BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (34 page)

“Amber, you get to have everything,” he said. “Start appreciating it.” He climbed out and slammed the door.

Amber sat in her car for a whole minute, her stomach squirming, before she pulled out and drove home.

She hardly paid attention to the road. The yellow paint strip slithered into the darkness, and as her VW Bug squealed around a corner, she half wished the tires would slip. She shot down a dark straightaway and the gas pedal bottomed out under her toes. As the car’s speed pressed her into the seat, gnarled branches of oak trees swung past her. The moon flickered, faster and faster.

She closed her eyes.

You get to have everything. Start appreciating it
.

Amber kept her eyes closed, and she knew it would be too late to slow down once her headlights illuminated the next corner, too late to make the turn.

She knew what Clive would say, her father, her mother, Clive’s father, everyone who said they cared about her.
Amber. You’re much too important. Don’t you dare be reckless.

But the rush made her dizzy, tingly all over, lightheaded. It was so easy not to look, like falling asleep
—
like being held.

Then her mind returned to Aaron Harper, the strange boy who’d shown up out of nowhere and made things interesting for a night.

She opened her eyes
—
and slammed on the brakes. The car shuddered and threw her forward. Her heart squashed against the inside of her chest as the vehicle sank toward the edge of the road.

Then silence.

Her headlights blazed two feet from the trunk of an oak tree.
Two feet
, that’s how close she had come. Slowly, Amber let out a breath, which she realized she’d been holding the entire time. Feeling numb, she reversed and got back on the road. She was full of helium, practically floating away already.

Who
was
he? Okay, so he was gorgeous. Amber shivered when she remembered his dangerous, jet black eyes. In her entire life, she had never been so devastated by a stare.

Nor had she met anyone else who dreaded turning eighteen like she did. And their shared birthdays . . . Her heart had been racing since he told her.

But years ago, Amber had resolved never to get her hopes up; it was easier that way, and a random guy she’d just met at a bonfire was
not
about to change that.

She already knew her fate.

TWO

26 Days, 3 hours, 59 minutes

A burst of
rap music jolted Aaron awake. He glanced around, disoriented, until he located the music’s source
—
Amber’s cell phone.

He silenced the call, which he noticed was from Clive Selavio, and swiveled his feet to the ground. Since Amber’s phone was locked and he didn’t have the passcode, he couldn’t access any of her contacts. He would have to return the phone to her in person.
Great
. More opportunities to royally piss off her psychotic boyfriend
—
or half, or whatever Clive was.

Aaron sighed, running his fingers through his hair. He tossed her phone in the trash. Cute as this girl was, she wasn’t worth the trouble.

As he stuffed his backpack for school, though, he realized that was a total lie. For some reason he couldn’t get Amber out of his head; she was just
—
different
.

In the dim hallway outside his bedroom, Aaron felt the crunch of paper under his foot. He picked up an envelope, clearly marked with the silver seal of the Chamber of Halves, and slid out an official-looking letter.

Dear Aaron Harper,

In preparation for your upcoming eighteenth birthday, the Chamber of Halves would like to arrange a meeting with you on Saturday, March 30 at 11:00 A.M. We strive for a successful union between you and your half. Unfortunately, your case involves some complications, which your correspondent from the Chamber will discuss with you in confidence.

Regards,

Walter Wu

CHAMBER OF HALVES

TULAROSA BRANCH

Est. 1939

Aaron blinked and read it again.
Complications?
He had never heard of complications. On your eighteenth birthday, you went to the Chamber of Halves, you met your half. It wasn’t complicated.

Unless, of course, they knew about the scar tissue. Aaron stuffed the letter in his backpack and tried to ignore the flash of queasiness. On his way to the front door, he passed the breakfast table, where his mom was scanning the news headlines on her laptop.

“A student from Corona Blanca High School was reported missing on Friday,” she said, without looking up.

“Who?” said Aaron.

“Justin Gorski, he’s a rugby player.”

“Never heard of him,” said Aaron.

“Says here he was last seen right after school with a classmate, Amber Lilian,” she said.

Aaron halted, his hand on the doorknob. “
Amber Lilian?
” he repeated like an idiot.

“Why, do you know her?”

“No,” he said quickly, but when his mom wasn’t looking, he slipped back to his room and fished Amber’s phone out of his trash can. Aaron could already tell this girl was nothing but trouble.

Unfortunately, he had a chronic inability to stay away from trouble.

***

“So how was the water, Buddy?” said Aaron’s best friend, Buff Normandy, as the six-foot-four, two hundred and forty pound, curly-haired and baby-faced rugby player squeezed into the adjacent desk before first period. “Heard you took a dip on Friday.”

“You should have been there,” said Aaron. “Dominic Brees was working the crowd.”

“No bullshit,
Breezie
was there?” said Buff. “Tell me you punched him in the face for me?”

“I kind of had my hands full,” said Aaron.

“You heard about that missing kid, right?” said Buff. “He’s the one who dropped that pass during the finals last year, Justin Gorski. Cost Corona the game. I bet Breezie snuffed him out because the season’s about to start.”

