Shallow Pond (16 page)

Twenty-One

Gracie didn't say anything. She got up from the table, went into the living room, and returned carrying the photo from the mantel. She held it up beside her face.

“We look just like her,” Gracie said.

“Exactly,” Annie said.

I was confused. This wasn't making any sense. I thought I had everything figured out, but now nothing seemed to fit.

“She died before any of us breathed our first breaths,” Annie said. “We're her clones.”

Gracie started laughing, like this was all some big joke. It was too early for April Fools', though. And Annie looked deadly serious.

“Clones,” I said in a whisper. I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare, but I didn't think I was going to be able to wake up and shake this off like a normal sort of nightmare.

“She's obviously just messing with us,” Gracie said. “You're just messing with us, right?”

Annie shook her head. The overhead light sparkled on the tear tracks running down her face.

No, no, no, no, no.
This was not the answer I'd wanted. I wanted to rewind the conversation. Annie would make her big grand admission, but it would be something trivial and mundane. She would confess to secretly being my mother. She'd gotten pregnant in her teens and given birth to me, but the decision had been to raise me as her sister. A birth certificate had been fabricated to preserve the illusion. I would have given anything in the world to be just your garden-variety illegitimate child. It was so simple and neat. I wouldn't even be mad at Annie for keeping the secret all these years. After all, it wouldn't really matter.

“It's not possible,” Gracie stated.

“He was a brilliant scientist,” Annie said. It took me a moment to realize that she was talking about our father. “One of the best in the world.”

“Nobody goes around cloning people,” Gracie said.

“It's not legal,” Annie said, “but it is possible.”

“What else don't I know about?” Gracie asked. “Did he have conversations with space aliens? Did he build a time machine?”

I wish he had built a time machine, because right now all I wanted to do was go back in time and undo everything. I wanted things to go back to the way they were before I started asking all my questions. I wanted to just be a teenage girl from a slightly eccentric family living in some middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania town. I wanted to go back to being me.

“But we're different from each other,” I said. My voice was choked with tears. “We look alike, but it's not like we
act
alike.” I felt sure I'd proven Annie wrong. Clones were all the same person, but we weren't all the same. We weren't anything alike. How could Gracie and I possibly be the same person?

“We've got the same DNA,” Annie explained.

“That just makes us sisters,” I said.

“The same
exact
DNA,” Annie said.

“Does this have something to do with the medicine you're on?” Gracie asked. “You're hallucinating, right?”

“I'm not hallucinating,” Annie said. Her voice was flat and weak.

“No, you are,” Gracie insisted. “Because if what you're saying is even remotely true, then we're freaks. We're nothing but some crazy science experiment, and I don't know about you, but I am not cool with that. Not one bit.” She punctuated her sentence by slamming the framed picture she was still holding on the edge of the table. I heard a tinkling noise as the glass over the picture shattered. A spiderweb of cracks now distorted the familiar face that looked out of the frame, the face that I'd always thought belonged to our mother, but it was the face that actually belonged to each of us. Our face.

“I didn't plan on telling you like this,” Annie said. She still sat there in her chair with her hands neatly folded.

“How long have you known?” I asked. She didn't answer right away. I stared at her as a few lonely tears slid down her face.

“Awhile,” she said after several seconds. I didn't know what that meant. Had she known her whole life? Why
was it that she knew and we were in the dark? I wished I was still in the dark. It would have been easier than knowing. Knowing made everything different.

I leaned my head against the door, resting my cheek on one of the cool glass panels. My whole life flashed through my mind, and it was all a lie. Everything that I thought I knew had been wrong. My whole life I'd been pretending to be a real person, a unique person, but I wasn't. I was a clone of some woman I'd never met. I was a freak. We were all freaks.

The door rattled suddenly, and I jumped. I spun around and saw Cameron Schaeffer standing on the other side.

He smiled at me through the glass. I stared at him as if he was a ghost. It seemed like a million years ago that I'd spent the afternoon with him, convinced he was my father. My father? I didn't even
have
a father. No wonder the man who I'd always assumed was my father was so distant from me. He was probably repulsed by our very presence, the monsters that he'd created—living, breathing monsters.

Cameron's brow furrowed when I didn't open the door right away. I thought of the Megan's Law site, the mug shot that was there. He was a sex offender. I knew this should make me feel something, but it didn't. It didn't seem to matter anymore. Nothing mattered.

I opened the door, and Cameron stepped into the kit-
chen. His eyes swept the room, taking in the mostly uneaten dinner, the smashed picture frame, Annie so sad and serene in her chair, and Gracie looking about ready to jump out of her skin. Unless he was a complete idiot, he must have realized that something was seriously amiss.

“Hello, Cameron,” Annie said in a voice that tried too hard to be casual and friendly.

