Replica (20 page)

“I'm okay,” she said. “I—I missed the bus. And I'm not feeling well.”

She'd said the magic words:
not feeling well
. Her mom's tone instantly changed. She became brisk, businesslike, as she always was about her daughter's health.

“I'm coming,” she said. “Where?”

Gemma explained and hung up, passing the phone back to Perv and scowling at him so he would know not to ask questions. As soon as her mom came, she would tell her everything. She wished now she'd paid more attention to the car—it was a white Chevrolet, she knew, and old, but she hadn't caught even one digit of the license plate. Jesus. She'd always thought she would be good in a crisis: cool, ironic, detached. But her knees were shaking. She hadn't picked up even one good detail they could tell the police, except that the guy liked McDonald's. That narrowed it down to a bazillion people.

It took her mom fifteen minutes to get there, and Gemma spent the whole time ignoring Perv's looks of concern, trying to keep Rufus from going after the display of beef jerky, and doing her best to recall every single detail of the man's interaction with her. And by the time
her mom pulled up—leaving the BMW door open as she jogged out of the car, still in yoga pants, scanning the parking lot for Gemma as though she expected her to be curled up in a fetal position on the ground—and then gripped both of Gemma's shoulders and demanded to know what was wrong, what had happened, Gemma only smiled tightly.

“I got tired,” she said. She knew she probably looked like shit and wouldn't have to fake it. “I did too much walking, I think.”

Because by then her mind, grinding slowly through its memory spool, had glitched on a few small details that in retrospect became huge, all-important: the shopping bags from Party City, which sold Halloween masks—like Frankenstein's—year-round. The fact that he'd called her Gem.

More importantly, the last thing he'd said to her, which in memory became clarified, distilled, amplified. Not:
What do you know about heaven?

But:
What do you know about Haven?

Turn the page to continue reading Gemma's story.
Click here
to read Chapter 4 of Lyra's story.

GEMMA WASN'T ACTUALLY EXPECTING TO find much of anything by Googling Haven. She thought she'd heard her parents talk about Haven before, although other than their fight of the previous week she couldn't remember specific instances of it.

The first time she typed in the search term, she got back a random assortment of articles and web pages: a band named Haven was releasing its fourth studio album; a woman named Debbie Haven had recently been convicted of seducing one of her teenage students; a bioethicist named Richard Haven, founder of a famous research institute, had driven his car off the road in Florida the same year Gemma was born; the same Richard Haven had left a large sum of money in his will to the University of Pennsylvania, where for years he had been a professor emeritus. Nothing that pertained to her, nothing that
made sense. She felt almost relieved.

But then she had the idea to type in Haven plus her last name, Ives.

Instantly, there were over a million results, all of them pertaining to the Haven Institute—Gemma quickly realized this must be the same research facility founded by Richard Haven—located on Spruce Island, somewhere off the coast of Florida. She found a PDF credited to her father's old company, Fine & Ives Pharmaceuticals. In it, a letter to the shareholders, the board wrote of hiring Haven to perform the company's research and development. But it was dated several years
after
her father had ruptured with the cofounder of the company and been ousted from the board.

She kept clicking and eventually turned up a picture of her father, standing at some kind of a gala next to a blond guy who looked like he belonged in a commercial for surf gear but who was, according to the caption, the famous Richard Haven. Next to them was a man with a dark curling beard and a forehead, sharply angled, that gave him the look of a shark: Dr. Mark Saperstein, a name that again registered very dimly with her from childhood. She remembered that her father had mentioned Saperstein the other night.
I knew what Saperstein was planning.
A quick Google search revealed that Saperstein had replaced Richard Haven after his death at the
institute that bore his name.

She kept toggling through results, increasingly confused. If Fine & Ives hadn't contracted Haven for its research until well after her father left, why were there so many photos of him getting chummy with Richard Haven? She found an interview with Haven himself for the Scientific Medical Association, crediting her father for his “tireless support of medical research and advances in stem-cell technology.”

She resumed her search, this time typing in
Haven Institute
. The official website was one of those bland templates that all research facilities seemed to share, filled with yawningly boring terminology like
neurobiological resolution
and
cutting-edge biotech services
. She found nothing listed on the website to indicate what kind of research Haven did, exactly—at least nothing she could understand. The institute, she noted, had been opened the year before she was born. Whatever her father felt about Haven now, Haven couldn't have been the reason he'd left Fine & Ives. The timing wasn't right.

