Falls the Shadow Page 5

  And that brings Huxley to the point they’re making, as the sharply dressed scientist in the video tells me now: You never know what the future holds, or how quickly things can change. But with cloning you can enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing that at least something you love is not as irreplaceable as it used to be.

  My mother has left the table now; I hear her pacing back and forth on the tile floor in the foyer. Probably tugging the sleeves of her cardigan down a little more with each step, absently trying to cover the marks that are already out of sight to everyone but her. Guilt gnaws at the back of my mind as I think of her face, and I wish, again, that I’d just eaten my vegetables and kept my mouth shut. Haven’t my parents been through enough already?

  They were just kids when everything in that video happened—which means they’ve had practically an entire lifetime to live with the fear of it happening again. Now add the fear of something happening to me, or of us losing Violet all over again, and suddenly everything that scientist is saying makes perfect sense. I understand.

  I still don’t want to listen to him anymore.

  Mother’s been gone long enough that I assume she’s waiting for me to leave before she comes back. The video is still rambling on about the benefits of cloning when my father clears his throat, gets to his feet, and starts to gather our mostly untouched plates. He piles his napkin and silverware onto mine and then just hovers awkwardly beside me for a moment, like he’s an understudy who has no idea how he ended up onstage.

  He eventually remembers his lines, though. “You should get to sleep early tonight if you can,” he says. “We likely have a long couple of days ahead of us.” Then he plants a quick, hesitant kiss on the top of my head and disappears into the kitchen without another word.

  * * *

  I don’t get to sleep early.

  Instead, I lie awake listening to my parents arguing. My father’s calm, unyielding tone. Mother’s clipped words and occasional shouting. I have my sheets drawn up over me like a tent, but through them I can still see the bright green display of the clock that tells me it’s well after midnight. In just a few hours, I’m going to have to face the world outside the safety of these walls. Which is going to be even more complicated now that I can’t even take refuge at school. I’ve managed to keep the whole suspension thing from my parents for now, but what, exactly, am I going to do come tomorrow morning?

  I sit up. While my mind chases questions and possibilities, I let my gaze wander toward the figures outside my window. Earlier, I set the glass to a dark tint—like I always do to block out the setting sun—so I can’t make out distinct people. They’re all the same, though. They all blur together to me. The anxious camera crews. The CCA members standing on our street, lecturing about the evils of cloning in loud, booming voices. The police officers there to keep a riot from starting—and waiting to question Violet themselves, when she finally comes home. Everyone wants to be the first to see her, to catch her, to demand answers from her.

  I’d like to demand some myself.

  I’m not going to be able to sleep in my bed tonight, it looks like. This isn’t the first time reporters have camped out on our lawn, though. So I’m already prepared for this. I’ve got places to hide.

  Our house is one of the oldest in Haven. The rooms are laid out strangely, and they’re not uniform in size or shape. It’s all so haphazard and uneven, full of nooks and crannies that Violet and I spent an entire childhood discovering. It’s almost as if the builders were simply making things up as they went along. Just one more reminder of how different my parents used to be; they’re really too practical, too no-nonsense for this house now. Which may be why Mother talks all the time about moving. She always comes up with a reason to stay, though. Too much work. Too many memories. And her favorite: Too many people speculating about what ran us off.

  In my room, there’s a random tiny space within my closet that I discovered when I was little; the door to it blends in so seamlessly with the wall that it’s almost impossible to see. To pry it open, I have to slide a thin butter knife, which I keep in a shoe box under the bed, beneath the tiny crack between the door and the floor.

  I already have spare pillows and blankets in here, and I bring my computer tablet and the digital picture frame from beside my bed to give me some sort of light. I make myself comfortable and set the frame down beside me. It sifts dutifully through its pictures, oblivious to the world outside the memories it holds; black-and-white, artsy photos of me and Violet playing dress-up, of our whole family at the beach, of the last time our grandmother visited us.

  If you were only judging by the pictures in this frame, the logical conclusion would be that we are a normal, happy family. If you were an outsider just glancing in, you wouldn’t be able to tell that the pictures of my sister are of two different people.

  But I can tell.

  Most of the time I don’t want to, but I still can.

  What will I do when Violet comes back, I wonder? Maybe I’ll scream at her. Hit her. Pick up this frame and throw it at her feet, hard enough to shatter it into a hundred tiny pieces. And then maybe I’ll grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Ask her, why? Why do you keep making things worse? What is wrong with you? You’re the big sister. You’re supposed to watch out for me, to set an example, to give me someone to look up to. Don’t you know that? Didn’t they program that into that stupid brain of yours? You should know that that’s how this is supposed to work.

  Maybe that’s how it would have worked too, if the first Violet was still here. If the first Violet was still here, maybe I wouldn’t keep finding myself in this same place, hiding and doing everything I can to avoid the wake of destruction this one leaves in her path. And maybe I wouldn’t have to sit across from an empty chair at the dinner table, and we’d have normal conversations there, instead of ones about war and politics and paparazzi.

