LUCY
Her jaw drops.
I strike a pose. “You like it?”
She makes an incoherent sound in her throat. Boris noses at her hand, but she ignores him. He plods over to me, sitting by my feet and leaning his heavy body into my leg. I rub his head absent-mindedly. Lucille’s attention flicks from him to my hair again, and I say, “You don’t have to do it too, you know.”
“How would that work? You stay in the studio for the next eighteen days?”
“Or you send me back early.” It’s a bluff. Or self-destruction. I honestly don’t know. When I went to the salon, I knew this would be something. A way to shove us off the teeter-totter. It was reckless and terrifying, and I’d do it again and again. Because while I want those eighteen days, I need her to see me. Not her reflection, me.
For the first time, I can’t tell what she’s thinking, feeling. There’s an emptiness to her expression. Shock, maybe. Then her eyes go glassy. She pulls out her phone, closes the gap between us, snaps a few photos of my hair, and turns back toward the door.
“Don’t forget to go by Dad’s and get the car,” I call after her. “And I left your history homework in your room. You have a quiz tomorrow.” She doesn’t look back, but I hear a quiet “Thanks” before she slips out the door.
I wait for a count of five (For what? In case she comes back in and asks me to keep her company? For her to change her mind and say, “Forget it! Let’s come clean!”), then head to the studio. The garage is hot and smells like dog food and dust. My hair feels light around my shoulders. But when the loose curls bounce in rhythm with my steps as I climb the stairs, when I close the apartment door behind me and they float, so obvious and pink, into my vision, I can’t even feel satisfied.
I just feel alone.
LUCILLE
“Cute,” the stylist says, looking at my phone. She runs her fingers through my hair. “Your hair’s so healthy and long. When was that?”
I huff a laugh. “That’s not me.”
“Oh. So a twin?”
“Something like that.”
Send her back. That’s the easy answer, right? It’s not even like we failed. But the thought makes me sick to my stomach, not in small part because I’m realizing it should’ve made me sick all along.
Mom finds me in my room when she gets home from work. “What the fuck, Lucille?”
I have no explanations, so I just say, “Sorry,” and close the history book I had open—reading and rereading the same three paragraphs—on my lap.
She shakes her head and lifts her hands in a helpless gesture. “What is this about? Some delayed reaction to the divorce?”
“No.”
“That boy who dropped you off last night?”
I bite the inside of my cheek—hard—to keep my expression empty. “No.”
She stares at me like she’s trying to read the real answers on my face. I shift my gaze to the cover of my history book, letting my eyes go unfocused and refusing to blink until they start to sting. “You used to tell me things,” she says.
“You mean I used to be easy.”
“No, Lucille. I mean that you used to let me be there for you. You’ve always been so practical and efficient. I never thought you’d use those traits to shut me out.”
I say nothing.
“Damn it, Lucille! Talk to me.”
I open my mouth. But I can’t. I won’t. She didn’t do this, I did. I can’t ask her to fix it. How would we even fix it? I signed an NDA, the contract. Sure, it’s void since I lied about my age with the fake ID, but all that does—I looked it up on the way to the salon—is make it fraud. And since I’m a minor, that means Life2 wouldn’t come after me, they’d come after my parents. I had a company make a person. And if I come clean, that same company could turn on my family. How am I supposed to drop that on her?
So I reopen my book.
“Really?” she says.
I don’t look up.
“Fine. You’re grounded for an extra week. Like you’ll respect it, but here we are.”
The next morning, we sit at the counter eating cereal in silence. She glances at me sidelong, narrowing her eyes at me like I’m a stranger. No, worse. Like I’m altered. Like however she meant to make me, shape me, I came out in a way she didn’t expect and isn’t sure she wants.
LUCY
I sit at the counter and eat my cereal in silence, listening for the sound of them leaving. When I hear the garage door open, I walk over to the window (following the X’s like a good little secret) and watch through the crack as first Lucille, then Mom, backs out and drives away. Ten deep breaths later (in, one, two, three, out, one, two, three, helps with the panic), I head inside.
LUCILLE
School is a stress dream come to life.
