Mom moves closer, tries to hug me, but I hold out my hands and stop her. She shakes her head. “Max always seemed to love you. I don’t know what he has been thinking, Josh. I just don’t know.”
Clone. Clone. The word is like something from a foreign language, and I keep playing it in my head over and over again, as if I’ve misunderstood its meaning. “This is why Dr. Di keeps testing me. I’m her secret science project.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m a lab animal!” I yell. “I’m not even my own person! I’m a clone. I’m a backup! I’m reserve parts! I don’t even matter! Why else wouldn’t you even tell me anything? Why else would you lie about what I am?”
Dad’s arm tightens around my shoulders, softening the impatient tone of his voice. “Josh, don’t. It’s not like that. You’re too smart to leap to such paranoid conclusions.”
“You just admitted it! I’m a clone of Max! What other conclusion is there?”
Dad mutes the television. “Think about it, Josh. You know what a clone is. Biologically you’re Max’s identical twin. That’s all. It isn’t any more sinister than that.”
Dad can make anything sound rational and normal. But this isn’t rational and normal. I’m a clone of my brother, and my brother is a psychopathic killer. If this were no big deal, my brother and I would not be on television under a “Breaking News!” header.
“Are there others? Are there other clones?”
“We don’t know,” Dad says. “It’s possible that somewhere in the world there are laboratories where—”
“I mean me. Are there more of me?”
Dad almost laughs, startled. “Oh, no. Of course not.”
“Why not?” I yell. “Why not make a whole army of spare parts for Max? Why not just cut me up and pickle my organs into jars? You never know when Max is going to need one!”
I look at the television screen. They’ve gone on to explain the cloning process. “What happens to me now?” My voice is thin and scared, and Dad holds me tighter. I shove his arms away, stand up. “What’s going to happen to me now?”
“What do you mean, honey?” Mom asks. She reaches out to me again, but I refuse to take her hand. “Nothing will happen to you, Josh. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I’m him! I have his genes!”
“You have our genes, son,” Dad says. “That’s what you have. Genetically speaking, you’re a mixture of me and your mother. But when it really comes down to it, you’re you.”
I stand there, between them, and I know both of them want to put their arms around me, want to assure me everything will be okay, and although that’s what I desperately need to hear, I back off from them. I’ve had enough of lies. I fold my arms on my chest, grabbing each upper arm tight. Tighter. Squeezing until it hurts. “I’m the same as Max. And Max is—”
“It doesn’t matter what Max is,” Dad says. “That doesn’t say anything about you.”
“You boys have always been different in many ways, Josh,” Mom says. Her voice is trembling. “Surprisingly different, considering you are twins.”
“Clones.”
“Twins,” Mom insists. “Twins born a few years apart, with some scientific help. That’s all.”
“That’s not all, Mom, and you know it. That’s just another lie! Were you ever going to tell me?”
They share a look. “No,” Dad finally says. “ To be honest, no. We weren’t.”
“Never?”
“No. Well, not for the foreseeable future, anyway.”
“Why?”
“We thought it would be best. For you. For Max. There’s so much superstition and prejudice in the world, so much ignorance. We wanted to protect you from the fallout.” Dad sighs. “And now it looks like we’re about to find out just how bad it can get.”
“We’ll deny it,” Mom says. “We’ll deny everything, and they can’t force you to give a DNA sample.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Dad mutters. “What we did was illegal, remember? We can be prosecuted.”
I’m illegal. I’m like crack cocaine or polygamy. Outlawed. If Mom and Dad get in trouble over this, I’ll be exhibit A for the prosecution.
There is silence, for how long I don’t know. I almost want to laugh. “You should have told me,” I say instead. Because that matters. “Even if you told nobody else, I had a right to know.”
