by Dan Rix
Reeling with uncertainty and beginning to feel nauseous, Aaron switched his thoughts to Dr. Selavio and his alleged cure for half death.
If he did possess a cure, he certainly hadn’t cured Emma Mist and Justin Gorski; he’d done just the opposite. Aaron drummed his fingers on the desk, then stood up and paced back and forth along the front of the classroom.
Just the idea of a cure for half death grossed him out. That halves died together was only humane. Continuing on alone after your half died would be pure agony. Yet Aaron had to admit, the “demonstration of the technology” planned for Wednesday aroused in him a certain perverse curiosity.
Would Casler unveil his machine?
Aaron was still pacing when he noticed the door to Mr. Sanders’s office was slightly ajar. The bolt hadn’t latched properly.
He approached the office, hesitated, then tugged the knob. The door swung open—and what he saw inside made his heart lurch.
A human skull, propped up on his teacher’s desk. Its cavernous eyeholes gazed vacantly at the ceiling, swallowing the white blaze of a halogen lamp. A microscope jutted out from one of the eye cavities. Based on the geometry, Aaron estimated that a spot inside the cranium, directly opposite the eyeholes, lay at the microscope’s focal point.
Aaron stepped behind the desk and glanced around, his heart thudding. From out of the vacant eyeholes, the stink of ancient rot curled up his nose and prickled the hairs on his forearms. This picture was wrong. Whatever was down there at the back of the skull, it wasn’t meant to be seen.
He felt a frantic urge to knock the whole setup over and run. Yet his curiosity pushed him closer.
He steadied his breathing, wiped sweat from his clammy forehead, and leaned forward. The instant he pressed his eye to the top of the microscope, the air stirred.
Light filled the eyepiece. An image came into focus, he blinked—
***
“Mr. Harper, what do you think you’re doing?”
Aaron jumped back.
Mr. Sanders stood in the doorway holding a tray of bones. He raised his eyebrows.
“Mr. Sanders, why do you have all these . . . all these . . . ?”
“Bones? I’m putting together a lab activity we can do in class.” He set the tray on his desk. “I read in Scientific American that in old human skulls you can actually see the marks left by clairvoyance.” He nodded to the skull under the microscope. “This one dates back almost seventy-thousand years. Have a look.”
Aaron swallowed and leaned forward. Once again, a faint image crystallized through the lens, and the hairs stood erect on the back of his scalp.
At this scale, the back of the skull appeared coarse, almost terrain-like through the microscope. Peaks of bone rose out of focus. But with eerie precision, the three-dimensional pattern of an iris—an eye—was burned deep into the cranium. Aaron wondered if it was scrutinizing him rather than the other way around. He pulled away from the microscope.
“That’s what you get from thousands of years of clairvoyance eroding the minerals in the fossil,” said Mr. Sanders.
“Thousands of years? But halves weren’t discovered until—”
“Exactly. We’re starting to find evidence now that halves existed all along . . . Either that or its somehow propagating backward through lineage, in which case this could be recent.”
“But there’s still clairvoyance even though this guy’s dead?”
Mr. Sanders nodded. “It’s proof that even death doesn’t break the channel between halves. The channel stays intact no matter what, even after the halves are long gone. Ironically, that’s what causes half death.”
Aaron perked up at his teacher’s words. “Half death? What do you mean?”
Mr. Sanders smiled. “Think about it. When your half dies, it’s like removing a plug from the other end of your channel, thus your clairvoyance leaks out. If the channel closed instead, then nothing would leak out and you could keep on living—albeit, severed from your half.”
Aaron twisted away from his teacher, his skin prickling. So that was what Dr. Selavio’s meant by a “cure.” His machine severed the connection between halves in an attempt to keep one alive without the other. He had severed Emma and Justin.
By the time Aaron’s chills subsided after detention, though, an idea had crept into his mind that made his insides squirm.