“I think maybe I've caught you at a bad time,” he said.

“You could say that again,” Gracie said.

“I'm sorry,” Cameron said. “I should have called. It's rude to just show up unannounced. I should probably go.”

“No!” Gracie screamed. “I mean, I was just about to go out too. Just let me go grab my jacket.”

“If you were in the middle of—” He looked around, as if the appropriate word might be sitting on a shelf somewhere. “Dinner, or whatever, I can wait for you in the car.”

“We're done,” Gracie said. She turned and looked at Annie with narrowed eyes, then ran out of the room to grab her coat.

“So, Babie, how're things going?” Cameron asked as he stood there awkwardly waiting for Gracie. I stared at him in confusion. How were things? I didn't even know where to begin with that question. Thankfully, Gracie swept back into the room and grabbed Cameron by the arm to steer him past me and out the door. She didn't look back at us or even say goodbye.

I didn't watch them as they walked out of the house, but Annie did. The look on her face said it all. She looked wistful and heartsick. It was the look of lost dreams and unrequited love, and I thought for the first time in my entire life that I finally understood Annie.

Everything I'd thought I knew about her had been wrong, but now, with the information I'd been lacking for so many years, I could finally piece together the mystery that
was Annie. All these years, I'd blamed the fact that Annie had never left Shallow Pond on Cameron and her foolish love for him, but now I could see the true explanation. It wasn't love that had kept her from living her life, but shock—and a knowledge that she didn't know how to deal with. How do you go forward with your life when you find out you aren't even a real person? What is the point of anything if your whole life has been some sort of cruel lie? She didn't go to college, and she broke up with Cameron, because college and Cameron were things that belonged to the real world, a world that she no longer belonged to. My sister had dealt with the knowledge that her whole existence was some cruel science experiment by becoming a recluse, a response that seemed pretty rational to me.

I turned to look out the window, but Gracie and Cameron had already disappeared from view. I looked back to Annie. She was staring out into the darkness with that wistful look on her face.

“There never was anyone else, was there?” I asked. That had only been a lie to appease Cameron, because telling him the truth was out of the question.

“No. There was someone else.”

I didn't believe her. For some reason, it was easier for me to believe that we were the clones of some woman we'd been told was our mother than for me to believe that Annie had ever had another boyfriend.

“Does it ever get easier?” I asked. She looked at me and smiled that warm smile of hers.

“It does,” she said. “I know it's a lot to take in at once. I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.”

“I didn't mean to tell you so suddenly like that, but it's best that you know.”

I nodded, though I didn't entirely agree. Why was it best to know?

“I think I'm going to head up to bed,” Annie said. “Do you mind cleaning up the dishes?”

She was going to bed? Now? She dropped a bomb like that on me, and then she was just abandoning me?

I told her I didn't mind. I began to clean up the dishes with slow, methodical movements like some sort of robot, even though I wasn't a robot. I was a clone. Well, at least there was that. I mean, being a robot? That would really suck, right?

Twenty-Two

I awoke suddenly. I felt my heart racing. It was dark, so I rolled over to look at my alarm clock. It was only a few minutes after five. Too early, way too early. I knew I should try to get some more sleep, but my racing heart thought otherwise. There was something I was forgetting. A nightmare, I told myself—that was the nagging feeling that was keeping me awake at this hour. But the nagging feeling refused to go away. After I'd tossed and turned for another minute or so, it came back to me.
Last night. Annie's announcement.
I wanted for it to have all been a nightmare, but I knew it wasn't.

I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest in the dark. I'd slept in this room my whole life, and it had always seemed like such a warm, welcoming space. Now, in the darkness of early morning, there was something menacing about it. I felt like I didn't belong. Maybe I didn't. After all,
she
(my mother, for lack of a better word) had not grown up in Shallow Pond. I belonged to a different time and a different place. I was an interloper here. I could never be anything but.

All I'd wanted for as long as I could remember was to get the hell out of Shallow Pond. I'd always thought this was because it was some crappy small town where dreams went to die, but what if that wasn't the reason at all? What if the only reason I longed so desperately to get out was because my body instinctively knew it wasn't supposed to be there?

Suddenly, everything I'd ever thought, everything I'd ever said, everything I'd ever done was suspect. Why had I done any of the things I had done? What if everything was due to forces beyond my control or understanding? I felt scared, like I couldn't even trust my own mind; like it wasn't my mind to trust.

Forty-five minutes before the first bell rang, I stepped out our front door. I couldn't remember ever being ready for school this early. The weekend had passed by like a confusing dream—I didn't sleep through it, exactly, but I'd barely left my bedroom for two days. At least now the groggy fog had lifted.