More interesting were the websites about Haven: millions of results, half of them blogs, conspiracy websites, and speculative articles about what really went on there, what kind of research was performed, and whether any of it was legal. Some articles were straight-up sci-fi, and claimed that the island was a place where hybrid animals
were being manufactured for military use, or where aliens were being studied and even trained. Other bloggers speculated that at Haven scientists performed illegal stem-cell research.

One of the websites cited most frequently was called HavenFiles.com. When she clicked over to it, a bright-orange warning, exuberantly punctuated and capitalized, flashed at the top of the screen.

Don't be fooled by phony websites and reports!!
it said
.
HavenFiles.com
is the NUMBER ONE source for TRUTHFUL and VERIFIED reporting on the Haven Institute!!

Half-amused, half-curious, she began to read. The website was, as far as she could tell, operated by some guy down in Florida named Jacob Witz, who had, for whatever reason, dedicated his life to reporting on various theories, rumors, and phenomena pertaining to Haven. His bio showed a picture of a gap-toothed middle-aged guy squinting into the sun, wearing a fishing hat feathered with different lures. He looked exactly like the kind of person you'd expect to see tipsy and railing about the time he was abducted by aliens. In his bio, half treatise, half manifesto, he revealed that he'd been a journalism major at the University of Miami and that he was devoted to “integrity,” “uncovering the facts about one of the military's best-kept SECRETS,” and “delivering KNOWLEDGE to the AMERICAN PUBLIC in
accordance with the tenets of FREE SPEECH.” This last sentence was punctuated with about forty exclamation points.

“All right, crazy,” Gemma said out loud. “Let's see what you got.”

His website was like one of those all-you-can-eat buffets where food keeps getting replenished, no matter how much you load up: every page led to more and more pages, every link to more and more links. Gemma felt as if she were falling down a well. There were detailed maps of Haven as imagined from above, and blurry pictures of the buildings taken from a distance and obviously from some sort of boat. (Reading between the lines, Gemma felt sure that Witz had never actually set foot on the island, which was guarded by troops and enclosed within a jail-style fence. He had pictures of this, too, dreary chain-link fitted with barbed wire that Gemma estimated to be about sixteen feet high.) Dozens of pages were devoted to the various theories about the experimentation done at Haven, and Witz argued carefully, in great detail, against the idea that Haven was manufacturing monsters or performing tests on aliens—although he was quick to say that he was an “expert” in military cover-ups of alien landings and had even written a self-published book on the subject (
The Secret Others: What the US Government Doesn't Want You to Know!
).

Several whole pages were devoted to something called the “Nurse M controversy”: Nurse M, real name unknown, who supposedly committed suicide after working at Haven, the day before Witz, who had tracked her down but at least on the site refused to reveal her real name, was supposed to interview her. She found a link to a three-year-old news story in which Haven was named, supposedly because a nationwide hospital system was illegally selling off embryonic and fetal cells to research facilities. An embedded video showed one of the hospital execs leaving a courtroom, swarmed by reporters and right-to-life protesters holding graphic handmade signs.

Gemma's back was sore and her eyes burned from staring at the screen. She was shocked to see she'd been at it for three hours already. Still, she had more questions than she had answers. Her father's company had contracted Haven to do research and development for them. So what? Fine & Ives was one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the country. They contracted plenty of research facilities—and besides, her father had already left by that point, after a protracted court battle with his former partner.

Why did the man in the parking lot think she'd know anything about Haven? And why was it important in the first place? What
did
go on at Haven? Why all the secrecy, and the guards, and that fence?

There was something she was missing, something obvious and yet hidden, like one of those visual riddles where a picture can be viewed two different ways. She wished she could get into her father's office, but he of course kept the door locked. Besides, she didn't even know what she was supposed to be looking for.

She stood up, did a clumsy approximation of a yoga stretch, and nearly fell over. Rufus raised his head and blinked at her.

“So much for Zen,” she said. Obviously unimpressed, Rufus flopped back onto her pillow.

Almost instantly, the buzzer sounded downstairs. Someone was at the gate. Rufus sprang to his feet and dove off the bed, barking furiously, charging for the stairs. For a second, Gemma worried it might be Chloe again, maybe back to do a second round of damage.

But that was stupid. Chloe wouldn't bother buzzing—besides, she was probably on spring break getting trashed on cheap tequila shots with the rest of her pack wolves. And though she'd been certain only a few days ago that Chloe had been the one to throw the Frankenstein mask, now she was having doubts. Maybe, if all the rumors about Haven and monsters were true, it really had been a message for her dad, even if she still couldn't understand the connection.

