by Schow, Ryan
“Brayden, stop.” Deliberately enunciating each word, like I’m talking to someone with a severe mental deficiency, I say, “I kidnapped a clone and I assaulted Nurse Arabelle. I got my face beat to crap and my arm is broken, and you’re whining about your sex life? Are you f*cking kidding me?”
“Give me a moment to mourn the life I could have had, Abby. Hold on. I’m doing it right now. You should see the pain in my face, Abs. It’s sad. Really, really sad.”
“Jesus Christ, Brayden.”
“I’m on my way you goddamn nut job,” he says jovially.
I’m about to thank him when the line goes dead. There’s a Motel 6 up the street. I pull in, find the emptiest part of the lot, then wrestle with the seatbelt and the clone. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, trying to buckle up an uncooperative body.
2
After Brayden hangs up on me, and after I finally secure the clone in a seatbelt, I feel desperate to talk to someone. No, not just anyone. I need to talk to my best friend. To Netty. This will be the first time I’ll get to really talk to her this summer.
I called two days ago, but she was at work and couldn’t talk. Apparently she’s with this start-up company in the city. I almost asked what the hell she was doing working, but then I remembered. With her dad in jail and her mother’s swinger parties the only source of income, it makes sense that she would need a job.
I call, but the phone rings through to voicemail. I leave a very tempered message. “Netty, I have to talk to you. Something’s happened. Call me as soon as you get this message.” Okay, so maybe it’s not so tempered. She calls three minutes later. She sounds like she’s in a restaurant, or in close quarters with friends.
“Can you talk?” I ask.
“Sort of,” she says. She sounds different. Like she’s not as desperate to talk to me as I am to talk to her.
Before I go and spill my guts, I say, “You sound…distracted.”
“Sorry,” she says. “There’s a lot going on.”
Now that we’re driving through town, the pace is slower and I feel less worried about cops. I glance at the clone. She looks okay. At least the bleeding in her nose has stopped. “Look, I have a problem.”
I hear the muffled sounds of her giggling. Like she’s covering the phone with her hand. In the background, other girls are laughing and talking too loud. Deep down I try not to be pissed, but I am. I’ve got this gigantic problem and she’s not even paying attention!
“Listen,” I say, trying but failing to hide my irritation, “call me when you have some free time.”
I hang up.
The heat steals fast into my face. I cuss silently and repeatedly, then look at the clone with her lab coat pulled haphazardly over her pale body and blood-crusted nose. I try scrubbing some of the blood off her face, but it’s drying, so some of it just smears while other parts of it stick in place. I lick my thumb, taste her blood, re-wipe.
“Jesus, what have I done?” I whisper to myself. My phone rings. It’s Netty. I pick up then hang up. I start to cry. The phone rings again. I reject the call.
The car falls silent, except for the power of the Audi’s engine and the sound of the tires gripping the road. At the next red light, which is just around the corner from my house, I glance at the clone. A steady pulse beats in her neck. She’s okay. Why isn’t she waking up? If she ever does, though, I have no idea what she’ll be feeling, or what the hell I’m going to say. Will she even understand me? Has she ever been outside her tank? Has she ever been awake? Does she talk? Probably not, but I want to know all these things anyway. I have to know.
Not for the first time today, it occurs to me: I am way out of my freaking depth here! I’ve made some big mistakes in my life, but with the adrenaline wearing off and the weight of my decision setting in fast and hard, I gag, like I’m about to vomit. But I can’t puke. The way the car seems to feel so hot and stuffy, it makes me crack the windows a bit.
Gosh damn, I can’t breathe!
You’ve started something, I remind myself, and you’re going to finish it. I reach out and take the clone’s hand. It’s warm, lifeless.
“I’m going to take care of you,” I tell her, throwing all my conviction and the entire weight of my soul into those seven words. “I promise.”
