Suddenly, everything I’d ever thought, everything I’d ever said, everything I’d ever done was suspect. Why had I done any of the things I had done? What if everything was due to forces beyond my control or understanding? I felt scared, like I couldn’t even trust my own mind; like it wasn’t my mind to trust.
Forty-five minutes before the first bell rang, I stepped out our front door. I couldn’t remember ever being ready for school this early. The weekend had passed by like a confusing dream—I didn’t sleep through it, exactly, but I’d barely left my bedroom for two days. At least now the groggy fog had lifted.
An icy wind blew, and the cold felt good on my skin. It made me feel alive. I should have called Jenelle, but I didn’t feel like talking to her. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I walked toward school, taking my time despite the cold. I told myself I needed time to think, but what I was trying to do was not think, keep my mind empty of anything important. I studied the bark on the side of a tree, the grit that speckled the snowbanks at the side of the road, a crow who cawed at me from atop a chimney. I immersed myself in the physical world to shut out all thought.
The school was still pretty empty when I walked in. It felt strange. I went to the library and found the shelf with the old yearbooks. I found the one from a couple of years earlier, Gracie’s senior year, and the one from Annie’s senior year. I’d seen them before, of course, but that was before I knew what I was looking at. Annie and Gracie looked alike, but so did plenty of sisters. Did they look identical? It was hard to say. They had different hair styles, and the angle the pictures were taken at was slightly different. But if you looked at the two photos side by side, without knowing anything else, it would seem like you were looking at two pictures of the same girl.
I flipped through the rest of the book. Annie had been on the debate team and worked on the school newspaper. I’m sure she’d told me that at some point, but I’d forgotten until I saw her picture on the activities pages. Gracie had played field hockey and worked on the yearbook and the prom committee. She’d been popular in school—her photo appeared again and again in the candid shots.
If we were all the same, then why wasn’t I in the popular crowd? How come Gracie hadn’t been on the debate team? It didn’t make sense.
When I glanced up at the clock, there were only three minutes until the homeroom bell rang. I’d lost track of time. Shoving the books back on the shelf, I ran to my locker. I should have known that Jenelle and Shawna would be waiting there for me, but it didn’t really hit me until I saw Jenelle standing there, her hand on her hip, her expression murderous.
“What the hell?” she said.
“Not now,” I said. “I’ve got to get my things.”
“You don’t answer any of my messages this weekend. You walk to school without even bothering to call me. This isn’t cool.”
“I’m sorry, okay? But I’ve got some stuff going on right now,” I said.
“Stuff that’s more important than your friends? That’s bull, Bunting.”
“It’s like you barely talk to us anymore,” Shawna said. She had a big pouffy bow tied in her hair. Was it some new style? It looked ridiculous, especially since part of it kept flopping in her face.
“I can’t explain,” I said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“No, what we don’t understand is why you’re treating us like you don’t even know us,” Jenelle said. “What’s up with that?”
I grabbed my books from my locker and slammed the door.
“Not now,” I said. I started to walk away down the hall.
“If that’s what you think of us,” Jenelle said, “if you’re not our friend anymore, then keep walking.”
I paused. I took a deep breath. Would it really be that much trouble to walk back to Jenelle and pretend like everything was fine? I probably could have done it, but I was sick of pretending. My whole life had been nothing but pretend. The only alternative was to tell the two of them everything, and that was definitely not going to happen. I resumed walking at almost the same moment that the bell rang.
“Hey,” Zach said, falling into step beside me.
“I’m not really in the mood to talk right now,” I said.
“So, not a morning person I take it.”
“No, I just … there’s this thing, a family thing, I don’t really feel like talking about it.”
“Maybe I should be thankful I’m an orphan,” he said. He was smiling as he said it, but it sounded more like a self-pitying sort of thing to say than the funny remark he was trying to pretend it was.
I came to a stop in the busy hallway, and a few people bumped into me as they hurried to get to their homerooms.
“I don’t want to be here,” I said.
“Yeah, I get it already. Shallow Pond is small and pathetic and nothing ever happens here. You know, you really should give this place a chance. It’s not that bad.”
“No,” I said. I sighed through my clenched teeth. “I don’t want to be here, at school, today. Drive me somewhere.”
“We can’t just walk out of here.”
“We can, and we have to. Come on.”
I grabbed his sleeve and started walking toward the parking lot door. He walked with me, but still didn’t seem entirely sure about it. I didn’t care. I couldn’t be there one more minute. I needed to be somewhere, anywhere else.
“What’s this all about?” Zach asked when we were safely in his car. His keys were in the ignition, but he hadn’t started the car yet. “I don’t like this. We should go back. They’ll give us a late pass.”
“Just drive.”
“I shouldn’t really skip school like this.”
