“Cody…”
He turned to her and saw that she was definitely not spaced out. He could tell by the tiny, tensed muscle in her jaw that her mind was working overtime.
“What do you think you’d be like if you hadn’t been genetically engineered?” she finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, who would you be right now if the scientists hadn’t messed around with your DNA? Would you still be the same person?”
James thought for a moment. It was a question he’d considered before, and the answer was obvious to him. Of course he’d be different. He’d look different, his body and mind would work differently, and every experience he’d ever had might have played out differently. Hell, if a butterfly had sneezed differently on the day his brother died, James probably wouldn’t even exist. It was kind of pointless to get worked up over it, he thought.
“No, I wouldn’t be the same,” he said. “I bet I’d be pretty similar, but who cares? I wouldn’t even know any other way to be.”
James saw that Cody wasn’t satisfied with this. It was different for her, and he understood why. If Cody hadn’t been picked for the pilot program, there was a good chance she wouldn’t be similar at all. There were plenty of kids in her neighborhood who were living proof of that, kids who had the odds hopelessly stacked against them by virtue of the block they were born on and the parents who bore them. James knew Cody felt guilty about overcoming this, but again, he thought, what was the point?
People were born with all kinds of advantages and disadvantages. You couldn’t control it, so how could you feel bad about it? Nor did it make much sense to be proud of it. James knew he didn’t possess any advantages because he was particularly deserving of them. And people born with birth defects, incurable diseases, lifelong handicaps—they didn’t deserve that, either. As he saw it, that was the whole point of testing this new technology. Once the science was all figured out, no one would ever be born unlucky again.
James turned to Cody. “Why are you asking this?”
Her thousand-yard stare had returned, and James knew he wasn’t going to get a real answer. He had come to accept that they would always feel differently about being Ones, always disagree about how much of it was a gift and how much was a curse. And since he was pulling up to her house now, he wasn’t going to push her. He did, however, stop the car with an extra hard jolt to the brakes. Cody slammed back in her seat.
“Easy there,” she said, a little surprised.
“Just trying to wake you up. You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I think I just caught a food coma,” she said, then smiled at him playfully. “If I never come out of it, promise me that you won’t waste your life sitting at my bedside. You have to live, James, promise me you’ll live!” Cody collapsed on top of him in a poorly acted death scene.
James laughed and tried to hold her up, then grabbed her hands in mock seriousness. “I’ll mourn silently for a year … then grab the first girl I see and head straight for the diner.”
Cody smacked his arm. “You would not!” She got her stuff together and started to get out of the car. “Sorry if I was acting weird. Talk to you later tonight?”
“Of course,” James said. Cody leaned in for a quick kiss, then shut the door. As she walked up to her tiny house with the faded paint and lopsided porch, James thought about shouting after her. He wanted to reassure her, to ease her guilt and tell her that if she hadn’t been a One, he was sure she’d be exactly the same—just as smart, beautiful, fast, witty, and stubborn. That she’d be an identical and equally perfect version of herself. He wanted to shout it after her, but he didn’t. Because James knew it wasn’t true.
* * *
Back at home, James ate dinner with his parents at their regularly scheduled time. Michael was nowhere to be found, which had become common in recent days. James didn’t know which way he preferred it. With Michael gone, at least he knew there wouldn’t be a fight at the dinner table, but his empty chair seemed to create a tension all on its own. As they ate silently, James thought about how much these family dinners had changed. Before Michael went off to college, meals were loud, raucous affairs. The two brothers would be yelling excitedly about something that happened at a sports practice, Arthur would be trying to stump them with a math brainteaser, and Helen would snap her napkin at the boys as they fought over food and made a mess. Tonight, though, it was so quiet that James could hear his parents chewing.
When they finished eating, James helped clear the table, dutifully loaded the dishwasher, and tied up the full trash bag. Then he stepped out of the kitchen door and walked down to drop the trash at the curb. At the bottom of the long driveway, James stopped suddenly. In the darkness just ahead of him, he saw a figure sitting at the edge of the street. After a moment of surprise, James recognized the slumped silhouette of his brother. James crossed behind him and tossed the bag in a garbage can. It rattled loudly, but Michael didn’t even look up. James was offended that his brother had ignored him, so he sat down right next to him on the curb.
They sat in silence for a minute, and then Michael reached over to a half-finished six-pack and offered it to James. “Beer?”
“No, thanks,” James said.
“Right, stupid question. Of course the perfect son wouldn’t have a beer,” Michael said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” James asked.
“Look at you. Doing all the chores, getting good grades, captain of the debate team. What an impressive specimen!”
James looked at Michael warily, realizing how drunk he was. He didn’t want to fight him and had no interest in provoking him, so he grabbed the beer and popped the top. “Happy?” he asked. “And, by the way, you did all those things, too—pretty well, if I remember correctly.”
“No, brother, you do it better than I did. That’s the difference,” Michael said.
