The Ones Read online

  Genetic engineering had been declared illegal.

  Cody, James, and all the others now lived on an island in history, with no one like them having come before and none allowed to come after—an orphaned generation. It was a lonely feeling, and it prompted Cody to finally get dressed and go downstairs.

  * * *

  Dinner was exactly what Cody had expected. James’s mom, Helen, was layered as usual in three different sweaters and a stack of bangle bracelets. She refused to sit for more than two seconds, constantly popping up to bring in food or to clear away plates. And God forbid if a crumb hit the floor. James’s father perched at the head of the table and directed the conversation by peering over his narrow spectacles. Arthur was a professor at the state university nearby, and he asked Cody for the tenth time what she planned to study in college.

  “Costume design,” she answered, running out of random professions that she knew would drive Arthur crazy.

  “Interesting,” he said, trying not to choke on his food. “Sounds colorful.”

  “Totally,” Cody replied, glancing at James and suppressing a smile. She felt him flick her knee under the table.

  And then there was Michael, James’s brother. He was six years older, tall, handsome, and dark-haired like James and wearing a similarly boring button-down shirt. He had graduated from college and worked as an engineer for a while but recently had to move back home. Michael had been quiet for most of the meal, but Cody saw him put his fork down deliberately and turn to her and James.

  “What did you think of the court’s decision today?” he asked.

  “Michael, come on—” James started to say.

  “Do you agree with it or not?”

  Cody saw James look to his father, but Arthur also seemed curious to hear an answer.

  “I get that people are nervous about what will happen eventually,” James said, “but that’s the case with all new technology. It doesn’t mean you should ban it.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Michael said. He turned to Cody. “What about you?”

  “It’s total bullshit,” she said, then looked over at James’s mom, feeling bad about the cursing. Helen wiped her mouth with a napkin, as if she were the one who had said it. Meanwhile, Michael was smiling, clearly pleased that he’d provoked such a response. Cody felt James touch her leg again, but she knocked his hand away.

  “I know you agree with me,” Cody said to Michael. “You’re just too scared to admit it. Stopping scientific progress just because a bunch of old people are afraid of losing their jobs is ridiculous.”

  The whole family jerked their eyes toward her, and Cody knew right away that she had put her foot in her mouth. She had forgotten for a second that Michael had just lost his job to a younger, more talented engineer. He suspected that his replacement was a One.

  “I’m sorry,” Cody said sincerely. “I just don’t think banning the science helps anyone. There are always going to be younger people moving into professions, whether they are Ones or not.”

  “The court disagrees—they ruled nine to zero. And Congress is about to pass more laws that address the Ones’ unfair advantages,” Michael said.

  “Unfair advantages?” Cody repeated. “That’s nothing new. What about being born into a rich family? Being delivered by good doctors in a fancy hospital? Having a parent at home who has time to read to you? Pretty nice, I bet. Should the court make laws so that none of that is unfair?”

  “There’s obviously a line somewhere. The vast majority of the country knows that we’ve gone too far,” Michael said.

  “I wonder why,” James chimed in, trying to deflect some attention away from Cody.

  “Don’t give me that crap about you guys being a poor little minority group,” his brother replied.

  “What are we, then?” Cody said, jumping back in. “We have no political power, no leadership, no money, no way to defend our rights, and we are outnumbered ninety-nine to one.”

  “That’s exactly what the Equality Movement is all about—making sure everyone has the same rights,” Michael said.

  “The Equality Movement wants to take away our rights,” Cody shot back. “They want to get rid of us.”

  “No, we don’t,” Michael responded. “We just want—”

  “We?” Helen said quickly, surprising everyone at the table. She was normally so quiet it was easy to forget that she was there. “Since when are you part of the Equality Movement?”

  Michael sat silently for a moment, startled by his mother’s intensity. Helen reached out and grabbed each of her sons by the shoulder.

  “This is your brother! You don’t ever do anything to harm him. Neither of you. Ever!”

  Immediately, Cody realized what was behind Helen’s uncharacteristic outburst. This wasn’t about Michael or James; this was about Helen’s other son, the one who had passed away. Cody didn’t know much about him, only that he had died before James was born. Maybe that version of the family had been different, perhaps better, in a way. It was still two parents and two sons, but at least in the original version, the brothers were on equal footing. This current dynamic wasn’t James’s fault, Cody knew. But maybe the rest of his family didn’t.

  Back at the table, Michael mumbled an apology. Helen let go of her boys, collected herself, and went into the kitchen. Then Cody watched as James and Michael looked at each other across the table, and the moment almost shattered her. She saw the truth in their eyes—ceaseless adoration on one side, implacable jealousy on the other—and she knew they would never really be brothers. Not while Michael saw James only as a One. Not while he saw him as a replacement.