An icy wind blew, and the cold felt good on my skin. It made me feel alive. I should have called Jenelle, but I didn't feel like talking to her. I didn't feel like talking to anyone. I walked toward school, taking my time despite the cold. I told myself I needed time to think, but what I was trying to do was
not
think, keep my mind empty of anything important. I studied the bark on the side of a tree, the grit that speckled the snowbanks at the side of the road, a crow who cawed at me from atop a chimney. I immersed myself in the physical world to shut out all thought.

The school was still pretty empty when I walked in. It felt strange. I went to the library and found the shelf with the old yearbooks. I found the one from a couple of years earlier, Gracie's senior year, and the one from Annie's senior year. I'd seen them before, of course, but that was before I knew what I was looking at. Annie and Gracie looked alike, but so did plenty of sisters. Did they look identical? It was hard to say. They had different hair styles, and the angle the pictures were taken at was slightly different. But if you looked at the two photos side by side, without knowing anything else, it would seem like you were looking at two pictures of the same girl.

I flipped through the rest of the book. Annie had been on the debate team and worked on the school newspaper. I'm sure she'd told me that at some point, but I'd forgotten until I saw her picture on the activities pages. Gracie had played field hockey and worked on the yearbook and the prom committee. She'd been popular in school—her photo appeared again and again in the candid shots.

If we were all the same, then why wasn't I in the popular crowd? How come Gracie hadn't been on the debate team? It didn't make sense.

When I glanced up at the clock, there were only three minutes until the homeroom bell rang. I'd lost track of time. Shoving the books back on the shelf, I ran to my locker. I should have known that Jenelle and Shawna would be waiting there for me, but it didn't really hit me until I saw Jenelle standing there, her hand on her hip, her expression murderous.

“What the hell?” she said.

“Not now,” I said. “I've got to get my things.”

“You don't answer any of my messages this weekend. You walk to school without even bothering to call me. This isn't cool.”

“I'm sorry, okay? But I've got some stuff going on right now,” I said.

“Stuff that's more important than your friends? That's bull, Bunting.”

“It's like you barely talk to us anymore,” Shawna said. She had a big pouffy bow tied in her hair. Was it some new style? It looked ridiculous, especially since part of it kept flopping in her face.

“I can't explain,” I said. “You wouldn't understand.”

“No, what we don't understand is why you're treating us like you don't even know us,” Jenelle said. “What's up with that?”

I grabbed my books from my locker and slammed the door.

“Not now,” I said. I started to walk away down the hall.

“If that's what you think of us,” Jenelle said, “if you're not our friend anymore, then keep walking.”

I paused. I took a deep breath. Would it really be that much trouble to walk back to Jenelle and pretend like everything was fine? I probably could have done it, but I was sick of pretending. My whole life had been nothing but pretend. The only alternative was to tell the two of them everything, and that was definitely not going to happen. I resumed walking at almost the same moment that the bell rang.

“Hey,” Zach said, falling into step beside me.

“I'm not really in the mood to talk right now,” I said.

“So, not a morning person I take it.”

“No, I just … there's this thing, a family thing, I don't really feel like talking about it.”

“Maybe I should be thankful I'm an orphan,” he said. He was smiling as he said it, but it sounded more like a self-pitying sort of thing to say than the funny remark he was trying to pretend it was.

I came to a stop in the busy hallway, and a few people bumped into me as they hurried to get to their homerooms.

“I don't want to be here,” I said.

“Yeah, I get it already. Shallow Pond is small and pathetic and nothing ever happens here. You know, you really should give this place a chance. It's not that bad.”

“No,” I said. I sighed through my clenched teeth. “I don't want to be here, at school, today. Drive me somewhere.”

“We can't just walk out of here.”

“We can, and we have to. Come on.”

I grabbed his sleeve and started walking toward the parking lot door. He walked with me, but still didn't seem entirely sure about it. I didn't care. I couldn't be there one more minute. I needed to be somewhere, anywhere else.

“What's this all about?” Zach asked when we were safely in his car. His keys were in the ignition, but he hadn't started the car yet. “I don't like this. We should go back. They'll give us a late pass.”

“Just drive.”

“I shouldn't really skip school like this.”

“You're like Mr. Perfect, aren't you? You can't have a hair out of place and you can't possibly do anything that isn't exactly by the book.”

“That's not true,” he said. “It's just I kind of got in trouble the last time I skipped.” I wondered if he meant the day he'd shown up at my house. “Strings had to be pulled for me to be enrolled here,” he continued. “I'm not really supposed
to be living on my own without a guardian, and I'm somewhat lacking in documentation. I don't even have a birth certificate.”

“Join the club,” I said. The bitter laugh that escaped my lips surprised me.

“I'm just saying that it probably makes more sense to fly below the radar.”

