Your One & Only Page 4

  It was such a stupid mistake.

  Jack saw Sam in the line of Council members. The man met Jack’s gaze, and the only thing Jack could see in his eyes was disappointment. Jack’s throat burned.

  They could hear it if they tried.

  The rebellious thought crept its way into his mind, and he forced it away. That kind of thinking wasn’t going to help.

  His mother, at the end, had heard it. Her eyes had shone with the understanding. It was right before she’d run away, taking him with her, that she’d first heard it.

  Carson-312 jumped down from the stage, a furious crease between his eyebrows. Jack could tell it was the 312 by the patch in his eyebrow where the hair had never grown back after Jack’s fist had split his skin. Before Jack could stop him, he’d wrenched the guitar away.

  “What’s wrong with you? Why are you even here?” Carson said, raising the instrument out of Jack’s reach.

  It stung that Carson’s questions were the same ones Jack asked himself every day.

  “Give it back,” Jack said.

  Adrenaline pulsed through him, but he tamped it down. The Council, and Sam, were watching. Jack refused to give them a reason to punish him. After that day in school, they’d locked him in the labs for a long time. He wouldn’t let them lock him away again. He knew they’d spent days back then discussing whether they were going to let their experiment continue. Jack had been too scared to ask Sam what terminating their de-extinction project would mean for him. He clenched his fists against his side and stayed seated, waiting.

  “Give it back,” Jack repeated.

  Carson’s eyebrows rose with Jack’s words, and Jack realized he’d made yet another mistake. He shouldn’t have let Carson see how much the guitar meant to him. Carson grinned and moved closer. Jack stood and backed away until his legs hit the chairs behind him. Maybe if he played nice, Carson would quit squeezing the neck of his guitar, knocking the strings out of tune.

  The Declaration was in disarray. Most of the remaining Gen-310s were still onstage, though the dance had ended. The audience had begun to disperse, not really clear on what was happening and confused by the interruption caused by Jack. A small cluster nearby still watched the two boys, including the Council members. Jack was on display. They wanted to see how this confrontation would play out, and Jack would bear the brunt of anything that went wrong.

  “Are they letting you Declare, monkey-boy?” Carson said, bumping the guitar against his hand. “What are you Declaring as, town freak?”

  “I’m Declaring as a teacher,” Jack said, his gaze flicking from Carson to the guitar.

  Carson pulled at one of the strings. It gave a sharp twang. “What’s that got to do with this thing? I mean, does it do something?”

  “Give it back, and I’ll show you.”

  “Why, so you can attack me with it? We all know you’re violent. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “I don’t know. Are you?”

  Carson tilted his head, that cool grin widening. In the corner of his eye, Jack saw Sam stand from his seat, but the man didn’t move forward or speak.

  Jack shook his head. He was clearly the stupid one, insulting a Carson in front of everybody. Why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut?

  “Listen,” he said, taking a breath, his voice low. “It’s nothing. It plays music, that’s all. Just . . . give it back, okay?”

  “Okay,” Carson said. “Come get it.”

  The onlookers murmured when Jack reached for the guitar and Carson brusquely pulled it away.

  He drew Jack close, and Jack felt the other boy’s breath as he snarled, “You want to hit me, don’t you?”

  Jack pressed his lips together, stifling the desire to do just that. It was exactly what Carson wanted, for Jack to lose control in front of everyone.

  “It’s okay,” Carson said, pushing Jack back and suddenly feigning friendliness. “I’ll give it back, for real this time. But listen, tell me what it’s called first.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t be so suspicious. I really want to know.”

  “It’s a guitar,” Jack said curtly. “It’s called a guitar.”

  Jack watched Carson while, as if in slow motion, he dropped the guitar on the ground at Jack’s feet.

  “You shouldn’t have ruined our dance, monkey-boy. Say goodbye to your guitar.” And with that, Carson smashed his foot into the base of the instrument, splintering the wood into fragments. Jack yelled incoherently as Carson crushed the remnants with the heel of his shoe.

  The Council was watching. Sam was watching. The Altheas’ brown eyes were on him, too. The Meis, the Hassans, all of them were watching now. None of that mattered as the anger exploded in Jack’s chest. He rushed at Carson. Immediately, two Viktors and a Hassan grabbed his arms. They must have been behind him the whole time, waiting for him to do exactly this. Before he had a chance to connect with Carson or even realize what was happening, he was on his back, the breath knocked out of him. They pinned his hands, then hauled him up again. His limbs shook with unreleased energy.

  “Good job, teacher,” Carson said, his mouth twitching up. “I think we learned everything we need to know from you.”

  One of the Viktors twisted Jack’s arm, steering him away from the snickering Carson and the stage.

  “Sam!” Jack called into the crowd. “Sam, where are you?”

  Jack searched across the Commons. Countless dark heads mingled in the crowd, at least twenty different Samuels, any of which could have been Sam. It was impossible to tell. Sam had abandoned him. Again.

  The Viktors escorted him back to his room in the labs, locking the door behind them. The usual punishment for bad behavior.

