Thirty-Four

At lunch, Todd Jameson asked Shawna to the prom, which meant that of the three of us, I was the only one without a date. But it didn’t matter. How could I possibly be worried about the prom when my sister was in a hospital bed, pretty much on the verge of death? Maybe I had the power to save her, or maybe the man behind my utterly messed-up life was just feeding me more of his twisted lies. But could I take that chance and be the one responsible for hammering that last nail into Annie’s coffin? I didn’t feel like I had a choice in the matter. I was stuck in Shallow Pond for at least another year, perhaps for all eternity.

But there was a prom coming up and I was supposed to be all excited about it. In fact, judging by the reactions of my friends, I was supposed to be freaking out that I didn’t yet have a date. We still had more than a month to go before the big day, but by the way Jenelle and Shawna were acting it seemed like the fate of the entire world hung in the balance.

“I don’t understand why Zach hasn’t asked you yet,” Jenelle said for what must have been the fiftieth time. The school day was over and they were both waiting for me at my locker. Either I was moving too slowly or Shawna had to pee—she was dancing around and hopping from foot to foot, which couldn’t have been easy in her platform sandals.

“It’s not like we’re a thing thing,” I said.

“I don’t know what that means,” Jenelle said.

“It’s just that it’s kind of complicated. I can’t explain.”

“You never can.” Jenelle sighed. “Look, anyone can see he’s crazy about you. He’s probably scared to ask you to the prom because he thinks you’re going to say no. Guys hate rejection.”

“You say that like there’s someone out there who likes rejection.”

“Boy alert, eleven o’clock,” Shawna said.

“Two o’clock,” Jenelle and I corrected her in unison, when we saw Zach walking toward me.

“It’s about time,” Jenelle said. “Okay, catch you later. Call if you need a ride.” The two of them scurried away so that I could talk to Zach alone.

I was still seeing Zach every day at school. We said hi to each other as we passed in the halls or grumbled about our English teacher and her doddering ways, but mostly we didn’t talk. We hadn’t spent any actual time together since the night we’d tracked down Donald.

“I hear your sister’s doing better,” Zach said.

“Yeah, well, as good as can be expected,” I said. I heard the bitter edge to my voice and tried to compensate for it by saying, “She’s awake now, which is nice.”

“I feel like you’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

“I see you all the time.”

“You know what I mean.”

I couldn’t meet his eyes, not because I was afraid he’d see through me, but because I was afraid of what I would feel. What if I looked into those eyes and I lost it? What if there was still some undeniable physical pull between us if I gave it a chance? We were made for each other, after all, and I remembered how I’d always lost control whenever I was with Zach.

He reached a hand out to grab my backpack, and I shied away. “Come to the pond with me,” he said.

“I should get to the hospital,” I said, but the truth was I wasn’t sure if I was going to the hospital. I wasn’t ready to give Donald an answer yet.

“I’ll drive you over,” he said. “But first we need to talk.”

The surface of the pond still looked frozen, but there was water around the edges and I could tell the ice wasn’t all that thick. It would all be gone soon. The weather was warm and the ground muddy, with only patches of dirty snow here and there. Even though the coming of spring should have been a happy thing, I felt sad inside.

I walked up to the edge of the pond. A breeze blew across it, carrying the cold off the ice. It felt like someone had opened a freezer door. I shivered, and Zach put his arm around my shoulders. I stiffened, but I didn’t pull away from him.

“He’s staying at a motel out near the university,” Zach said.

“Who?”

“Your father.”

“He’s not my father.” The angry tone of my words surprised me.

“I went to see him,” Zach said. “We talked for a while. I know you don’t like him, and I can’t say that I blame you, but he isn’t evil.”

“You don’t know what he did to Annie,” I said.

“Actually, I do. He told me.”

“It was incest.”

“You yourself said he’s not your father,” Zach said.

I glared at him. “Well, it’s morally wrong, abusive. And you still think he’s a good guy?”

