Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance)

by Dan Rix

  ENTANGLEMENT

  Dan Rix

  This is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  ENTANGLEMENT. Copyright © 2012 by Dan Rix

  www.danrixauthor.blogspot.com

  All rights reserved.

  Editing by American Editing Services

  www.americaneditingservices.com

  For Laura,

  my inspiration.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE

  28 Days, 19 hours, 15 minutes

  “Scar tissue,” said the doctor, “here.” She tapped the white lump on the MRI scan.

  “Is that in my brain?” said Aaron.

  “Just touching it, actually. Between the grey matter and the skull. Aaron, how long have you been having these headaches?”

  “Since I was a kid. It’s gotten worse recently.”

  “Well, the good news is it’s not cancerous.” The doctor stretched on a pair of latex gloves and probed the back of Aaron’s head with two fingers. “The pain is always here?”

  “Yeah, like something tugging back there.” Aaron Harper shifted, still jumpy from the MRI, and his sticky palms suctioned the paper off the exam table with an irritating crinkle. “What’s the bad news?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said the good news is you don’t think it’s cancerous. What’s the bad news?”

  He felt the doctor’s breath on his scalp.

  “The bad news is that according to your MRI, that scar tissue is right here—” she tapped the very back of his skull, “in the region of your clairvoyant channel, possibly obstructing it. Since you’re almost eighteen, my guess is you’re experiencing a boost in clairvoyant activity with your half. Hence the inflammation in the surrounding tissue.”

  Aaron fought the urge to swallow. “But we’re okay, right? Me and my half? I mean, I would have felt if something was blocking us.”

  “Well . . . ” the doctor scrunched up her eyebrows, “not necessarily. I doubt you’ll notice the symptoms until you meet her. After that, it really depends on both of you.”

  “The symptoms of what?”

  With a whip-like snap that made Aaron flinch, the doctor peeled off her gloves. “Aaron, I’m sorry, but with that scar tissue blocking your channel, your half could literally be standing right in front of you—kissing you even. Part of you is going to feel like she’s not really there.”

  ***

  In the Sansum Clinic parking lot outside the Radiology wing, Aaron jabbed at his Mazda’s ignition but couldn’t slot the key. His hand still trembled from the doctor’s words.

  His half.

  The girl born at the exact same time as him, somewhere else in the world. Like all seventeen-year-olds, he was scheduled to meet her on his eighteenth birthday.

  Now it felt like a death sentence.

  The key lodged. He cranked the ignition and thrust his foot down, and the tires burned out with a screech. Smoke rose in the rearview.

  In twenty-nine days, he was supposed to meet his soul mate. Eighteen years of waiting, wondering, fantasizing . . . looking forward to someone perfect.

  Now this crap.

  ***

  That evening as the buzzer concluded the first league volleyball game between Pueblo High School and Corona Blanca, Aaron, Pueblo’s starting setter, ripped off his jersey and flung it into the stands.

  His coach grabbed his shoulder. “Cool it, Harper.”

  “Where the hell was Franco tonight?” said Aaron, stooping to catch his breath.

  “He’s eighteen now.”

  “Coach, it takes forty-five minutes to win a volleyball game. He can’t leave his half for forty-five minutes?”

  “And I wouldn’t ask him to,” said his coach. “Just like I won’t ask you after your birthday.”

  With a nervous twinge, Aaron recalled his visit to the doctor. All the things he didn’t get to look forward to. He stood, shrugged off the coach’s hand, and made for the exit.

  His coach called after him. “Put a goddamn shirt on, number eleven.”

  Aaron punched the wall on his way out. Outside the gym, the night cooled his sweaty skin, and Corona’s fans parted around him. He never reached the bus, though.

  Someone’s hard shoulder crunched into his spine. In that split-second of contact, he felt a shock-like twinge at the back of his skull, then something crawling inside his scalp. He staggered forward and grabbed the back of his head. But the skin wasn’t broken.

  Aaron spun toward the culprit and saw a figure in a gray hoodie vanish into the crowd of Corona fans, oblivious.

  Aaron started after him. “Hey!” he called, but the figure slipped out of view. Aaron charged through green-jerseyed fans. He shoved aside a Corona player and saw a flash of gray hoodie. He lunged.

  But his hand closed on empty air.

  The figure darted past the last cluster of students and receded into the night. Aaron tore after him, and for a brief, blind moment, the wind whistled in his ears—before he collided with a chain link fence. He caught his breath and peered into the shadows beyond the fence.

  There, under a dark hoodie, two pale blue eyes—Aaron blinked. No, just shadows.

  He slammed the fence in frustration. As the pain in the back of his head subsided, his skin formed goose bumps.

  It was the same spot. Exactly where the MRI showed a lump of scar tissue in his brain. The headaches were one thing, just pressure on his brain, but this—this had felt like a piece had actually torn off. And all because a stranger in a gray hoodie bumped into him.

