“So where’s she going to go?” Tessa asks, finally looking up from her leather tote.
“Who cares? As long as we never see her again.”
That’s when Tessa notices me standing there, eavesdropping. She stares at me. Tessa and Madison both do.
I feel a nauseating lurch in my stomach. The serrated-knife feeling starts to throb in my chest. I hightail it out of there, pushing my way through the crowd of students toward Cypress, my dorm. It’s just beyond a cluster of trees north of the main house. Once comprised of servants’ quarters, Cypress is as gloomy as the rest of Darkwood’s architecture, what with its gray stone exterior and polygonal tower that looks crooked, as if it might fall at any moment, taking the entire dormitory down with it.
I drag my bags to my dorm room, then flash my gold key in front of the sensor. The lock chimes open, and I slump inside. My room hasn’t changed since I was last here in May. It’s not much to look at, but even with its plain Shaker-style furniture and lone window looking out onto the depths of Dark Lake, it feels more like home than my real one. Of course, a big part of that isn’t what’s inside it, but rather who. Pru. Friend to everyone. But mostly to me.
She drops the book she’s reading and jumps up when she sees me. “Emma—”
I don’t let her finish her thought.
“Ugh,” I say, depositing my bags next to my bed. “I completely forgot Madison and Tessa are still on the transplant list.”
Pru frowns. “Transplant list? What transplant list?”
“You know.” I slouch down on my sagging twin mattress. “To receive actual beating hearts.”
Pru cracks a half smile, her brown eyes lighting up. “What have they done now?”
“Besides contributing to climate change every time they open their mouths and breathe out their toxic fumes of elitism? Everything.”
I slip off my shoes and am about to flop back onto my bed when Pru’s arms are around me, holding me so tight I can barely breathe. I don’t have to ask her why she’s squeezing me like a lifeline. I already know. She’s thinking of the thing that happened, and of the 843 things she wants to say to me but can’t. It’s okay. She already said them, this summer, in a buzz with the subject line: Re: RE: RE: RE: FWD: Oliver.
“You should have let me come to California,” Pru says, finally letting go of me. “I wanted to be at Ollie’s funeral, Emma. I feel awful that I missed it…”
“You had to take care of your mom. She needed you.” There’s no way I would have let Pru leave her mother’s side, not when she’s been decimated by a cancer so rare, even nanobots can’t reverse its effects. “How is she? I haven’t heard from you in two weeks. I was worried when you went dark…” I don’t want to say the words out loud. I thought your mom died.
Pru sweeps a strand of her curly black hair out of her eyes. “She’s doing okay. They think this latest treatment is going to work.”
“Good,” I say. I’m grateful to Pru; besides Oliver, she’s the one person I can actually stand to be around. Still, I turn away from her, feeling the tears coming hot and fast. The hug from my friend has lodged the serrated knife deep in my chest, and as much as I love Pru, all I want is to be alone.
“So tired,” I say, lying back and shutting my eyes. “Must rest.”
“I’ll see you at assembly,” Pru says, as I drape an arm over my eyes for dramatic effect and wait for her to slip out of our room. “And Emma…” she adds, lingering in the doorway. “I’m sorry.”
When I hear the door click shut behind her, I sit up. Sleep is my own personal brand of hell, but Pru has no way of knowing that I do almost anything to avoid being unconscious. I never know what, or whom, I might encounter in my dreams.
I slip on my flip-flops and make a beeline for the door, glancing down the hallway to make sure Pru’s gone before heading outside. I hurry down a shady path toward a modest clearing by the lake. I picture it in my mind as I walk: the rocks big enough to sit on and the patch of dirt where Oliver and I always convened after our last class of the day. I would tease him for being a flirt, and he’d tell me my sarcasm was going to render me physically incapable of a real smile. I’d shove him, and he’d fall backward… We’d laugh so hard, never imagining our joy would have an expiration date.