  Instead it would be How was school today, Cate? or Tell me about that boy who drove you home, Cate.

  If only she was still here.

  I glance over at that frame. The display’s stuck on a picture of the two of us, Violet with her arms wrapped in a playful headlock around me. It’s recent. Definitely New-Violet. I think about flipping the picture over on its face so I won’t have to look at it anymore. I think about taking it and burying it in the darkest corner of my closest too, or maybe going back to my window and throwing it outside, right into the crowd of all those people who are waiting for her. There she is, I’d shout at them. Take her. I don’t care. I’m tired of looking at her.

  Suddenly I feel a crawling in my skin—a disgust with myself for thinking these things. I wrap my blanket tighter around myself and curl closer to the corner, like I could somehow sink into the walls, the floorboards. Away from myself. I don’t like having these dark, terrible thoughts about Violet. But sometimes they’re just there, and sometimes I just can’t get away from them.

  I hear the old house creaking through the walls. My parents climbing the stairs to their bedroom, probably. I wonder if they’ll sleep tonight, or if they’ll lie awake like me, having terrible thoughts of their own.

  Or worrying.

  Because there’s no denying that the spaces in my thoughts—the ones that aren’t filled with anger—are filled with a gut-twisting anxiety for Violet. In the end, I know I’m only fooling myself by thinking I could stand to never see her smiling face again. I don’t even know if I could yell at her or hit her or do any of those things. She is my sister, after all. Or what’s left of her.

  And right now I just want—need—to know she’s safe.

  But I have a bad feeling about that.

  Thirty more minutes have somehow slid by, according to the tablet’s display. It’s going to be morning before I know it, and I still have no idea what I’m going to do. All I know is that I can’t tell my parents. One delinquent daughter is plenty for them to have to deal with. My problem, as usual, is silly compared with the ones surrounding Violet; mentioning
it would just be an extra irritation they don’t need.

  My options are limited, though. Faking sick is out; Mother’s only let me stay home from school one time—and that’s only because I passed out on the front porch after she insisted I get up and get ready. You have to show up, she always says, or people will start talking.

  As if they didn’t do that already.

  I don’t have a license to drive, and our driver would tell my parents if I tried to skip school. And I don’t think my parents would approve of me taking the ETS—especially with everything that’s happened today. They’d be right to disapprove too, because I’d probably get jumped by more crazies like the ones outside.

  There’s only one other option I can think of: I grab the phone from my sweatpants pocket and start to flip through my contacts. It’s a short list, so it doesn’t take long. It also doesn’t take long for me to realize that I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling any of these people and asking them to pick me up in the morning. How sad is that? After sixteen years of living here, it seems like there should be somebody I could call.

  And then it occurs to me: Jaxon.

  His face, his voice, his laugh—it all drops into my head and sets it spinning again. I don’t have his contact information, but I should be able to find it easy enough; he doesn’t seem like the type who would try to keep that sort of thing off the Network.

  I pick up my computer tablet. Or me and Violet’s computer tablet, rather—because we share most things like this. I think my mother believes that forcing us to share will equal obligatory closeness. When this Violet first came to live with us, my mother even tried to force me to share my room with her. Just until she felt “at home.” That wasn’t happening. It was one of the only times I actually managed to stand up to my parents with any sort of success.

  But me and Violet still share the same computer, the same clothes, the same everything else. We even shared the same phone for a while, as impractical as that was. And when things like the computer are taken away from one of us (usually Violet), it’s taken away from the other, because when you’re family, you don’t get to pick and choose what losses you suffer alongside each other. My sister’s pain is my pain, and her punishment is my punishment.

  So I’m not supposed to be using the computer now. Because three weeks ago, Violet got detention for the third time this year and had her computer privileges revoked. My father even went so far as to install a program to lock the whole thing down, preventing any sort of access to the Network.

  That’s not fair, though. Which is why I figured out a long time ago how to get around stuff like this. I rebel in little ways—it helps me keep my sanity. And it’s made me really good with computers, at least.

  Now if I could just focus on what I need to find.

  The thought of talking to Jaxon again doesn’t make that especially easy, though. I run my nervous fingers over the virtual keyboard, swipe through the images on the monitor until I come to one of him. Smiling. Of course. Is he ever not smiling?

  I hesitate. What if he thinks I’m needy or clingy or just plain annoying for doing this? We haven’t even gone on a date, and I’m already asking for favors. Maybe there’s someone else I could call? Or maybe I should just suck it up and tell my parents?

  Except, just then, I hear my father raise his voice. They’re still arguing. And I know it’s gotten serious, because he almost never yells.

  There’s no way I can give them something else to fight about.

  So I take a deep breath and dial the number on the screen.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Charades

  At precisely seven o’clock the next morning, Jaxon knocks on the front door. Twenty minutes later, we’re outside, and I’m still trying to figure out if this is really happening, or if I just haven’t woken up yet.

  Then the camera flashes start.

