Replica (Replica #1)(76)

Jake leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You’ve heard of Dr. Saperstein?” Gemma nodded. She remembered reading that Dr. Saperstein had taken control of Haven after Richard Haven had died in a car accident—the very same year she was born. The coincidence now seemed ominous. “About fifteen years ago, Saperstein weaseled his way onto the board of a nonprofit called the Home Foundation up in Philadelphia. It still exists today,” he added when Gemma shook her head to show she hadn’t heard of it. “He spent a few years growing its operations, expanding the volunteer forces, crowing about it in the media. Anyway, my dad dug up all the details. The Home Foundation places kids in foster care. These are the worst cases, children who’ve bounced around for years, or got dumped in front of the fire station or the hospital. It was the perfect setup. Kids get shuffled and reshuffled, moved around, drop out of the system, run away, disappear. Nobody’s going to look too hard for them, right?”

Gemma felt now as if her thoughts were all gummed up and sticky. Maple Syrup Brain. “I don’t get it,” she said. “What are you saying? You can’t mean—” She took a deep breath. “They’re not doing experiments on kids?”

“They’re only doing experiments on kids,” Jake said gently—almost apologetically, Gemma thought. “I think Saperstein stole them. He stole them and brought them to Haven. That’s why all the security. It’s not just to keep us out, you know. Not by a long shot. It’s to keep them in.”

Gemma felt dizzy, even though she hadn’t moved. It was too terrible. She didn’t want to believe it. She wouldn’t believe it. “There’s no proof,” she said. Her voice sounded tinny and far away, as if she was hearing it through a pipe.

Jake turned to look out the window. The smoke was still smudging the horizon, turning the setting sun to a smoldering orange. He said something so quietly Gemma nearly missed it.

Nearly.

Suddenly her heart was beating so hard, it felt as if it might burst through her chest.

“What?” she said. “What did you just say?”

He sighed. This time when he looked at her, she was afraid.

“I saw them,” he repeated.

“How?” Gemma felt like she was choking.

“Remember that boy I told you about, the one who made it onto Haven through the fence?” Jake half smiled. “I was the boy.”


Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 7 of Lyra’s story.





EIGHT


THE TWO BASS MOTEL WAS just outside of town—a long, low, shingle-sided building with only a single car in the parking lot. When Gemma requested a room, the ancient owner knocked over her tea in surprise, as if she’d never before heard the words. But the room was clean, although slightly musty-smelling, and decorated, predictably, with lots of fish: an itchy coverlet woven with images of leaping salmon, a framed picture of fly-fishing hooks above the TV, a plastic bass mounted on the wall in the bathroom. Gemma hoped it wasn’t the singing kind.

They had agreed that Jake would come back for her at eleven o’clock, and Gemma wasn’t sure what was making her so nervous—the idea of trying to sneak into Haven, as Jake had done only once before, or the idea of being alone with him in the dark.

Alone with those perfect hands and eyes and lashes and fingernail beds. She’d never even noticed fingernail beds before. But she’d noticed his.

She powered on her phone. There was a sudden frenzied beeping as a dozen texts and voice mails loaded, and she was surprised to see among all the messages from her mom that Pete had already texted her.

You didn’t get eaten by an alligator, did you?

For a quick second, she actually felt guilty, as if she was cheating on Jake. Then, of course, she felt like an idiot. A delusional idiot.

She wrote back: I’d like to see one try.

Then she dialed April’s number.

April picked up on the first ring and was talking before Gemma could even say hello.

“Thank God, finally, I’ve been calling you for, like, five hours. I thought you said your parents caved, but your mom is freaking out, she said you basically ran away, I mean, seriously, I’m talking about National Guard, Armageddon-level freak-out, if screaming were a superpower, she’d seriously be eligible for her own franchise—”

“Did you tell her I was with you?” Gemma asked quickly. The idea of her mother screaming—or even raising her voice—was both difficult to imagine and also terrifying. Her dad was the screamer. Her mom was the apologizer, the mediator, the smoother-over. The nothing-a-glass-of-wine-and-a-Klonopin-can’t-fix kind of person.

April snorted. “Do you think I’m a complete amoeba? Of course I did. Except I started running out of reasons you wouldn’t come to the phone. First I said you were napping, then that you’d gone out for a swim, then that you were in town getting coffee, and then I had to stop picking up the phone. I’m talking serious harassment here, she’s probably called, like, twenty times—”

“I’ll call her, okay? I’ll call her right now,” Gemma said, and April let out a big whoosh of air.

“Please,” she said. “Before your mom calls in a SWAT team. My grandpa will kill me if they trample his geraniums.” And then, in a different voice: “Where are you? Are you okay? How did you even get down here?”