Memories of Oliver flood my heart like a vein opening. Sunlight, gray eyes, floppy bangs, cocky smile, backpacks tumbling, minds daydreaming, fifty years, fifty years—I’ll be your best friend for fifty more years. And after that? You have to reapply.
I stop in my tracks as I arrive at our old spot. I’m not alone.
They’re ten, fifteen feet away, at most. Their presence—their existence—sends my heart hammering in my chest. I freeze, watching, observing. I don’t think they can see me, not yet—but I can see them.
There are three of them, and one is Tessa. Only, I can tell she isn’t Tessa. She has the same long brown hair. The same elegance and fragile features. But her outfit is plain and old-fashioned. She wears a white button-down shirt and a black skirt, both so…ordinary, I could never imagine Tessa in them. And her hair—it’s pulled back into a french braid, the kind we used to wear in grade school. There’s something girlish about her. Something naive. She’s a Similar. I’m sure of it.
They talk in hushed tones, and I’m not close enough to make out their words. But I watch as the Tessa Similar addresses another girl. It takes me a moment to process what I’m seeing. Because the girl the Tessa Similar is talking to isn’t simply any girl. It’s Pru.
No, it’s not Pru. She was in our room not ten minutes ago, wearing her signature running pants and hoodie. This girl isn’t Pru. This girl is her clone, her copy. The Similar standing ten feet from me is willowy and delicate, while my roommate is athletic and lean. Pru’s hair is always wild and untamed, while this girl wears her curly locks pulled back in a tight bun. She talks quietly to the others. She doesn’t smile.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Pru, the daughter of the man who made a name for himself defending clones to the nation, has an identical copy. But I am. Why didn’t she tell me? My stomach flips. Does she even know? I’m so anxious to find out, I almost buzz her. But this is too big. It can wait a few minutes till I see her in person.
The third Similar is a clone of another boy in my class, Jake Choate. He has the same black hair as Jake, the same dark skin and attractive face. The same build—not too thin, not too muscular. But the devilish expression Jake has spent years perfecting is nowhere to be seen. This boy’s face is full of burden, sacrifice, and hardship.
I feel drawn to them. I want to know what they’re talking about in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Less than an hour ago, I had little interest in the Similars. Now, I’m more than interested. My mind spins with questions. I want to know everything about them. Where they grew up. What it was like. What they think of Darkwood—
“Are you feeling all right, Emma?” Dash asks.
“Of course,” I answer softly, relieved he has no way of knowing that I’ve been spying on the Similars. I feel like an intruder. As if I’m invading a private moment I have no right to see. “I’m fine,” I fib. “Why?”
“Elevated heart rate. I assume you were thinking about Oliver.”
“Always,” I whisper, my eyes still glued to the clones.
“Assembly starts in ten minutes,” Dash reminds me. “You don’t want to be late.”
“Thanks, Dash,” I say, looking down at my plum to swipe away the notification for the assembly and silence my bot.
By the time I look up from my plum, the Similars are gone.
Assembly
On the walk to the chapel, I think of them. Tessa’s look-alike. Pru’s look-alike. Both of them so unlike the teens they were cloned from. And Jake’s Similar… He, especially, appeared so markedly different in demeanor from his original just now, it’s hard to believe they share the same DNA. I wonder i
f any of my classmates have spotted them yet, and I wonder what the Similars were talking about with such secrecy. I don’t have much time to think about it before I’m surrounded by students, swept into the throng of Darkwoodians convening on the grassy lawn in front of the chapel. We’re minutes from learning the identities of the Similars.
But I already know about three of them… Four, if you count Madison’s clone.
The thing is, the fact that the clones are enrolled at Darkwood is a big deal. Most of us have never even met a clone. I haven’t—at least, not that I know of. The first clones were born in the early part of the century, when scientists started perfecting the technology after that failed Dolly-the-Sheep experiment. Reproductive cloning got really popular among certain wannabe parents who were more excited about copying themselves than using an egg and sperm to have a kid. I guess a lot of people thought cloning was unnatural, because it was eventually outlawed in the United States. But that hasn’t stopped people from seeking out reproductive cloning overseas.
