Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (4 page)

“You
should have been there,” said Aaron. “Dominic Brees was working the crowd.”

“No
bullshit,
Breezie
was there?” said Buff. “Tell me you punched him in
the face for me?”

“I
kind of had my hands full,” said Aaron.

“You heard about that missing kid, right?” said Buff. “He’s the one who
dropped that pass during the finals last year, Justin Gorski. Cost Corona the
game. I bet Breezie snuffed him out because the season’s about to start.”

“Couldn’t have been a rugby player,” said Aaron, “Gorski was last seen
with a girl.”

“No bullshit, Breezie put her up to it,” said Buff. “Hey, are you still
trying out for rugby this year?”

“Yeah, now that the volleyball team’s whole starting lineup is eighteen,”
said Aaron, “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

“Not sure why you’re even bothering . . . ” Buff grinned and glanced at his
phone “You’re up in twenty-six days.”

Just
then a girl came through the doorway, her dark hair sailing in slow motion
behind her. Emma Mist. She glanced at Aaron briefly, then let her hair fall
over her shoulder to block him from view.

“Yep,
she hates you,” said Buff.

“It’s
that obvious?” said Aaron. He had recently broken up with Emma because his
birthday was coming up. It was the right thing to do—but standing her up the
night of winter formal after she’d already done her hair and makeup was the
wrong way to do it.

“Please
turn in your essays on quantum mechanics and the discovery of halves,” said Mr.
Sanders, walking in just as the bell rang.

As
the sounds of shuffling papers and sliding desks filled the room, Buff produced
a crumpled sheet of notebook paper covered with barely legible scribbles. He
glanced at Aaron, whose hands were still jammed in his pockets, and gave a
disappointed headshake before he ambled to the front.

Aaron
tried to catch Emma’s eye, but she was decidedly oblivious, twirling her hair
around her finger and gazing firmly out the window. If she would just let him
apologize . . .

Ten
minutes into lecture someone knocked on the classroom door, and Mr. Sanders
paused to let in another girl who hated Aaron. Tina Marcello. Today she wore big
sunglasses and chewed bubblegum.

“Ms.
Marcello, I’m glad you’re here,” said their teacher with a smile. “I didn’t
think it was fair for us to talk about you behind your back.”

She
stopped chewing and brushed her straight, highlighted hair out of her eyes.
“Huh?”

“Take
a seat, Tina.” Mr. Sanders went back to his lecture. “ . . . so although quantum
entanglement was well documented by 1935, we credit Schrödinger with the
discovery of halves. Mr. Harper, why does he get all the credit?”

Tina
sat right in front of Aaron. As usual, she glowered at him as she walked toward
her seat, chewing her gum like it didn’t taste good.

Aaron
mouthed, “
Bite me
.”

“Aaron,
how did he prove it to the world?” said Mr. Sanders.

Buff
kicked the side of Aaron’s calf, making him wince.

“Prove
what?” he said.

“That
every human is born with a half.”

“Uh—he
used an aitherscope?” said Aaron.

“Wrong.
Aitherscope technology wouldn’t exist for another decade.” Mr. Sanders swept to
the chalkboard. “Schrödinger said if humans formed in quantum entangled pairs,
then in every case we would find that the halves were born simultaneously . . . therefore
all we have to do is look at birth times.” The chalk made a nasty scrape on the
board.

“Nice
one,
Aaron
,” Tina said under her breath. She was putting on makeup.

Aaron
kicked her desk, causing her to smear her lipstick.

“
Jerk,
”
she said, wiping the smudge with her tank top.

Their
teacher scanned the classroom for the source of the commotion, and his eyes
settled on Aaron. At the same moment, Amber’s cell phone went off in his
pocket, turning all the heads in the classroom with a shrill, hip-hop beat and
a chain of rapid-fire cusswords.

Lovely.

***

Over
the next six hours, Clive called Amber’s cell phone so many times that Aaron found
himself humming the ring tone between periods. When it rang for the twentieth
time on his way to volleyball practice, he picked up.

“Clive,
this is Aaron—”

But
the caller hung up before he finished. Aaron lowered the phone from his ear,
and his heartbeat felt heavier than usual. He had just made a huge mistake. Now
Clive Selavio, Amber’s abusive boyfriend, thought she and Aaron were hanging
out.

He
had to get the phone back to her. Soon, before the guy did something to her.
Maybe if he ditched practice and drove straight to Corona Blanca High School,
he could catch her before she went home.

Don’t
go near her again
, Clive had said.

Too
bad.

There
were still cars in Corona Blanca’s parking lot when Aaron rolled in around
four. But how to find her . . .

From
what he remembered, Amber looked athletic, probably played a sport and stayed
after school for practice. If she had a car, it would be here.

Outside,
he slid on his sunglasses and leaned against his Mazda, feeling oddly nervous
about talking to her again. At the campus entrance, a bronze statue of the Austrian
physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, glinted in the sun. Its shadow crept closer.

The
man who changed everything.

Just
then Aaron saw her coming out. A smile pulled at the corners of his lips when
he saw Amber approach a bright, Crayola-style powder blue Volkswagen Beetle.
Same color as her cell phone.

She
wore a white tennis skirt and a green tank top with ‘
Corona Blanca Varsity
Tennis
’ written in white cursive along the front. Her skin was damp with
sweat, and a few wisps of hair had escaped her ponytail and stuck to her
forehead. She walked slowly, her eyes downcast.

He
waited until she reached her car before he called out her name.

***

Amber
glanced up, saw him, and froze. “
Aaron?
” She combed her damp hair off
her forehead.