“Couldn’t have been a rugby player,” said Aaron, “Gorski was last seen with a girl.”

“No bullshit, Breezie put her up to it,” said Buff. “Hey, are you still trying out for rugby this year?”

“Yeah, now that the volleyball team’s whole starting lineup is eighteen,” said Aaron, “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

“Not sure why you’re even bothering . . .” Buff grinned and glanced at his phone “You’re up in twenty-six days.”

Just then a girl came through the doorway, her dark hair sailing in slow motion behind her. Emma Mist. She glanced at Aaron briefly, then let her hair fall over her shoulder to block him from view.

“Yep, she hates you,” said Buff.

“It’s that obvious?” said Aaron. He had recently broken up with Emma because his birthday was coming up. It was the right thing to do
—
but standing her up the night of winter formal after she’d already done her hair and makeup was the wrong way to do it.

“Please turn in your essays on quantum mechanics and the discovery of halves,” said Mr. Sanders, walking in just as the bell rang.

As the sounds of shuffling papers and sliding desks filled the room, Buff produced a crumpled sheet of notebook paper covered with barely legible scribbles. He glanced at Aaron, whose hands were still jammed in his pockets, and gave a disappointed headshake before he ambled to the front.

Aaron tried to catch Emma’s eye, but she was decidedly oblivious, twirling her hair around her finger and gazing firmly out the window. If she would just let him apologize . . .

Ten minutes into lecture someone knocked on the classroom door, and Mr. Sanders paused to let in another girl who hated Aaron. Tina Marcello. Today she wore big sunglasses and chewed bubblegum.

“Ms. Marcello, I’m glad you’re here,” said their teacher with a smile. “I didn’t think it was fair for us to talk about you behind your back.”

She stopped chewing and brushed her straight, highlighted hair out of her eyes. “Huh?”

“Take a seat, Tina.” Mr. Sanders went back to his lecture. “. . . so although quantum entanglement was well documented by 1935, we credit Schrödinger with the discovery of halves. Mr. Harper, why does he get all the credit?”

Tina sat right in front of Aaron. As usual, she glowered at him as she walked toward her seat, chewing her gum like it didn’t taste good.

Aaron mouthed, “
Bite me
.”

“Aaron, how did he prove it to the world?” said Mr. Sanders.

Buff kicked the side of Aaron’s calf, making him wince.

“Prove what?” he said.

“That every human is born with a half.”

“Uh
—
he used an aitherscope?” said Aaron.

“Wrong. Aitherscope technology wouldn’t exist for another decade.” Mr. Sanders swept to the chalkboard. “Schrödinger said if humans formed in quantum entangled pairs, then in every case we would find that the halves were born simultaneously . . . therefore all we have to do is look at birth times.” The chalk made a nasty scrape on the board.

“Nice one,
Aaron
,” Tina said under her breath. She was putting on makeup.

Aaron kicked her desk, causing her to smear her lipstick.

“
Jerk,
” she said, wiping the smudge with her tank top.

Their teacher scanned the classroom for the source of the commotion, and his eyes settled on Aaron. At the same moment, Amber’s cell phone went off in his pocket, turning all the heads in the classroom with a shrill, hip-hop beat and a chain of rapid-fire cusswords.

Lovely.

***

Over the next six hours, Clive called Amber’s cell phone so many times that Aaron found himself humming the ring tone between periods. When it rang for the twentieth time on his way to volleyball practice, he picked up.

“Clive, this is Aaron
—
”

But the caller hung up before he finished. Aaron lowered the phone from his ear, and his heartbeat felt heavier than usual. He had just made a huge mistake. Now Clive Selavio, Amber’s abusive boyfriend, thought she and Aaron were hanging out.

He had to get the phone back to her. Soon, before the guy did something to her. Maybe if he ditched practice and drove straight to Corona Blanca High School, he could catch her before she went home.

Don’t go near her again
, Clive had said.

Too bad.

There were still cars in Corona Blanca’s parking lot when Aaron rolled in around four. But how to find her . . .

From what he remembered, Amber looked athletic, probably played a sport and stayed after school for practice. If she had a car, it would be here.

Outside, he slid on his sunglasses and leaned against his Mazda, feeling oddly nervous about talking to her again. At the campus entrance, a bronze statue of the Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, glinted in the sun. Its shadow crept closer.

The man who changed everything.

Just then Aaron saw her coming out. A smile pulled at the corners of his lips when he saw Amber approach a bright, Crayola-style powder blue Volkswagen Beetle. Same color as her cell phone.

She wore a white tennis skirt and a green tank top with ‘
Corona Blanca Varsity Tennis
’ written in white cursive along the front. Her skin was damp with sweat, and a few wisps of hair had escaped her ponytail and stuck to her forehead. She walked slowly, her eyes downcast.

He waited until she reached her car before he called out her name.

***

Amber glanced up, saw him, and froze. “
Aaron?
” She combed her damp hair off her forehead.