I park my car and rush straight to my first period—eyes following my pink hair like I’m glowing—which, since it’s a green-block day, is history. History with the reading I couldn’t make myself finish and the quiz I couldn’t force myself to study for. And I seriously doubt Ms. Martin will take “I was distracted by my clone” as a valid excuse.
I find a seat I can’t be sure is “mine,” set my book on my desk, hunch down, and chant please, please, please, please in my head while I wait for the bell to ring, begging Providence to shine on me by giving both Cass and Bode a different class this period. When the warning bell rings, I watch the second hand circle the clock, relaxing with each tick.
Then Louise walks through the door.
I look away, tuck my head, pretend to study. But she turns down my row and slows by my desk, nudging my shoulder as she goes. I glance up.
“Love it,” she says, gesturing to my hair.
I manage a smile—I think—and as the final bell rings, she slides into a desk one row over and two seats back.
Louise too?
Out of fifteen questions on the quiz, I know the answers to three.
LUCY
Boris stretches out on the carpet of Lucille’s room and huffs a contented sigh. I open her laptop, type in her password. Stare at the flash drive on the palm of my too-smooth hand. Then plug it in. Click the icon. Open the first folder, a video.
And press play.
Isobel sits eye-level with the camera. She’s wearing a white doctor’s coat, with her hair down in tight curls and dangling orange earrings in her ears. Her expression is stoic. “Stardate nine five seven three seven point—” Then she’s laughing, smile spreading bright and quick. “Sorry, okay.” She clears her throat. “Today is February nineteenth, two thousand eighteen, it’s”—she glances at her watch—“a little after ten-thirty in the morning, and I am Dr. Olivia Mitchell, lead geneticist at Life Squared.”
LUCILLE
I sit at my regular table in the library, chewing a bite of granola bar, looking up the answers to the history quiz questions that I didn’t know. But I can’t focus. What have I done, what am I going to do, what have I done, what am I going to—
My phone buzzes. I flip it face-up on the table. It’s Cass: Bode’s wondering where the hell you are, says you won’t answer any of his texts. So…You coming to lunch or?
I stare at it, chewing the second half of my granola bar, then tap a two-letter response.
“Yeah, I didn’t think you were.”
I look up, nearly choking on my mouthful. “Jesus. Creepy much?”
“The pink hair’s interesting.”
“Thanks?”
Cass smiles. “Let’s ditch.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes. Really. What do you have next?”
A tightening spiral into my massive existential and legal crisis. “Independent study.”
“Seriously?”
“Convinced admin I needed it for History Day and Science Fair and such.”
“Well, then, what are we waiting for? Get up! You can take me to get frozen yogurt in your fancy new car.”
“What do you have?”
“Choir. I’ll tell Mr. Campbell I have cramps. Which I do, so it’s not even lying.”
I roll my eyes.
“Come on. You know you want to.”
And I do. I so do.
LUCY
There are hundreds of them, each one time-stamped, spanning more than two years.
On February 22, 2018, at 11:37 p.m., she started without preamble: “Major breakthrough. And I mean major.” Her expression is ecstatic. She can barely sit still. “It’s a match! I almost can’t believe it. A fully functional human kidney. Grown from scratch. And matched specifically to the recipient.” She (Olivia not Isobel, Olivia not Isobel, Oliv-liv-liv-liv) huffs an astonished sigh and leans back in her chair. The room around her is dim, gray, her face illuminated by what I’m guessing is the computer she’s using to record and maybe a desk lamp. Apart from her, the frame is empty.
“The implications of this are…” Her eyes go unfocused, aimed somewhere up and beyond the camera. She shakes her head, purses her lips. Blinks away tears. “It’s life-changing. Humanity-changing.” She looks into the camera again. “No more transplant waiting lists. No more donor databases.” She laughs, overcome by amazement. “We can cure…cancer. Replace amputated limbs. Cure heart disease, lung disease, cirrhosis. Jesus. We could do transfusions with the patient’s own blood. Limitless. The possibilities are truly limitless. We’ve just made the human body a machine with entirely replaceable par—”
There’s the sound of a knock and a door opening. Olivia sits ups, looking beyond the camera to her right. “We’re going to celebrate. Coming?” someone asks, and I recognize Dr. Adebayo’s voice.
