Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (9 page)

It
was rolling twenty miles per hour into the wind, and there was forty feet of
pier left. He couldn’t gain on it.

But
he loved this car.

Aaron
took one more step and lunged, grabbed the frame. The door slammed on his
fingers, but he held on. The car bounced, and he got his other hand on the door
and swung himself into the driver’s seat.

Now
he was inside a car barreling toward the edge of a pier with twenty feet left
before blackness.

Now
what?

He
yanked the emergency brake and jammed his foot down on the brake pedal. It was
stiff; they were hydraulic brakes which hardly worked when the engine was off.
He pushed harder, strained against the ceiling for leverage. The car slowed,
barely.

“Buddy,
get out of the car!” he heard Buff yell from somewhere far behind him.

To
Aaron, it seemed to take a whole minute with his leg flexed, foot crushing the
pedal, before his bumper crashed through the railing. Splinters scraped the
windshield, the car pitched forward. The sea rose before him, white caps
churning in the darkness, and he felt the undercarriage grind off the edge of
the pier. Then everything stopped.

Balanced
on the edge of the pier, the car had stopped. Aaron let out his breath.

Buff
ran up and yanked the door open. “No bullshit,” he yelled, dragging Aaron out
of his seat.

After
the two of them heaved the car back onto the pier, Aaron noticed the driver’s
side door hung looser than before. He pried the panel off the underside of the
steering column and started twisting wires together. Since he lost the keys
last summer, he had to hotwire the thing every time he wanted to start it.

The
engine sputtered, and all the warning lights flashed. Aaron sighed and let the
engine die.

He
didn’t have to check under the hood; the oil pooling under the car gave it
away: a cracked oil pan. Behind him, Amber was demanding that Clive and Dominic
give them a lift home.

“Are
you crazy?” said Dominic, pointing to the bloody wads of toilet paper stuffed
up his nose. “
Look!
”

“Wow,”
she said, “you’re comparing a nosebleed to almost killing him.”

“Why
don’t
you
drive him if you’re so concerned?”

Her
eyes flashed in Aaron’s direction, suddenly fearful. “Because I don’t
want
to,”
she said.

“Make
him walk,” said Clive.

“How
about I just tell your father?” she said

Clive
went pale.

And
that settled it.

***

Aaron
knew it was a bad idea, but they were fresh out of options. The buses didn’t
run past ten, and after paying twenty each to get inside the Pelican, he and
Buff couldn’t pool enough for a cab. Nor did Aaron have any intention of waking
his parents, as that would lead to too many questions.

Aaron
didn’t bother saying goodbye to Amber. There was something in that last look
she had given him that seemed to erase everything that had happened on the
dance floor.

“Anything
happens, we got each other’s backs,” Aaron murmured, as he and Buff slid into
the backseat of Dominic’s beamer, behind the guys who had just tried to sink
Aaron’s Mazda in the Pacific Ocean.

“Always,
Buddy.”

“Let’s
take these fuckfaces home,” said Dominic, once they were all in the car.

“I
bet you know where I live,” said Buff, “since you egged my house fifty times.”

Dominic
spun around. “Make one more sound, Normandy, and you will not make it home
alive.”

“What
are you going to do, Breezie, call another bullshit play like you did back in
the Junior League rugby championships?”

“I
was right with you,” said Dominic. “We could have scored and you know it.”

“Yeah,
if you listened to me.”

“There
were scouts that day,” said Dominic. “I’d be playing for the Eagles right now.”

“A
prissyboy like you?” said Buff. “Go play football if you want to be a hero.”

 “Both
of you shut it!” said Aaron, feeling things were escalating.

Buff
was talking about an old offshoot of rugby that died off in the thirties,
during the exchange of international culture that followed the discovery of
halves. The tougher, more dynamic rugby had won out.

They
dropped Buff off first. Dominic rolled down the window, sniffed, and spat
bloody snot at him—and then Aaron was alone.

“Now
you have to fix my oil pan too,” he said to Clive, sounding braver than he
felt.

“You
knew how it was,” said Clive. “You knew what I had with Amber.”

“Actually,
I’m still confused.”

“Didn’t
she tell you the truth?”

“That’s
not why she ran after me.”

Clive’s
lips whitened. “She’s my half,” he said. “And if you touch her again—”

“You’re
seventeen,” said Aaron. “You don’t know who your half
is.”

“I
thought we’d be past this by now, Harper.”

Aaron
leaned forward. “How about when you kiss her?” he said. “Does she kiss back
like a real half
?
”

It
struck a nerve, and once again, Aaron wished he’d kept his stupid mouth shut.
Clive swiveled his body and clamped his hands around Aaron’s throat, digging
his fingers into his jugular.

Dominic
slammed on the brakes. “
Clive!
”

Aaron
clawed his face, but the guy held on.

“Clive,
let him go!” Dominic yelled.

Aaron’s
felt dizzy, and he was only half-aware of Dominic trying to drag Clive off of
him. He was more focused on Clive’s hand as it reached around his head, his
thin fingers probing the back of his scalp—until he touched the farthest point
back.

As
if he’d pressed a button, the strength deflated from every muscle in Aaron’s
body, and the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was the
pain, like molten lead dripping into his brain through the back of his head—that
and wishing he’d had more time to live.

Because
he really wanted to see Amber again.

***

After Amber dropped off
Tina Marcello, she drove home, relieved she wouldn’t have to deal with Clive
after what happened with Aaron—and convinced Aaron had been put into her life
just to tempt her.

