Double Helix

  CHAPTER 32

  I WOKE UP SUDDENLY and fully in the pitch dark. Viv moved, and I said, softly: “You awake?”

  “Yes. What time is it?”

  I reached for the clock and pressed the little button that made its numbers glow in the dark. “Two thirty-eight.”

  “Oh.” Then: “I was only pretending to sleep before. I’m not—I don’t think I really can. I don’t seem to be tired.”

  “Me either,” I said.

  We were quiet awhile longer, and then Viv said, “I’m wondering, Eli—could you tell me why you asked me to look up the building plans for Wyatt Transgenics? What’s with the subbasement? I’ve been eaten up with curiosity about it all day.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right. That.” I reached over to the nightstand and turned on the lamp.

  With everything else that had happened that day, I’d mostly forgotten about the discrepancy in basement levels at Wyatt Transgenics. I couldn’t even remember why the issue had ever seemed important enough to investigate—especially after I’d learned that my own card key worked to open the little mislabeled elevator. I now thought that I’d simply projected my real anxieties about Dr. Wyatt and my own past onto the red herring issue of the basement.

  Viv was leaning forward, though, waiting, and so I told her the story of how I’d chased Foo-foo around the building and into the hidden elevator, of the look on Judith Ryan’s face when I’d practically trampled her, and of my discovery of the different numbers on the elevator’s control panel. “I’m not sure why I wanted to know what the city hall blueprints showed,” I finished—and only then realized that I’d gotten out of bed and had been pacing as I talked. “There’s probably some simple reason for the discrepancy. But it just seemed—I don’t know . . .”

  “Strange.” Viv had shifted so that she was lying on her stomach, her chin propped up in her hands. “And yeah, probably there’s some innocent explanation, but it’s not an obvious explanation. I personally find it very odd that there’s a basement level that isn’t on the official record, and that’s accessed through an elevator labeled ‘Utility Room.’ I mean, why?”

  “Yeah.” I flung myself down on the bed again next to Viv. She smiled right into my eyes, and I found myself grinning back.

  And all at once, it was one of those magical moments between us. “I’m thinking retroviruses,” she said. “Horrible new diseases developed in secret by a dastardly cadre of mad scientists. Of course, we’re the only ones who suspect anything—and if we don’t act, the world will surely be destroyed.”

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s a race of genius rabbits. This is only one of many thousands of basement warrens that they’ve carved out beneath the laboratories of the United States. They’re pursuing their own scientific agenda. They hypnotized Judith Ryan, and she assists them by—by—”

  “—by delivering Gap toddler-sized T-shirts and shorts to the basement for the rabbits. They only wear one hundred percent cotton, naturally. And as for Foo-foo—”

  “Foo-foo is obviously on an undercover spy mission. She hypnotized me to let her out of her cage and was making her way back to Mission Control when I thwarted her—”

  “Stupid, hulking human! Don’t you realize that you risk the wrath of the entire Rabbit Empire?”

  “I’m scared,” I said. I reached over and put my hand on top of hers. She turned her hand and interlinked her fingers with mine.

  “Yes,” she said to me, and her voice was suddenly entirely serious. “You are.”

  I just looked at her. She swallowed and continued. All the fun had drained from her voice, her face. “Something’s different about you. Something important.” I saw her entire body tighten, and then she blurted: “Did you take the blood test for HD?”

  That startled me. I shook my head, because I hadn’t taken it for myself, after all, and that was what Viv meant. “No. But I’ve decided that I will take the test,” I said, realizing only as the words came out that they were true.

  Viv nodded gravely. “Would you like me to go with you?”

  “I need to bring my father,” I said, again discovering my intention as I spoke. “But thank you.”

  She smiled at me. We were quiet awhile longer, but the silence remained charged with something I couldn’t interpret. Suddenly Viv twisted her hand out of mine. Her face was still only inches from mine, though, and never had I seen her look more serious.

  “There’s one more thing, then,” she said. “And it’s trivial next to HD, and—and I don’t really care; I decided it doesn’t matter, we were broken up, and now we’re back together and that’s what matters. But . . .”

  “But what?” I said.

  Viv bit her lip.

