For a while he just sat like that, saying nothing, not looking at Jake. He was so still and quiet Jake started to wonder if the guidance counselor was breathing. Jake slowly, carefully reached for the box. He wanted to close the files he’d been looking at. If Mr. Zuraw opened the box now and saw the page for MCCARTNEY, JAKE D on the screen, he would know what Jake had just learned. If Jake could just hide that fact from him, if he could somehow erase all evidence of what he’d been doing—
Mr. Zuraw grabbed the box out of his hands with ease and threw it across the room to smash against the wall behind Jake’s head. The screen broke off and went crashing to the floor while several keys popped out of the keyboard and danced across the carpet. Jake cringed and covered his head with his hands, expecting Mr. Zuraw to attack him or at least grab him and haul him out of the room.
Instead the guidance counselor simply said, “I might like to know how he got my password, yes, that does interest me. Or I might ask who pulled the fire alarms. That person is looking at long-term suspension, if I ever learn their name. I could ask him who he expects to clean up this mess, and the foulness by the principal’s office. But I think,” Mr. Zuraw said finally, his head rolling forward until he was looking directly at Jake, “that the question that begs answering the most, is, what does he think he’s doing?”
Jake inhaled sharply. He’d considered this. He’d considered what would happen if he was caught, and he’d tried to plan for it. He’d actually considered the possibility that he would be asked this exact question, and how he should answer it.
“I was following your instructions,” he said, trying to keep his voice from cracking.
Mr. Zuraw’s face twitched into a smile. It looked like the sides of his mouth were being propped up by sticks. “Now that is good,” he said. “I admire bravado. Please, tell me. Exactly when did I instruct you to break into my office and steal my secrets?”
Jake nodded. He knew what to say now. “When you told me that cheating was permitted. That it was actually necessary to pass some of the tests.”
“Cheating? Go on.”
Jake shrugged. “I thought you might have a list of the tests in your—your—”
“It’s called a computer,” Mr. Zuraw told him.
“In your computer,” Jake said. “You might have descriptions of the tests in there, or even solutions to them.”
“And did you find anything like that?” Mr. Zuraw asked. “No, you did not,” he said, not giving Jake a chance to answer. “I’m not that stupid. The solutions are all up here.” He tapped one side of his head. “Still. You’ve shown real cleverness. You know what, Jake? If it were in my power, I’d give you a free PASS just for trying. Unfortunately that’s not in my power. The Youth Steering Committee are quite clear on the rules, and I simply enforce them. Get out of here.”
Jake blinked his eyes.
“I do not repeat instructions. I have work to do, an you’re in my way.”
It still took a second for Jake to realize that he was being dismissed. Without, apparently, any kind of punishment. He could scarcely believe it.
“Oh,” Mr. Zuraw said, as if he could read Jake’s mind, “someone’s going to pay. Maybe several someones. For a start there’s the Proctor you’ve somehow corrupted. There are a very small number of people who know my password, you see. It won’t take long to figure out which of them is playing on the wrong team.”
“I—I figured it out myself,” Jake lied.
“Highly unlikely. It’s not random, but it might as well be. It comes from a book you’ve never seen. I will, of course, have to change it now so you won’t be tempted to try this again. I assure you that whoever provided you with my password will not be in a position to learn the new one. I believe I told you to get out of my goddamned sight?”
Jake ran.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jake had a lot to think about. He needed to discuss what he’d discovered with Megan and Cody. But first he had to try to save a life. Mr. Irwin needed to know that he was in danger and that Mr. Zuraw would find him all too soon. Jake ran for the physics classroom but it was fourth period and there was no class inside. Jake thought of going back to check the teacher’s wing—maybe Mr. Irwin was in one of the lounges there—but halfway down the hall he nearly bowled over Cody.
