I’m already slipping on my boots and grabbing my coat, then looking up Levi’s room assignment. He and Jago are roommates. I hadn’t known that. Their dorm is in the same building as Oliver’s old room. It’s called Nightshade. I steel myself for what I’m about to do. Returning to Oliver’s dorm—without Oliver—will take all the strength I can muster.
* * *
Standing on the fire escape that runs up the side of Nightshade, the wind groans, threatening to blow my small, insignificant body right off. I’m having second thoughts. Why did I think it was a good idea to climb up here and ask Levi’s help right this minute?
But it’s too late. I’m already rapping on the window to get his attention. His hair is messy, and he’s shirtless and barefoot, wearing only jeans.
He comes to the window and opens it. “Emma?” He surveys me, and I detect the hint of a smile on his lips. “Are you out of your mind? It’s two in the morning.”
“I know how to tell time. Are you going to let me in?”
Levi holds out a hand, and I take it, noting his firm grip as he helps me inside. As I jump down from the windowsill, I brush against his bare chest. A shiver runs down my spine. Levi lets go of my hand and grabs a T-shirt from the back of his desk chair. That’s when I notice Jago standing to the side, looking ready to murder me.
“Hi,” I say.
Jago doesn’t say it back. “You realize you’re breaking pretty much every Darkwood rule by being here, and by association, so are we?” Jago rants. “So unless you’re on fire—”
“Do I look like I’m on fire?”
“You have to leave. Now.”
“Oliver left me his key,” I blurt.
“So?” Jago presses, and Levi levels him with a look.
He says something to Jago I can’t understand. For a moment, I’m puzzled. This doesn’t sound like French—I would understand that, or at least some of it.
“What language was that?” I ask.
Jago stares at me. “Portuguese. Why?”
“I thought you spoke French to one another.”
“We do,” Levi starts. “We did. Until…”
I suddenly understand and supply the rest of the sentence. “That night by the lake.”
Levi nods. “I didn’t realize until the other day, when you told me you understood us and what we were talking about—privately, we thought.”
“Let me guess,” I say. “You switched to Portuguese because it’s not taught here?”
“She’s a smart one,” Jago says before grabbing his jacket. “I’m going to Ansel’s room. The two of you can do what you want. Enjoy detention again, expulsion, whatever. It’s not my problem.” Jago slams the door behind him.
“Light sleeper,” explains Levi. “He was working his way toward his REM cycle when you so unceremoniously interrupted him.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what else to say, so I switch gears, thrusting Oliver’s note toward him. Levi reads it.
“This tells us nothing,” he says.
“Thanks, Sherlock,” I snap, grabbing the note from his hand. “He wanted me to look for something in his old room. I checked the housing assignments. It’s empty. I know it’s a long shot, but maybe there will be some answers about why Oliver did what he did. The key won’t work for me, not if the room’s locked—”
Levi smiles wryly. “Enter me. And my genetics, to be exact. Who is he? I mean, ‘him’?” Levi asks, brow scrunching as he looks at the note again.
“I don’t know,” I say quickly. “The only person I could come up with was—is—you.”
Levi takes that in, walking over to the window and staring at the dark grounds below. “There’s not a lot of moonlight tonight. You weren’t scared climbing that thing?” He gestures at the fire escape.
I shrug. “Should I have been?”
Levi turns back to face me. “You think Oliver knew about me before he died?”
“It’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Otherwise, who is he talking about? I think somehow he knew. Even if Jane and Booker didn’t,” I add, since Levi and I disagree on that point. “And whatever’s in his room, it could explain everything—how he knew he had a clone, why he has a clone, why he…died. For God’s sake, Levi. This is your life we’re talking about too. Don’t you want to know?”
“Of course I do,” he says quietly. “I’ve wondered, no hoped, all of my life that there was a reason why I exist besides a mistaken lab experiment. That somebody actually wanted me.” He’s quiet for a moment, then makes a decision in his head and grabs a pair of sneakers. “Let’s go now. Unless you feel like scaling that fire escape again tomorrow night?”
