The pictures told a heartwarming story: a little girl and her mother, alone but for each other, Us-against-the-world practically written on their faces. Cody thought about what her mother had said earlier, how Joanne had nothing to give to her daughter. That was not what came across in the photographs. Sure, the birthday parties weren’t fancy and the Halloween costumes were thrown together from the closet, but the girl in the photos didn’t seem to notice any of that. She was healthy and happy. Cody considered what her mom had done to make that happen. A lot. Worked her ass off. Sacrificed her personal life. Put every extra dollar into something that Cody wanted, even if it was some junky magnifying glass from the thrift store. She gave me everything, Cody thought. Why couldn’t her mom have had faith that that would have been enough? Why did she also have to lie?
Cody went to bed still torn about what she had discovered that day. She realized it was all about perspective. If she looked backward, she grew angry and frustrated, pissed off that she had never really been in control of her life. If she considered the future, that new feeling of pride and possibility swelled up in her again. But she didn’t live in the past and she didn’t live in the future, she was stuck agonizingly in the present. And at the moment, that wasn’t a very comfortable place to be.
So she tossed and turned for a long time, feeling like she’d never get to sleep. But she must have drifted off at some point. That was the only way to explain how she woke up suddenly with a firm hand pressed against her mouth.
Cody tried to sit up and wriggle out of her bed, but a strong arm held her down. It was dark in her room, and she couldn’t tell who was on top of her. As her panic grew into sheer terror, she heard someone softly make a sound.
“Shhhhhhhh…”
Yeah, she was already quiet, but as soon as the hand moved from her mouth, she was going to wake up the entire West Coast.
“Promise me you’ll be quiet, Cody. It’s Kai.”
Kai? What the hell was Kai doing in her room pinning her down to the bed? And was that terrifying or a relief? She was flooded with embarrassment as she thought about her messy room, her tangled hair, and her thin shirt.
Cody nodded her head, and Kai removed his hand. Her eyes began to adjust, and she made out the razor-sharp cheekbones under his dark hood. Kai knelt down next to her bed and started to whisper.
“I’m sorry to scare you, but this can’t wait.” He stared into her eyes, and for a second, Cody forgot to be scared.
“What are you doing here? And how did you even get in?” she asked.
“Cody, please keep your voice down. Your mom is right down the hall.”
“Kai, what is going on?” Cody whispered loudly.
“We need to talk. I can’t imagine you’re surprised to hear that. You came to our meeting, we trusted you, and now you’ve made us look very foolish.”
“What do you mean?”
Even in the dark, Cody could feel Kai looking at her like she was crazy. “Cody, you’re not on the List. You’re not a One. You lied to us.”
Cody had never felt stupider. In all her soul-searching about what it meant to not be a One, she had never considered that it also made her a liar. Not intentionally, of course, but that was beside the point. And if anyone might get pissed about a person lying about being a One, it would probably be the New Weathermen. This nighttime visit suddenly made a lot of sense.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know, either. I swear, I can explain—”
Kai put a finger against her lips to stop her from getting too loud. His touch was warmer than she’d expected.
“Let’s talk about this outside—we need to figure out what to do. We’re out back—come meet us,” Kai whispered, and then stood up.
“Us?” Cody asked.
“Just come outside.”
Kai slipped out of her room as silently as he must have entered, and Cody was left in bed, suddenly shivering. The New Weathermen were demanding to see her in the dead of night. They thought she was a liar. This could be a pleasant nighttime stroll, or it could end with her in the trunk of a car.
Cody knew she didn’t have much of a choice, so she threw on a sweatshirt and shoes and slipped quietly out the back door. At the back edge of her yard, she glimpsed two figures waiting in the shadows.
Kai, with his deep eyes reflecting the moonlight.
And Taryn. The girl who casually carried around a gun.
“Thanks, Cody. We just need to talk,” Kai said.
“I promise I didn’t mean to lie the other day,” Cody started.
Taryn cut her off. “The New Weathermen have a strict policy about spies infiltrating our group.”
“I’m not a spy! I honestly thought I was a One!” Cody quickly explained everything she had just learned from her mother. Even if it all made sense, she knew it sounded a little convenient.
Kai and Taryn looked at each other, weighing how much they believed. Taryn shook her head. “The rules exist for a reason. Even if there’s a chance she’s telling the truth, we can’t risk it,” she said.
Kai was silent for a moment. He stared long and hard at Cody, and her skin started to prickle from his intensity. “I believe her.”
“That’s great, but it doesn’t matter,” Taryn responded. “If she walked down to the police station tomorrow and told them what she heard, we’d all be screwed. They’d have us locked up in two minutes. All of us.”
“I am not going to do that,” Cody said.
“But how do we know that, Cody?” Kai asked. “I need to be able to convince everyone else that there’s no chance of that happening.”
“Because I still agree with you guys!” Cody shouted.
Taryn looked at her quizzically. “You do?”