Dr. Mitchell nods, and the video cuts off.
I open another, dated about six weeks later.
“Sunday, April eighth, two thousand eighteen. Two twenty-two”—she snorts a laugh, shakes her head—“a.m. No, wait. That makes it Monday. The ninth.” Dark circles under her eyes, she blinks rapidly a few times, then yawns. “It’s official. The kidney failed.
“Well, the kidney didn’t fail. The suspension process failed. Had we had a recipient ready six weeks ago, a month ago even, I feel confident it would’ve worked. But if the aim is to create a delicate organ like a kidney or a lung or…” She trails off, a slight crease appearing then disappearing between her dark eyebrows. “Or a brain. We’ll need—” Her eyes go wide and she leaps out of her seat, running out of the frame. Ten seconds later, her arm cuts in front of the camera, maybe reaching for the keyboard, and the screen goes black.
The next one’s dated three days later. “I knew it! It’s the hydrogel. The organs need to stay alive. Without a host. For an extended period of time. So.” She shrugs like it’s nothing, then her expression brightens with pride and she starts dancing in her chair. “Tailor the hydrogel! Genetically! To mimic the future host! Circulate oxygenated donor blood and there we go. We still need to test it, but it’s perfect. I know it is.”
I skip ahead two months, to one dated June 5, 2018, 1:33 p.m. “It’s digesting. Di-gest-ing. Fucking unreal. Sorry, language.” She laughs. “Kim’s planning to attach the small and large intestines tomorrow. Thompson says it’s time to shit or get off the pot. Ha. What she really said was something like What are you waiting for? Shanghai and Stockholm already have functioning livers. Which was a completely wasted opportunity when discussing the digestive system, if you ask me.”
Grinning, she drops her eyes to her lap.
“I wish I could tell someone about it.” She lifts her eyes to the camera again. “I know why we can’t. It’s all proprietary. And we’re in competition with the other branches. Not to mention the chaos leaking any of this to the public would cause. I’m not even supposed to be keeping this video journal.
“I just mean…the work we’re doing is light-years beyond what I thought possible six months ago. It’s not groundbreaking, it’s earth-shattering. The minds at work here?” She shakes her head. “Baffling. I’m part of the team, and I’m baffled. Awestruck.”
July 1, 2018, 1:12 a.m., and she glares at the camera for a full minute before beginning to speak. “Fucking money. A river of it coming from the investors, whoever the hell they are, yet we can’t spare a single kidney? A heart? Some kid with shit lungs dies on a waiting list while we could grow him a new pair in a matter of months. Burn victims languish in agony while we could print them a whole new suit of skin. And I’m the ridiculous one? For suggesting that all of this amazing shit we’re doing be used for more than some megalomaniac’s immortality wet dream?
“Thompson says to be patient. They get what they want, make their money, then, eventually, let the benefits trickle down.” Jaw tight, she shakes her head. “Some of us know that’s not how this shit works.”
She leans back, resting an elbow on the arm of her chair. I watch her shoulders rise and fall with deep, calming breaths. Still looking away, she says, “I should delete this one. Even with Damian’s encryption.” Then she reaches for the keyboard and the screen goes black.
Boris snores on the carpet behind me. Great blubbering snores. Paws twitching as he chases something in his dreams. I check the time (almost noon) and skip ahead six months, to January 7, 2019, 8:15 a.m., and Dr. Mitchell starting the video off with a truly epic yawn. She sips from a hot mug, eyes bleary behind the rising steam. “It’s done. Assembly on BF1901 completed at”— she looks at her watch, blinks, looks again, gives up—“twenty-ish minutes ago. Now we just wait for, well. Everything. We wait for everything.”
BF1901.
01.
The first clone.
Face-up on the desk, my phone lights up. I glance at it. Three unopened texts from Bode and a new one from Life2.
I open the next file.
