There’s movement. A bored sigh. I glimpse a face. It’s a girl. She’s standing up. She brushes dust off her jeans, steps forward into the light straining through the narrow windows.
She looks my age, maybe a little bit older. She’s wearing a hooded sweater, so I don’t see her face very well, but I see the glint of her eyes as she looks at me arrogantly, like I’m supposed to recognize her. I don’t. She does looks a little familiar, but I don’t know why. She’s definitely not anyone I know.
“Who are you?” I repeat. I still clutch the phone, but it feels stupid to be afraid of this girl. “This is private property. You’re trespassing.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Are you with the press?” It’s a silly question. She’s just a kid.
“No.”
Her voice hardly carries, but it’s not shy. Just . . . barely there. She’s wearing an unzipped coat over the hooded sweater, and she stands very straight.
“Who are you?” I ask once more. “What are you doing here?”
“You look like him,” she says. Her voice is dark and flat. “You’re Josh. His brother.”
“Max. Yes. He’s my brother.”
“I read about you this morning. In the paper. I saw your picture. You’re the designer baby.”
I’m silent.
“He had cancer.”
I cross my arms. “You’re not exactly telling me news here, you know.”
She tilts her head to the side. “You saved his life. He wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you.”
“What are you doing here?” I trace the buttons on my phone with my thumb. “Who are you?”
She finally pushes the hood back. Her hair is blond, reaches just below her shoulders, her eyes are big and green. She’s very pretty. Prettier than most of the girls in my class. “Your brother killed my sister.”
I almost drop the phone. When I realize my hands are shaking, I stuff the phone away and put my hands in my pockets. Her tone is belligerent. Angry. Like she expects me to protest her accusation, and of course I will.
But now I know why she looks familiar. Her face resembles the face I know from the television screen and newspaper pictures. Karen. Karen was pretty too. I remember Dad saying that was why her murder got so much attention, why it even made national news. They like to put pretty faces on television, and Karen was a beautiful blond, blue-eyed girl someone killed.
Someone. Not my brother. Not Max.
“Max is innocent,” I say. “He didn’t kill anyone. It’s a mistake.”
She leans forward. “If you had never been born, my sister wouldn’t be dead.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t Max.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything,” she spits out. “You just hope.” She sits back down on the lounge chair. The legs scrape against the floorboards as she leans back. She looks around, pats her knee absently as if asking a cat to jump in her lap. But they’re all gone now. It’s almost dinnertime and the cats know it. They are inside, clustered around their bowls, waiting, but there’s no one there to feed them.
I wonder if Mom will even remember them tonight.
“You look a lot like him.”
She says “him” with loathing and disgust. Like Max is not human anymore, like he’s lower than a sewer rat, lower than bacteria. I guess when you do what he’s accused of doing, you leave the human race behind. You almost become another species.
“Yes. I look like him.”
“He’s a monster.”
I don’t answer. Shivers of fear are giving me goose bumps. She’s wrong. I know Max is innocent. But I’m afraid I’ll start to doubt him.
“I said, he’s a monster!” The girl is back on her feet. She has moved closer, getting right in my face, and her voice is louder, her fists clenched and her face tight in fury.
“I heard,” I say. I step back, not because I’m afraid or because I can’t take her, but because I don’t fight girls, and besides, if I get in a fight with Karen Crosse’s sister, there will be trouble.
The girl unclenches her fists when she sees me back off. “Your brother will be dead too,” she says. “He’ll get the death penalty for what he did. They’ll shave his head and barbecue him in the electric chair. Or strap him down on a table and pump him full of poison until his heart can’t beat anymore.”
She smiles when I gasp aloud. I hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t thought about the death penalty. For split seconds, I’ve imagined what would happen if this went to trial and Max was somehow found guilty. I’ve imagined Max in prison forever, me visiting him when we were both old and gray and our parents gone.
But I never thought about the possibility of the death penalty.
“You’ll get to say good-bye, though,” the girl says. “We never got to say good-bye to Karen.”
“You have to go,” I say. “This is private property. You’re trespassing.”
The girl laughs. She walks toward the door. Opens it. Steps outside. She turns around and looks back at me, framed against the fading light outside. Snow has begun falling again and the flakes stick to her hair. “My sister was also private property.”
I’m in bed by the time Mom and Dad come home. The next morning they’re preoccupied. Whispering to each other, whispering into the phone, occasionally forgetting and shouting instead. They don’t even notice my swollen lip.
“How’s Max doing?” I finally dare ask over breakfast. Mom rubs her face with her hands and pushes her bowl away.
“He’s . . . holding up,” she says. “It’s not easy, but he’s resilient. He always has been.” She tries to smile at me. “He’s asked about you.”
“Can I go with you soon? Can I see him?”
“I don’t know . . . Maybe. We’ll see.” Mom stands up, mumbles something about taking a shower and goes upstairs, her movements slow and dreamlike, like she’s sleepwalking.
Dad grabs the remote and flips on the small TV we have in the kitchen. Max’s face fills the screen, but the sound is muted after Dad stabs viciously at the remote. We stare in silence at Max’s face, at Karen’s face, a picture of our house, of Max’s dormitory. Then finally they move to another story and Dad turns up the volume again.
