I walked into my parents’ room and opened the drawer in the night table. I was shocked when I saw that the twin photos were back. Kyle and me. Brothers. I slipped the photo of Kyle out of the hinged frame and put it in my wallet. But that wasn’t what I had come in here for. My mother’s pills were here. I squeezed open the lid and tapped two and then a third into my hand. I tossed them into my mouth and swallowed hard.
I went back to my room and swallowed a big gulp of water from my water bottle and then headed downstairs. No one said a word. I just walked out the door and sat in the skid, waited for my father to come out, and then we drove in silence to the school.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Robyn was not in school that day, and I had this bad feeling in my gut that I might never see her again. And then, in the middle of math class, the pills started to kick in. I actually started to feel better. I figured they were some kind of antidepressant but it must have been more than that. I found myself swimming up from the bottom of a murky, cold ocean. I felt light-headed and fine. It was almost frightening how good I felt. And it was like I didn’t care right then what I had learned about my past or what Robyn had said.
No wonder my mother wanted to blitz herself with whatever this was. No wonder other kids were popping pills. The most I had ever done was smoke some weed, and that had been okay but nothing like this. I wondered how big of a dose three pills were. And then I thought about Robyn’s friend, Carla. I don’t know what drugs had killed her but I could see that if life was treating you like crap, you’d take your chances on just about anything that would make you feel better, especially something like this. I started to feel sorry for her but even that emotion settled itself and went away. I knew it was the drug but I was glad that I could let go of all the negative stuff and let it just float away. At that moment, I didn’t care about anyone else in the world but me. And I was doing just fine.
“Dylan,” Mr. Kempton said, drawing me back to the reality of a high school math class. “I wish I could be with you on whatever desert island you are on right now, doing whatever you are doing there.” He must have seen the big grin on my face. I needed to be more careful.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “some of us have to spend our time here in the real world. Some of us have jobs. My job, for example, is to teach you mathematics. Mathematics, you will recall, is a rather precise discipline. I like to think of it as both science and philosophy. And even a way of life, if you will. Something you can believe in.”
Oddly enough, he was letting me off the hook. The other kids were looking at me and laughing, but Kempton had decided to use his singling out of my distraction to launch into one of his famous speeches about mathematics. Even that seemed rather fascinating and full of a kind of cheerful optimism to me now.
“In mathematics,” he continued, now rather pleased with the sound of his own voice, “we have something called gravity models, mathematical formulas that can be used to predict with some accuracy the migration patterns of animals or, more importantly, people. We can use it to predict even where people will shop and when. We can predict what a person will choose to buy or where he or she will want to live. I am not making this up, my young scholars. With gravity models and more sophisticated mathematical tools, we can predict many things about who you will become and how you will live your life.”
For a moment I thought he was making this up, but like my fellow classmates I knew that Kempton was really quite brilliant for a high school teacher and even though he was forced to teach far below his actual intellectual level, he was prone to leaping beyond the textbook. I felt challenged by what he had to say, though, and discovered that I had opened my mouth and begun to speak. “But are we really that predictable? Do we want mathematicians to predict where we go after school and what we buy? What about free will?”
“‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,’ to quote an old, old song I once heard.”
“But what if I don’t want to be predictable?” I asked.
He was smiling now and rubbing his forehead. This meant that he didn’t mind my questions and implied that he couldn’t tell I was currently a chemically altered version of myself. “It’s a wonderful myth to think that one is not programmed, not predictable, but, as I’ve said, mathematics is now a fairly precise science used by many disciplines and it would be worth everyone’s effort to listen up in my class every once in a while.” And with that he was back to the textbook and a series of equations that would baffle even the best of students.
As I wandered out of math class, I harboured a gnawing fear that what Kempton had been saying might be true. I wondered how much of my parents’ training in genetics had been based on mathematical models like this gravity thing. What if we were not beings of spirit like the Tibetan Buddhists and many others suggested? What if we were mere mechanistic physical beings — crude, predictable right down to which toothpaste we would buy? And if that were true of most human beings, then what about me, a boy who did not even come into the world in the usual way but a child who was created from someone else’s DNA? My parents would have known with a fair bit of precision what I would look like at four, at eight, and maybe even beyond that. Had they been able to predict my favourite foods, my favourite colours? And what exactly had that Scottish Doctor MacKenzie done with the information — the data — my parents must have fed him over the years? Could he now predict what I would do next, now that I knew of my origins? Did he have the perfect mathematical model that would tell him?
I had the bad luck of having my locker next to Miles Vanderhague’s and the even worse luck of arriving there at a mutual off-block while he rooted around in his compartment for something. He looked up at me. “Where’s your lesbian girlfriend, Dylan?”
“Shut up, Miles.” I was detecting that my mom’s pills made me a little quicker on the draw.
“Dylan, we were really hoping you’d be able to tell us if she really is a lesbian or not.”
He was pushing me. I slammed my locker shut and then noticed he was holding his Veriscan, aiming it at me. I should have just walked away.
