by Dan Rix
“Is that what I have?” said Aaron, trying to peek over the clipboard again, “an abnormality in my channel?”
Casler finished jotting notes in Aaron’s file and glanced up. “If it’s alright with you, Aaron, I’d like to see you again. Preferably before your birthday.”
“What’d you write in my file?”
“You have my card, Aaron,” he said, tucking the clipboard under his arm. “You should grab Dominic now so he can drive you home.” He flashed his brilliant set of teeth one more time and reached out his hand.
“Is something wrong with me?” said Aaron, but he didn’t need to ask. Dr. Selavio’s too-firm handshake confirmed his fears.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Casler.
Aaron eyed the medical forms on the clipboard, suddenly convinced that Dr. Selavio knew something about him the other doctors didn’t. He needed to read those notes.
Casler wore a ring on his middle finger, which he clinked against the clipboard. It was the only sound in the damp, concrete space. Frozen under Dr. Selavio’s impatient stare and unable to formulate a plan fast enough, Aaron trudged toward the exit.
“One more thing,” said Casler, when Aaron reached the stairs, “I’m glad you’re curious about my work. I think you should come on Wednesday.”
“What’s on Wednesday?” said Aaron.
“It’s kind of like a support group for men. We all need some time by ourselves, you know, without our halves.” He winked. “Dominic attended last week, and I think he enjoyed himself. Think about it, Aaron. Oh, and shut the cellar door on your way out, would you?”
***
Aaron snapped out of his daze when he emerged from the cellar and found himself in the grandiose marble-tiled entrance hall of Dominic’s mansion. He simply had to get his hands on that clipboard.
Feeling ridiculous, he hid in the bedroom where he’d found Amber until Dr. Selavio came out a few minutes later—empty-handed, he noticed.
When the sound of footsteps vanished, Aaron rushed back to the cellar. Once again in the dingy chamber, he scanned the floor around the aitherscope for the clipboard, but the only other thing in the cellar was wine. Casler must have carried it out with him. But the laptop too? Surely, he would have seen it under Casler’s arm.
Aaron twisted to leave, thinking he’d been an idiot, when he caught movement out the corner of his eye. A rack of wine bottles against the far wall.
Heart thudding, Aaron scanned the racks, but everything lay still. Then he saw it again. The wine in each bottle was gently sloshing back and forth.
Dr. Selavio must have bumped the rack. Or moved it. Aaron crossed the room, and his scalp tingled against his skull like it wanted to peel away. Electricity hummed in the air near the back wall, cold as frost.
He knelt and felt along the edge of the wood frame, in between the wine bottles. Yes, the rack was on hinges.
With a tug, the entire section came loose and swung open, exposing the bare wall—and a gaping hole the size of a doorway, jackhammered right through the concrete. No wonder Dr. Selavio had stayed in the cellar.
From out of the dark pit, dank air rushed up Aaron’s nostrils. Just inside the hole, jagged steps dropped into the earth, and he couldn’t see the bottom. The cellar was already underground, the stairs went deeper.
Before he chickened out, Aaron stepped into the blackness and descended, pulling the rack closed behind him. He had done enough stupid things tonight already. What difference would one more make?
The stairs got steeper, thinner. Slimy roots hung from the ceiling—at least Aaron hoped they were roots. It was too dark to tell. Thirty feet down, he hit the bottom. The air purred with the warm smell of machinery. Drips echoed around him.
The stairs had opened into a chamber, and a light switch glowed red on the wall next to him.
He flipped the switch.
The scene that flickered into view made him gasp. It was manmade—but hardly. An enormous granite cavern expanded around him, with rough columns carved into the rock. Bulbs dangled from the ceiling, blinking like sick fireflies.
And Aaron was certain he had found the source of the static electricity he felt upstairs.
Anchored to the bedrock and rising to the ceiling was a device that, if fitted with lenses, could pass as a giant telescope in an observatory. From the machine’s base, power cords snaked into the darkness. Something massive oscillated inside its metal core, and the nauseating rhythm thumped against Aaron’s ribs.
Slouched in a chair at the foot of the machine, casually winding a spool of rope, was Clive Selavio. Blood had dried on his face in crusty black trails.
He made another coil as he watched Aaron enter the chamber. “You know we’re supposed to be together,” he said, “me and Amber.”
“What the hell is this place?” said Aaron, and his voice echoed.
“Be honest,” said Clive, letting the rope unwind through his fingers, “did you kiss her?”
They glared at each other, and Aaron’s blood prickled. Neither one of them blinked.
Aaron nodded to the machine. “What’s this?” he said, still not looking away.
“It’s my father’s.”
“What’s it do?”
“It makes an incision in the clairvoyant channel,” said Clive. He leaned back and ran his hand along the steel shell.
“I thought he fixed leaks?” said Aaron.
“He does, but it’s very much like surgery,” said Clive. “You ever gotten surgery?”
“Not my thing,” said Aaron.
“They have to cut you open first.”
Aaron finally broke their stare. He circled the machine, too curious to hold off any longer. Around back, panels were missing. They hadn’t been installed yet, and Aaron saw what was inside Casler’s device.
A spider web of crystal fibers, sewn together and pulsing like strands of mucous. They were organic, alien—living. But nothing was spinning—the thumping came from the fibers themselves. Aaron smelled burnt ammonia and wrinkled his nose.
The machine telescoped down to a dull metal spike, which was aimed at an operating table crisscrossed with thick nylon straps. The straps were meant as a harness.
“Don’t tell me someone lies here,” said Aaron.
Clive laughed. “I guess you could say that.”
And Aaron noticed the odor of ammonia rose from a stain at the center of table—urine.
The machine had been used recently.
Aaron’s heart gave a jolt. Justin Gorski. So this was how Dr. Selavio sucked out his clairvoyance.
The clipboard lay on a broken concrete slab behind the machine. Aaron unclipped the medical forms and began folding them. It was time to get out of here.
“Put that back,” said Clive, “it’s my father’s.”
When Aaron didn’t comply, Clive lunged and closed his fist on the wad of paper. He yanked so hard Aaron thought his wrist would snap, but Aaron held on, and the folded stack tore in half.
Aaron had the side with the most writing, though, and before Clive realized, he stuffed the wad in his pocket.
Clive’s forearms tensed, but he didn’t attack him. Aaron wondered if it had anything to do with the wounds on his forehead.
Clive’s lips curled into a smirk. “You’ll be going on Wednesday, won’t you?”
“Yeah, I’ll bring a bag of potato chips for the potluck afterwards,” said Aaron.
“We provide the refreshments,” said Clive.
“Who’s we?”
“The Juvengamy Brotherhood.”
Aaron raised his eyebrows. “Is this the weekly social?”
“It’s a bit more formal than that,” said Clive.
“Is Amber going?”
Clive’s smirk only grew. “You know, juvengamy halves get marked for each other,” he said. “Matching tattoos.”
“I’ve heard about that,” said Aaron.
“Ever seen one?”
Aaron felt his heart quiver. He didn’t say
anything.
Clive turned his side to Aaron and removed his gray hoodie. He reached for the bottom of his shirt and lifted the hem to his shoulder—giving Aaron a full view of his side and back.
Aaron stared at the marks on Clive’s torso, and a chill sank into him. The lines were white scars, etched into his pale skin—as they had been since the day he was born. The tattoo resembled a fingerprint, only more symmetrical, more spiral-like. It wrapped around the side of his rib cage and over his shoulder blade, but cut off at his spine.
“It’s only half done,” said Aaron.
Clive let his shirt fall back into place, and his lips twisted into a cruel smile. “That’s because Amber has the other half.”
FIVE
7 Days, 9 hours, 1 minute
At two in the morning, Dominic skidded to a stop in front of Aaron’s house.
“That’s twenty dollars for the gas, fuckface.”
“What is this, Europe?” said Aaron, the image of Clive’s tattoo still vivid in his retinas. He threw his last two ones at Dominic and stepped out of the car, hardly caring that now the rugby player—and probably in a few minutes, Clive too—would know where he lived.