James shook his head, knowing it was pointless to argue. Michael had been his idol for as long as he could remember. James grew up following him around and copying his every move, from the stupid way they still tied their shoes to the part in their hair. If Michael was criticizing James, then he was really being critical of himself. So James just ignored him and took a swig of beer.
“So you agree, then? You do all that stuff better than me?” Michael asked.
“Shut up, will you?”
“You’re better than me, James. It’s okay to admit it. Not every person is equal.”
“Can we just sit here and enjoy—”
“Say it!” Michael shouted. “Admit that you’re better than I am.”
“Better at holding my liquor,” James said, trying to keep things light.
“Better at everything,” Michael said. “Well, almost everything. I bet you still can’t get out of a super-deluxe head clamp.”
Before James could react, Michael had pounced on him, reached around his neck and under one armpit, and locked his head into a painful position that James was all too familiar with. It was Michael’s favorite little-brother torture device, a trump card that could put a stop to any fight. James was always helpless in the grasp of his stronger brother and would eventually concede the point rather than getting choked out. And now he was back in that excruciating position, with the full weight of his brother pushing down on him and the sound of laughter ringing in his ear.
“Still got it, bro!” Michael yelled. “Damn, that was quick.”
James felt the searing pain start in his neck and tried to squirm free. But he knew it was hopeless. “All right, you got me. Now let go,” he croaked.
But Michael kept leaning down on him, laughing joyfully. “Come on, buddy, you can get out of this, right?”
James began to struggle for real, getting angry now. “Loosen up, I’m serious,” he said, starting to get scared. Besides being drunk, his brother had been acting different for a while. This didn’t feel like roughhousing. It just felt like James couldn’t breathe.
“I
know you can get out of this, Superboy,” Michael said, even as he tightened his hold. “Or did Mom and Dad not order this skill from the breeding catalog?”
The anger burst out of James in an instant of pure fury. First there was the surge of strength as he twisted his body to grab Michael behind the knees and lift him off his feet. Then he threw both of them to the ground, landing with a crushing thud as he drove his shoulder into his brother’s chest. And then, as Michael rolled on top of him, James threw a violent right hook with such power and precision that it shattered his brother’s nose with a crunch. James cocked his left arm, ready to throw again, but Michael had collapsed onto his back, blood streaming from his face.
James staggered a few steps away, catching his breath as his heart raced. He tried to process an odd combination of feelings—the thrill of victory mixed with remorse at having hurt a member of his family. But most of all, there was the sensation of something totally new: He had never beaten his brother before, in anything. And now he stood over him, looking down as Michael lifted an arm to gingerly touch his face and then let out a pained moan. James looked on for a moment as tears that he couldn’t quite explain began to fill his eyes. Then he turned and walked away.
* * *
Cody didn’t answer her phone as James walked toward her house, so he wasn’t too alarmed when her mother opened the door with a look of surprise. Joanne craned her neck to see behind him, worry creeping across her face.
“Is Cody all right?” she asked.
“What?” James said, confused.
“Where is she? Did something happen?”
“I was just coming over to see her … is she not here?”
Now full-fledged panic came over Joanne. “She took her bike and said she was going out to meet you.”
Inside the house, they tried to call her again, looked around her room, and only after it was clear that Cody was totally off the grid did Joanne think to tell James about the guy at the diner. As she recounted what she saw, James couldn’t help but imagine the worst. A stranger had approached her at the counter, whispered to her, left her shaking, and disappeared as quickly as he arrived. Well, that explained Cody’s weird behavior on the car ride home. What did this guy say to her? Joanne didn’t know much—she was across the diner when they were talking—but somehow saw fit to mention that the guy looked like an underwear model. Terrific, James thought, the one thing we know about Cody’s kidnapper is that he’s handsome. Growing more worried, James opened up Cody’s computer. He typed in her password and immediately saw the last thing Cody had been looking at: a map and directions to an address outside town.
Within a minute, James was on the road, gunning Joanne’s car out of Shasta and toward wherever Cody had been lured. Even as he was desperate to find her, James couldn’t help but be angry with her, too. She was always running straight into trouble, and every reckless decision put her in a new, unpredictable bind. James had no idea what this current one would be, but he had a terrible feeling about it. Joanne’s car was a piece of junk, and even while stomping down on the accelerator, he felt like he was barely moving.
Miles later, when James saw that he was getting close to the address that he’d written down, he began to recognize his surroundings. He was near Cal State–Redding, the university where his father worked. But instead of taking him onto the familiar campus, the directions led him to an area he’d never been before, which was run-down and seemingly deserted. He stopped the car near a crumbling church and double-checked the address. This was it. James got out of the car and walked up to the entrance of the church. The front doors were padlocked, but he could see some light coming from the windows just above the basement. James walked around to the back of the building and found a rusted metal door that was cracked open.
James stood frozen outside the church, and as he felt a cold sweat start to cover his skin, he wondered if he was about to break his own rule. Wasn’t walking blindly through this doorway just as foolish as anything Cody had done? Perhaps, he rationalized, but at least he had a legitimate reason. Cody was in trouble; he was sure of that much. And she wasn’t very good at getting out of it on her own.
