Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (14 page)

Aaron
halted to listen.

“Rest
assured the Brotherhood does not endorse the juvengamy procedure,” said Casler.
“Our mission is to help past victims cope with their loss, not create new
ones.”

 A
journalist asked a question. “Doctor, you claim you’ve invented a cure for half
death, but have you considered the ethical implications of such a cure?”

“I’ll
leave that to the Chamber of Halves,” said Casler. “For those interested, a
demonstration of the technology will be given on Wednesday.” He signaled for
another question.

“Dr.
Selavio—” yelled a reporter. “Are the rumors true that you’ve been chosen as
the heir to the Juvengamy Brotherhood?”

Aaron
felt a hand grab the top of his head and aim it out the door.

“That
way,” growled Mr. Lilian, before Aaron could hear the response. More questions
he might be able to answer if
he accepted Dr. Selavio’s invitation to
the Brotherhood’s meeting. Outside, a twilight breeze sliced through his hair.

“Just
one last thing,” said Mr. Lilian, before Aaron left, “and this is for your own
good, son. My daughter isn’t allowed to date. If you ever go near her again,
it’s going to be your ass.”

3 Days,
19 hours, 56 minutes

Aaron arrived early for
his afterschool detention the next day and found Mr. Sanders’s classroom empty,
so he sat at a desk. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, about their kiss, and
whether their plan to meet up tonight after her parents fell asleep would work.
The anticipation made his heart race, but in between the shallow beats, his
body revolted.

He
knew the stakes. They were both due at the Chamber of Halves in four days, and
with the taste of Amber’s lips now etched into his brain, there was no way he
could truly be there for his half. Not all of him, at least. Their channel,
malleable up until their eighteenth birthday, would congeal with whole chunks
missing.

Still,
given the scar tissue blocking his channel, he doubted it mattered. If four
days with Amber was all he got, she was worth it. Or
was
she?

Reeling
with uncertainty and beginning to feel nauseous, Aaron switched his thoughts to
Dr. Selavio and his alleged cure for half death.

If
he did possess a cure, he certainly hadn’t cured Emma Mist and Justin Gorski;
he’d done just the opposite. Aaron drummed his fingers on the desk, then stood
up and paced back and forth along the front of the classroom.

Just
the idea of a cure for half death grossed him out. That halves died together
was only humane. Continuing on alone after your half died would be pure agony.
Yet Aaron had to admit, the “demonstration of the technology” planned for
Wednesday aroused in him a certain perverse curiosity.

Would
Casler unveil his machine?

Aaron
was still pacing when he noticed the door to Mr. Sanders’s office was slightly
ajar. The bolt hadn’t latched properly.

He
approached the office, hesitated, then tugged the knob. The door swung open—and
what he saw inside made his heart lurch.

A
human skull, propped up on his teacher’s desk. Its cavernous eyeholes gazed
vacantly at the ceiling, swallowing the white blaze of a halogen lamp. A
microscope jutted out from one of the eye cavities. Based on the geometry,
Aaron estimated that a spot inside the cranium, directly opposite the eyeholes,
lay at the microscope’s focal point.

Aaron
stepped behind the desk and glanced around, his heart thudding. From out of the
vacant eyeholes, the stink of ancient rot curled up his nose and prickled the
hairs on his forearms. This picture was wrong. Whatever was down there at the
back of the skull, it wasn’t meant to be seen.

He
felt a frantic urge to knock the whole setup over and run. Yet his curiosity
pushed him closer.

He
steadied his breathing, wiped sweat from his clammy forehead, and leaned
forward. The instant he pressed his eye to the top of the microscope, the air
stirred.

Light
filled the eyepiece. An image came into focus, he blinked—

***

“Mr.
Harper, what do you think you’re doing?”

Aaron
jumped back.

Mr.
Sanders stood in the doorway holding a tray of bones. He raised his eyebrows.

“Mr.
Sanders, why do you have all these . . . all these . . . ?”

“
Bones?
I’m putting together a lab activity we can do in class.” He set the tray on
his desk. “I read in Scientific American that in old human skulls you can
actually see the marks left by clairvoyance.” He nodded to the skull under the
microscope. “This one dates back almost seventy-thousand years. Have a look.”

Aaron
swallowed and leaned forward. Once again, a faint image crystallized through
the lens, and the hairs stood erect on the back of his scalp.

At
this scale, the back of the skull appeared coarse, almost terrain-like through
the microscope. Peaks of bone rose out of focus. But with eerie precision, the
three-dimensional pattern of an iris—an eye—was burned deep into the cranium. Aaron
wondered if
it
was scrutinizing him rather than the other way around. He
pulled away from the microscope.

 “That’s
what you get from thousands of years of clairvoyance eroding the minerals in
the fossil,” said Mr. Sanders.

“
Thousands
of years? But halves weren’t discovered until—”

“Exactly.
We’re starting to find evidence now that halves existed all along . . . Either that
or its somehow propagating backward through lineage, in which case this could
be recent.”

“But
there’s still clairvoyance even though this guy’s dead?”

Mr.
Sanders nodded. “It’s proof that even death doesn’t break the channel between
halves. The channel stays intact no matter what, even after the halves are long
gone. Ironically, that’s what causes half death.”

Aaron
perked up at his teacher’s words. “Half death? What do you mean?”

Mr.
Sanders smiled. “Think about it. When your half dies, it’s like removing a plug
from the other end of your channel, thus your clairvoyance leaks out. If the
channel closed instead, then nothing would leak out and you could keep on
living—albeit, severed from your half.”

Aaron
twisted away from his teacher, his skin prickling. So that was what Dr.
Selavio’s meant by a “cure.” His machine severed the connection between halves
in an attempt to keep one alive without the other. He had severed Emma and
Justin.