“The next time we break and enter, you can come down and let me in,” I reply.
“Next time?” he ribs.
We are off. It doesn’t take long to get to Oliver’s old room. I try the doorknob, but as I suspected, it doesn’t open for me. “Here,” I say, handing him Ollie’s key. “Put it on. You should probably wear it around your neck, like you would, you know, if you were actually him.”
Levi nods, slips Oliver’s key around his neck, and holds it in front of the doorknob. There is a faint beep as the door unlocks. It worked. With a steady hand, Levi turns the knob, and just like that, we’re in.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but the room doesn’t scream “Oliver!” in any profound way. It’s empty, except for twin beds pushed to opposite ends of the room. There are the standard-issue dressers and desks, and a closet, bare except for a few wire hangers dangling from a metal rod.
“I’ll take the right side. You take the left,” Levi says matter-of-factly. As we scour our respective sides of the room, I have three thoughts. The first is that working side by side like this, me and Levi, like we did during duty, feels easy and familiar. The second is that I’m grateful to him for helping me. And the third is that I must’ve completely misunderstood Oliver’s last message because after twenty long minutes of searching, we’ve come up with nothing that could even begin to qualify as a clue or a message.
Levi yawns and asks me if I’m ready to go, and with one glance back as if I’ll spot the ghost of my best friend, we walk out together.
We are silent as we approach the front doors of Nightshade.
“I’m sorry we didn’t find anything,” Levi says softly.
“I’ll live,” I reply. What I don’t say is that I need to know why Oliver didn’t live. And I won’t stop trying until I figure out what his note meant.
“Levi?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“The midnight session. The injective. What I said back there…”
Levi doesn’t respond. He simply stares at me with those gray eyes, the ones I love, or used to, anyway.
“Oliver meant the world to me. I didn’t mean to push him away.”
“I get it,” he says. “You were scared. You didn’t want to risk a relationship. You didn’t want your friendship to change. If there were someone I cared about that much…”
“What?” I ask, my heart in my throat.
Levi shakes his head. “Nothing.”
There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask him, but it was never the right time, until now. “Levi? You said before, when we were in your room, that you’ve always hoped there was a reason you were created. I think you know more about that than you’re telling me.”
He hesitates before answering. “What makes you say that?”
“In American history, when Mr. Park dedicated that whole class to discussing cloning, there was talk of an experiment. Something about primates. Theodora said she knew all about it, but that it was classified.”
“It is.”
“But you know about it too.”
Levi shuts down all at once. He stiffens and his jaw locks. If I’ve had any window of insight into him tonight, I don�
��t anymore. It’s been closed. Maybe indefinitely. “You should go to bed, Emma. Stop thinking about Albert Seymour and his primates. I can assure you, you’re better off not knowing the details.”
Without so much as a goodbye, he turns and leaves me alone in the darkened hallway.
That night, as I toss and turn, drifting in and out of a fitful sleep, I startle awake. That’s it, the piece of the puzzle that has been eluding me. Albert Seymour. I remember where I last saw the scientist’s name. He was in the portrait of the Ten, the one from my father’s senior year. Albert Seymour was the man standing between my father and Jane Porter.
The Wards
“Dash,” I address my plum, “who was Albert Seymour?”
“Researching Albert Seymour,” Dash responds. “Is there anything else I can assist you with, hon?”
“Hon?” I tease. I’m not used to this sass in the middle of the night.
“It’s something I’m trying out,” Dash quips. His response makes me smile.
