He’s here.

But he can’t be here.

He’s real.

But he can’t be real.

He’s taller, somehow, in reality. His eyes are alive now, amazingly alive. He’s curious, concerned. He knows me – that much I can tell. He knows who I am.

He’s the most beautiful male I’ve ever seen. Ever. Anywhere. George Clooney and Johnny Depp and Justin Timberlake and all of them, all of them, would be cast as Adam’s less attractive best friend.

I wonder, can he speak anything more than my name?

Although even that’s great. I liked hearing him say my name. I’d like him to do it again.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he says.

First published in Great Britain 2012

by Electric Monkey – an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate 2012

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

Published by arrangement with Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan.

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978 1 4052 6434 1

eISBN 978 1 7803 1299 6

www.electricmonkeybooks.co.uk

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Typeset by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford on Avon, Warwickshire Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

EGMONT

Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street. He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment.

The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.

for

Jean Feiwel

friend

visionary

responsible party

CONTENTS

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

About the Author

1

EVE

I AM THINKING of an apple when the streetcar hits and my leg severs and my ribs crumble and my arm is no longer an arm but something unrecognizable, wet and red.

An apple. It was in a vendor’s stall at the farmers’ market off Powell. I’d noticed it because it was so weirdly out of place, a defiant crimson Macintosh in an army of dull green Granny Smiths.

When you die – and I realize this as I hurtle through the air like a wounded bird – you should be thinking about love. If not love, at the very least you should be counting up your sins or wondering why you didn’t cross at the light.

But you should not be thinking about an apple.

I register the brakes screeching and the horrified cries before I hit the pavement. I listen as my bones splinter and shatter. It’s not an unpleasant sound, more delicate than I would have imagined. It reminds me of the bamboo wind chimes on our patio.

A thicket of legs encircles me. Between a bike messenger’s ropy calves I can just make out the 30% OFF TODAY ONLY sign at Lady Foot Locker.

I should be thinking about love right now – not apples, and certainly not a new pair of Nikes – and then I stop thinking altogether because I am too busy screaming.

I open my eyes and the light is blinding. I know I must be dead because in the movies there’s always a tunnel of brilliant light before someone croaks.

“Evening? Stay with us, girl. Evening? Cool name. Look at me, Evening. You’re in the hospital. Who should we call?”

The pain slams me down, and I realize I’m not dead after all, although I really wish I could be because then at least I could stop screaming.

“Evening? You go by Eve or Evening?”

Something white smeared in red hovers above me like a cloud at sunset. It pokes and prods and mutters. There’s another, then another. They are grim but determined, these clouds. They talk in fragments. Pieces, like I am in pieces. Vitals. Prep. Notify. Permission. Bad.

“Evening? Who should we call?”

“Check her phone. Who’s got her damn cell?”

“They couldn’t find it. Just her school ID.”

“What’s your mom’s name, hon? Or your dad’s?”

“My dad is dead,” I say, but it comes out in an ear-splitting screech, a song I didn’t know I could sing.

Dead would be so good right now. My dad and me, just us, not this.

O.R. 2’s ready. No time. Now now now.

I’m pinned flat like a lab specimen, and yet I’m moving, flying past the red and white clouds. I didn’t know I could fly. So many things I know this afternoon that I didn’t know this morning.

“Evening? Eve? Give me a name, hon.”

I try to go back to the morning, before I knew that clouds could talk, before I knew a stranger could retrieve the dripping stump of your own leg.

“What do I do with it?” he’d asked.

“My mother’s Terra Spiker,” I sing.

The clouds are silent for a moment, and then I fly from the room of bright light.

2

I AWAKEN TO an argument. The man is simmering, the woman on full boil.

They’re out of my view, behind an ugly green curtain. I try to do what I always do when my parents fight, adjust my earbuds and crank the volume to brain-numb, but something is wrong. My right arm is not obeying me, and when I touch my ear with my left hand, I discover a thick gauze headband. I’ve sprouted long tubes from my arms and my nose.

“She’s my daughter,” the woman says, “and if I say she’s leaving, she’s leaving.”

“Please listen to me. She’s going to be your one-legged daughter if you take her out of here.”

The man is pleading, and I realize he’s not my dad because (a) my dad was never a pleader – more of a pouter, really, and (b) he’s dead.

“I have superior facilities, the best medical staff money can buy.” The woman punctuates with a dramatic exhalation. It’s my mother’s trademark sigh.

“She’s in critical condition in the ICU after a fourteen-hour surgery. There’s every chance she’s going to lose that leg, and you want to move her? Because . . . what? It’s more convenient? Your sheets have a higher thread count? What exactly?”

I feel pretty okay. Sort of floaty and disconnected. But this man, whom I’ve decided must be a doctor, sounds a little freaked out about my leg, which, as it happens, doesn’t seem to be behaving any better than my arm.

I should probably reassure him, get my mother off his case – when she’s like this it’s best to retreat and regroup – but the tube stuck down my throat makes that impossible.

“I will not release this patient,” the doctor says, “under any circumstances.”

Silence. My mother is the goddess of painful pauses.

“Do you know,” she finally asks, “what the new hospital wing is called, Doctor?”

More silence. The contraptions I’m tethered to chirp contentedly.

“That would be the Spiker Neurogenetics Pavilion,” the doctor mutters, and suddenly he sounds defeated. Or maybe he’s missing his tee time.

“I have an ambulance waiting outside,” my mother says. Check and mate. “I trust you’ll expedite the paperwork?”

“She dies, it’s on you.”

His choice of words must bother me, because my machines start blaring like a cheap car alarm.

“Evening?” My mother rushes to my side. Tiffany earrings, Bulgari perfume, Chanel suit. Mommy: Casual Friday edition.

“Sweetheart, it’s going to be okay,” she says. “I’ve got everything under control.”

The quaver in her voice betrays her. My mother does not quaver.

I try to move my head a millimeter and realize maybe I’m not feeling so okay after all. Also, my car alarm won’t shut up. The doctor is muttering about my leg, or what’s left of my leg, and my mother is burying her head into my pillow, her lacquered nails digging into my shoulder. She may actually be crying.

I am pretty sure we’re all losing it, and then, on my other shoulder, I feel a firm pressure.

It’s a hand.

I follow the path from hand to arm to neck to head, moving just my eyes this time.

The hand is connected to a guy.

“Dr Spiker,” he says, “I’ll get her into the ambulance.”

My mother sniffles into my gown. She rouses herself, stands erect. She is Back in Control.

“What the hell are you doing here, Solo?” she snaps.

“You left your phone and briefcase behind when you got the call about the –” he jerks his chin toward me, “the accident. I followed in one of the Spiker limos.”

I don’t recognize this guy or, for that matter, his name – because, really, what kind of a name is Solo, anyway? – but he must work for my mother.

He looks down at me, past the tubes and the panic. He is scruffy-looking with too much hair, too little shaving. He’s tall and wide-shouldered, muscular, blondish. Extremely blue eyes. My preliminary taxonomy: skater or surfer. One of those guys.

I’d really like him to get his hand off me because he doesn’t know me and I’m already having personal space issues, what with the tubes and the IV.

“Chill, Eve,” he tells me, which I find annoying. The first phrase that comes to mind involves the word “Off ”, preceded by a word I have absolutely no chance of pronouncing since it includes the letter “F ”.

Not in the mood to meet new friends.

In the mood for more painkillers.

Also, my mother calls me “Evening” and my friends call me “E.V.”. But nobody calls me “Eve”. So there’s that, too.

