I.D. (6 page)

Yes. The voice. The face. The mannerisms.

It was all familiar.
Why?

“Been? Uh, home. Holly, I don’t know how you could—?

“Did you find Dr. Black?”

“I mean, have we ever—?”

Eve swallowed the rest of the question.

It was a short name.
That’s what Mr. Wainwright had said. About the doctor from A Better Chance.

“Who’s Dr. Black?” Eve demanded.

Holly’s smile faded. “You told
me
about him. Remember? Over the phone? The clone guy. You and Caroline tried looking him up, but there were about a million Dr. Blacks listed in the physician directory—?

“Holly, I never called you. I’ve never known about you until right this moment!”

“Wait a minute. What’s your name?”

“Eve!”

“You’re
not
the girl…”

“No! Who did you
think
I was?”

Holly’s mascara and eyeliner seemed to darken as her face grew ashen. “Her name was Danielle.”

A Boy in Kansas City. Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Female, Manitoba. Rheumatoid arthritis.

Massive stroke. Male, Guatemala.

Alive?

All, so far.

Their lives, I’m afraid, are in the hands

of the Fayette girl
.

“W
HAT CITY, PLEASE?”
S
QUAWKED
the mechanical voice.

Eve massaged her aching forehead. She focused on Holly across the bedroom. “Uh…Huddlestone—?”

Holly looked up from her desk chair. “Huddleston,” she corrected. “Huddleston Falls.”

Eve repeated it. Softly.

If she kept her head still, it didn’t hurt.

“Name, please?” the voice asked.

“Forbes.”

Danielle Forbes of Huddleston Falls. That was all Holly could find out. The information was scribbled in one of Caroline’s English notebooks.

Holly had tried to piece together the phone conversation. Danielle had sounded desperate. She’d known about the cloning and the disease. And she had been determined not to get what Caroline had gotten.

Holly didn’t know what had happened to Danielle. She just stopped calling. Never left a return phone number.

But she’d gotten further than I have. She knew about Dr. Black.

And maybe more. Maybe she’d met him. Maybe she’d figured out how to beat the disease.

Maybe she was still alive.

Danielle was Eve’s only hope.

“The number is…555-9126,” said the recorded voice.

Eve scribbled it down and quickly called.

Holly paced her bedroom floor. “I can’t stand this.”

At the other end, a
click.
A pickup. “Hello, you’ve reached the Forbes family. No one can come to the phone right now…”

It was scratchy. A bad connection.

The static hurt.

But the voice seemed familiar.

Like mine.

“What?” Holly was gaping at her.
“Why are you looking like that, Eve?”

“…Please leave a message at the sound of the tone.”

“I think—it sounds like—? Eve stammered, hand over the receiver.
She’s alive.

Beeeeeep.

“Hello?” Eve said into the phone. “This is Eve. I’m…what Caroline was, only a year younger—than
Danielle
, not Caroline—I’m two years younger than her, or
you
, but I need to find Dr. Black; I think I’m getting what you had, and—whenever the next train to Huddleston Falls is, from North Champlain, that’s the one I’m taking. I’ll call you from there, okay? Sorry about this. But I’m kind of in a hurry. See you.”

She hung up the phone and groaned. “She’s not going to understand one word of that.”

Holly was putting her coat back on. “I did. You were brilliant. Now let’s get out of here.”

Six hours.

Each bump was a wrenching jolt.

The clacking of the tracks seemed to be taunting her:
Dead-dead. Dead-dead. Dead-dead.

Sleep was out of the question. The pain wouldn’t ease up.

Neither would the worry.

But it’ll be gone soon. Danielle survived. She knows how to beat this.

Eve decided to rewrite the letter she had started—slowly, parceling out the words a few at a time, as long as her aching fingers could stand it. She told her parents
everything.
Where she had been, where she was headed. By the time they got it, she’d be heading home.

She hoped.

Love, Eve
she wrote, and then carefully inserted the letter into an envelope and sealed it.

As the train pulled into Huddleston Falls, Eve pressed her nose to the window. Darkness had swallowed up the suburban countryside, leaving a cozy tapestry of lights. The station was a fluorescent beacon in the midst of town. Several weary commuters stood at the platform, catching the end of evening rush hour.

No clone in sight.

Stepping off the train, Eve clutched the metal railing. Her ankles were screaming at her. She gazed up and down, watching people walk briskly to waiting cars. She dropped her letter into a mailbox near the newspaper vending machines.