The drive home was
miserable. The smell of Aaron’s sweat was all over her body, in her hair, and
she couldn’t breathe without tasting him. She needed boiling water, shampoo, a
loofah, maybe even scented bath salts to get rid of it—but then she had a crazy
and exhilarating thought.

If she didn’t shower,
if she went to bed just like this, she could fall asleep to his smell. She
could sleep the entire night with a constant reminder of him, and nobody would
ever know her secret. The notion gave her such an intense, nervous rush that
she immediately felt herself blushing—and was furious with herself.

As if she would
ever
fall asleep like that.

As it was, she would
have enough trouble forgetting the feel of his torso through a thin cotton
T-shirt.

Amber sighed and closed
her eyes. She couldn’t allow herself to see him again, not after tonight. And
that was how it should be. She loved Clive.

Her cell phone rang . . . Dominic’s
ringtone. Feeling faint, Amber answered her phone,

“What now?” she said.

“Your lucky number
eleven is unconscious,” he said.

It took Amber a moment.
“
What?
”

“Selavio pulled the
same exact shit he did with Gorski,” he said. “Remember at school?”

“Where is he?” said
Amber, swerving briefly into oncoming traffic.

“Selavio? I left him by
the side of the road, he’s still walking back—”

“No, where’s
Aaron?
”

“Never gave me his
address. I brought him back to my house.”

“I’m coming over,” said
Amber, and she squealed to a stop before he could tell her no. There were honks
behind her. As she turned around, her insides felt prickly and cold. This was
her fault.

At every high school
she attended, Clive did things to boys if they so much as glanced at her in the
hallway. Yeah, it was frustrating enough that every boy she dated was too
scared to acknowledge her existence in public, but she should have known Aaron
would be much worse. He
tried
to piss off Clive.

After she parked up his
driveway, Dominic stopped her at the door. Amber was breathless for a second,
thinking it was Aaron.

“You probably shouldn’t
be here,” he said, “at least not until Clive gets back. I don’t want him
thinking anything.”

“Where is he?”

“I left him down by the
freeway.”

“I mean Aaron.”

Dominic’s eyes narrowed
at her. “Amber, why do you do this to Clive?”

“Why do you even care?”

“Because his father is
an incredibly talented doctor, whom I’m honored to have as a guest in my house—and
he’s asked me to look after his son,” he said.

“Well,” she said,
“you’re not doing a very good job of it, are you?”

“
Just give Clive what he wants.”

“And what does he want,
Dominic?”

“He wants you.”

“Doesn’t he already
have me?” she said.

“You could be better
about it,” he said.

She pushed past him.
“Just let me see him.”

He chased her and
grabbed her arm. “You can’t right now,” he said

“Is he alright?” she
said, sounding more concerned than she would have liked.

“He’s being examined,”
said Dominic stiffly.

Her eyes widened. “By—by
Clive’s father?
”

“I didn’t know what
else to do,” said Dominic. “He wouldn’t wake up.”

***

Aaron
opened his eyes on a bed in a room he didn’t recognize. The air tasted sour,
prickly. Like static electricity and stale glue.

He
felt the back of his head, but there was no more pain. Had Clive pulled some
kind of Ju-Jitsu move on him?

Aaron
glanced around the bedroom. The only furniture was a dresser, topped with
a wrought iron sculpture depicting two cupids.
The
floor was layered with slivers of cut up photographs and empty cans of Red
Bull. Someone had made a collage with the photos that spanned the entire opposite
wall, and though he couldn’t say why, something about it didn’t look right.

Feeling
dizzy, Aaron sat up and swiveled his feet to the floor, stepping onto a
Swiss Army duffel bag that was stashed between the bed and
the windowsill. A baggage claim ticket on one of the straps revealed the owner.
Clive Selavio.

So
this was his bedroom.

Aaron’s gaze snapped back to the photos on the wall, and he realized
what
was off. They were all photos of the same person. Playing tennis in high
school. Swimming in middle school. Even younger. Baby pictures. Everywhere he
looked, a thousand snapshots of her blonde hair.

All
of Amber.

The
sour odor of static and dried glue seemed to thicken. He went to the sculpture
on the dresser. They weren’t cupids like he’d thought, they were simply babies.
Two
infants, their bodies wrapped around each other
in a sexually suggestive way. On the base of the sculpture, carved into the
iron, were the words:

Halves joined at birth

The Juvengamy Brotherhood

Hot with disgust, Aaron stared at the infants’ faces, sculpted into vague
expressions of ecstasy, as every puzzling facet of Amber and Clive’s abusive
relationship clicked into place.

They were juvengamy halves; their parents had put them together shortly
after birth. There were still a few who clung to the old belief that nature
intended it that way, even though juvengamy had been illegal for decades. It
damaged halves, thus Amber and Clive’s love-hate relationship.

Aaron’s
skin prickled with sweat, and he licked his lips, which had dried to scabs. If
Amber was Clive’s half, it didn’t make sense to feel jealous any more. He would
meet his own half in a week. So why, he asked himself as he stormed into the
hallway, did he still have the squeamish feeling that Clive had stolen her from
him?

Dominic
Brees was on his way in, though, and they collided in the doorway.

***

“
You?
”
said Aaron, but before he could act, Dominic grabbed his collar and slammed him
against the wall outside the door.

“This
is my house, fuckface, and nap time’s over. You owe me now for saving your life . . . Clive
almost killed you.”

“No
shit,” said Aaron, peeling Dominic’s fingers off his collar one by one. He
could see why Buff hated this guy. “What the hell was that anyway?”