“You’re like Mr. Perfect, aren’t you? You can’t have a hair out of place and you can’t possibly do anything that isn’t exactly by the book.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “It’s just I kind of got in trouble the last time I skipped.” I wondered if he meant the day he’d shown up at my house. “Strings had to be pulled for me to be enrolled here,” he continued. “I’m not really supposed
to be living on my own without a guardian, and I’m somewhat lacking in documentation. I don’t even have a birth certificate.”
“Join the club,” I said. The bitter laugh that escaped my lips surprised me.
“I’m just saying that it probably makes more sense to fly below the radar.”
“Then go back to school,” I said. I put my hand on the door handle. I didn’t need him. I could walk. I was about to open the door when the car roared to life.
“You’re impossible,” he said. He peeled out of the parking lot too fast, but it felt good. It felt reckless. It felt like we were alive. I liked that feeling.
Zach didn’t say anything until he pulled into the parking lot by Memorial Park. I wished he’d kept driving. If I’d been the one behind the wheel, I would have gotten on the highway and kept going all the way to California.
“What is it about you, Barbara Bunting?” he asked. I shrugged, because how do you answer a question like that? “You’ve got this pull over me. So, what’s going on? Why aren’t we at school?”
“I just didn’t want to be there,” I said. I opened the door and stepped out. The cold tore through my clothes. My coat was back in my locker. I should have gotten back in the car, but I didn’t want to. I folded my arms across my chest and tried not to shiver.
Zach got out of the car holding a scratchy wool blanket in his hand. He shook his head at me, then draped one end of the blanket over my shoulders before pulling the other end over his own shoulders. I had no choice but to huddle next to him for warmth. The blanket had a musty smell, but Zach smelled clean and soapy. Everything about Zach was perfect. He was good-looking and sweet. He wasn’t from Shallow Pond; he was the exotic stranger with the mysterious past. Best of all, we were alike, orphaned, the dark shadow of q
uestionable parentage hanging over our childhoods. We belonged together. It seemed so natural. I was surprised it had taken me so long to see it clearly.
I turned to him, the scratchy blanket twisting around me. I stared into his blue eyes, eyes so deep they sucked me right in. When he exhaled, a small white cloud condensed in the space between us and I could smell minty toothpaste. It was warm beneath the blanket, with Zach inches from me.
“Why can’t I resist you?” Zach asked me, and this time I knew he didn’t expect me to answer. Instead, he leaned toward me. His lips brushed mine; they were soft and warm. They filled me from head to toe with intense heat. It was over in a moment. He pulled back and looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, as if trying to answer his own rhetorical question.
But I needed him. I needed to lose myself in him. I rea-ched up and brushed my fingers along the rough skin of his cheek, then gently guided his face back to my own. Our lips met again, but this time they stayed locked together as if by some magnetic force. Zach tasted the way I imagined a bubbling forest stream to taste. I raised both hands to his face and held on. The blanket slid from my shoulders and then to the ground as Zach’s hands found my hips and pulled me toward him. With our bodies pressed together, I didn’t feel the cold. Zach’s hand, just above the waistband of my jeans, was warm against my bare flesh. I could feel the pounding of his chest against my own.
The world fell away. Nothing else mattered. There was only us, and I could have stayed there forever and ever. If only it was possible to stay there forever and ever. He leaned against the car and pulled me to him. Our lips explored each other as his hands, strong but gentle, explored my body. I slid my own hands from Zach’s face to his chest and then down to his waist. I’d never needed anything as badly as I needed Zach Faraday.
Zach pulled away from me. I reached for him, but he turned his head away. With his hands on my waist, he held me at bay.
“No,” he said. “Why are we here?”
“What are you talking about?” I couldn’t understand what he meant. I only knew that I needed him desperately.
“I mean, what’s going on, Barbara? Why are we ditching school? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to talk about that now,” I said. I pushed his hand from where it held my waist, then reached up and guided his face back to my own. Our lips tore into each other, desperate to taste each other, but then he pulled away again and shook his head. When he stepped away from me, I suddenly felt the cold. He lifted the blanket from the ground and handed it to me, but he didn’t drape it over my shoulders, and he didn’t take up the other end for himself. He paced across the unpaved parking lot.
“I can’t do this,” he said. I thought of Meg and hated her. He shook his head, as if he could read my thoughts. “You need to talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said.
“The hell there isn’t. You dragged me out of school and then won’t even say anything to me. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Was it Cameron? Did he do something to you?”
“No!”
“I don’t like him. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”
“It’s not Cameron,” I said. My voice was soft and quiet. I looked at Zach, and his eyes looked damp. Was he crying? Was it the cold?
“Get in the car,” he said. He opened the passenger door, then went around and got in on his side. I sank into the seat, the blanket still wrapped around me, and pulled the door closed after me. I was too stunned to speak. Zach was about to start the car, but then he stopped, sat back against his seat, and sighed. “I wish I’d never met you. I think about you all the time. I can’t get you out of my head.”