And then she saw her.

A girl, wrapped in a thick, hooded down parka, emerging from a station door farther down the platform. She was gazing in the opposite direction. Eve couldn’t make out her features in the shadow of the hood, but the height was exactly Eve’s.

“Danielle?” she called out.

The girl spun around. “Eve?”

Eve hobbled toward her, gritting her teeth with the pain. “I am
so
glad to see you! I saw Holly. She told me all about—?

She stopped.

Blue eyes.

Blond hair.

“Oh. Sorry,” Eve said. “I thought you were…”

“Unbelievable,” the girl said, staring at Eve with wonder. “It’s as if I’m looking at her.”

Eve nodded. “So…you must be Danielle’s…”

“Older sister. Martina.”

Eve sat on a bench. She was short of breath. “Well, I guess…you know what happened…with the clones and all. And Dr. Black.”

“Yes, but we had no idea he’d made another one—after Danielle.” Smiling, Martina sat next to Eve. “Guess he still had some leftover genes.”

“You have no idea how frustrating it’s been—well, I guess you do, I mean, Danielle has been through this, but—oh, I am
so
relieved, Martina—my head hurts, my neck is killing me—?

“I’ll take you to our house. The car’s in the lot.”

Martina helped Eve up. Arm in arm, they walked toward the end of the platform.

“I can’t wait to meet Danielle,” Eve said. “I think it’s so weird to have, like, an identical copy of myself. Alive.”

Martina turned. Her smile had vanished.

Eve’s heart stopped.

“You thought…” Martina’s voice trailed off.

“She’s not?” Eve asked.

Martina shook her head. “About a year ago.”

And Eve suddenly realized whose voice she’d heard on that answering machine.

Martina’s.

Not Danielle’s.

Case File: 0918

Name: Danielle Forbes

Age: 14

First contact: 39:11:27

“D
ON’T…MAKE…A SOUND,”
Martina whispered.

She and Eve tiptoed through the first floor of the Forbes house. A TV laugh track brayed from a room near the stairs.

“Hi!” Martina called out cheerfully.

Two absent-sounding hellos echoed from the den.

Martina gestured frantically for Eve to go up.

The first step was like climbing a fence. Eve’s calf muscles felt as if they’d rip. Her ankles wobbled. Her hips were on fire.

“Hurry!” Martina whispered.

“Help me!” Eve whispered back.

Martina took her arm. Eve leaned on her and painfully stepped upward.

“This happened to Danielle, too,” Martina said. “Some kind of clone disease, huh?”

“It’s happening to other kids across the country. Not just us clones.”

Eve grimaced. She wasn’t sure what hurt more, the physical pain or the despair.

She’s dead. She had my symptoms. She never found Dr. Black.

She was my last lead.

But Martina had insisted they come home. Look at Danielle’s stuff. Try to continue the search.

Martina had hope. Which was a good thing.

She would have to have enough for two.

Eve was exhausted when she reached the top of the stairs. “I…have to lie down,” she said.

Straight ahead was an open door into what must have been Martina’s bedroom. It looked neat but lived-in.

Martina was quietly opening a door to the left, flicking on a light switch.

The room was empty of furniture. Musty-smelling. Its wood-plank floor was covered with a thin coat of dust.

“This was Danielle’s room.” Martina’s whisper echoed faintly against the bare walls as she closed the door behind them and walked toward a closet. “Mom and Dad wanted to get rid of all visual reminders. They’re still so torn up. Which is why they mustn’t see you. Anyway, they stored some of Danielle’s stuff in here, the sentimental things they couldn’t bear to throw out. They would kill me if they knew I was doing this.”

“Don’t they know about the clones?”

Martina pulled open the closet door. She began rummaging around a pile of cardboard boxes inside. “Danielle managed to track Caroline down, not long before the end. She told Mom and Dad, and they were pretty freaked out.”

“How about Bryann and Alexis?”

“Who?”

“The other clones. Did Danielle know about them, too?”

Martina was carrying out a box now, setting it on the floor. “No. But she suspected there were others. Here—
this
is what I was looking for.”

She pushed aside an old bike chain. Under it was a small, battered spiral notebook. She began flipping through it. “Danielle had this with her on the bus when she died.”

“She died on a
bus
?”

Martina nodded. “She was looking for Dr. Black. By that time she was really sick. Mom and Dad wouldn’t allow her to go, so she snuck out.”

She held out the notebook, open. Eve took it and read: