by Schow, Ryan
My decision changes things. Where fear once took up residence inside me, now there is an emotionless vacancy. My determination to not be bullied by these two bleached assholes fuels me. Empowers me. Something in me clicks. My anger blooms. I feel an icy, manufactured rage, and I like it.
“You two are freaking toxic,” I all but snarl, my words sharp with hostility.
I’m thinking of everything they’ve ever done to me, how they humiliated me, terrified me and physically abused me. I’m thinking of the bucket of puke, how they keyed my beautiful Rover and took forever to get it fixed. I’m thinking of all these things, and channeling every scathing drop of hatred into each word and I have to admit, it feels…euphoric.
“Everything about you is venomous and rotten,” I continue, unchallenged. “What in the hell happened so badly in your lives that you feel it necessary to poison everyone around you?”
Julie closes the distance between us, fast, testing my resolve. She stands face to face with me, unafraid. Oh, crap. What did I start? Right now, in this moment, looking into the barely noticeable pores of my fiercest enemy, I’m thinking all my bravado is about to drain into my underwear.
She says, “If I were you I’d shut that mouth of yours and crawl back into whatever hole you came from.”
Julie’s fearlessness and aggression terrify me. With nowhere to run, and no way to back down, I do the only thing I can do, the thing that absolutely has to work because it’s in all the movies these days: I slam my forehead straight into her face. The impact staggers me, leaves my head feeling a bit syrupy.
I stumble backwards a step, my legs wobbly. Julie’s legs nearly buckle, same as me, and Cameron’s making her O face, but not in a sexual way. The surprised, agonized look in Julie’s eyes rakes me with a sort of morbid satisfaction. I can’t stop the grin spreading across my face. I must look psychotic right now! Julie looks scared.
I’m not this strong, am I?
My head clears instantly and I’m thinking, is this really me? It could be. I can be this version of me any time I want!
Julie’s eyes water and a lump starts in the bright red spot just above her right eyebrow. Horrified, Cameron puts a hand on Julie’s arm, but Julie shrugs it off, leveling me with her meanest stare. It’s a pretty good one.
“Stop it!” Maggie says. She’s trying to project strength, but there’s real panic in her tone.
“She started it,” Cameron replies. “Why is she even here?”
“Ask me yourself, you miserable wretch.”
Cameron turns her lovely eyes on me and just when she’s about to speak, she turns her head sideways, like she’s contemplating something, then says, “How in the world did you get those eyes?”
Is it possible she thinks they’re contacts?
“They’re exactly like Nurse Arabelle’s,” Julie says, rubbing her head. Then: “Freaking clone.” Except she doesn’t say freaking. When there are no teachers around, girls like Cameron don’t use diet cusswords. I’m thinking she might be on to something.
Things move and shift in Cameron’s eyes; perhaps this is understanding. “Now I get it,” she says. “This is where ugly, rich girls come to change their looks.”
Behind me I feel Maggie’s discomfort like spiders on my back. I wonder how the two of them would act if they knew about Maggie.
“I now know why those girls killed themselves,” I say to Cameron, going right for the jugular. “Anything to stop that awful voice of yours, to erase your disgusting assertions, to get you out of their lives. That’s why they did it, isn’t it? They hated you so much they would rather suicide themselves than suffer one more second of you.”
“Don’t talk about that, bitch.”
“Now I see you, Cameron, and you’re hideous through and through. Like an abused dog. Or gut rot. You’re the freaking black plague.” For me, right now, I skip the diet cusswords as well and go for full-scale verbal destruction.
“Stop it you guys,” Maggie says, quieter this time, less sure of herself. But no one stops. We can’t. The train has already jumped the tracks. The only thing left to do is rack up damage.
“You’re a future statistic, Cameron. The prom queen destined for obscurity. So your daddy’s a superstar, so what? The minute he puts out one more shitty album, or one more underage teenage boy comes out to the media saying his butthole burns on account of your daddy’s perverted tendencies, it’s open season on him and his career. You’ll be a nobody. No, you’ll be less than a nobody. Less even than that waste-of-a-life old hag you call a mother.”
With every single word, my aggression intensifies. Suddenly I’m leaning forward, the chords in my neck straining with my hatred, my index finger pointing at her, accusingly, with malice. And I can’t stop. It’s almost scary.
“There’s nothing you will be able to do to survive the fallout because inside that body of yours, your soul is charred black and barren, which leaves you with absolutely no redeeming qualities. Your only consolation prize is you have two obnoxious skanks just like yourself to keep you company. The closet abortionist here, and that human pestilence, Theresa. Believe me, I see both of you and you’re both…ghastly.”
“I’m not a closet abortionist,” Julie growls.
Turning my scorching hot eyes from the speechless Cameron to the enraged Julie, I say, “From what I hear, you should have an abortion punch card. Three more abortions and the fifth one’s free.”
I’m not me. The other me has officially taken over. 452 from Prague.
My DNA model.
Julie’s breath is a sharp inhale; her exhale is pure contempt. Seeing her, smelling the violence brewing in her, hearing the slap of my words hitting her where it counts most, this is my Pie Jesu, my Ave Maria, my soul in its most sacred, blissful state. And it’s the worst pain ever. Like I’m looking at myself thinking I’m winning, but inside—to the doleful, lonely person I used to be—I understand the cruelty I’m wielding, and it’s me most definitely losing.
Julie lunges at me. Hands becoming claws, fingers grasping for eyes and hair, face twisted up like some wild banshee, she attacks. I stumble out of the way, twisting my ankle as I step uneven on one of Maggie’s shoes. Julie’s feet crash into Maggie’s thousand pound suitcase and she sprawls face-first into the side of the bed, her neck cranking backwards unnaturally. I barely have my balance, and that’s when Cameron punches at my face. I see it coming and pitch my head straight forward, which is totally the wrong thing to do. Or perhaps, in this case, the right thing. The minute I feel her fragile fist connect with my rock-hard skull, we both hear the crack of a bone breaking. Pain burns bright in my head, but it is Cameron who suffers most.
Maggie is screaming for us to stop. A very stunned Cameron is backing away from me, cradling her injured hand, trying not to cry. Feeling guilty and mortified, I find Maggie’s eyes. They plead with me.
“This isn’t me,” I say. “Honest. I’m sorry. I really am.”
Julie is getting up slow, rubbing her neck and glaring at me.
“Just go,” Maggie says.
Holding her broken hand against her chest, Cameron’s physical pain reads like a neon billboard, the horror in her eyes impossible to miss. I’m ashamed of myself. Then again, she was trying to break my nose, so maybe I don’t feel that bad.
“You brought this on yourself,” I mutter. It’s not what I wanted to say. That part of me that used to be me, she wants to say she’s sorry, that it was an accident, but my mouth refuses to utter those words.
Cameron remains speechless, her attention more on her swelling hand. I step in the hallway and make for the elevators. I get as far as the floor’s guest bathrooms. I head inside, go for the nearest stall, drop straight to my knees as the convulsions hit. My entire body seems poised to purge this evil inside.
Who am I becoming?
I haven’t blown chunks for weeks now, nor have I shed much in the way of tears. But here I am, sobbing like a baby. Puking into a sparkling white toilet and blubbe
ring out loud. It’s one thing to slap a person, but to head-butt them? To break Cameron’s hand? This isn’t me.
This isn’t me!
I hear the bathroom door open, and I try to stop crying, but I just start snorting out my nose, blowing snot and sidetracked vomit onto the otherwise clean toilet seat. Maggie opens the stall door, lays a hand on my shoulder and says, “I know you didn’t mean it.”
“But part of me wanted it,” I say, my voice hiccupping and shaky. “Then, when it happened, even as it was happening, I didn’t want it at all. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” My crying jag is unrelenting. Inadvertently a snot bubble blows out of my left nostril, which is embarrassing, but not. With Maggie, I somehow feel safe.
“The new DNA changes you,” she says, gathering up my hair. “It’s like a part of them is in you now. The ones whose DNA you have. Dr. Gerhard once told me our donors are bred to be competitive, driven, perfect. Sometimes this translates into a ruthless need to win, a loss of morality, physical violence.”
“All I know is as much as I hate those two, I didn’t want to do what I did. You understand, right?”
“Perfectly.”
I wipe my mouth, blow my nose and swipe my watery eyes with the backs of my hands. “They don’t know you’re here?”
“I said I was going for a First Aid kit, so I have to get going. Will you be okay?”
Gently, she pulls my head back and slowly turns my face to hers, examining the growing lumps on my forehead. For some reason, they are starting to heat. Like a sparkling fire going on in my body.
“I’m more worried about Cameron.”
“Yeah. Me, too. If I don’t see you, have a good Christmas.”
“I hate Christmas.”
Smiling, she says, “I kinda do, too.”
7
It takes about twenty minutes and a lot of tissue for me to pull myself together, but somehow I manage. I don’t want to miss my friends’ leaving. I have to say good-bye.
In Bridget’s room, Georgia and Victoria are sitting on Bridget’s bed. Bridget is zipping up her suitcase, not having the same problem Maggie was having earlier. They’re all so terribly giddy. I’ve seen them happy before, just not to this degree.
Looking up at me, chipper, Bridget says, “We were on our way down to your room.” Then, concerned, she sees my face and says, “Holy dog balls, what happened to your forehead?”
In the moment before answering, I consider telling them about the fight, about my underhanded victory and my guilt, but this is not the time. Besides, for having reduced myself to the likes of a schoolyard bully, I don’t want anyone’s praise. Or their pity.
“I slipped in the bathroom getting ready. Got not one but two bumps for trying to shower half-asleep.” It’s a terrible lie, I know. But anymore, I’ve come to see lies as a reimagining of the truth. A truth more suitable for the moment. In this moment, while they’re all so hopeful about winter break, and getting what they started to call their “individuality cures,” the last thing anyone needs is me breaking their crayons with news of a stupid fight. “Are you guys about ready or what?”
“More than you know,” Georgia says, hugging me. “And it’s all because of you. Thank you.”
Victoria and Bridget jump in and they all hug me and start rapid fire kissing my cheeks until I can’t stop laughing. Sometimes, when you’re in your own headspace for too long, you forget the joys of friendship and the outside world. Later I’m sure I will lose it again, but not now. Not with them.
Thinking of what Maggie said in the bathroom about the clone’s DNA mixing with my DNA to produce different personality traits, I wonder what will happen to the girls. Will they get new genetic traits that somehow make them different?
Will they still want to be my friends?
Dr. Suess and the Second Coming of Christ
1
I’m driving home, passing through Davis on I-80, knowing Brayden is now on a 747 heading for Dallas, Texas. I’m sort of missing my life back at Astor Academy, and dreading going home to my father and the monster, so I call Brayden even though I know I’ll go straight to voicemail.
“It’s me, Savannah,” I say. “I know your testies are in a twist over this whole thing with your father, but don’t worry, we’ll figure something out. The point is, don’t kill yourself over the break. Besides, when we get back, or maybe sooner, I need you to help me do some digging on the Virginia Corporation. What they’re doing, well, I’m sort of thinking that morally, I don’t know, it’s wrong, or something? I mean, do the clones feel anything in those giant canisters? It’s stupid, I know, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Anyway, call me.”
Not fifteen minutes after the phone call, the first shot of pain drills like a bolt of lightning down through my bones. My hands seize, like I’ve been tazed. I struggle to grip the wheel. Spots blacken the vision in my left eye and before I know it, I’ve swerved into oncoming traffic at seventy miles an hour.
A woman in a bloated Mercedes-Benz leans on her horn, nearly losing control as she swerves off the road, startling me. I work the wheel back into my lane, the tires barking, and try not to have a heart attack over what could’ve been my death. Fortunately the agony simmers to a dull roar and my senses make their slow return.
My electrified mind is racing through the possibilities of what just happened when something nauseating and new courses through me, like supercharged period cramps. I pull off the road, kill the engine. The last thing I need is to die in traffic. Sweating like a crazy woman, mortified, sitting stiff in utter and complete silence, I can’t stop wondering what just happened.
What was that pain?!
