The Ones (3 page)

“Calm down. This was the law that the Equality Movement wanted. They're getting it. Now it's over.”

Cody shook her head, frustrated by how naive James was being. “Maybe if I put this in terms you can actually understand…”

“Go right ahead.”

“Remember when we started dating, and I wouldn't let you kiss me?”

“Of course,” James said. “It was diabolical.” He couldn't help a cute half smile at the thought, but Cody wasn't going to be distracted.

“And then after we kissed, what happened?”

“You saw stars and realized you could never live without me?” He beamed a full smile at her.

“You wish. I mean the next time we hooked up, what happened?” Cody pulled one of his arms from the steering wheel and waved it in front of his face. “With these things.”

“My hands? Oh. They, uh, wanted to move around.”

“Exactly. And then what? After they had ‘moved around' a few times?”

“They wanted to do other things.” He said with the beginning of a blush creeping onto his cheeks.

“And so on and so forth, each step meeting less resistance than the one before it,” Cody said.

James was finally grasping her point. “Wow. So all the Ones are going to be marched off to their deaths?”

“Pretty much,” Cody responded, pleased with her lesson.

“Because you let me kiss you in the stacks of the library that day?”

Cody smacked him hard in the chest, and James laughed, trying to block it. “I am being serious here!” she yelled.

“I know, I know, I'm sorry,” he said as he slowed the car down in front of Cody's house. “But honestly, I swear, I don't think we have anything to worry about.” He put the car into park and turned it off.

Cody gave him a weird look. “What are you doing?”

“I'm coming in. You can't possibly go through that whole analogy and expect me not to hang out for a few minutes.”

“That wasn't my point.”

James took his hands off the steering wheel and held them harmlessly up in the air. “Hands at ten and two, I promise,” he said, smiling.

Cody tried to stay angry with him, but it was impossible with his hands raised in mock innocence, his dimples deep enough to have dimples of their own. And then there was the dark hair that tumbled over his forehead, the curls thick enough to have curls of their own. James had a way of looking at her that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up and dance.

“Fine,” she finally said, knowing she didn't have the willpower to resist. “My mom's already asleep anyway.”

They got out of the Jeep and walked quietly up to the small clapboard house. Cody silently unlocked the door, and they tiptoed through the dark, cramped living room and into Cody's bedroom. James banged into a chair in her room and had to stifle a groan. They tried not to step on the broken microscopes and old doctor bags that littered the floor. Cody turned on a globe that threw stars across the wall, making it a little easier to see.

“You okay?” she asked.

James sat down on the bed and pulled her down next to him. “Couldn't be better,” he said.

Cody turned to face him and hovered there for a moment, savoring that sensation of being close enough to feel someone without actually touching. And then, finally, barely having to move, they pressed their lips together.

After a second or two, James pulled back a few inches. “PQ3318,” he said.

Cody smiled. “PQ3318,” she answered back.

That was the library catalog code that James had written on a scrap of paper and handed to her before disappearing into the stacks. When she got up the courage to actually go look for him, it had taken forever to find him, the butterflies inside her getting crazier with each step. The random book he had picked was deep in their cavernous library, and when she finally walked down the right aisle, they were totally alone. “I almost gave up on—” he had started to say, but Cody didn't let him finish. PQ3318 was their secret.

It was a wonderful memory, and Cody relished it as she reached up to touch James's face and kissed him again. Their bodies pushed into each other, heating up as articles of clothing began to come off.

And that was when the brick crashed through her window.

Cody gasped as hundreds of glass shards exploded over their heads. Her bed was directly below the window that now had a gaping hole in it.

“Stay down,” James yelled, but Cody crawled to the window and shoved her face out between the jagged edges. She caught a glimpse of a car, which shot off into the night, tires squealing, lights off, a faint shout of triumph drifting back down the empty street.

She turned to James, who was standing in shock. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Cody didn't answer. She looked down at the glass-strewn comforter and went to pick up the brick off the floor. It was solid, heavy, cold. Then she turned it over in her hands and saw it.

Two parallel lines, painted in white to stand out against the red brick—a perfectly drawn equal sign. As Cody looked at it, she wasn't fearful or angry or nervous. To her surprise, she felt something entirely different. She felt … ready.

Cody held up the brick to show James, her arms steady, eyes clear. “I told you this was just the beginning.”

 

CHAPTER 2

JAMES STOOD DUMBSTRUCK
as Cody showed him the brick. He saw the equal sign and knew what it meant. Yet all he could think to say was, “Watch out for the broken glass.”

Broken glass was easy enough to deal with; you watched where you stepped and then swept it up. James was always finding the most efficient way to proceed, and there was a beautiful logic to this problem: Broken glass was dangerous, so you cleaned it up carefully. A brick flying at their heads was another matter. James didn't have a solution for that. Cody did, though.
Of course she does
, James thought, and from the look on her face, it didn't involve a broom.

“Let's go,” she said, eyes aflame. “I saw their car.”

Cody grabbed a sweatshirt and bounded out of her room. James felt his adrenaline pumping, too. He knew it was a natural biological reaction, a step in the fight-or-flight process. And he knew just as well that he landed squarely on the
flight
side. But to where? The whole country had heard the Supreme Court ruling by now, and they were all wearing the requisite
LET AMBER CHEER!
bracelets. If people were blowing off steam by throwing bricks at Ones, then chasing after this car didn't seem like the best idea.

“Come on!” Cody loudly whispered from the hallway, and James knew there was no use in arguing with her. Quite literally, she wasn't even there to argue with, so he had no choice but to follow her outside, moving carefully back through the dark living room and easing the front door shut behind him. Cody was waiting for him next to his Jeep.

“How did your mom not hear that?” he asked.

