Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (31 page)

“I
know I hurt you, and I’m sorry. Obviously, what we did together hurt me too,
but will you please let me get on with my life?”

“You’re
lying,” he said finally. “You’re trying to protect me. I know what we had.”

She
sighed again, more exasperated this time. “I knew you would say that. I liked
you too, Aaron. I even thought I loved you at one point. You were fun, and I
really needed that during that time of my life. You helped me through a lot.
But I’m eighteen now and I have a half. What we had is over . . . and I want you to
promise me you won’t try to contact me again.”

“So
you love Clive?”

“Of
course I do, he’s my half,” she said. “I told you that like a thousand times.
Aaron, will you please just promise me?”

Aaron
shut his eyes and loathed the words that came out of his mouth. “If you love
Clive, then yes. I promise.”

“Trust
me,” she said, “you’ll be happier without me screwing up your life. Bye,
Aaron.”

Then
she hung up.

***

At
ten forty-one on Tuesday morning, three days after his appointment at the
Chamber of Halves, reddish sunlight slashed through the dust and scorched
Aaron’s retinas as he crossed the street to his doorless Mazda. He would drive
away. No idea where. He would just drive. He pressed his phone to his ear, and
one more time, he listened to Amber’s terrified message, the one she left while
his phone was off.

“Aaron,
it wasn’t supposed to happen like this—I’m so sorry—
you have to run away
—”

He
slid the phone off his cheek, and it occurred to him in stabbing thrusts. That
message was his last memory of her. They weren’t halves, they weren’t supposed
to be. They had no connection to each other. She didn’t love him.

And
that was the end of it.

Casler
had tried to lure him into a trap; it hadn’t worked. Sure, he could toy with
her clairvoyant channel, cut her open, reconnect her like the plastic pieces of
a marble maze. But not to him—
never
to him. Amber didn’t even want them
to be halves.

In
this world, he had no right to love her. Casler could drain her into a vial,
and Aaron had no right to stop it. She was Clive’s half
,
and in the eyes
of the Juvengamy Brotherhood, his property—his
possession
.

Aaron’s
cell phone rang again.

He
let it ring in his pocket, thinking instead about the half-baked plan he had
been formulating when Amber called. First, he would have driven to Dominic’s
house and made sure she was okay. Then he and Amber would meet Dr. Selavio in
the dungeon. Aaron would volunteer for the machine first. Amber would go next.
When it was done, they would be halves again.

They
would leave here and travel somewhere faraway, like Spain, or Sicily.

 Thinking
back, it was all a delusional fantasy. Every second he spent with Amber—
fake
.
His body had been confused, fragile. It hadn’t been love.

Aaron
eased himself into his car, taking shallow, pinched off breaths, and his phone
rang again. Only this time he felt goose bumps forming along his forearms.

Aaron
dragged the phone out of his pocket. It was Tina.

“What
is it?” he said.

“Aaron—”
Her voice crackled over the speaker. “It’s Amber, she’s in trouble!”

“What
do you mean?”

“She
heard Clive’s father visited you,” she said. “She’s scared he’s going to hurt
you—”

Aaron’s
heart jerked. “What did she do?”

“Amber
made a deal with him,” she said. “He promised to leave you alone, but now she
has to go through with it.”

“Go
through with
what?
” said Aaron.

“They’re
doing it in fifteen minutes,” she said. “The machine . . . they’re going to drill
into her head and drain her clairvoyance. They’re going to make her like the
other juvengamy women!”

Plus 2
Days, 23 hours, 45 minutes

“No—” he gasped, “talk
her out of it, tell her she can’t.”

“We
tried,” said Tina, “but she’s not thinking straight. She heard Casler say he
could use your clairvoyance to make his machine work, and she freaked out. She
volunteered herself instead.”

“But
she knows what it will do to her,” he choked, barely forming the words. “She
doesn’t have any left to give.”

He
heard Dominic’s voice in the background, and then the rugby player came on the
line. “Number eleven?”

“I’ll
volunteer. Just tell her she
can’t
.”

“She’s
not listening to anybody, fuckface.”

Aaron
squeezed his eyelids shut. “She never does.”

“Dr.
Selavio’s warming up the machine right now. They’re doing the operation at eleven.”

Aaron
held the phone away from him, stared at it. It was a nightmare, surreal. His
heart sounded far away, buried, and the whole world rippled when it beat. He
pulled the phone back to his mouth.

“I’m
coming right now,” he said. “Why the hell didn’t Dr. Selavio wait for me? We
had a deal.”

“Amber
made him swear not to contact you,” said Dominic, “and he decided she would be
better anyway. She’ll let him take more out.”

“Jesus.
Just tell him I’m coming,” said Aaron. “And tell him we had a deal.” He flung
his phone onto the passenger seat and reached for the ignition.

What
the hell was Amber thinking?

The
operation would drain her body of something she could never replace. She would
be docile afterwards, helpless, pathetic. She would follow Clive around like a
pet, taking orders and feeling sad when she was reprimanded, happy when she was
rewarded. Never defiant. On the outside, she would still be the same girl—Clive’s
trophy—with only a tiny scar at the back of her head to remind her that she was
hollow.

They
would do this to her, and in fourteen minutes, she was going to let them, all
just to protect Aaron, a boy who wasn’t even her half.

He
had to stop her.

Aaron
ignored the burn of the ignition wires, and his Mazda fired to life. Fourteen
minutes. On a bad day, the drive to Dominic’s house could take twenty. He
wasn’t going to make it in time—

Aaron
hadn’t even found first gear when a figure loomed to his left. He glanced up as
two large hands closed on his collar and dragged him out of the car.

