“I can’t believe you made it,” Hennessy Chapman says as I fight for balance, walking on stilts in the thick carpeting. “I thought they’d have you on total lockdown.”
Lockdown? Has my secret identical found as much trouble in her city as I’ve found in mine?
Trying to piece together information about the girl I’m pretending to be from the fragmented bits that fall from her friend’s mouth is both frustrating and terrifying. One wrong word could expose me. But silence when she would have spoken up could expose me too.
I am paralyzed by indecision.
“But I wish you’d told me you were coming,” he continues. “I would have left one of my own men to escort you in. Or I could have brought your trunk with me so you’d have your own clothes to wear.”
“Hindsight,” I say with a shrug, and to my relief he seems to accept that as an answer.
Hennessy Chapman stops in front of a heavy set of double doors, each intricately carved into four quadrants of a curving design. He lets go of my arm, and I sway a little on my stilts. “I can’t wait to see their faces,” he says as he throws the doors open with a soft grunt.
Music and aroma and voices wash over me and I stumble backward, stunned. One of Waverly’s stupid spiky heels wobbles beneath me, and only my fresh grip on my escort’s arm keeps me upright.
“You okay?” he whispers.
I nod as I stare into the huge room, but I don’t understand what I’m seeing. There’s too much to process at once. There are so many tables full of foods I’ve never seen before. So much elaborate furnishing. So much light glittering on so many brightly clad bodies. I am overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and scents.
Dozens of girls and boys around my age lounge on clusters of plushy cushioned, elaborately carved furniture, chatting in groups of three or four. Several dozen more bob and move in time to music blaring from two huge boxes in one corner.
The boys are dressed in Management-style suits, but like Hennessy Chapman they wear different muted shades of blue, gray, or brown. The girls all wear lavish dresses in every conceivable color and style, and—Hennessy Chapman was right—no two are alike. As they move with the beat, paired with boys, they look like exotic flowers floating around the room on a breeze no one can see.
Hennessy Chapman smiles at me. Then he turns back to the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, look who I found!”
Conversations end. The rhythmic bobbing stops. Everyone stares.
Goose bumps pop up all over my skin, and I feel horribly exposed. Paralyzed by the attention. For my entire life, the fewer eyes that have lingered on me, the safer I’ve felt. Yet suddenly no one seems to be looking at anyone or anything else.
This is the opposite of hiding.
My chest locks around the breath trapped within it, and my throat aches with the effort of dragging in a fresh one.
I am going to die. This is the beginning of the end. Yet on the edges of that thought, as my gaze falls upon wonder after wonder, I realize I am glad—since I am definitely moments from being caught—to have seen such an extraordinary display before I die.
Yes, this party is exorbitantly extravagant and unforgivably wasteful, and terrifyingly…conspicuous. But it’s also the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. All the colors are bright. All the textures are soft, shiny, or glittery. And the food…
My mouth waters so insistently that I have to swallow to keep from drooling. I’ve never smelled so many tantalizing scents, and the amazing part is that I recognize most of them!
For years I’ve grown food I never saw served. I’ve always assumed the fruits and vegetables and herbs and spices that never made their way onto my dinner tray were served to the adult residents of Lakeview. That after graduation I’d finally be allowed to sample the full selection of produce I’ve been growing my whole life.
Now that will never happen.
But at least I’ll have had this glimpse of tiny slices of meat I can’t identify, marinated in tantalizing combinations of spices I’ve hand-picked from their stems. Of vegetables blended together and served on delicate little crackers made from wheats and grains I always found to be more trouble to grow than they were worth, when they were only used in the coarse breads we’re served in the cafeteria.
And if I step into this huge room and face this crowd of gawkers, I might even get to taste these delicacies before the soldiers descend on me and drag me away.
Finally, after several of the longest seconds of my life, a girl stands from a low upholstered stool and holds her arms out for me. “Waverly!” Her hair is blond and too long to be practical, and her bright white smile seems to welcome me. Her lilac dress swishes around her feet as she crosses the room toward me. “I’m so glad you could make it!”
As she comes closer, I notice something strange about her face. While she looked beautiful at a distance and still does, in an odd way, up close, it’s now easy to see that her face has been…painted. Her lips and her eyes appear to have been drawn on.
As strange as this custom seems at first, given the elaborate dresses and ridiculous shoes, maybe the face paint shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
Hennessy Chapman lets me go as the painted girl pulls me into an embrace. Her warm breath brushes my left ear. “What in the living hell are you doing in my dress, you thieving bitch?”
Margo. It has to be. I don’t understand half of what she’s said, but I can hear the fury in her voice.
Before I have a chance to tell her that her brother insisted I wear the dress, she’s holding me at arm’s length, beaming at me as if she’s never been happier to see anyone in her life.
The sudden change makes my head spin.
“Hennessy, what the hell?” she demands softly as she turns from me to take his arm. And now I feel like an even bigger fool. She’s only using the first of his two names. And he’s addressed her by a single name.
Does that mean Waverly has a second name as well?