“Please reconsider, Dr Spiker –” The doctor trails off.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” says the guy named Solo. He’s about my age, a junior, maybe a senior. If he does work for my mother, he’s either an intern or a prodigy. “Will you be coming in the ambulance, Dr Spiker?”

“No. God knows what micro-organisms are in that ambulance. My driver’s waiting,” my mother says. “I’ll need to make some calls and the back of an ambulance isn’t the place. I’ll meet you at the lab.”

The doctor sighs. He flips a switch and my contraptions still.

My mother kisses my temple. “I’ll get everything set up. Don’t worry about a thing.”

I blink to show that I am not, in fact, worried about a thing. Not with the morphine drip taking the edge off.

Solo hands my mother her briefcase and phone. She vanishes, but I can hear the urgent staccato of her Jimmy Choos.

“Bitch,” the doctor says when she’s out of earshot. “I don’t like this at all.”

“No worries,” Solo says.

No worries. Yeah, not for you, genius. Go away. Stop talking to me or about me. And take your hand off me, I’m nauseous.

The doctor checks one of my IV bags. “Uh-huh,” he mutters. “You an MD?”

Solo half smiles. It’s knowing and a little smug. “Just a gofer, Doctor.”

Solo gathers up my bagged belongings and my backpack. Suddenly I remember I have AP Bio homework. A worksheet on Mendel’s First Law. When a pair of organisms reproduce sexually, their offspring randomly inherit one of the two alleles from each parent.

Genetics. I like genetics, the rules, the order. My best friend, Aislin, says it’s because I’m a control freak. Like mother, like daughter.

I have a load of homework, I want to say, but everyone’s buzzing about purposefully. It occurs to me my Biology worksheet won’t be all that relevant if I’m dying.

I believe death is on the list of acceptable excuses for missing homework.

“You’re going to be fine,” Solo tells me. “Running 10Ks in no time.”

I try to speak. “Unh onh,” I say.

Yep. Can’t pronounce “F ” with a tube in your mouth.

Then it occurs to me: How does he know I like to run ?

3

SOLO

SO. THIS IS the boss’s daughter.

I’d seen pictures of her, of course. You can’t go into Terra Spiker’s office and not see photos of her daughter. My favorite’s this one where Eve’s crossing a finish line, all sweaty and flushed, with a killer smile on her face.

I glance down at the stretcher. Eve’s got a serious bruise coming up under both eyes. Still, you can see the resemblance to her mom. High cheekbones, big, deep-set eyes. Tall, slender.

That’s about it for similarities, though. Terra’s a total ice queen bitch: frosty blonde hair, calculating gray eyes.

Eve . . . well, she’s different. Her hair is sun-streaked gold, and her eyes are this mellow brown color.

At least I’m pretty sure they’re brown.

They’re a little wobbly at the moment.

There’s not a lot of room on the narrow bench in the back of the ambulance. I nearly go flying when they pull away from the emergency room and crank on the siren.

I grin. “Floor it, dude,” I yell to the driver.

The doctor sitting on the other side of Eve’s stretcher sends me a What the hell? scowl.

I know it seems wrong to enjoy this, but still: the siren and the powering through the streets of San Francisco while all the other cars scatter? Very cool.

Besides, Eve’s going to be fine.

I think.

We’re at the bridge in no time. The bridge. The Golden Gate, still the best, never get tired of it. I fantasize sometimes how great it would be to ride a longboard down the cable. Yes, it would almost certainly be a long plunge to a hideous death. But before that it would be amazing.

I sit with my elbows on my knees, trying to hunch my shoulders forward a little. I have good shoulders, might as well reveal them. I know she’s checking me out. Fair enough, because I’m checking her out.

“Ah ahhh ahhhh!”

Eve cries out suddenly. She’s in pain. Bad pain. So it’s possible she’s not really checking me out.

“Doc,” I say, “can’t you help the girl out?”

He leans over to check the IV tube. It’s gotten kinked, the flow cut off. He straightens it and tears off strips of white tape to hold it in place.

“She’ll be better in a second.”

“Cool,” I say. I lean in close so she can hear me. “I got him to crank up the morphine,” I say, speaking loud and slow.

Her eyeballs kind of roll toward me. Unfocused. For a second I think, What if I ’m wrong ? What if she actually dies ?

All of a sudden it’s almost like I want to cry. It’s not gonna happen, obviously – crying, I mean – but there’s just this sudden wave of sadness.

I shake it off as well as I can. But once you start seeing the Big D, the Reaper, sitting beside you, it’s very hard to stop.

“Don’t die, okay?” I say.

Her dilated pupils are looking for me. Like I’m a target and she can’t quite line up the sights.

So I get close again and I kind of touch her face and aim her head at me. Unfortunately, I lean my other hand on her leg – the wrong one – and there’s some yelling from Eve and from the doctor.

Which makes it impossible for me to say what I had planned to say to reassure her: Don’t worry. I’ve seen things. I know things.

Your mom has secrets.

She won’t let you die.

4

EVE

OPERATION? WHAT OPERATION?

They tell me it lasted fourteen hours.

I wasn’t really there. I was in a weird landscape of dreams, nightmares and memories – with a little shopping thrown in.

I’m pretty sure I had an extended dream where Aislin and I wandered around the big Westfield Mall downtown on Market Street. Of course, it could have been a memory. It’s hard to keep track of the difference when your blood flows with whatever drug they use to separate your consciousness from your senses.

My new doctor, the one who arrived with the private ambulance, has on a lab coat that reads:

Dr Anderson

Spiker Biopharmaceuticals

Creating Better Lives

It’s a chic, low-sheen black. He looks like he should be foiling my hair, not checking my pulse.

Solo keeps staring at me. Not a She’s dead meat stare. More like he’s an anthropologist who’s just discovered a new tribe deep in the heart of the Amazon.

The road was a little bumpy over the bridge, but I’ve discovered I can surf the pain, feel it roll and crest and crash. If you think about something, anything, else, it’s not so bad.

The fact that I can think at all, when my leg has recently been . . . well, chopped off and glued back on is, I believe, the medical term . . . is kind of a miracle, and I’m grateful for the random thoughts that flood my brain.

Things I Think About, Exhibit A:

How I got a B+ on my oral report in Bio, which sucks because it’s going to bring my grade down, and possibly my GPA, which means I won’t get into a decent college, which means I’ll never escape the clutches of my crazy-ass mother, and I know this really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, especially now, but that’s not the point, is it?

I’m pretty sure Ms Montoya dropped my grade because of my intro: “Boys have nipples.” Perhaps this was news to her.

It was a risky ploy, sure, but when it’s second period and you’re the first speaker and the Red Bull has only ignited a handful of brain cells, you do what you have to do.

There were twenty kids in the room. When I moved to the front to tie my iPad to the projector, I’d say I had a total of eight eyeballs out of a possible forty watching me.

I delivered my opening line, and thirty-nine eyeballs were trained on me. Jennifer has one lazy eye, so I was never going to get all forty.

“Why?” I asked. I cued the first slide, which was of a boy’s chest. It was a fine chest, a very fine chest, and I knew it would hold the attention of the nine straight girls and one gay boy.

It was a cheap ploy, but sex sells. Always has; always will. And in the context of a boring report day in my boring eleventh grade Biology class at boring Bay Area School of Arts and Sciences, a smooth, hard chest over rippled abs was just the ticket.

The way I had the presentation laid out, we’d see that slide two more times. We’d also see DNA molecules, a little video snippet of dinosaurs demonstrating the concept of survival of the fittest – because seriously, there’s no bad time to show bored kids some dinosaur-on-dinosaur violence – and the inevitable graphs, pie charts, and equations that would earn me a decent grade. And chest to keep my audience.