“It wasn’t safe, Josh,” Mom says, her voice broken, tears once more erupting from her eyes. “Please understand. Kids tell each other secrets. They tell their girlfriends, who tell their best friends, who tell . . . Secrets have a way of getting out. It simply wasn’t safe. There’s so much fanaticism out there, and the press—we wanted you to grow up in peace. Both of you. We are so sorry, but please try to understand, we only wanted what was best for you.”
All at once, our phones are ringing. The home phone, Mom’s cell phone, Dad’s cell phone and mine, where they lie in a jumble on the small dresser near the front door.
“I’m going upstairs,” Mom says. “Make some calls. I need to talk to Diane. This affects her, too . . .”
Dad and I are left alone together. He’s limp in his chair, staring at his wedding ring, rubbing it with his thumb.
“You let me think I was a designer baby. That I was selected as an embryo because I matched Max. You told me this whole story about how I was created, and it was all a lie. . . .”
“It was a true story, Josh. It was what we went through to have you.”
“You didn’t get me that way.”
“It was a part of the process of getting you. We tried for so long. Do you know how it’s done?”
Of course I know. They told me how. They lied to me how.
“They gave your mother hormones. To stimulate her eggs. So they could harvest many eggs at once. The number varied. Sometimes there were as little as four eggs, sometimes twenty. Then they’d use my sperm to impregnate the eggs.”
“Just like fish,” I interject. Dad looks at me, frowning. “Fish. Many fish species. The female fish lays the eggs, then the male fish comes along after the fact and fertilizes them.”
Dad stares at me. “I suppose it was a bit like that. Anyway, we tried it that way. The fish way. For more than a year. Meanwhile, Max was dying. This was his only hope.”
“How many embryos did you make?”
Dad shakes his head. “I don’t know. Dozens and dozens. Only two of them were compatible, but we lost both. Your mother didn’t tolerate the stress very well. Or the hormones. She started to obsess about all the embryos we couldn’t use. It was a terrible time for all of us.” He sighs, rubs his face with his hands. “Max was dying. A part of Laura seemed to die with every failed attempt. Then, well . . .”
“Enter Dr. Die-Hard.”
For once Dad doesn’t scold me for using the nickname. “The lab was close to the children’s hospital, and Diane would frequently look in on Max for us. We couldn’t stay with him as much as we’d have liked while we were involved in the IVF treatment. One morning she was sitting there with him when your mother arrived. He was asleep. Your mother sat down next to him and started crying. We’d lost a baby that night. Again. She’d carried him only seven weeks.”
“I cried,” Mom says, startling us both. She’s standing in the doorway, her hand clutching the shirt at her stomach. “I held Max’s hand, and I sobbed for the baby I’d lost, the one I’d lost before, and the child I was about to lose, the innocent little boy sleeping in that hospital bed, almost comatose from the cocktail of drugs they gave him to ease the pain. Diane was there. She understood. She lost her little girl to a brain tumor the year Max was born. She’s always understood. I told her I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t let them continue creating all those embryos and then throwing them away because they didn’t match. But saying that also meant giving up on Max. It meant letting Max die. I couldn’t do that, either.”
Mom falls into the chair next to Dad. She reaches out and their hands entwin
e.
“‘There is another way,’ Diane told us.” Mom is whispering now. “‘You know there is another way. With our new method we could do it, and it would be quicker and more effective than IVF. But it’s not legal. Not now. Not yet. We have the technology, we could save Max’s life, but there is a law against it.’” She shakes her head. “Once the suggestion was there, out in the open, once Diane had assured us they could clone Max and create a viable embryo, guaranteed to match, we didn’t think twice. What parent cares about the law when their child’s life is at stake? There was no other way. There was no guarantee that the pregnancy would be successful, but if it succeeded, we’d have a cure for Max, and we’d have another child. And we knew we’d love our new little boy just as much as we loved Max.”
“But if I’m identical to Max . . . how could you be sure I wouldn’t get sick too?”