Over the next week, I eagerly read all Dash can collect about Albert Seymour’s life. I devour a biography of the man, discovering that he was born into an influential family in Boston. Seymour’s only sibling was a half brother, John Underwood, who shared the same father. Little is said about Underwood, or the brothers’ childhood, except that they lived apart, and Underwood took his mother’s last name. The book skips to Seymour’s days at Harvard, where he graduated early, then began studies for his PhD, completing his dissertation on reproductive cloning by the age of twenty-two. Seymour wasted no time starting his own cloning lab in Boston, eventually moving it abroad when laws in the United States barred him from continuing his research.
The book glosses over Seymour’s Darkwood days in a few sparse paragraphs, so I trek to the Tower Room to study the portrait of the Ten from Seymour’s year. I scan the names, lingering on the familiar ones—my father; Oliver’s parents, Jane and Booker; Prudence’s dad, Jaeger’s family. There along with Albert Seymour is John Underwood. I’d read the name before, but I hadn’t realized the two were half brothers. I make a mental note to ask my father about both of them if he ever answers any of my buzzes.
As I take in the picture, I match each name to a figure in the photograph. My father, Jaeger, Bianca Kravitz, Booker Ward, Ezekiel Choate… Albert Seymour is the scrawny guy near the end with oversize glasses. His clothes are wrinkled and look too big for his narrow frame. I look again. Something isn’t adding up. Where is John Underwood? I count the people in the photograph. There are only nine. John Underwood is listed, but he isn’t in the photo.
That night, I read the book a second time, thinking maybe I missed references to Seymour’s primate experiment, but it’s not even mentioned. That strikes me as odd. If the experiment was so groundbreaking, why can’t I find any information on it? Theodora called it “classified,” but Mr. Park knew enough about the experiment to bring it up in class. Where did he learn about it?
A week later, I linger behind in American history to find out.
“Mr. Park?”
“Hmm?” He stacks textbooks on his desk, clearly preoccupied.
“That day you brought up Albert Seymour’s primate experiment…sir,” I add politely. “You were going to say more about it, only the class’s discussion got sidetracked. I can’t find any information about it anywhere. Can you tell me more?”
Mr. Park sighs. “I appreciate your scholarly interest in the topic, but I’m in a rush, Emma. My next class starts in two minutes in the annex across campus.”
“I understand,” I say quickly. “You must have a book you can point me to? Some articles?” And for good measure: “I’m trying to learn more about the issues, Mr. Park. Expand my base of knowledge.” I cast my most winning smile.
“I’ll try to locate some material for you,” he answers hurriedly before making a beeline for the door.
“I thought I told you to let that go,” a voice says from behind me. I turn, taken aback, to find that Levi is still in the room. I’d thought Mr. Park and I were alone.
“You did. I ignored you.”
Levi sighs, and I almost welcome that sound. It’s been almost two weeks since our sleuthing in Oliver’s room, and with class and homework, we’ve barely spoken.
“Albert Seymour went to Darkwood,” I blurt.
Levi doesn’t react, though his gaze hardens. I don’t flinch or look away.
“And so did his half brother, John Underwood,” I add.
“Your point?”
“They’re both in a portrait of the Ten, from my father’s year. Actually, Seymour’s in it. Underwood isn’t pictured.”
“I’ve seen it,” says Levi tightly.
“Of course you have,” I answer. “Because you know legions of things you plan to never tell me, and in fact, hope I never think about again.”
“Why are you doing this, Emma?” he asks quietly. “Why can’t you let this go?”
“Let this go? You want me to let go of my questions about Oliver’s death? Let go of what he said in his last note to me? Let go of the fact that the man who invented cloning went to this school?!” I’m so angry, I could slap him. But I don’t. I hold in my fury. “When you feel like telling me whatever it is you know about Albert Seymour, you know where to find me.”
I storm off like a petulant child.
Weeks pass, and now Levi and I don’t even say hello to each other. There have been two midnight sessions where we avoided each other’s gaze. For once, I was happy that Madison rambled on about our duty to uphold Darkwood’s founding tenet of excellence. At least she didn’t make us participate in any more “exercises.” Of course, I noticed him at the sessions. Anytime we’re in a room together, I look to see what he’s doing. In the dining hall, I crane my neck to see what he’s reading. I can’t help it.