“I didn’t say that. He’s got problems, Barbara. He was too much in love with Susie and never was able to get over losing her.”

“So, that makes what he did all right? Lots of people lose people they love and they don’t go around creating clones.”

“If he hadn’t, then neither of us would be here. Doesn’t that sort of freak you out?”

“This whole thing freaks me out!” I screamed. “I wish that I wasn’t here. I wish that I’d never been created by some mad scientist who couldn’t just join a support group or something.” I removed Zach’s arm from my shoulder and stormed back to his car. I didn’t get in, though. I could see my reflection in the passenger-side window and it was like looking at Annie. I felt hot tears stinging my eyes. I thought of Annie in that stupid hospital bed and was reminded of how unfair her whole life had been. Donald was probably lying about being able to fix her—he probably didn’t have a clue. But it didn’t matter. If there was even a tiny little chance that I could somehow save my sister, I had to do it.

“I’m not accepting that scholarship,” I said.

“What?”

I wasn’t sure if Zach hadn’t heard me because I’d spoken so softly or if he was incredulous that I would turn down a free ride to college.

“I’m staying here in Shallow Pond,” I said. “I’m not going to college in the fall.”

“Listen,” Zach said. “If this is about me, there’s something I think you should know.”

His response was so much like Donald’s that I couldn’t help myself. I spun around and shouted, “What is it with you two? Do you really think I’d stay in this crappy town because of some dumb boy? Do you really think I am that pathetic?”

Zach staggered a few steps backward, as if I’d physically taken a swing at him. I yanked open the car door and got in, slamming the door after me. A few seconds later Zach got in on the driver’s side.

“I’m not staying in Shallow Pond,” Zach said. I wanted to tell him how that had no bearing one way or another on my plans, but he stopped me before I could say anything. “I always felt like I could never know entirely who I was because of that big, unanswered question about my origin,” he continued. “I imagined all the time what they must have been like, my parents. I figured that some day I’d find them, and then my whole life would come together and I’d finally understand who I really was. But now that I’ve found out where I came from, I’m still as lost as ever, maybe more so. I think I need to go somewhere, take some time to think things over to make sense of it all.”

“Are you going back to the convent?” I asked.

“No, not there. I don’t really know where I’m going. I’m going to get in my car and drive, go as far as I can, or to wherever feels like a good place to stop for a while.”

I imagined Zach out there, driving down some endless highway against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. I was jealous. Why did he get to leave while I had to stay?

“It sounds nice,” I said.

“The thing is,” Zach said, “I’m going pretty soon. I made some arrangements to take final exams early. Donald helped me with that, actually, and, well … ” He looked down at his feet. For the first time, I saw a Zach who was entirely different from the boy I’d known. He looked nervous and unsure of himself. He looked the way a teenage guy was supposed to look, and it was oddly reassuring.

I smiled at him, in spite of myself. Maybe I’d fallen for Zach simply because I was biologically programmed to. Maybe he only became interested in me because it was embedded somewhere in his DNA. But a part of me wondered whether, if we’d been different people, kids who’d led perfectly normal lives, who didn’t have some weird past life controlling our present life, we could have found each other and fallen in love anyway. I felt so cheated by the whole stupid thing.

“Look, it’s not anything against you,” Zach said. “I like you, but at the same time, I feel like … ” He hesitated, and I jumped in.

“You feel like you don’t know whether you like me be-cause of who I am, or because years ago our clones fell in love with each other.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I’m being stupid. It probably all sounds like some excuse.”

“It’s not stupid,” I said. “As soon as I realized who you were, what you were, I knew I couldn’t trust my feelings.”

“It sucks,” Zach said. “It really sucks.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But remember, I just wanted to be friends anyway.”

This got him to crack a smile and even let out a short chuckle. I held my hand out to him.

“Friends?” I asked.

“Friends,” he agreed, and shook it.