Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) - By Dan Rix Page 0,14
her up, and carried her to the door. Only Buff ran forward to help. The rest of the class sat white-faced and frozen.
Mr. Sanders addressed them before he left. “Explain how the discovery of halves pushed the world toward greater international cooperation in the late thirties, I want at least a page from each of you when I get back—and NO talking!”
Then the door slammed.
All eyes turned on Aaron. Nervous, shifty-eyed stares, wary of his reaction to what had just happened to his ex-girlfriend. They knew the symptoms.
Her half was dead.
***
Emma’s condition had gotten a lot worse when Aaron and Buff visited her on Sunday, five days later.
Sunlight spotted the peach wallpaper in Emma’s bedroom, and Aaron felt a strange twinge in his stomach when he saw her. She was buried under comforters and fluffy pillows. Her pale skin gleamed with sweat, and her eyes made endless circles as she watched the blades of a ceiling fan.
Her mother managed a weak smile from her rocking chair and leaned over her daughter. “Baby,” she said, her voice cracking, “look who came to see you!”
Buff squeezed Emma’s hand. “It’s us, Emma. It’s me and Buddy from school.”
She opened her mouth but only managed to drool.
Emma’s father cupped her head in his palm and edged the pillow out from underneath her. Right where the back of her head had been, Aaron saw a red stain in the indentation on the pillow—blood. Her father laid her down again and glanced at his half.
“It’s getting worse,” he said.
There was no cure for what Emma had, for half death. The scientific explanation was quantum entanglement, the spooky phenomenon whereby two entangled subatomic particles could be separated by light-years yet react instantaneously to changes in each other’s states.
In humans, it was termed clairvoyance.
Up close, Emma’s eyes were vacant, unfocused, cloudy. There was only a glimmer of the girl Aaron once knew, and he felt a lump form in his throat.
Emma was innocent. She was normal. There were only six weeks left before her birthday—six weeks until she met her half. And that was stolen from her.
Aaron was the one whose clairvoyant channel was clogged. It should have been him in that bed, drooling and bleeding from the back of his skull. It should have been him with half death, not her.
Aaron knelt by Emma’s bed and peered into her half open eyelids. “I’m sorry, Emma.”
Too late.
He felt a hand squeeze his shoulder: Emma’s father. “What happened to her at school wasn’t the first sign that something was wrong,” he said.
“What do you mean?” said Aaron.
“She had a similar attack a couple weeks ago,” said her father. “We thought it was a false alarm and that she was still okay, but now the doctors are telling us her half was already dead.” The man shook his head. “Something strange happened to her half that first time. Whatever it was, it managed to keep her going for a few weeks.”
“When do they think her half actually died?” said Aaron.
“They haven’t quite pinpointed it yet, but they’re pretty sure it was March 1st.”
Aaron nodded, not sure what else to say.
“Wait a sec,” said Buff, “March 1st? That’s the day that kid from Corona went missing.”
“Right, Justin Gorski.” Emma’s father managed a weak smile. “We thought about that too, but the Chamber of Halves won’t release the identity of Emma’s half until she’s gone—or until they find Justin’s body . . . ” His voice faltered and he trailed off, tears in his eyes.
Aaron caught Buff’s eye, and they left Emma’s parents alone with their daughter. On their way out, Aaron’s cell phone beeped, interrupting their mournful silence. He opened his phone and stared at a text message from Amber Lilian.
Can I come over? There’s something I need to tell you.
***
By eight she still hadn’t shown. Aaron bounced his volleyball off his wall, straining to hear a knock on the front door, a scratch . . . anything over the evening news blaring in the living room. Jesus, were his parents deaf or something?
Besides, it wasn’t good news playing. He could tell from the bits he overheard. A hundred-and-something year old woman who had refused to meet her half for eighty years, now famous as the sole survivor from the pre-halves era, had died earlier today. Apparently, she had been in her early thirties when halves were discovered, but chose to stay with her husband.
The doorbell rang.
Aaron’s heartbeat quickened. He beat his dad to the door, fumbled with the lock, and