  The doctor he had seen earlier wasn’t the first to predict that he and his half would have problems. He had seen a dozen doctors the last year alone, brain surgeons and clairvoyant specialists, and they all said the same thing; the scar tissue would hamper his emotional connection to his half, they just didn’t know how much.

  No surgeon dared operate on him. The lump of scar tissue was pushing up against his clairvoyant channel. One mistake with a scalpel could sever it, destroying the already delicate connection between Aaron and his half. They would both die.

  Aaron was still standing at the fence, a new wave of dread soaking through him, when he realized there was someone behind him.

  “Number eleven, right?”

  Aaron recognized the shaggy-haired guy as Corona Blanca’s starting setter.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” said Aaron.

  The other setter extended his hand. “I wanted to meet you,” he said. “I was watching you set during the game, and with a pair of hands like yours, Pueblo should have won.”

  “Thanks,” said Aaron, as they shook hands, “the better team won.”

  Corona’s setter shrugged. “Hey, a couple of our players are heading down to the beach. We got a bonfire going and a couple of coolers. You feel like a postgame party?”

  “Maybe next time.”

  “No pressure,” said the setter, and he headed back to the cluster of green jerseys.

  Aaron rubbed hi
s scalp again. It still felt raw. As he lowered his hand, he wondered if the doctor had been optimistic. Maybe symptoms would show up even before his birthday. Like tonight, the searing pain caused by the hooded figure. Maybe this was his last night as a normal seventeen-year-old.

  If it was, he damn well wasn’t going to waste it lying in bed.

  “I changed my mind,” Aaron called. “Where’s the bonfire?”

  The setter glanced back, grinning. “Arroyo beach. Once you hit the sand, turn right. You can’t miss us.”

  ***

  He really couldn’t miss them. Aaron felt the bonfire’s heat a good sixty feet from the flames, which leapt above the silhouettes of what looked like Corona Blanca’s entire school. And some.

  They had taken over the whole beach, crowding around open coolers and sitting on pieces of driftwood, drinks in hand, their faces glowing reddish-bronze. Aaron wished he hadn’t come. This wasn’t his school.

  At least he could have changed out of his damn red and white Pueblo volleyball jersey—

  “Number eleven, over here!”

  Aaron spotted Corona’s setter along with the rest of the Corona Blanca volleyball team chowing down on pizza off to his right. As soon as Aaron reached them, he felt an icy sting as the setter slapped a can of soda into his palm.

  Aaron took a swig and scanned their surroundings. A brief flicker of red by the base of the cliffs caught his attention. At first he thought it was an ember from the fire, but as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he made out two seated figures on the beach just beyond the lighted radius of the bonfire. He recognized one of them.

  The figure in the gray hoodie.

  The other one was a girl, a blonde with long, wavy hair, and Aaron couldn’t quite tell from the distance, but she looked pretty—and very bored. As Aaron watched, the hooded figure slipped a bright red object into his pocket.

  Aaron grabbed the sleeve of Corona’s setter, his heart racing. “Who is that?” he said, nodding to the pair of them. “Over there in the dark.” He didn’t want to lose sight of the figure again.

  The setter and a few of his teammates followed Aaron’s gaze. They all laughed.

  “You noticed her too, huh? Welcome to the club,” said the setter. “That’s Amber Lilian. New student at Corona Blanca.”

  “Sure, she’s eye candy,” said number ten, “she’s also sassy as hell.”

  “I mean the guy,” said Aaron. “He bumped into me earlier.”

  The team went silent. Then the setter spoke in a much quieter voice. “That’s Clive Selavio. Also new.”

  “Her half?” said Aaron.

  “Her boyfriend, but they have the same birthday, so it’s pretty much a sure thing. I think their families moved here together.”

  Aaron nodded. Same birthdays. Given that halves were usually born near each other—often within the same city—halves did sometimes find each other before their birthdays. But people got it wrong too. He looked back at the boy and girl seated on the driftwood only to find that once again, the hooded figure had vanished. The girl sat alone.

  Aaron scanned the beach, now frantic. Something weird had happened when Clive bumped him, and he needed to figure out what. Aaron couldn’t find him in the crowd, though, and his eyes darted back to the girl. Maybe she could explain.

  “I’m going to go talk to her,” said Aaron, making up his mind before she, too, could disappear. He barged through what was now a Corona Blanca team huddle and slogged toward the girl.

  A player muttered behind him, “Where do these Pueblo guys get their nerve?”

  “It’s because he doesn’t have to live with the embarrassment of seeing her at school. I’d talk to her if she was a Pueblo chick.”

  “Nah, it’s because he was running behind-the-back quick sets all night—”

  Aaron ignored the rest. As he trudged through the sand, he was more concerned with what in God’s name he was going to say to this girl once he got to her.

  ***

  Amber Lilian was way more than just pretty, he realized, when she finally glanced up at the sound of his approach, the gleaming whites of her eyes warning him not to take another step. Caught in the girl’s predatory stare, Aaron felt his pulse quicken as he covered the last few feet.

  “I need to talk to you about your boyfriend,” he said, sitting next to her.

