BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (4 page)

Then it was over.

Josh gave my shoulder a squeeze. I hadn’t even realized his arm was around me. I linked our fingers and squeezed his hand back.

Only when I left did I notice them.

Two figures in the shadow of a eucalyptus tree, watching the ceremony from a distance. I couldn’t make out their faces, though.

Just two shadows.

***

I woke up drenched in sweat.

Orange light poured through the cracks in the blinds, igniting the walls and tinting the air crimson. My bedroom shimmered.

It was light from the street.

I dashed to the blinds and lifted the corner to peek outside
—
and the blast of heat made my eyes water.

Fire.

A house across the road and two lots up.

Flames exploded from the windows and slithered up the walls and burst into the sky. Above the house, a rising column of red haze bled into the fog.

But it was the scene in front of the house that sent prickles through my heart.

My neighbor was on his knees, begging for mercy.

A boy stood over him.

A boy in a yellow leather jacket, not much older than I was, leveling a gun at the man’s forehead.

At his side a can of kerosene spilled the last of its contents into the grass, and behind him a yellow Ford Mustang GT with a black racing stripe growled on the lawn.

Yellow and black.

Like a hornet.

Finally the distant whine of police sirens cut through the roar, the sound of safety and protection. Of civilization. I let myself breathe again. Thank God
—

A flash, the boy’s arm recoiled.

The gunshot echoed up and down the street, and my neighbor keeled over, his lips still pleading for mercy.

I gasped, clutching my mouth to stifle it.

The boy holstered his weapon and peered up at the burning building with a lazy smile.

I couldn’t help it anymore. A shriek escaped my cupped hands.

And despite the deafening roar of the flames, despite the scream of the sirens, despite the double-paned tempered glass windows my father had installed for my protection, the boy heard.

His back muscles flexed, straining against the tight leather. He swung around, and from a hundred feet away his coal black eyes locked on mine.

It was like he reached right into me and gripped my heart. I dropped the blinds and backed against the wall, shivering and wheezing for air. My skin buzzed with fear, and I could hear it ringing in my ears, louder and louder. 

Like hornets.

Chapter 4

I jolted up
in bed.

A bad dream. The boy, the fire . . . just a bad dream. Yet it didn’t fade
—
the fear palpitating my skin, the icy cage locked around my heart. I squirmed and clawed at my chest, frantic to free myself.

But I couldn’t reach my heart.

Not like him.

Just a bad dream, Blaire.

I gave up trying to tear through my ribs and peeled off my sheet, now glued to my stomach with sweat.

Through a crack in the blinds, my neighborhood appeared dark and silent. The house across and two lots up stood intact.

No yellow Mustang. No fire.

No boy.

Relief rushed through me, but not enough to wash away the unsettled feeling. The house, a roaring inferno a second ago, looked almost too peaceful now.

Just a bad dream
.

I was about to lower the blinds when movement caught my eye. There, through the second story window of the same house that burned down, the flick of a shadow.

Someone was moving upstairs.

I watched the house, hardly breathing.

The porch light came on, and the front door opened. For a long time, a figure hung back in the darkness, and the chill returned to my spine.

Then he stepped into the light.

My neighbor, Dr. Benjamin
—
I remembered his name now
—
walked onto his front porch and cinched his night robe around his bare chest.

Though dark, it was clear he was staring at something in his yard. With a wave of prickles, I realized what. He was staring at the exact spot where his body had fallen in my dream.

Where he died.   

I climbed back into bed badly shaken. Had Dr. Benjamin experienced the same dream?

***

Unable to fall back to sleep, I rose from bed and meandered through my house, spooking myself with my own dark reflection in the hall mirror.

My kitchen felt safest, so I plopped myself on a barstool at the marble island, currently piled with boxes of pasta, and watched the oven clock change to 3:34 AM.

The fridge hummed to life, jolting my already traumatized heart. But I liked the background noise. It was reassuring somehow knowing my kitchen never slept.

Behind me, an L-shaped black leather couch faced a fireplace topped with a 72” flat screen. Outside the floor to ceiling glass walls, a steaming swimming pool glowed from magenta and blue mood lighting.

My father’s interior design work had been lucrative. The inheritance he had left me
—
now managed by New York Life
—
had helped me prove financial self-sufficiency to the court.

I fished out my scrapbook and flipped through the clues on his disappearance, keeping one ear tuned for roaring flames and police sirens.

If only I had gotten hold of his diary; I was beginning to feel certain he had left a message for me in its pages. After all, I was the one who
—
because I could decipher his handwriting
—
had recognized the text was reversed.

He had come back to tell me something.

And I had let the diary, intended for me only, slip right back into the hands of the police. I had failed him.

