“WHAT CITY, PLEASE?” SQUAWKED 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.