The Similars—they aren’t supposed to exist. Because of some lab mix-up sixteen years ago, six babies from six high-profile families were cloned without the families’ knowledge or permission, using the umbilical cord blood that had been banked after their births. It’s fairly standard for modern parents to store their babies’ cord blood in case their child needs the stem cells in the future to treat a disease. But in this case, the cord blood somehow got into the hands of an “irresponsible” lab technician. Before anyone knew what was happening, the genetic material from the infants was fused with human egg cells and implanted in surrogate mothers, and voilà—nine months later, six bouncing babies were born. Six “Similars,” as they call themselves.
The details came together when the Similars showed up this summer. They’d lived their whole lives up north on some kind of secluded man-made island, and for some inexplicable reason, they’d been sent by the man who raised them to meet their DNA parents…and their “originals.” Since the Similars are minors, their identities haven’t been disclosed to the public, so nobody knows their names or who their originals are—except their DNA families.
And if all that seems out of the ordinary, here’s the wildest part: all six of the original kids are Darkwood students. Which is why the Similars were invited to attend Darkwood Academy. I guess because it’s their birthright. But also because Darkwood is progressive. If there’s any place the Similars could feel welcome, it should be here, where the administration has focused on inclusion since the school’s inception. But who knows. I’m only a junior. I don’t really have all the info.
I’m jolted out of my thoughts when I spot him—the real Jake Choate. He’s surrounded by his clique, which includes Madison, Tessa, and Jake’s roommate, Archer de Leon. Archer, with his winning smile, brown skin, and famously photographed dark locks, hails from sunny Los Angeles and is practically Hollywood royalty. He was a child actor on a successful show I never watched, but I hear it was solidly mediocre.
“Emma!” a voice calls out over the din of my classmates. I spot Pru across the way, waving at me. She pushes against the flow of traffic to get to me, and for a moment, I wonder if this is what life will be like from now on. The people who care about me constantly worrying that I need babysitting. Wondering if Oliver’s death has broken me beyond repair. They wouldn’t exactly be wrong.
Pru arrives at my side, and I can’t help but feel a strange sense of déjà vu. “I saw her,” I blurt.
“Who?” Pru asks.
“Your Similar, who else? The jig is up, Pru. She was by the lake just now. I saw her. I know.”
“I wanted to tell you, Emma. I swear I did! But the note from the Similars’ guardian asked us not to reveal their identities before—”
“I’m not mad! Well, maybe a tiny bit. But start talking. I’m dying to know all the details.”
Pru smiles. “Thanks for not hating me. It’s the hardest secret I’ve ever kept, especially from you.”
“So what’s her deal? What’s her name?” I ask as we inch our way toward the chapel lobby, following the forward motion of the crowd.
“Her name’s Pippa,” Pru tells me. “And she spent the last two weeks with us on the farm.”
“Two weeks?”
“Sorry,” Pru says. “It was torture not buzzing you. I had to stash my plum in the freezer so I wouldn’t call you.”
“So that’s why I haven’t heard from you in forever!”
Pru looks sheepish. “I know! I’m sorry!” She pauses. “Pippa’s great, Emma. I really like her, and I think you will too.”
“You have the same DNA.” I shrug. “She’s like, literally you. Of course I’ll love her. It would be sacrilege if I didn’t.” A couple of teachers begin directing us into a sloppy line. They hold pen-size scanners that they pass over the plums of the girls in front of us.
“Ms. Chance? Ms. Stanwick? Your devices?” asks Mr. Park, our genial, stubbly-faced American history teacher. I hold out my wrist so he can pass his scanner over my plum, rendering it useless for anything but buzzing across the campus system and sending messages to my father, as well as a few other preapproved contacts. No social media, no live streaming. No one in the country knows the names of the Similars, and we’ve been told the administration plans to keep it that way. Even the press has been forced to stay silent when it comes to the Similars’ identities, due to strict laws protecting minors’ privacy. They’re just kids, after all. They didn’t ask to be cloned from someone else’s DNA. They didn’t ask to be thrust into the public eye. It’s only fair to respect their privacy.
