Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (6 page)

“Too
bad,” said Aaron, “didn’t bring it.”

Amber
glanced at the side of Aaron’s backpack, at the mesh pocket—where the bulge of
his cell phone was clearly visible.

“Didn’t
bring it, huh?” She slid Aaron’s phone out and flipped it open, keyed in her
number, and called her own phone with it. Then Amber and Tina squeezed between
him and Buff on their way out.

As
Amber brushed past Aaron, she slipped the phone into the pocket of his shorts.
“That’s for
Buff
,” she whispered, her breath right in his ear. Her green
eyes lingered on him for another second before she turned away.

***

“Buddy,
who
was that?” said Buff, gaping at him.

“Don’t
worry about it,” said Aaron. “She’s out of her mind.”

“Who
cares?” said Buff. “Give me the phone number, it’s obvious she likes me.”

“She
goes to Corona Blanca,” said Aaron.

Buff
lunged for the phone in Aaron’s pocket, and Aaron had to beat him off with his
backpack.

“Fine,
I’ll just wait until she calls me,” said Buff, leaving Aaron to go talk to his
coach, “which she
will!
”

“Say
hello for me when she does.” Aaron slung his clean shirt over his shoulder and
headed to his car alone. So much for forgetting about her. After that last
sizzling look she gave him, that was going to be impossible.

Aaron
sighed, imagining how much simpler his last month as a seventeen-year-old would
have been if he’d never met her—and wondering if he’d ever have the courage to
delete her number. Or call her.

His
Mazda waited, black and sleek. Aaron was almost at the door when he noticed the
damage, and his heart jolted.

He
scanned the lot, hardly breathing. Nobody lingered. Nobody had left a note.

Aaron
stared at his car. A dent stretched across the door, broken glass and crumpled
metal, bashed inward. Bare steel glinted underneath, deformed and scraped
white. Black flecks of paint streamed in rivulets along the asphalt under his
feet.

“No—”
he whispered, and he laid his palm on his car’s frame.

It
wasn’t a fender bender. The dent was too deep, as if someone had deliberately
driven into it, their toe to the floor—or beaten it with a crow bar.

Aaron
pulled the handle, and the door collapsed an inch and screeched open. He stared
at the ruined door, and pressure tingled in his sinuses, like two thumbs
pressing under his eyes.

The
driver’s seat was soaked, and the door didn’t close. It just banged against the
side and swung back open. Aaron squeezed his shirt into a ball and flung it
across the parking lot.

 Then
his cell phone rang.

“Hello,”
said Aaron.

“Aaron
Harper, how are you?” said an icy drawl.

A
chill slithered up Aaron’s spine—Clive Selavio.

He
scanned the deserted school, the houses across the street. “Who gave you my
number?” he said, his heart pounding. All he heard was Clive’s heavy breathing
infused with static.

“I
told you to stay away from her,” said Clive.

“How’d
you get my number?”

“But
you didn’t
listen
,” said Clive.

The
air stirred in Aaron’s ear, like someone breathing behind him. He spun.

Nobody.

“It
was you—” Aaron’s eyes darted across the street. Down in the shadows between
two bushes, hunched over. Nobody.

“It
was
you
—that was my car, asshole!”

Clive
chuckled. “Next Friday,” he said. “Expect me. I have a little surprise for you,
Aaron Harper.” Then he hung up.

18 Days, 2
hours, 45 minutes

Aaron didn’t know whether
to feel terrified, pissed off as hell, or betrayed. He was sure Amber gave
Clive his number, unless Clive hacked it off her phone somehow. Or threatened
her. Still no excuse.

By
morning, pissed off as hell won out, and Aaron hunkered down at his desk before
first period, kneading his fists. He’d spent everything he had on his Mazda, he
loved that car. Sure, he wasn’t always on time with the oil changes and he had
to hotwire the thing each time he started it, but to him, his car meant freedom—and
Clive Selavio had defiled that.

If
Clive thought Aaron was just going to disappear like Justin Gorski, just
another name off his hit list, he was dead wrong. Next Friday, Clive was going
to lick asphalt.

Emma
Mist came in late and slogged to her seat, and Aaron noticed something off
about her. Her face was pale, and her hair, usually full and glossy, looked
wilted. He caught her eye as she slumped into her seat, and Aaron knew this was
his chance to apologize. Before she could look away, he mouthed, “
Can we
please talk?
”

She
stared at him, her brown eyes clouded by weariness, then gave a stiff nod.
Aaron felt a weight off his chest already.

But
while his eyes were still on her, her back arched suddenly. She gasped, and her
bony shoulders tensed before
she
fell forward,
shivering. Students’ heads swiveled toward her, and Mr. Sanders, who had
started his lecture, trailed off.

“
Emma!
”
Their teacher ran to her desk and knelt beside her. “Emma, talk to me—what’s
wrong?”

She
clutched her stomach, and a tear slid down her cheek from her wide, terrified
eyes.

“Is
it a stomach ache?” said Mr. Sanders.

When
Emma spoke, her voice was a whimper. Almost too low to hear across a classroom,
but Aaron heard.

“I . . . I
can’t feel him,” she said, and another tear splattered on her desk. “I can’t
feel my half.”

“Let’s
get you to the nurse,” said Mr. Sanders, helping her to her feet.
“It’s going to be fine.”

Emma
touched the back of her own head, winced, and collapsed against his chest. She
was breathing too fast, hyperventilating.

Mr.
Sanders looped his arm behind her knees, scooped her up, and carried her to the
door. Only Buff ran forward to help. The rest of the class sat white-faced and
frozen.

Mr.
Sanders addressed them before he left. “Explain how the discovery of halves
pushed the world toward greater international cooperation in the late thirties,
I want at least a page from each of you when I get back—and
NO
talking!”