***

 “Amber, turn around,”
said Dominic. He stood in front of the cellar door, swirling a glass of whisky—blocking
her.

Amber stopped just
short of him. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Trust me, you don’t
want this,” said Dominic.

“You mean
you
don’t
want this?” she said.

“No one does.”

“It’s my choice,” she
said.

 Dominic scanned the
entrance hall behind her and raised his eyebrows. “No Selavio?”

“I’m all alone,” she
said. “Does that excite you?”

“Nah.” He tilted his
glass, and the ice crinkled. “My birthday’s in five weeks.”

“Am I invited?” she
said.

“Depends on how much of
you is left.”

She sighed. “Can you
please
move?”

“Seriously though,” he
said. “He’s going to stop you.”

“Clive?”

“Number eleven.”
Dominic wrinkled his nose and sipped his whisky.

Amber felt a twinge in
her heart. “He won’t. Not anymore.”

“Let him volunteer
instead of you. He’s already halfless; no one’s going to miss him.”

Amber glared at him.
Then her eyes flicked to his glass. She snatched it from his hand and poured
the rest on his head.

He flinched, then shook
the liquid off his letterman jacket, kind of like a wet cat. “If that leaves a
stain,” he said, “you’re paying for it, Amber.”

She smiled sweetly.
“Can I go now?”

He stepped to the side.
“Don’t let me stop you.”

Before he changed his
mind—or she
changed hers—Amber pushed through the door. In the cellar,
the silver haze of the aitherscope made her feel see-through. She held her
breath until she was safely past it.

Her stomach still
hadn’t unknotted from her final, heartbreaking conversation with Aaron. On the
phone, it had taken all her strength not to burst into tears, not to cave and
confess she loved him. But somehow, she had to push him away. It was the only way
to protect him. Whether or not they were supposed to be halves hardly mattered.
Even if Casler agreed to reconnect them, the operation would be her second
switch, and she wouldn’t survive it—at least not all of her.

And she never wanted
Aaron to see her like that. As long as Casler left him out of it and promised
never to touch him, he could do whatever he wanted to her. In fact, the more he
took out the better. When it was done, she wanted to feel nothing.

She couldn’t stand
another excruciating minute as Clive’s half. Up until now, he had kept silent
about his father draining her clairvoyance, though she knew it terrified him.
In his own way, he did love her; he wanted to own her just the way she was, not
hollowed out like other juvengamy girls. He wanted her to love him in return,
to
really
love him, and he knew that would only come from the feeling,
thinking, self-aware part of her, from the part she would be missing after the
operation—but Amber would rather throw it away than let him have it.

Clive had never let her
see his father’s studio before, and before today, she had never wanted to. She
took the stairs one at a time, not sure how deep they went. She reached the
bottom and peered into the darkness, and when her eyes adjusted, she felt her
brain go numb with panic. 

It wasn’t the white
hospital room she’d expected.

Amber traversed the
dingy cave and found herself under a huge machine, suddenly terrified—suddenly
aware of everything she was about to lose. The thing hummed above her, dripping
oil, and she could already feel it pulling at her, trying to get inside her.

***

Aaron
was slammed against his car, which had stalled in first. He felt the edge of
the doorframe cut into his back as he stared dumbstruck into the wild eyes of
his best friend, Buff Normandy.

“Don’t
touch me,” said Aaron.

“Buddy,
you can’t go,” said Buff.

“You
don’t even know where
I’m going.”

“Tina
called me and told me what happened,” said Buff. “You made a deal with that
doctor.”

“In
thirteen minutes,” Aaron spat, “she’ll be worse than dead. Let me
go
—”
Aaron slapped Buff’s hands aside and rushed the car, but Buff grabbed his
shoulder and slammed him against the rear door again.

“No
bullshit!” he said. “Not after all the things you told me about him.”

Aaron
was aware of every heartbeat, every second Amber didn’t have. He glared into
his best friend’s eyes. “Do you know what she’ll be like when they’re through
with her?” he said. “She’ll be a pretty little shell—that’s all!”

“It’s
a trap, Buddy. You know that.”

“He
wants clairvoyance,” said Aaron. “It’s either mine or Amber’s.”

“Says
who? Make him use his own shit.”

“Just
get out of my way,” said Aaron.

“Buddy,
she’s not even your half—”

Aaron
shoved Buff backwards, and his friend stumbled to the ground. Then he climbed
into his car.

“I’m
not coming with you,” said Buff, climbing to his feet.

“I
don’t want you to,” said Aaron, “you’d only get someone killed.” He restarted
the engine and burnt rubber. Behind him, black fumes boiled off his tire
tracks. Buff chased him down and kicked his bumper before he squealed down the
street.

So
much for friends.

Aaron
drove a hundred and ten on the freeway. He passed cars as if they were parked.
The wind tore inside the cabin, ripped at his clothes and blinded him. His
Mazda leaned dangerously around curves, right at the edge of traction. At this
speed, it was like cornering switchbacks.

So
Casler lied about making them halves again. Why? All he wanted to do was drain
their clairvoyance. But he clearly preferred Amber’s.

The
needle on his fuel gauge teetered on empty, then crossed it. There was enough
fuel to get him there, to Amber—and that was all he needed.

Grassy
hills swam around him, shimmering pollen-green under the bright sun—as green as
her eyes had been when he sat next to her at the bonfire, more than a month
ago, and gazed into them for the first time.

He
didn’t have the strength to face the rest of his life without her, alone.
Halfless. He had to stop her, even if it meant giving up his own clairvoyance
so she wouldn’t have to.