“Say goodbye to the cloud for the next nine months,” a voice quips behind us. I turn to see Tessa. She’s with Madison. They’re directly behind us.
“It’s like they’re stalking us,” I mumble to Pru.
Thankfully Madison hasn’t heard me, or if she has, she’s ignoring me. “They can’t do this,” she whines. “My channel has a million fans. Who’s going to entertain them while I’m gone?”
Pru whips around to face Madison and crosses her arms over her chest. “I, for one, am more than happy to relinquish my live-streaming capabilities if it means a little privacy for our new classmates.”
Tessa stares at Pru. “You’re taking their side already?”
“She’s not taking sides,” I answer. “She’s complying with the request of our headmaster—”
“Ms. Huxley? Ms. Leroy? Your plums?” Mr. Park prods.
Madison scowls, tugging her plum off her wrist and hurtling it at Mr. Park’s feet. I don’t even bother to respond, and neither does Pru. She links her arm through mine and steers us into the chapel.
“I know it’s weird,” Pru says as we find seats. “She looks exactly like me. I get it. I was freaked out when I first met her. But really, she’s a regular person, just like us.”
“Define ‘regular,’” I mumble, watching as more and more students stream in, the ninth graders all convening in the front rows. Two years ago, I sat next to Oliver in one of those pews on my first day at Darkwood. He’d been my best friend since the third grade, when we’d become inseparable within a few weeks of meeting each other. Oliver and I had applied to Darkwood at the same time, had both been accepted, and had made the trek from Northern California to start our first year together. Back then, I’d been certain that my life was finally beginning. I had no idea that it was the beginning—of the end.
“She wasn’t alone,” I whisper to Pru. “I saw two of the others. A clone of Tessa and one of Jake. What about the other three? Do you know who they are?” I don’t bring up Madison’s clone. Who knows if it’s even true. She may have made the whole thing up to impress Tessa.
Pru shakes her head. “We got a letter two months ago telling us about Pippa. My parents couldn’t believe it, really. We’d heard all the news stories about the Similars—the reports about the lab mix-up, the whole deal. Ex
cept we never imagined one of them was a clone of me. When we found out, my parents invited her to the farm. Then Pippa showed up at our house two weeks ago. Alone.”
“She didn’t tell you who the other Similars are? She grew up with them, didn’t she?” I press, as Headmaster Ransom makes his way to the podium.
Pru shrugs. “She was so nervous meeting us, I didn’t want to pry.”
“Welcome back, Darkwoodians,” Headmaster Ransom bellows from behind the podium. “I’m thrilled you’re all here.” He smiles out at us, looking like he’s in a far better mood than when I saw him talking to the Huxleys. I wonder how trying this day has been for him. After all, he personally endorsed the Similars, inviting them to Darkwood knowing that it would be a controversial move.
Headmaster Ransom continues his speech. “Whether you’re a returning student or beginning your Darkwood career: welcome. You are all here because you are exceedingly intelligent. And you are talented in many ways. Our student body includes world-class athletes, classical musicians, published novelists, and even a successful Hollywood actor.”
As if on cue, Archer stands up and gives a little bow. “Happy to represent the school, sir,” he says, before popping back into his seat. The student body breaks into applause and chuckles, amused by Archer’s bravado. Then the hush settles over us again.
“Some of you come from families who have populated our halls for generations. Your great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandmothers may have walked these corridors with pride, and now you have that same honor and privilege. You have the opportunity to live up to their expectations. Or, should I say, exceed them. Goodness knows that the bulk of you will try.”
The smile disappears from Ransom’s lips. “Returning students, you know that in order to thrive at Darkwood, you must not let your talents lie dormant. You must achieve. You must succeed. You must transcend.” I nod along, anticipation stirring inside me, in spite of myself. I can’t deny that Ransom’s hit the core of what matters to him, and to all of us.
The Similars Page 2