  And then I know I’m awake, because even pinching myself as hard as I can doesn’t make this nightmare go away.

  “What are you doing?” Jaxon laughs, glancing down at the red mark I pinched into my skin.

  “Nothing.” I rub my arm furiously. “And I’m sorry about this,” I add, motioning to the small crowd that’s following us. “I thought more of them would be gone by now.” I also half expected my parents to have bodyguards assigned to escort me to school. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I slipped their minds, since I don’t think either of them got much sleep last night.

  At least it will be easier to skip school without extra people following us.

  Jaxon shrugs, looks back at the crowd, and flashes them a smile. I grab his shoulder and jerk him back around. “You really shouldn’t do that,” I say, voice perfectly deadpan. “At least make them work for the shot.”

  He keeps making charming faces and posing for the cameras, while I focus on getting to his car as quickly as possible. His car that is a different color today, I notice. Now it’s a shiny black that clearly reflects everything against its surface—both Jaxon and me and the crowd of camera-faced people behind us.

  “I liked the blue better,” I say conversationally.

  “Really? I’m sort of partial to the black myself. Feels more manly.”

  “Tint adjustor?”

  He nods. “It has an opacity adjustor, too.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  Before he can answer, one of the paparazzi gets brave and falls into step right beside us, his recorder lifted shamelessly into Jaxon’s face. He must have heard me say “illegal.” The press loves buzzwords like that.

  Jaxon patiently grabs the man’s wrist and shoves the recorder away. Then his hand finds the small of my back and he urges me a little faster, until we’ve put enough space between us and the recorder man that he can tilt his head close and safely whisper, “Almost as illegal as driving without a cleared gas permit.”

  I can’t help but laugh, shaking my head at him.

  “What?” he asks with a grin.

  “You just don’t strike me as someone who would break a law. Any law.”

  “I break all kinds of laws,” he says matter-of-factly. “I drink and smoke, and I run with a tough crowd when I’m not at school. I’d tell you about all our nefarious deeds, but I don’t want to scare you away.”

  I raise an eyebrow. Did he just say “nefarious”? Who uses that word in a conversation?

  He sighs. “Okay,” he says. “Maybe those last few things weren’t true. I’m not that cool. Sorry.” He flashes me another grin, and at least for the moment, I forget all about those people behind us. “But I’ll try to be cooler,” he adds, opening the door for me as we reach the car.

  “Please do. I can only handle so much lameness.”

  “Point taken.” He closes the door, and I watch him move to the driver’s side. It’s not really on purpose; my eyes just sort of follow him. Naturally. This all feels a lot more natural than I was expecting it to. At least until he drops down into his seat and looks over to find me still staring at him. Our eyes meet, and we both look away, embarrassed.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking.”

  “About?”

  “This is . . . You just seemed a lot different from a distance, I guess.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “I guess so,” I say.

  He hesitates. “Different in a bad way?”

  “No.” Definitely no.

  He looks like he’s about to say something else, but just then a reporter appears next to my window, camera raised and ready. I grab a notebook lying on the floorboard and press it against the glass, hiding as much of my face as I can.

  “I bet that gets old,” Jaxon says offhandedly as he digs the car keys out of his pocket. I still can’t get over the fact that they’re actual, honest-to-god metal keys. What if they get lost or stolen? Our driver starts our cars with just a touch of his hand against the bioignition panel; that just seems a lot more practical to me.

  “Having
to hide like that, I mean,” Jaxon goes on.

  “I don’t normally bother to hide from them like this. I just pretend I’m invisible or something. But today I just—” My eyes fall back to the keys. The shiny brass flashes in the sunlight flitting through the car as we drive; it reminds me of a tiny fire flickering to life.

  Today I just what? Why do I feel so different today?

  I never really fell asleep last night. Instead, I lay awake thinking, thinking about how wonderful it would be if I really could hide. Not forever, necessarily. Just long enough for everyone to forget about Catelyn Benson, and then I could reemerge, reinvent myself as someone else. Someone who didn’t have to try to sleep while people whispered outside her window. Someone who didn’t have to push and shove her way through those people just to get to the car.

  Someone who didn’t belong to my family.

  “Have they heard anything from your sister?”

  Speak of the devil.

  I don’t answer right away, and Jaxon tightens his grip on the steering wheel and clears his throat uncomfortably. “You don’t have to answer that,” he says.

  “I haven’t heard anything,” I tell him. Not a word.

  I have ideas about where she could be, of course—because it’s not like this is the first time she’s disappeared on us. It is the first time she’s left without telling me where she was going, though. Normally when she decides to run away, I’m the person she tells about it. I don’t know why. Maybe because she wants someone to know where she went, just in case—and because she knows I won’t tell on her. She goes to a handful of the same places every time, stays in one of them just long enough to cause a scene. Then she always comes back.

  I’m not sure what I would do if she didn’t.

  “Seth told me why you punched him,” Jaxon says. He’s trying really hard to keep the conversation going; I get the impression he’s not as content with silence as I am.