by Ryan Schow
“Follow me,” Raven said. She had that look like smiling proved difficult. Like maybe her blood ran cold with hostility. “Let’s get you looked at.”
On the stroll back to the infirmary, which was down a short hallway past Dr. Holland’s office, and off to the left, Abby said, “How well do you know the doctor?”
What Abby knew of Dr. Holland was he that was as ruthless and as despicable as he was handsome. She despised him for threatening to kill her family, yet she felt intensely indebted to him for giving her this new life.
“I know Dr. Holland better than he knows himself,” Raven replied, but not like it was a good thing. It appeared she did know him. But did she like him? Her clipped tone said it was unlikely.
“Are we all, you know…different?” she asked, her voice low, like she was testing Raven with the question.
Raven stopped, turned to her with a guarded expression and harshly whispered, “Do you want to get yourself killed?”
Abby’s eyes flashed wide. She was coming down hard from the adrenaline rush of the cafeteria fight, but that didn’t mean her heartrate couldn’t spike again. She looked behind her to make sure they were alone, then leaned toward the girl and whispered, “You…know me, don’t you?”
Raven’s amethyst eyes were still ponds on a windless day. She stared almost trance-like at Abby, and that’s when Abby felt the little tickle in the back of her mind, like fuzz on her brain, or fingertips grazing the inside of her cranium. Then Raven’s purple eyes blossomed with life once more, and she said, “Yes, I know you.”
“Not Abby Swann,” she said, breathless, risking her life in the hope that someone other than the homicidal doctor knew her.
“Janice Millworth,” Raven whispered. The purple in her eyes, as luminous as it was, it was not a singular thing but ten thousand points of light fighting to hold its shape.
Abby’s breath caught. So Raven knew what had happened to her, which caused a violent pounding of her heart. The adrenaline was like that first line of cocaine. That joyous first tab of acid. “And who are you?”
Raven started to say something, but then she hesitated, grabbed Abby’s hand and damn near dragged her into the exam room. The black haired girl was impossibly strong. She pressed the door shut, silently, then put her index finger to those brick red lips of hers in a light shushing motion. Abby’s body went rigid, completely still. Then the weight of that hypnotic gaze landed squarely upon Abby’s shoulders as she nearly broke under its mass.
Raven stole a deep breath, seemed to measure her words, then said, “I am you. The girl before you. The original Abby Swann you came here to stand in for.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Abby said, her excitement causing her harried whisper to lift an octave.
Raven stepped forward, her violet eyes blazing with intensity, her brow pulled together in a scary, no bullshit look, and said, “Tell a soul and I’ll kill you long before Holland puts a bullet between your eyes.”
“What the hell am I doing here?!” she hissed.
“Standing in for me. For as long as you choose. Forever. I’m dead, Abby. Dead when you got my genes, my body, my life.”
“If you died, then why are you standing right here, in front of me?”
“Because you went and got your ass kicked on the first day of school, that’s why.”
Unraveling
1
The minute I get done doing the most block-headed thing ever by telling my stand-in I’m the original Abby Swann, gosh damn Damien comes rushing into the exam room like the motherfreaking building’s on fire. Half of me wants to kiss him because he’s that beautiful, and the other half of me wants to soccer ball kick him in the nuts because he’s such a tool sometimes.
“You can’t be in here,” I bark.
Right then I’m raring to shove him out of the room and slam the door behind him. That old, weak thing inside me, that human part of me that fell madly in love with Damien and his stunning look, it rolls through me once more, then fastens into anger. He was the perfect boy who couldn’t give me what I so desperately wanted.
Stinking narcissist.
“I came to see if Abby’s alright,” he says, nearly out of breath. He keeps looking back and forth from me to Abby, waiting for me to object, hoping I won’t.
“She isn’t yet, not until you leave and let me do my job.”
Okay, so now I’m pissed off and it’s showing. And with good reason. Not only did I just f*ck the sacred dog by telling fake Abby about me, Damien’s attentive to this version of me in a way he never was when I was her…or me before now.
