ABBY TOOK HER TIME GOING DOWNSTAIRS, a hand pressed over her pounding heart. There had to be another explanation for the gorgeous guy in her room. No one could have successfully cloned humans almost eighteen years ago and kept it secret. Someone would have talked by now … right? In her experience, scientists tended to have pretty big egos when it came to breakthrough discoveries. How was it no one knew?
And why did Marty look like JD’s identical twin? Marty said Dr. Kane was in charge at Jason Farms. Since Helen Kane was the high school principal, Dr. Kane must be JD’s dad, which explained a lot about JD’s extremist views and his claim of having an eccentric scientific father. It did not explain why a man would clone his own son. How weird was that?
And intelligent! From what little interaction they’d had, Marty was healthy and perfectly cognizant. A little odd from living in an underground lab all his life, but other than that … it was beyond amazing. At some point, she would have to ask her dad why they educated them.
Abby reached the bottom of the stairs, thankful her dad had gone to bed, and crept across the wooden floor into the kitchen. She took a large plate from the cupboard and set it on the counter. What would a guy want to eat at quarter to ten at night? She pulled the peanut butter out from the pantry then put it back. What if he’s allergic to something?
She rummaged through the fridge and pantry looking for a decent hypoallergenic selection. Settling on a turkey sandwich, she added cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes, but spread the mayo and mustard thin, in case he didn’t like it. She grabbed the plate, a package of Oreos, and a bag of Doritos, and headed for the stairs. She paused and went back, set everything on the counter, shoved a bottle of blue Gatorade under her arm, and picked up everything again. She’d gathered all the food she could hold, but how in the world was she going to knock?
She managed to kick the door three times with the side of her foot. Marty opened it, staring at her with those deep brown eyes. Gah, he was even cute bald, although technically, his head was covered in fine stubble. She edged past him, and he shadowed her as she set the food on her bed. She whispered, “Shut the door!” and he jumped to it.
Obedient. A mark in the pro column. Add another pro for: looks like JD but doesn’t behave like JD.
She nodded at the food. “Go ahead.”
He sank onto his knees beside the bed and stared at the food like it had just spoken or something.
“What’s wrong?”
He drew a slice of tomato out of the sandwich. “What is this?”
He didn’t know what a tomato was? O-kay. “It’s a tomato.”
“Tomato. I’ve never had one before. They don’t let us eat tomatoes.”
“Why not?”
“Color causes fights. We all want to have it, but there’s never enough for everyone.”
What was this, some sort of sterile Lord of the Flies?
Marty brought the tomato slice to his tongue and tasted it. His eyebrows rose and he tucked the tomato back inside the sandwich. Well, he was certainly a tidy clone.
She winced at the word clone, still not quite convinced he was for real. Maybe Dr. and Mrs. Kane had twins and gave one up for research? She shuddered. No matter how hard she tried to find a logical explanation, nothing seemed to make sense.
Especially since Marty had said there were more than fifty like him.
Marty ate slowly, savoring every morsel like a death-row inmate eating his last meal. Abby opened the Gatorade and set it beside his plate on the floor. He eyed the liquid as he chewed his sandwich and didn’t speak until he swallowed.
“Is it water?”
“It’s like juice. It’s sweet.”
“What color is this?”
“Blue.”
His lips stretched into a slow smile. “Blue like the sky.”
He set his sandwich down and scooted the plate closer to him, like he was afraid she might take it away before he finished. Then he lifted the Gatorade to his lips and drank.
His eyes went wide again. What on earth did they feed them at the Farm? Then she remembered seeing the cans of cauliflower and the instant mashed potatoes. Bland colored—and tasting—food.
Martyr set the Gatorade down. “When I came outside, the sky was black. Why was it not blue with white clouds and a massive star?”
