After the Highland News officially broke the story of Sarah Mueller’s accusations more than a year ago, Rick Harliss claims to have recognized two people from a photograph of the Home Foundation staff, including a staff nurse, Emily J. Huang, whom he claims to have seen several times with his ex-wife.
Adding to the difficulty of disentangling the truth—and fueling the idea that these claims are fraudulent—is the fact that Sarah Mueller and Fatima Aboud may have known each other previously. Both women were in a state-run rehabilitation facility during the same period of time, although counselors from the program do not recall the women being friendly. . . .
Gemma stopped reading. Her head was pounding again. She couldn’t make sense of any of it. Rick Harliss had once worked for her family. Why didn’t she remember him? It must have been when she was young. But how did the story of those missing children connect to Haven, to the clones, to the charity, to her father?
All she knew was that it was connected. Jake had originally believed Haven was doing drug experimentation on orphaned children—and he was 50 percent right. But why, if Haven was also manufacturing clones?
She did some more Googling and found out most of the alleged disappearances had occurred during the exact same three-year period as her father’s lawsuit against his former business partner. The facts, then, were these: Dr. Saperstein got control of the institute the same year Richard Haven died and was, potentially, murdered. Around the same time, her father sued for control of the company, possibly because his business partner wanted to invest in Haven. He lost.
Meanwhile Dr. Saperstein was busy “misplacing” children through his charity, possibly stealing them for some unimaginable purpose. Then Fine & Ives swooped in and took ownership of Haven, at least financially, and the institute began to breed clones in large quantities for its own sick purposes.
Her father had said follow the money. She was sure she was missing something, and she was sure it had to do with money, with the flow of cash from the military to Fine & Ives to Haven.
She Googled Rick Harliss, but although he was mentioned several times in articles related to the Home Foundation, he’d done a pretty good job of avoiding the photographers. She found a Rick Harliss who was a lawyer in Tallahassee and a Rick Harliss who had his own personal training business, but she could not find a single picture of the Rick Harliss who believed his daughter, Brandy-Nicole, had been sold to the Home Foundation. Then, remembering that he’d been in jail, she added mug shot to the search terms. Almost immediately, she was bounced to a website unimaginatively named Mugshot.com.
For one, two, three seconds, her heart failed to beat.
He was younger in the picture, and although his eyes were raw-red and his expression ferocious, he was handsome. She thought of his stale, coffee-breath smell, the curtained greasiness of his hair. He had aged terribly. And yet despite the differences, there was no mistaking him.
It was the guy from the gas station. What do you know about Haven? And she remembered now that she had had the impression of familiarity. She’d remembered him, at least vaguely, and now she knew why. He had done work for her father. Probably he’d been one of the rotating series of guys who kept the grounds, or cleaned the pool, or painted the house.
Always she came back to her father and Haven. That was the center of the mystery, the original cancer, the tumor that had metastasized into a hundred other mysteries.
“Gemma?”
Gemma looked up. She hadn’t heard April come outside. Quickly, she pocketed her phone, as if April might read it from across the pool deck.
“What are you doing out here?” April frowned, shaking her bangs from her eyes.
“Nothing. Thinking. Trying not to think.” Gemma stood up. The distance between her and April suddenly felt very great.
“You promised to explain.” April’s voice was all pinched, like it had been zipped up too tightly.
Gemma rubbed her forehead. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m still sorting it out myself.”
April came down off the porch. She was barefoot and already dressed for bed, in cotton shorts and an oversized T-shirt from Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Gemma was struck in that moment by how normal she looked: tan, rested, beautiful. She and April had always talked about being co-aliens, members of a different species dropped on this planet to suffer among the humans, maybe pay penance for crimes committed in a past life on their home planet. But April wasn’t an alien. April belonged.
And for a split second, Gemma hated her.
“Well?” April stopped a few feet away from Gemma, hugging herself. She wasn’t smiling. “I’m listening.”
Gemma looked away, ashamed. April had helped her. April was always helping her. But how could she begin to describe what she had seen? How could she talk about the other-Gemma, the nightmare twin? It was like something out of a horror movie.
“Haven was using the replicas,” she said, because it seemed as good a place to start as any. “They were engineering them for a specific reason. We think Haven was infecting them with some kind of disease,” she added quickly, before she could lose her nerve.
“A disease?” April repeated. She stared openmouthed at Gemma. “And you brought them here?”
“It isn’t contagious like the flu is.” Gemma felt queasy thinking about it. She hoped she was right. She hadn’t truly understood everything Jake was reading to her. The boy seemed all right, almost normal. But she’d seen the girl stumble. Motor coordination problems were some of the first symptoms, he had read. “You can’t get it except through tissue or organ transfers or—ingestion. And it takes years to work. It’s like mad cow disease, or Alzheimer’s, or something like that.”
“My grandparents would kill me,” April said, and Gemma’s anger notched up again. Twenty feet away were two people who had been raised as human petri dishes, and all April could think about was getting in trouble. “What do you think they’re doing in there, anyway?”
