Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) - By Dan Rix Page 0,29
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