I thought I had the thing aced.

Wrong.

So okay, I phoned it in a little. But still. A B+ after those abs?

Things I Think About, Exhibit B:

How I was supposed to bail out Aislin’s dirtbag boyfriend after school, which is why I was checking her latest frantic text when that out-of-place apple caught my eye, which is why I wasn’t looking where I was going, which is why I am now in an ambulance with an MD from Aveda and some guy with a perpetually smug look on his face.

Things I Think About, Exhibit C:

How I missed prom yet again. (I had a previous engagement, organizing my sock drawer while watching old Jon Stewarts on my laptop.) Aislin claims I didn’t miss anything: it was a total waste of a good buzz. Even with the purse searches and rent-a-cops, she managed to sneak in three separate flasks of lemon vodka.

I am a little worried about Aislin.

Things I Think About, Exhibit D:

How I can’t figure out the deal with this Solo guy. Is my mother using him as her stand-in? Is that his job?

Things I Think About, Exhibit E:

How Solo’s eyes have this distant, don’t-mess-with-me edge to them. They’d be hard to sketch, but then, I can never get faces right.

Last week during Life Drawing, Ms Franklin asked me if I’d ever considered majoring in art instead of biology.

I asked her for a new eraser.

Things I Think About, Exhibit F:

How Solo smells like the ocean when he leans close and smooths my hair.

Things I Think About, Exhibit G:

How Solo, once he’s done gently smoothing my hair, starts pounding out an incredibly inept drum solo on my oxygen tank.

Things I Think About, Exhibit H:

How I might never run again.

5

SOLO

WE PULL INTO Spiker Biopharm. It’s located on the back side of the Tiburon peninsula across the Golden Gate and down some windy roads. As you drive up it’s not mind-boggling or anything, because the road at that point is maybe two hundred feet up above the ocean, and the Spiker complex is more vertical than horizontal. It spreads down that steep slope from the road above to the water below. And it is big. From the water, it looks like the City of Oz had a giant baby with one of those flagship Apple stores.

The place is built around three massive spikes – as in Spiker, heh – with each of the spikes being an elevator array. Connecting them is a sort of ziggurat construction with terraces, open spaces, entire floors given over to gardens, sandy volleyball courts, a pool.

It is, without question, a great place to work. If you can get past some of the people.

And number one among the people you have to get past is the psycho-bitch boss herself, Terra Spiker. Known throughout the campus as Terror Spiker.

The bottom floor, Level One, is the largest space, the Orphan Disease Research Division. They focus on the many less-than-popular diseases that no one is ever going to get rich curing.

Whatever else you can say about Terra, she’s done some very major work down there on Level One. As in cures. As in people who were being eaten alive by some parasite or some germ are walking around alive today because of Level One. Because Terra Spiker said, “Screw profits, we’re throwing a billion dollars into beating this disease.”

The reason no one gets serious about investigating Spiker Biopharm? Because of what happens down there on Level One, that’s why.

The reason so many people think about investigating Spiker? Because of what happens on Levels Seven and Eight.

Me, I live on Level Four. My parents, Isabel and Jeffrey Plissken, were Terra’s business partners way back in the day, when all they had was a broken-down IBM, some petri dishes and a dream.

I don’t remember them. It’s like that.

I could say Terra raised me, but that would be wrong. She’s no mother to me. She gives me a place to live, an education, a job at the lab.

She tolerates me.

She wouldn’t even do that if she knew.

6

EVE

A STEEL DOOR opens and we enter an overlit garage. Two men and a woman, clad in black lab coats like Dr Anderson’s, are waiting for me. I have an entourage.

“She’s stable,” Dr Anderson remarks, “doing well,” and the other three lab coats seem surprised. They mutter medically in ways I can’t decipher.

I am whisked into a long white-tiled tunnel. Solo keeps pace beside me.

We arrive at a large glass elevator. Each member of the group stands before a wall-mounted lens.

“Optical scanner,” Solo explains as a green light clears him.

I’ve only been to my mother’s office a couple of times. (She says mixing home and work is like mixing a single malt with Sprite.) The complex is visually stunning, or at least that’s what Architectural Digest said: “Frank Gehry on steroids.” When you look at satellite photos, you see more security than the Pentagon. Even the security gates have security gates.

It’s the kind of sprawling building you’d expect to find in Silicon Valley, not Marin. But Spiker Biopharm is a different kind of company, my mother likes to say, and I suppose that’s why she decided to locate it in a different kind of place.

“Different” would be her word, but others have had worse things to say. As drug companies go, Spiker’s the bad boy on the Harley your dad doesn’t want you to date. I first realized this in fifth grade, when Ms Zagarenski passed out a form letter soliciting parents to give classroom talks for Career Week. She sent a note home with everybody but me (“Your mother’s so busy, dear”) and I got the clue. Even Danny Rappaport got one, and we all knew his dad ran the largest pot farm in Mendocino.

The elevator shoots to the sixth floor. The doors open to reveal a breathtaking lobby. Marble, glass, steel, tiered fountain. It looks like the Ritz Carlton my dad used to retreat to when the fights dragged on too long.

I’m wondering when the concierge will show up, and suddenly here she is.

“Baby,” says my mother, “welcome to my world.” Burying me in her perfumed embrace, she lowers her voice to a whisper and adds: “Mommy’s going to fix everything.”

She leads the way through swinging doors, and suddenly we are in a hospital.

A really swank hospital.

Dr Anderson has a platoon of assistants: specialists, nurses, techs, but, as far as I can tell, only one patient.

They are shocked at how well I am doing. Everyone wants to have a look at my mangled arm, swollen like an overcooked hot dog. I learn that my spleen, whatever that is, has been ruptured. Also, I’ve lost a rib.

“You’ll never miss it,” Dr Anderson assures me.

The star attraction, however, is my reattached leg with its Frankenstein stitches. My mother is especially interested – my mother, who always made my dad apply Band-Aids because the sight of blood made her woozy.

My gown is an oversized napkin, barely covering the essentials. I’d be massively embarrassed if I weren’t so drugged up. Fortunately, Solo seems to have stayed behind in the hall.

“Miraculous,” breathes a nurse.

It looks horrifying to me, all the blood and goo and gauze, but I have to admit I’m not feeling as awful as I was a few hours ago. The pain has gone from blinding to mere throbbing. And when they finally remove the tube from my throat, the first thing I say is “I’m hungry” in a hoarse whisper, which gives rise to appreciative laughter and applause.

One of the nurses, an older guy with a trim gray beard, introduces me to my room appointments like a bellboy sniffing for a tip. Wi-fi! Flat screen! Italian marble! Heated towel rack!

“Is there anything you need?” my mother asks. “I’m having your pajamas and robe picked up from the house.”

I try to focus. “My laptop. My Titus Andronicus T-shirt, you know, the blue one? Maybe some Clearasil.”

“You won’t be needing your laptop any time soon.”

“Do you know where my phone is?” I croak. “I should call Aislin. I think that guy – Solo? – I think he said somebody turned it in.”

A tight smile. My mother does not like Aislin. She tolerates her the way she tolerated the pet ferret I could never quite housebreak. I believe this is because Aislin shorted out our seven-thousand-dollar, full-body Swedish massage chair with a puked-up Mojito, but Aislin is convinced the tide turned when she suggested a cure for my mother’s chronic headaches. I gather that the phrase “get some” may have been employed.