His friend’s face was a bad greenish color and he kept belching ominously. His shirt was wet as if it had been rinsed out very recently. But he looked like excitement was beating out any lingering nausea. “Did it work?” he asked, grabbing Jake’s arm. “I don’t mind spewing chunks for the team, but I’d like to know I at least barfed for a cause. Did you find out anything good?”
“Kinda. I’ll explain everything. First I have to find Mr. Irwin, though.” He cursed himself for saying the name out loud. If Mr. Zuraw knew who Jake was looking for, he wouldn’t even have to interrogate the Proctors—he would know immediately that it was Mr. Irwin who had betrayed him.
Still, it turned out to be a good thing. Cody smiled and said, “You’re in luck, then. I know exactly where he is. Megan told me she saw him in his car in the parking lot.”
“What?”
Cody shrugged. “When she was out there, during the fire alarm, she was keeping track on all the teachers. She said it was weird, Mr. Irwin was already out there before anybody else, and when it was over he didn’t come back in. He just got into his car and sat there. Like he was waiting for something.”
He’s waiting for me, Jake thought. “Listen, find Megan. Both of you meet me in the ruins in ten minutes,” he told Cody, then hurried toward the front of the school. Outside the sun was bouncing off the hoods of all the cars lined up in the lot, making it hard to see which one was Mr. Irwin’s. Jake shielded his eyes with his hands and eventually saw the physics teacher sitting in a battered old Honda. Mr. Irwin was sitting up straight in the driver’s seat, just staring straight ahead. He didn’t even look over when Jake pulled open the passenger’s side door and climbed in.
“Close the door,” Mr. Irwin whispered. Jake closed his door. “Good. I don’t think he can hear us in here. I don’t think he’s bugged my car. But I can’t say for sure.”
Jake knew without asking that Mr. Irwin was talking about Mr. Zuraw. He opened his mouth to start to talk, to warn the teacher that Mr. Zuraw was about to find out what he’d done, to try to convince him to run away—but then he stopped.
It was clear from the look on the teacher’s face that he already knew.
For a while they just sat there. Jake was afraid to say anything. No matter what Mr. Irwin said, he knew that he’d put the teacher in mortal danger. Finally, Mr. Irwin sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. He exhaled deeply and said, “When you put the mask on, it’s easier. All the distractions—all the emotions go away. You can focus on the goal. But you can’t wear it all the time.” He opened his eyes. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Jake frowned. “Not really. I was looking for a way out.”
Mr. Irwin startled him by turning sideways in his seat and grabbing Jake’s arm. “A way out? No! Jake, you have to pass. That’s the only way—so much is riding on the Curriculum. You have to pass.”
Jake shrank backwards in his seat. “I thought you wanted to help me.”
The teacher’s eyes were red as if he’d been rubbing them. Or as if he hadn’t slept in a long time. “I want to help you achieve what you were born for. He—he’s lost sight of that. Zuraw. I remember when this all began. He was so passionate, so committed. Eight years of this takes its toll on all of us. That test with the galvanometer wasn’t good science. It was punitive. He wanted to test your pain threshold. That was never part of the Curriculum before! It’s not even a significant metric. I couldn’t let him keep going like that.” The teacher leaned forward and leaned on his steering wheel. “Now he’s going to turn his gaze on me. Did you find anything in the computer?”
“I found eight different files for eight different people, all with my name. T
hat’s all.”
Mr. Irwin perked up a little. “Then at least you know what you are. I was always against all this masquerade, this school, this town. It should have been done in a lab somewhere. You should always have known where you came from. I’m glad you got at least that much out of it.”
Mr. Irwin fished his keys out of his pocket and started up the car.
“Where are you going?” Jake asked.
“I have a sister who lives in Albuquerque,” Mr. Irwin told him. “I think that’s far enough away. I don’t think they have anyone watching there. I guess I’ll find out.”
“You should get started right away,” Jake said. “I shouldn’t hold you up.” Maybe Mr. Irwin’s motivations had been different than he thought, but he still didn’t want to see the teacher get hurt. The sooner Mr. Irwin was on the road, headed out of Fulton, the less likely he was to get stopped by Mr. Zuraw. Stopped, and punished.