Not quite another story, though. Another familiar face flashes on the screen.
“Rachel Crosse, sister of murder victim Karen Crosse, is missing.”
I sit frozen, my spoon halfway to my mouth.
Rachel. Her name is Rachel.
“Rachel didn’t come home last night, and she hasn’t been seen since yesterday afternoon when she left school at around two o’clock. Rachel, fourteen years old, is five foot six, slim, with shoulder-length blond hair and green eyes. She was wearing jeans and a dark coat over a blue hooded sweater, and she was carrying a leather backpack.”
I hear Mom come running back downstairs. There’s hope and excitement in her face as she enters the kitchen. “I heard the news upstairs. Jack, did you hear?” She gestures at the screen. “If this girl has been killed too, that would be evidence. Wouldn’t it? It would prove Max’s innocence. They’d have to let him go and start searching for the real killer.”
Dad looks at Mom, startled. “No. I don’t think it would prove anything. Not in itself. Could be a copycat murder.”
Mom deflates. Stops hoping Rachel is dead, I guess, and then looks ashamed when she realizes what she sounded like. “I didn’t mean . . . oh, I hope they find the poor girl,” she mutters. “To lose one child, especially like this, is a tragedy beyond words.” She looks at me. “ To lose another one the same way . . . it’s unthinkable.”
I finish my breakfast quickly, put my bowl in the dishwasher and head for the back door.
When I think about it, the cats have been very silent this morning. It’s because they’ve been out in the cat shed, clustered around Rachel. She’s found the closed cupboard where we keep the treats. She’s sitting on the lounge chair, backed into a corner, and all five cats are there—on her la
p, on her shoulders, nudging each other away at her feet. She digs into the treats bag, holds out palms full of goodies.
The litter boxes will be interesting tonight.
She looks up when I open the door, but she doesn’t look worried. She makes eye contact only for a second, then turns her attention back to the cats. I stand there for a while, not sure what I’m doing—what she’s doing, what either of us should be doing.
I should call my parents. I know I should, but I don’t. There’s enough trouble, and I guess I’m hoping this particular problem will leave of its own accord, without me having to get involved. So I walk toward her, grab the treats bag, tuck it away on a high shelf. The cats protest, but they soon forget about the bag and focus on getting the last treats out of Rachel’s hands and nosing around her feet for leftovers. I sit down opposite her, silent until she looks at me defiantly. It’s a trick Dad used to use on me. When he knew I’d done something I wasn’t supposed to, he’d come into my room, sit down, and look at me until I broke down and confessed. Max tried to teach me tricks to resist it, but they never worked. Not for me. It’s psychological warfare and Dad’s a champion.
“What?” Rachel snaps at last. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Your name is Rachel.”
“So what?”
“You were on TV. Your picture was on the local news. Your disappearance.”
“Yippee. I’m famous. Not as famous as my big sister, though.” Her voice sounds bored. Disinterested. She fishes around in the creases of her clothes, finds another cat treat or two.
“Your parents are freaking out. You have to go home.”
Rachel shrugs. “I will. Sooner or later. Did you tell someone about me?”
I want to tell her I did, but it’s obvious I didn’t, or someone would be here. “No. Not yet.”
She grins. “Why?” she asks, in a way that suggests she already knows the answer. Maybe she does. I don’t.
“Go home, Rachel.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“None of your business.”
“If you’re hiding out in my home, that is my business. But fine. I’ll just tell Dad. He’ll deal with this.” I stand up. Rachel does too. She puts her hands on her hips.
“You’re not going to tell anyone.” Her voice is ominous.
“Why not?”
“Because I said.” She takes a couple of steps toward me. I blink, and suddenly she has a knife. She’s holding it up between us, the sharp blade flashing, but I don’t have time to be afraid before she’s holding it out to me, the red handle first. “Here. Take it.”
I take a step backward. It’s just a Swiss Army knife, but it creeps me out. “No.”
She moves closer, still holding out the knife. She moves it lower, toward my hand, tries to push it into my palm. “Try it, Josh. See how you like it. I bet you will.”
I move my hands behind my back, take another step back and then another until I come up against the wall. I grab my left wrist tightly with my right hand. “Stop acting crazy!”
“Why? Am I scaring you?” She’s grinning again. Her big green eyes seem to glow. “Your brother killed my sister with a knife just like this one. They’re very popular, you know. You can buy one anywhere.” Suddenly she brings the knife up to her face, touches it to her cheek. “He cut her here.” She presses down, and a tiny drop of blood oozes up. “And that was just the beginning.”
I’m breathing too fast, but I can’t slow it down. I want to stop her, but I’m afraid to move, afraid to grab the knife, afraid something terrible will happen if I do, afraid something terrible will happen if I don’t . . .
“You’re crazy,” I whisper as she pushes the knife deeper and a thin red line appears on her skin. I can barely hear myself, my heart is pounding so loudly in my ears.
“He cut her and cut her and cut her. Before he killed her. She bled for a long time before she died.” She tilts her head to the side, as if asking me an important question. “Why? Why didn’t he just kill her? Why did he have to hurt her first?”
