Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (12 page)

Aaron
knew he had to quit agonizing over her, his birthday was too close, but he
couldn’t think about anything else. No way could he forget her enchanting green
eyes, her maddening overconfidence, her nerve.

Seven
days—seven days until he turned eighteen and never saw her again.

Back
inside his room, Aaron dragged the torn stack of medical forms from his pocket
and spread them out under his desk lamp, hands shaking. Under the
“complications” section on a form titled “Physical Examination,” Dr. Selavio’s
sloppy cursive was barely legible.

Scar
tissue obstructing clairvoyant channel. Likely result of massive trauma to
channel during birth.

Trauma
during
birth?
But Aaron hadn’t sustained any trauma during birth. Not
unless you counted the false alarm story his parents always bragged about to
family—how an intern had misread one of the synchronized clocking machines and
declared Aaron a stillborn, even though he was crying right in front of them.

With
the uneasy feeling his parents hadn’t quite told him the full story, Aaron read
the scribbles concerning his condition on the next form, titled “Aitherscope
Imaging”—and felt his insides seize up.

Aitherscope
registers zero clairvoyant activity and patient experiences inexplicable pain.
Suggests extreme vulnerability to clairvoyance. Patient MUST NOT meet his half;
initial surge of clairvoyance upon first contact will likely rupture his
channel
 . . .

The
rest was torn off, but those three sentences were more than plenty.

Darkness
swallowed the bubble of light around Aaron’s desk. He tried to neaten the stack
of forms, but they slipped through his jittery fingers and floated to the
floor. He rose, tipping the chair backwards. His eyes throbbed, blurry.

Dr.
Selavio’s notes about him made two things clear. First, if he met his half on
Saturday, his channel would rip open and leak like Emma Mist’s. They would both
die. Second, Amber wasn’t his half, otherwise they would already be dead.

Aaron
shrank onto his bed and grabbed his volleyball, but instead of setting the ball
to the ceiling, he just curled around it, hugging it between his knees.

For
his whole life he had worried something would be missing when he met his half,
when in fact he
couldn’t
meet her—No,
shouldn’t
meet her. No
matter the risk, he still had to show up on his birthday.

Life
without one’s half was no life at all, everybody knew that. Once mature, the
human body required constant physical contact with its half. Aaron faced a
simple choice. He either died on his birthday with his half, or withered away
months later without her.

There
was a third choice. It involved Amber and running away from their halves, and
it burned him with such a deep sense of shame, he thought he would puke.

***

Aaron
didn’t know how he made it through the weekend, or why he even bothered
patching the crack in his oil pan on Saturday afternoon, but by Monday morning,
he had successfully relegated Dr. Selavio’s medical report to the back of his
mind. By first period, he even rekindled his delusional hope that he and Amber
could be halves. Now, if he could just convince himself she wasn’t a juvengamy
baby.

From
what Aaron remembered of the video they watched in health class, juvengamy girls
had been emptied of the most precious thing they had.

Clairvoyance
was like your soul. It was the conscious, living part of you, and should you
lose any of it—well, it wasn’t hard to imagine what that was like.

The
worst part was that Amber Lilian supposedly had a scar branding her as one of
them.

Aaron
leaned toward Buff’s desk. “Besides the matching scars,” he said, “what else
you know about them?”

“They’re
spooks,” said Buff. “Ghosts. People say they’re hollow.”

“You
can tell?”

“The
girls act like their half’s pet. They’re not all there.”

“The
parents must be out of their minds.”

“It’s
in their blood, Buddy. Ever since that first generation.”

“So
it’s like their inbred—”

“Mr.
Harper—Mr. Normandy!” Mr. Sanders yelled from the front of the class. “Shut
it.”

Buff
leaned closer so he could whisper. “Their founder’s like a hundred-and-twenty
years old. I heard they’re choosing an heir to replace him when he dies.”

“How
do they know who goes with who when they’re putting kids together?” said Aaron,
“Wouldn’t they need access to the Registry?”

“They
keep their own records,” said Buff. “Most halves stay within juvengamy
families.”

“And
they’re always weird and empty?” said Aaron. “I mean, let’s say I met a
juvengamy girl, would I be able to tell she’s one of them just by talking to
her—”

“Congratulations,
Mr. Harper,” said their teacher, his eyes intent on Aaron, “you’ve just earned
yourself a detention.” He turned back to the board. “ . . . as I was saying, in
response to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing refusal to legally recognize halves, the
League of Nations imposed sanctions on any country that prevented, hindered, or
in any way deterred halves from meeting safely . . . ”

Aaron
slouched until his butt almost slid off the chair and fixed his eyes on the
ceiling. 

“However,”
Mr. Sanders continued, “it wasn’t until almost fifty years later—about the year
you guys were born—that Saudi Arabia became the final member state of the
Chamber of Halves . . . ”

When
the bell rang, Jessica Lim, a girl who sat at the front, bounded over to Tina
Marcello’s desk.

“Oh
my God! Can you believe it’s tomorrow?” she said, squealing and clapping her hands.
“And guess what I overheard? My parents are sending us on a honeymoon
cruise!
”

Out
in the hallway after class, Aaron thought about his conversation with Buff. So
there was no way to determine if Amber was a juvengamy baby. Not unless—and the
idea gave him a nervous twinge—he accepted Casler’s invitation to the Wednesday
meeting of the Juvengamy Brotherhood.

Not
the smartest idea, since he guessed the urine stain on Casler’s operating table
came from Justin Gorski. On that night, Casler must have drained the boy’s
clairvoyance into the vial, the same vial Clive brought to the beach a few
hours later. Aaron couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for Justin—and
for Emma.

