The Pretenders

by Rebecca Hanover

  I’m ready, I think to myself. I clamber to my feet and watch the other Emma settle into the boat next to Levi, resting her head on his shoulder as the island burns. Everyone I love has left the island now for good, and I know that with this one, last act, I’ll free the Duplicates at home and facilitate the return of the DNA parents and originals to their old lives. Ollie and Jane will get their lives back. So will Levi and Emma. It will be worth it, to die.

  Smoke is billowing into the room through the open door. I begin to cough, and so does Seymour, who’s still powerless to speak or move of his own accord. The coughing is involuntary. But he can’t flee the fire. He must stay here with us, and die. I consider releasing him from the hold I have over him. But what if he found a way, later, to reverse everything? To fly away in the copter and undo the reset? I can’t take that chance.

  I will control you to the end, I think. It’s what you deserve.

  “Levi,” I say, because it’s the name that must feel the most real to him. He’s as much Levi as I’m Emma. He and I meant something to each other this year, in a way no one else will ever know, or understand. What he and I had, it has to have mattered. I have to believe that it did.

  The room has stopped shaking, and Levi pulls me close to him, presses his lips to my cheek.

  “Before it happens,” he breathes into my ear. “Before we forget it all…”

  “I’m scared,” I admit to him.

  “Me too,” he answers back. “I don’t want to leave this life. I don’t want to leave you,” he says, his voice so tender it almost kills me to hear it. “Not before we’ve gotten a real chance to live it. But maybe it’s better this way, if we forget. When we die—we won’t know, will we?”

  “We could throw a chair through the window,” I tell him, tasting the salt of tears in my mouth. I hadn’t even realized I’d been crying. “We could jump…”

  Levi doesn’t answer me, and I know we’re thinking the same thing: jump to what life? In moments, we won’t even know who we are. Would living like that—with no thoughts, no identity, no way to survive—even be worth it? That thought is scarier than letting the smoke overtake us. Much scarier than dying here, together, knowing we did everything we could for the people we love.

  “It was always you, Emma,” he chokes. I can’t answer him. It hurts too much to talk.

  So we stand there, holding each other. I smell the smoke that’s right outside the door, and in a few minutes I walk to it, to open it. The doorknob is scalding, and I snatch my hand away. A wall of thick, black fumes stops me from leaving. I don’t want to walk through that. I don’t know what might greet me on the other side. White-hot fire? Flames that would burn my flesh?

  It’s a strange sensation, losing all of one’s memories and thoughts and feelings. It starts out small. I feel vaguely foggy, like someone’s drugged me. Thoughts flit in and out of my head, but they are mere musings. They linger like flies, buzzing around my consciousness. I hope my friends are safe. I don’t remember why I wish for this, but I do. I know I love the boy who’s sitting on the floor next to me, holding my hand. We’ve ducked down low, because that’s what you do in a fire. Isn’t it?

  I look down at my own hand, threaded through the boy’s. Whose hands are these?

  Why am I coughing so violently?

  Oh. There’s smoke billowing through the door.

  I look at the man splayed on the floor, also coughing fitfully. I know this man isn’t good. But why? And what has he done?

  The smoke is overwhelming, so I lie down on the floor, gasping for the last clean air, and curl myself into a ball.

  The boy lies down next to me. We’re still holding hands, linked until the end.

  I try to think of something comforting to carry me through this, but when I grasp for a memory, something to hold on to—there’s nothing there.

  Home

  Two weeks later, we’re home. Home is Darkwood—with its relentless gossip and impossible standards, its in vitro meat and freezing dorms, and the old abandoned pump house that’s something straight out of a nightmare. It’s the place where I fell in love with Levi junior year, where Ollie and I spent so many afternoons before that, lying on our backs on the grass, dreaming. I’ve missed it so much that my longing for it all is still a gaping hole in me, one it will take months to fill. Every time I walk into the dining hall, or my dorm room, I think of her—my Duplicate—and wonder what my senior year, her senior year, was like.