Cody nodded. She hadn’t given it much thought yet, but she instinctively knew it was what she really believed. Her biography had changed, but her principles were the same as ever. “Yes. I’m still on your side. I still believe Ones are being persecuted unfairly. And I still believe that the only way to fix it is to fight back.” She thought back to what Kai had said at the meeting and looked him in the eye. “We follow one rule: Protect our rights at all costs.” And then Cody caught herself. “Your rights,” she added sheepishly.
Cody noticed that Kai was trying to suppress a proud smile. Taryn saw it, too, and rolled her eyes, clearly irritated.
“I’m glad you feel that way. We need all the help we can get,” Kai said.
“So you’re not going to kill me?”
“No, I guess not. And I was never going to kill you,” Kai said, and then nodded at Taryn. “She was.”
Cody glanced over at Taryn and didn’t feel much relief. If looks could kill, Cody was already a chalk outline.
“How?” Cody asked, unable to help herself.
Taryn seemed to relish giving an answer. “Put it this way: You wouldn’t even know that it happened.”
Cody tried not to gulp. “Okay, then. Well, thanks for coming by and clearing this up, I guess,” she said, then turned to Kai. “So does this mean I’m officially a Weatherman?”
Kai shook his head and laughed. “No, not even close.” And then he looked at Cody with those piercing eyes and turned dead serious.
“You’re going to need to prove yourself first.”
CHAPTER 8
WHEN JAMES WOKE up on List Day plus 1, the atmosphere of hysteria still hung in the air like a stubborn layer of smog. As of yet there was no nationwide purge of the Ones who were exposed by the List, but stories of targeted violence drifted in from around the country. Most of them started in a similar manner to James’s experience in the school parking lot but didn’t end with a big brother riding in to the rescue. Members of the Equality Movement felt as if they had tacit approval from the government to go after Ones now. Why else would someone from a federal agency have released the List? Sure, various political leaders made broad statements that condemned violence, but on the Internet, Edith Vale was being hailed as a hero, a whistle-blower of the bes
t kind, someone who shone a light on a problem that the majority of the country wanted to expose. The attitude of most of the country could be seen in the fresh graffiti that was popping up everywhere: the ubiquitous equal signs, of course, but there was also a new word finding its way onto brick walls and abandoned trucks—gennycide.
Scanning through all the stories online, James saw reports of resistance, too. The headlines were pretty intense: EMPTY SCHOOL BUS EXPLODES IN THE BRONX … CONGRESSWOMAN’S HOME BURNS DOWN, ARSON SUSPECTED … ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT CRIPPLED BY CYBERATTACK. It was clear to James that pockets of New Weathermen were starting to lash out, and he shook his head with disappointment as he read the stories. The extremists on both sides were digging in.
Despite all this, James had negotiated an uneasy compromise with his parents that allowed him to leave the house just to go to school. The last thing he wanted was to be cooped up with Michael hovering over him, so he argued that going about his normal life was the best statement he could make right now. If he didn’t, then the terrorists would win—the terrorists in this case being his own government and most of his fellow citizens. Maybe that was a little melodramatic, but the point still stood: James didn’t want to get bullied into disappearing from society. His parents understood that and finally allowed him to leave the house without his brother as an escort.
And James’s house wasn’t exactly the most comfortable place to hang around now. Since the List had come out, his brother had berated his father for choosing to have James, and his father had basically admitted it was a terrible mistake. James actually felt a measure of relief that some of the uncomfortable dynamics he could never put his finger on were finally coming to light. That nagging sense that he could never be perfect enough made sense now. No report card was ever going to fix a “mistake.”
Making things worse, his parents had also seen that Cody wasn’t on the List, and James’s mom couldn’t bite her tongue as she handed him a plate of toast that morning.
“I always had a feeling about that girl,” she said with a note of pride.
James glared at her and walked out of the kitchen. He felt desperate to get away from these people. Luckily for him, his address had been circulated to everyone alive who might want to harm him, so getting out of the house actually made sense.
James texted Cody and arranged to pick her up on the way to school. When he pulled up in front of her house, a weird sensation of butterflies swarmed his stomach. It was the same feeling he’d experienced when he arrived to take Cody on their first date more than a year ago, and it grew even more intense when she had walked out of the house and James saw her wearing a dress for the first time. Today, though, James wasn’t so much nervous as confused. Cody—the epitome of being a One and his equal in all ways—somehow wasn’t that person anymore. But that made no sense, because Cody was obviously still the same person. At least James hoped she was.
When she bounded out the door and loped down to his car, James’s fears melted away. He pushed open the passenger’s side door for her, but Cody circled around the Jeep and leaned into James’s window to plant a kiss on his lips. They held together for a moment, sharing all the wild emotions of the past day.
Cody finally pulled back as James reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry. I never meant to lie to you. I didn’t know, either,” she said. James nodded, only beginning to understand how confusing this must have been for her. “So am I allowed in the car, or do you only date gennies?” Cody asked sweetly.
“I don’t care what the List says—you’ll always be my one,” James said, pulling Cody closer for another kiss. When they finally came up for air, she had a huge smile on her face. “Unless you already joined the Equality Movement,” James joked.
“No, I figure you could probably use a bodyguard right now.”
“It’s going to be pretty sweet for you, huh? You can get rid of your ID card, probably race in the meet on Friday, too.”