  I put my arms around her. “Viv—”

  “I’m sorry,” she burst out. “I have to know. It’ll be okay, but I have to know. You were with some other girl while you - weren’t with me. Right?”

  I was appalled. And I felt guilty, even though—luckily—she was wrong. I said cautiously, “No, Viv. I wasn’t. Why would you think that?”

  “Because.” She swallowed hard, and then continued remorselessly. “There was this girl at your mother’s memorial service. She had very long brown hair and was wearing a pale pink flowered dress. She came in late. She was totally gorgeous, even if she didn’t have a clue that you shouldn’t wear a pink halter dress to a funeral.

  “She sat and watched you the whole time the service was going on. I saw you turn and see her. You smiled at her. Don’t even think of trying to tell me you don’t remember, because you’d remember her even if you didn’t know her. Anyone would—including me! But you did know her. And then I saw her walking over to talk to you afterward. That was when I left.”

  “Oh,” I said. I let Viv go. I didn’t mean to, but somehow my arms loosened and she shifted away from me. I said, “I - didn’t realize you’d seen her.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “I didn’t date her,” I said. “Or—or anything. Really.” The thought that I’d found Kayla desirable now made me feel queasy. And had I imagined, because Kayla was so beautiful and because I’d wanted her, that Dr. Wyatt had thrown us together deliberately, hoping we’d be interested in each other romantically ? I found myself thinking of the Egyptian pharaohs—they’d married and had children with their sisters. But it was genetically unsound to interbreed; everyone knew that. Except—well, with plants and animals, if you were doing deliberate work to develop a species, you did interbreed. That was how you encouraged certain traits to emerge. And Dr. Wyatt was a geneticist . . . Think like a scientist . . .

  A whisper emerged from Viv. “Eli, look. There was something about her. There was something about the two of you, together. It’s not that I don’t believe you, but—well, you have to talk to me.” She had her arms around her knees and was looking directly at me. She was squinting . . . or maybe guarding against tears. But nonetheless her voice was firm. And I looked at Viv as she sat in my bed and I knew that I would do whatever I had to do to make sure it wasn’t the last time she was there. Even if it meant being completely open with her.

  I said, “Her name is Kayla Matheson. And . . .” I climbed out of bed and went over to my backpack. I took out the picture of my mother and handed it to Viv.

  “That’s the girl,” Viv said, positively.

  “No,” I said. “That’s my mother. That’s my mother when she was our age.”

  Viv looked at the photograph, and then at me, and then at it, and then at me. She frowned. “What? But that girl—Kayla—So what’s going on? You were separated at birth? She’s your long-lost twin?”

  “No,” I said. “Close, but no. Actually, I’ve been thinking that the best word for our relationship is probably littermates. Although it’s far from exact.”

  And as Viv stared, I began pacing again. “Okay, listen. It’ll sound like science fiction, but it turns out that my mother went to Dr. Wyatt twenty years ago looking for a way to have a child who definitely wouldn’t have
HD. She took fertility drugs and produced a bunch of eggs and the eggs were fertilized in vitro.

  “It was all definitely, uh, irregular, but it happened. Dr. Wyatt checked the embryos that survived and that divided normally for the HD gene sequence. And well, in short—I came from one of those embryos and Kayla came from another.”

  I didn’t look at Viv, but I could feel her astonishment. “Kayla was born before me. Almost a year earlier. I don’t really understand how that happened. Well, I guess they froze me for a while. You can freeze a fertilized egg. I understand the how of that, just not the why.”

  “There was a surrogate mother who carried Kayla to term?” Viv’s voice was very faint. “Not your mother?”

  I discovered that I could look at Viv again. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, legs dangling, watching me. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess. I don’t know what happened with Kayla except what I already told you. I walked out on Dr. Wyatt today, after he told me as much as I’ve just said. I couldn’t hear any more.

  “And I haven’t talked to my father, haven’t asked him anything. I know I ought to. I just can’t. I do know he hates Dr. Wyatt, but he’s been refusing to tell me why. He says he’s thinking about telling me, but he hasn’t. It has to have something to do with all this, though. It has to. And now—I don’t know, Viv. I don’t want to push him. I’m not even sure I want to know anything more. It’s all—I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  A long silence. Then: “Well,” Viv said, finally. “It’s a lot to take in. It does sound incredible, Eli. My head is reeling.”

