A Perfect Blank

by Rye Duran

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  Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Duran, Rye.

  Title: A perfect blank / Rye Duran.

  Description: New York : West 44, 2020. | Series: West 44 YA verse Identifiera: ISBN 9781538382851 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781538382868 (library bound) | ISBN 9781538383438 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Children’s poetry, American. | Children’s poetry, English. | English poetry.

  Classification: LCC PS586.3 D873 2020 | DDC 811’.60809282--dc23

  First Edition

  Published in 2020 by Enslow Publishing LLC 101 West 23rd Street, Suite #240 New York, NY 10011

  Copyright © 2020 Enslow Publishing LLC

  Editor: Caitie McAneney Cover Design: Sam DeMartin Interior Design: Seth Hughes

  Photo Credits: Cover (background) Wangwukong/The Image Bank/Getty Images; cover (man) Yagi Studio/Taxi Japan/Getty Images.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.

  Printed in the United States of America

  CPSIA compliance information: Batch #CS18W44: For further information contact Enslow Publishing LLC, New York, New York at 1-800-542-2595.

  A Blank Beginning

  I remember the day I was born. This is important because I was not born the way other babies are born. And I was not born to be like other babies. The room was so bright. There were nine others. Exactly nine others born that day. Nine like me. None like me. A speaker boomed over each of us. From my speaker came a voice. And that voice said Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex.

  Project Apogee

  In the beginning before us, before the voice that said my name, there was a crisis. People were dying. There was so much suffering. There wasn’t enough food or medicine to go around. We were made to be the solution. Ten perfect babies. The hope of humanity. We would never get sick. We would never feel depressed. Never get distracted from doing our homework. We would win every contest.

  And then we would be leaders. Diplomats. Award- winning scientists. Inventors. We would be smart and strong. We would lead humanity back from the edge of collapse. You know, hero stuff. But in the beginning we were just babies. And that’s a lot of pressure to put on a baby. Even a perfect baby.

  The Nine

  Let me tell you about the others. They were my family because we all came from the same place, which is nowhere. We were made in a lab. Made by scientists working for the government. Each scientist working on Project Apogee named one of us. They became responsible for our growth as our Monitor. And so A is for all of us: Ander who is by minutes the oldest. The most stubborn. Weirdly also the sweetest. Ander is full of care for his fellow man. He will make a good president. Aggie is a musical mastermind. A child composer, like Mozart. She finished her first symphony at four and a half. Plus, she outranked the rest of us in strength that same year. And every year since. Ashlun has been in commercials since he was in diapers. His face has been studied for its perfect balance. Ace is the problem-solver. The puzzler. She was making board games for four major toy companies by ten years old. Asa has traveled with the National Ballet Company as a dancer and acrobat. Abel has amazing blood. Which means he is the healthiest person in the world. He will live longer than any human ever has. Ada is a coder. She beat every video game the Monitors could find. She was called in by the government. Helped with the famous cyberattacks of 2031. Alo is a diver. He has the world record for holding his breath. Seventeen minutes upside down. Alo is a survivalist. He can go for 12 days without water. And finally, there is Anto. She is a poet. And she is the only one who spoke to me when I was kicked out of Project Apogee eight years ago.

  I Am Alex

  I am Alex and I remember everything.

  The Ten at Two

  Years one and two we lived in a wing of Project Apogee called the Rainbow Ring. Each of our rooms was painted a single color, a color chosen to be our color. A color to bring out our gifts. My color was blue, but not blue like my eyes. Bluer. Starting with my room, I was meant to remember every blue shape I saw. For the rest of my blue life. Anto lived next door. A purple room filled with purple pillows and soft things. Ander’s world was fire-engine red. He lived with a little red robot. It taught him to make jokes in four languages. My blue room was the emptiest of all the rooms. To make space, they said. Space for my brain to fill with dreams and eventually memories. There was a little projector that moved clouds across the ceiling during the day. It made star patterns at night.

  I must tell you about Myra. She was my Monitor. She gave me my name. The blue room was always filled with her face. Her smile. I remember her teeth. She had a large gap between her front teeth. She could whistle through the space in her mouth. She held me and rocked me in a blue chair while the ceiling turned clouds to stars. And she would say, “Time to go inside, baby.” And by inside, she meant the place inside my head. It was already better and more beautiful than anything outside.

  My Left Leg

  Everyone else walked before I walked. But Dr. Pinker told Myra, who told me, it was just because I was doing what I was built to do. I was busy remembering everything. Like a photograph or a perfect record of every moment. Walking was just not important to me. And that was fine at first. I could swim beside Alo. I loved to dance with Asa. I could lift almost as much as Aggie. But still I could not run. My left leg was shorter and weaker than my right leg. And my foot sometimes curled in and trembled. Sometimes when Myra wasn’t around, Dr. Pinker tried to trick my legs by shocking me with a stick that he plugged into the wall.