At the thought, an intense, self-hatred gripped my chest and forced me to take slow, shallow breaths.

I had failed him.

***

I dropped my Jeep off for an oil change on Monday morning. After school, Josh walked me home, bouncing a basketball between his legs.

“So your dad didn’t remember you at all?” he asked.

“He thought I disappeared when I was little.”

“I don’t know, Blaire . . .” He caught the ball in one hand, faked as if throwing it at me
—
making me flinch
—
and pulled it back at the last second, because he was palming it. Finally he twirled the ball on his finger. “Stuff like this happens all the time.”

I punched the ball off his finger, and it bounced down the street.

“Hey! What was that for?” He glared at me before chasing it down.

I kept walking.

When Josh came back, he put his arm stiffly around my shoulder. I tensed briefly, but returned the gesture and put my arm around his waist, letting my head lean against his shoulder while we walked.

“I don’t know, Blaire,” he said again, “it doesn’t sound that weird
—
I mean, there’s tons of cases like this where people show up years later acting funny.”

“So where was he all that time?” I said. “Why didn’t they find him?”

“Bet they didn’t even try,” he said. “You know they don’t do anything unless you’re a celebrity. Your dad was probably just staying with a friend.”

We turned onto my street, and I wondered whether Josh would want to come inside. Whether I wanted him inside. Having a father to scare off boys made things so much simpler.

“How could he not remember his own daughter?” I said.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Blaire. He had Alzheimer’s.”

I let go of Josh’s waist and pushed him away. “No he didn’t.”

“Hey,” said Josh, pointing up ahead. “What’s all that for?”

I followed his gaze halfway up my street, where two police cars and an ambulance idled at the curb, lights flashing.

I balked, thinking they had come for me, before I realized they had cordoned off a yard across the street, where a group of officers and a paramedic stood conversing behind a perimeter of yellow tape. Outside the tape stood a group of doctors.

It was the house across from mine and two lots up.

Dr. Benjamin’s house.

The house I had watched burn to the ground in my dream.

***

I ran the rest of the way up my street and reached one of the detectives as he climbed into his Lincoln. 

“What happened?” I gasped.

“Sorry, we can’t release anything yet.”

“But this is my street,” I said. “My house is right there.” I pointed.

He seemed to appreciate the proximity of my house to the crime scene, because he didn’t shut the door on the face. “Suicide,” he said, “reported this morning.”

I swallowed. “Was it Doctor Benjamin?”

“What’s your relation to him?”

“I’m his neighbor,” I said. “Is he
gone
 . . .
I saw him just last night.”

The dream
.

No, it couldn’t be. Thinking back, I wasn’t even sure now I’d had the dream before
Dr. Benjamin came out. It had to be after.

In fact, I couldn’t even picture what the boy looked like now. All I remembered were his eyes.

His coal black eyes.

Just a bad dream.

The officer raised an eyebrow and hauled himself out of the car. “I believe that makes you our only witness.” He produced a small notebook, folded back. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

The sun struck my hair, making the strands burn against my face. I flicked them off. “When did he die?”

“Sometime between three-thirty and four-thirty in the morning.”

In other words, right after the dream. My unease rushed back. While the officer took down my name and phone number, Josh strolled up behind us but kept his distance. He bounced his ball.

At the sound, and the officer’s gaze flicked to him. “Hold the ball, son.”

“Sorry.”

“Josh, you should just go,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Blaire, could you describe your last interaction with Doctor Benjamin?” said the detective.

“I just saw him out my window. I didn’t talk to him or anything.”

“What time would you say that was?”

I hesitated, not sure how incriminating it would sound to admit to spying on my neighbor at three in the morning.
If you want the truth, Blaire, you must speak the truth
.

That’s what my dad would have said.

“Three-thirty in the morning,” I answered. “A bad dream woke me up, and I noticed he was standing out on the porch.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know, just thinking.” I nodded to the group of white coats. “What are all the doctors for?”

“They’re lab technicians from Scripps,” he said. “Colleagues.”

“Your colleagues
?
”

“His. He was a director, headed one of their divisions. Been doing stuff with the Army.”

“Inside the quarantine zone?”

“I take it he kept to himself?” he said, trying to steer us back on topic. “Private sort of fellow?”

“Were his colleagues surprised by his suicide?” I said.

“That’s how it usually is with these guys, high profile and all that. No one sees it coming. It’s the stress that does it.”

“But the whole quarantine is just a drill, right?”

“Sure, these guys get to go home at night, but word on the street is they’re running that place like a concentration camp. Can hardly blame the guy.”

“So you’ve ruled out murder?”

“We’re sure it’s suicide.”

I glanced at Dr. Benjamin’s lawn, where I had seen the parked Mustang. No tire tracks. And on the house, no evidence of fire.

