July 15, 2090, Bainbridge Island, Washington

Caroline Olstead

At ten o’clock exactly, Angie pops into my toll booth with a cup of coffee in each hand, just like she has every Monday morning for the last two decades.

“I saw that little whore neighbor of yours at Starbucks,” she says, setting one cup on the counter beside me and fishing a handful of sweetener packets from her pocket. “She was flirting with the boy at the register, holding up the whole line.”

She’s talking about Camden, Twila’s daughter. I flick the switch under the counter, which sets the sign outside my booth to read “Lane Closed” in red neon. I am allowed to do this twice a day—fifteen minutes in the morning and sixty minutes at lunch.

“Better her hustling baristas for free scones than out at my place bothering Spud all day long,” I say.

Camden’s a year older than Spud and when they were little she was so sweet to him, almost like a big sister. Things changed though once the kids got closer to puberty, and these days... well, let’s just say she’s probably not the best influence in the world. But a crummy friend’s better than no friend and that’s what Spud would have otherwise. Once, I walked into his room to find the two of them on the bed, Camden’s hand in Spud’s shorts. They panicked and scrambled apart, but I just closed the door. None of my concern what two adolescents do.

“Does Spud even like girls?” Angie asks. “I never see him with people at all except you.”

“He’s not the social type,” I say. “Just like his daddy, you remember? He’d rather read books, or hang around with cats and snakes. Spud’s got this stray pit bull trained up to wait for him on our front steps all day. The thing’s probably rabid. I keep telling him it’s only a matter of time before the dog turns on him and then he’ll be sorry. Can’t trust pit bulls.”

Angie puts the lid on her cup and says she ought to be getting back to her own booth. I thank her for the coffee and tell her I’ll stop by before I go to lunch.

I’ve still got ten minutes left on my break, so I step out for a cigarette. We aren’t allowed to smoke in our booths. I go over to the benches underneath the big green sign that says Bainbridge Island Bridge & Ferry Terminal. The sign is a lie. There are no ferries anymore. Only the bridge, which was built in 2070 to connect the island to Seattle when the last tech boom hit and every brand new baby executive wanted a mansion in the woods, but still close to the city. The island’s population tripled almost overnight. They were running two dozen ferries a day and the state built the bridge—ten miles long, a marvel of engineering—to accommodate all the extra traffic. A lot of town folks took toll jobs when it opened, Angie and myself included. But then when the bubble burst (whatever that means) nine years later and the economy turned bad, the state stopped running the ferries entirely. Now anyone who wants on or off the island has to cross the bridge, or drive their own boat. But who has the money for a boat anymore? No one, that’s who.

At peak traffic times, I don’t just take toll fares. I also have to ask drivers what’s their purpose for leaving the island. If the answer isn’t professional or medical, I can’t allow them through. The state’s rules, not mine, I tell them. With only one way off the island, the bridge can get overburdened quickly. Too many cars at once, and it becomes ten miles of parking lot. So it’s only essential trips during rush hour, no exceptions. I had to remind Spud of that this very morning. He asked if we could go over to Seattle tonight, but I said no.

I don’t feel too bad for the crossers I turn back. Everyone has had to make sacrifices since the market tanked. Some of us more than others. If it weren’t for the bad economy, I wouldn’t have Spud with me. This isn’t to say I don’t love my nephew (that’s how I refer to him). I just mean things would have been a lot easier for both of us if he was able to stay where he belonged.

When the recession was at its worst, the University of Michigan lost funding for its genetics program and had to close down their whole kiddie-copy lab—couldn’t even take care of what they’d made anymore. They called me one day out of the blue and said as next-of-kin I had to come get the boy. So I drove three days straight to pick up this two-year-old I’d never met, never even seen a picture of. Not that I didn’t already know what he looked like. He looked just like Parker when Parker was two. There was a lot of paperwork, then this sophomore work-study nanny helped me strap him into a car seat and handed me a stack of files and a stuffed sea turtle she said was the boy’s favorite thing in the world. She had tears in her eyes when she waved goodbye to us and then there I was with this toddler. I was so totally unprepared to have him in my life. A lot of the time, I still feel unprepared. We drove back to Washington with him babbling to his turtle the whole way. Sweet kid. He had Parker’s giant, oblong head, squinty brown eyes, and straight hair on top. I couldn’t help but call him Spud.

Potato Head. Parker Potato. When we were kids, my little brother dubbed me Carrie Carrot for spite, but I said it didn’t work that way since my head looked nothing like a carrot. When mom would hear me call him Parker Potato, she’d say, “Don’t be cruel.” But she thought Spud was all right, and after a while it was the only name either of us ever used for him.

This one, too, just the same. Spud, too. Spud two. Spud, also. No one calls him Parker, which is for the best I think. Being a junior is hard, especially when you’ve never met the senior. So he’s Spud at home, Spud at school, Spud at church.

Spud will never know he’s a clone and neither will anyone else. I made that promise to myself from the beginning. The University of Michigan clone program got a lot of press when it first started, none of it good. And since the lab closed, Spud’s peers from Ann Arbor haven’t fared well on the whole. The families who’ve been open about their children’s origins have taken a lot of flak. Just six months ago, there was a story in the news about a little clone girl who got her skull bashed in by a boy from her school. He hit her with a bat while others cheered him on. These days it’s fine to be gay or handicapped or pretty much any weird religion, but Lord help a kid if he’s a biological double of another human being. They’re the new schoolyard pariahs, clones are. As if the boy doesn’t take enough abuse already just for being himself.

When Spud asks about his daddy, I tell him stories about how he was an American hero.

When Spud asks about his mother, I say, “That’s none of your concern.”

It’s hard, me being the only family the boy’s got. Sometimes, I worry I’m not enough. I mean, he was supposed to be raised in a state-of-the-art lab with top teachers and high-tech accommodations. All I’ve got to offer him here on Bainbridge is a dinky old house and crummy, crumbling public schools. Money is tight. I can’t even afford things like summer camps and book-of-the-month clubs for him. And Lord knows I’m no great intellectual role model myself. Spud’s already past the point in school where I can be of much help on his homework, even if he wanted it.

I think about all of this while I smoke my cigarette under that lie of a sign. What’s got me going on this whole train of thought, aside from Angie’s remarks, is that today is Spud’s birthday. His thirteenth. He wanted me to take him to the natural history museum in the city. What kind of kid wants to go to a museum for his birthday? Spud, of course. But, like I said, I had to tell him no. It’ll be rush hour by the time I get off work, and, birthday or no birthday, you need a damn good reason to cross the bridge at rush hour.

The best I can do for him today is cake and candles. Except even in that, I’m falling short. We’re out of eggs and milk, both of which I’ll need for the cake. I call Spud to see if he can run down to the store to get some, but he doesn’t pick up his phone, which means his hands are busy doing God-knows-what.