He and his half might die as soon as they met each other, but if they let Dr. Selavio sever their channel, there was a chance they could still live—and that’s what scared him the most. That, and how desperately he clung to the insanity of it, how the madness took hold and dug in its claws. And he knew—despite his body’s revulsion—that he would go through with the cure if he had to. That if he had to, he would sever his channel to his half.
Aaron imagined how Emma must have felt when her link to Justin was torn out of her, how she must have grasped inside her mind, terrified and lonely, but felt only the hole where he used to be. And Aaron tried to imagine a lifetime like that, perpetually hollow. Wasn’t it better than nothing, though?
Maybe. Probably not. Regardless, Aaron wanted to know what Dr. Selavio was actually capable of. Still queasy, he dragged his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Clive’s number.
And he accepted Casler’s invitation.
***
Fifteen minutes before midnight, Amber finished straightening her hair and studied her reflection. She felt beautiful, a feeling that hadn’t left since she last saw Aaron. Tonight, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
Not that she stood a chance either. Their first kiss had ruined her. Now whenever she closed her eyes, she felt like she was falling into his arms all over again.
Amber heard the muted buzz of her cell phone. Heart pounding, she leapt onto her bed and dug it out from her comforter—but for the twentieth time, it was Clive.
She silenced the phone, both irritated and embarrassed by her sudden adrenaline rush.
She watched the screen flash Clive’s name then go blank and wondered again if her parents’ story was wrong. What if everyone was wrong?
What if Aaron was actually her half? But it was too much to hope for, and she knew it. Aaron would forget about her the moment he met his half on Saturday. Amber collapsed miserably into her pillow as she imagined a replay of their first kiss, but with another girl. His half would be tan and exotic—and she wouldn’t deserve him.
Amber’s phone buzzed again with a new voicemail. Amber stared at the screen, now uneasy, and something told her she needed to hear this message.
Six minutes before midnight, Amber pressed her cell phone to her ear and listened to the hiss of Clive’s voice.
“Amber, if you don’t call me back in the next two minutes, I’m waking up your father to tell him,” he said, and even though he was carefully measuring his voice, she could tell he was livid. “And one more thing—”
For a moment he just breathed into the phone, as if trying to calm himself. “Your boy toy’s joining us at the warehouse tomorrow. He’s going to realize you’ve been lying to him.” He let out a low chuckle. “You have one minute and thirty seconds.”
Then he hung up.
Amber dropped the phone, horrified. What was Aaron thinking going to the warehouse with Clive?
She glanced at her clock. She was meeting him in five minutes. They had waited all day for her parents to finally fall asleep, and if Clive woke them up now—
The downstairs phone rang, making her jump.
It was also ringing in her mom’s bedroom down the hall—and in her dad’s bedroom upstairs. They would wake up any second.
Amber raced down the stairs and caught it on the second ring. “What do you want?” she whispered furiously.
“So you’ve been screening my calls,” said Clive.
“Why did you invite him?” she said.
Clive was silent a moment. “Father did.”
Amber breathed once, and her body’s warmth was suddenly gone. Casler invited him? Surely after
what happened to Justin, Aaron knew not to trust him.
“And he’s going?” she asked, but Amber knew it was a dumb question—of course Aaron was going; he always got himself into this kind of trouble.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” said Clive. “But you know how bad a listener he is.”
Only to you. Amber checked the clock in the den. 11:57. She bit her lip. She was starting not to care if her parents woke up or not, just as long as she got to see Aaron right now.
“Clive—good night,” she said.
“Hold on,” he said, his tone suspicious. “What’s the rush, Amber?”
“My parents.”
“They’re asleep,” he said. “Otherwise they would have picked up the phone.”
She ran her fingers through her hair in frustration, and Clive must have realized he was about to get hung up on, because he changed his tactics.
“I miss you,” he said quickly. “I want you to come over.”
“Don’t you sleep?” she said.
“Not unless I’m with you,” he said.
