Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) - By Dan Rix Page 0,44

made him more inaccessible than ever. He sat up, and she saw guilt burning behind his pupils.

“Take that back,” he whispered.

Amber felt her heart go still. “But it’s true,” she said, “we’re only supposed to be able to love one person, right?”

“Yeah, so take it back. It’s not me.”

Now she glared at him. “Then who the fuck do you think it is, Aaron?”

Aaron tried to stroke her hair, but she wriggled away from him and he gave up. “Look,” he said, his voice hollow, “my clairvoyant channel is supposed to collapse when I meet my half. It didn’t collapse when I met you. In fact, it doesn’t even hurt right now. Amber, I’m fighting not to fall in love with you because you can’t possibly be my half. I’d probably be screaming in agony right now if you were.”

***

The following morning, Aaron woke to the gong from the Chamber of Halves. The air was damp and yeasty, and beads of sweat clung to his forehead like leeches.

As he watched, a bluish hue crept along the dark horizon. It was six in the morning; he was due at the Chamber in twenty-nine hours.

Aaron rolled onto his side, and Amber’s warm scent floated up from his bed. It had rubbed into his pores and rubbed off on his sheets—and then he remembered the previous night, how much he’d hurt her. He groaned and buried is face in his comforter.

Supposing Amber was right, though. Supposing they were halves. Everything would make sense that way. Doctors were pessimists; it shouldn’t come as a surprise if they had falsely predicted the collapse of his channel when, in fact, nothing had happened.

Aaron closed his eyes, and for the dozenth time, he performed the calculation in his head. With a hundred thousand people in Tularosa, there couldn’t be more than a few thousand seventeen year olds—merely a dozen of whom turned eighteen this Saturday. A few boys and a few girls. In reality, if Aaron and Amber were halves, their odds of finding each other were even higher. Clairvoyance brought halves together like magnets.

But the blue haze of dawn pried his eyelids apart. He already knew how it ended. He had known since his first nauseating sniff of the sterile, bleached insides of an MRI machine. He didn’t get to have Amber. His channel wouldn’t allow it.

Yet hope still leaked into his blood stream, itching in places he couldn’t scratch. And he knew he had to see her again tonight, in case it wasn’t their last night together.

And, in case it was.

***

At 6:25 that evening, Amber waited for Aaron with Tina and Buff outside the gate into Pueblo’s rugby stadium. Sunlight slanted through the trees and tinted their faces orange. Amber had meant to keep her previous night with Aaron to herself, but she was on the verge of tears and Tina had no trouble prying it out of her. She was getting worse and worse at hiding her feelings.

“He’s an asshole,” said Tina. “We all knew that.”

“No bullshit, Tina. Buddy was only trying to protect her.” Buff stood tall in a crisp warm-up jersey, his hair neatly combed. He looked . . . cute.

“Well, she doesn’t need his protection,” said Tina.

“Somebody had to bring it up the fact that tomorrow’s their—”

Tina shot him a warning glare. “We’re not talking about tomorrow.”

Amber sighed. “You guys can just say it,” she said. “Our birthday’s in six hours. We shouldn’t be anywhere near each other right now.”

Tina and Buff flinched and averted their eyes. In other words, they couldn’t have said it better themselves.

Amber stopped paying attention to them and scanned the faces of unfamiliar boys entering the stadium. She wished for once that she could be invisible. She hated being stared at when she felt like she was about to cry.

Why didn’t Aaron think they were halves? The previous night, he had ruined her pride. Okay fine, so he was right. Amber knew she didn’t get to have him. She was naïve to think she could just run away from her birthday, from what her parents had always told her. From Clive. But at least they could have pretended they were halves for one night. Tonight, after the game, she would have to confess the truth.

Tomorrow, when Aaron saw what she was supposed to become, he would wish she had never existed.

Finally, Aaron arrived at the gate, hair unkempt and skin bronze in the afternoon sun, looking more like he was modeling that leather jacket of his for