“Miles, is it the fact you have a tiny penis that makes you so mean or is it because your mother never breastfed you?”
Some other kids were stopping to watch now, not a good sign. Miles looked at his half-hidden Veriscan and smiled, acted like he wasn’t at all bothered by my insults. He was on a fishing expedition.
“What about your mother, Dylan? Did she breast-feed you?”
I said nothing but Miles looked at his techno-toy and seemed to like what he saw. He could see he was getting a strong reading on my emotions. I was ready to explode.
“Maybe she never loved you. Maybe you were a mistake.”
I tried to stay calm. I’d seen Miles use his scanner as part of his bullying act before. I knew all about how adults and kids had used the truth device for mean purposes. For such a thick-skulled, small-minded lout like Miles, it was amazing that he was, in his own way, using a logical approach to narrow his field of questioning until he found a way to get at some secret that could be revealed, any new bit of information that exposed a victim’s Achilles’ heal.
The pills were still very much in charge when it came to the chemistry of my thoughts. Maybe Mr. Kempton, had he known I was on this particular antidepressant, could have predicted with mathematical precision that at this very instant, I would lash out with one hand and grab Miles’s Veriscan and heave it against the far wall hard enough for it to break into several asymmetrical pieces and then clatter onto the floor. After that, the math teacher might have predicted, I would curl my right hand into a fist and hit Miles hard enough in the chest that he slammed up against his locker.
Because that is what I did.
I can’t say that I was proud of my actions. I’d always considered myself a pacifist. Miles would figure out a way to get back at me. His victims, even the ones who stood up to him, never got off easy. But I figured that was the least of my worries.
Miles would not be clever enough to figure out the truth about me. But maybe someday someone else would. I was going to have to get used to that fact or I was going to have to work damn hard at keeping the truth hidden. I felt certain the second option was the best one. I already regretted having told Robyn. No one was to be trusted. Not even her. But thanks to the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals, I could hold all of this in my head and still walk down the hall believing that none of that much mattered. The sun was shining outside and, after a couple more classes, I would go home and spend the rest of my day playing hologames in my room. Whatever was going to happen tomorrow was nothing I was interested in worrying about today.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I changed my plans before school was over. I took public transit to Robyn’s house and I think she was home but no one answered the door. The effect of the antidepressants had worn off by then and I felt heavy and sluggish. Once again, I was out of step with the world, alone, a damaged kid with way too much to think about. I tried to find a bus headed back to my house but nothing seemed to be going that way. I walked and felt a growing uneasiness within me. Dogs barking made me nervous, skids stopping at lights made me move on more quickly. I had this irrational feeling that Miles Vanderhague was going to jump out from behind the bushes with his cronies and pound me. It was a very long walk home.
My parents saw me coming up the driveway. The door opened and they were both looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
“We were worried.”
I shrugged. “I’m just tired.” And I was very, very tired. “I’m going to go to sleep.”
My mother walked towards me and hugged me to her. “This can’t be easy for you,” she said.
“I got in touch with Dr. MacKenzie in Scotland,” my father told me. “He wants to talk to you. I told him we’d put you on with him for a videoconf so we could all talk about this. If anyone can help out, he can.”
“I want to talk to him alone,” I said. “Just him and me.”
“We should all be part of this, Dylan.”
“I want to talk to Dr. MacKenzie by myself.”
“Okay,” my dad said. “You got it. Go to your room. I’ll get him on the line and I’ll buzz you.”
I went to my room and threw myself on the bed. What I really wanted to do was fall asleep but the phone rang and I switched on the monitor. I sat up in bed and pointed the vidcam in my direction. We were connected.
“Long time, no see,” MacKenzie said. He was a white-haired man now, tall and thin, balding with a weird little patch of grey-white hair on his chin that looked like a miniature cloud parked there. But I clearly remembered the piercing blue eyes. The accent was decidedly Scots.
“Hello,” I said.
“You sure have changed since I saw you last.”
It was a brilliant observation on his part. “You’re sharp,” I said. “Guess it’s all those graduate degrees.”
MacKenzie laughed and shook his head. He understood why I was angry with him. “Okay. I’ll cut the small talk. You’re pissed, I can see that. Let’s talk about it.”
“What’s there to talk about? I’m not even sure who I am anymore. Is one part of me Kyle and the other part me? Am I some kind of freak of nature? And even if I can sort all that out, I have to decide whether to live my life with this secret or parade in front of the world and tell them who I really am so that people can stare at me or maybe try to kill me for who I am and what I represent. I’m not that good at keeping secrets and I’m even worse at public humiliation. Whatever happens, I figure I’m screwed. I’m a freaking mutant. You might as well fly me back to Scotland and hook up your instruments again. Gather your information and publish your papers. I bet that’s what you really want out of this, isn’t it?”