“We couldn’t be sure,” Dad says. “Max’s type of cancer . . . when one identical twin falls ill, there’s a fifteen percent chance the other one will too. For you, the risk was smaller because you were born years apart and your environmental factors were different. It was a risk we decided to take.”
“For Max.”
Dad meets my eyes. His are damp, and his voice isn’t steady anymore. “There was a chance that whatever caused Max to get sick would also happen to you. Because you share the same DNA, you body chemistry is similar, your immune systems, your vulnerabilities. But the chances of you being healthy were better. Instead of one dying little boy, we’d have two healthy ones.”
“And it wouldn’t matter anyway, because even if I got sick later on, I’d already have healed Max. I’d already have served my purpose.”
“No, Josh. It was not like that.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Rachel’s face flash on the television screen. I grab the remote and turn the sound up.
Rachel’s parents are there, live from their home. Their eyes are red-rimmed, and angry lines arch around their mouths. Behind them, pictures of Rachel and Karen hang on the wall.
“Something must be done,” Rachel’s mother says. She pushes the back of her hand against her mouth, shakes her head. The camera zooms in on her, then moves to her husband.
“We can’t take the chance,” he says. “One of our daughters is dead, the other one is missing. Karen died in the most horrible way. If there’s a chance this boy could become a monster like his brother, we must act. If there’s a possibility he can turn into a killer, that he will torture and murder innocent people, something must be done.”
“But he hasn’t done anything,” the reporter said. “Can we justify incarcerating an innocent child?”
“We don’t let tiger cubs loose in the city, do we? There must be institutions for people who are dangerous. Not a prison, just a place where he’s watched, where he can’t do something like this. He can have a good life there. And the rest of us can be safe.”
“Of course it isn’t fair,” Rachel’s mother interjects. “We know that. It’s unfair to the boy. He hasn’t done anything—yet. But our daughter’s death wasn’t fair either. The boy is only a child now, but when he grows up . . . who knows what will happen? Who knows what kind of evil is inside him? We have to watch him carefully.” She looks into the camera. “Please, don’t let this happen a second time. That boy could be a time bomb. Next week, next month, ten years from now, he may strike. We have the duty to protect ourselves. To protect our children.”
“There are alternatives to imprisonment,” Rachel’s father says. “A security guard. One of those ankle bracelets. So we know where he is, what he’s doing, at all times.”
“Unbelievable,” Dad breathes. “I know their little girl is still missing, but still, this is unbelievable. Turn it off.”
“No. I want to see this.”
“Why, Josh?” Dad sounds exhausted underneath the anger and fear. Mom’s just sitting there beside him, not speaking, not moving. Her eyes are on the television, but I don’t think she’s seeing much.
“They’re talking about me. I’m interested.”
“It’s nonsense. You know it’s nonsense.”
“We don’t know that yet. Max wasn’t a killer when he was my age. You don’t know what made him that way. You can’t be sure about anything. You don’t know about me yet. I don’t know about me yet!”
“Josh, if you and Max were identical twins, born at the same time, this would not be happening!” Dad shouts. “And identical twins is all you are. If the Crosse parents would stop for a moment, look up from their grief, they’d realize that.”
I take a deep breath. “I want to see Max. Today. Now. Can we visit him?”
“Josh . . .” Dad frowns. “That’s not a good idea. Right now, Max wants to hurt you. He wants to hurt everybody.”
“He’s doing this because I turned him in.”
Dad hesitates. Nods. “That would be my guess too.”
“I need to see him.”
“Why?”
I shake my head hard and turn away. I’m not sure why. I only know I have to.
Maybe I have to look into his eyes to see if I find myself.
Max is looking different today. Happy. Pleased with himself. He looks at me instantly. Not at Mom and Dad. Only at me. There’s a light in his eyes I have never seen before.
“Hey,” he says as I sit down between my parents. “Big news, huh?”
I look at my brother and I feel almost faint. I believe it, but I still don’t. It’s too incredible.
