The Similars (The Similars #1)(59)
There’s a click, and the room goes silent. My father has turned off the feed.
“Why did you turn it off?”
My father adjusts his napkin in his lap. “Because that protest is abhorrent. Because the idea that clones aren’t people like us, people who eat and breathe and feel the same emotions that we do… I couldn’t stand to watch another second of it.”
“Oh.” I’m chastened. I had no idea he felt so strongly about clones’ rights. The way I do. But of course, he raised me. Distant as he is, he’s shaped what I believe. And when it comes to clones and the Similars… I feel sick, thinking of Pippa, and Maude, and Ansel…and, of course, Levi. He doesn’t deserve that. None of them do.
My father interrupts my thoughts. “Are you friends with him? With Levi?”
“No, Levi and I will never be friends. Or anything else,” I mutter. We finish our meal, and I don’t ask my father about Underwood’s expulsion. I’m sure he won’t give me any useful answers, anyway. I’ll have to find them some other way.
Returning to Darkwood, I spend most of the flight trying not to imagine what I will say to Levi when I’m eventually forced to talk to him. Maybe I can avoid him forever. Yeah, right.
When I step out of the car that delivers me to the main house and see all the warm reunions among my classmates, it’s not lost on me that nearly everyone I love is no longer here at school. I feel a pang of longing, wondering where Pippa and the Similars—including Levi—went over the holiday. They all couldn’t have gone home with their originals like Ansel.
I’m so caught up in my thoughts, I barely notice the flyers plastered across campus about the first rally for DAAM, the Darkwood Academy Anti-Cloning Movement. Of course, I’m not out of the loop for long. Not with the entire campus buzzing about it, and Madison talking it up to anyone who will listen.
“It doesn’t make sense,” a couple of sophomores say. “Why is Ransom allowing this? Why’s he giving that evil group a charter?”
I don’t tell them that I don’t trust anything Ransom says or does anymore. Still, it’s hard to imagine why Ransom would allow a rally like this to take place at Darkwood. I feel like the founders of the school would turn over in their graves if they knew this kind of discrimination was happening on their beloved campus. The only positive to this rally is that Madison seems to be too preoccupied to call any midnight sessions lately, and for that, I’m relieved.
That evening, I head to the rally. Boycotting it, I reason, would only make me ignorant to whatever Madison’s planning. I head out of my dorm, following the crowd to the athletic center, where nearly the entire school has convened. From the look of it, not a single student is missing this.
A first-year girl shoves a leaflet into my hands as we funnel into the gym. Soon, I am surrounded on all sides. There are DAAM supporters and potential supporters, who are chanting the club’s slogan, while others are wide-eyed and hushed as they prattle on about how horrifying, and simultaneously fascinating, this is. I scan the gathering for the Similars. I don’t see them. I can’t ignore the ache I feel when I think about what it would be like to be Theodora, Pippa, Maude, Jago, Ansel, or Levi. I would hate there being a rally to protest my very existence. It cuts me to the bone, on their behalf, and I have to suppress the tears that form in my eyes as I consider how wrong this is. How unfair.
Someone taps on a microphone, and a moment or two later, Madison Huxley walks up to a makeshift lectern and smiles at the crowd.
“I’m so pleased by the turnout.” She basks in the spotlight while Sarah Baxter plays the role of assistant, fiddling with Madison’s microphone. I notice several of the boys, the ones Madison was charming in the dining hall, up front, waving and whooping their support. “First, I’d like to thank Headmaster Ransom for granting us our charter.” Madison flashes her signature grin at Ransom, who’s standing to the side of the staging area, watching the rally unfold, his arms over his chest, his face unreadable. A few other teachers dot the sidelines. They look serious, like they’re here to stop any inappropriate behavior before it can start. But hasn’t it started already? Isn’t this entire rally, by its very existence, inappropriate?
Madison beams at the crowd. “I’d like to thank all of you for coming. From the look of it, most of Darkwood is in attendance, which means you’re all here to listen to, and accept, the truth.” There’s a smattering of clapping from the audience. Madison waves off the applause. “No need for all of that. I’m not here because I get personal satisfaction out of public speaking. I’m here because I’m following in my parents’ footsteps, taking on the mantle, the burden, if you will, of righting a huge wrong in our society. One that affects all of us—at Darkwood and beyond.
“Today, I would like to challenge you to look inside yourselves and ask an all-important question: Do you think it is right for your fellow citizens to be able to tamper with natural order, with biology, simply because they are vain or narcissistic or selfish enough to want to make an identical copy of themselves?
“Now, I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Maybe it is vain or narcissistic or selfish to clone oneself, but what does that have to do with me?’ Everything, my friends. Imagine a future world, one in which you have no control over your DNA. Imagine that scientists want to clone you—to take your DNA and make ten copies of you. A hundred copies. A thousand, even.”