“Um, because it’s nighttime. And also because it’s Alaska. Trust me, I’m still getting used to the hours-of-daylight issue here.” But he probably didn’t know what that meant either. She reached for her bedside table, opened the small drawer, and pulled out a stack of postcards. Uncle Pete didn’t own a cell phone and hated email, but always kept in touch with Abby with short-and-sweet postcards. She had dozens from Philly, and dozens more from various places around the globe.
She shuffled the stack until she found a card with a picture of Myrtle Beach. “This is what you were hoping to see, I bet.” She passed him the postcard. “Depending on the weather, the sky here could be blue in the morning. Well, by eight a.m. or so anyway.”
His JD Kane eyes danced over the picture. It was so weird to be with him and not feel like she had to have a can of pepper spray ready.
“It’s beautiful,” Marty said. “So much is beautiful in the outside.” He looked at her then, his expression so intense she had to look away. Too much of JD in that look.
“Yeah … nature rocks.” She passed him a postcard of the Philadelphia skyline during the day. “But check this out.”
His eyes shifted as he studied the postcard. “What’s this place?”
“It’s a city. Alaska has a few cities, but they’re far from here and are nothing like that one. Not too many skyscrapers in Alaska.” She paused, then answered before he asked. “A skyscraper is a really, really tall building.”
His eyes flickered back and forth between the postcards. She grabbed the Oreos and slid the tray out of the wrapper. “Have you ever had cookies?”
“No.” He set the postcards on the floor in front of his plate and took another sip of Gatorade.
She grabbed an Oreo and popped it whole into her mouth, then remembered how black they made her teeth. She was such an idiot. She dumped a few cookies on Marty’s plate then pushed the bag across the room where she couldn’t reach it.
Marty picked up a cookie and bit into it. His face scrunched up, like eating new foods was a serious job requiring deep thought and concentration and he might have to give a detailed report on it. Suddenly he grinned, his teeth caked in chocolate. “I like cookies.”
Abby laughed. She watched him eat until all the food was gone. He leaned back against her bed and pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. It was eerie how much he looked like JD, with the exception of the lack of hair. His demeanor was completely different, though. Hesitant. Nervous. His eyes were always observing, collecting information. And the sound of his own voice didn’t seem to thrill him like it did JD.
She took in his clothes for the first time. He wore gray sweatpants and a white lab coat over a white T-shirt. His feet were bare and pink.
Abby brushed the back of her knuckles over the top of one foot. “Your feet are freezing!”
He jolted at her touch and scrambled to the side.
“I’m sorry.” She crawled over to her dresser and opened her sock drawer. She had a pair of men’s socks in there somewhere. Dad had loaned them to her once when he took her skiing at Liberty Mountain Resort.
That had been a joke. She hoped Alaska’s jagged peaks would not inspire Dad to try again.
She spotted the cream-colored socks with the wide red band and pulled them out. “Here.” She tossed them to Marty, who eyed them curiously. Was he kidding? “Don’t tell me you don’t know what socks are?”
“I’ve never …”
She scooted up to him and took the socks back. She scrunched her fingers up inside one and held it out. “Give me your foot.”
He extended one leg. “The doctors wear socks, inside their shoes. We’re not allowed shoes.”
Wild, dark hairs stood out on his pale ankle. Apparently he could grow hair just fine. Abby stretched the sock over his toes and past his heel, leaving the long sock bunched around his ankle. “Does someone shave your head?”
He nodded, but kept his eyes glued to his foot. “J:3s have grooming every Thursday morning. They shave our heads and faces and clip our fingernails and toenails. That’s when we also get bandages if we’re hurt.”
Abby readied the second sock, and he offered his foot without her having to ask. “Once a week? For Band-Aids?”
“They don’t always discover our injuries right away, and we don’t like to say.”
“Why not?” You’d think the scientists wouldn’t want the clones bleeding to death.
“Because we get marks for fighting.”
Marks? As Abby pulled the other sock on, she noticed a silver ring poking out from the cuff on his pant leg. She pushed up his pant leg and drew the ring out. “What’s this?”