Eesh.
Inside, I’m like, oh, so now the fraud gets what I always wanted from him? This hillbilly spawn? Take a breath, I tell myself. Calm down.
But I can’t.
I’m dying to throw a tantrum right now! Or at the least, I want to host a world class pity-party. Which is the wrong thing to do since I’m not supposed to know these people. Or Damien at least. With him, technically Raven has no history.
Ignoring me, he goes to Abby, takes her hand and says, “Are you okay? I heard there was a fight.”
Even the sensitivity in his voice feels like sandpaper scraping the surface of my eyeballs. Screaming would be a relief. Or if I could spit at him, just once. Just blast it all over his stupid, gorgeous face. I should be polite, though. Smile. At least make an attempt to not act like such an inflamed bitch right now. But posturing in the face of rage is for pussies.
Looking back and forth from me to the stand-in, Damien’s gaze finally settles on Abby. I turn away, unable to watch him with her.
He says, “Let me have a look.” Abby withdraws the towel and reveals the gaping wound. “My God,” he says. Then he keeps staring at it. Like it’s going to heal.
It won’t.
“With all due respect,” I say, “I need a sterile environment here, so you will have to wait outside with all the other germ infested things.” I just say it. At this point, I’m not thinking very clearly at all. I’m just letting my mouth run with the truths kicking around in my head and, voilà, out it comes.
Um…oops?
Now they’re both looking at me like my tits are on fire.
“Sorry,” I mumble, gathering the stitching equipment from a cabinet of drawers. “Just go. She’ll be out in a few.”
“You’re going to stitch her?” Damien asks, backing toward the door. He’s looking at me like I’m a loose cannon, which, to be honest, I sort of am.
“It’s okay, Damien,” Abby says to him, an apology in her lost-in-love eyes. “I’ll be just fine.”
“Sit up here,” I say to Abby, patting the exam room chair. Then to Damien: “To answer your question, Dr. Holland will stitch her up. I’ll assist. And you won’t be here.”
“Stitches might not be necessary with her,” Damien says, one last time. I know exactly what he’s getting at. He’s thinking she’ll heal herself.
Pulling back the towel, I turn and burn him with my eyes. He looks at the wound, which remains gashed open and nasty. “Does it look like it’s healing on its own, Damien? No, it does not. Wounds like this don’t just sew themselves shut.”
He doesn’t move.
“Seriously, Damien. Out!”
He finally leaves.
“Jesus Christ,” Abby says, “what’s wrong with you?”
“As good looking as he is, his timing is crap. Always has been.”
“So you were a thing, I take it?”
“In the scope of all things large,” I say, putting the towel back, “not hardly. He had this unsanitary obsession with Kaitlyn, his missing step-sister, for what seemed like forever. Right about the time I manage to get over him, he decides to open up to me, to let me in. So he kisses me.”
“Was it good?” Abby asks, mesmerized by the story.
“He basically called us an abomination.”
Us.
“But we are,” Abby says.
We.
“I know,�
� I whisper, my voice even quieter than hers. For the first time since meeting my stand-in, I feel the restiveness in my heart going still. “I know.”
“I think I like him,” Abby finally admits. Her eyes say she’s taking a big chance telling me this. Like she knows I’ll be upset.
That’s when I creep into her brain and discover how desperate she is to feel loved, and how the best boy who ever came close to being her boyfriend was a curly headed soccer player named Robert Mullin. The details of him were sparse, but enough. Dark eyes, freckles on his nose and chest, muscular legs, small waist. She and Robert kissed a couple of times. Together they did a line of coke, and then in a wash of ecstasy, she let him slide two fingers in her and it was heaven. At least, it was until he told all his friends her pussy smelled like urine.
I feel her broken heart, which feels like my heart breaking, then I quickly pull out of her.
“Gosh damn,” I say.
“What?”
“Robert Mullin? That’s the closest you’ve come to a boyfriend? That awful shit?”
All the sudden she can’t breathe. “How did…how do you know about…about him?” she asks. When I tilt my head, as if to say whatever, she says, “Don’t get in my head.”