“Don’t be mad,” he insists. “Waverly had to sneak into the city in disguise, and she couldn’t exactly bring a trunk, could she?”
“So you gave her my dress?” Margo hisses softly as others stand and head our way.
“Hennessy meant no harm,” I assure her in a soft voice, since they’re both whispering. “He thought he’d be doing you a favor, because it looks so much better on me.”
Hennessy’s laughter echoes across the room. Margo’s sharp inhalation and her shocked-wide eyes are my only clue that I’ve just said something wrong.
Her brows lower and her brown eyes darken with fury. “You brash little slut!” she hisses, too low for anyone else to hear.
I have no idea what she’s just called me, but I’ve obviously made things worse.
“It’s only a loan,” I assure her just as softly, but her eyes narrow when she turns back to me. “I fully intend to return the dress.”
“As if I can ever wear it now that everyone’s seen it on you.”
I’m not sure what she means, but there’s no time to ask for a clarification of something Waverly would probably understand, because suddenly we are surrounded by other people. Boys and girls call out my clone’s name and fuss over my dress, and as I try to pretend I know them all without using any names, I finally notice the most extraordinary part of this odd wonderland.
It isn’t just the dresses that are one of a kind—it’s the people too. I see a dizzying array of heights and a dazzling spectrum of skin tones, and no two sets of features look alike. There are no names or numbers embroidered on their clothing.
These people are—all of them—individuals. Which must mean that in her city, Waverly doesn’t stand out for being unique.
I can hardly wrap my mind around that concept. People engineered one at a time. No two alike. The process must be incredibly labor-intensive. Their city must have hundreds of geneticists. Or thousands! But why would any city persist with such an inefficient process?
I glance around the room again and notice that
though the girls each have a distinctly different set of features, they all seem to share that same painted quality Margo has. Their lashes are all dark and thick, and something bright and glittery has been smeared into the creases of their eyelids, which makes their eyes look quite prominent and bright.
Their skin is universally smooth and flawless, and their lips seem just a little too plump and symmetrical. As if this collection of individuals, each determined to wear unique clothing, all secretly want to look alike.
“Waverly!” A boy in a dark green suit brushes one hand down my arm. “Did you really sneak into Lakeview disguised as a common laborer? That is so badass!”
A common laborer? Is there an uncommon variety?
“As if anyone would believe she was a clone,” one of the girls says to the boy next to her, eyes sparkling as if she’s just heard the best joke. “Can you imagine hundreds of Waverlys walking around with calluses on their hands and dirt under their nails?”
Try thousands.
But that thought makes my eyes water. I cannot afford to cry here. So I push my grief back and try not to hate all these people who think the sisters I’ve just lost are nothing more than a joke.
That’s why they’re falling for my act. It’s not that I’m good at pretending to be their friend. It’s that they have no choice but to believe what their eyes are telling them unless I make a huge mistake, because they don’t know there’s any other option.
They think that Waverly, like all of them, is one of a kind.
I get lost in the greetings, pointless chatter, and unintelligible jokes. Half of their vocabulary is indecipherable, which is just as well, because nothing I hear seems to truly mean anything anyway.
Finally, just when the noise and confusion threaten to overwhelm me completely, a hand slides into mine and I exhale in relief. Then I look up and disappointment washes over me when I realize that the hand belongs to Hennessy.
Trigger has retreated to the edge of the room, where a few other personal guards stand. They are all enough older than us that I don’t recognize their faces. However, I notice that two of them are identical.
So the partygoers are one of a kind, but the private guards are not?
I don’t understand the strange new world I’ve stepped into. But suddenly I am grateful for Hennessy’s hand and his apparent willingness to let me hold on to it.
Finally the crowd around us starts to disperse. Couples return to the center of the room to “dance” to the music. Groups return to their seated conversations centered around topics I can’t even begin to understand. But one boy is still making his way across the floor toward Hennessy and me, carrying two tall, delicate stemmed glasses. His suit is the color of the night sky, the darkest blue I can imagine, with shiny black lapels and matching shoes.
“Waverly!” He leans forward to kiss me on the cheek, and I suck in a surprised breath. “I hear you pulled out all the stops to sneak into the enigmatic Lakeview compound, just to come wish me a happy birthday!”
Compound?
I give him a smile. “Happy birthday, Seren.” I am so thrilled and relieved to have figured out his name that I don’t even hesitate to speak to him, despite a lifetime of training to the contrary.
Smiling, he holds one empty stemmed glass into the stream of a pale golden liquid flowing from the fountain in the center of the nearest table full of food. The liquid fizzes in the glass. He hands it to me, and though I know he intends for me to drink, I can do nothing but stare at his right wrist, where it is extended from the cuff of his shirt.
He has no bar code.
How can he function in life with no bar code? How can he sign in for an appointment or check out recreational equipment without one? How can he get a lunch tray or be issued a fresh set of clothes? How does he gain access to his tablet? How will he someday start a CitiCar?
Surely in his native city not every meal is served on crystal plates, from tables piled high with food. Surely not every drink pours from a fountain.