3
By the time I pull into my driveway, my mind is split in so many directions I feel crazed. What if I see Jacob out front? What will I say to my father? He’s going to shit bullets when he sees what I’ve done! Now that I’m thinking semi-rationally, I can’t imagine any kind of circumstance where I won’t have to admit my plan was stupid, reckless. Completely asinine. All I know is I didn’t think this far ahead. As in my plan was too simple. Too unrefined.
Screw it.
What’s done is done.
I cinch the clone’s coat around her as best as I can, pop her seatbelt off, then get out of the car and hurry to the passenger side. When I open her door, she practically slumps into my arms. The stiff white fabric of her lab coat loosens and her lady business flashes. Other than her needing some serious gardening down there, at this point, I really don’t care. She needs to be inside. Like now! I circle her arm around my neck, hoist her up, then use what’s left of my insubstantial strength to drag her up the walkway. At the porch, I get under her and fold her over my shoulder, lifting her in a fireman’s carry. Under her weight—which can’t be more than a hundred pounds—my exhausted body wobbles and sways. Twice I nearly drop her.
When I try the front door’s handle, I realize it’s locked. As graceful as I can—which is to say, not graceful at all—I set the clone down. It’s not pretty. She smacks her head on the stucco wall, then sags sideways. Her coat is undone and I’m panicking. Boobs, bush, belly button and knees. All out in the big, wide open. She would so hate me if she knew I was letting this happen to her!
I fumble with the lock. The damn key won’t go in right! Finally, it slides in, clicks open. As I’m putting the clone back together and preparing to move her inside, I’m thinking, what will I say to Maggie when she sees her? Will she feel cheated out of a summer? Cheated out of my attention? In my heart, I know she’s going to feel betrayed. Great, I hadn’t thought of this either! The sad thing is, right now, I’m thinking of everything. We’re talking about a post-traumatic 20/20 moment where everything is being shined through the lens of perfect clarity and I’m left looking like a total jack-ass.
Pushing and heaving her into the house, she’s all deadweight. Something like a bone or a joint bumps across the threshold and I wonder if all these minor injuries are going to hurt later. The bruises this poor thing is going to have…
I’m sweating now, completely exhausted. I shut the door and listen for anyone. Inside, all I hear is silence.
Thank the Lord.
Grabbing her by her ankles, diverting my attention from her wide open privates, I drag her across the hardwood floor to my bedroom (her bare butt skipping on the floor) then practically fall into my bed panting, out of breath.
Totally, utterly graceless, I think to myself.
It takes me a moment to recover. That’s when I realize my broken arm isn’t feeling too broken. I touch it gingerly, then harder. I tap it. Nothing. I give it a solid punch. What the hell? Earlier I heard it break. I did! The way the bone snapped, it was the same way a twig stress cracks if you stomp on it.
Yet here I am, hauling around a hundred pound girl. Somehow I manage to get her onto the bed, and by now the lab coat might as well be gone. What would she say if she woke up to a strange girl staring at her unclothed body? I can tell you what I’d do: I would shit out barking toads, that’s how bad I’d freak out.
Because I value her modesty, I remove the lab coat and maneuver her under the covers. It doesn’t make sense, me doing that, but anymore I’ve lost my gosh damn marbles. She’s not tired, I tell myself. It’s not bed time. She’s a clone! Then again, what else am I supposed to do?
In Maggie’s room, there’s a note on
the bed telling me she’s gone to a recording studio inside the city to work on her album. Yesterday she told me she needed to go, that her label booked the studio for her for the week. She said she couldn’t dodge her producer’s calls anymore. Not without risking being sued for breach of contract.
In the kitchen is another note, one left by my father. He’s gone for the day as well. It says not to wait up. Do I ever?
After an already long day where just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, I’m grateful for the break. In the fridge is a carton of Tropicana OJ, some fruit punch and several beers. I crack a beer, lean against the island and drink deeply. I don’t like the taste as much as my father does, but after what I’ve gone through, and what I’m about to go through, I’m drinking the beer just to keep from going for my father’s not-so-hidden stash of premium Vodka.