“Sound machine, sleeping mask, earplugs—that woman would sleep through the apocalypse.”

James got in the car and unlocked the doors so Cody could hop into the passenger's seat. She was still holding the brick. “What are you going to do with that?”

“I'm not sure yet,” she said, setting it on her lap. “Drive to the quarry, and we'll figure it out.”

James had the key in the ignition, ready to start the car, but he paused and gave her a questioning look.
The quarry? How did she know where to go?

Cody reached over and grabbed his hand. James took solace in it for a moment … until Cody twisted the key and brought the engine to life.

*   *   *

If there was anything good about being raised in the town of Shasta, the quarry in the abandoned mine—long since filled with water—was at the top, middle, and end of the list. It was a gigantic playground where the local kids grew up swimming in the deep reservoir, climbing the smooth sandstone walls, and daring each other to jump off the cliffs. It made for a glorious way to spend a summer day, and the fact that it was sealed off and you needed to sneak in gave it just the right feeling of danger. More than 150 years had passed since the last gold miners had stripped the mountain bare, but the various tunnels, chutes, and pathways they had carved were still present. Of course, they were hard to see now, and every local campfire legend involved some poor kid falling down an unexpected hole and slowly transforming into a grizzled maniac who terrorized the town. This never really scared James; even as a little kid, he knew that gold mines were not dug down in straight vertical shafts and that you couldn't just fall into one.

But the real reason James had never worried about falling into a tunnel was that he had been to the quarry only once in his life.

That wasn't normal for a Shasta kid, but James's parents made it clear that this was their firmest rule. He had defied them once, hiked up with his friends when he was ten or eleven and had the time of his life making perfect dives from the highest perches. When his mother found out, she slapped him across the face. Hard, angrily, violently. It was the only time his parents had ever touched him, and the sheer surprise of it made him sob instantly. He could always recall the exact details of that moment, the warm sensation of blood surging to his temple, the sting on his cheek, the look in his mom's eyes that somehow made him feel like he deserved it.

And maybe he did deserve it, he figured out a few years later. When he was old enough to finally put the full picture together, he realized that his brother had drowned at the quarry. Thomas, the sibling he had never met. The child that James was meant to replace. So he came to understand how it must have been great news to his parents when they were selected for the NIH pilot program and told that their newly conceived embryo was eligible to be genetically engineered. It was a miracle—not only could they replace Thomas, but they could also guarantee that their new child would be just as perfect.

James felt that pressure every day of his life. Long ago, he realized that he could never screw up. Never get in trouble, never disappoint, never drown in some senseless accident. James had internalized these expectations and worked his ass off to meet them every day. It had made him cautious, thoughtful, and reserved. He was the president of his class at school, the captain of the debate team, a tireless dishwasher at home—doing a damn good job of being perfect, he thought. But for some people, he was starting to realize, it would never be enough.

So maybe it was good that he was here right now, driving through the dark on this winding road to the place where he was never supposed to go. He wasn't scared; he was excited. Curious, too. He loved being in the wilderness, and if he weren't so overwhelmed with chores and activities, he'd happily hike around the woods all day long. But James could barely remember what the quarry was like from that one visit, and he knew it would be different at night. He also knew that people went there to party sometimes, but he had never been. He looked over at Cody.

“Have you been up here at night before?” he asked.

She hesitated for a moment. “Once or twice maybe.”

“Like for a party?”

Cody squinted as she saw something ahead of them and then gestured to a spot in the woods. “Over there,” she said. “There's an old dirt road behind those bushes.”

James slowed down and pulled to the side. He slid through some undergrowth and then started down a bumpy road with branches clawing at their windows. At the end of it, he could make out the faint glow of a bonfire. Cody pointed to a little clearing off the path, and James steered the Jeep into the small area that was hidden from the road.

He shut the car off and turned to Cody. “What now?” he asked.

“Someone owes us an apology.”

Cody hopped out of the car, brick still in hand, and started toward the bonfire. James walked next to her, taking in the heavy darkness and trying to force his eyes to adjust. Sure, he had perfect vision, but he still couldn't see in the dark. There was music playing ahead of them, kids shouting, shadows dancing through the bright orange flames. Looking on from a distance, James immediately felt inclined to give everyone a lecture on fire safety. He had been an ace fire starter in his Boy Scout troop, and that included learning all the dangers that came with camping in a prehistoric, dry pine forest. The sparks rising from the bonfire ahead practically gave him a heart attack. One unlucky change in the wind could burn down half the state.

Cody and James pressed forward, and when they reached the end of the path, James finally got his bearings. Ahead of them—or really below them—was the expansive reservoir, black, shiny, and still in the calm night. They had emerged to stand on top of a giant cliff, carved smooth and flat up to its edge, sixty feet over the water. And they had stepped right into a scene that even James had to admit seemed like an awesome party.

“Yooooooo!” someone shouted, finally noticing them. “You're hella late!”

James and Cody stepped into the light, closer to the oil-barrel trash can containing the flames. About thirty people from their school were milling around. James recognized most of them but didn't exactly see any friends. And whoever had shouted at them changed his tone when he saw Cody and James.

“Oh,” he said. “You guys lost or something?”

James saw who was talking to them: a kid named Marco Spiller, the de facto leader of the Bench Mob. The Bench was a noted landmark at their school, an otherwise boring piece of public infrastructure that happened to be set in concrete just on the other side of the school's property line. It was technically off-campus, and thus a convenient meeting spot for any activity that wasn't allowed on school grounds. There were always kids gathered around the Bench, but only a few actually sat down on it. Marco Spiller perched on it like it was a throne.

He continued eyeing James and Cody and then began to smile. “Or did you guys come to party?”