In the Image of Grace (9 page)

I didn’t even hear my name. I’m pretty sure it was at
that point I fainted in Jeremy’s arms.

I opened my eyes and stared into Jeremy’s jacket. It
smelled like coffee and cigarettes. I could feel the cold night air
and my feet bouncing. I was being carried. Jeremy’s arms supported
me through the night. I turned my head and looked up at him. He was
biting his lip and looking straight forward. He was set in a slow
sprint. I turned my face back into him and let him carry me just a
little longer. I could hear a car speed by.

“Hey,” I said after a while.

“Thank God you’re all right,” he responded slowing
down his step.

“Where were you taking me?”

“Away from that madness.”

“You know you can put me down.”

“You sure?” He asked still holding onto me.

“Yes.”

“You feel okay?”

“As good as I’m going to feel. Really, you don’t have
to carry me.”

“Okay,” he said lowering me to the ground. He stopped
as I stood up straight. I stumbled a couple steps to the side.
“See, you can’t walk.”

“No, I think it’ll do me some good,” I said grabbing
onto his shoulder to steady myself. “I didn’t make a big scene or
anything did I?”

“No, you fainted very discreetly.”

“Thank goodness.” We walked along the sidewalk. It
wasn’t in very good condition. Every other square was cracked and
some squares were uplifted by the large oversized roots of trees.
We reached one spot where there was no sidewalk, just a black pit
blocked off with some wooden barricades. We walked around it in the
street. We hopped back up onto the sidewalk. I still held onto
Jeremy’s shoulder.

“You gonna be okay if I tell ya something?” Jeremy
asked me as we walked along.

“Hopefully,” I replied taking a deep breath making
sure I was awake and not dreaming.

“As I was carrying you out I heard your father say
something about a press conference or something to unveil you and
your sisters to the world.”

I stopped walking. “What,” I shouted. “He can’t do
that. It’s not even true!”

“You sure?”

“I want to be,” I declared rubbing my hands over my
face. “It has to be. There’s no way I am a clone. That’s not even
possible. There’s no way that strange woman back in that warehouse
there carried me in her womb.”

Jeremy looked me in the eyes. “Somehow I believe
him.”

“God, don’t even say that,” I shouted whacking him in
the shoulder.

“All I’m saying is if you look at you and you’re
sisters the only difference is height. Remember how I thought the
three of you were triplets?”

“If he does a press release of this could you imagine
what it would do to my sisters and me? And what about my mother?
Where is she? This is just insane.” I started walking again with my
arms hugged around my waist.

Jeremy followed me with his hand shoved his pockets.
We got to the El stop and walked up the stairs.

I stopped half way up the stairs. “Elizabeth dying
wasn’t any sign for those people.” Jeremy stood on the same step as
me. “She simply had enough.” I opened my mouth to say more and
nothing came out. I put my hands over my face. “Oh God,” was all I
could think of to say.

“C’mon,” Jeremy said walking up the steps. “We’ve got
to get you home.”

“Is it even my home?”I questioned up to him. He was
about three steps above me.

“I don’t know,” he stammered walking down the three
steps and grabbing my hand.

“I’m sorry for all of this. I didn’t want to drag you
into this mess.”

“You didn’t, I got myself into it.”

“Was it just because you thought I was pretty? That’s
what Clarissa said.”

“No, well, yes and no, you are very pretty, but it’s
more than that, you are one of the most unique people I think I
ever met.”

“Is that pre or post clone?”

“Both.” He nodded smiling. “It’d be kinda cool tellin
people that the girl I like is a clone.”

I attempted to smile and the two of us walked up to
the train platform together. We stood hand in hand waiting for the
train to come. There was one other person waiting. He wore a long
black coat and a pair of dirty painters pants. I could smell him
all the way across the platform. He smelled like old sweaty feet
and liquor. With him he had tons of plastic tarps wadded up and
shoved into clear garbage bags. He was swearing at himself and
swatting at something invisible above his head that seemed to be
bothering him.