That’s when I hear the car pull in the driveway. I hurry to the window where Margaret’s Bentley is in plain sight. I panic. She’s already getting out! The beer goes back in the fridge and I run straight for my room. Harried, I grab a handful of clothes from my dresser and pile them over the clone’s body and face. The front door opens, Margaret calls my name. I freeze.
Mother freaking hell!
Fix my hair, tuck in my shirt. Then she’s here. In my doorway. Looking at me in pure shock. I smile and say hello, then remember all the blood still left on my clothes and face. Wait a second, why is my face feeling fine?
“What the hell?” she says.
“Why are you always here?” I say in my most unkind, most impolite voice.
She has that Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct look—except with darker skin and slicked back black hair instead of blonde. Her fitted white dress stops just over her knees. She’s wearing killer heels and a heavily jeweled necklace that would sparkle in the pitch black of night. She looks AMAZING.
“You’re my daughter—”
“As if that explains anything,” I say, defiant, like nothing’s amiss.
“Who did that to your face?”
She comes forward to attend to me when her eyes flick over to the bed, then back to me, then fast back to the extra lumpy bed. What she sees gives her pause. After a moment, she goes and pushes the clothes away revealing the clone’s face.
“What the fu—?” she says. She snaps her fingers in the clone’s face to wake her, but she doesn’t stir.
Margaret pulls the covers back. I try to stop her, but it’s too late. She actually gasps. Like the kind of gasp you hear in the movies, or read about. A real, honest-to-God gasp.
She rips the covers all the way down exposing the nude clone to her knees.
“You’re a lesbian,” Margaret says, looking at me like this is the first time she’s really seen me. “Jesus, I knew something was going on but I couldn’t figure it out. Now it all makes sense.”
“I’m not a lesbian, Margaret.”
“Why isn’t she awake? Is she drugged?”
“She’s…asleep?”
God, I suck at lying.
“Plus, her nose is bleeding. Holy shit, you roofied her, didn’t you?”
“I did no such thing!”
“You did! You used the date-rape drug on this girl!”
“Margaret, stop!” She does, but only for a moment. She starts to open her mouth again, but I choose a different tact: I try stopping her with the truth. “She’s a clone. I kidnapped her.”
4
The iron-blanket weight of those six words sinks in. Margaret stares at me for a long moment, wordless, then turns back to the girl. She looks at her with a gentleness I’ve never seen (I wish she would look at me like that sometimes), then sits down on the bed beside her. The clone’s face is pale. Is this normal? Is she dying? I don’t know what to make of her complexion, and dozens of thoughts careen through my head as a result. Then it dawns on me that being out of the pink-goop environment she spent her entire life in might be a bad thing.
“How did you get her?” Margaret all but whispers.
“I took her.”
“You already said that. I want to know how.”
“By force,” I say.
“Jesus,” Margaret sighs, her eyes still taking in the girl’s body. “So you’re a criminal now.” The way Margaret’s body starts to move contrary to her customary grace, it’s her falling apart while fighting to maintain her composure.
“Say what you want, but what they’re doing, it’s not right. She may be a clone, but isn’t she human, too?”
The monster turns and fires me a look. “This is kidnapping, Abby. Kidnapping!” Seeing my face, examining it with greater focus, her voice softens and she says, “Honey, how did your face get like this? What happened?”
First thing that goes through my mind is this: why is she being so calm? Second is: how do I explain this? This is a new Margaret, and a new me. Is it even possible for the two of us to co-exist?
Probably not.
“Part of the whole kidnapping thing. I got into an…altercation. Well, several altercations.”
She shakes her head, like she can’t believe it. “Come here,” she says. “Let me see you.”
“I’m okay, I guess.”
Margaret rifles though her purse then pulls out a compact and hands it to me, as if to make some point. “Look at yourself and then try telling me you’re okay.” I open it up and take a look.
Yep, my face is still a bloody mess. It’s not all red and drippy as much as it’s starting to take on that dried brown look with the edges separating and cracking apart.