“Zach,” I began, because I knew I needed to say something, but he cut me off.
“No, let me finish. You’re … I can’t explain it. I don’t un-derstand it. You’ve got this power over me, and I like you even though you clearly aren’t interested in me. I know that I should just forget you, but I can’t.”
“I am interested in you,” I said. I thought of how we had been kissing just a couple of minutes before. How could he say that I wasn’t interested in him?
“You don’t act like it,” he said. “You won’t even tell me what’s bugging you.”
“It’s a family thing,” I said. “I can’t really talk about it. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Are you forgetting who you’re talking to? I was found in a basket outside a convent. I was raised by nuns.”
“Trust me, you’re normal compared to me,” I said. It was more than I’d meant to say. For a second or two, I considered telling him everything, but I thought of how it had been to feel his lips on mine, his hand against my skin. I needed Zach Faraday, and if I went ahead and told him everything, he would never even look at me again. He would be repulsed by my very presence. I couldn’t handle that. I might have been sort of a freak, but I wasn’t ready to let the rest of the world know that.
“You and your sisters are aliens, here from another planet to observe life in a small American town?” he asked.
“Something like that,” I said.
He smiled at me, but when I didn’t say anything more, he looked away. “Why do you shut me out?” he asked.
“It’s not something I can talk about,” I said.
“Why not?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“How do you know unless you tell me?”
I shrugged. He pounded his fist on the dashboard and I flinched. He shook his head and turned the key in the ignition.
“We’re going back to school,” he said.
I didn’t say anything. I turned and looked out the window. I watched as Shallow Pond flew past. I hated this place more than ever, but I would have traded places with just about anyone in town whose last name wasn’t Bunting. It wasn’t fair. I wished I had some nice, normal life, but I was some sort of monster. How could I explain any of that to Zach? Zach thought his life was messed up? He didn’t have a clue.
I looked at him sitting there beside me, perfect in every way, and my heart ached with hunger for him. I wondered if this was what Annie had felt when she broke up with Cameron. It would be easier to reject someone than to have them run from you when they found out you were nothing but a complete freak. The fact that I could understand and relate to my sister scared me. Annie was no longer a mystery. Her peculiarities all made sense now; she was looking a whole lot more like a sensible and logical person.
I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I might have no choice but to become my sister—and then I reminded myself that she wasn’t my sister. We were much closer than that. We were just different versions of the same person. Was my fate already decided? It seemed I might have no choice but to spend the rest of my miserable life in this town.
Twenty-Three
When I got home from school, Annie was waiting for me. She clicked off the television as soon as I stepped in the door.
“I got a phone call from the school today,” she said. Crap. “They said you were late this morning, which I thought was kind of strange since you left pretty early.”
“You’re not my mother,” I said. “You can’t yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling,” she pointed out.
“Look, it’s not a big deal,” I said. I hung my coat up and started up the stairs. We weren’t going to have this conversation.
I figured Annie would give up and turn the television back on, but I’d underestimated her. I threw my backpack on my bed, and when I turned around, she was standing there in my doorway.
“I know this hasn’t been easy for you,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you, but I didn’t think I could keep it from you forever. You’re too smart for that.” She smiled at me, like complimenting me on my intelligence would somehow wipe away all my problems.
She nodded, but she kept standing there as if I might change my mind. I glared at her and she finally walked away. I threw myself down on the bed beside the backpack. I curled myself around it as if it was some piece of flotsam keeping me afloat in an endless ocean. I wanted to cry or scream or do something, but instead I just lay there staring at the wall in front of me.
“Who is Zach?”
I jumped. Annie had crept silently back into my room. I rolled over and saw her standing there, just inside the doorway. Why couldn’t she just leave me alone?
“When the school called to say you signed in late, they said you were with another student, a boy, Zach Faraday. I didn’t recognize the name.”
“He’s not from here,” I said.
“Is he … ?” She let the half question hang there in the air. I sat up and shook my head.
“Don’t do this,” I said. “Don’t try and act all motherly. It’s annoying.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” she asked.
“Genetic mutants don’t have boyfriends.”
“We’re not genetic mutants.”
“Yeah we are.” I stared at my sister; well, not my sister, my clone. She looked old, with the dark circles beneath her eyes and her skin pulled tight across her face. This was what I would look like in a few years.
“It’s not like that. It doesn’t really matter where you come from.”
“If that’s true, then why the big secret? Why the phony birth certificate?”
“There are laws,” Annie said. She waved her hand in the air as if this was only some trivial thing. “It makes things easier.”
Easier? Or did it just keep us from getting locked up in some lab somewhere, where government scientists would poke, prod, and study us like the science experiments gone awry that we were? What would happen if the truth ever got out? Did we risk more than complete and total ostracism by everyone we knew? Was our very security at stake?
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