The teacher nodded. He didn’t say goodbye. Jake got out of the car and watched him drive away, watched him head toward the highway.
When he was gone, Jake headed back through the school. He walked out the back door and down into the ruins. Cody and Megan were there waiting for him. They looked at him with expectant faces, waiting to hear what he’d discovered.
“I’m not the first,” he told them.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jake stepped in through the vacant doorway of the ruins and stared at his friends. “I’m not the first,” he said again. He had to keep repeating it until he believed it himself.
“Well, technically, we were here first, so you’re the third,” Cody finally said, and laughed at his own stupid joke. When Cody was scared or confused, he made a joke. Good old reliable Cody.
“If you mean, you’re not the first boy I ever dated, that’s true,” Megan said carefully. “But I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“What?” Jake asked, looking up. He’d been lost in his own thoughts. He looked at them again and wasn’t sure if they would understand. If they didn’t, however, he didn’t know who else he could possibly tell it to. “I’m not the first Jake McCartney. I’m the eighth.” He told them about the dossier in Mr. Zuraw’s computer. About the seven pictures of his own face and how the subjects of those pictures, with possibly one exception, were all dead. “None of them passed.”
The initials carved under his bedside table—there were seven of them. Each time, a different Jake McCartney had carved his initials down there. Only to be replaced by the next in line.
“When one of us fails the tests, and gets executed, the Youth Steering Committee brings another one in to try again.”
Megan put a hand on his shoulder. “What are you saying? You have seven brothers or something and they all went through the tests?”
“Those pictures were of my face. They would have to be identical twins of mine. Or… identical octuplets. No, that’s not how it works. They were clones. I’m a clone.”
“That isn’t possible,” Cody said. “The technology for human cloning doesn’t exist yet. We learned about it in Civics II last year, don’t you remember?”
“The technology isn’t supposed to exist to build a telephone you can carry around in your pocket,” Jake said. “Or that box in Mr. Zuraw’s office—he called it a computer. We learned about computers in Physics class a while back,” he said, thinking of Mr. Irwin. “Computers fill up entire rooms, and they can’t do anything like what this one did. They can barely do division. Or so we thought. The Youth Steering Committee has all kinds of technology that isn’t supposed to exist yet.”
“You’re serious about this,” Cody said.
“Yeah.” Jake went over to a shady wall of the ruins and sat down in the sand. “And I have no idea what it means to be a clone. I don’t know if I’m normal or not. I don’t even have my own name—just one I share with seven other people. Which of us was the real Jake McCartney? Any of us? I don’t know if I’m really real, or not.”
Megan knelt down next to him and took his hand in hers. “You’re real. I know you are,” she said.
He gave her a smile he didn’t really feel. “The worst of it is that they all failed. I’m identical to them in every way, all the way down to my genetic structure. How can I pass, if they all failed? It’s hopeless.”
Megan stroked his hand. It helped a little, he guessed.
“You have to look on the bright side,” Cody said. “Look at it this way. You’ll save a ton of money on clothes, since you can have all of their hand-me-downs.”
Even Jake laughed at that one. He felt like he was about to start crying and any joke, no matter how lame, could fend that off for a while. “Thanks,” he said to Cody. “Hey. Can you do me a favor?”
“Anything. Always,” Cody said.
Good old Cody. “I need a minute alone.”
“Sure, of course, you’ve got lots to think about—”
“I mean, alone with Megan. It’s not personal. I just have something I need to ask her. Okay?”
Jake had known it would hurt Cody to be sent away at such an emotional moment, but he didn’t see any way around it. He felt like he was going to go insane, or explode, or just evaporate on the spot if he didn’t talk to her right that minute.
Cody left without another word.
“Jake,” Megan said, when he was gone. “Oh, Jake…”
“Kiss me. Please,” Jake said.