Amber has the other half. Those words haunted him still, as Dominic’s Beamer roared away from the curb, shattering the quiet of the sleeping neighborhood. But Aaron had to see the tattoo on Amber to know for sure. Her shoulders had been bare while they were dancing, but he hadn’t looked. The club was too dark.
Aaron knew he had to quit agonizing over her, his birthday was too close, but he couldn’t think about anything else. No way could he forget her enchanting green eyes, her maddening overconfidence, her nerve.
Seven days—seven days until he turned eighteen and never saw her again.
Back inside his room, Aaron dragged the torn stack of medical forms from his pocket and spread them out under his desk lamp, hands shaking. Under the “complications” section on a form titled “Physical Examination,” Dr. Selavio’s sloppy cursive was barely legible.
Scar tissue obstructing clairvoyant channel. Likely result of massive trauma to channel during birth.
Trauma during birth? But Aaron hadn’t sustained any trauma during birth. Not unless you counted the false alarm story his parents always bragged about to family—how an intern had misread one of the synchronized clocking machines and declared Aaron a stillborn, even though he was crying right in front of them.
With the uneasy feeling his parents hadn’t quite told him the full story, Aaron read the scribbles concerning his condition on the next form, titled “Aitherscope Imaging”—and felt his insides seize up.
Aitherscope registers zero clairvoyant activity and patient experiences inexplicable pain. Suggests extreme vulnerability to clairvoyance. Patient MUST NOT meet his half; initial surge of clairvoyance upon first contact will likely rupture his channel . . .
The rest was torn off, but those three sentences were more than plenty.
Darkness swallowed the bubble of light around Aaron’s desk. He tried to neaten the stack of forms, but they slipped through his jittery fingers and floated to the floor. He rose, tipping the chair backwards. His eyes throbbed, blurry.
Dr. Selavio’s notes about him made two things clear. First, if he met his half on Saturday, his channel would rip open and leak like Emma Mist’s. They would both die. Second, Amber wasn’t his half, otherwise they would already be dead.
Aaron shrank onto his bed and grabbed his volleyball, but instead of setting the ball to the ceiling, he just curled around it, hugging it between his knees.
For his whole life he had worried something would be missing when he met his half, when in fact he couldn’t meet her—No, shouldn’t meet her. No matter the risk, he still had to show up on his birthday.
Life without one’s half was no life at all, everybody knew that. Once mature, the human body required constant physical contact with its half. Aaron faced a simple choice. He either died on his birthday with his half, or withered away months later without her.
There was a third choice. It involved Amber and running away from their halves, and it burned him with such a deep sense of shame, he thought he would puke.
***
Aaron didn’t know how he made it through the weekend, or why he even bothered patching the crack in his oil pan on Saturday afternoon, but by Monday morning, he had successfully relegated Dr. Selavio’s medical report to the back of his mind. By first period, he even rekindled his delusional hope that he and Amber could be halves. Now, if he could just convince himself she wasn’t a juvengamy baby.
From what Aaron remembered of the video they watched in health class, juvengamy girls had been emptied of the most precious thing they had.
Clairvoyance was like your soul. It was the conscious, living part of you, and should you lose any of it—well, it wasn’t hard to imagine what that was like.
The worst part was that Amber Lilian supposedly had a scar branding her as one of them.
Aaron leaned toward Buff’s desk. “Besides the matching scars,” he said, “what else you know about them?”
“They’re spooks,” said Buff. “Ghosts. People say they’re hollow.”
“You can tell?”
“The girls act like their half’s pet. They’re not all there.”
“The parents must be out of their minds.”
“It’s in their blood, Buddy. Ever since that first generation.”
“So it’s like their inbred—”
“Mr. Harper—Mr. Normandy!” Mr. Sanders yelled from the front of the class. “Shut it.”
Buff leaned closer so he could whisper. “Their founder’s like a hundred-and-twenty years old. I heard they’re choosing an heir to replace him when he dies.”