  Jack had grown a lot in the past two years. He was taller than the Viktors, taller in fact than all the models. He was stronger than them, too. There were times Jack would look at them and be struck by how delicate the clones were. Thin and narrow-chested. It didn’t matter, however. They controlled every situation, every move he made.

  When Sam came by that night and unlocked the door, Jack wanted to scream at him, tackle him to the ground and hit him the way he’d wanted to hit Carson, hit him until that desolate expression left his face. Instead he said, “You left,” and hated the sorry plea in his voice. “You just left.”

  Sam sat in a chair, crossing his ankle over his knee. Jack’s room in the labs was nothing like his room in the cottage. It was a small, sectioned-off corner of the building, with linoleum floors and white-tiled walls. It was as sterile as the larger sections, where banks of fluorescent lights swung over rows of marble-topped desks fitted with gas spigots and sinks. He had a narrow bed, a small chair and desk, and a doored-off bathroom. The lab workers could see him through the small window in the door that led out into the hall. They didn’t bother him much. He sometimes watched them working in the daytime, and then at night the bright lights were turned off, and everything was silent and dark.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said with a heavy sigh.

  “They locked me in. You told me after last time they wouldn’t do that again.”

  “Not everything is in my control.”

  “You’re afraid of them. You’re afraid of the Council.”

  “I’m on the Council. I have to consider the needs of the community. I can’t just worry about one boy.”

  “What am I even doing here? I can’t figure out the point of your experiment. Why the hell was I born, Sam?”

  “You have so much potential, Jack, but you certainly weren’t born so you could disrupt the entire community.”

  Jack’s heart sank even as pinpricks of anger pierced him. “My mother, she used to call you my father.”

  “The Inga wanted to give you something human. Fathers are something humans had. I never had one—​none of us do. I’ve done the best I could.”

  Sam used to read to him, before Inga died. Not from the novels that Jack liked, the ones Sam called human, but from the histories, his physiology books,
and the books that had taught him to be a doctor. The clones didn’t get sick, but he’d read to Jack about setting a limb and treating a concussion or infected wound. When they’d all lived in the cottage, Jack remembered Sam sitting in the creased leather chair studying textbooks and psych manuals, discussing with Inga how humans lived their day-to-day lives. Occasionally Sam would see something in the books and then abruptly declare some new activity, like reading aloud together or throwing a ball outside. Jack still remembered Sam dressed in his lab coat and black shoes, chasing after the balls Jack threw.

  “It must have been tough, pretending to care for the sake of your experiment.” Jack heard the venom in his own voice. “Acting human, like some kind of animal.”

  “I care about you, Jack. More . . . more than I should. It has been difficult. My brothers don’t understand. It’s put distance between us, and you don’t know how hard that’s been.”

  “So what now?”

  “The Council will meet about what happened. I don’t know what their decision will be for your apprenticeship. Why did you have to bring the guitar, Jack? What were you thinking?”

  “You’re not even going to stick up for me, are you? You’ll abandon me like always. Like you did today.”

  “I have to do what’s best for Vispera.”

  “So go, Sam. Go away and leave me alone.”

  “Please, listen—”

  Jack didn’t want to be mad anymore. Instead his voice was almost gentle when he said, “You can stop trying to be a father. You’re not very good at it, and I don’t need one anymore.”

  Jack thought he saw something in Sam’s eyes, but he turned away too quickly to see what it was. He looked up only when the lab door closed and the sound of the latch, this time unlocked, rang through the room.

  Later that night, Jack lay sleepless on his bed in the dark, his eyes sore and his head aching. Light from flickering lanterns outside shone through the tiny window above the bed, mottling the floor of his room. Distant voices floated in with the pattering of rain over the wide jungle trees.

  With the Declaration over, the Gen would be holding their monthly Pairing Ceremony now. He could picture the girls in the circle of the Commons, each choosing her partner. In his mind he saw a girl with dark curls walking down the path to the Pairing tents, teasing and playful, hand in hand with a boy who couldn’t possibly grasp how much it meant for her to take him in her arms, their bodies lost in a pile of quilts and tapestries.

  Jack curled into himself, burying his head under a pillow in an effort to block out the soft laughter of the strolling couples outside.

  Chapter Three

  Althea

  Althea-310 gazed out the window of Remembrance Hall. She was only a few weeks into her apprenticeship, and she was already forgetting to pay attention to the minutes she was taking of the Council meeting. Remembrance Hall was the oldest building in all three communities. It was the very building where the Original Nine had lived and slept, before there were dorms. Inside the meeting room, mahogany walls framed tall windows that looked out on the Commons. Althea sat at a desk in the corner while the nine members of the Council, one representative for each model, sat at a long table, the gold badge of the Council, embroidered with the words Harmony, Affinity, Kinship, sewn into their clothes.

  In contrast to the hushed voices and shuffling papers in the meeting room, the Commons outside was a flurry of activity. The Gen-310s would have their Pairing Ceremony tonight, and all day the four boys and four of the five girls would hardly be able to concentrate on their apprenticeships as they looked forward to the coming celebration. One of the girls always hosted, and this month was the Meis’ turn to sit out the Pairing and instead plan the décor and menu for the evening. They’d already converged to hang lanterns and garlands from the kapok tree in the center of the Commons, and they’d encircled the huge trunk with lighted, colored stones, a new decoration they’d created that Althea knew they were particularly proud of.