“Oh.”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut and pulled his knees toward him. “No!” he said. “Just do it, okay? I need you to kiss me right now. I’ve never needed anything more. I need to feel alive, because right now I feel like a ghost. One kiss will show me that’s not true.” He forced his eyes open and looked at her through his bangs. His nose had started to run, which meant tears weren’t far behind. Another reason he’d had to send Cody away—he couldn’t let Cody see him like this, not now, not ever. “Just one. And then we can go back to this weird non-dating thing.”
She did kiss him, and it gave him what he needed. But nothing more. It was a soft, dry kiss, on the lips, but there was no passion in it. It would have to be enough.
“Okay,” he said, when it was done. “Now tell me something. Tell me why you and I can’t be together.” He smiled, thinking of Cody’s defense mechanism. “Or can’t you have feelings for a clone?”
“Of course I can. I mean, of course, I could.” She turned away from him. “I told you, you would take it the wrong way.”
“Try me,” he said.
“Fine. I can’t be with you right now because you can’t afford the distraction. You can’t be worrying about how much I like you or what I want for my birthday or whether I had a good time on our last date, not when you’re fighting for your life!” She grabbed him by the shoulders. “Don’t you get it? You need every brain cell you’ve got to pass these tests. You can’t spare a single one for me. I won’t let you.”
He stared at her, horrified. Didn’t she understand? He was distracted, almost fatally distracted, by the fact that she wasn’t his girlfriend. He thought about her all the time. He worried endlessly that she didn’t like him. That she didn’t want to be with him.
“You’re right,” he said, “I don’t understand. I don’t get it. It’s stupid.”
The look on her face made his stomach drop. He suddenly felt like he might throw up.
“Stupid,” she repeated.
It was too late to take it back.
“I guess I am stupid, compared to you. Mr. Valedictorian. Mr. So Smart, so smart you get a special screwed-up advanced placement program all of your own.”
She stood up very fast and all he could do was look up at her and wish he could have picked any other word in the English language. He wished he could explain to her what he’d actually meant. But as he’d told her once, he had trouble talking to girls.
“Much,” she said, “much too stupid for you.” She walked away, then, and every step she took hurt him more.
Chapter Thirty-
Five
The next morning she wasn’t waiting for him on his walk to school.
He didn’t know what to do. He needed to apologize, obviously, but she wouldn’t talk to him long enough for him to get the words out. When he found her at her locker she turned and gave him a nasty glance and he could do nothing but slink away in shame. She had helped him with his plan to get at Mr. Zuraw’s computer. She had risked being suspended from school. And this was how he’d repaid her, by calling her stupid.
Except he hadn’t! He hadn’t meant that at all, she’d just taken it that way. And now she wouldn’t listen when he tried to explain.
Cody listened. Jake went over it again and again with him. “And at the worst possible moment! I’m still trying to deal with this clone thing.” Jake ran his fingers through his hair, massaging his troubled brain. He hadn’t had a chance yet to sit down and think about what it all meant. Not when he had to worry about Megan being mad at him. “Did she have to be so over-sensitive right now?”
“Maybe that’s not what she’s doing,” Cody said, carefully.
Jake stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Cody said, too quickly. “Look. Forget about her for right now. She’s distracting you from what’s important, which is your next test.”
Jake laughed. “You know, that’s exactly what she said.”
Cody nodded. “Yeah. Probably because—”
“Because why?” Jake was breathing heavily now.
“It’s probably because I told her so. I told her she was breaking your concentration. Don’t hit me! I did it for your own good.”
“You know, that’s what Mr. Zuraw keeps telling me. That he does things for with my best interest at heart.” Jake looked down and saw that both his hands had balled up into fists.
“Come on, it’s not like that. You need to concentrate. Anyway. I’ve had my doubts about her. For a long time. I don’t think she’s right for you.” Cody took a step back.
“Are you jealous?” Jake asked, anger and surprise bursting through him.
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