“Then go back to school,” I said. I put my hand on the door handle. I didn't need him. I could walk. I was about to open the door when the car roared to life.

“You're impossible,” he said. He peeled out of the parking lot too fast, but it felt good. It felt reckless. It felt like we were alive. I liked that feeling.

Zach didn't say anything until he pulled into the parking lot by Memorial Park. I wished he'd kept driving. If I'd been the one behind the wheel, I would have gotten on the highway and kept going all the way to California.

“What is it about you, Barbara Bunting?” he asked. I shrugged, because how do you answer a question like that? “You've got this pull over me. So, what's going on? Why aren't we at school?”

“I just didn't want to be there,” I said. I opened the door and stepped out. The cold tore through my clothes. My coat was back in my locker. I should have gotten back in the car, but I didn't want to. I folded my arms across my chest and tried not to shiver.

Zach got out of the car holding a scratchy wool blanket in his hand. He shook his head at me, then draped one end of the blanket over my shoulders before pulling the other end over his own shoulders. I had no choice but to huddle next to him for warmth. The blanket had a musty smell, but Zach smelled clean and soapy. Everything about Zach was perfect. He was good-looking and sweet. He wasn't from Shallow Pond; he was the exotic stranger with the mysterious past. Best of all, we were alike, orphaned, the dark shadow of questionable parentage hanging over our childhoods. We belonged together. It seemed so natural. I was surprised it had taken me so long to see it clearly.

I turned to him, the scratchy blanket twisting around me. I stared into his blue eyes, eyes so deep they sucked me right in. When he exhaled, a small white cloud condensed in the space between us and I could smell minty toothpaste. It was warm beneath the blanket, with Zach inches from me.

“Why can't I resist you?” Zach asked me, and this time I knew he didn't expect me to answer. Instead, he leaned toward me. His lips brushed mine; they were soft and warm. They filled me from head to toe with intense heat. It was over in a moment. He pulled back and looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, as if trying to answer his own rhetorical question.

But I needed him. I needed to lose myself in him. I rea-ched up and brushed my fingers along the rough skin of his cheek, then gently guided his face back to my own. Our lips met again, but this time they stayed locked together as if by some magnetic force. Zach tasted the way I imagined a bubbling forest stream to taste. I raised both hands to his face and held on. The blanket slid from my shoulders and then to the ground as Zach's hands found my hips and pulled me toward him. With our bodies pressed together, I didn't feel the cold. Zach's hand, just above the waistband of my jeans, was warm against my bare flesh. I could feel the pounding of his chest against my own.

The world fell away. Nothing else mattered. There was only us, and I could have stayed there forever and ever. If only it was possible to stay there forever and ever. He leaned against the car and pulled me to him. Our lips explored each other as his hands, strong but gentle, explored my body. I slid my own hands from Zach's face to his chest and then down to his waist. I'd never needed anything as badly as I needed Zach Faraday.

Zach pulled away from me. I reached for him, but he turned his head away. With his hands on my waist, he held me at bay.

“No,” he said. “Why are we here?”

“What are you talking about?” I couldn't understand what he meant. I only knew that I needed him desperately.

“I mean, what's going on, Barbara? Why are we ditching school? What's wrong?”

“I don't want to talk about that now,” I said. I pushed his hand from where it held my waist, then reached up and guided his face back to my own. Our lips tore into each other, desperate to taste each other, but then he pulled away again and shook his head. When he stepped away from me, I suddenly felt the cold. He lifted the blanket from the ground and handed it to me, but he didn't drape it over my shoulders, and he didn't take up the other end for himself. He paced across the unpaved parking lot.

“I can't do this,” he said. I thought of Meg and hated her. He shook his head, as if he could read my thoughts. “You need to talk to me.”

“There's nothing to talk about,” I said.

“The hell there isn't. You dragged me out of school and then won't even say anything to me. What's going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Was it Cameron? Did he do something to you?”

“No!”

“I don't like him. I don't like the way he looks at you.”

“It's not Cameron,” I said. My voice was soft and quiet. I looked at Zach, and his eyes looked damp. Was he crying? Was it the cold?

“Get in the car,” he said. He opened the passenger door, then went around and got in on his side. I sank into the seat, the blanket still wrapped around me, and pulled the door closed after me. I was too stunned to speak. Zach was about to start the car, but then he stopped, sat back against his seat, and sighed. “I wish I'd never met you. I think about you all the time. I can't get you out of my head.”

“Zach,” I began, because I knew I needed to say something, but he cut me off.

“No, let me finish. You're … I can't explain it. I don't un-derstand it. You've got this power over me, and I like you even though you clearly aren't interested in me. I know that I should just forget you, but I can't.”

“I
am
interested in you,” I said. I thought of how we had been kissing just a couple of minutes before. How could he say that I wasn't interested in him?