  I was on Castor Island for nearly a year. Away from Ollie and Pru and the Similars and my father. I lost a year of my life because I was Gravelle’s prisoner. The only thing that made it remotely tolerable was Levi.

  He was there with me, on Castor. We didn’t know it in the beginning, and those first few weeks were a specific kind of hell, finding myself trapped on the compound with Gravelle, all alone without a soul but the guards in sight. I was so lonely—so desperate to escape. I quickly learned how futile my efforts were. Every time I tried, the guards thrust me into the portal. So I resolved to wait, pacing my stark room, slowly going mad. Gravelle made sure I had plenty to do to keep me busy. Textbooks and coursework would arrive at my room each day—including a syllabus—and assignments would appear on a tablet, with pop quizzes and homework I worked on well into the night. I never lacked for schoolwork to keep me occupied. Leave it to Gravelle to make sure I wasn’t “missing” my senior year—even though I was, in every other sense of the word.

  Then we found each other. Gravelle wanted it to happen, of course. He sent me to the library on a research assignment, and that’s when I saw him there. It nearly leveled me to learn that Levi was trapped on Castor too. I felt a conflicted kind of joy at the sight of him. Elation that he was there, with me, and I could touch him and hold him and feel his warmth underneath my fingertips. I was also bereft, because I thought he’d been freed. Every moment he was there with me was a moment he was a prisoner. I didn’t want that for him. I didn’t want that for us. I would have taken back my secluded imprisonment in a heartbeat if it had meant he could leave.

  Of course, Gravelle had other plans. He dealt out our punishments slowly. First, he informed me about my past. That I was—am—a Similar. That took me weeks to comprehend and even longer to accept. But it was only the first blow. When Gravelle informed me and Levi that DNA copies of us had been sent back to Darkwood, to stand in as us and live our lives for us, we were wrecked. He told us that we’d be living on Castor, with him, for the rest of our lives. He told us that the Duplicates believed they were us, and not to bother trying to escape; we never would.

  As much as it pained me that Levi was trapped right by my side, he quickly became my oxygen, my air. It had only been a few weeks since that night we spent together in Bar Harbor, and every cell in my body longed to be with him. Not only because we were all we had, but also because he understood me in a way that no one else had, or ever would. He was the one who talked me off the ledge when I learned I was a Similar. He had known, he told me. I was angry at first—outraged—but that knee-jerk anger eventually morphed into understanding, and I knew why he’d kept it from me. Everything about his life had been so twisted, so cruel. He was sparing me from that. He had tried to, anyway. After that, every chance we got, we found a way to see each other. Some days it was only for minutes. Some days longer. Kissing each other, our bodies pressed together like magnets, it all felt so crazy when we thought of our lives, of what we were losing, of the enormity of it all. And yet, it felt so necessary and right. When I wasn’t studying, I spent my waking hours engineering ways to end up in his path, and he in mine. I spent most of my sleeping hours dreaming that one day we’d be able to be together, and not as prisoners. This was a coping mechanism. One I used, at least in part, to numb the pain I felt over being separated from Ollie, and my father, and Pru. The idea that I might never see them again was too much to bear.

  Eventually, Gravelle moved u
s to Pollux. I don’t know his reasons, I only know it’s where he was training the Duplicates. I never saw them once while I was there. They were hidden from us, kept in the lower part of the compound, which we didn’t have access to. I certainly never saw my father or the other DNA parents and originals once they arrived on the island. I had no idea they’d all been replaced, just like me and Levi, not until the guards grew lax one day—the day the islands exploded—and Levi and I escaped our restricted area, only to discover the entire compound was in tatters, and my friends were fighting the guards and Duplicates and Gravelle and Seymour.

  Our Duplicates—mine and Levi’s—died saving all of us. Resetting all the clones back here at home and “releasing” them from their duty to follow Gravelle and Seymour’s orders. Duplicate Levi and Emma had to reset themselves to do it—and I can imagine that they were terrified. But they did it anyway. They destroyed the islands, and all that research, ensuring no more Duplicates could ever be created again.