  * * *

  Even though Cody wanted to walk by herself, James insisted on driving her home, so they climbed into the beat-up red Jeep that James refused to let die. To his credit, he could work wonders on an engine. Did he just learn that one day? Or was he programmed from birth to fix a leaky carburetor? These were the types of questions that Cody had to ask herself whenever she was good at something. Was she born this way, or was she made this way? Should the difference even matter?

  “I’m sorry,” James said as they pulled out of the driveway. “I know that was awkward.”

  “It’s fine,” Cody said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Michael doesn’t really mean that stuff. He’s just dealing with a tough break right now.”

  “He has a One in his own family, and he still can’t stand us. Can you imagine what everyone else is thinking right now?”

  “No one is thinking anything. Everything is fine.”

  “When are you going to wake up?” Cody snapped, louder than she’d meant to. James shrank back in his seat, surprised at her eruption. “This court decision is just the beginning. Who knows what law will pass next week, or a month from now? Someone spat on the ground when I walked past the other day. Why would a person do that?” she asked, and then answered, “Because they’re making it legal to hate us.”

  “Calm down. This was the law that the Equality Movement wanted. They’re getting it. Now it’s over.”

  Cody shook her head, frustrated by how naive James was being. “Maybe if I put this in terms you can actually understand…”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Remember when we started dating, and I wouldn’t let you kiss me?”

  “Of course,” James said. “It was diabolical.” He couldn’t help a cute half smile at the thought, but Cody wasn’t going to be distracted.

  “And then after we kissed, what happened?”

  “You saw stars and realized you could never live without me?” He beamed a full smile at her.

  “You wish. I mean the next time we hooked up, what happened?” Cody pulled one of his arms from the steering wheel and waved it in front of his face. “With these things.”

  “My hands? Oh. They, uh, wanted to move around.”

  “Exactly. And then what? After they had ‘moved around’ a few times?”

  “They wanted to do o
ther things.” He said with the beginning of a blush creeping onto his cheeks.

  “And so on and so forth, each step meeting less resistance than the one before it,” Cody said.

  James was finally grasping her point. “Wow. So all the Ones are going to be marched off to their deaths?”

  “Pretty much,” Cody responded, pleased with her lesson.

  “Because you let me kiss you in the stacks of the library that day?”

  Cody smacked him hard in the chest, and James laughed, trying to block it. “I am being serious here!” she yelled.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he said as he slowed the car down in front of Cody’s house. “But honestly, I swear, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.” He put the car into park and turned it off.

  Cody gave him a weird look. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m coming in. You can’t possibly go through that whole analogy and expect me not to hang out for a few minutes.”

  “That wasn’t my point.”

  James took his hands off the steering wheel and held them harmlessly up in the air. “Hands at ten and two, I promise,” he said, smiling.

  Cody tried to stay angry with him, but it was impossible with his hands raised in mock innocence, his dimples deep enough to have dimples of their own. And then there was the dark hair that tumbled over his forehead, the curls thick enough to have curls of their own. James had a way of looking at her that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up and dance.

  “Fine,” she finally said, knowing she didn’t have the willpower to resist. “My mom’s already asleep anyway.”

  They got out of the Jeep and walked quietly up to the small clapboard house. Cody silently unlocked the door, and they tiptoed through the dark, cramped living room and into Cody’s bedroom. James banged into a chair in her room and had to stifle a groan. They tried not to step on the broken microscopes and old doctor bags that littered the floor. Cody turned on a globe that threw stars across the wall, making it a little easier to see.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  James sat down on the bed and pulled her down next to him. “Couldn’t be better,” he said.

  Cody turned to face him and hovered there for a moment, savoring that sensation of being close enough to feel someone without actually touching. And then, finally, barely having to move, they pressed their lips together.

  After a second or two, James pulled back a few inches. “PQ3318,” he said.

  Cody smiled. “PQ3318,” she answered back.

  That was the library catalog code that James had written on a scrap of paper and handed to her before disappearing into the stacks. When she got up the courage to actually go look for him, it had taken forever to find him, the butterflies inside her getting crazier with each step. The random book he had picked was deep in their cavernous library, and when she finally walked down the right aisle, they were totally alone. “I almost gave up on—” he had started to say, but Cody didn’t let him finish. PQ3318 was their secret.

  It was a wonderful memory, and Cody relished it as she reached up to touch James’s face and kissed him again. Their bodies pushed into each other, heating up as articles of clothing began to come off.

  And that was when the brick crashed through her window.

  Cody gasped as hundreds of glass shards exploded over their heads. Her bed was directly below the window that now had a gaping hole in it.

  “Stay down,” James yelled, but Cody crawled to the window and shoved her face out between the jagged edges. She caught a glimpse of a car, which shot off into the night, tires squealing, lights off, a faint shout of triumph drifting back down the empty street.

  She turned to James, who was standing in shock. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Cody didn’t answer. She looked down at the glass-strewn comforter and went to pick up the brick off the floor. It was solid, heavy, cold. Then she turned it over in her hands and saw it.