MacKenzie blinked and sat silently. He tugged at the funny little tuft of hair on his chin. I wasn’t at all prepared for what he had to say next. “Dylan, I can tell you some textbook stuff about your current, um, identity crisis and we could put you into therapy and it could take months or years and we may get somewhere or maybe not. But I’m not sure we have enough time for that.”
“What do you mean, enough time?” A chill crept up my spine.
“Your parents have been protecting you in a way, protecting you from us. I’ve asked them several, no dozens, of times for their help, for your help, but they’ve refused. In fact, they still refuse.”
“What are we talking about?” I was lost.
“Dylan, this isn’t about me helping you. It’s about you helping us. And we’re desperate.”
I was feeling defensive now. “It’s all about the research, isn’t it? Now, I’m supposed to be a good little Frankenstein and go along with whatever comes next.”
“It’s not about the research. It’s about this. Watch.”
MacKenzie blipped out and, instead, I found myself watching a series of vidclips of children, boys and girls, ranging from fourteen on down to five. I didn’t get it.
“They’re all like you,” he said.
“Clones?”
“Yes. But you are the oldest.”
“Lucky me.” I sat for a minute. MacKenzie offered up another collage of vidclips. More kids. More clones. Ever since I had started to understand my origins, I had figured that there were others out there. I remembered the stories on the news. I remembered parents going public about cloned babies. But the stories all went the same. Either the parents eventually told the media they had been lying or someone figured a way to disprove the validity of the cloning story. I had thought about the fact that there must be others but I didn’t have a clue as to how that would affect me.
“Almost all of these kids are having problems. They know who they are — how they came into this world — and it’s created fear in them. They all want to be like every other child but they know that in one very significant way, they are not. I believe that, if you were willing to talk to them, it will help.”
“How can I help? I’m a walking disaster. I punched a kid at school today. I can’t control my emotions. And I think I also just lost the one most important person in my life.”
“Yeah, but you’re sixteen and you are older than all the rest. I’m convinced that if these kids meet you and talk to you and learn about how well you’ve done, then it will give them confidence that they will be okay. They can get on with their lives.”
“You want me to be a freaking role model?”
“I want you to help heal children who are hurting.”
I put my two hands up over my face and rubbed my eyes. Then I stared at the 3-D poster of the Loch Ness monster on my wall. “Why should I do that? I don’t even know these people. I want someone to come and take away my hurt. That’s what I want.”
“We can try, but, to be honest, we have a couple of kids who are a hell of lot worse than you right now and we’ve tried everything in the goddamn textbook and beyond. What we need now is a miracle and the closest thing we have to that is you.”
MacKenzie blipped out again and the images of the kids came back. They all looked more or less fine to me. Most of them looked just plain ordinary. I wanted to believe that was true but then an image of a twelve-year-old boy came on. He was in a hospital setting. There was a haunted, fearful look in his eyes. MacKenzie spoke. “That’s Jeremy LeBlanc. He lives in Toronto. He was told that he was cloned. His parents thought that was the right thing to do. At first, it didn’t seem to affect him. But then he started to change. He’s in pretty rough shape.”
“And what is it you want me to do?”
“Talk to him. Go there and talk to him.”
“And the others?”
“You’ll get to travel and see some interesting parts of the world.”
“People will find out. Sooner or later this will be public.”
“Did you really think you were going to keep the secret for the rest of your life?”
I knew deep in my bones that I could not. And now the image of my dead brother Kyl
e seemed to come out of nowhere. I remembered that feeling of being there with him, or of being him, hot, weighted down and scared, in the hospital bed. I thought about him now and how I deeply wished that I had had a chance to get to know him, to have that older brother. And now this. In a way, I was the older brother to these other kids. I really was. And that was equally scary. I wouldn’t know what to say to them or what to do. I realized that what he was asking me was much more than I could handle. I was having a hard enough time keeping my own self together. I couldn’t possibly help a bunch of kids I didn’t even know.
MacKenzie was back on screen now, sitting in his office, silent, patient.
“My parents have already agreed to this?”
He shook his head. “No. They haven’t. They still want to protect you. In fact, they said no. It will be up to you to change their minds.”
I was still scared and uncertain. I felt overloaded with information and emotion. I sensed a terrible burden of responsibility being placed on me now that seemed so unfair at a time in my life when I just wanted to be a kid.
“I don’t think I can help you,” I said.
“Just think about it, okay?” he said. “Sleep on it.” He paused and then looked straight at me. “You hungry?”
I hadn’t thought about food but I hadn’t really eaten much of anything all day. “Well, yeah.”
“Pizza and ice cream, right? Pepperoni for the pizza and plain vanilla for the ice cream, if I recall.”
I nodded.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said and waved goodbye.
Twenty minutes later a van stopped in the driveway. The doorbell rang and a couple of minutes after that my mom was at the bedroom door. She looked puzzled. “This arrived for you,” she said.
There were two thermal packs. In one was some very cold vanilla ice cream and in the other a giant slice of very hot pepperoni pizza.
Deconstructing Dylan Page 10