it matter?” she said. “We’re halves, just like you always wanted.”
“You used to love me,” he said.
“Funny. I don’t remember that,” she said.
His blue eyes held her captive. “Well I do.”
***
Aaron stepped into the special office and found Walter Wu cradling his forehead in his hands, gazing at a photo of his half through thick glasses. Aaron shut the door behind him and the man flinched, knocking the frame into his lap.
“Mr. Harper—?” he said, his eyes widening as Aaron lowered himself into the chair opposite his desk.
“Who’d you expect?” said Aaron.
Walter chewed on his lip for a moment, considering him carefully. Then he pulled off his glasses and massaged his bald forehead. “Aaron, you seem like an ordinary kid to me so I’ll just get right to it.”
In the special office, there was only a desk and a chair. No tapestries, no chandeliers, no paintings. It was an office for delivering bad news, for explaining complications.
And it was wrong to be here. It was wrong to meet his half. He was in love with Amber.
“Yes, perfectly ordinary,” Walter added, and he didn’t look Aaron in the eye. He slid his glasses back into place and turned to the file that was open on his desk, “which is why your situation is so curious.”
He flipped over one of the pages. “Of course, halves aren’t born exactly the same time. Sometimes they’re off by a fraction of a second, but eighteen years?”
Walter Wu shook his head and set the page down. “No, your situation is quite different.” He looked up. “I’m afraid you don’t have a half.”
ELEVEN
Plus 1 minute
Walter Wu held his breath, his knuckles white on the framed photo in his lap as he waited for Aaron’s reaction.
But Aaron only blinked.
You don’t have a half. It was like saying he didn’t have a mother, or that the sun hadn’t risen that morning. It had to be a play on words.
“Sorry—” Aaron leaned forward. “I didn’t catch that last bit.”
“I assure you,” said Walter, his breath leaking from the corners of his mouth. “To this day our very best psychologists continue to analyze the circumstances of your birth. They agree that you’re extremely fortunate—”
Aaron raised his eyebrows, and Walter’s face gave an odd twitch.
“In fact,” said Walter, still unable to meet Aaron’s gaze. “It’s a miracle you’re alive at all. Anybody else with your condition would be dead.”
The man’s words travelled slowly, striking Aaron’s ear a full second after they were spoken. In the special office, across from Walter Wu, Aaron watched the answer to his life’s riddle crystalize before his eyes.
He didn’t have a half. And the opposite of what Walter said was true. To be dead—that would be fortunate.
Amber had been wrong. It wasn’t a setup.
“So the two who just left,” said Aaron, asking the only question that still mattered, “they’re halves?”
“You mean the Selavios?”
At the mention of the name, Aaron’s lungs tightened. He nodded.
“Actually, I confirmed them myself,” said Walter. “I still have the aitherscope’s printout if you’d like to see.”
Aaron stared at him, swishing drool around in his mouth. Then he hunched forward, planted his elbows on his knees, and spit on the floor. While his saliva bubbled on the tiles, he listened to the clock’s endless ticking.
Walter Wu stiffened, and his hand crept toward the telephone on his desk.
Finally, Aaron rose to his feet and left the office. The deep, purple hallways were lined with paintings of valleys and sunsets—scenes of life’s beauty.
On Aaron’s eighteenth birthday, he left the Chamber of Halves through a steel service door, peeled a parking ticket off his windshield, and drove home alone.
And he thought of Amber.
She had known all along that Clive was her half. All last week, all those nights together, she’d been living with an expiration date.
Aaron passed his house but kept on driving. Street names repeated. The hours blurred together. He couldn’t face his parents—not without a half. Not alone.
Not when his final glimpse of Amber was branded into his eyelids, flashing every time he blinked. Amber, all dressed up as a prize for the Brotherhood’s heir, for Clive.
At sunset, Aaron found himself alone on the cliffs overlooking the pink streaks at the ocean’s edge. Alone, when the word itself meant nothing. And he wondered what they were doing to her.
***
Amber caught a glimpse of the Chamber’s distant towers, soaring like sunburned fists as the last sliver of sunlight cleared the peaks—before she was led into the church.
The dying light slanted in through stained glass windows, dusting