“Then pretend,” she said and hung up anyway, feeling only a twinge of guilt. He’d be pissed tomorrow, but at least he wouldn’t call back tonight. Tonight she was Aaron’s.
But first, she had to make sure Aaron wouldn’t go to the Brotherhood’s meeting with Clive. She hated that she had to lie to him, but if he figured out how screwed up her parents were, or worse, if he found out what was really going on with Clive—she shuddered at the thought. She would tell him everything, just not tonight.
At midnight, the gardens on Loma Sierra drive glowed blue and magenta under landscape lighting. Tularosa twinkled in the valley below.
The night was electric.
Aaron was waiting, just as they’d planned. As soon as she saw him—wearing only a short-sleeved shirt, arms crossed, leaning against his stolen car like nobody’s business—she fought the urge to throw her arms around him.
“I was just about to leave,” he said with a smirk. “If you kept me waiting thirty more seconds—”
“Well aren’t you impatient to see me,” she said.
His stare made her feel faint, and Amber realized she wasn’t hiding anything from him. She was still flustered from Clive’s call and it was all over her face.
“It was my parents,” she lied quickly.
“It was Clive, wasn’t it?”
“I said it was my parents,” she said. “Can we go?”
He unfolded his arms. “What did he say to you?”
Amber stepped closer to him. “Ask him yourself,” she said. “You’re going to see him tomorrow anyway.”
Aaron raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Then he circled to the driver’s side. Frustrated, she lowered herself into the passenger seat.
They flew down the ridge, around switchbacks, and then cruised along State Street, past halves stumbling home with each other, palm trees strung up with white lights, and empty, flashing clubs. A fog floated overhead, stained orange by the city’s lights.
“Please don’t go,” she blurted out.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
“I mean tomorrow,” she said. “That meeting. Don’t go to anything he invites you to.”
Aaron shifted gears forcefully, and they sped through a stop sign. “I have to go,” he said. “Don’t ask me to explain it.”
Her heart plummeted. “He’s lying to you,” she said.
“Who? Clive?” he said.
“Casler.”
“About what?” said Aaron.
“About whatever he told you when he examined you,” she said. “He lied to Justin too.”
All Quiet on the Western Front, a movie about the last big war before halves—the World War—showed in the Arlington Theater at midnight. It was mostly empty.
They chose the farthest seats back, and Amber raised the armrest separating them. She leaned into him, her hair draping over his shoulder.
She closed her eyes, breathing in his smell. It was like the poisonous, dizzying fumes that rose after the strike of a match, existing only for a moment before the flame went dark.
She closed her eyes and pressed herself closer to him. During the explosions, her eyelids flashed neon yellow, but she didn’t want to open them. They were in their own world at the back of the theater, a world where they never had to say goodbye to each other, where they were halves, and where juvengamy was only a memory.
Aaron’s body went rigid.
“What are you thinking about?” she said.
He trailed a finger down her arm, teasing the skin inside her elbow and giving her goose bumps. “Something my teacher said,” he said.
“Wouldn’t you rather think about us?” she said.
“I try not to,” he said.
Meaning he can’t stop. She smiled, and slowly draped her arms around his neck. “My parents won’t be home tomorrow evening,” she whispered into his ear with her most alluring voice. “We could hang out if you want?” And then she left him no choice by kissing his neck. He would, of course, no longer be accepting Casler’s invitation.
“Nice try,” he said, giving her a consolation kiss on her forehead. “But I’m still going to the meeting.”
***
While Aaron waited for Clive and Dominic to pick him up the following evening, he opened his mom’s laptop and googled Dr. Casler Selavio.
The name popped up in medical journals and websites sponsored by the Juvengamy Brotherhood, but nothing of interest. Then, in an old article archive, Aaron stumbled across a strange headline:
Casler Selavio Fails to Demonstrate Cure for Half Death; Cites Privacy Issues
Curiously, the article was ancient, from the year Aaron was born. He glanced up at the kitchen clock: 9:05 p.m. They would be here any minute.