“My brother didn’t kill her!” Anger releases me from the paralysis of fear. My hand shoots out and I rip the knife from her. It’s brand-new, with a million different functions, including a flash drive and everything.
The blade is streaked with red. I wipe it on my jeans. Then I crack the door open, raise my arm and toss the knife over the fence surrounding the shed, into the bushes at the edge of our backyard. I hear it thud into the ground. Rachel is looking at me when I turn around. Smiling. A drop of blood leaks down her cheek, curves toward her chin like a red tear.
“I’ve got you now.” She’s almost gloating.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Evidence.”
I don’t understand what she means.
“I have a cut on my face. You have my blood wiped into your jeans. Out there’s a knife with my blood and your fingerprints on it. And my fingerprints are all over this place. I can go to the police and say you kidnapped me, held me a prisoner here. That you attacked me with a knife just like your brother’s. That you cut my face, just like he did to my sister.”
I stare at her. She’s still smiling.
“Or,” she says, “you can kill me. You can kill me, get rid of my body, drag it out in the forest behind your house, and if you’re careful, nobody would ever find out.”
“What—”
“Except maybe you can’t do that. Because maybe I’ve left a note behind, telling everybody where I am and what must have happened to me.”
“Why are you doing this?” I shout.
Rachel keeps talking. She’s enjoying herself, I can tell. “So maybe I’ll run away. Disappear forever. And they’ll find the note I left, and the drops of blood on the floor here, and the traces of my blood in your clothes, and they’ll think you killed me. They’ll arrest you and question you and your face will be all over the papers. Again. Can’t you picture the headlines? ‘Blood Brothers.’ And you and your brother will both go on trial for murder. After all, you guys are used to sharing cells.”
“I’m telling my parents right now,” I yell at her. “We’ll call the police. Nobody will believe your crazy lies!”
I stalk out of the shed and slam the door shut, shaking. Rachel’s laughter follows me. It’s not a happy sound.
“Hey!” she calls. I pause. Turn around. She’s standing in the doorway like she belongs there. She’s even careful to leave the screen shut, like we always do so the cats can’t get out. Her eyes glitter, and my spine feels cold. “Does your brother miss Genesis Alpha?”
“Genesis Alpha?” I pause, sudden unease tingling inside me. “What do you know about Genesis Alpha?”
Rachel shrugs. She pushes her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans, turns around and disappears into the shed.
I heave the door open, follow her inside. “I asked you a question. What about Genesis Alpha?”
She settles down on the mattress. Cleopatra, the traitor, curls up next to her and starts to purr. “Maybe I’ll tell you later. Maybe tomorrow—maybe not.”
She’s playing some stupid game, and I’m one of her pawns.
I refuse to beg. When she doesn’t tell me, I shrug as if I don’t care, and leave, slamming the door behind me.
I search for a long time before I find the knife. It has sunk through the layers of snow caught at the base of the bushes and is sticking up from the ground underneath. The snow has wiped the blade clean of Rachel’s blood. I close it, put it in my pocket, and wonder what I’ll do with it. I’m not even sure why I looked for it.
How does she know about Max and Genesis Alpha?
She doesn’t. She doesn’t know anything. A lot of kids play Genesis Alpha. Everybody knows about that game. Maybe she’s even been spying on me, maybe she’s been looking in through the windows and seen the Genesis Alpha poster on the wall in my room. She’s just messing with my head.
I’m alone again, and the day is e
xcruciatingly slow. I watch a lot of TV and ignore the phone, even though I’m going crazy, stuck inside like this. I try to focus on a science-fiction novel I’m reading, but it’s hopeless. Even though I turn the pages and my eyes scan each line, I don’t remember a word.
I wish I had my computer. Genesis Alpha can take my mind off anything, no matter how big and scary.
When Mom and Dad get home, they try to pay attention to me, ask about my day and stuff, but the phones keep ringing, and I can tell that they have trouble concentrating on anything I say. Everything revolves around Max, and I give up and get out of the way, go to bed early, sit up and read until finally the phones stop ringing. I don’t know if people have stopped calling, or if Mom and Dad unplugged them.
“Josh?” Mom pushes my door open and peeks in. “You still awake, sweetie?”
“Yeah.”
She comes in, sits on my bed, takes my book out of my hands, and scans the back. “Looks interesting,” she says. “Is it?”
I nod. I don’t really think Mom cares about colonization of distant planets right now. “It’s not bad. When can I go back to school?”
“Just a few more days, honey. I’m sorry. Have your friends been over at all?”
“Yeah. Frankie was here.”
I thought that would make Mom feel better, but the lines between her eyes deepen. “How is he taking this? Was it okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “It was great.”
“You’re a trouper, Josh. We’re very proud of the way you’re handling all this.” I roll my eyes because I’m no trouper at all and besides, they wouldn’t be very proud if they knew about the big secret hiding out in the shed. Mom smiles, kisses my forehead, and leaves. My book slips to the floor, and I lean back against the pillows. The air is stuffy. I go to the window and open it, letting the cold bite at my skin for a long time.
Genesis Alpha Page 4
