s endangered or extinct. I’ve always been fascinated by birds. I’ve always wanted to fly.” She laughed. “I still can’t, of course. But it’s pretty cool being part bird. I get to see the world differently, I think, being a chimera. It gives me a broader view of how everything is connected.”

  “Do you ever wish you hadn’t gotten spliced?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess. Not much. I have a good life. I have good friends, like Rex and Pell.”

  “Is that who you were sitting with on the porch the other day?”

  She nodded, smiling. “Yeah. Pell’s my bestie. Birds of a feather, you know?”

  I nodded like I knew. But I didn’t, really. Not anymore. My closest friend—my only friend—was lying on the floor changing from someone I didn’t know as well as I thought into someone I barely knew at all.

  Ruth leaned her head back, still smiling, and slowly closed her eyes. Her mouth fell open and she started making a soft whistling sound as she breathed. She was asleep.

  Sitting there beside her, I vaguely wondered what would happen if Aunt Trudy checked on me before she left and realized I wasn’t there. But as my own exhaustion hit me, I felt a strange calm. So what if my mom grounded me for months? If Del was gone, I’d have no one to hang out with anyway. And if I couldn’t get my driver’s license, I’d just deal with it. I hadn’t come all this way just to leave Del like this. I needed to stay with him and make sure he was okay.

  Ruth turned in her sleep, and her head sagged over, her soft feathers resting on my shoulder. Up close, they were quite beautiful, but they were so nonhuman that for a brief moment I felt a twinge of something like revulsion, as if deep down my brain still didn’t know what my reaction should be. But she was so sweet and so caring, my heart knew my reaction shouldn’t be that.

  She smiled in her sleep. And as I felt my eyes closing, I smiled too.

  TWENTY-SIX

  When I awoke, bright sunlight was streaming in through the open window. Del was lying next to me on the floor, tangled in the covers. He should have been better by now, but he looked worse. His skin had gone from sickly green to a blotchy gray. His eyes and his nose were crusty and dry. His lips had scabbed over, which I hoped was a good sign, but they looked terrible.

  Ruth was standing by the door, looking upset. The feathers on her head seemed ruffled, disheveled.

  I looked back at Del and my heart seized up. “Is he—”

  “He’s alive,” she said harshly, “but he’s not doing great. Here,” she said, shoving a paper bag at me. “Rex got this for him. To help with the pain and the fever.”

  Her voice sounded different, and her nose was pierced with a tiny green stud.

  I suddenly realized it wasn’t Ruth I was talking to. It was Pell.

  “Wait. Where’s Ruth?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Pell’s shoulders heaved as she choked back a sob. “Ruth’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, scrambling to my feet.

  “She went outside last night to get some air, and she disappeared. While you were sleeping. While Rex was out getting Children’s goddamn Tylenol, worrying about you and your friend instead of protecting Ruth from poachers.”

  I was taken aback by the force of her anger.

  “Well, I’m really sorry about Ruth,” I said, and I was. “But I’m trying to save my friend’s life, and look at him!” I pointed at Del. “I’m sure a little Children’s Tylenol will fix him right up.”

  She blinked rapidly, surprised, like she’d been so wrapped up in her own fury and fear that it hadn’t crossed her mind that I might be anxious too.

  “You chimeras think it’s a joke,” I continued, “that it’s no big deal people are dying from these splices—”

  “‘You chimeras’?” she repeated. “You sound like an H4Her. Are you sure you don’t mean ‘You mixies’?”

  “—you tell people they can live this carefree life, not a worry in the world—”

  “No worries except for poachers and people like you,” she shot back, “who think they’re more important than some disgusting mixies.”

  “—and when things go wrong, you have no idea how to fix it. Children’s Tylenol?” I said. “Are you kidding me?”

  We both turned at the sound of heavy footsteps rushing up the stairs. Rex rounded the top of the stairs and came down the hallway toward us. His eyes looked burdened and his forehead was creased.

  He met Pell’s gaze and she started crying again, and as he came into the room, he put an arm around her. He looked down at Del. “How’s he doing?” he asked.

  “Look at him,” I said. “He’s dying!”

  Rex rubbed his chin, studying him. “It could be a bad splice. Something might have gone wrong.”

  “Do you think so?” I said, sarcastic and shrill.

  Rex took a step back. “Did you get the Tylenol?”

  I wanted to throw the bag at him. “Yes, I got the Tylenol!” I took a deep breath, pointing at Del. “Do you really think Tylenol is going to fix that?”

  “It’ll help with the fever,” he said.

  “He needs a doctor!” I shouted. “Where’s Malcolm? He did this. He needs to fix it.”

  “Malcolm’s gone, but even if he were here, there’s nothing he could do.”

  “Then we need to get Del to a hospital!”

  “A hospital won’t help him,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They won’t even try. Not for chimeras,” Pell said bitterly.

  “Why? Because chimera biology is so different?”

  Pell laughed. “Because they don’t have to.”

  “Insurance companies don’t have to cover us, so they don’t,” Rex said. “Hospitals and doctors say their liability isn’t covered. Nothing says they have to treat us, so mostly they don’t. The best they’ll do is monitor him until he dies.”

  I was stunned. Not only did these chimeras let Del do this to himself, now they were telling me we couldn’t even take him to a hospital. Del coughed again, his breathing growing more ragged. Tears filled my eyes, but I willed them to stop. “So then, what do we do? There must be something we can do.”

  Rex felt Del’s pulse and looked into his eyes. He seemed so sure of himself, but more and more I was realizing none of them had any idea what they were doing.

  He stood and let out a sigh. “Look,” he said softly. “Nobody talked Del into doing this, not even Malcolm. It was a decision Del made on his own. But there might be something we can do to help him.”

  “What? Tell me!”

  Rex ignored me and turned to P
ell. “I’ll find them,” he told her, his voice burning with determination. “But first, we need to clear out of here, in case the poachers come back for more.”

  Pell started crying again, but she nodded and left the room. Downstairs, I could hear the others packing up.

  Rex turned to me. “And we’ll take care of Del too.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “We can take him to a fixer.”

  “A what?”

  He looked away from me before he continued. “First twenty-four to forty-eight hours, before a splice really takes hold, it can be undone. Fixers are people who can reverse a bad splice. Change him back, if it’s not too late.”

  A wave of relief crashed over me at the thought that this horrible mistake could still be undone. Del might be angry, but he’d get over it. And if reversing the splice would save his life, how could he argue with that? I felt a sudden, intense optimism, a sense that things could be salvaged, that Del could be saved, that maybe the craziness that had taken over the world in the last couple days wasn’t a done deal.

  But as the news sank in, I realized I was angry as hell. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked, my voice loud and hot.

  “This isn’t a choice to be taken lightly.”

  “If it can save his life it is!”

  “And that’s why I’m telling you about it now. But Del chose to get spliced, whether you agree with it or not. It was his decision. He paid for his splice, both in money and in the pain he’s been sweating through. If I had told you about the fixer last night, you would have wanted to bring him there immediately. And if you deny it, you’re lying.”

  I opened my mouth to protest but thought better of it. “Okay, whatever. So let’s get him there now.”

  “It’s not that simple. We need a way to get him there, which won’t be easy. And we need a way to pay for it. Do you have a driver’s license?”

  “I have a permit, and I know how to drive.”

  His face said he took that as a no. “How much money do you have?”

  “On me? Forty bucks.”

  He frowned. “How much can you get your hands on?”

  “I have another forty at my aunt’s. And sixty more at my house, but I can’t get in there.”