“Derek, see if Solo has my daughter’s phone.” A tech scurries away, and moments later Solo appears, carrying a plastic bag.

“Someone turned in your cell,” he says. “Also your sketchbook. It’s a little muddy. Nothing too major, though.”

“Thanks,” I say in a dry croak. I sound like my great-grandmother after her nightly Marlboro menthol.

“I’ll take that,” my mother says, but for some reason, Solo refuses to let go of my sketchbook. She yanks and it falls to the floor.

When Solo retrieves the pad, it’s open to a sketch I’ve been working on for several weeks for Life Drawing. We’re supposed to draw a person, either from memory or from our imagination, without referring to a model or a photo.

Easy, I thought.

Turns out: not so easy.

Solo stares at the drawing. It started out as a guy’s face in profile. Not a memory, just something that came to me. Mostly it’s just lines, angles, planes. A preschool Picasso.

It’s deeply lame.

Solo takes it in, meets my eyes.

“Interesting,” my mother says without looking. She plucks the sketchbook away from Solo, snaps it shut and hands it to an assistant.

My mother doesn’t like art, mine or anybody else’s, probably because my dad was an artist. “Austin was a failed sculptor,” she’s fond of saying – she always pauses a beat here, raising a professionally waxed brow – “but he was an accomplished failure.”

“So you’re an artist,” Solo says.

“She’s a patient,” my mother answers, “and she needs to rest.”

“Right.” Solo starts to hand her my phone.

“No,” I say quickly. “Would you check for messages first? The password’s 0123.”

“Impenetrable.” Solo scans my mail. “Aislin wants to know WTF are you dead or what OMG please please please call.”

“Didn’t you call her?” I ask my mother. “She must be so –”

“I’ve been a little busy, dear,” my mother says crisply. “I’ll have someone give her a call, let her know you’re all right.”

I can tell she’s planning to forget to remember. “Would you do it?” I ask Solo. I don’t know why him exactly, except that he’s still holding my phone.

“Sure. No problem.”

He taps the screen. “Got it. Don’t worry. I have a photographic memory.”

“Really?” I ask vaguely. Suddenly I am incredibly weary.

“Just for things that matter,” Solo replies.

His gaze lingers on my leg, then moves on to my middle. I am not sure if he’s staring at my flattened arm or my boobs (also pretty flat), but either way, I’m not dressed for company.

He meets my eyes for just a moment. Then he hands my mother my cell and makes his way past my bedside fan club.

7

I WAKE UP hours later, clawing my way out of the Vicodin haze. It’s dark, but my room is lit with soft yellow light. If I squint just right, I could be in a romantic restaurant. On a really bad date.

The first thing I see is Solo, looking with intense focus at the iPad they use in lieu of an old-fashioned clipboard medical chart. It’s not the concentration of someone trying to make sense of something he doesn’t understand. It’s the concentration of a guy confirming something he already suspected.

He hears me moving. The iPad is back in the slot at the foot of my bed and he’s smiling at me. Covering up. Looking innocent.

I think: Strange boy I really don ’t know, don ’t you realize nothing is more suspicious than an innocent look ?

Before I can say anything, Solo slips out the door. Seconds later, a nurse arrives. I haven’t seen her before, so I figure she must be part of the evening shift.

I close my eyes, pretending to sleep. I’m not in the mood to chat.

She checks the bandage on my leg. It’s one hell of a bandage. Gently she begins to cut away the tape and gauze and pressure mesh. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t make me happy, either.

“Oh my God!” she says.

She has laid the flesh bare and her first thought is to call up a deity.

I risk a slit eye to see what horror she’s witnessed.

She’s not looking at my face. She’s staring down at my leg. And she’s not horrified, exactly.

She’s amazed. She’s moved. She’s seeing something she never expected to see and can’t quite believe is real.

I’m afraid to look, because I know that something must be very wrong.

Or, just possibly, very right.

8

SOLO

THE SPIKER COMPLEX has an amazing gym. Everyone is constantly nagged to stay in shape. I don’t need to be nagged and I don’t need to be coached. I need to be left alone.

I run on the inside track. I run barefoot, I prefer it. The soles of my feet make a different sound, nothing like those three-hundred-dollar running shoes, groaning as all that shock-absorbing rubber takes the impact. My feet are almost silent.

I run and then I hit the weights, the crunches, all that. I like weights – they’re specific. There’s no bull in weightlifting, you either get that seventy pound dumbbell up to your chest or you don’t. Yes or no, no kind-of.

After weights I go into the dark, smelly side room where the speedballs and heavy bags are. The rest of the massive gym complex is spotless and bright and gazed-down-upon by screens.

The boxing room – well, there’s just something seedy about the sport that comes through, even if the designer you hired insisted on a lovely shade of teal for the ring ropes.

Pete’s there, all ready to go.

Sometimes I go rounds with Pete. Pete’s older than me, maybe twenty-five. I’ve never asked. But he’s one of the geeks so we tend to get along well. We speak geek, or we would if we didn’t have slobbery mouthpieces in and weren’t beating on each other.

Pete’s not as quick as I am, and he looks softer and spongier than I do. But damn, when he connects you know you’ve been hit. You know it and you have to acknowledge it as your brain spins inside its bone cradle trying to reconnect all the switches.

I kind of love it.

You take a hard one to the side of your head, a shot that makes you feel as if you aren’t wearing sparring headgear at all, one that rings the bells in your ear, and then you come back from it, still swinging? To me that’s one of life’s finest moments.

Hit me. No, I mean hit me hard. Turn my knees to overcooked linguine.

And I take it and come back with a combination? Prodigious.

I’m done and covered in sweat. From the hair on my head down to my feet: wet, shiny, panting, grinning, wondering if I’m going to get feeling back in the left side of my face.

“Wimp,” Pete says.

“Weakling,” I respond.

“I don’t feel right beating up on a little girl.”

“Don’t feel bad, Pete. Keep at it and you may learn to throw a punch that actually connects some day.”

With our ritual abuse concluded, we make an appointment for the day after tomorrow. Pete heads for the gym’s showers, I head for my quarters.

My quarters, my place, my space. It’s on Level Four, where Spiker maintains rooms for visiting scientists and dignitaries. Some of those rooms are amazing. My quarters do not justify the word “amazing”, but they aren’t bad.

In any case, this place is a major improvement on the boarding school in Montana that Terra shipped me off to after my parents died. Some kind of tough love dude ranch high school for troubled kids called Distant Drummer Academy. I wasn’t troubled – unless you count being orphaned overnight – and I wasn’t in high school, but Terra provided them with a nice diagnosis of severe ODD. And a hefty donation.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder? Yeah, I can do that.

I lasted eight days.

After they kicked me out, Terra gave me two options: I could live at her place, or I could live at Spiker.

We both knew which one I’d choose.

I have a single room, but it’s big enough for a queen-sized bed and a sofa, TV, desk, beanbag chair, and mini kitchen. Except for the two framed photos on my desk, it’s as sterile as a hotel room. I like it that way.

I barely notice the photos any more. There’s one of my parents at a podium, my mom in a shimmering green evening gown, my dad in a tux. They’re accepting an award, flashing smiles. And there’s one of me and my mom reading a book together. We’re in some kind of waiting room, sitting on orange vinyl chairs. I don’t remember where it was, or why we were there.

But then, I don’t remember much of anything.

Next to the mini kitchen is a small bathroom. That’s where I strip down, soap up and shower off.

That’s where I start thinking about the girl.

Like I don’t know her name: the girl. Please, Solo. I know her name. Evening. E.V. to her friends.