  My Blue World

  Year three was the first year I failed to grow as the Project expected I’d grow. A red flag in my blue world.

  Many Kinds

  At the end of year three, Project Apogee gave us to our parents. Saying goodbye to Myra was the hardest part of going to live with my parents. But she came to visit us every weekend. She brought new books and pictures for me to memorize. She would ask, “How many oranges were on the ground before?” And I would tell her. And my parents would cheer and peel oranges for smell. Which Myra told them helped my memory work even better. I went to physical therapy three times a week. I started to move a little faster. A little better. But average-kid-better. Which Myra told me for Project Apogee kids is not better at all. I cried sometimes because I was not getting better. And I would not get better. I would not ever be the kind of good I was supposed to be. When I cried, Myra would say sorry over and over again. And she would remind me, “There are many kinds of fast.”

  Making Fun

  When I started school I got a chance to meet “average” kids. They were meaner, slower, and louder than Project Apogee kids. My very first day, the teacher told me to introduce myself. So I told the class everything I knew about my blue world. I told them how many kinds of birds lived in our backyard. And what they liked to eat. Then I talked for a while about which ones flew south for the winter and why. There was a table of kids in the back who laughed. They talked through my report on blue jays. At lunch a nice girl named Charlie said she was sorry they were making fun of me. I asked, “What is making fun?”

  Average Kids

  I learned that average kids thought I was weird. Weird for the exact same reasons Project Apogee thought I was good. They did not like my memory. Or the way I talked about the things I remembered. I felt embarrassed. Like I didn’t know which parts of me to hide. This feeling was a new kind of memory.

  The Ten at Seven

  At the end of year seven we returned to Project Apogee for a month to test our progress. The Ten of us
had not seen each other more than once a year since we were adopted. I had missed Anto so much. And the others. We were connected in a way that was familiar. I felt so close to them, so understood.

  Back at Apogee

  we returned to our old rooms, where there were new beds. New toys and books. But my room was as blue as ever. And the night sky where the stars had glowed above me while I slept—each group of stars now had a name. A screen on my nightstand let me pick. Ursa Major, the great bear. Or Sagittarius, the archer. Whichever star group I chose would glow even brighter against the rest. My blue dreams came back to me right away that first night. I dreamed of a blue meadow full of blue flowers that turned toward the full moon.

  Family of Ten

  The Ten of us had dinners together in the common room. We had an hour in the morning and an hour before bed to talk to each other. We shared our stories of home. Ander said that he, like me, was an only child. Anto talked nonstop about all of her little brothers and sisters. And her favorite person in the world—her grandmother. “She’s a witch,” she said. And we all wanted to know what that meant. We talked about our schools. How much more we liked each other than the rest of the kids we knew. Alo was homeschooled. And his family took lots of trips to other countries and museums. Some of us were jealous. “It’s OK,” Alo said, “but they never leave me alone.” Ada said, “I know exactly what you mean. My family lives with a bunch of other families. We all work the land together.” I had never heard of such a thing. “It’s my job,” Ada said, “to take care of feeding the animals. So I built an automatic system that delivers food to the chickens at the right times.” We talked about how different we all were from each other. And how much the same.

  The Stars and the Gods

  One night, Anto snuck into the blue room. I was sure we would get caught. She wrapped her super soft purple blanket around us both. And snuggled close. She told me that her grandmother would sometimes talk about how one day they would run away together. Just the two of them. And live free.

  “She says this place is the opposite of free,” Anto told me. I told her how so many of the stars were named for people who the gods were punishing for being too powerful. These regular people who the gods thought had become too much like the gods.

  “That’s funny,” Anto said, “because the gods made them.” Then she went back to her purple room and left me to my blue dreams.

  One Blue Dream

  I had one blue dream of a blue god. The blue god was angry. So he turned me into a blue star that no one could find in the huge black night sky.

  Dr. Pinker’s Lab

  On the way to my first physical test the next morning, I saw Myra in the hallway outside Dr. Pinker’s lab. She was talking to Dr. Pinker’s assistant, Glen. He was big and square and always looked like he had just smelled something bad. She looked worried. But she smiled at me. She smiled one of those worried smiles so I knew something was wrong.

  In the lab, Myra sat across the room with a clipboard and watched Dr. Pinker and Glen watch me. “Hello, Alex. Please sit down,” Dr. Pinker said. His thin hair was greasy and pushed to one side. “How is your leg?” I didn’t know what he meant. So I said, “My thigh is about one-quarter the height of my whole body.”

  Dr. Pinker laughed the way kids at school laughed, so I said, “Stop.” Dr. Pinker touched his jaw. “Alex, I know that we told you you would be here for a month. And we would be doing a lot of tests to check your progress—” I nodded, knowing that this moment was like when you are at the very top of a very tall slide.