  Altheas tended to choose Hassans at the Pairing Ceremonies. Since the Gen-310s had turned sixteen and celebrated their first Pairing a year ago, the Altheas had chosen the Hassans half the time. Althea-310 turned her attention back to the meeting, but she studied the Samuel at the conference table while her fingers flew over the letter machine, recording a conversation about the rice mills. Perhaps the Altheas could choose the Samuels tonight. They were pleasant, and more decisive than the Hassans, who tended to be timid.

  Althea shook her head. It was impossible. The Kates had already made it known that they were choosing the Samuels, and Althea’s sisters had made a specific decision for this month’s Pairing. The Gen-290 Altheas had had a long discussion with them about how conspicuous it’d become that the Gen-310 Altheas never chose the Carsons at a Pairing.

  “I don’t understand why your generation seems to have a problem with the Carsons,” Althea-298 had said. “The rest of the Altheas are fine with them. You’ve hurt their feelings. It’s causing problems.”

  If the others in Vispera sensed a lack of harmony between the Gen-310 Carsons and Altheas, then Althea and her sisters were obliged to seek a resolution. It was the way things were always done in Vispera. As a result, they had agreed to choose the Carsons tonight, and there was no way around it. Althea had to go along or risk upsetting her sisters, all the older Altheas, and really, the entire Pairing Ceremony itself. She sighed, returning her full attention to keeping the record.

  Carson-292’s voice picked up and droned through the meeting hall. They were discussing the amniotic tanks.

  “The timers on the tanks are missing,” he said. “They disappeared, and they’re not the first thing to disappear from the labs either, but they are the most critical. The next generation will be born soon. If we don’t find the timers, how will we control the oxygen levels in the amniotic tanks? We have to get to the bottom of this.”

  “We’re as interested as you in figuring it out, Carson.” The Inga sat at the head of the table, presiding over the Council meeting. “We’re all aware of what’s at stake, and we’re working on the problem.”

  Althea noted the gray hair at the Inga’s temples and realized she’d recorded the wrong Gen. In the end, which individual Inga was acting on the Council made little difference. Council members were chosen with a Gen communing and deciding by consensus who should represent the models in a given month. Those selected were usually the most adept at weaving through communing currents and picking out slight intimations of difference, swirling eddies of dissent and divergence. Though everyone was capable of serving on the Council, these were the ones who won a nomination time and again. Althea went back to the transcript and adjusted the record, noting that a 280 was representing the Ingas this week. If Althea wanted to be respected as a record keeper and future historian, she couldn’t afford silly mistakes.

  “That’s not good enough,” Carson-292 said. “We need security in the labs.” He leaned back in his chair. “Those timers were stolen. This is sabotage.”

  The other Council members slumped in their chairs as if weary of an old argument.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Carson,” Inga said. “We’ll post some Viktors there, but I’m sure they’ve just been misplaced by the new apprentices, that’s all. They’ll turn up soon.”

  Carson-292’s lips tightened, but Althea noted in the record his assent to the proposal for new security.

  Inga turned to her agenda. “Next item to discuss is the proposed modification of the de-extinction project. Samuel, since you’ve had the most involvement, would you like to address the Council?”

  Althea’s fingers paused on her machine. They were talking about the human, Jack. After that day in school, no one had seen him for a long time. Then suddenly he started appearing now and then, walking with his eyes focused on the ground in front of him, keeping to himself. Sometimes she’d see him carrying baskets of linen to and from the clinic. And then at the Declaration, he’d attacked Carson again. That was the first time she�
��d been reminded of the violence that shimmered just under the surface, the same violence that had ended with Carson-312 out of class for a week. Althea remembered the anxiety of the Carsons during their brother’s absence. It’d made them jittery and short-tempered.

  The brothers had been excused from class for the last few days Carson-312 was gone. They seemed about ready to fall apart, and the Council was concerned Carson-312 might fracture and there would have to be a Binding Ceremony. Althea had seen one once. A few years ago, a jaguar had come over the wall and attacked an older Hassan. He hadn’t simply been injured, he’d been traumatized as well. He refused to walk any of the paths hidden in trees, and eventually he wouldn’t even leave the Hassan dorm. His erratic behavior distanced him from his brothers, and when there was nothing more to be done, Althea had watched with the rest of the community as the remaining Hassan brothers said their ritualistic goodbyes before slipping a needle into the arm of the fractured Hassan. He’d drifted off, closing his glassy eyes, and then the community drank cups of punch and chatted solemnly about having uneven numbers at the Gen’s next Pairing Ceremony.

  Fracturing was rare, but it was painful for everyone. In the end, Carson-312 hadn’t fractured. Everyone was relieved they hadn’t needed the Binding Ceremony, and they subsequently remained silent about that terrible day. Althea avoided thinking about it all as much as possible. She couldn’t help watching Samuel-299, however, wondering what he was going to say about Jack and the project that seemed to have caused so much trouble.