Eve.

There’s a problem with that name, Eve. You say “Eve” and you think Garden of Eden, and then you think of Eve and Adam, naked but tastefully concealed by strategic shrubbery.

Except at this particular moment, my brain is not generating shrubbery.

The girl had her leg chopped off. She just got out of surgery. So I add shrubbery.

And yet the shrubbery doesn’t stay put. It’s moving shrubbery. It’s disappearing shrubbery.

I step back under the twin shower heads and blast myself with hot water. Maybe I should make it cold water. But I don’t want to.

“That’s the problem with you, dude,” I say, speaking to myself. “You suck at doing things you don’t want to do.”

I don’t feel bad speaking to myself.

Who else have I got?

Solo isn’t just a name, it’s a description. I have no actual friends. I have some online ones, but that’s not quite the same.

I’ve never had a girlfriend.

When I touched Eve, she was the first girl I’d touched since coming here to live six years ago. Unless you count female scientists and techs and office workers I’ve accidentally brushed in the hallways.

Sometimes I do count those. It’s a normal human behavior to count whatever you have to count.

“Back up, man,” I tell myself softly. “She’s a Spiker. She’s one of the enemy.”

The microphones won’t pick up what I say with the shower running. I know these things. Even though I’m not supposed to. For six years I’ve lived and breathed this place. I know it. I know it all.

And I know what I’m going to do with it.

As soon as Eve is gone.

9

EVE

THREE LITTLE DAYS, but oh my God, can they be long.

Time is relative. An hour spent watching paint dry is much longer than an hour getting a massage.

Which is exactly what I’m doing. Getting a massage from Luna, the massage therapist.

Luna doesn’t touch The Leg.

In my head, The Leg is capitalized because The Leg is what my whole life seems to be about now. Every single person I’ve seen in the past few days asks me about The Leg.

How is it?

How’s The Leg?

The Leg is attached. Thanks for asking. There’s The Leg right there. It’s on display, always outside of the sheets and blanket, although the whole thing is still so wrapped up it looks like I borrowed The Leg from some ancient Egyptian mummy.

How’s The Leg?

It seems a bit mummyish, thanks.

I had a dream where The Leg was no longer attached. Not a happy dream, that. It scared me. I try to be glib and tough and all SEAL Team Six about it, but in all desperate seriousness: I was scared.

“I need Aislin,” I say to my mother.

“Aislin is a drunken slut,” she replies, without looking up from her laptop.

This is diplomatic for her.

I decide to change the subject. “What are you working on?”

With effort, she pulls her gaze from the screen.“Fluff. A vanity project for one of the biochems.”

“Fluff ?”

“Educational software. Project 88715.”

“Catchy. The kids’ll eat that up.”

“Mm-hmm.” She returns to her screen.

“Aislin is not a slut,” I say. I don’t deny the drunken part. “She’s been in a steady relationship for months. Anyway, she’s my friend. I miss her.”

“Talk to the masseuse,” my mother says. She glares at Luna. “Who are you? Talk to my daughter.”

I feel the tremor go through Luna. Luna is probably fifty years old, a very nice Haitian woman. I like Luna. She doesn’t hurt me as much as the various other physical therapists.

Luna has six kids. Two are in college and one is a real estate broker in San Rafael.

Number of things I have in common with Luna? Zero.

“I want my friends,” I say.

“Pfff. Friends, plural?” my mother asks. “Since when do you have friends, plural? You have one friend and she’s a drunken slut.”

“I’m lonely. There aren’t even any other patients. The only one around who’s my age is Solo.”

“You haven’t talked to him, have you?” my mother asks, feigning a casual tone. Casual, like warm and fuzzy, is not part of her emotional repertoire.

“No,” I lie, wondering why she cares.

Actually, I’ve seen him every day since my arrival, passing by my room with studied indifference. He only spoke once, to tell me that he called Aislin and told her not to worry about me.

His eyes are disturbingly blue.

Against my better judgment I ask, “Who is Solo, anyway? And why is he here?”

My mother ignores me. She has different Ignore settings, and this one means she’s hiding something. She thinks she is inscrutable, and maybe she is, to her minions, but I’ve had seventeen years to deconstruct her poker face.

Before I can press her to answer, Dr Anderson strides purposefully into the room. He always strides purposefully, although he doesn’t seem to have much purpose, what with me being his sole patient.

“How’s The Leg?” he asks.

“The Leg is bored,” I answer. “The Leg wants to know why it can’t go home and recover.”

“You’ve been here three days, Evening! Are you insane?” my mother cries.

“I should leave,” Luna says meekly, half-question, half-hope.

“Stay,” my mother commands. “Calm her down.”

“I don’t need to be calmed down. I need Aislin. I need something to do.”

“You have to take this slowly, Evening,” Dr Anderson intones. He has perfect teeth and the graying temples of a Just For Men model. “This kind of recovery is measured in months, not days.”

“I’m missing the end of the school year.” I am starting to feel quite sorry for myself. “I have homework, tests. Oh crap, my Bio exam is Tuesday! And my Life Drawing project is half my semester grade.”

“You can’t draw,” my mother says. “Your fingers are crushed. Your arm’s a mess.” She pauses, mentally thumbing through her What Mothers Are Supposed To Know file. “She is right-handed, isn’t she?” she asks Dr Anderson.

He nods discreetly.

“At least can I have my laptop? I can type with my left hand.”

My mother glances at her own laptop.

She is having an inspiration. You can practically see the giant light bulb throbbing over her head.“Evening, I have just the project for you! Something to keep you thoroughly occupied.”

“I don’t want a project. I want to spend a couple of hours with Aislin. I want you to send a car for her and bring her here.”

Luna has moved to my lower back, and seriously, my desire to fight with my mother – even if it is a respite from boredom – is diminishing with each deep, healing stroke.

“It involves genetics.” My mother sets aside her computer and comes to my bedside. “You love genetics. I would even pay you to do it.”

“Pay me?”

“Why not? I’d have to pay someone else to test it. What do you want? A hundred dollars? A thousand?”

My mother, ladies and gentlemen: one of America’s pre-eminent businesswomen. Not a clue as to what a dollar is.

“I want ten thousand dollars,” I say.

Dr Anderson nods his approval.

“Is that a good number?” my mother asks. She turns the question over to Luna. “Is that a good number?”

“Ma’am, I don’t –”

“Whatever,” my mother snaps. She makes a brusque gesture with her hand. “The point is, I have something that will keep you busy.”

“Aislin will keep me busy. That’s my price: Aislin. You can keep the money.”

She taps her freshly tended nails. French manicures, twice a week. Five tiny crescent moons dance on my bed rail.

She sighs.

Dr Anderson examines a smudge on his stethoscope.

“One visit,” my mother says at last. “I’ll have security search her. If she has any drugs or booze on her, I’ll confiscate them and have security rough her up.”

I assume that’s bluster.

Then I look at her again, at my mother, and I’m not so sure it is. This is a woman with a multi-billion dollar company. This building is big enough to house what amounts to a small hospital among many, many other things.

Can my mother actually have people beaten up?

Maybe. Maybe she can.

She smiles to show she doesn’t mean it. The smile convinces me that she can.

“So what’s the project? You want me to wash some test tubes?”

“No, that’s why we have people like Solo,” she says. “You’re a Spiker.”

I feel a twinge of sympathy for Solo. I’d been assuming he’s some kind of wunderkind, and here she’s talking about him as if he were a janitor.

People like . . .

Quite a bit of condescension locked up in those two words.