“Damien isn’t like Robert,” I say, deadpan. “But he’s not boyfriend material either.”
“Why? Because for the five minutes you two were an item, he called you a name? You know the names I’ve been called in my life?”
Now I’m getting pissed. Which isn’t a surprise since my temper seems to be the shortest thing on me. Or perhaps the most human thing.
“Spare me the lecture, sweetheart. I was a fat, disfigured pig before I got the face and body you now have. You don’t remember that part. How, in the press, they put all my flaws front and center for the world to see, how they trampled my family’s reputation so they could make a few bucks. We’ve both had our fair share of hurt and shame.”
“Your family is perfect,” Abby growls. She pulls the bloody towel away from her head, maybe because she’s tired of holding it up, or maybe because she wants me to see what was done to her face as a result of me. “Maybe you should have appreciated it while you had it.”
My face cuts into an aggravated smile, the kind that all but screams you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. “You only know the genetically modified version of them, Janice. Except for Margaret that is.”
“Margaret the absentee mother?” she challenges. The confused look on my face must have told her I don’t know what she’s talking about. “Oh, yeah. Margaret’s gone. Traveling the world so you can have your space from her, or some bullshit like that.”
“Are you kidding?” I hear myself ask. Of all the times she decides to leave me alone, she does it for Janice. Janice the Abby-imposter who gets everything I have ever worked for. Now I really want a f*cking pity-party!
“Not kidding at all. She’s gone. But Christian, he wasn’t always Christian?”
“He’s new. Like you and me.”
“Oh my God,” she says, like it’s all so hard, “being you is such a pain!”
“You don’t have the slightest clue what it’s been like being me so spare me your sadness and I’ll spare you mine.”
“I have to go to class,” Abby says, like she’s pouting.
“What’s your next class?” I ask.
“Second language class,” she says. I ask which language and she says, “German.”
“That’s fitting,” I say, thinking our creator is a former homicidal Nazi.
“Then fifth period Genetics and sixth period Investing.”
Those are classes I would take, and for some reason this makes me mad. Like this little bitch is stealing not only my life but my happiness. For a minute, we both just sit here, glaring at each other, chewing on our anger, trying to decide if we like each other for the things we have in common, or if we hate each other. I decide I hate her.
“I’ll get Holland to stitch you up.”
2
Dr. Holland has gone down the elevator behind his bookcase into his underground lab to work with Quinten on the miracle babies. When I tell him what happened with Abby and the Bitch Brigade, he totally comes undone.
“Everything about your genetics is flawed!” he screams.
“Whatever,” I say.
“Stitch her up yourself,” he grumbles.
“No.”
Back in the elevator, back up top. The whole time I keep telling myself to forget this life of mine and just kill Holland. The heat in my face, it could scorch the sun.
Back in the reception area, to my immense dismay, Damien and Brayden are engaged in a grid-lock of an argument over Abby. Sitting down behind the desk, where Arabelle used to sit, I groan and roll my eyes.
Awesome.
They both hit me with that look. Like they’re escalating and it could go to blows. I roll up inside Brayden’s mind and he’s feeling the same way toward Damien as I am: pissed off that now, of all times, Damien decides to come to Abby’s rescue.
The word “dick” sits in his brain like a rock plopped in fresh mud: a permanent, stuck truth.
Something inside Brayden takes me by surprise, though. A feeling. He is frustrated with this version of Abby. Of me. He doesn’t like her. This makes me smile inside. Great minds do think alike, I muse. Then he looks at me, which is really just me looking at me through his eyes, and he feels something akin to attraction.
“What?” he challenges. I realize I’m staring.
My invisible essence yanks itself out of Brayden’s brain, and slams right back into my own. Now Brayden and Damien are looking at me weird. Oh my God, the old me is dying to interject. To speak to them like I know them, but I can’t.
Regrettably, I stop myself.
“What are you two divas bickering about?” I ask instead. The look on my face, it’s all pinched features and narrowed eyes. The new me, she decides she isn’t taking anyone’s crap.