“Like dominoes,” she says, miming it with a sweep of her hand. “One after another. Kidneys, liver, pancreas, intestines, stomach, lungs, heart. Brain. It’d have been impressive if it didn’t mean watching months of relentless work literally die. Necrosis and catastrophic organ failure. Even his—its. Sorry. Semantics matter. Even its skin. Which was…” She shakes her head, takes a deep breath, then cuts the video off.
I start skipping. Looking for clones two through nine.
March 12, 2019, 9:55 a.m.
“Progress. That’s what we focus on. Progress. Stanch IE1902’s necrotic spread, only to watch her fall apart at the seams.” She barks a dark laugh. “You forget. You know, of course. But. Five liters feels like so much more when it’s oozing out all over the floor.”
June 2, 2019, 4:32 p.m.
Dr. Mitchell sits with her forehead in her hand. Her hair’s pulled back into a (Isobel’s) tight bun. “We learn so much. Each time, we learn so much. Twice as much since we did AA1903 and GT1904, concurrently this time. But it still feels…”
Inhaling deeply, she sits back, a slight smile on her lips. “They tease me for being squeamish. Because I usually spend my time at a microscope instead of elbow-deep in guts. I like to remind them that despite my being sans MD—all PhDs all the time over here—I’ve become quite the adept surgical nurse in recent months. Besides, it wasn’t me who lost it on the lab floor today.” She arches a brow and quirks her lip. “That was Thompson.”
August 17, 2019, 1:12 p.m.
“It’s the brain. Which we all know, even without what happened to JO1905. All of it. Lymph nodes and endocrine glands and perfectly formed heart valves. It can’t work in concert without the brain.” She huffs a breath out her nose. “Everything we’ve already done. Enough to save millions. Yet, without the brain, they’ll always be parts,” she mimics someone. “As though those parts aren’t already a miracle.”
October 9, 2019, 7:58 p.m.
“You start to wonder what the point is. You start to wonder…” She swallows thickly. “You disassociate. You have to. Because if they’re people, then— Are we murderers? Seven of them. With RK1906’s removal from life support yesterday and NK1907…” She takes a deep breath. “And NK1907 gone today, that makes seven. Karlsson immediately went into research mode, wanting to open it up and find out what happened.
“I found Kim in the hallway afterward. Crying. And when I set a hand on his arm, he said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ I said something about it being normal and we laughed. Because none of this is normal. Five minutes earlier, Kim had watched himself die. Watched his Facsimile suffer consecutive grand mal seizures and go into cardiac arrest. There’s no way that doesn’t fuck you up. Even if they aren’t—”
She shakes her head. “That’s the crux, right? Are they people? Are they individuals? Do they have souls? Does it make a difference either way? They’re just bodies, Karlsson says. But we can’t know that. Not until one of them succeeds long enough to be able to converse. Until we can prove consciousness, cognizance. Would that simplify it? The individuality question? They’re still exact replicas of preexisting individuals. NK1907 was Nathanial Kim in every physical aspect. A duplicate. But so are identical twins. Genetic duplicates. Yet we’d never say that neither was an ‘individual.’ So what are they?”
Dr. Mitchell frowns at her lap. “The truth is, I don’t know. None of us do.”
December 23, 2019, 11:55 p.m.
Her face is blank. No, not blank, frozen. I check the time bar, but the video’s still playing. Then she blinks. “He woke up. Patel’s. But…” She swallows. “All he did was scream.”
December 26, 2019, 2:32 a.m.
“Onward. It’s what we all say. Even cheersed to it tonight after our mandatory day off. Thompson was right, of course. We needed it. I’ve never seen her this affected. Not even by GT1904. But I can’t tell if it’s because we got so close only to fail again, or if RP1908’s conscious state disturbed her the way it did the rest of us.
“Anyway. Tomorrow’s my full-body mold, and I’m trying not to get preemptively claustrophobic. Adebayo’s been teaching me breathing techniques, and I practiced wearing the face mask yesterday.”
She pulls one foot up onto her chair and hugs her knee to her chest. Her eyes go wistful. “I asked tonight why we don’t have funerals for them. Karlsson shot whiskey out her nose, then cursed me in Swedish while tears streamed down her face. It turned the mood. Adebayo said that when it finally works, we’ll have things to consider. Kim said it’s the Board’s job. Patel said it’s also the client’s.
