Your One & Only(23)

“You want something?” he said. “Or did you just come to stare?” He pressed his lips together, hating the resentment in his voice. Not well-socialized, he heard in his head.

“I . . .” She seemed at a loss for words. “I was talking to . . . my friend, Althea-310. She told me about you.”

“Yeah? I bet she had a lot of great things to say. Did she tell you how dangerous I am?”

“You are?” The Nyla’s eyes widened.

Jack shook his head, beyond exhausted by the way they all stared.

So the Althea had talked about him. What could she have possibly said? That he was an unfriendly brute who wasted his time on books that made her scream in revulsion?

Feeling like an idiot, he asked, “What’d she say?”

“She told me you were lonely.”

Cursing himself for asking the question, he shrugged his shoulders and made to turn away. He didn’t want their pity.

“I was also told you were smart, and could be funny and nice, and that you’re so angry all the time because you’re lonely. Is that true?”

Now she was making fun of him. He was supposed to believe Althea said all that?

“Did a Carson put you up to this?”

Her brow creased. “I haven’t talked to the Carsons.”

In a way, the Gen-310s were worse than the 290s and 280s. He never really knew why the older Gens did what they did with him, but he knew their day-to-day motives. They gave him tests to take—personality tests, intelligence tests, blood tests, and sometimes injections of medicines and drugs the nature of which they never explained. But the clones his age, they always seemed to be playing some game, and he was sick of not knowing the rules.

“So what, you thought you’d come over for tea?”

“No,” she said, her dark eyes blinking at him. “Not tea.” She closed the door behind her.

He backed away. “Okay.”

She approached him, smoothly confident. She circled his small space, her fingertips lightly tracing over his desk, his books, as she casually looked over the few things he owned.

“You don’t have very much,” she said.

“Listen, you shouldn’t be here.”

She peered at him over her shoulder, and her mouth softened into a smile. “So—are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Lonely.” She approached him with her hand raised, delicate and graceful, as if she was about to touch his face with the back of her fingers. A cup of pencils rattled on a shelf as he bumped against it.

“I don’t understand.” And then her fingers brushed his cheek. He swallowed as her touch slid down to the center of his chest. “What are you doing?”

She touched his lips with a fingertip, and her mouth formed into a shhh. With one hand, she picked up his, and with the other, she reached into the pocket of her robe. She withdrew a silver ribbon and draped it around his wrist and then over his palm and through his fingers, until it wrapped finally around the end of his thumb.

Jack knew what went on at the Pairing Ceremonies. He’d read about the customs in the Vispera histories and textbooks. And he’d read Sam’s books on physiology and psychology. He’d also read his own books, his human books, and those stories often dealt with things like romance, love, and sex. It was his books, not those of the clones, that told him what people did when they loved one another. Whatever he knew, his mind couldn’t form a coherent thought when she slipped the silver-gray robe from her shoulders and let it pool at her feet. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. He gave way until they lay back on the narrow bed.

As much as his books had tried, they’d failed utterly to prepare him for what this was. Her touch burned. Her lips inflamed every part of his body as they caressed his own. He felt like an electric current was running through his skin. Her softness and warmth was like sinking into a bottomless pool that made him want to sink farther, and when her warmth enveloped him completely, he finally understood what loneliness truly was and that he’d been drowning in it his whole life.



After, they lay side by side on the bed, and Jack ran his fingers along her brow. She touched his necklace, holding the bead so it faced the candle he’d lit. She ran her finger along the curve of the heart design.

“Why do you wear this?” she said, contemplating the bead. “I’ve never seen a boy wear a necklace.”

“Inga-296 made it.”

He’d seen the older Nylas in the lab every day for the past year, but he’d never noticed before how their black lashes sloped up at the corners of their eyes or how their petal-soft skin smelled of violets.

“They had a Binding Ceremony for her, didn’t they?”

“Yes. The bead is made from a cohune nut we found in the jungle after she ran away from Vispera. She carved it one of the nights we were gone. I’ve worn it ever since.”

Nyla’s nose wrinkled. “Why?”

Jack had never known a clone to be sad in the face of death. It would be hard for Nyla to understand why he wore the bead. The clones simply moved on as if each life were replaceable. But his mother wasn’t replaceable, and he wanted Nyla to understand.

“I don’t want to forget her, and the bead reminds me of her.”

Nyla thought about that for a moment. “Why would she run away from Vispera?”