“Convenient, wasn’t it?” Max laughs. He’s still looking at me. Only me. Straight into my eyes. Deep into me. “Not only did they get me a blood donor, marrow donor—heck, an organ donor if I needed one, but they also got an identical baby. A replacement for me if I died. They couldn’t lose. It must have been perfect.”
“It was never like that, son,” Dad says. Mom has started crying again. She tries to say something but can’t.
“Sure it was, Dad,” Max says, but still doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“I’m sorry if that’s what you thought, Max. But it was never like that. Josh was never meant to replace you.”
“Dr. Die-Hard must have been ecstatic. Her own personal laboratory right here. Haven’t you noticed the way she looks at you, Josh? You’re the star of her career. It must be driving her nuts that she can’t make you public, can’t show you off like a prize lab rat. She’s written journal articles about you, you know. About both of us. She can’t publish them, of course. At least, not yet. But she can pass them around to like-minded colleagues.”
“How do you know about these articles, Max?” Dad asks.
Max answers, but he doesn’t look away from me. “Not hard to find. They’re in her computer.”
“You broke into her office.”
Dad’s the one who spoke, but it’s me Max grins at. “You should be able to find them. Inside one of the computer magazines in my old room. I knew Mom and Dad would never flip through those, but, well, I rather thought some day you might. Anyway, Diane must be thrilled now. Her little project just took a very interesting turn. She’ll want to watch you develop. Watch you become more and more like me. Will you become a ‘psychopath’ too? Will you kill someone?” He leans forward. “What will happen to you now, Josh? We’re identical. What will happen to you now that everybody knows you’re another me?”
“Just because we have the same genes, that doesn’t mean we’re the same,” I force out. “DNA is not a killer.”
Max chuckles. “Is that like saying guns don’t kill?”
“You killed someone. I didn’t.”
“Are you sure? Maybe there is no you and me. Maybe there’s only we.”
Mom is crying at my side. She pushes her chair backward, stands up, and I hear the locks rattle as the guard lets her out of the room.
“Josh . . .” Dad puts his hand on my arm. “This is enough. Go with your mother.”
“No,” I say, shrugging his hand off. “I’m talking to my brother.”
/>
“Look at that,” Max drawls. “Little Josh, standing up to Mom and Dad. Who’d have thought? I’m so proud. My liberator. My savior. My cure. My clone.”
“Why are you doing this?” Dad yells.
Max doesn’t look away from me, ignores Dad. “I’m sorry, Josh,” he says, smiling to show he’s not sorry at all. “This is my one trump card. My sad past. My unique childhood. My scarred psyche, the irretrievable damage to my personality. Lione says that might make all the difference to my sentence and to my chances of parole. And remember, brother, this is your destiny, so you can hardly complain. You were put on this Earth to rescue me.” His eyes narrow, spit fire for a second before he’s smiling again. “You forgot that when you turned me in. You’ll never forget now. I’m the original. You’re just an imitation.”
“Why did you do it?” I ask. I dare, now. “Why did you kill Karen?”
Max seems to explode in anger. He slams his fists down so the table shakes, and he finally looks away from me and at Dad instead. “I should have died! You shouldn’t have played God and cloned me!”
Dad leans forward, reaches out to him, but pulls his hand back. “We loved you, Max. We couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. Where do you draw the line? When should we have stopped trying to save your life? What about your shots? Antibiotics for your infections? The medicine when you first became ill? The radiation treatment? At what point should we have given up and let you die?”
Max shakes his head. “You don’t understand. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m famous now. We’ll make headlines all over the world. People will write books about me, movies. They’ll make TV documentaries, write hundreds of academic papers. Years from now they’ll still be interviewing you, asking questions about me.”
Dad shakes his head sadly. “Max . . . you know that’s ridiculous.”
Max leans towards me and sniffs, a distant look in his eyes. “You haven’t started smoking, have you, Josh?”
I shake my head.
“You smell like cigarettes.”
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