“Then I asked, ‘Not the creators’?’ And the table went quiet.”
February 1, 2020, 6:01 a.m.
She’s dressed in Life2 scrubs. White and soft. I remember the feel of them against my skin. Her hair is down, her eyes bright. “Today is the day. Kim and Adebayo have made substantial adjustments to the Mimeo since RP1908, and honestly, despite all of it, I’m feeling…excited? Hopeful. Truly. OM2009 is almost done. And she’s…” She shakes her head, grinning, almost proud. “Magnificent.”
Then there’s a two-month gap.
I click the next video file, dated March 29, 2020, 5:58 a.m.
She’s in the scrubs again. Hair pulled back in a tight bun. Expression blank. I wait for her to say something, anything, as seconds, then minutes, tick by in utter silence. Then I recognize it.
That stillness.
That quiet.
It isn’t Dr. Mitchell. It’s Isobel.
LUCILLE
“So,” Cass says as we walk to the parking lot, leaving through the empty gym to avoid passing the main office. “Pink, huh?”
I reach for my hair, self-conscious. “Yeah.”
She nods.
“What?”
“Remember in first grade when we both wanted those ridiculous winged unicorn things?”
“I remember.”
“Good. So, then you remember that when we got them, you threw this epic fit—”
“I did not. I was just—”
“—about how you wanted the purple one because you hated pink and I got the purple one and that wasn’t fair. And I was, like, Forget that I hate pink too, so finally we both ended up with purple ones and we colored the hooves on yours silver with a Sharpie so we could tell them apart?”
“What’s your point?”
She stops between two cars and turns to face me. “You hate pink! You have always hated pink. So…” She waves a hand, urging me on. “What’s up with the hair?”
I squeeze past Cass and start walking again. “I wanted to do something different.”
“Bullshit.”
I scoff.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she says, “it looks awesome. But…”
We reach my car. I look at her over the roof. “But what? I’m not allowed to do something different because that’s ‘not like you’?”
“Well, yeah. You’ve been a lot ‘not like you’ lately.”
“What does that mean?”
“Come on. Really? Bode. Art. Saturday. The hair.”
Wait, what? “Saturday?”
The look she gives me—like I’ve lost half my head or sprouted a second one—sends a spark up my spine. Cass is how Lucy got home. I duck down and climb in the driver’s side. My hand shakes as I put my key in the ignition to start the car and roll the windows down. After a beat, Cass opens the passenger door and gets in.
I sit, trying to order my thoughts, and finally say, “How do you know what is or isn’t like me when I don’t even know myself?”
She’s quiet for so long that I purse my lips to keep from filling the silence with something I shouldn’t say. Sitting like this, quiet and alone and close, I realize just how much I miss her. All summer. Last year. Right now, even though she’s right next to me.
I miss her.
Cass, the person I shared not just inside jokes but whole stories, whole imaginary universes with. Cass, who cried with me when my first dog, Nellie, died; who called the only boy I ever asked to dance—and said no—a “human suit filled with rancid turkey fat” to his face; who told me about her first kiss in the seventh grade before she told anyone else, then cried on my couch when he broke up with her a week later.
Cass, the person I used to tell everything to, shared everything with. Cass, who now knows nothing—about my parents, Marco, my freaking clone—beyond a series of flimsy lies.
Then she says, “I know that even thinking about Dumbo makes you feel like you’re going to cry. I know that you think Twizzlers are good in theory but make you sick to your stomach. I know that while your mom loves Gilmore Girls and has made you watch the whole series with her, you think Rory’s a self-absorbed snob. I know that when you flipped over your handlebars and got that cut on your temple, you didn’t even cry.
“I know because I was there. For all of it. I’ve watched you cry watching Dumbo. And Inside Out and WALL-E and, which I will never believe or let you live down, Cars 3. I’ve listened to you argue with your mom about Gilmore Girls. I’ve eaten Twizzlers with you, then regretted it twenty minutes later. And when you went over your handlebars, I took off my sock to sop up the blood.”