The residue of the attack sits throbbing in my side—localized around my left breast—in a sort of pulsing sickness that burns hot and long beneath my skin. Like how you feel after sticking a knife in a light socket.
Is this some fluke, or an aftereffect of my treatment? Who knows. Either way it’s gone and thank God, because if I never feel that kind of pain again, it will be too soon! I start Rover, slip the gearshift in drive…and then—like a stack of dominoes tumbling inside me—the pain flashes again, carving a hot path up to my face, then sinking deep into the muscle tissue beneath my left eye. At the same time a rolling ache churns low in my belly, squeezing my insides so hard I wonder if I’m about to backdoor vomit in my pants.
I grip the steering wheel so tight my forearms seize; I release the wheel, but can’t stop lock-jawing my molars against the pain. A sniffling sob escapes my nostrils, and pretty soon I sound like I’m hyperventilating. What’s wrong with me?
Whatever is happening inside my body, I’m terrified it’s tissue damage. Whatever is happening, it’s cutting too deep to not be permanent. Is my body falling apart? Is this what happened to Kaitlyn?
Oh Jesus, am I dying?
Just when I’m certain I need to call someone, the stabbing pains begin to ebb, feeling less biting than before, less insistent. Holding my breath, I ease down the vanity mirror and inspect my face. One look and I’m sighing with relief. I look fine. Poking the flesh beneath my eye, it seems…undamaged. Well, sort of. A hollow ache now sits low in my cheek bones, like the residue of something intentional.
Driving with the utmost caution, I keep to the slow lane, my cruise control set to the speed limit. With what just happened, I need to be able to pull off the road at a moment’s notice. Thankfully though, the pain is receding, so much so that part of me is left wondering if any of that was real.
About fifteen minutes from my home, my temperature spikes again. Oh, great. I try not to panic, but when my stomach starts to knot, I realize it’s not the nervousness of being home again as much as it’s freaking diarrhea.
WTF???
I’m clenching my butt cheeks so tight, you couldn’t punch a needle in there with a jackhammer. How is this possible? Groaning, willing the diarrhea off, I blaze through the neighborhood, fishtailing hard onto my street with the accelerator mashed to the floor.
/> Two girls, each no more than nine years old, are playing hopscotch in the road. They both bolt for the sidewalk, scared senseless. Their mother is screaming for them. Or screaming at me. She’s got panic in her eyes and her hands are waving everywhere.
I barely even slow, that’s how much I don’t want to shit my pants.
Rover’s back end bucks and screeches and one tire lifts off the pavement making me wonder if I’m about to roll. By God’s will alone, Rover doesn’t tip. But barely.
2
The FOR SALE sign in the front yard of our house with the red SOLD sign plastered across it forces me to do a double take. I would be devastated had I not already been hot-flashing and prepared for a full colon evacuation.
Spinning the wheel at the last minute, the back end breaks loose and I bounce Rover hard into the front yard, skidding about a foot and a half up the lawn. The lawn is trenched for sure, but at this point I don’t care. Kicking the car door open, my hand to my lower belly, I fly out of Rover and hunch-sprint for the front door, which—thank Jesus—is unlocked.
My fingers fight with my zipper all the way to the bathroom. With a dozen horrifying flashbacks of the effects of my now defunct social anxiety disorder, I’m totally freaking out. The minute my bare bum hits the toilet seat, I have a Dumb and Dumber moment…you know, that moment when Jeff Daniels unknowingly ingests half a bottle of laxative then later dumps like forty pounds of mud and vital organs in the toilet. Swear to God, it’s that bad. OMFG, the way my body is exploding from the inside out, I’m practically exorcising demons!
It’s a brutal ten minutes that leaves me sopping wet from sweat and tears. The pounding in my head is tribal, unrelenting. Trying to catch my breath, to stop crying, I slump over on the floor, mentally feeling my way through my body. I’m like a trash-compacted, destroyed shell of my former self. I pray to God I’m being overly dramatic, but with what I’ve gone through this last semester, I’m pretty sure my fears are reasonable. Eventually, when I’m certain the storm has passed, that the physical torture has run its course, my tears dry and I manage to stand. My stomach groans, making me feel emptied out in an Elle McPherson sort of way.