By
the time Aaron’s chills subsided after detention, though, an idea had crept
into his mind that made his insides squirm.

He
and his half might die as soon as they met each other, but if they let Dr.
Selavio sever their channel, there was a chance they could still live—and
that’s what scared him the most. That, and how desperately he clung to the
insanity of it, how the madness took hold and dug in its claws. And he knew—despite
his body’s revulsion—that he would go through with the cure if he had to. That
if he had to, he would sever his channel to his half.

Aaron
imagined how Emma must have felt when her link to Justin was torn out of her,
how she must have grasped inside her mind, terrified and lonely, but felt only
the hole where he used to be. And Aaron tried to imagine a lifetime like that,
perpetually hollow. Wasn’t it better than nothing, though?

Maybe.
Probably not. Regardless, Aaron wanted to know what Dr. Selavio was actually
capable of. Still queasy, he dragged his cell phone out of his pocket and
dialed Clive’s number.

And
he accepted Casler’s invitation.

***

Fifteen minutes before
midnight, Amber finished straightening her hair and studied her reflection. She
felt beautiful, a feeling that hadn’t left since she last saw Aaron. Tonight,
he wouldn’t stand a chance.

Not that she stood a
chance either. Their first kiss had ruined her. Now whenever she closed her
eyes, she felt like she was falling into his arms all over again.

Amber heard the muted
buzz of her cell phone. Heart pounding, she leapt onto her bed and dug it out
from her comforter—but for the twentieth time, it was Clive.

She silenced the phone,
both irritated and embarrassed by her sudden adrenaline rush.

She watched the screen
flash Clive’s name then go blank and wondered again if her parents’ story was wrong.
What if everyone was wrong?

What if Aaron was
actually her half?
But it was too much to hope for, and she knew it.
Aaron would forget about her the moment he met his half
on Saturday.
Amber collapsed miserably into her pillow as she imagined a replay of their
first kiss, but with another girl. His half would be tan and exotic—and she
wouldn’t deserve him.

Amber’s phone buzzed
again with a new voicemail. Amber stared at the screen, now uneasy, and
something told her she needed to hear this message.

Six minutes before
midnight, Amber pressed her cell phone to her ear and listened to the hiss of
Clive’s voice.

“Amber, if you don’t
call me back in the next two minutes, I’m waking up your father to tell him,”
he said, and even though he was carefully measuring his voice, she could tell
he was livid. “And one more thing—”

For a moment he just
breathed into the phone, as if trying to calm himself. “Your boy toy’s joining
us at the warehouse tomorrow. He’s going to realize you’ve been lying to him.”
He let out a low chuckle. “You have one minute and thirty seconds.”

Then he hung up.

Amber dropped the
phone, horrified. What was Aaron thinking
going to the warehouse with
Clive?

She glanced at her
clock. She was meeting him in five minutes. They had waited all day for her
parents to finally fall asleep, and if Clive woke them up now—

The downstairs phone
rang, making her jump.

It was also ringing in
her mom’s bedroom down the hall—and in her dad’s bedroom upstairs. They would
wake up any second.

Amber raced down the
stairs and caught it on the second ring. “What do you want?” she whispered
furiously.

“So you’ve been
screening my calls,” said Clive.

“Why did you invite
him?” she said.

Clive was silent a
moment. “Father did.”

Amber breathed once,
and her body’s warmth was suddenly gone.
Casler
invited him? Surely
after what happened to Justin, Aaron knew not to trust him.

“And he’s going?” she
asked, but Amber knew it was a dumb question—of course Aaron was going; he
always got himself into this kind of trouble.

“I tried to talk him
out of it,” said Clive. “But you know how bad a listener he is.”

Only to you
. Amber checked the
clock in the den. 11:57. She bit her lip. She was starting not to care if her
parents woke up or not, just as long as she got to see Aaron right now.

“Clive—
good night
,”
she said.

“Hold on,” he said, his
tone suspicious. “What’s the rush, Amber?”

“My
parents
.”

“They’re asleep,” he
said. “Otherwise they would have picked up the phone.”

She ran her fingers through
her hair in frustration, and Clive must have realized he was about to get hung
up on, because he changed his tactics.

“I miss you,” he said
quickly. “I want you to come over.”

“Don’t you sleep?” she
said.

“Not unless I’m with
you,” he said.

“Then pretend,” she
said and hung up anyway, feeling only a twinge of guilt. He’d be pissed
tomorrow, but at least he wouldn’t call back tonight. Tonight she was Aaron’s.

But first, she had to
make sure Aaron wouldn’t go to the Brotherhood’s meeting with Clive. She hated
that she had to lie to him, but if he figured out how screwed up her parents
were, or worse,
if he found out what was
really going on with Clive—she shuddered at the thought.
She would tell
him everything, just not tonight.

At
midnight, the gardens on Loma Sierra drive glowed blue and magenta under
landscape lighting. Tularosa twinkled in the valley below.

The
night was electric.

Aaron
was waiting, just as they’d planned. As soon as she saw him—wearing only a
short-sleeved shirt, arms crossed, leaning against his stolen car like nobody’s
business—she fought the urge to throw her arms around him.

“I
was just about to leave,” he said with a smirk. “If you kept me waiting thirty
more seconds—”

“Well
aren’t you impatient to see me,” she said.

His stare made her feel
faint, and Amber realized she wasn’t hiding anything from him. She was still
flustered from Clive’s call and it was all over her face.

“It was my parents,”
she lied quickly.

“It was Clive, wasn’t
it?”

“I said it was my
parents,” she said. “Can we go?”