“I don’t know.” When Gemma turned, she saw they were no longer in the living room. They must be in the kitchen or bedroom, and out of view. Irrationally, she was glad. She didn’t want April to see them. April didn’t deserve to see them. “I don’t know. Eating. Sleeping. Trying to relax. Whatever people normally do.”
April laughed in a way Gemma didn’t like, as if Gemma had made a joke. “And you’re sure they’re not going to, like, infect us?”
“Only if you decide to go zombie on them and eat their brains,” Gemma said sarcastically, but April actually nodded, as if she was reassured. She was still staring into the guesthouse. A glass of water and an open can of Coke on the coffee table were the only signs that someone had been there at all.
“And they can, like, talk and stuff?” April asked. “And eat normal food?”
“Yes, they can talk and stuff.” Gemma’s voice sounded overloud, but she didn’t care. “They’re people.” If she’d considered even for a second telling April about the girl with Gemma’s face, she knew now she never would. She couldn’t.
“Okay, okay. Jeez. Calm down.” April rolled her eyes, as if Gemma was the one being unreasonable. “Sorry if I’m not a clone expert.”
“Replica,” Gemma corrected her automatically. “They don’t like being called clones.” She didn’t know how she knew this, only that she’d noticed Lyra flinch whenever she used that word, the way April did when someone referred to her dyke parents, or Gemma did when she heard fat.
“Are you serious?” Again, April laughed.
“Yes, I’m serious.” She was suddenly way past anger. She was furious. She wasn’t tied to the girl on the marshes and yet she was: they were bound together, they were the same. Which meant that Gemma had died, too. Just a little. But she had died. “They can talk, they have feelings, they have likes and dislikes, they dream and breathe and hurt like anybody else.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” Now April was squinting at Gemma as if she didn’t know her. “I’m just a little freaked out, okay?” Gem
ma said nothing. “You have to admit it’s weird. . . . I mean, you said yourself they were engineered. Shake and bake, test-tube style.”
“I hate to remind you,” Gemma snapped, not even sure why she was so angry, “but so were you.”
Instantly, she knew it was the wrong thing to say. April went very still. “You’re comparing me to one of them?” she whispered. Gemma wasn’t deceived by her tone of voice. The quieter April got, the angrier she was. “You think because my moms are gay, that makes me some kind of freak?”
Gemma already felt guilty. But it was too late to take back the words. And what would April say if she knew that Gemma had a clone floating around somewhere—possibly more than one? That Gemma remembered Haven from her childhood? “I’m just saying.” She couldn’t stand to see the naked hurt on April’s face, so she looked away. “Plenty of people would think you weren’t in a great position to judge.”
“I know.” April’s voice was sharp as a slap. “I just didn’t know you were one of them.”
She turned away and Gemma saw her bring a hand quickly to her eyes. April never cried. Gemma was suddenly filled with wrenching guilt. She thought her stomach might actually twist itself up and out of her throat. She nearly put a hand on April’s shoulder—she nearly begged for forgiveness—but then April spoke again.
“Maybe you should leave.” She didn’t turn around, but her voice was steady and very flat, and Gemma thought maybe she’d been wrong, maybe April hadn’t been crying at all.
“What?”
“You heard me. Maybe you should leave. You and your new best friends.” She turned just slightly, so Gemma could see the familiar ski-slope jump of her nose, the soft curve of her cheek, a sweep of dark hair, and she knew in that moment that something had changed forever. “I’ll give you until morning,” April said.
She moved soft-footed across the grass and into the house. Gemma wished she’d stomped off instead. She wished an earthquake would come, or rifts would appear in the ground—anything other than this terrible silence, the peacefulness of the crickets in the trees and the low drone of TV, the world humming along while hers was ending. April didn’t once look back. After she closed the door, Gemma heard the lock turn.
Then she was alone.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 11 of Lyra’s story.
TWELVE
GEMMA WOKE FROM A NIGHTMARE with her cheek saddled up against a band of old plastic striping and the sun hard in her eyes. Immediately she remembered her fight with April. She had a horrible, sticky feeling all over, as if something wet was clinging to her. She couldn’t remember her nightmare, but she was left with the disturbing idea that something had been hunting her, wouldn’t leave her alone.
She sat up, touching her cheek where the chair had indented it. The windows of the main house threw back the light so she couldn’t see beyond them, but she thought April must still be asleep. She checked her phone: nine thirty. She noticed her notebook wasn’t on the ground where she’d left it. But she must have stuffed it into her backpack.
Even before she figured out what to do about the replicas, she was determined to apologize to April, to explain. April was her best friend—her only good friend, unless you counted Pete, and she wasn’t sure she could. April was freaked out by the replicas, but anyone would be. And Gemma had been horrible. She had deserved to sleep outside, deserved the stiffness in her neck and shoulders and the taste of dead fish in her mouth.
She would make coffee. She would apologize. She would tell April everything, including the truth about the dead girl Gemma had seen out on the marshes.
She went up the stairs and was encouraged to find the back door unlocked. It seemed like a sign that April might be ready to forgive her. The kitchen was empty, but there was coffee in the pot and a dirty plate sitting on the table next to a ketchup bottle. So April was awake. Gemma was about to call out to her when she saw the note, anchored to the counter by a red mug that said San Francisco.