“A stinger.”
Abby’s felt her breath snag. She leaned closer to study the crude device. “How does it work?”
“The people watching through the cameras make it sting.”
A remote-controlled taser? “When?”
“When we get out of control.”
“Does that happen often?”
He shook his head. “No one likes to be stung.”
Abby swallowed back a sarcastic remark and patted his shin. “All done.”
“Thank you.” He pulled his knees back up to his chest and wiggled his toes. “They are soft and warm … and red.” He stroked the red band on his right leg.
Her mind raced with questions. “What’s a mark?”
“A consequence for misbehavior. One mark is one hour with a doctor in their lab room.”
“What happens in the lab?”
“Different things. It depends on the doctor. Some—like your father—are kind and just want to talk. But most test how our bodies react to different vials.”
Abby trembled at his words. “They do pharmaceutical testing on you?”
“That’s right.” Marty had apparently heard the word pharmaceutical from the doctors before.
It ticked Abby off to hear her dad was involved in this Farm business. That he knew human clones existed and was party to using them as guinea pigs … She exhaled through her nose to calm herself and chewed her thumbnail. She should be thankful Dad was one of the kind, talking doctors at least. “You had a mark with my dad? What did he ask you?”
“Much of what you are asking.”
“I still don’t understand why they told you the world is toxic. Maybe to keep you from trying to escape. Why did you escape?”
“I wanted to see the sky before I expired.”
Abby’s heart broke at the desperation in his voice. Right. He’d said something about that. His one dream in the world was to see the sky and the outlaw scientists wouldn’t let him? Insanity.
“Do you think they also lied about expiring?” Marty’s gaze was filled with so many things: hope, desperation, confusion, fear. “That maybe I won’t expire on April twenty-eight?”
She grimaced. Expiring. Beyond disturbing. But why would they kill their own clones? “I don’t know, Marty. We should ask my dad.”
Marty hung his head. “Will he make me go back?”
She threw up her hands. “I don’t know. I won’t tell him yet. I need to think about this a little more.” If Marty weren’t a carbon copy of JD, her skepticism would be greater. But she knew JD’s gene pool. The guy couldn’t act. Marty’s behavior, the things he said, the way he said them … no one could pretend that. Not even for a very sick and twisted joke.
Marty was real.
Abby went into her closet and pulled out her purple sleeping bag with the fuchsia lining. She had used it for her trip to Philly, then for the first night in the house until she could unpack her bedding. She rolled it out along the wall across from her bed and checked to make sure the door was locked. “Sorry. This is all I have, but it’s warm.”
Marty didn’t seem to know or care that purple and fuchsia were girly colors that no guy his age would be caught dead sleeping in. She gave him one of the pillows off her bed, explained how to wiggle inside the sleeping bag, then zipped him up. Once he was settled she rolled up the bag of Doritos and set them on the floor next to the Oreos.
She needed to go brush her teeth, but she didn’t dare leave his side. Not yet.
“What are the names of these colors?” Marty asked, looking at the sleeping bag.
“Purple and pink—hot pink.”
“The floor is also purple and pink hot pink?”
She snickered. “No. The outside of the sleeping bag is purple, like my comforter. The floor and walls are lavender, which is a lighter shade of purple. Purple is my favorite color.”
“Red is my favorite color.”
She smiled at their pre-school-level conversation. “The inside of the sleeping bag is hot pink, which is a very bright shade of pink.”
“Sleeping bag.”
Abby crawled under her comforter and watched Marty. He stared at the ceiling for a moment before turning to face her. His eyes were unnerving. They were as dark and insatiable as JD’s, yet Marty’s presence didn’t threaten. He was everything good about JD—and unique. Sweet and innocent and nice to talk to. A clone.
A thought popped into her head that both amused and shamed her.
Can I keep him?
She clicked off the light next to her bed. “Good-night, Marty.”
“Yes, it is, Daughter Abby. A very good night. Thank you.”