“This will be a wonderful introduction to the kind of thinking and creativity we require at Spiker,” my mother says. “It’ll challenge you, sweetheart. Bring out the talent I know you have hidden deep, deep down inside you.” She’s getting excited now. The lines in her forehead seem to smooth, her eyes gaze with a certain wild excitement at the horizon.

She pauses, waiting to be sure she has my undivided attention.

“I want you, Evening, to design the perfect boy.”

Luna stops rubbing.

“Am I doing this with crayons? Or will I be working with Play-Doh?”

My mother smiles tolerantly. “Oh, I think we can do a little better than that. You can start tomorrow morning. If you do it, I’ll have your little friend here tomorrow afternoon.”

“I think Aislin has her dance class on –”

“Evening. When I send for people, they come.”

10

“THIS IS WHERE you’ll be working. Playing.”

My mother hesitates, frowns, realizes she’s frowning and that frowning causes lines, and unfrowns. “Play, work, call it whatever you like.”

“So long as I do it.”

“Exactly.”

Solo is pushing my wheelchair while my mother leads the way. At the last minute, the orderly who was supposed to be assisting us this morning had an attack of stomach pains. His back-up couldn’t be located.

It crosses my mind, just for a nanosecond, that Solo might have arranged to be here with me. Maybe he’s as desperate for company as I am.

Solo pushes my wheelchair into a horseshoe-shaped work station. It’s an amazing space with soaring ceilings and low-slung black leather furniture. There’s a huge ficus tree next to the desk. It’s strung with white twinkle lights, probably a remnant of the long-past holiday season. It’s oddly whimsical in the clean, minimalist setting.

I don’t have time to admire the decor, though, because I’m too busy gaping at the twenty-foot-tall, floor-to-ceiling monitor. I’ve never seen a screen so big. Movie theater big.

A strand of DNA is displayed on the monitor. This is not just some run-of-the-mill textbook image. And it’s definitely nothing like the primitive double helix model I made in sixth grade out of styrofoam balls and toothpicks. (My mother’s assessment: “What are we, Amish?”)

This thing . . . this thing is pulsating with energy. It’s alive.

“That’s the project,” my mother says. “That’s 88715.”

“It’s real,” I murmur.

“No, just a simulation. You can see the DNA, you can see entire chromosomes, you can pull out further –” She demonstrates by tracing a finger across the touchscreen that is set at wheelchair level. The image on the wall zooms out. “Now you see a chromosome. Out further, it’s a cell.”

Solo locks my chair wheel and grabs a chair. He yawns. Clearly, he’s not as mesmerized as I am.

“The best part is that you can use any number of different interfaces.” Tap, tap, drag. “This one’s made of Lego blocks, for younger kids. See how there’s a Lego representation of the DNA?”

My mother’s in the zone, her voice animated. She gets like this when she’s excited about an idea. And this little project – this “fluff ” – is nothing compared to her real work, the work she’s overseen on new drug therapies. When she’s laboring on something she’s excited about, she’ll move into Spiker’s lab for days, even weeks, at a time. More than once, she’s come home with her mascara smudged, her nails bitten to the quick, her eyes bleary.

Usually, it’s because her team has failed. But sometimes, and there are just enough of those times, it’s because they’ve succeeded.

“You can add or subtract blocks,” my mother continues. “Hover over and you see what each does. Or –” tap, drag, tap – “you can picture each element as a colored blob or as a tile in a mosaic. But either way you can run forward and see the effect.”

“The effect on what?”

“On your person.”

“My what?”

“Your person.” She enunciates carefully. “Per. Son. The person you’re creating.”

I lean forward and The Leg shifts slightly. “You almost sound like you’re talking about a real human being.”

She blinks and brushes back an errant strand of hair. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it’s not real. That would be illegal. The fines would be astronomical. The government would probably shut us down. I might even go to jail. Me!”

“I didn’t –”

“No, no, no. This just provides students with an opportunity to learn how to . . .”

“To play God?” I supply.

She snaps her fingers. “Exactly. Exactly, exactly.” Deep sigh. “Exactly. We want to enable the average person, a person like . . . like him” – her eyes flit toward Solo – “to understand what makes humans . . . human.” She waves a dismissive hand and trails Bulgari.

“‘Like him’?” I repeat.

“You know what I mean: someone who’s not a scientist.”

“A mere mortal,” Solo suggests.

“Stupidity is relative,” my mother says, still addressing me. “And it’s also case-specific. Thomas, the scientist most directly responsible for this project, has an IQ of 169. He also has his entire body covered in ridiculous tattoos. He’s very smart at science. You, Evening, are very smart at school, particularly science, and very stupid at choosing your friends.”

“Oh, snap,” I say.

“What?”

“Sorry. I was flashing back to 2005.”

The corners of Solo’s mouth flirt with a smile.

“The point is, you get to play God.”

“Can I play Portal instead?”

“You play Portal?” Solo asks.

“I have,” I say cautiously. “Is it all right with you if a girl plays Portal?”

“A girl?” He’s puzzled.

“Yes, I am, in fact, a girl.”

“I noticed,” he says.

“No, you did not notice she’s a girl,” my mother snarls. “You noticed she’s my daughter.”

My mother favors Solo with a look that has reduced many a grown man and woman to sniveling terror. She is in full feral mode.

But Solo is not afraid.

Oh, he pretends to be intimidated, but it’s an act. I see it as plain as day. He’s not intimidated at all. In fact, within his playacting there’s something else deeper going on.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says.

Oh my God. He hates her.

This startles me. I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing in those eyes. He actually hates her.

I mean, I hate my mother, too, sometimes. But I’m her daughter. I’m supposed to.

And there are moments, like right now, when I actually kind of love her. At least, I love the way she loves her work. Whatever’s going on inside Solo’s head, he hides it quickly. He slides his gaze to the side, away from her, and when he looks up his eyes are as distant and unknowable as a starless sky.

He has really nice lashes. Better than mine.

I look for something to do. I reach my hand toward the touch screen. Objects on the wall screen move.

“So I make a human,” I say. “Is this just about how they look?”

“No, no, that would be a paint-by-numbers set.” My mother smiles, but not at me. She’s smiling at the computer-generated image. “No, if you’re playing God, a lot of the fun is in building the brain. The mind.”

She takes a step away. Her hands came up to form a sort of basket of fingers. It’s one of her gestures. She uses it when lecturing her underlings.

“We are at a turning point in the evolution of the human species,” she says, surveying, with slightly crazy eyes, an imaginary audience. “Evolution has blindly felt its way forward. Now we, the product of evolution, are taking the reins. We are taking the wheel.”

“Is it the reins or the wheel?” I ask perkily, but she hears nothing.

“We will soon have the ability to design and create the new human. Evolution still, but guided evolution.”

There is a long pause. I am not entirely sure if she expects us to applaud.

“Of course,” she adds, coming down off her high, “only in computer simulation.”

I don’t know where she was headed with her lecture. But I am definitely sure that this project sounds interesting. The touch screen calls to me. Suddenly I’m wishing everyone would go away and let me play.

“I think I’ll . . . you know. Just mess around with the program a little,” I say.

My mother is pleased. Solo is . . . well, I can’t exactly tell.

Ten minutes pass. I look up and I’m alone.

I didn’t even notice them leave.

I stare at my first choice. The choice I have to make before I get into the details of playing God: male or female?

I consider the looming monitor.

Here’s the thing: I am not beautiful.

I’m pretty. I’ll allow that much. Pretty.

But I’m not the girl boys long for.

Cheerleader? No. Prom queen? No. Voted most likely to get a modeling contract? No.