I snort a laugh. “So sanitary.”
“Yeah, well, you ruined my sock.”
“Sorry.”
“You know what else I know?”
I shake my head.
“There is something going on with you. Something big. Maybe your parents’ divorce, but I don’t think so. You’re…” She stares out the windshield. “Different isn’t the right word for it. Because you aren’t totally. Yet you are. I don’t know. But it’s like since the first day of school some switch flipped. Then, for some reason, today it flipped back.”
I mean to laugh, but it comes out broken. “I messed up, Cass. I did something, and…”
“And?”
I wipe my eyes, but the tears keep coming.
“Can you fix it?” she asks.
“I don’t know if I want to. I mean, I have to. I can’t do nothing. But I don’t think the easy fix is the right one anymore.”
“It usually isn’t.”
“I’ve really missed you,” I say.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
We’re quiet for a minute, a breeze blowing through the open windows of my car. “What did you say about art?”
LUCY
It’s unbearable.
Watching her.
Her halting speech (six videos until she can complete a coherent sentence), her erratic movements, and finally, her grief.
May 1, 2020, 10:17 p.m.
She sits, shoulders straight and chin parallel to the floor (this, I learn, the fastidiousness, the attention, is how she controls the tremors and tics), with her hands in her lap. “I don’t know…” She pauses, collects herself. “Metaphors are still difficult for me. But I feel hollow, as though the bulk of me either never was or has been…scooped out. Dr. Thompson says this is because my my my…” Isobel stops again. Aiming her eyes as far down as she can without shifting the set of her head. I can almost hear her thinking, searching for the right word, forcing her synapses to connect. She looks up again. “My connectome is incomplete. But I know it’s because you’re gone.”
The muscles in her chin shiver. Then she’s crying. Silent rivulets slipping down her cheeks. “To never get to know your self, to lose that self without ever…”
She closes her eyes. I watch her throat bob as she swallows. Then she looks directly into the camera and says, “The misery is acute.”
The Mimeo killed Dr. Mitchell.
Halfway through, thanks to a catastrophic amount of brain swelling brought on by excessive radiation. I find the write-up in the files. Not a traditional medical report, rather a series of events included with a diagnostic report on the machine: elevated heart rate, reduced oxygen rates, seizures—followed by the cessation of the procedure, administration of medications, CPR, removal of a portion of her skull to reduce pressure, and finally, death.
I think about what it would be like to lose Lucille. There’s a flash of satisfaction (a glimpse of how easy it’d be if, suddenly, I was the only one) followed by a chasm.
Not the same as losing a sister. A best friend. A confidante. Because she’s none of those things. I honestly can’t even be sure that I like her. I know I resent her, envy her, maybe even hate her.
But she’s also me.
Losing her would feel like having my life string cut. And without that tether, I might simply float away.
There’s more. Beyond the video diary. Massive PDFs filled with pages and pages of indecipherable (to me) data, rosters with the names and personal information of the Life2 investors, much of it dated after Mitchell’s death. And a separate video titled “Presentation OM2009, 5/18/20.”
It opens on a conference room, bright and sterile like the one at Life2 but bigger. The table stretches at least ten seats to both the left and right of the camera, with every seat filled. Across from it, back a few paces from the middle of the table, between it and a glass wall, stand Dr. Thompson and Isobel.
Isobel’s dressed in her familiar skirt suit and modest heels. She stands stiffly, with her hands clasped before her hips. To the audience, I’m sure her expression appears stoic, composed. But as the camera zooms in slowly, before it rewidens the frame, I see how her right eyebrow twitches. There’s a sheen of sweat on her upper lip.
“Begin,” says a deep male voice, out of frame, at the right end of the table.
Dr. Thompson nods. “Thank you, to the Board and other gathered investors, for allowing me to present the American branch’s successful Facsimile”—she makes a sweeping gesture—“Isobel.”
The awe is audible, gasps and disbelief. People talk over one another. Isobel’s left knee begins to shake. “How do we know it’s real?” shouts a man over the rest. “She could be anyone.”
Thompson lifts her chin. “You’ll find all relevant verification materials in the introduction packet on your tablet.”