Aaron skimmed the article, and a few sentences jumped out at him. He reread them.
. . . though Dr. Selavio claims the March 30th test of the device (performed during birth) was a success, he still hasn’t revealed the identity of the “severed” boy, citing a wish to protect his privacy until a much later date. Selavio states that the procedure may leave scarring at the back of the brain, but no external signs. Meanwhile, health practitioners are alarmed by the staggering rates of half deathobserved in recently widowed halves . . .
Aaron tried to swallow, but couldn’t work the muscles in his neck. According to the article, Casler had tested his machine on a newborn on March 30th, eighteen years ago—the same day Aaron was born.
Could it just be a coincidence?
He recalled that Casler had also written on his medical forms that his scar tissue was probably the result of a massive trauma to his channel during birth. Perhaps he meant a trauma like getting severed from his half.
Aaron’s sweaty thumbs slid on the keys, and his heart made dull, echoing thumps in the hollow of his rib cage. Was he the “severed” boy Dr. Selavio had tested his device on?
There was a loud honk from Aaron’s driveway.
***
Aaron snapped his head up, and his stomach plunged. He rose from the table, hands shaking, and tripped over his chair.
Dominic’s Beamer purred in his driveway. Its high beams flooded Aaron’s front yard with a blinding bluish haze, while a full moon glowed on the horizon.
Aaron slid into the backseat, willing the panic from his mind. He would find the error in his logic later.
“Put this on,” said Clive, handing him a cloak without looking at him.
Aaron held the material to the window, and it shimmered in the moonlight—a luminescent royal red. Dominic and Clive were already wearing theirs.
In addition, Clive wore a gold sash over his shoulder—membership. He fingered the scabs around his lips and eyebrows, which still hadn’t healed from Friday.
“Amber’s not your half,” said Aaron, trying to distract himself with the first thing that came to mind. “She doesn’t have your tattoo.”
Clive smirked. “Not yet,�
� he said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”
On the freeway onramp, Dominic downshifted and put on a burst of speed. Aaron’s stomach scrunched against the seat, then sloshed back. He laid the cloak in front of him, queasy all over again.
“You know the exit,” Clive said to Dominic.
Layers of Eucalyptus rushed by outside the window, black and silent. And through the gaps, the full moon burst through a silver veil of clouds.
For several minutes they drove in tense silence. Then Dominic took his eyes off the road and twisted around in his seat. A white bandage covered the bridge of his nose.
“I swear to God, if Normandy tries anything this Friday—” There was a click, and Aaron saw a thin switchblade glint in his hands. He raised it to Aaron, blade first. “He’s dead. Got it?”
Aaron felt his muscles tense, but he didn’t flinch. “You might want to stab me right now then,” he said.
“Sounds like fun.” Dominic smirked and flipped the knife closed. A minute later, holding the steering wheel between his knees, he lit a joint and the reek of marijuana wafted through the car. Clive took the next hit, held it in. Two wisps of smoke seeped from his nostrils as he offered the glowing tip to Aaron.
“I don’t smoke,” said Aaron.
They got off the freeway and drove for miles down a deserted road, past dry fields and empty warehouses. Every quarter mile, a street lamp flooded the car with orange light and deepened the hard creases in Clive’s face.
“Pull in here,” said Clive. “We’re in that warehouse.”
Aaron saw what he was pointing at and realized coming here was a big mistake. Nature had tried to reclaim the warehouse but abandoned the job half done. Ancient graffiti flaked off the pitted concrete into tall, dead stalks of grass. Yellow bulbs flickered over twisted steel doors. An old backhoe had been driven into the wall, and the hydraulic rams had long since rusted over with hard, black scabs.
The only sign of activity was the white light spilling onto the dirt through a crack in one of the boarded up windows. At this point, Aaron figured he would rather strap himself into Casler’s device than step inside the place.