It’s not like I’ve spent my life beating the boys back with a flaming torch.

So. Am I “creating” a male or a female?

Worse yet . . . no, maybe it’s better yet . . . I’m picky. Not so much about looks, although even there I’m kind of picky. It’s more that I can’t pretend some guy is interesting when he’s not. If he’s immature, I’ll tell him. Within five minutes of knowing him. If he looks ridiculous dressed up like some wanna-be, I’ll probably say that, too, or more likely just steer clear of him.

When you’re at a high school, looking around at the boys, and you subtract all the ones who are looking for Ms Perfect, and subtract all the childish, ludicrous, boring, mean or sex-obsessed ones, there aren’t that many left.

It’s not that I think I’m some kind of prize.

No, wait, that’s not true. I do think I’m some kind of prize. I’m smart and occasionally funny and I’m pretty. I don’t see why I should spend long dates with some guy who expresses himself in single syllables and wants to go to slasher movies.

Which does not answer the question: male or female?

I also don’t understand why I should let some guy fondle me when I know the relationship has no future. I don’t need to be groped that badly.

So I’ve been on exactly three dates. The first when I was fourteen. The most recent two years ago.

A guy tried to kiss me once. I didn’t let him.

I live that part of my life vicariously through Aislin.

I hear her stories. And I admit I’m fascinated most of the time. Sometimes kind of appalled. And then fascinated again. I wonder what it would be like to be her. To be that . . . experimental. To be that “What the hell?”. To actually have detailed, well-informed opinions on questions having to do with kissing. Or whatever.

I have no opinion on chest hair versus no chest hair. Aislin could write a treatise on that alone.

So. Who do I want to create with my new simulated god-like powers?

Male or female?

I sigh. I squirm in my wheelchair.

Who am I kidding?

Male.

11

SOLO

I CAN’T GET into Eve’s file on Project 88715 yet. It’s encrypted.

She just finished up a half hour ago, but I’ve already checked out the surveillance video. I can watch her face as she stares intently at the screen. I can even see myself, staring intently at . . . her. And Terra, being her predictably insane self, raving on about world domination.

I’ve been able to access – and edit – this kind of file for a couple of years now. I don’t edit out the merely embarrassing, I make the minimal edits to conceal the degree to which I have penetrated security.

It bugs me that I can’t get into Eve’s working file. It’s that new security protocol. A lot of the newer stuff is beyond my reach. But I have enough to bring the Food and Drug Administration down like a hurricane on this place.

Soon I may have enough to bring the FBI.

Do I want Terra Spiker to go to prison? The question makes me a little uncomfortable. She has sure as hell broken the law. Many laws.

It’s time for school. It’s Saturday, but I slacked off all week and I need to catch up. It won’t take long, it never does. I click on the window for the online high school. I replaced the generic logo of the school with a picture of a guy sleeping. Which I guess says what I feel about it.

On my screen I get a video feed of a lecture on the Manhattan Project. Ancient history about the first atomic bomb.

The reading for this unit is on the right side of the screen in a window. There are numerous links in the text that open audio or video or text.

The lecturer drones into my headphones. I click on a link that shows a loop of an atomic bomb exploding.

A request for chat pops up. It’s a kid I know online. He, she or it goes by the name FerryRat7734.

FerryRat7734: What’s vertical?

SnakePlissken: You could just say, “What’s up?”

I don’t know if FerryRat actually meant to write FurryRat. I don’t ask questions of people I meet online. I figure they have a right to be whoever or whatever they want to be.

My online name is SnakePlissken. There’s a reason for that. It’s the only character I’ve ever come across who shares my last name. Plissken. Google just the word “Plissken” and that’s who you come up with. I don’t appear in Google. I am invisible. That’s deliberate.

FerryRat7734: Is it just me or are they teaching us how to make an atomic bomb?

SnakePlissken: The science is easy enough. The engineering’s a bitch.

FerryRat7734: So can you do me a favor? Send me your notes on the next week’s lectures?

SnakePlissken: You going on vacay?

FerryRat7734: I wish. I have a procedure.

I sit back. The teacher is droning on. A second dialog box opens up with someone saying, “How do you spell Openhimer?” I should answer that question, not ask FerryRat one of my own. I can sense I’m opening a can of worms. But how do you not follow up on something like that?

SnakePlissken: What procedure?

FerryRat7734: You don’t want to know. Trust me.

I say that’s not true, although it is. And I repeat the question.

Lung transplant. FerryRat has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease. Lung transplant is the final, desperation move.

SnakePlissken: F–.

FerryRat7734: Exactly. So take notes, okay? I’m not dead yet.

SnakePlissken: Will do.

What else am I going to say? Someone tells you they’re dying what do you say? You say yes, I’ll take notes.

It dawns on me for the first time that a lot of these online students that I know only by their handles, only from pop-up chat boxes, may be sick in one way or another.

It embarrasses me that I’ve never even considered this before.

“Slightly self-absorbed are you, Solo?” I mutter.

I sit through the rest of the lecture and then the natural history lesson after that.

Then I have work. Today I’m helping to prep visitors’ suites for a conference. We have those about once a month. A bunch of Big Brains and Even Bigger Bucks fly in and we wine and dine and lecture them about the wonders of biotech and what a great investment Spiker is.

I’m distributing cut flowers to the rooms, checking the mini-bars, that kind of thing. Then I’ve got to fill in for the coffee cart guy for a few hours while he attends a wedding in Monterey.

I don’t have to do this kind of work. Terra would let me stay here, keep a low profile, whatever. But the grunt work gives me access, and access is what I’m after.

When I’m done, I get into the system, mask my identity, and start looking around for cystic fibrosis. Because as full of crap as Terra might be, and as much of a criminal as she might be, Spiker does do some amazing work.

There are lots of hits for CF. The company has done some research on it. But all files have been moved. They’ve all been transferred to Project 88715.

I Google “genetic diseases” and get a list.

Back to the Spiker database. I search for hemophilia. Many files. It seems we may be close to a gene-based cure. Transferred to Project 88715.

Neurofibromatosis. Ditto.

Sickle cell disease. Ditto.

Tay-Sachs disease. Ditto.

Not every genetic disease, but a lot. Too many for it to be some kind of fluke. Half a dozen major genetic diseases that Spiker has worked on have been suddenly transferred to Project 88715.

Why transfer all this info about genetic diseases to some ridiculous classroom software project?

I know the budget for all of Project 88715 is 12 million dollars. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not a lot of money at Spiker. At Spiker, anything under a billion is loose change.

I pull up the log entries – the brief descriptions – for CF and hemophilia and the rest. Rough addition in my head: the total budget is over twenty-eight billion dollars.

Billion. With a “B”.

Twenty-eight billion dollars’ worth is suddenly under the aegis of a 12 million dollar project?

That’s like saying your local grocery store chain will be managed by the kids selling lemonade on the street corner.

Terra Spiker’s up to something. I don’t know exactly what yet.

But I will find out.

12

EVE

“MMMMM. CAVIAR,” AISLIN says.

It’s one of her phrases.

It’s late afternoon, and Solo has just entered my room. He’s holding Aislin’s shoulder bag.

Aislin has no self-editing function. She is incapable of ever not saying what she’s thinking.

“I’m sorry?” Solo says.

“It’s expensive. It’s . . . delicious. And I could eat it with a spoon.” She’s employing her purring, hair-tossing, flank-stroking voice, one that brings an alarmed expression to Solo’s face. He’s probably not used to girls like Aislin.

Come to think of it, almost no one is used to girls like Aislin because there’s only one Aislin.