“How long did it take?”
“Can it talk?”
“Does it have preferences?”
Until they’re all talking over one another, rabid. A cacophony. And Isobel begins to panic. I watch her hands shake, her eyes dart from point to point, face to face, never pausing long enough to focus. I can feel it. How she must’ve felt. The pressure of all that attention, all those questions, dozens of Thompsons wanting something from her, something she couldn’t give, couldn’t be, all at once.
“This says there were complications. What were those complications?”
“How long until the service is available to clients?”
She’s about to lose it, lifts her hands as though to cover her mouth or grip her head.
Then a deep male voice from the right-hand head of the table asks, “Where is her Original?”
Isobel opens her mouth and begins to scream.
The screen goes black.
From a follow-up report, I learn that Thompson nearly lost her job. What had she been thinking, presenting a Facsimile for a dead Original? What use was RapidReplicate if it killed the client? There’s no praise, no acknowledgment of Isobel, only censure. Deserved, maybe, but the tone is vicious.
Then there are Isobel’s videos about Lucille. About me.
They start in June, the day of Lucille’s first appointment. “They’ve found a new candidate” is all she says. In the following entries, she calls Lucille “young” and “naïve” and “self-involved,” which is “exactly what Thompson wants. She doesn’t even care that the girl’s a minor, though who knows if the Board will. Not like legality is a big consideration here. And even if Lucille were of age, it isn’t like Thompson would honor the contract if it tipped suddenly out of her favor. In the end, all that matters is Thompson’s ability to deny knowing, and leverage Lucille’s lie against her. She only cares about winning, about being first. And for that she needs a willing participant. A candidate who won’t think too hard about the implications. Who’s only flattered that she’s been chosen, who doesn’t know that Thompson’s search turned up dozens of candidates and she’s the only one who took the bait. One who’s a stranger. Ignorant of the risks, easy to manipulate. Whose Facsimile won’t be…” She pauses, takes a quick deep breath. “A shadow.”
The last one is dated Wednesday, August 12, 5:45 p.m. The day before I went home.
“I’m not sure why I keep making these. As a testament to my existence? Habit? Both Olivia’s and mine. And as a contingency, I suppose.” She sighs, and her shoulders relax. She lets her head tilt to the side, eyes appraising, like she’s studying her own image on the screen. Her movements are fluid. No more careful, incremental shifts. No more preternatural stillness. Her hair’s in its usual bun, but she’s shed her suit jacket and undone the top button on her blouse. She looks…not like Olivia, exactly. But more like herself. “I went back and watched a few of my first videos. I won’t call it humbling, to see how far I’ve come. It’s infuriating. Though, helpful in some ways. Only yesterday Thompson left me alone in her office yet again. Because she still sees me as she did that first day, when I woke up and she figured out I’d have to relearn how to speak.
“And thanks to that, I now have this.” Smiling, she holds up a flash drive similar to, if not the same as, the one she gave me. “The failsafe codes for Cindy. And with Lucy heading home tomorrow, I imagine I’ll get my opportunity to use them soon.”
LUCILLE
I walk with Cass back through the front doors, then turn toward the wing with the art room instead of following her toward the junior lobby to wait for our next classes.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“I need to take care of something.”
She smirks. “Lucille Harper, ditching two class periods in one day?”
“Guess so. I’m a real wild woman.”
“International Woman of Mystery, right?”
I smile but don’t say anything. It’s a Cass-and-Lucy joke. I’m not sure how I know, but I do. Cass waves and I head for the art room.
When I walk in, it’s empty, lights dim, Mx. Frank’s planning period or something, and I’m glad for it. I hesitate inside the door. No clue where I’m going. I’ve never been in this room before. It smells like mud and dust and paint. Sunlight comes in through the windows facing the courtyard. In a weird way, it reminds me of the conference room at Life2. The size, maybe. The courtyard, the light. Like, if that’s the fake version, this is the real one.
The easels are all pushed together against a wall, but they’re empty. To their right are drying racks with canvases in each slot. I stride over and start searching.