Both boys trade looks of disbelief.
As if…
“She’s not worth it,” I mumble, thinking that little backwoods scab is so out of her league she’s going to crack. If not now, soon. Astor Academy can do that to a lesser person. It has a way of getting into your head and under your skin. It got under mine, and I’ve got so much more backbone than that wounded little creature. The new Abby won’t handle the weight.
“What did you say?” Damien asks, his full attention on me. His aura is crackling with so much energy I’m drowning in it. It’s a rare thing, seeing him angry like this.
I clear my throat and clearly say, “She’s not worth it.” What he doesn’t get is that I want to fight. I want it the same way a fat kid wants sugar, the same way an alcoholic wants a dozen beers on a Saturday night.
“What’s your damage?” Damien asks. He’s suddenly up in my grill, two hands planted palms-down on the desk, eyeballs like lasers drilling down in me. I’m contemplating whether to read one of Arabelle’s unread books, or check him in the throat with one.
“I don’t like you,” I snap. “I don’t like your stupid hair, your stupid face, or the way you look or dress. You’re not fooling anyone into thinking you’re kind or caring, or really anything of value. Right now you’re acting like it’s all about you. Not about her, or her injuries. I mean, for heaven’s sake, you’re more bothered she won’t be able to heal this on her own than the fact that she was both hurt and embarrassed on the first day of school.”
He’s absolutely speechless, his cheeks blistering with some mix of shame and anger. At some point I spring to my feet, thirsty with rage, desperate to tear out his Adam’s apple the same way you would pluck a dangling chord from a wall outlet. Some lucid part of my brain asks me if I’ve become a psycho, and honestly, I don’t have an answer.
“You act like you know me,” Damien says, a small tick in his cheek, “but you don’t.”
“I know your type, and honestly, I’d rather flush my own face down the toilet t
han have to stand here for one more minute and be reminded of every other douchebag I’ve ever met and told to get bent.”
“That’s a little harsh,” Brayden says, stepping up.
“Oh, so now you’re coming to his defense? Jesus, and here I thought you were the one with the common sense.”
“Why are you so angry with him?” Brayden asks. “And who are you anyway?”
“You’re really siding with him on this?” I ask, ignoring his question. So much blood has rushed to my head it’s going to pop. The truth is, I shouldn’t be this hostile. But I am. Kicking over Arabelle’s stack of unread books, I round the reception desk and all but scream, “You two are unbelievable!”
Seconds later, I’m blazing out the front door, stalking through campus pissed off. People see me and literally take a wide berth. For some unknown reason, I want to choke the life out of something. God this pining for violence is debilitating!
Why am I still like this? OMG, I freaking hate boys!
For all the battles I fought to win Damien’s affections, it looks like it’s worked, although, with someone else who looks exactly like me. The old me. The non-me. Did I abandon myself too soon? I wonder.
Was becoming Raven a colossal mistake?
My feet stop moving and I stand statue-still in the middle of campus, just seething, but also realizing something else. The decisions I’ve made lately, they’ve been emotional decisions, not logical ones.
Am I even capable of making any good decisions anymore? For the love of Jesus, I’m a wreck. Even now, as Raven, my past is an unrelenting burden.
“Are you okay?” a voice behind me asks, angelic, sincere.
I turn and my eyes feast on the platinum blonde I saw watching me the other night, when we were moving our things into Holland’s office. The one who disappeared so thoroughly not even my superhuman brain could tether her. She is thin, her skin so white and flawless it looks airbrushed. Not yet twenty, she’s got slightly curved hips, goosebumps for tits, arms that are on the sexy side of skinny, but not because she’s worked them out. But it’s her eyes I can’t bear to turn away from. They’re big and chocolate brown, but not like any other brown I’ve ever seen. Looking close, they have different kinds of circles, almost like digital rings that throb and glow ever so slowly in brighter and darker waves. Anyone else would lose their shit looking at them. Not me. Not with my purple eyes.