Eve and Adam

– 19 –

“There isn’t even a scar,” Aislin murmurs.

We all stare for a while. I extend shaking fingers toward my leg.

I need to touch to believe.

The skin isn’t even bumpy. It’s not just smooth. It’s absolutely identical to the way it was before the accident.

I push the bandages down farther. It’s like taking off a very tight legging. All the way to my knee, just in case, just in case memory is playing some weird trick on me.

“We’re awake, right?” I ask.

Solo stands up. He sets the scissors on the counter. “It’s been like this for days. By the second day everything was fine. By the third day the scars would have already been disappearing. Day four?” He lifts his shoulders. “There can be variations, it’s not an exact thing.”

Aislin seems to have forgotten her own injuries. “That’s not possible. Is it?”

“Solo,” I say. He has the answers. I can tell.

“Have you ever had a scrape or a skinned knee that lasted more than a day?” he asks.

“Um… I don’t know.” I scroll back over a lifetime of Band-Aids. “Who keeps track?”

“Cuts? Bruises?” Solo leans back against the sink, arms crossed over his chest. “Toothaches?”

“I’m an excellent flosser,” I say defensively.

“Colds? Flu?”

My heart is hammering. “I use Purell?” I say with a weak smile. “How many colds have you had in your life?”

Solo tenses. He starts to say something, then catches himself. “We’re talking about you.”

“She never gets sick,” Aislin says softly. “Like… never. She doesn’t even get cramps.”

I shoot her a look.

She holds up her hands in a placating gesture. “Well, it’s true.”

“So I’m the picture of health. I’m lucky,” I say. Gingerly I touch my thigh.

Solo shakes his head. “No one is that lucky.”

“Wait! I know!” I cry triumphantly. “When I was around two I had heart surgery.” I am weirdly relieved by this fact. “It was some valve thing. Congenital. They repaired it, though. With pig tissue, actually.”

Aislin frowns. “Like… bacon?”

“No,” Solo says to me. “They didn’t repair it surgically.”

“Obviously, they did. Because here I am, fine. Beyond fine.” I chew on a thumbnail, considering. “And how could you possibly know what happened when I was two, anyway?”

Solo looks at his feet. “You didn’t have long to live, Eve,” he says. “The odds of getting a heart transplant were pretty slim. At some level, you can see why they did it. They were desperate.”

I grab his arm. “What are you telling me?”

“You’re a mod.” Solo touches my hand and I loosen my grip on his arm. “You’re genetically modified. It happened when you were two. It’s in your file.”

He waits while I absorb this.

I leave him waiting.

I am not absorbing.

“Two days after your surgery, you were completely cured,” Solo says. “The doctors probably thought they were seeing things. What they were seeing was the Logan Serum. Either your mom or your dad must have injected you.”

“Logan Serum,” I repeat dully.

“Cool,” Aislin says, staring at her reflection in the mirror. “Can I get some?”

“No one can get any,” Solo replies. “It’s never been approved by the FDA, by the government.”

“Why not, if it’s so—” I start, but just then Aislin’s legs buckle just a little. She catches herself, but I can see the night has taken a big toll.

“I need a drink of water,” she says in a little girl voice.

I fill a glass from the tap. Solo catches Aislin as she suddenly folds up. He lifts her easily. She’s not unconscious, just in that strange zone between awake and asleep.

Solo places her on my bed. I put a pillow under her head, pull off her boots, and cover her with a blanket.

I motion Solo to follow me back into the bathroom. The Leg is surprisingly limber, but my hands won’t stop trembling.

I shut the bathroom door. “First of all, we’re in here because there aren’t any surveillance cameras, right?”

“Yes.”

“This thing.” I toy with the sink handle. I don’t want to look directly at Solo. “This healing thing. Why doesn’t everyone have it? I mean, why doesn’t my mother, why doesn’t Spiker…”

“Because it’s illegal. The way they made it was illegal. They took shortcuts with human testing. Now they have to re-create the whole thing from scratch, pretending to discover it and test it the right way. That takes years.”

I force myself to look at him.

There’s more. I can see it in his eyes. I can see that he’s challenging me to ask. I can see that he’s almost eager to tell me.

That’s what makes me hold off. I don’t want to hear any more. Not now. Not yet.