At least the swelling seems to have gone down. Which is strange for the kind of beating I took. The way the nutcase in the lab coat was kicking the holy living shit out of me, I felt things in my face split and break. Pulling the mirror closer, however, reveals no cuts. I look even closer, confused.
What the shit? I should be cut!
I feel around my face. Nothing. I lick my thumb and rub away the blood that ran from a gash just above my eyebrow. But there’s no gash. I press my fingers hard against my broken eye socket and it doesn’t even hurt.
Margaret looks at me and says, “Whose blood is that?”
“It was mine, but…”
It can’t be. But maybe it is. The thoughts I’m having right now feel like insanity. Then they get a little more crazy. We’re talking nuthouse crazy. I grab Margaret’s purse and pull out her keys. There is a particularly sharp mail key. I put the key in my fist, the sharp end protruding from my knuckles like a weapon.
“What are you doing?” Margaret snaps. “Give me those keys back.”
I walk over to the desk, flatten my left hand, palm-down, then with all my might, rear up and punch a hole in my hand. The pain is brilliant starbursts of light. I stagger backwards a bit, dazed, my hand flaring hard. My eyes wobble in their sockets. They look around the room, which blackens on the edges and threatens to close in on me. I’ve just lost control of my face. The way my mouth is hanging open, like a old country mailbox with the door pulled down, it can’t even sob, the pain hurts that much.
Margaret’s face, it turns sheet-white with horror. All kinds of blood is pouring out of my hand and now she’s officially freaking out. What I’m feeling right now, it’s… indescribable.
No, worse.
“My God, Savannah, what have you done?!” Some stupid thought in my head tells me to correct her, to tell her my name is Abby now, but something about her using my birth name is comforting.
Warmth and color flood back into her face. The monster is pulling me close, trying to staunch the bleeding, not even caring that blood is getting all over her expensive white dress. She’s crying now, telling me I need help. She’s saying she’ll be the one to help me. That she knows just the right doctor.
The pain doesn’t last long.
Margaret runs to the bathroom to get a towel and warm water. I look at the cut. I watch it. By the time she wipes up the blood, the wound is almost closed shut. Within minutes there is no wound at all. Marga
ret can’t believe what she’s seeing.
“How is this possible?” she asks.
“I’m a gosh damn superhero is how,” I hear myself say with a fair amount of dark sarcasm. It’s like someone else used my mouth to say this.
The truth is, my hand is blazing hot. Fire ants are marching under my skin with their torches lit. The sweat that breaks out on my body, it starts with my hand, then moves up my forearm and into my armpits, which now have a swamp-like quality to them.
“Gerhard must have done something to accelerate my healing capabilities.”
“How is…this…even possible?”
I want to answer her, to say, “You saw it with your own eyes!” but I don’t. I merely stand there burning up, sweating, standing in awe of my own godlike body. If Gerhard did this, it couldn’t have been done on purpose, could it? Was I his personal guinea pig? Wiping the dampness from my brow, I shove the thought away.
He wouldn’t…
“We need to do something,” Margaret says.
“About what? My hand? There’s nothing to do but—”
“Not your hand. The girl. We need to get her dressed.”
The way Margaret deals with an overload of stress is to shelve one problem and focus on another problem not so close to her. Like the naked red head in my bed. In the bathroom, I pull a white towel from the rack and clean my face and underarms. It comes back with brownish-red flakes of blood. My body is starting to cool, finally, thankfully.
Unfortunately, I’m not wired the same way Margaret is wired. What I can’t do is stop thinking about my body’s ability to heal myself. It’s all I can think about! Even with a naked clone in my bed, I can’t stop thinking, did I really just stab myself in the hand? The red evidence, however, is all over the front of the monster’s white dress. I shudder to think about what happened as being real. But it was. It is. Am I having an out-of-body experience right now? Deep down, I’m horrified at the idea of doing all that damage to my hand, yet I’m so enamored with the results I want to do it all over again just to watch the miracle unfold.