Replica (Replica #1)(69)
She dug her hand in the bag and popped fries in her mouth. They were delicious. She didn’t care that when she leaned forward her stomach rolled a little over her waistband. Pete wasn’t even looking at her. He was busy scarfing his own burger. Gemma decided she liked the way he ate—with total attention, like the food was a complex math problem he had to solve.
“So you really didn’t steal Chloe’s underwear?” she asked after a moment.
“’Course not,” he said, although since his mouth was full it came out cough noff. He made a big show of swallowing. “Want to know my theory? My theory,” he said, without waiting for her to respond, “is that Chloe DeWitt was and is hopelessly in love with me, and when I didn’t steal her underwear, it drove her crazy. She had to pretend that I did.”
Gemma stared at him. There was a little bit of sauce at the corner of his mouth and she had the momentary urge to reach out and wipe it off. “You’re insane. Do you know that? You actually might be certifiable.”
He shook his head. His expression turned serious. “Those girls are clones, Gemma. They lack brains.”
She turned toward the window so she would stop noticing things about him—how nice and long his hands were, with freckles sprinkled across the knuckles. His funny Adam’s apple, which rioted up and down his throat when he spoke. Even if he was nice, he was still a cute boy, and cute boys did not go for girls like Gemma. She’d seen enough romantic comedies to know it.
“Clones have brains,” she said. “You’re thinking of zombies.”
“Zombie clones, then,” he said, and put the car in drive.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 6 of Lyra’s story.
SEVEN
THEY WERE NEARING JACKSONVILLE WHEN they heard about the explosion off Barrel Key, and the fire burning out of control on Spruce Island. Gemma had been searching the radio for something that wouldn’t tempt Pete to sing along. It turned out when he wasn’t talking, he was singing, usually off-key, and with some random jumble of words that had only a vague relationship to the actual lyrics. She was looking for gospel, bluegrass, hard-core rap, anything. The first hour of impromptu karaoke had been all right—she’d actually enjoyed his rendition of “Man in the Mirror” and had nearly peed her pants when it turned out he knew every word to Britney Spears’s “. . . Baby One More Time”—but after the second hour she longed for quiet, especially since Pete wouldn’t stop harassing her about singing along.
When she hit a news station, she almost skipped right over it.
“—local officials confirmed the fire . . . at the Haven Institute for—”
“Come on, DJ, how about playing a song?” Pete spun away from the station just as Gemma froze, stunned. The radio skipped to a Jimmy Buffett song.
“No. Stop. Go back, please.” Gemma turned the radio back, past the crackle and hiss of silent frequencies, until she heard the newscaster’s voice tune in again.
“. . . unconfirmed rumors . . . a deliberate attack . . .”
Pete was pretending to pout. “Jimmy Buffett, Gemma. That’s, like, Florida’s national anthem. I think it’s mandatory that we hear ‘Margaritaville’ at least once a day. Otherwise we might get kicked out of the state.”
“I’m begging you. Please. This is important, okay?” She cranked the volume button, but the sound quality was awful. She had no idea where the station was broadcasting from, but it must have been closer to Barrel Key, and the voices kept patching in and out, interspersed with snippets of music from another station.
“Tom, is it true . . . actually took credit on Facebook?”
“. . . problem is . . . nobody talking . . .”
“Police say stay away until . . . situation under control . . .”
“Military presence . . .”
“Rumors of a protest at Barrel Key . . .”
But by then the interference was too great, and they were listening to some old-timey singer warbling about heartbreak. Gemma punched the radio off. She needed silence to think. There was a fire at Spruce Island—possibly an attack. But by whom? And what did it mean? Why would anyone attack a research institute? She thought of the man who’d grabbed her in the parking lot, with his coffee-stink breath and the wide frenzy of his eyes.
“Barrel Key,” Pete said slowly. For once, he wasn’t smiling or twitching or trying to make her laugh. He was just frowning, holding tight to the steering wheel with both hands. “That’s where you’re going, isn’t it?”
“That’s where you’re going to take me,” Gemma said. And maybe it was the way she said it, or the way she looked, but he finally stayed quiet after that.
They got to Barrel Key just after six o’clock. Gemma had powered down her phone hours earlier, after sending a single text to her mom—Gone to see April in Florida—just so Kristina wouldn’t be tempted to call out the police or the National Guard. Still, she knew her mom would be frantic. She had probably called Gemma’s dad by now, too, and this gave Gemma her only satisfaction: he was thousands and thousands of miles away and couldn’t punish her.
Barrel Key was one long chain of warehouses and boat shops, big metal storehouses and bait-and-tackle shacks leaning over on their foundations. The sky, she noticed, was greenish, and only when she rolled her window down and the acrid smell of burning reached her did she realize that the wind had carried ash from Spruce Island.