The note was very short.
Going for a run and then to play tennis. Will be back around noon. Please be gone.
—April
Gemma balled it up and threw it in the trash can. She felt like throwing something but she didn’t want to get in trouble with April’s grandparents, so instead she opened the back door again and slammed it three times. She was furious again. Fucking April. Gemma had been out slogging through the marshes, nearly getting shot, hiding from the military, rooting out her family’s deepest, darkest secret. She’d found her own fucking clone. And April had been going for a run and taking tennis lessons and was chucking Gemma out because of one stupid thing she’d said. Meanly, Gemma thought now she was even glad she’d said it.
She took a shower, leaving hair in the drain and not bothering to clean it out, and then brushed her teeth vigorously. At least she looked slightly better after sleeping, less like a zombie from a horror movie brought back to life by its taste for brains.
Downstairs, she poured some coffee into a mug—pleased, again, that she could use the last of the milk—and tried calling Jake. His phone rang but he didn’t pick up. She waited a few minutes and tried again. Then, when he didn’t answer, she sent him a text. You awake? It was only ten, but she couldn’t imagine he was sleeping in, not after yesterday and all they’d discovered about Haven.
She was halfway back to the guesthouse when something crunched beneath her foot: her ChapStick, which had somehow escaped from her backpack and rolled across the pool deck. She saw now that her bag was lying on its side, and when she went to return the ChapStick to it, saw that everything inside was a jumbled mess, as if someone had rifled through it. Instinctively she reached for her wallet. Her credit cards were there, but she’d taken out three hundred dollars from the ATM in Walmart the day before, and all of it was gone.
She felt as she had the single time her mom had caved and taken Gemma to an amusement park, and they’d ridden a roller coaster called the Cobra together. As they’d inched up, up, up toward that first crest and then the first downward hurtle, Gemma had known she’d made a huge mistake, that she didn’t want to see what was on the other side.
The guesthouse was empty. That was obvious as soon as she walked in. It even felt empty, and she was afraid to speak out loud because she didn’t want to hear her voice sucked away by the carpet. Still, she went from room to room, checking the bathroom, even opening the closet doors as if Lyra and 72 might be hiding there. For a brief, delirious moment, she even imagined Lyra, 72, and April out together somewhere near the ocean, dressed in tennis whites, working on their game.
But there was no pretending. The replicas were gone.
Jake still hadn’t texted her back. She tried calling again, then remembered he had said his aunt’s house was pretty rural and cell phone service was bad. He’d written down his address and home phone number on the back of a piece of tinfoil that looked like it had come from a cigarette pack, and she tried calling this as well, three times in a row. She switched back to trying his cell phone, and her next two calls went straight to voice mail. She couldn’t understand what it meant, but she was afraid. Printouts from the Haven Files had been recovered from the bomber’s bag. It seemed obvious that he would get in trouble. Maybe he was with the cops even now. What if they thought he’d had something to do with the explosion?
It was ten thirty now, and she was getting desperate. No way was she going to be here when April returned—she’d rather hitchhike. She’d rather walk.
Then she remembered Pete.
He picked up on the first ring. “This is your knight in shining armor,” he said, in a baritone. “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
“A lady in distress,” Gemma said. The sound of his voice lifted her spirits, just a bit. “I need help.”
Pete cleared his throat. “You’re in luck. That’s what knights in shining armor do. Helping is basically our bread and butter. What’s the trouble?”
“I need you to pick me up”—she gave him April’s address in Bowling Springs—“as soon as possible. I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Pete said. “Be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means sit tight. I’m coming.”
She hung up, feeling better already. Pete could be annoying, but he was reliable and sweet. A distraction, too. Kind of like having a fluffy Pomeranian for company. If Pomeranians could drive and knew all the words to “Baby Got Back.”
He was there in less than half an hour, and her heart lifted again when she saw the ridiculous purple minivan swanning down the road. He leaned over to pop open the door for her, and she nearly sat on a bag of doughnuts in the passenger seat.
“Figured you hadn’t eaten,” he said. “There’s coffee, too, if you want it.” Two jumbo Styrofoam cups were straining against the cup holders.
Pete must have gotten sun yesterday, because his arms and the bridge of his nose were more deeply freckled. But the freckles looked good on him, like a dusting of stars. She was super aware of the fact that when she sat, her shorts cut hard into her thighs, and wished she had worn jeans instead. Even her knees looked fat. To conceal her embarrassment she looked down, fumbling with the lid of her coffee.
“You weren’t kidding about the knight-in-shining-armor thing,” she said.
He beamed at her. Actually beamed. His smile nearly blinded her. “So where to?”
She knew that there was no point in trying to go after the replicas. She wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, and there were no footprints to track. They had most likely left in the middle of the night and could have been anywhere. She needed to talk to Jake. He might have ideas about what to do next. Fortunately, he’d written down his address when he’d given her his aunt’s landline. At least the replicas hadn’t stolen her entire wallet. Small mercies.
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