“What’s up?” he asked. “Lousy practice?”

“Why are you here?” she said, and when Aaron pushed off his car and came closer, she narrowed her eyes, tracking him.

In the daylight she was even more stunning. Once again Aaron found himself lost in her green eyes, not sure what he had been about to say.

Luckily, a distraction behind her snapped him out of his daze. The rest of the girls’ tennis team came into the parking lot, chatting and giggling. They paused, and after a few wary glances in Amber’s direction, continued on their way.

Aaron dug through his pocket. “You left this.” He tossed the phone to her, which she caught. “Does Clive always call you that much?”

Without even a thank you, Amber keyed in her passcode and thumbed through the list of missed calls. “It’s because he’s worried,” she said.

“Worried about what?”

“You. He’s worried you might have a crush on me,” she said, slipping the phone into her backpack with a hint of a smile, “and that you’re going to wait by my car after school with some lame excuse about having to return my cell phone just so you can talk to me again.”

“Oh?” Aaron raised his eyebrows. “So he’s not worried about the fact that you left the phone in my shoes on purpose then?”

She didn’t take her eyes off him. “Did that make your day, Aaron?”

“Actually, I was kind of dreading this,” he said, “since our first conversation resulted in me freezing my ass off with some sea lions while your boyfriend threatened to kill me if I ever went near you again.”

“Then you probably shouldn’t be near me. Why did you race him, anyway? It’s not like anyone was impressed.”

“It’s a guy thing.”

“Uh-huh,” she said doubtfully. “You know, he’s done things to guys like you before.”

“Like me?”

“Egotistical and stupid.”

“Why, is that your type, or something?” said Aaron, returning her glare. When it got ridiculous, though, he gave up trying to outstare her and squinted into the horizon. “So you really think Clive is your half?”

“You sound jealous,” she said.

“Just confused,” said Aaron, pushing his sunglasses halfway up the bridge of his nose. “Halves don’t treat each other like that . . . and I could tell he was nervous when I told him we had the same birthday.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “I forgot.”

Aaron peered sideways at her, but this time she broke eye contact first.

“No, you didn’t,” he said.

“I think I would know,” she said, rolling her eyes. Though now she was blushing.

“Well, have you thought about
—
”

“Just drop it,” she said.

“You don’t buy it, do you?”

“Buy what?”

“Halves. The whole bit.”

She set her gaze on him and the sudden force of her green eyes jolted him. “We’ve known about halves for barely eighty years. We don’t even know what causes it . . . I mean, nowhere does it say we’re meant to be soul mates. We just
assumed
.”

“Yeah, because that part was obvious.”

“There’s another explanation.”

Aaron nodded to the bronze statue. “One your man over there didn’t think of?”

“You know . . .” she said, without looking back, “Schrödinger kept a mistress.”

“Ouch,” he said. “Alright, let’s hear your theory.”

“Halves are more like siblings. Like cosmic twins . . . which would make this all incest.”

“You are aware most people say its love at first sight when they meet their half.”

“Easy.” She held his gaze. “Power of suggestion.”

“You’re saying it could be anybody?”

“I think that depends.”

“On what?”

“The person,” she said, watching him with a tinge of daring, “and what they believe.”

“Most people believe halves are perfect biological matches,” he said.

“That’s what scares me,” she said. “What happens to the human race if we no longer evolve through natural selection, but instead allow ourselves to be artificially bred by a force we haven’t even begun to understand?”

“You think it’s breeding us?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t be the first.”

A few students walked past them, and Aaron chewed his lip, waiting for them to pass out of earshot. Like the tennis players, their eyes darted between the two of them but lingered on Amber, and then Aaron remembered
—

“What happened to Justin Gorski?” he said, changing the subject.

Amber glared at him as if he had just asked the stupidest question on Earth, and Aaron regretted asking her; the poor girl had probably gotten nonstop stares at school, and it was still only her first week.

Yet part of him doubted her innocence. “Weren’t you the last one with him?” he said.

“He offered me a ride home, which I didn’t take,” she said, “and I
wasn’t
the last one with him.”

“Then who was?” he said, ignoring her look. “Was it your boyfriend, Selavio, jealous maybe? Am I next on his hit list?”

“It was Dominic Brees,” she said, “and that’s because they’re both on the rugby team and they carpool home after practice.”

Aaron turned away from her and closed his fist. “Just like Buff said,” he muttered.

“Why do you even care? You don’t go here.”

“One more thing,” said Aaron, as he recalled Friday night, still believing Clive was somehow involved. “What was in that vial your boyfriend brought to the beach?”

“What are you, Aaron, some kind of private detective?”

“He said it was liquid clairvoyance.”

Amber pulled her keys out of her backpack and reached for her car door. “I’m kind of done talking to you,” she said, “and for your information, it was just a glow stick.”

She slammed the door in his face.

Well, that went well
, Aaron thought, as her tires squealed on the asphalt and left him in a puff of burnt rubber.