“How do they know who goes with who when they’re putting kids together?” said Aaron, “Wouldn’t they need access to the Registry?”
“They keep their own records,” said Buff. “Most halves stay within juvengamy families.”
“And they’re always weird and empty?” said Aaron. “I mean, let’s say I met a juvengamy girl, would I be able to tell she’s one of them just by talking to her—”
“Congratulations, Mr. Harper,” said their teacher, his eyes intent on Aaron, “you’ve just earned yourself a detention.” He turned back to the board. “ . . . as I was saying, in response to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing refusal to legally recognize halves, the League of Nations imposed sanctions on any country that prevented, hindered, or in any way deterred halves from meeting safely . . . ”
Aaron slouched until his butt almost slid off the chair and fixed his eyes on the ceiling.
“However,” Mr. Sanders continued, “it wasn’t until almost fifty years later—about the year you guys were born—that Saudi Arabia became the final member state of the Chamber of Halves . . . ”
When the bell rang, Jessica Lim, a girl who sat at the front, bounded over to Tina Marcello’s desk.
“Oh my God! Can you believe it’s tomorrow?” she said, squealing and clapping her hands. “And guess what I overheard? My parents are sending us on a honeymoon cruise!”
Out in the hallway after class, Aaron thought about his conversation with Buff. So there was no way to determine if Amber was a juvengamy baby. Not unless—and the idea gave him a nervous twinge—he accepted Casler’s invitation to the Wednesday meeting of the Juvengamy Brotherhood.
Not the smartest idea, since he guessed the urine stain on Casler’s operating table came from Justin Gorski. On that night, Casler must have drained the boy’s clairvoyance into the vial, the same vial Clive brought to the beach a few hours later. Aaron couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for Justin—and for Emma.
If only Aaron hadn’t dropped the vial out at the buoy, he could have brought it the police, maybe gotten the substance analyzed. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and swung his gym bag to his other shoulder. Today was going to be hot.
***
“Buddy, it’s ninety degrees o
ut,” said Buff, collapsing into an empty picnic table at lunch. “We’re ditching practice and going to the beach.”
“Not me,” said Aaron, sliding on his sunglasses.
“Yes—you, me, Tina, and Amber. Tina invited us all to Arroyo beach.”
At the mention of Amber, Aaron’s heart fluttered. “Since when does Tina invite us to the beach?”
“She’s okay now,” said Buff. “She broke up with Breezie because his birthday’s in a few months . . . ”
Aaron missed the rest of Buff’s explanation. Even in the scorching heat, the prospect of seeing Amber again gave him goose bumps.
So she was fine with breaking their consensual goodbye. Okay, so they hadn’t really said goodbye. In fact, as Aaron recalled, their goodbye was interrupted . . .
Through his sunglasses, the sky blinded him. The sun’s heat seared his scalp and the back of his neck. His black T-shirt scalded him, and he clawed at the material, trying to pull it off his skin—at least he could take his shirt off at the beach.
Amber would take hers off.
And he could check her back for the mirror image of Clive’s tattoo.
***
At two in the afternoon, Aaron and Buff trudged through the sand to Amber and Tina, who were sunbathing on two fluffy beach towels—and the center of attention of three chatting teenage boys. Amber lay on her back with one knee raised, stunning in a bikini, Aaron noticed.
“You three,” he said, once they’d made it to the boys, “beat it.”
Buff smacked his palm. The kids, probably juniors, took one look at the rugby player and stumbled away.
“So you’re rude to everybody,” said Amber, perching herself up on her elbows as Aaron approached her.
Now was his chance.
Heart racing, Aaron tossed his shoes behind her, and while he pretended to stash his wallet and phone inside them, he glanced at her exposed back. At first he wasn’t sure, the way sunlight glanced off her bare skin, silvery white. A spiral shaped scar, or was it sunscreen? It was almost too bright to tell, even with sunglasses.
Aaron squinted, shifted positions, then perceived her back clearly. He felt a wobbly twinge in his knees. Amber’s skin was unblemished, and he let himself sigh his relief.