Solo knows I don’t want to know. He laughs, a hard, flat sound. He opens the bathroom door and crosses my room. “I gotta go. I’m beat. If your mom asks, Aislin found her own way here.” He pulls a key card out of his back pocket. “This is for Suite Fourteen. That’s supposed to be her room.”
I take the key. I have to say thanks, don’t I? He risked a lot, bringing Aislin to me.
But somehow the word doesn’t come from my mouth. All I can say is, “Good night,” and he’s gone.
Aislin snores.
Despite everything, I sleep. Despite Aislin’s hand thrown across my face. Despite the strangely detailed memories of dropping my pajamas to the floor while Solo is at eye level with my unsexy panties.
The sense memory, the shiver that comes with it, of Solo running careful fingers down my inner thigh.
Despite all of that, I sleep. I dream of a hospital. But not the one here at Spiker. Or the emergency room.
It’s a hospital room far back in my past.
I see my mother. I see my dad.
I dream of my father sometimes, never of my mother.
But in this dream, they’re together, whispering. My mother is holding a syringe. My father nods his approval. They are both crying.
I wake up to a blast of very bad breath from Aislin. She smells of puke. I hope she made it to the bathroom. I stagger up and find the toilet bowl full. Well, better than the bed.
My bandage is flapping loosely. I either have to cut it all the way off, or try to conceal my guilty knowledge until my next scheduled bandage-change.
It hits me then, what should have hit me earlier: They’re all in on it. The doctors, the nurses. They know the injury’s gone.
They’re all in on it. All playing a game, hiding the truth from me.
It’s why my mother was in such a hurry to get me out of the hospital and safely to Spiker. My secret would have been out within a day. And what would have happened to my mother if it had come out that she’d broken the law? Many laws?
It’s dark in the room but the clock shows 8:42 A.M. I would normally be up by now. I’m buzzy from lack of sleep, and my head is full of pictures and words. Aislin’s bloody face. The dream memory of a long-ago hospital room. Solo’s words:
Despite this, what I remember most is Solo kneeling on the bathroom floor.
I head for the bathroom. Aislin snores softly.
I grab the scissors Solo used to cut off my leg bandage. Awkwardly, I slit the bandages on my right arm and hand.
I bend my crushed fingers, wave my mangled hand, flex my broken elbow.
It’s as if nothing ever happened.
Don’t think about it.
I take a hot, hot shower. I can’t believe how good it feels. Standing upright in the stinging spray is a gift. Shampooing my hair with both hands is bliss.
I towel off, change into fresh clothes, actual jeans with two legs. Then I reach—with my right hand, no less —for my sketchbook and pencil.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
I open to the unfinished sketch I’d been working on for Life Drawing.
The pencil feels smooth and certain between my fingers. The whispered resistance of point on paper is music.
I make a few random lines, just to get the rhythm right.
Don’t think about it.
I study my drawing. It still sucks.
It needs something. Energy, spark, soul.
Life drawing, my ass. This is a still life.
It’s the eyes. The eyes are all wrong. They’re nothing like the eyes I’ve been creating with the aid of my mother’s software.
Adam’s eyes pulse with possibilities.
These eyes… well, they’re granules of graphite on recycled wood product.
I start to erase the left eye, but suddenly I picture the dog-eared poster on the art room wall: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
I turn to a new page, tear it out, and write Aislin a quick note.
I put the paper by her pillow. She’s kicked off her blankets, so I tuck them around her chin. Her cheek looks like an overripe plum, purple-black and swollen.
I stash my sketchbook in a drawer.
Then I flee for the safety of Adam.
– 20 –
I settle into my workstation. A shaft of sunlight slices the air. The twinkling ficus tree has dropped a leaf onto my keyboard. A couple of workers glance up when I appear, then quickly return to their monitors.
I enter my password. Click, click, tap, tap.
I can type again. Two hands, ten fingers.
Adam materializes.
He is a good-looking guy, Adam. Very good-looking.
Apparently, the other workers think so, too. They stare, as if hypnotized, at his hovering form.
“I want her job,” someone murmurs.
I glance over, and, in perfect sync, all gazes return to their respective monitors. I am, after all, Terra Spiker’s daughter: Eye contact is not an option.
Terra Spiker, who’s apparently capable of anything.
I wiggle the fingers of my right hand. My perfect, pain-free fingers.
They were trying to save my life. They
If they hadn’t cut corners, ignored the FDA, I wouldn’t be here.
Wouldn’t I do the same thing for someone I love? For Aislin?
Yep. In a heartbeat.
But would I have kept it a secret from her, a secret she has to hear from some stranger?
Solo’s not a stranger, some part of my brain protests. But he is, of course. I know virtually nothing about him, except that he hates my mother.
Click, click. I focus on the monitor.
I realize that Adam’s eyes—which, yes, happen to be the color of Solo’s, which, yes, is just a coincidence— aren’t as lifelike as I’d remembered.
Like my sketch, the gaze is blank. There’s an emptiness, a void. Still, there’s a feeling of, I don’t know,
This isn’t like art. I know how to fix this problem.
The set of tools for designing the genetic components of the brain are different. They aren’t as simple as the first steps in creation: Plug in this gene and presto, you’ve got blue eyes or dark hair or lungs.