I know which one is hers right away. And not just because it’s…me.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Cass told me about it, confused why I was asking her to explain my own painting but humoring me anyway. She told me how Bode’s apparently obsessed, how he kept talking about it at lunch and asking Cass why I hadn’t signed up for art before. She told him the truth, that I couldn’t draw anything better than a janky stick figure to save my life. But, of course, she was talking about me. This is Lucy’s. And it’s gorgeous. And ugly. And strange. And interesting. But mostly it’s real.
That’s what I settle on.
It’s real. And Lucy made it.
Her self-portrait’s done entirely in shades of blue, from a near-black to the bleached blue of a sun-drenched sky. Her—not my—head is tipped to the side, her—not my—brow is tight with eyes slightly narrowed, considering. Skeptical. And her—not my—edges are liquid, blurred into the all-blue background.
What the hell color is the sky, anyway?
She looks like me. But the longer I look at it, the less I recognize her.
“Lucy?”
Bode stands in the doorway to the storage and kiln rooms, backlit by the overhead light. “What are you doing? Aren’t you supposed to be in physics or something?”
“Yeah.”
I stare back at the painting. It’s just pigment. Strategically placed, in varying shades. And looking at it makes me want to pull my heart out of my chest with my bare hand.
She made this. All this while, I’ve treated her like a thing. A placeholder. My stand-in. And she’s capable of this. I shake my head. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. This thing she did, it’s not what matters. It’s incredible, but it’s a symptom. A side effect.
I wipe my cheeks with my free hand and—taking the painting—turn to go.
“Lucy,” Bode says, “wait.”
Almost to the door, I glance back. “I’m not Lucy.”
LUCY
My phone buzzes on Lucille’s desk, snapping me out of the stupor I’ve been sitting in for the last twenty minutes. It’s Bode: Where are you?
I unplug the flash drive from the laptop and make my way back out to the studio, wanting, what? A moment alone? Seems superfluous. But I guess I just want to be somewhere that feels even a little bit like mine.
Walking up the stairs, minding the X’s out of habit, I text back: In class.
What are you talking about? No you aren’t. I just saw you.
Where?
Are you joking? In the art room. You took your painting. Kickass hair btw.
My throat goes thick. Can’t swallow. Can’t breathe. I run the rest of the way up the stairs, dialing Lucille’s number as I go. The phone buzzes with a text while I hold it against my ear. She doesn’t answer. I check the message, from Life2: Severely elevated heart rate. Please report.
But I can’t think clearly enough to come up with a lie. I can feel my pulse inside my head. If she, if she, if sh-sh-sh-sh—
The garage door opens. I hold my breath, hear a car pull in, the engine cut, door open and close. Then, footsteps on the stairs.
LUCILLE
I close the door to the studio behind me. Lucy’s eyes flick between mine and the painting. She’s terrified. And it breaks my heart that she thinks I’d hurt it, hurt her. But I suppose I’ve set the precedent, if not for hurt, then for total disregard.
“The strangest part is that you know,” I say. My throat aches. I can’t stop my tears. “You’ve known all along how I thought of you. How I didn’t think of you. I don’t know how to say I’m sorry for that.”
She stands still, both feet on a blue X between the counter and the back of the love seat. “So that’s it? You see a picture I made and suddenly decide I’m human?”
“It’s not about you not being ‘human.’ It’s understanding that you aren’t…”
“That I’m not what?” She swallows, jaw tight.
“Me. You aren’t me.”
She loses the battle, tears welling in her eyes. “Aren’t I?”
“No. Maybe. Maybe you’re both. Maybe I’m both too. Me, not me. Lucille, Lucy”—I cough a laugh—“Lucille Harper, Overachiever. Lucille Harper, Perfect Daughter. Lucille Harper, Trying Too Hard. Maybe I’m all of it, or none of it. Maybe I have no fucking clue.”
She purses her lips, and I can still feel the gesture, taste the salt of tears on her lips, because I’m doing it too. “Sounds about right,” she says.
I hold up the painting. “This is amazing. You’re amazing.”
“Same apple,” she whispers. “Same tree.”
I swallow, letting my eyes blur as I stare at the blues. “What the hell do we do now?”