It’s one thing to know that your mother skirts the law from time to time. My mother’s always been in the gray zone when it comes to ethics.

It’s another thing altogether to know that your mother broke the law outright. And that she did it in order to save your life.

It seems like something she might have mentioned, oh, I don’t know, over breakfast one morning: Make yourself an Eggo, Evening, and don’t forget your science project. Hey, speaking of science projects, Daddy and I had you genetically modified when you were two. Please put your dishes in the sink.

Solo knows I don’t want to know. He laughs, a hard, flat sound. He opens the bathroom door and crosses my room. “I gotta go. I’m beat. If your mom asks, Aislin found her own way here.” He pulls a key card out of his back pocket. “This is for Suite Fourteen. That’s supposed to be her room.”

I take the key. I have to say thanks, don’t I? He risked a lot, bringing Aislin to me.

But somehow the word doesn’t come from my mouth. All I can say is, “Good night,” and he’s gone.

Aislin snores.

Despite everything, I sleep. Despite Aislin’s hand thrown across my face. Despite the strangely detailed memories of dropping my pajamas to the floor while Solo is at eye level with my unsexy panties.

The sense memory, the shiver that comes with it, of Solo running careful fingers down my inner thigh.

Despite all of that, I sleep. I dream of a hospital. But not the one here at Spiker. Or the emergency room.

It’s a hospital room far back in my past.

I see my mother. I see my dad.

I dream of my father sometimes, never of my mother.

But in this dream, they’re together, whispering. My mother is holding a syringe. My father nods his approval. They are both crying.

I wake up to a blast of very bad breath from Aislin. She smells of puke. I hope she made it to the bathroom. I stagger up and find the toilet bowl full. Well, better than the bed.

My bandage is flapping loosely. I either have to cut it all the way off, or try to conceal my guilty knowledge until my next scheduled bandage-change.

It hits me then, what should have hit me earlier: They’re all in on it. The doctors, the nurses. They know the injury’s gone.

They’re all in on it. All playing a game, hiding the truth from me.

It’s why my mother was in such a hurry to get me out of the hospital and safely to Spiker. My secret would have been out within a day. And what would have happened to my mother if it had come out that she’d broken the law? Many laws?

It’s dark in the room but the clock shows 8:42 A.M. I would normally be up by now. I’m buzzy from lack of sleep, and my head is full of pictures and words. Aislin’s bloody face. The dream memory of a long-ago hospital room. Solo’s words: You’re a mod. You’re genetically modified. The unreal sensation of my fingertips on the place where terrible damage should be.

Despite this, what I remember most is Solo kneeling on the bathroom floor.

I head for the bathroom. Aislin snores softly.

I grab the scissors Solo used to cut off my leg bandage. Awkwardly, I slit the bandages on my right arm and hand.

I bend my crushed fingers, wave my mangled hand, flex my broken elbow.

It’s as if nothing ever happened.

You’re genetically modified.

Don’t think about it.

I take a hot, hot shower. I can’t believe how good it feels. Standing upright in the stinging spray is a gift. Shampooing my hair with both hands is bliss.

I towel off, change into fresh clothes, actual jeans with two legs. Then I reach—with my right hand, no less—for my sketchbook and pencil.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

I open to the unfinished sketch I’d been working on for Life Drawing.

The pencil feels smooth and certain between my fingers. The whispered resistance of point on paper is music.

I make a few random lines, just to get the rhythm right.

Don’t think about it.

I study my drawing. It still sucks.

It needs something. Energy, spark, soul.

Life drawing, my ass. This is a still life.

It’s the eyes. The eyes are all wrong. They’re nothing like the eyes I’ve been creating with the aid of my mother’s software.

Adam’s eyes pulse with possibilities.

These eyes… well, they’re granules of graphite on recycled wood product.

Don’t think about it.

I start to erase the left eye, but suddenly I picture the dog-eared poster on the art room wall: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

I turn to a new page, tear it out, and write Aislin a quick note.

I put the paper by her pillow. She’s kicked off her blankets, so I tuck them around her chin. Her cheek looks like an overripe plum, purple-black and swollen.

I stash my sketchbook in a drawer.

Then I flee for the safety of Adam.