Replica (Replica #1)(114)

“Why did you run?” Gemma asked, and for a second neither Lyra nor 72 spoke.

“It was Caelum’s idea . . . ,” Lyra said finally.

“Caelum?” Gemma twisted around in her seat and was shocked to see that 72 was actually smiling, staring out the window, as if the smear of highways contained the world’s best secret. She hadn’t seen him smile before—wouldn’t have even said he was capable of smiling—and she was shocked by the change. He’d gone instantly from brooding sociopath to budding Calvin Klein model.

“I named him,” Lyra said proudly. “Like Dr. O’Donnell named me.”

“I wasn’t sure I could trust you.” The boy now named Caelum turned away from the window to meet Lyra’s eyes. “I’m sorry.” She wondered whether the act of naming him had changed him on deeper levels, too. She couldn’t imagine this boy, the boy sitting politely in the backseat wearing a Seven-Up T-shirt, pulling a knife on them in a swamp.

“And I almost forgot.” Lyra unzipped a backpack Gemma knew she must have stolen from April’s grandparents’ guesthouse. “Before she died, Nurse Em gave three pieces of art to her next-door neighbor. I found these hidden in the backing.” She passed Lyra two printouts and one handwritten sheet of names. Gemma’s stomach turned over. Brandy-Nicole Harliss was the third name on the list, but there were forty-seven others. That might mean that all these names, all these children, had been taken from their parents or from foster homes when Haven was in danger of running out of funding, used as bodies before new bodies could be manufactured.

“Can I keep these?” Gemma asked, and Lyra shrugged, although she saw the expression of hunger there—it was the same way Lyra had stared at the bookshelves, like a starving person confronted with a feast. “I’ll give them back, I promise.” There was no point in delaying anymore: she had to tell Lyra about her father. She didn’t know why she felt so nervous. Lyra would probably be happy. She would be happy. She had a dad, which meant she probably had other family out there—cousins, aunts. “There’s something I need to tell you, Lyra. Something about your past.”

“Now?” Pete said. “Here?”

Gemma pivoted to look at him. “What’s the point in waiting?”

“What?” Lyra said. When Gemma turned around again, she noticed that Caelum and Lyra were holding hands. Or not holding hands, exactly—they were touching palm to palm as if they wanted to hold hands but didn’t quite know how to do it. “What is it?”

Gemma took a deep breath. The sun was bleeding red on the horizon. “You weren’t actually made at Haven.”

“What do you mean?” It was Caelum who spoke. There was an edge to his voice. Not anger, Gemma thought. Fear. “Where was she made?”

“Nowhere.” Gemma hadn’t realized how hard it would be to explain. “This list, and all the names on it? I’m pretty sure these are all kids who got taken from their families or from foster care and were brought to Haven, at a time the institute couldn’t afford to keep making human models.” Lyra was sitting there huge-eyed, white-faced, and Gemma had the sudden urge to apologize, to take it all back. But that was insane. Maybe she simply didn’t understand? “The third name, Brandy-Nicole Harliss. That was your birth name. Your real name. That was the name your parents gave you.”

“My . . .” Lyra inhaled whatever else she was going to say.

“You have parents,” Gemma said. She thought Lyra might cry, or laugh, or at the very least, smile. But she just kept staring, looking horrified, as if Gemma had opened up a coffin to show her a dead body. “Well, you have a father. He’s been looking for you all this time. He’s loved you all this time.”

Lyra cried out, as if she’d been hit. And Caelum, Gemma noticed, withdrew his hand from Lyra’s, and turned back to the window.


Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 16 of Lyra’s story.





SEVENTEEN


IT WAS TIME TO GO home. They had no options left. Gemma would have to confront her parents. Strangely, the idea no longer frightened her. She felt she’d aged years in the past few days. She felt only a vague pity when she thought of her father, and the secret he’d been carrying all these years, and the dead child they had refused to mourn. For her father and mother thinking they could buy their way out of tragedy.

She would go home, but on her terms: no more lies.

By eleven o’clock Pete could hardly stay awake at the wheel. They weren’t far from Savannah when they passed an RV park and campground, Gemma suggested they stop for the night. She didn’t mind spending one more night on the road. She knew that everything would change in the morning. She had an idea that her life would never be the same, that she’d never go back to worrying about Chloe and Aubrey and the pack wolves, that she’d never spend another gym class sitting miserably in the bleachers, fudging her way through math homework.

She had a feeling this was her last free night.

The campground was enormous and surprisingly full. Gemma estimated there were at least four dozen tour bus–size RVs and even more smaller camper vans, plus tents peaked like angular mushrooms across the sparse grass. It was a beautiful night, and outside there was a feeling of celebration. Old couples sat side by side on lawn chairs dragged out onto the cracked asphalt, drinking wine from paper cups. Children ran between the tents, and a group of twentysomethings with long dreads and bare feet were cooking on a portable camper stove. Fireflies flared sporadically in the darkness, and people shouted to one another and shared beers and stories of where they were going and where they’d come from.