Meanwhile, more and more students inquire about DAAM. I can’t help but notice that the general mistrust of the Similars on campus is mounting, and it makes me furious. Where is this coming from? Darkwood students are supposed to be inclusive, which is the whole reason Headmaster Ransom felt he could invite the Similars here. So why does it feel like he completely missed the mark?
One November morning at breakfast, Pippa slaps a stack of paper on the table. She explains that it’s a printout of an essay that’s gone viral around the nation—and our dining hall—called “The Case for No Clones.”
“Apparently it got more than twenty million page views. And they had to turn off comments because the site kept crashing.”
“Where did you get this?” I ask as I scan it.
“A girl in my calculus BC class.”
“But how did she get her hands on it? There’s no way Headmaster Ransom would ever let this through his firewalls.”
“A junior hacked the system.” Pippa shrugs. “I’ve heard it’s not that hard if you know what you’re doing. Anyway, the essay says we were abused. This author thinks our unconventional childhood on Castor Island altered us irrevocably.”
“Abused? That’s—How?” My gaze leaps to the Similars’ table, where Ansel and Theodora talk quietly, and Levi and Jago absentmindedly play a game of tic-tac-toe. My heart hurts considering the possibility that this could be true.
“We were treated well. But according to this article, what happened to us there made us dangerous,” Pippa offers in a barely audible voice.
“If anyone’s dangerous, it’s not any of you,” I tell Pippa. “It’s Madison. She’s the only person who could have attacked Pru…”
“But we don’t have any proof,” Pippa reminds me. “And Jaeger isn’t returning my buzzes. I feel like an intruder, like the last person he wants to hear from is me.”
I grab Pippa’s hand across the table and squeeze it. “You aren’t an intruder. Jaeger’s just dealing in his own way with what happened. It’s got to be why he hasn’t called either of us b
ack. When Pru wakes up…” I fight my own tears. “Everything will be different. You’ll see.” But I don’t know if I believe that myself.
* * *
Fall break passes in a blur. I stay on campus with a handful of other students, plunging into a wormhole on the history of cloning, on Seymour, and also on Gravelle, the Similars’ guardian. Not much is known about his personal life, only that he’s a self-made billionaire who funded the lab that made the big mistake when they created the Similars. He then took responsibility for raising the six clones—and according to “The Case for No Clones,” brainwashed and abused them.
Though I don’t believe the author of that article has all the facts, I’m still gutted to think that what transpired at the compound might have hurt Pippa, Levi, and the other Similars. I know their childhood was unconventional. I know Levi said he’d never traveled off the island. I know they didn’t have real parents. And I suppose that could be considered abuse in its own right.
Not surprisingly, the Similars stay on campus during break too. Pippa and I spend the holiday together. I buzz Pru’s father on our behalf, leaving him message after message. We want to visit Prudence. Please tell us a good day to come. When he finally contacts us, he says Pru is still in a coma. She wouldn’t want you to see her like that, he insists. Please don’t come. Not yet.
I don’t talk to Levi over the break. I have nothing to say to him, and it’s clear he feels the same. But I won’t back down from what I said. I need to know more about Albert Seymour, and if Levi won’t tell me, I’ll find out another way.
As the long weekend draws to an end, I’m filled with a growing sense of unease. In only a few short days, Oliver’s parents will be arriving for the dedication ceremony—when they won’t be able to avoid meeting Oliver’s Similar. I haven’t seen Jane since Oliver’s funeral, and the idea of watching her grieve all over again is nearly more than I can bear. If I could spare her from this, I would. But I can’t stop them from coming. And even if I could, they will have to meet Levi eventually. They can’t avoid the inevitable. Levi exists. Hard as that is for me to process, it’s a fact.
The Similars Page 13