  Before we escaped in the boats, I visited my father one last time, in the library where he lay, dead, and where he later burned. I kissed him and slid his wedding ring off his finger. The ring’s on a chain around my neck, with my Darkwood key. When I graduate, I’ll give the key back. But I’ll never take off the ring.

  Once the bombs detonated, Levi and I made it into a motorboat where we watched Pollux Island burn, the orange and yellow flames licking at a building that had once been beautiful. Ollie was safe, and Pru, and everyone else I loved, except Theodora. Her death split me apart. It was so unfair. So senseless. As we crossed the choppy water to our freedom and Levi took over the controls of the boat, my eyes became so heavy that I fell asleep on his shoulder.

  Some of us went home, not to Darkwood but to our real houses. Pru and Pippa traveled with Jaeger to the farm. Tessa to her mother’s apartment. Ansel and Archer to the de Leons’. Ollie and, yes, Levi, to Booker and Jane’s. I hoped this would be Levi’s chance, finally, to make amends with his DNA family.

  I insisted on flying back to San Francisco on my own. I needed to go through my father’s things. I needed time alone, to process. It had been him and me for so long; that’s how it had to be in the days following his death. Just me, with my memories of him. It’s painful accepting his last year with me wasn’t with me at all. My Duplicate had conversations with him I’ll never be privy to. I missed so much in a lifetime where he and I had so little. So little time, so little understanding. At night, I lie awake imagining what she might have said to him. Ollie tells me my father died in an act of love, to save Duplicate Levi, and his distance all those years stemmed from his deep-seated fear of losing me. I hold on to that like a lifeline. It’s all I have. My father’s memorial will be this summer. I need time to plan, to think about what I want to say in his eulogy. I’m not ready to officially say goodbye. Not yet.

  We are back at school, and Jane has been reinstated as headmistress. Duplicate Jane, along with the other Duplicates who were rebooted, have abandoned their roles and are searching for their real identities, as individuals. Many of them have expressed how directionless they feel—and all of them are, in a way, displaced. Jaeger has invited them to live on his farm, and some have found temporary homes, oddly enough, with their originals. I don’t know what the future will hold for them, but I make a promise to myself to help them figure that out, as soon as I graduate.

  The blank Duplicates from Pollux didn’t survive. Victims of the explosion, they didn’t make it off the island. I am deeply sad about that, but I know there was no alternative. The real Gravelle died of his gunshot wound. Seymour perished with my Duplicate and Levi’s clone, passing out from smoke inhalation before being consumed by flames.

  As for the DNA parents, most have a new lease on their old lives, having been away from their families and jobs and homes for months. Madison has credited Maude with saving her life. And, since Ansel’s heroic rescue of Madison from the cage, the two have started up a relationship of sorts. They were recently caught kissing in the science lab when Madison was visiting for the weekend. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the idea of them as a couple. I hope it means that Madison’s really changed.

  Our private memorial for Theodora is scheduled for tonight, on the shore of the lake. Ollie, Levi, Ansel, Maude, Jago, Pru, Pippa and I will celebrate her life. It will just be us there, those who knew her best…and Tessa. She’s been so broken up by her Similar’s death, she’s come back to Darkwood with us and has been sleeping on the floor by Theodora’s empty bed, paying tribute in her own way to the girl who had the potential to be like a sister, but whom she never got the chance to really know and love.

  Ollie meets me before the memorial for Theodora in the courtyard outside Cypress. We haven’t talked much since we got back, but I’ve felt his unconditional support in the wake of my father’s death. I hear him walking up and turn to watch him ambling toward me, his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of a light wool coat. I missed Ollie so much last year, it hurt like a cracked rib. Being with Levi, falling so deeply for him while we were on Castor, didn’t lessen the pain I felt at being separated once more from my best friend. We were robbed of our junior year together, and then we lost our senior year too. I’ll never get those years with him back, and it’s a pain that still haunts me.

  “Hey,” he says, folding me into his familiar chest, where I burrow in and let myself relax for the first time since I’ve been back at school.

  “Hey,” I answer, pulling back to look at him, to study his face and promise I’ll never take him for granted, ever again. “You look like you’ve eaten a burger or two.”