God, I’ve missed her.

“Leave him alone, Aislin,” I say mildly.

What can I say? I like the girl. She’s the polar opposite of me.

“Oh, is he yours, E.V.?” Aislin asks innocently. She’s about six inches away from Solo. “Can I at least have . . . the leftovers?”

Aislin is tall, taller than I am, and I’m not short. She’s wearing shorts which, if they were any shorter, would qualify as the bottom of a bathing suit, and she has about a mile of leg. Her T-shirt might as well be spray paint. She has sleek, short, stylish copper hair and eyes that slant up, giving her an exotic, feline look.

And breasts. Which she deploys with absolutely cynical yet devastating effect.

I love myself and my body and I’m proud of being who I am blah blah blah. But there are times when I would give a lot to have Aislin’s body and her boldness.

She knows no fear, Aislin.

No, that’s not true. She shows no fear.

“Your bag,” Solo says, leaning back with eyes wide. “It’s uh . . . security . . . you know.” He shoots a panicky look at me.

I shrug. I’m not rescuing you, dude. I look down to conceal an anticipatory grin because I know what’s coming.

Aislin takes the bag from Solo, but before he can escape, she clamps a hand on his wrist. She opens the bag and examines its contents. “So I guess they took my flask.”

“They said something about your personal property being returned when you leave.”

Good boy, Solo: a complete sentence.

“Wait!” Aislin says. She reaches into the bag and then, yes, draws out a long string of condoms. “At least,” she says, “they didn’t take anything I really . . . need.”

A slightly strangled sound comes from Solo. He backs out of the room, smirking but clearly thrown.

Aislin laughs, delighted. She perches on the edge of my bed and I say, “You are such a bitch.”

“I know, aren’t I?”

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.” I sigh. “I miss everything. I miss homework. I miss the very special stench that is the girls’ locker room.”

“You are such a nerd. School’s over in a few days, anyway. They’ll let you make it all up in the fall.” Aislin pats The Leg. “Oh, crap, sorry! Did I hurt you?”

“No, actually. The pain pills work really well.”

“Don’t suppose you have any extra you feel like sharing?”

I breathe in deeply. “How’s Maddox?”

“Who?” she asks. “I’m sorry, that name slipped right out of my brain when I saw Mr Scruffy McMuscles.”

“His name is Solo.”

She grinned a huge, lascivious grin. “Why, of course it is. But he could be in a duo without too much trouble.” She switches on her serious face. “Maddox is out on bail. If he doesn’t screw up again they’ll probably let him go with community service.”

“If,” I say.

I know it’s wrong, but Aislin’s troubles are almost reassuring to me, they’re such a regular feature of our lives.

I first met Aislin in sixth grade. My dad had died over the summer, and she provided much-needed distraction. Even then, she was the glamorous fashionista, and at a point where I was still four years away from noticing that boys existed as something different and apart and interesting, Aislin was already charming them like a cobra mesmerizing prey.

She was also the only one who could make me laugh that horrible year.

“You know Maddox,” Aislin said. She looks down and away, her patented move to ensure I don’t know how much something is bothering her.

When he goes off to prison – and he will, someday – Aislin will probably wait for him. Her loyalty is fierce.

I love her.

“So what are you doing in here for fun?” she asks.

“Help me get into my wheelchair and I’ll show you,” I say.

It takes a while, but we manage to haul my giant leg and bruised body into my wheelchair.

Except, now that I think about it, am I bruised any more?

“Push me over to the mirror,” I say.

It’s a floor-to-ceiling mirror, gilt-framed.

I brace for the worst. I saw myself early on, a reflection in a piece of shiny equipment: it was not good. I had huge raccoon eyes, my nose was red, and there were two visible bumps on my forehead, one of which was about the size of an egg yolk.

Since then, I’ve been avoiding mirrors.

I stare at my reflected image in disbelief.

I’m me.

“Huh,” I say. Where are my bruises? My egg yolk? “Push me closer.”

“It’s kind of hard to believe you almost died,” Aislin says. “It’s only been, like, a few days.”

“It’s nuts,” I say. “I mean, my eyes were all . . .” I wave my hand around my face. “I looked like I’d been hit by a train. With good reason. I shouldn’t be this . . .”

Aislin shrugs. “Yeah, but this isn’t a regular hospital, right?”

“No, you’re right, it isn’t,” I say. “My mother was completely freaked about getting me out of San Fran and into this place. I guess she was on to something.”

While I contemplate my reflection, Aislin pokes around the room. “Giant flat-screen, nice sound system. Maybe I should get run over.”

“I had stitches here,” I murmur, peeling back a strip of surgical tape. “Right here on my cheek. Now there’s nothing.”

“Lucky,” Aislin says. “Would’ve been hard to cover with make-up.” She slides open my closet doors. “Whoa. Primo robes. Can I steal one?”

I glance at the closet. My sketchbook is on the top shelf, barely visible. “Hey, can you get that down for me? My mother probably had someone stash it there.”

“Have I mentioned that your mother’s an ice-cold bitch?”

“I believe you may have mentioned that in passing, yes.” I hold up my cell phone. “At least she finally let me have my phone back. Charged and everything.”

Aislin stands on tiptoe and retrieves the sketchbook. She browses through the pages, holds one up for me to see.

“I love this guy. You’ve been working on him forever.”

“He’s a cartoon. He has no depth. No soul.”

“Screw depth.”

“I can’t get the eyes right.”

“Hmm. Maybe. But he’s got great lips.” She taps her chin with her index finger. “You know, he reminds me a little of what’s-his-name. So-hot.”

“Solo.”

“Needs a body, though. Your drawing, I mean. So-hot’s doing just fine in that department.” She smirks. “If you need suggestions, I can help you finish him. If you know what I mean.”

I ignore her. “Must be genetic. My dad never could do faces, either.”

“But he was a sculptor.”

“Sculpting, drawing. Same problems.” I stare out the window at the undulating hills wreathed in fog. “I remember once he tried to draw my mother. He was using oil pastels, I think. He gave up after a couple tries.”

“Must’ve been tough, capturing Satan on canvas.” Aislin places the sketchbook on my bedside table. “Hey, can you draw, anyway? With your arm all mummied up like that?”

“Nah.” I consider my crushed hand. “Although the way things are going, who knows?”

“So where’s the mini-bar?”

“There’s a fridge in that cabinet with sodas in it.”

Aislin pulls a flask from the back waistband of her shorts. Naturally, security only found the one in her purse: who carries more than one?

She takes a swig and holds the flask out to me. “Cough syrup?”

“You mean vodka?” I ask. I don’t want to show disapproval, I really don’t, because it bothers her when I do and it creates a barrier between us.

“Lemon vodka, cough syrup, who can tell the difference, really?” Aislin asks.

“Tempting,” I say. “But, no.”

“You’re on meds.”

“Plus I don’t really drink.”

“You’ve had beer.”

“Don’t get caught or my mother will ban you. And listen to me, Aislin: I’m all alone in here. I need you.”

She acts tough. But she gets tears in her eyes and gives me a hug. “Don’t worry, no one will keep me away from you,” she says. “Now, let’s go find Mr Bashful. I’ll tell him you like him.”

“I will kill you if you say any such thing!”

“Yeah, right: you’re in a wheelchair. You’re not that scary.”

“There’s something else I want to show you first.”

Aislin steers me toward the door. “What is it?”

“I’m making my own male.”

She frowns. “Mail, like e-mail?”

“Male, like m-a-l-e.”

“You have my full attention, girl.”

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