Duh, Blaire, it was just a coincidence.

I was not capable of prophetic dreams.

My eyes carried up the street, over the baked, shimmering asphalt, and suddenly I caught a wave of déjà vu. Like this one was a fake, and somewhere else someone was living my real life. Despite the heat, I shivered.

After the ambulance departed, the cops took their tape down and followed suit. The scientists lingered, talking in low, hushed voices. Worried voices.

Their director had just committed suicide.

***

After my conversation with the detective, there was no way I could focus on my AP U.S. History essay. Feeling antsy, I closed my laptop and stuffed it into my backpack, confident I could hammer something out tomorrow before class.

Instead, I decided to make amends with Joe. He was right, after all. He did need me on his side. And I needed him on my side. First priority: apologize to him for being a punk sixteen-year-old.

Later that afternoon, I climbed the steps to the police station with a skip in my step, feeling like I was doing the right thing for once, and found him in his office.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said gruffly.

I was about to speak when I noticed his walls had been completely stripped bare. He had two Bankers Boxes open on his desk which he was jamming full of picture frames and stacks of paper. He wore a stoic frown.

“What’s going on?” I said quietly.

“I’m off the case, Blaire. That’s what’s going on.” His moved in jerks, barely containing his fury.

“No, you can’t be.”

“My wife thinks I’m having an affair with you,” he said.

“
What?
” My jaw fell open. “Why?”

He spun to face me, temples pulsing. “Now let’s see, Blaire . . . she calls my office at two in the morning and hears
you
. Later,
you
call her and whine that I’m not giving you what you want. Finally
you
show up to my house dressed like a prostitute and beg to see me. Does that answer your question?”

“You mean this . . . this is because of me?” I whispered, horrified.

“And now there’s no one on your dad’s case,” he said. “So I hope it solves itself.”

“You got fired?”

“No, I got demoted to patrol.”

“But we’re not having an affair!”

“No shit, Sherlock. You’re way too needy, obnoxious, and irresponsible for my taste.”

“Then why are you off the case?”

“Because cops can’t have affairs with sixteen-year-old girls,” he shouted. “They can’t even be accused of having affairs with sixteen-year-old girls.”

“All I wanted was the diary,” I said. “Can I at least have it now?”

“Blaire
—
” Joe slammed one of the boxes onto a cart. “There’s nothing in the diary.”

“Yes there is,” I said, heat rushing to my face. “He wrote it all down; you just hold it up to a mirror
—
”

“We reversed the copy like you said. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s crap. Because that’s what insane people do. They write gibberish.”

“No,” I breathed, “that’s not true . . . he wrote it all down.”

“Not in the diary, he didn’t.” Joe smashed the second box onto the cart. “Your father’s case is closed until further notice. If you have any questions you’ll have to take them up with my sergeant.”

***

Shame.

Utter shame. For the rest of the day and throughout school on Tuesday, self-loathing burned my cheeks. An affair with Joe Paretti.

God, how stupid could I be? I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.

Because of me, the police had abandoned the case. I had failed my father
and
ruined a marriage. Great job, Blaire.

Real smooth.

And what had I accomplished? I barely even knew the cause of death.

The police could give up
—
they had a body, after all
—
but I couldn’t. Something or someone had taken my father away from me, and I had to know what. It wasn’t a choice; if I didn’t, the mystery of his disappearance would fester in me until the day I died. I needed closure. I needed something to blame.

I knew he would have done the same for me. It’s just what you do when you love someone so completely. You never give up.

On Tuesday, I entered the hospital for the third time in two weeks, still disgusted with myself. My eyes stayed glued to the floor.

“We’ve got your father’s karyotype,” Dr. Johnson said to me once inside her office. “And yours . . . are you okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine.”

“These tests were carried out by the UCSD Cytogenetics Laboratory.” She brought up a pair of slides on her computer screen depicting a bunch of pairs of what looked like gummy worms. “It turns out you both have abnormal karyotypes
—
and don’t worry, these aren’t their actual colors.”

“What do you mean,
abnormal?
” 

“Let’s start with your father’s karyotype,” she said, tapping the screen. “Right now, you’re looking at twenty-three pairs of normal chromosomes.”

“Okay.”

“Notice anything else?”

I mentally checked off each pair. Then I saw it. “The last one . . . it’s missing one.”

“Are you sure?” she said. “Count them again.”

I counted. “Forty-seven.”

“Right,” she said. “This is known as aneuploidy, or an abnormal number of chromosomes. Most humans have forty-six chromosomes, which means your dad had an extra one. Believe me, that’s loads
better than missing one, and probably much more common than most people think. Now here’s your karyotype. Let’s see if you can spot what’s different.”