  Enough Tests

  Glen put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I wanted to say, Don’t you dare touch me. Dr. Pinker continued. “Well, we have decided not to have you come back to Project Apogee anymore.” I tried to make my face do something. Glen stood over me. “Do you get what’s happening, Alex? Your parents are on their way to take you home.” I looked over at Myra. She looked like someone kicked her in the gut. Glen smiled a bad smile. “What Dr. Pinker means is that you finished your work. You don’t have to come back here and take a test ever again. You get enough tests at school. Am I right?”

  These Things

  “But what if I want to come back here?” I asked. I thought of Anto and the stars and my whole blue life. “We think it would be best for you,” Dr. Pinker said, “if you tried not to think about Project Apogee. Think of this as another way of learning to control your memory.”

  I thought of the 13 ceiling lights on the way from the blue room to the common room. I thought of the 27 to 29 drips that fell after every time I turned off the faucet in the bathroom sink.

  I focused my eyes on a tiny crack in the window of Dr. Pinker’s lab that grew a little longer every time I saw it. I will never forget these things.

  The Blue Sky

  “But what did I do wrong? I can try again,” I said. I felt hot tears and knew my face was doing something that everyone could see. Myra gave Dr. Pinker a look and put down her clipboard. She put her arms around me. “Myra, don’t—” Glen said. Dr. Pinker put his hand up.

  No one said anything. I let myself cry. I filled up all the silence with my crying sounds. I was not embarrassed because Myra said, “That’s OK, that’s good, Alex.” They let me say goodbye. But it was very quick. In the common room, I cried again. And Anto gave me a bracelet she made out of the purple strings of a hammock that hung above her bed.

  In the blue room there was a clear blue sky. Outside there was the same clear blue sky. It was so clear it made me dizzy.

  The Details

  I didn’t really get it until Anto explained it to me a month later when she got home. Words were her gift. I was in my treehouse when my dad called up to say Anto was on the phone.

  “You’re so lucky,” she said. “How?” I asked. “Don’t you get it? You’re done with this. I’ll never be done.” “So?” I asked. “They didn’t even let me do the memory tests over.”

  “That’s not why they kicked you out, silly.” Anto understood some heart things much better than I did. Even though I was just as smart as she was. “It was your leg, and, well, this is just a rumor, but— Ander said it’s because you’re too much like a girl.”

  “Like a girl?” I had never thought of myself that way before. But it felt good. I did like all the things girls liked. And my only friends outside the Nine were girls. I liked the ways I was sensitive. I liked painting my nails. I liked listening to glittery pop music.

  Being a Girl

  I thought about being a girl. And it was like a little light went on inside my chest. “I like the things I like,” I said. “I like myself.” “I like you, too,” Anto said. “Anyway, the whole thing is genius. You got out.”

  “Whatever,” I said, with the sourness I had been holding onto since I’d left. “This is the first time in your life your body and mind have just been yours, Alex,” Anto said.

  My Body

  When I left the Project, I didn’t have to do memory stuff anymore on the weekends. But I also didn’t get to see Myra. I lost touch with all the Project kids except Anto. She sent me emails from a fake account called freak0fnurture.

  Anto always loved that joke. The joke of our lives. How we come from nowhere. I always hated that joke. Because when you come from nowhere, it’s too easy to send you back. My parents told me that forgetting Project Apogee is part of the agreement. I have to move on, they said.

  But it’s me, so I can never really forget things. Anyhow, now I know I am lucky. I get to like myself and my body and my big stormy brain. I’m really into my superpower. And that it’s just mine. It’s like I’m more than one person. Sometimes I feel like I’m lots of people at once. I’m a boy and a girl and maybe some other people, too.

  Alex at 15

  Turns out, I can do a lot. Here’s a list: I can memorize anything— a picture or a book in just a few minutes. I can remember how to get anywhere, even places on the map I’ve never seen in real life. I can name every little flower growing in my city, an
d I like to wear flowy skirts with peonies or crocuses like the ones that bloom first in spring. I can listen to a song just once and sing it back note for note. I can cook exactly 721 dishes without looking at a recipe.

  I can make lots of different looks with makeup. Sometimes I do glam rock and sometimes I just do regular. I like learning about spices and herbs. How to combine flavors to make the most delicious mixes. It is a skill and an art.

  Dizzy Spells

  I have even learned how to use plants I find in the woods to help with the dizzy spells that I go through every day. When I feel good, I can focus my powers and make the spells even stronger.

  I can also make the dizzy spells go away if I want. Which is a good thing when your powers are the difference between being wanted and not wanted by the people who made you. When I wake up from my dizzy spells I think about nothing. In my head I make a perfect blank. This is my favorite thing I can do. I can change my mind and my body, too. And that’s important magic.