“Damn, damn,” he kept saying and shaking his head.
Then he’d throw in a, “mother fucker” and swat at the air some
more. The train came after forever. We got on and sat on the seats
near the door.

I sat down in my seat and turned towards Jeremy. “How
could my father say Elizabeth dying was a sign? She didn’t die of
natural causes. She wasn’t ravaged by disease or killed in some
horrific accident, she killed herself. She took her own life. I
just can’t get over what he said.”

“I know,” Jeremy said.

“I can’t get over any of this.”

Jeremy reached up and took off the awful ear muffs I
still had on. I pulled off the sunglasses and folded them up and
put them in one of my jacket pockets’. Then he kissed me on the
train. It was the perfect answer. He didn’t have to say anything
more. I kissed him back. It helped lift my heart a little. I took
off the baseball hat and kissed him again.

…………………………………………….

Jeremy got off at my stop with me and walked me
home.

“You gonna be okay?” He asked as we stood in front of
my house.

“Will you come in for a while and just sit with me?”
I didn’t want him to leave.

“No, I’m just gonna go. You have some stuff you have
to tell your sisters and I feel it would prolly be best if I wasn’t
there.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

We had one last kiss goodnight and I let myself in
the front gate. I walked up the front walkway, up the stairs and
went to open the door when Clarissa whipped it open.

“I saw you kiss him,” she giggled. “You have a
boyfriend.”

“We have way more important things to talk about
besides that,” I affirmed walking into the house.

“Ms. Dunderfeltz has noticed that we have been
gallivanting around as she calls it. She sez she’s going to tell
our father.”

“That does not matter right now Clarissa.”

Clarissa and I went upstairs and went to Isabelle’s
room. She was at her desk beneath the window reading.

“Boy Isabelle,” I said. “I have some stuff to tell
you all.”

I told them about the whole evening, the sign and Mr.
Carl and our father and the image of Grace stuff and her picture on
the projector and we are in her image and these perfect beings and
then I stopped when I got to the cloning part.

“Okay, I don’t know if this part is true or not,” I
said looking at the both of them.

“What is it?” Isabelle asked with a concerned look in
her face.

“Our father claims we are clones of our mother.”

Both of them looked at me with blank stares. I shook
my head to affirm what I had said.

“No way,” Clarissa gasped softly. “There’s just no
way.”

“Well,” Isabelle pondered slowly. “It’s really not
that far off gene modification.”

“So you think it could really be true?” I asked
purely surprised.

“Maybe,” Isabelle said. “But it does sound kind of
farfetched.”

“But what about our mother?” Clarissa asked.

“I don’t know, we have to find her. Supposedly there
is going to be some kind of press release or press conference or
something soon.”

“Do we continue like we know nothing about this?”
Clarissa asked. It was a very good question.

“Maybe,” I said. “Until we find out more about our
mother.” I then realized I hadn’t told them about the whole her
supposedly going back to the home planet and us being carried by
strange woman, so I told them the rest of the story and about how I
fainted and everything. We decided that we had to find our mother’s
family or something. Maybe they could give us some information.
Maybe they could at least tell us what she was like, something.

The next morning Isabelle, Clarissa and I got off the
bus and I saw Jeremy running down the sidewalk at us. He didn’t
have on a hat and his hair was flying everywhere in the wind.
Instead of the plaid jacket he had on the night before we wore an
orange stripped sweater underneath a black hoodie. He slowed down
as he approached us and pushed his glasses up on his nose. We
walked over to the lawn just out of the way of everybody trying to
get to school and stopped.

“Listen,” he said. “I did some clone research last
night.”

“Is that how you greet your girlfriend?”Clarissa
asked giving us a mischievous smile.

Jeremy glanced over at her and then at me. He seemed
unsure on how to respond.

“Just go on,” I said moving us out of the
awkwardness.

“If you guys are really clones, your dad might not
technically be your biological father.”

“Huh,” we all responded.

“He might have donated what’s called somatic cells,
like skin cells or something, but that’s about it. Your biological
dad is technically your mother’s father. You would have needed his
sperm to have him be your biological father.”