I glance around the room again as I slowly lift the glass to my mouth. The boys’ wrists are covered by their shirt cuffs and jacket sleeves, but most of the girls’ wrists are exposed by sleeveless dresses. Not one of them has a bar code.
Who are these people?
“Waverly?” Hennessy has noticed me hesitating with the glass inches from my lips. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Thank you,” I say, but the common courtesy seems to confuse him even more. So I drink, and the bubbles pop in my nose and mouth.
I laugh at the strange sensation. Then I take a longer sip.
“Your favorite, right?” Seren says as he fills his own glass.
I can only nod. I have no idea what Waverly’s favorite is, or what I’m drinking. It’s sweet, yet the undertone is a bit bitter. It’s not unpleasant, but it will take some getting used to. The best part is the bubbles.
As I lift the glass for another sip, the jeweled cuff slides up my arm, revealing a thin slice of my bar code. Terrified that I’ve exposed myself, I hastily transfer the glass into my opposite hand and shake the cuff down to cover my right wrist. Just in case, I keep that arm pressed against my side.
As I stare off into the room, glancing from face to face—dizzied by the variety of features and the lack of any unifying color, clothing, or mark—the reality of this strange world finally hits me.
These people belong to no bureau. They aren’t gardeners, soldiers, seamstresses, or cooks. In fact, they seem to serve no purpose whatsoever.
Was I, like Waverly’s friends, created to serve no purpose? For no other reason than to eat extravagant food while we say nice things to one another aloud, then whisper angrily into one another’s ears?
If that is so, why was I ever given life?
Why were any of the partygoers in this room ever designed in the first place?
“What is this?” I hold my glass up for Hennessy to see when we’re alone in the crowd again.
“The champagne? I don’t know what vintage Seren is serving, but knowing the Administrator, it’s expensive.”
I have no idea what champagne is, but I’m even more confused by what the Administrator might have to do with a party thrown for a boy—an individual—from another city. At first I assumed that she was simply hosting a diplomatic event, but the guests are all my age, and they seem to represent no one but themselves.
While Hennessy fills his own glass, Margo returns with another girl and they each take one of my arms. I feel as trapped as I was in my cell at the Management Bureau. And a lot less safe.
“Doesn’t Waverly look beautiful tonight, Sofia?” Margo says, and relief floods me. Evidently she’s no longer angry about the dress.
Then I get a good look at her friend’s long dark hair and olive-toned skin. She looks different, with her face painted, but I recognize her anyway.
Sofia is the girl I saw arguing with two soldiers on a sidewalk in the training ward the day several thousand of Trigger’s identicals graduated. The bold girl wearing strange clothes, who kept refusing to get into the patrol car.
She didn’t even glance at me or my identicals that day. If she’d noticed our faces, Waverly’s secret would already have been exposed.
My act wouldn’t be working.
“She does look beautiful,” Sofia says, squeezing my arm while I try to piece together facts and events that don’t seem to fit. I deduce from her resemblance to Seren—how can she look so much like him yet still be a girl?—that she is his “sister.” They must share some strange genetic connection, but I can’t understand how.
“Where did you have that dress made?” she asks. But her too-wide eyes and pursed lips make me think she isn’t really interested in the answer. Which is fortunate, because I don’t have one.
“I love what you’ve done with your hair tonight, Waverly,” Margo says. “It’s so I-don’t-give-a-shit. That must feel liberating.”
“I…” Her statement sounds like a compliment, but it feels lik
e biting into an apple that has gone bad on the inside. Maybe she’s still angry after all.
“It’s not like she could go get her hair done,” Sofia says. “No one would have believed her as a trade laborer when she was sneaking in through the service entrance.”
“Of course. And I guess that explains this au naturel thing you have going on with your face.” Margo makes a gesture vaguely encompassing my head, and I can feel my cheeks flame. I don’t understand everything they’re saying, but I’m clearly being made fun of. I’m the only girl here whose face isn’t painted.
“Don’t worry about these hyenas.” Hennessy plucks his sister’s hand from my arm. “They’re just jealous because it takes them hours in a salon chair to look half as beautiful as you do when you roll out of bed in the morning.”
Salon chair?
“You’re laying it on thick this evening, brother,” Margo says. But she actually looks a little contrite. I don’t think she intended for him to hear her.
“Waverly can handle herself,” Sofia adds. “And anyway, we’re not throwing any muck she hasn’t thrown at us a thousand times.”
“Thank you,” I whisper to Hennessy as both girls head onto the dance floor, where two boys are obviously waiting for them.
“Are you okay?” he asks, just loudly enough to be heard over the music. “You seem kind of out of it tonight.”
My gaze wanders toward Trigger, and I find him watching me. His clenched jaw is the only sign that he’s not perfectly happy playing his role while this strange new boy holds my arm and whispers in my ear.
Trigger is clearly as ready to leave this dangerous charade behind as I am now that the novelty has worn off. But I don’t know where to go. This private party in the Administrator’s mansion seems to be the only place in Lakeview that the soldiers won’t search for us.