She checked the security camera and was surprised to
see Perv Rogers, leaning half out of the car, the shock of his white-blond hair visible despite the low resolution. But she buzzed him in without asking him what he wanted. Perv was harmless. Well, except for being a pervert and maybe keeping girls' underwear strung around his basement for sniffing. Maybe keeping
girls
in his basement.

Rufus was still barking two minutes later, when Perv's car—a purplish minivan that looked like a giant, mobile eggplant, obviously borrowed from one of his parents—came rolling up the drive. She had to hold Rufus by his collar so he didn't bolt into the front yard.

“Sorry,” she said, over the sounds of his continued barking, even as Perv climbed out of the car and began edging cautiously toward the door. “He doesn't bite, I promise. He just likes to make a lot of noise. Sit down, Rufus.” Rufus finally sat, and even licked Perv's hand when Perv bent down and presented it for sniffing.

“How old is he?” Perv asked.

“An artifact,” Gemma said. “Thirteen. But still really healthy,” she added quickly, because she had a superstition about referring to Rufus's age. He'd arrived as a puppy when she was three years old. She had no memories that didn't include him.

“I probably smell like Quick-Mart hot dogs,” Perv said. He must have changed after work, because instead of his crappy collared shirt he was actually dressed nicely,
in a white button-down that showed off skin that was half tan and half just freckly, plus a pair of faded chino shorts and old Chuck Taylors. She realized she was wearing an old Hannah Montana T-shirt—
ironically
, of course, but he wouldn't know that—and crossed her arms over her chest.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“You forgot your change,” he said, digging into one pocket and producing a few crumpled bills and some loose change. “There you go. Three dollars and twenty-seven cents.”

She stared at him. “You drove to my house to give me three dollars?”

“And twenty-seven cents,” he repeated, smiling broadly. “Besides, I wanted to see where you live. I heard your house was kind of awesome.” He craned his neck, looking beyond her into the house. “Oh, man. Is that a chandelier? I thought chandeliers were for hotels and Las Vegas casinos. And maybe Mexican drug lords.”

“Are you serious?” Gemma had maybe spoken three words to Perv in her whole life before their exchange in the Quick-Mart—most recently
no
, when he'd turned around in bio and asked whether she knew that in sea horses, only the male carried the eggs.

“Sorry.” Perv rubbed a hand over his hair, making it stick up, flame-like. “Sometimes my mouth says things without checking in with my brain first.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Gemma said. “Mexican drug lords?” Perv shrugged. He seemed to be waiting for something, but she had no idea what. He was the first boy who'd ever come over to see her—not that he was there to see
her
, really—and she was suddenly mortified. She wanted Perv to leave, but didn't know how to ask without seeming mean. After all, he'd just done her a favor. And he was nice, even if he did steal girls' underwear. And possibly, you know, have a sex chamber in his basement, as April had once theorized when she caught Perv staring at Gemma in the cafeteria.

“So can I?” Perv asked, after looking at her patiently for a bit.

“Can you what?”

He blinked. “Come in and see where you live.”

She didn't want to say yes but couldn't think of a way to refuse. So she shuffled backward, taking Rufus by the collar. “Okay,” she said. “I mean, if you really want.”

Perv took a step forward and then hesitated. “You sure that thing doesn't like the taste of human flesh?” He pointed at Rufus.

She rolled her eyes. “Please. He's a grumpy old man. He likes to make a lot of noise, especially around people he doesn't—” She broke off suddenly. She'd just remembered that Rufus, who still barked as if the world was ending whenever a stranger came to the door, hadn't
made a sound when the man had approached her in the parking lot, at least not until Gemma shouted. He'd even wagged his tail. Almost as if . . .

Almost as if he recognized the man, knew him from somewhere.

She was gripped, then, by a terrible feeling: that something was coming. Something she couldn't understand. The man, Haven, her father—all of it was tangled up together, and she, Gemma, was at the center of the mess, the heart of the shitstorm.

Head shit.

Perv was still prattling on, oblivious. “Damn. Is that your mom in the oil painting?”

“It's a watercolor,” Gemma said automatically.

“Wow. Cool. Your mom's kind of hot. Is that weird?”

“Yes.” Gemma's head hurt. “Listen, I'm really sorry. But I'm kinda not feeling great. It's not really a good time for me. . . .”

But he didn't seem to hear. He'd just spotted the bathroom off the foyer. “Holy shit. Is that a TV? Right next to the toilet?” He disappeared, although she could still hear him talking, his voice tinny and distorted by the tile. He reemerged a second later, midsentence. “. . . snorkel in that bathtub. It's like the spring break of shower models.”