  “My mom’s been feeding me nonstop since we got back.” He smiles. “Burgers, lasagna, chicken curry, chicken potpie…”

  “And the editing? How’s that going?”

  “Let’s see. Eight hundred hours of footage, and I think my bot’s going to kill me. I have him weeding through it twenty-four-seven. I put together a highlight reel. I think it’s ready for public consumption, but you’d better take a look at it first.”

  “I’ll watch it tonight. Two, maybe three a.m.,” I answer, and we both know I’m not joking. I used to stay up all night thinking of him. Then Levi. Now, it’s my dad’s face I see when I try to close my eyes.

  “Okay, but don’t give me too many notes, because I already sent the highlight reel to NYU,” Ollie says slowly, like he’s gauging how I’ll respond.

  “And?”

  “And they have a spot. For me. Next year.” He laughs, and the sound is so joyful and right, I want to grasp on to it and never let go.

  “How could you not lead with that?” I smile now too, running up to hug him again, and we do a sort of awkward and wonderful happy dance together before settling down and wandering over to the wall that faces Dark Lake. I lean on it, looking out.

  “Oxford’s sorting out whether I’ve been accepted or not,” I say as I scan the lake. “Harlowe really screwed me, or my Duplicate, I guess I should say, but luckily Duplicate Emma’s grades and scores were top-notch, and with Jane vouching for me and explaining what Harlowe did, they’re going to see what they can do. Good thing Gravelle forced me to study nonstop when I was his prisoner,” I say through gritted teeth. “Or I wouldn’t even deserve to be going.”

  “Are the others—”

  I cut Ollie off, understanding him before he even finishes. “Maude and Jago are going too. And Levi. Oxford was always the place they wanted to go to blend in, and I…I…”

  “It’s where you belong too.”

  “I didn’t even apply there. My Duplicate did, on my behalf. That’s not how she saw it, of course, but it’s what happened. And now, it just feels…right? Ollie, I—”

  “No, Emma. Don’t. Please don’t feel like you have to make some kind of sweeping grand gesture right now.”

  “I don’t do grand gestures. Do you know me at all?”

  Ollie l
aughs. “What was I thinking? Of course you don’t.”

  “I don’t know if I’m the same person I was two years ago. I don’t know if I’m the same person I was two months ago,” I say, trying to explain myself but feeling like I’m coming up short. “I know being a Similar doesn’t define me. But now, with my dad gone… I’m really alone.”

  “And so are they.” He doesn’t say, and so is Levi, but I know he’s thinking it. We both are. Ollie is and always will be my past. But Levi is my future. Not because I’m a Similar and can’t be with Ollie because he’s not. But because Levi was always the one. And Ollie will always be my best friend.

  “Maude and Pippa and the others, they told me about a lot of what I missed senior year. But so much of it—it feels like someone else’s life. Like some other girl lived it. Which is, I guess, what happened. To both of us,” I add, remembering that Ollie and Levi’s lives were hijacked too.

  “There’s only one thing I regret from this year,” Ollie says, his gray eyes shining so bright I want to live in them indefinitely and bottle up that “usness” that’s so precious and only ours.

  “What’s that?” I ask breathily.

  “That the Emma I kissed wasn’t you.”

  Those words set every atom of my being on fire. I know I’m not in love with Ollie, not like I am with Levi. But still, I do love him, in a way that’s only mine and his. And in that moment I feel so much for him—for all the pain we’ve both suffered—that I don’t respond. I simply let him pull me close. He needs this—this one kiss—and maybe I do too.

  His hands cupping my face, Ollie gently leans toward me and presses his lips to mine. It is tender and sweet and sends tingles up my spine. It doesn’t mean what it could, in some other life, a parallel world where we got to be together. Maybe Ollie wants it to; I don’t know. For me, it’s a kiss that means something singular, in this moment. It means we are Emma and Ollie, solidified in space and time, and no one can ever take that away from us again. In a way, this kiss is its own sort of goodbye, to what might have been between us. To the road we won’t ever take.