Cody pulled away. “Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. I guess I still think of myself as a One in spirit. But I should probably stop.”
As she climbed into his car and he started the engine, James realized how hard this was going to be for Cody. So much of her identity was tied up in her pride at being a One and in defending their rights. She had recently seemed like she was on the edge of doing something crazy, so James was grateful that this would pull her out of the chaos and maybe prevent a fight or confrontation that could ruin her life.
“I guess this means you won’t be bombing any buildings with the Weather Channel then?” he said.
Cody looked at him—a little offended, it seemed. “Well, about that…”
“Cody, you can’t—”
“It’s a serious problem, James. They’re pissed. They think I am some kind of spy.”
“Oh, come on, if you just explain what happened—you went to one meeting, which they made you attend! They need to leave you alone.”
But James knew this was going to be a tricky situation. He had spent only a few minutes around those people, but it was long enough to see they were serious, paranoid, and in possession of guns. Not exactly the ideal group to catch you in a lie.
“Maybe I don’t want them to leave me alone.”
“What?”
“I still believe everything I believed about the Ones two days ago. I still think what’s happening is outrageous. Even more so after this list. And I still want to contribute to this fight. The Weathermen are taking action, and I want to be part of that.”
“But Cody … you’re not a One anymore,” James said. He immediately knew his statement had come out wrong, in a mean way, instead of just a simple declaration of fact.
“No, I’m not, I get it. But what kind of person would I be if I changed all my morals because of that?” Cody paused for a second. “They asked me to prove my allegiance, James, and I am going to do it. Now I just need to figure out how.”
James sighed, accepting the futility of fighting with her. Cody was still Cody. In one sense, it was a huge relief. He loved that fiery girl who wanted to change the world for the better. But the world was different now, and trying to change it was probably going to be very dangerous. James didn’t even want to imagine what she might cook up to prove herself.
He also couldn’t stop thinking about the package he saw at his father’s office, the one shipped by the National Institutes of Health. In his gut, he knew this was something he should share with Cody. The NIH was something that the Ones talked about all the time, because it was the federal body that administered their pilot program. Every year they had to send in reams of data about their height and weight and blood pressure and triglyceride levels and everything else you could measure in the body. It wasn’t much of a nuisance—everyone’s doctor basically did it for them—but the NIH was still something that was always part of their life. James knew Cody had the tests done, too, but now he assumed her mother never mailed the results anywhere. Still, on a normal day, if James had gotten a weird feeling after seeing a package from the NIH, he would definitely loop Cody in on it.
But today was different. It was their first day together when Cody wasn’t a One. It was a day when Cody was looking for a way to prove herself to the New Weathermen. And it was a day when telling her about a suspicious package in his father’s lab didn’t seem like a good thing to add into the mix.
* * *
The atmosphere at school was a little calmer than the day before. Marco and his cohorts were not prowling the parking lot with bounty posters. Sympathetic friends weren’t rushing up with breathless warnings. When James and Cody walked in together, there were a few looks, sure, but it seemed that people were starting to move on from List Day. Anyway, James knew that in the grand scheme of the whole world, his high school was pretty safe. Obviously, the vast majority of the students weren’t Ones, but most of them were still supportive of their peers in the minority. There were bad apples and bullies, but the younger generation was gene
rally fine with the Ones. Knowing them, growing up with them, dating them, and being friends with them—James supposed it all made it harder to support their persecution. And his classmates weren’t so freaked out by the technology, either. To them, genetic engineering was just another fancy gadget that had existed all their lives. It was the older generations that felt the most threatened. James knew this dynamic had existed in every generation since the apes looked disapprovingly at the cavemen, but this was different. Normal, upstanding adults—hell, even members of the Supreme Court—wanted to get rid of him. These people were the supposed silent majority in favor of the Equality Act. So, notwithstanding the recent experiences of being forced off a cliff and then almost pummeled in the parking lot, James felt he was safest around people his own age.
Today James and Cody had calculus together during first period, and they settled into their seats, relieved to be back in normal life. That normality lasted all of thirty seconds, however, because a blaring announcement came over the school PA system. Just like the week before, Margie’s voice started calling out names to come immediately to the office. And just like last week, the names were all Ones. James stood up and gathered his things, frustrated. But unlike last time, Cody didn’t join him.
“Punch Ms. Bixley in the nose for me, will you?” Cody said, only half-joking.
“I’ll tell her you say hello.”
“Actually, do me a favor,” Cody said, reaching into her bag. “Give her this.” She handed James her ID card.
James took the ID from Cody and couldn’t help but sheepishly look down at his own, hanging around his neck.
“You should give her yours, too,” Cody said.
“Let’s see what she wants. I’ll fill you in after class,” James said, and then departed for the office.
When he got there, James joined the usual roundup. Laura, impeccably dressed. Gregory, his muscles a little more concealed than normal, perhaps in deference to the List coming out. Victor, fiddling with his Rubik’s Cube. And the half-dozen others with whom James shared a nod of commiseration. Like last time, they waited forever before Ms. Bixley emerged from her office. Margie, ever the sweetheart, passed around her candy.
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