He pulled the door open and grimaced at the grating screech of its hinges. There was a staircase directly in front of him, dropping down into pitch darkness. He started to walk down, the metal stairs echoing with every step, and reached a dank hallway that had a single lightbulb hanging in it. Then he saw the girl, seated in front of a doorway, staring at him.
James froze and tried to conceal the fear pulsing through him. After a second, though, he relaxed just a bit. All things considered, he realized, his descent into this abyss could have yielded a lot worse. Instead, there was a girl, maybe a couple of years older than him, sitting in a chair. She didn’t look very nice—that much was true—but she didn’t look like a serial killer, either. Serial killers didn’t usually have cute pixie cuts that swooped down over big brown eyes like that. At least that was what James was counting on.
“Hi,” he said.
She didn’t answer, so he began to walk cautiously toward her. James started to see her more clearly now, struck by the extreme contrast of her jet-black hair against her fair complexion. And she had a few piercings on her face that he didn’t even think were possible. When James got halfway down the hallway, she held up her hand to stop him.
“What do you want?” she said.
James didn’t really know how to answer that. “I’m here to meet my girlfriend.”
“Did she tell you to come here?” the girl asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Well … yeah. She did.”
“All right,” she said. “Then tell me which way the wind blows.”
“Huh?” James said, not even meaning to speak. Had he heard her correctly? Because if so, he had no idea what she was talking about. And as she stared at him, waiting for an answer, it didn’t seem like she was going to repeat the question. “I don’t understand. I’m just going to go in there and get my girlfriend, okay?” James took a step forward, but the way the girl stood up from her chair made him stop in his tracks.
“Get the hell out of here,” she said, and if she had merely seemed cold and grumpy before, her tone now was downright chilling. James saw the change in her face, the new angles of her nostrils and the flush of her cheek—whatever the “or else” was that she had only implied, James wasn’t interested in finding out. So he backed toward the staircase, climbed up to the backyard of the church, and shut the door behind him.
As he stood there trying to figure out what to do next, a cool breeze rustled the branches of a tree above him. Should he go back down there and make up something about the wind? No, he didn’t want to do that—it would only make him look stupider. He would be grateful to never encounter that girl for the rest of his life.
James knew Cody was somewhere in the basement of that church, but he still didn’t know if she was actually in danger. As he walked back to the street, he looked helplessly at the small illuminated windows that rested just above the ground. Something was happening down there, but the glass was clouded over and he couldn’t see inside. Maybe he could slip in through the front doors and find a different way downstairs. Granted, they were locked, but they seemed a lot easier to get past than that girl.
Then, as he made his way back to the front, he noticed a metal grate set against the foundation of the church. He walked over and saw that it was covering some ancient heating equipment with plenty of room in the window well for a person to squeeze in on either side of it. And best of all, James saw on the boarded-up window down there that the wood had half-crumbled off already. He knelt down next to the grate and tried to pry it up with his fingers. It didn’t move easily, but he could tell it was just grass and mud holding it down. He pulled harder, got the grate in the air, and gently leaned it against the church, taking care to be as silent as possible. Then he lowered himself into the well, landing softly on the gravel bottom. He turned his attention to the boarded-
up window and found a crack that was almost big enough to see through. He could tell there were people on the other side and could hear voices now. If he could just shift it open a little more, he’d have a clear view of what was going on.
But just as James was about to peer inside, he heard the gravel crunch behind him. Before he could turn around, his face was pinned against the concrete wall of the church basement.
“I told you to leave.”
It was the same voice that James had heard in the hallway. He twisted his neck just enough to see out of the corner of his eye. The girl was standing behind him with a gun pointed at his head.
CHAPTER 5
CODY HAD SPENT most of the meeting trying not to draw any attention to herself. Between not knowing exactly what was going on and seeing that everyone else was a few years older than her, it seemed wise to find a seat in the back and keep her head down. When she had arrived at the church earlier, she found Kai outside, and he greeted her warmly and led her downstairs. But as other people filed into the large storage room, Kai took a seat up front and left Cody to fill in the blanks herself.
It was pretty obvious that everyone in the room was a One. There were maybe two dozen of them, and Cody realized she had never been in one place with so many Ones before. The thought thrilled her as she contemplated the talent and potential that was gathered in this grimy church basement. At the same time, she had the unfamiliar feeling of being intimidated. It wasn’t just that they were older; they also had a confidence and seriousness that she envied. It was the same feeling Kai gave off in the diner, that mix of passion and self-control that Cody found so difficult to balance in her own life.
So Cody sat in the back and listened. A well-dressed, preppy guy named Brandon stood up and began to speak.
“Welcome to the Northern California chapter of the New Weathermen,” he said. “I know many of us have been talking in smaller groups, but it’s time we get more organized.”
“Fuck Amber Reed!” a wild-haired kid shouted from the back.
The Ones Page 5