Then
the door slammed.

All
eyes turned on Aaron. Nervous, shifty-eyed stares, wary of his reaction to what
had just happened to his ex-girlfriend. They knew the symptoms.

Her
half was dead.

***

Emma’s
condition had gotten a lot worse when Aaron and Buff visited her on Sunday,
five days later.

Sunlight
spotted the peach wallpaper in Emma’s bedroom, and Aaron felt a strange twinge
in his stomach when he saw her. She was buried under comforters and fluffy
pillows. Her pale skin gleamed with sweat, and her eyes made endless circles as
she watched the blades of a ceiling fan.

Her
mother managed a weak smile from her rocking chair and leaned over her
daughter. “Baby,” she said, her voice cracking, “look who came to see you!”

Buff
squeezed Emma’s hand. “It’s us, Emma. It’s me and Buddy from school.”

She
opened her mouth but only managed to drool.

Emma’s
father cupped her head in his palm and edged the pillow out from underneath her.
Right where the back of her head had been, Aaron saw a red stain in the
indentation on the pillow—blood. Her father laid her down again and glanced at
his half.

“It’s
getting worse,” he said.

There
was no cure for what Emma had, for half death. The scientific explanation was
quantum entanglement, the spooky phenomenon whereby two entangled subatomic
particles could be separated by light-years yet react instantaneously to
changes in each other’s states.

In
humans, it was termed
clairvoyance.

Up
close, Emma’s eyes were vacant, unfocused, cloudy. There was only a glimmer of
the girl Aaron once knew, and he felt a lump form in his throat.

Emma
was innocent. She was normal. There were only six weeks left before her
birthday—six weeks until she met her half. And that was stolen from her.

Aaron
was the one whose clairvoyant channel was clogged. It should have been him in
that bed, drooling and bleeding from the back of his skull. It should have been
him with half death, not her.

Aaron
knelt by Emma’s bed and peered into her half open eyelids. “I’m sorry, Emma.”

Too
late.

He
felt a hand squeeze his shoulder: Emma’s father. “What happened to her at
school wasn’t the first sign that something was wrong,” he said.

“What
do you mean?” said Aaron.

“She
had a similar attack a couple weeks ago,” said her father. “We thought it was a
false alarm and that she was still okay, but now the doctors are telling us her
half was already dead.” The man shook his head. “Something strange happened to
her half
that first time. Whatever it was, it managed to keep her going
for a few weeks.”

“When
do they think her half actually died?” said Aaron.

“They
haven’t quite pinpointed it yet, but they’re pretty sure it was March 1
^st
.”

Aaron
nodded, not sure what else to say.

“Wait
a sec,” said Buff, “March 1
^st
? That’s the day that kid from Corona
went missing.”

“Right,
Justin Gorski.” Emma’s father managed a weak smile. “We thought about that too,
but the Chamber of Halves won’t release the identity of Emma’s half until she’s
gone—or until they find Justin’s body . . . ” His voice faltered and he trailed off,
tears in his eyes.

Aaron
caught Buff’s eye, and they left Emma’s parents alone with their daughter. On
their way out, Aaron’s cell phone beeped, interrupting their mournful silence.
He opened his phone and stared at a text message from Amber Lilian.

Can I come over? There’s something I need to tell you.

***

By
eight she still hadn’t shown. Aaron bounced his volleyball off his wall, straining
to hear a knock on the front door, a scratch . . .
anything
over the evening news
blaring in the living room. Jesus, were his parents deaf or something? 

Besides,
it wasn’t good news playing. He could tell from the bits he overheard. A hundred-and-something
year old woman who had refused to meet her half for eighty years, now famous as
the sole survivor from the pre-halves era, had died earlier today. Apparently,
she had been in her early thirties when halves were discovered, but chose to
stay with her husband.

The
doorbell rang.

Aaron’s
heartbeat quickened. He beat his dad to the door, fumbled with the lock, and
yanked it open.

Her
usual knockout self, Amber stood in the doorway, cheeks flushed, a green flower
pinned to her hair. Aaron recalled vaguely that it was St. Patrick’s day—and
that he had thirteen days left until his birthday. He grabbed her hand and
pulled her inside, his heart still jittery. At the sight of her, his dad did a
double take.

But
before Amber could say, “Hi mister—” Aaron hurried her down the hall, pushed
her into his room, and shut the door.

“That
was rude,” she said.

“My
parents are easily disturbed,” he said.

Amber
tucked her hair behind her ear. “And you think I would disturb them?”

Aaron
studied her green eyes, and it occurred to him that she might be the reason his
heartbeat wasn’t slowing. “Never mind,” he said, and he grabbed his volleyball
off the floor and collapsed onto his bed. “So what did you want to tell me?” He
set the ball to the ceiling and caught it.

“It’s
about Clive,” she said.

Of
course. She was here to confess that Clive was her half. Suddenly, he didn’t
want to hear it. “Look,” he muttered. “Whatever weird thing you have with Clive,
you can keep it to yourself. I really don’t care.”

But
he was a bad liar.

Amber’s
eyebrows nudged upward. “You
do
care?”

“I
said
I didn’t
.”

“You
kept my phone number,” she observed.

“I
was keeping it for Buff.”

“Uh-huh.”
There was a teasing glint in her eyes, as if she now had a secret she could use
against him. “Well, I wasn’t going to tell you about that anyway.”

“Then
what?” said Aaron, frustrated she had gotten to him so easily. He set the next
ball so it landed in her lap, and she jolted back in surprise. He smirked and
sat up next to her. “Does he know you’re here?”

“I
hope
you don’t think I’m that stupid,” she said.

“No,
but I think you’re trying to make him jealous.”