  Two parallel lines, painted in white to stand out against the red brick—a perfectly drawn equal sign. As Cody looked at it, she wasn’t fearful or angry or nervous. To her surprise, she felt something entirely different. She felt … ready.

  Cody held up the brick to show James, her arms steady, eyes clear. “I told you this was just the beginning.”

  CHAPTER 2

  JAMES STOOD DUMBSTRUCK as Cody showed him the brick. He saw the equal sign and knew what it meant. Yet all he could think to say was, “Watch out for the broken glass.”

  Broken glass was easy enough to deal with; you watched where you stepped and then swept it up. James was always finding the most efficient way to proceed, and there was a beautiful logic to this problem: Broken glass was dangerous, so you cleaned it up carefully. A brick flying at their heads was another matter. James didn’t have a solution for that. Cody did, though. Of course she does, James thought, and from the look on her face, it didn’t involve a broom.

  “Let’s go,” she said, eyes aflame. “I saw their car.”

  Cody grabbed a sweatshirt and bounded out of her room. James felt his adrenaline pumping, too. He knew it was a natural biological reaction, a step in the fight-or-flight process. And he knew just as well that he landed squarely on the flight side. But to where? The whole country had heard the Supreme Court ruling by now, and they were all wearing the requisite LET AMBER CHEER! bracelets. If people were blowing off steam by throwing bricks at Ones, then chasing after this car didn’t seem like the best idea.

  “Come on!” Cody loudly whispered from the hallway, and James knew there was no use in arguing with her. Quite literally, she wasn’t even there to argue with, so he had no choice but to follow her outside, moving carefully back through the dark living room and easing the front door shut behind him. Cody was waiting for him next to his Jeep.

  “How did your mom not hear that?” he asked.

  “Sound machine, sleeping mask, earplugs—that woman would sleep through the apocalypse.”

  James got in the car and unlocked the doors so Cody could hop into the passenger’s seat. She was still holding the brick. “What are you going to do with that?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” she said, setting it on her lap. “Drive to the quarry, and we’ll figure it out.”

  James had the key in the ignition, ready to start the car, but he paused and gave her a questioning look. The quarry? How did she know where to go?

  Cody reached over and grabbed his hand. James took solace in it for a moment … until Cody twisted the key and brought the engine to life.

  * * *

  If there was anything good about being raised in the town of Shasta, the quarry in the abandoned mine—long since filled with water—was at the top, middle, and end of the list. It was a gigantic playground where the local kids grew up swimming in the deep reservoir, climbing the smooth sandstone walls, and daring each other to jump off the cliffs. It made for a glorious way to spend a summer day, and the fact that it was sealed off and you needed to sneak in gave it just the right feeling of danger. More than 150 years had passed since the last gold miners had stripped the mountain bare, but the various tunnels, chutes, and pathways they had carved were still present. Of course, they were hard to see now, and every local campfire legend involved some poor kid falling down an unexpected hole and slowly transforming into a grizzled maniac who terrorized the town. This never really scared James; even as a little kid, he knew that gold mines were not dug down in straight vertical shafts and that you couldn’t just fall into one.

  But the real reason James had never worried about falling into a tunnel was that he had been to the quarry only once in his life.

  That wasn’t normal for a Shasta kid, but James’s parents made it clear that this was their firmest rule. He had defied them once, hiked up with his friends when he was ten or eleven and had the time of his life making perfect dives from the highest perches. When his mother found out, she slapped him across the face. Hard, angrily, violently. It was the only time his parents had e
ver touched him, and the sheer surprise of it made him sob instantly. He could always recall the exact details of that moment, the warm sensation of blood surging to his temple, the sting on his cheek, the look in his mom’s eyes that somehow made him feel like he deserved it.

  And maybe he did deserve it, he figured out a few years later. When he was old enough to finally put the full picture together, he realized that his brother had drowned at the quarry. Thomas, the sibling he had never met. The child that James was meant to replace. So he came to understand how it must have been great news to his parents when they were selected for the NIH pilot program and told that their newly conceived embryo was eligible to be genetically engineered. It was a miracle—not only could they replace Thomas, but they could also guarantee that their new child would be just as perfect.

  James felt that pressure every day of his life. Long ago, he realized that he could never screw up. Never get in trouble, never disappoint, never drown in some senseless accident. James had internalized these expectations and worked his ass off to meet them every day. It had made him cautious, thoughtful, and reserved. He was the president of his class at school, the captain of the debate team, a tireless dishwasher at home—doing a damn good job of being perfect, he thought. But for some people, he was starting to realize, it would never be enough.

  So maybe it was good that he was here right now, driving through the dark on this winding road to the place where he was never supposed to go. He wasn’t scared; he was excited. Curious, too. He loved being in the wilderness, and if he weren’t so overwhelmed with chores and activities, he’d happily hike around the woods all day long. But James could barely remember what the quarry was like from that one visit, and he knew it would be different at night. He also knew that people went there to party sometimes, but he had never been. He looked over at Cody.

  “Have you been up here at night before?” he asked.