“Ewe,” Clarissa said while getting distracted by a
boy approaching. The kid was probably also a freshman, short and
very skinny. His hair was closely cropped to his head and bleached
and his lip wore a ring.

“Hi Clarissa,” he said slowly walking by doing a
double take when he saw Clarissa with Isabelle and me.

She gave him a little wave and watched him walk
away.

“Okay, back on track,” Isabelle urged.

We were then interrupted again by somebody Jeremy
knew.

A well built looking kid walked up. I’m quite
possibly sure he was on some kind of sports team. “Hey man,” he
said to Jeremy, stopping next to him.

“What’s up?” Jeremy asked.

“Nothing much,” his friend said smiling. He then said
hey to Clarissa and Isabelle giving them a little head bob.

“Get out of here,” Jeremy said to his friend.

The bell then rang interrupting us for the last
time.

“I have more stuff to tell you about all this cloning
and stuff,” Jeremy said as we walked into school.

“I’ll stop by the library.”

“Okay,” he nodded giving me a little smile.

Jeremy and I walked down the crowded hallway towards
my locker.

“You all right?” He asked.

“I guess,” I said as we turned a left down the next
hallway.

“You sure?” He pressed.

“Yeah.”

“Really.”

“Yes,” I assured him poking his shoulder.

“Okay,” Jeremy said. “I go this way.” He pointed down
another hallway.

“Okay,” I said following him. I walked a couple steps
next to him, then grabbed his wrist and pulled him to a stop. I
stood up on my tip toes and gave him a nice soft kiss on the
lips.

“You know it’s against school policy to kiss in the
hallway,” he teased grinning.

“I’m okay with that,” I said walking away, leaving
him standing in the hallway.

………………………………………….

I went to my literature class and sat in a catatonic
state through the whole thing. I told Jeremy I was all right, but I
knew I really wasn’t. It all seemed like so much at once. I missed
Elizabeth so much and was feeling guilty because I was so busy
thinking about everything else going on I didn’t think about her
that much. I was thinking about our mother missing and Mr. Carl
lying to us and now our father being some sort of cult leader and
they worshipped my mother, but where did she go and Jeremy was so
great to have around and thinking of him made me happy and that
made me feel guilty all over again because I wasn’t sure if I had
the right to feel happy when my sister was dead and she never had
the chance to lead a regular teenage life. Her whole life she was
trapped in that house with us. She only knew one way out.

“Charlotte.” I could hear someone calling my name in
the background somewhere, but I didn’t respond because I started
thinking about what if I really was a clone? What would that mean
to me and Jeremy said our father wasn’t technically our father, so
who was our father then? Then I kept having those dreams with the
screaming and somehow I knew it was our mother. My neurons were
moving at lightning speed. I could feel them clashing around in my
cranium. My head started to pound. I put my elbows up on my desk
and rubbed my temples with the heels of my hands. “Charlotte,” I
heard again this time louder. I looked up and it was Mrs. Brown my
literature teacher, which would make sense because I was sitting in
her class. I kept my hands on my temples and rolled my eyes up.

“You need to pay attention. Part of your grade is
participation,” she said. That day Mrs. Brown had on a quilted vest
with horse heads all over it with a yellow turtleneck underneath.
It was quiet awful. I shook my head yes and looked back down at my
desk.

…………………………………………………..

The rest of my day continued in a daze until it was
study hall where I got a library pass. I quickly walked down the
hallway to the library passing by lockers and open classroom doors.
When I walked into the library I was greeted by large rectangles of
light splayed all over the carpet and tables. Under the window
people sat at all the computers, here and there at the tables kids
sat studying, or at least they pretended to study. I found Jeremy
in the back corner of the library shelving some books. The metal
cart next to him was full of them. He looked up at me through his
glasses and smiled. I thought he looked really cute, the light from
the sun that squeezed its way down the aisle added an extra sparkle
to his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“Everything,” I responded with very little
enthusiasm. It hadn’t been a very good day for me. Jeremy put the
book he was holding on the shelf and came over and squeezed my
shoulders.