“What’s
up?” he asked. “Lousy practice?”

“Why
are you here?” she said, and when Aaron pushed off his car and came closer, she
narrowed her eyes, tracking him.

In
the daylight she was even more stunning. Once again Aaron found himself lost in
her green eyes, not sure what he had been about to say.

Luckily,
a distraction behind her snapped him out of his daze. The rest of the girls’
tennis team came into the parking lot, chatting and giggling. They paused, and
after a few wary glances in Amber’s direction, continued on their way.

Aaron
dug through his pocket. “You left this.” He tossed the phone to her, which she
caught. “Does Clive always call you that much?”

Without
even a thank you, Amber keyed in her passcode and thumbed through the list of
missed calls. “It’s because he’s worried,” she said.

“Worried
about what?”

“You.
He’s worried you might have a crush on me,” she said, slipping the phone into
her backpack with a hint of a smile, “and that you’re going to wait by my car
after school with some lame excuse about having to return my cell phone just so
you can talk to me again.”

“Oh?”
Aaron raised his eyebrows. “So he’s not worried about the fact that you left
the phone in my shoes on purpose then?”

She
didn’t take her eyes off him. “Did that make your day, Aaron?”

“Actually,
I was kind of dreading this,” he said, “since our first conversation resulted
in me freezing my ass off with some sea lions while your boyfriend threatened
to kill me if I ever went near you again.”

“Then
you probably shouldn’t be near me. Why did you race him, anyway? It’s not like
anyone was impressed.”

“It’s
a guy thing.”

“Uh-huh,”
she said doubtfully. “You know, he’s done things to guys like you before.”

“Like
me?”

“Egotistical
and stupid.”

“Why,
is that your type, or something?” said Aaron, returning her glare. When it got
ridiculous, though, he gave up trying to outstare her and squinted into the
horizon. “So you really think Clive is your half?”

“You
sound jealous,” she said.

“Just
confused,” said Aaron, pushing his sunglasses halfway up the bridge of his
nose. “Halves don’t treat each other like that . . . and I could tell he was nervous
when I told him we had the same birthday.”

“Oh,
right,” she said. “I forgot.”

Aaron
peered sideways at her, but this time she broke eye contact first.

“No,
you didn’t,” he said.

“I
think I would know,” she said, rolling her eyes. Though now she was blushing.

“Well,
have you thought about—”

“Just
drop it,” she said.

“You
don’t buy it, do you?”

“Buy
what?”

“Halves.
The whole bit.”

She
set her gaze on him and the sudden force of her green eyes jolted him. “We’ve known
about halves for barely eighty years. We don’t even know what causes it . . . I mean,
nowhere does it say we’re meant to be soul mates. We just
assumed
.”

“Yeah,
because that part was obvious.”

“There’s
another explanation.”

Aaron
nodded to the bronze statue. “One your man over there didn’t think of?”

“You
know . . . ” she said, without looking back, “Schrödinger kept a mistress.”

“Ouch,”
he said. “Alright, let’s hear your theory.”

“Halves
are more like siblings. Like cosmic twins . . . which would make this all incest.”

“You
are aware most people say its love at first sight when they meet their half.”

“Easy.”
She held his gaze. “Power of suggestion.”

“You’re
saying it could be anybody?”

“I
think that depends.”

“On
what?”

“The
person,” she said, watching him with a tinge of daring, “and what they
believe.”

“Most
people believe halves are perfect biological matches,” he said.

“That’s
what scares me,” she said. “What happens to the human race if we no longer
evolve through natural selection, but instead allow ourselves to be
artificially bred by a force we haven’t even begun to understand?”

“You
think it’s breeding us?”

She
shrugged. “I wouldn’t be the first.”

A
few students walked past them, and Aaron chewed his lip, waiting for them to
pass out of earshot. Like the tennis players, their eyes darted between the two
of them but lingered on Amber, and then Aaron remembered—

“What
happened to Justin Gorski?” he said, changing the subject.

Amber
glared at him as if he had just asked the stupidest question on Earth, and
Aaron regretted asking her; the poor girl had probably gotten nonstop stares at
school, and it was still only her first week.

Yet
part of him doubted her innocence. “Weren’t you the last one with him?” he
said.

“He
offered me a ride home, which I didn’t take,” she said, “and I
wasn’t
the last one with him.”

“Then
who was?” he said, ignoring her look. “Was it your boyfriend, Selavio, jealous
maybe? Am I next on his hit list?”

“It
was Dominic Brees,” she said, “and that’s because they’re both on the rugby
team and they carpool home after practice.”

Aaron
turned away from her and closed his fist. “Just like Buff said,” he muttered.

“Why
do you even care? You don’t go here.”

“One
more thing,” said Aaron, as he recalled Friday night, still believing Clive was
somehow involved. “What was in that vial your boyfriend brought to the beach?”

“What
are you, Aaron, some kind of private detective?”

“He
said it was liquid clairvoyance.”

Amber
pulled her keys out of her backpack and reached for her car door. “I’m kind of
done talking to you,” she said, “and for your information, it was just a glow
stick.”

She
slammed the door in his face.

Well,
that went well
, Aaron thought, as her tires squealed on the asphalt
and left him in a puff of burnt rubber.

***

“It’s too suggestive,”
said Amber’s mother.

Amber stood on a
pedestal wearing the dress, still fuming inside from her conversation with
Aaron. Just who did he think he was? At the moment, a dozen people were looking
her up and down.

She felt André’s hands
on her waist. “We want to display her athletic figure,” he said. “The fabric
accentuates movement, lightness. Step down, Amber, try walking around a bit.”