If
only Aaron hadn’t dropped the vial out at the buoy, he could have brought it
the police, maybe gotten the substance analyzed. He wiped the sweat off his
forehead and swung his gym bag to his other shoulder. Today was going to be
hot.

***

“Buddy,
it’s ninety degrees out,” said Buff, collapsing
into an empty picnic table at lunch
. “We’re ditching practice and going to the
beach.”

“Not me,” said Aaron,
sliding on his sunglasses.

“Yes—you,
me, Tina, and Amber. Tina invited us all to Arroyo beach.”

At
the mention of Amber, Aaron’s heart fluttered. “Since when does Tina invite us
to the beach?”

“She’s
okay now,” said Buff. “She broke up with Breezie because his birthday’s in a
few months . . . ”

Aaron
missed the rest of Buff’s explanation. Even in the scorching heat, the prospect
of seeing Amber again gave him goose bumps.

So
she was fine with breaking their consensual goodbye. Okay, so they hadn’t
really
said goodbye. In fact, as Aaron recalled, their goodbye was interrupted . . .

Through
his sunglasses, the sky blinded him. The sun’s heat seared his scalp and the
back of his neck. His black T-shirt scalded him, and he clawed at the material,
trying to pull it off his skin—at least he could take his shirt off at the
beach.

Amber
would take hers off.

And
he could check her back for the mirror image of Clive’s tattoo.

***

At
two in the afternoon, Aaron and Buff trudged through the sand to Amber and
Tina, who were sunbathing on two fluffy beach towels—and the center of
attention of three chatting teenage boys. Amber lay on her back with one knee
raised, stunning in a bikini, Aaron noticed.

“You
three,” he said, once they’d made it to the boys, “beat it.”

Buff
smacked his palm. The kids, probably juniors, took one look at the rugby player
and stumbled away.

“So
you’re rude to everybody,” said Amber, perching herself up on her elbows as Aaron
approached her.

Now
was his chance.

Heart
racing, Aaron tossed his shoes behind her, and while he pretended to stash his
wallet and phone inside them, he glanced at her exposed back. At first he
wasn’t sure, the way sunlight glanced off her bare skin, silvery white. A
spiral shaped scar, or was it sunscreen? It was almost too bright to tell, even
with sunglasses.

Aaron
squinted, shifted positions, then perceived her back clearly. He felt a wobbly
twinge in his knees. Amber’s skin was unblemished, and he let himself sigh his
relief.

Next
to them, Buff and Tina were arguing.

“Stop
blotting out the sun,” said Tina, arching her upper lip in disgust. “I’m trying
to tan!”

“Why’d
you bring this bullshit washcloth?” said Buff.

“Oh
my God,” said Tina. “Don’t you own a towel?” 

To
Aaron, their voices sounded distant, hollow. Still feeling faint, he crouched
in the sand next to Amber and scrutinized her face. Today, her eyes sparkled
brighter than he’d ever seen them. Her golden hair winked at him in the
sunlight.

“So . . . I
kind of missed you.” she said, holding his gaze.

Those
simple words made his heart race. Up until now, he doubted she felt anything
for him. This was the closest she had ever come to admitting she did.

“Yeah,
you might have crossed my mind once or twice,” said Aaron.

“Per
second,” she said.

“Has
Clive tried to see you?”

“I’ve
been ignoring his calls.” She scooted over to make room for him on her beach
towel. When he didn’t move, she said, “What? Am I too cool for you?”

He
eased in next to her, careful not to brush her skin. She tugged his shirt over
his head again and dropped it in the sand.

Buff,
now sick of Tina, paced a few feet away.

“First
league game this Friday,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “We play Corona
Blanca, and coach won’t let me play because of my grades—this is
bullshit!
”
He kicked a crater in the sand. “I bet Breezie set me up.”

Tina
sighed. “All you and him ever talk about is getting revenge on each other—it’s
so lame.”

Buff
threw a practice punch through the air, then another. His fists whistled.
“Friday, Breezie’s gonna get it.”

Aaron
scanned the distant line of buoys lost in thought, and his eyes settled on the
one he and Clive swam to the night of the bonfire, hardly more than a dot on
the horizon. What did it all mean? If Amber didn’t have the matching tattoo,
then who
did?

And
why had Clive insisted all this time that Amber was his half?

Aaron
blinked. It was right in front of him.

The
buoy.

***

The
buoy marked the exact location where the vial sank. He could swim back out; he
could dive to the bottom. He
could
recover the vial.

A
wave of sweat soaked his skin, and he peeked at Amber, afraid she might have
read his thoughts. At the same time, she glanced at him too, and their gazes
snapped apart.

It
was a stupid idea, he decided, now hyper-aware of Amber as she played with her
hair. An underwater current would have swept the vial away by now, or buried it
in the sand.

Amber
leaned against him and whispered in his ear, her breath hot. “Aren’t we
supposed to say goodbye to each other?”

He
tensed up, doing all he could to resist bringing her into his arms. But he
nodded. That’s what they had come here for.

He
hadn’t seen a tattoo, but that didn’t prove anything. Obviously, Clive knew
something about her he didn’t. But what? Aaron scooped up a palmful of sand and
watched the grains slip through his trembling fingers.

“Fine.
If you’re just going to sit there, I’m going to leave,” said Amber, shoving him
off her towel so she could fold it up. “Can you at least give me a ride home?”

“Look,
I’m not really in the mood to be chivalrous right now,” he said.

“So
you want me to
walk
back? My house is way up on Mission Ridge.”

“Then
take it at a jog. You’re athletic.”

“In
sandals?”

“How’d
you get here anyway?” said Aaron, standing up next to her.

“I
got a ride like a normal person,” said Amber. “How do you
think?
”