Your One & Only(11)

“Are they letting you Declare, monkey-boy?” Carson said, bumping the guitar against his hand. “What are you Declaring as, town freak?”

“I’m Declaring as a teacher,” Jack said, his gaze flicking from Carson to the guitar.

Carson pulled at one of the strings. It gave a sharp twang. “What’s that got to do with this thing? I mean, does it do something?”

“Give it back, and I’ll show you.”

“Why, so you can attack me with it? We all know you’re violent. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

Carson tilted his head, that cool grin widening. In the corner of his eye, Jack saw Sam stand from his seat, but the man didn’t move forward or speak.

Jack shook his head. He was clearly the stupid one, insulting a Carson in front of everybody. Why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut?

“Listen,” he said, taking a breath, his voice low. “It’s nothing. It plays music, that’s all. Just . . . give it back, okay?”

“Okay,” Carson said. “Come get it.”

The onlookers murmured when Jack reached for the guitar and Carson brusquely pulled it away.

He drew Jack close, and Jack felt the other boy’s breath as he snarled, “You want to hit me, don’t you?”

Jack pressed his lips together, stifling the desire to do just that. It was exactly what Carson wanted, for Jack to lose control in front of everyone.

“It’s okay,” Carson said, pushing Jack back and suddenly feigning friendliness. “I’ll give it back, for real this time. But listen, tell me what it’s called first.”

“Why?”

“Don’t be so suspicious. I really want to know.”

“It’s a guitar,” Jack said curtly. “It’s called a guitar.”

Jack watched Carson while, as if in slow motion, he dropped the guitar on the ground at Jack’s feet.

“You shouldn’t have ruined our dance, monkey-boy. Say goodbye to your guitar.” And with that, Carson smashed his foot into the base of the instrument, splintering the wood into fragments. Jack yelled incoherently as Carson crushed the remnants with the heel of his shoe.

The Council was watching. Sam was watching. The Altheas’ brown eyes were on him, too. The Meis, the Hassans, all of them were watching now. None of that mattered as the anger exploded in Jack’s chest. He rushed at Carson. Immediately, two Viktors and a Hassan grabbed his arms. They must have been behind him the whole time, waiting for him to do exactly this. Before he had a chance to connect with Carson or even realize what was happening, he was on his back, the breath knocked out of him. They pinned his hands, then hauled him up again. His limbs shook with unreleased energy.

“Good job, teacher,” Carson said, his mouth twitching up. “I think we learned everything we need to know from you.”

One of the Viktors twisted Jack’s arm, steering him away from the snickering Carson and the stage.

“Sam!” Jack called into the crowd. “Sam, where are you?”

Jack searched across the Commons. Countless dark heads mingled in the crowd, at least twenty different Samuels, any of which could have been Sam. It was impossible to tell. Sam had abandoned him. Again.

The Viktors escorted him back to his room in the labs, locking the door behind them. The usual punishment for bad behavior.

Jack had grown a lot in the past two years. He was taller than the Viktors, taller in fact than all the models. He was stronger than them, too. There were times Jack would look at them and be struck by how delicate the clones were. Thin and narrow-chested. It didn’t matter, however. They controlled every situation, every move he made.

When Sam came by that night and unlocked the door, Jack wanted to scream at him, tackle him to the ground and hit him the way he’d wanted to hit Carson, hit him until that desolate expression left his face. Instead he said, “You left,” and hated the sorry plea in his voice. “You just left.”

Sam sat in a chair, crossing his ankle over his knee. Jack’s room in the labs was nothing like his room in the cottage. It was a small, sectioned-off corner of the building, with linoleum floors and white-tiled walls. It was as sterile as the larger sections, where banks of fluorescent lights swung over rows of marble-topped desks fitted with gas spigots and sinks. He had a narrow bed, a small chair and desk, and a doored-off bathroom. The lab workers could see him through the small window in the door that led out into the hall. They didn’t bother him much. He sometimes watched them working in the daytime, and then at night the bright lights were turned off, and everything was silent and dark.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said with a heavy sigh.

“They locked me in. You told me after last time they wouldn’t do that again.”

“Not everything is in my control.”

“You’re afraid of them. You’re afraid of the Council.”

“I’m on the Council. I have to consider the needs of the community. I can’t just worry about one boy.”

“What am I even doing here? I can’t figure out the point of your experiment. Why the hell was I born, Sam?”

“You have so much potential, Jack, but you certainly weren’t born so you could disrupt the entire community.”

Jack’s heart sank even as pinpricks of anger pierced him. “My mother, she used to call you my father.”