  She eyed the narrow gap he’d left between them and, without a word, edged away from him.

  He tried again. “You know, that guy in the hoodie—”

  “Why are you even here?” she said, interrupting him. “You guys lost.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Aaron undid his laces and kicked off his shoes. “So, about that guy—” He glanced up, but the sight of her up close caught him off guard, and he trailed off. She brushed her hair behind her ear, still watching him. So it was a staring contest. Fine. Except staring into Amber’s strikingly green eyes gave Aaron the same bad feeling he got at zoos when he accidentally locked eyes with the caged panthers—the ones that could rip his throat out.

  Aaron felt his gaze slipping and broke their stare, noticing with relief that she broke at the same time.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said.

  Heart still racing, Aaron nodded to the group of green jerseys he had come from. “Your school’s volleyball team says he is.”

  “I think I would know,” she said, flashing him another warning look.

  “Then who is he?”

  “Do you actually care or is this just an excuse to talk to me?” she said.

  On any other day, Aaron would have juggled coals as an excuse to talk to this girl, but tonight, he worried more about the throbbing pain at the back of his skull and what Clive Selavio had done to cause it. He tried another angle. “What was that red thing he showed you earlier?”

  “Nothing,” she said, a threatening tone in her voice as she edged away from him again.

  “So you guys are the real deal,” he said, “same birthdays and all?”

  “So what?” she said. “Why is everyone so obsessed with birthdays? I’m going to belong to my half for the rest of my life. Can’t I just be a normal seventeen-year-old right now?”

  Aaron blinked. She had just put into words exactly what he felt about his own birthday. Before he could respond, though, he sensed the tension in her body as she fought a shiver.

  “Are you okay?” he said. “You look cold.”

  “Don’t even think about putting your arm around me.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  Amber glared at him, then laughed to herself. “As if you would understand. You probably downloaded that dumb birthday countdown app on your cell phone and check it every five minutes just like everyone else.”

  “Actually, I do understand,” said Aaron. “I’m dreading my birthday too. I have scar tissue in my brain blocking my clairvoyant channel, so when everyone else gets to meet their soul mate, I get to see what’s missing. And I didn’t download that app.”

  His answer must have surprised her. She stared at him, mouth open, and forgot to brush away the curtain of hair that fell in front of her eyes.

  Just then, a commotion near the bonfire drew their attention. A group of juniors was talking excitedly, and as others joined in and cheered them on, they took off their shirts.

  Two guys ran over to Aaron and Amber’s log. “Hey, like twenty of us are going skinny dipping, you guys want to come? Dominic’s already in the water.”

  It was obvious they were here to recruit Amber. Big surprise.

  “No thanks,” said Aaron. “We’re good.”

  “Is it just pervy guys?” said Amber. “Or are there actually girls too?”

  “There’s girls too. It was their idea, in fact.”

  Then, to Aaron’s bewilderment, Amber said, “Okay. I’ll come in a second.”

  “Cool, see you down there!” The two guys raced back to the water, and when they thought they were out of sight, they grinned and high-fived.

&n
bsp; “Can I hide my cell phone in your shoes?” Amber said, facing Aaron.

  He gaped at her. “You’re kidding, it’s freezing out there—”

  But she was already pulling her sweater over her head. He felt a rush of air as her hair came loose from the hood and swished back. She smelled like the beach, like salt and sunscreen.

  “So do you have a name, number eleven?” she said, removing a large pair of peacock feather earrings that had been hidden under her hair.

  “Aaron Harper,” he answered, still in disbelief.

  “So when’s this birthday you’re dreading, Aaron?”

  “March thirtieth.”

  Amber froze, and for the first time that night, it seemed, she let down her guard. “Mine too,” she whispered.

  Aaron felt his heart leap, and for a moment they couldn’t look away from each other—

  “Amber, put you goddamn clothes back on,” said a cold, drawling voice behind them.

  Aaron turned around as Clive Selavio, the figure in the gray hoodie, emerged from the shadows at the base of the cliffs.

  ***

  Two pale, milky blue eyes glowed beneath the shadow of his hood. Though muscular, he was shorter than Aaron by a few inches, with perfect, if not cruel features. Like Amber’s. Too perfect.

  So this was the guy who knocked into him. Aaron’s first impression was that Clive couldn’t have been seventeen. Twenty, maybe.

  “You—” Clive said to Aaron, “thanks for babysitting her. Now you can leave.”

  Aaron didn’t budge. His mind was still reeling with the news that he and Amber had the same birthday. Plus he had unfinished business with Clive. “You shoved me after the game, remember? What the hell was that?”

  Clive ignored him to deal with Amber, who was now shivering in just a T-shirt. “Put your sweatshirt back on.”

  “Actually, I’m going skinny dipping,” she said.

  “You are not fucking skinny dipping,” said Clive.

  “If she wants to take a dip, let her take a dip,” said Aaron.

  Clive’s gaze snapped back to him, and Aaron felt the corner of his mouth twitch as their eyes burned into each other. “I thought I told you to leave,” he said.