  “I’m telling the truth.” It came out defensively, angrily. Viv stood up and walked over to me. “I believe you.” She kissed me. Then she turned and began to get dressed.

  “Viv?” I was incredulous. “You’re leaving?”

  “No.” She turned, and there was a look on her face I had seen before—in the bathroom in the fifth grade, when she’d set out to protect Asa Barnes. Mingled fear and determination. “Eli, we have to wake up your father so you can talk to him.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not ready yet.”

  “I don’t care,” Viv said quietly. “I am going to make you.”

  “You can’t.” Panic pushed at me.

  “Watch me,” said Viv, and walked right out of my room.

  CHAPTER 33

  I TRAILED VIV INTO THE HALLWAY, watching with disbelief as she flicked on the light and rapped at my father’s bedroom door. “Mr. Samuels? It’s Vivian.” When at first there was no reply, she took in a deep breath and began pounding. “Mr. Samuels! Please wake up. It’s not an emergency, but it’s important!”

  My panic was replaced by blind terror. I backed into my room, snatched up a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and was dressed in ten seconds. I pushed my feet into sneakers. I was in the hallway again just as my father, in a robe, opened his door.

  “Is everything all right?”

  I didn’t pause to listen to Viv explain. I shoved past them both. I had my hand on the doorknob when I felt Viv’s full weight land on my back. “No!” she yelled. “Eli, don’t you dare run away! You coward!” Her arms were around my shoulders, clutching. Her knees gripped my hips.

  It was true. I was a coward. And I knew exactly what I was afraid of.

  I was afraid to discover that my father might not be my father. That the experiment involving my conception had indeed involved chimeralike activities with my DNA, activities that split my parentage in strange, untraceable ways. And that my father knew . . . and that this was the source of his hatred for Dr. Wyatt. And that this was why he was reluctant to tell me.

  I knew my father loved me. Even if I were some unnatural mishmash of DNA—even if I were not his, or not fully his—he loved me. But . . . but this—did adopted children feel like this? Or was this some strange new, unhuman emotion?

  “I’m sorry,” Viv was saying. She slid down from my back but kept one hand firmly on my arm. “But the two of you have to talk. Mr. Samuels, Eli knows stuff—and you know stuff . . . this is about Dr. Wyatt, of course—you have to tell each other . . . Eli’s scared, Mr. Samuels, you have to—”

  My father cut her off. “I agree,” he said calmly.

  “Oh,” said Viv uncertainly. “But—Eli? If your father will talk to you, will you talk to him? Eli?”

  I didn’t answer. I slumped against the wall.

  “Eli?”

  Finally I nodded.

  The sequence of events after that was a little unclear to me, but somehow my father got dressed and the three of us drove to Viv’s apartment and dropped her off. Then it was my father and me, alone in his old silver Toyota Camry at four in the morning. My father drove a short distance to the library lot and parked there, leaving the motor running. I felt the enclosed space of the car press in around us. I was glad that it was still dark.

  “Don’t be angry at Viv,” my father said. “She did the right thing. I’ve left this too long already.”

  I said, “She shouldn’t have forced things.”

  My father spoke quietly, without moving his eyes from the steering wheel. “It was you who forced things. You made the decision weeks ago to pursue this.” An edge of impatience crept into his voice. “You didn’t stumble onto Dr. Wyatt. You went looking for him. I tried to stop you, but you wouldn’t stop.”

  I drew in a breath. “I’m sorry.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then my father reached out and covered my hand with his. “It’s okay.”

  “You were right to try to stop me,” I blurted.

  “No. Now I think I was wrong not to tell you long ago.”

  That shut me up.

  He returned his hand to the steering wheel and added: “But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you know how much I love you. How proud I am of you.”

  I had known he would say that. I knew that he felt it. But still, still, it was good to hear.

  “I do know,” I said. We sat another moment. Then I said, “Okay. Are you ready now?”

  “Yes.”

  Now it was my turn to look straight ahead while I spoke. “I already know what Dr. Wyatt told me about my conception—that Mom wanted to be sure she wouldn’t have a baby with HD, and he decided to help. That he gave her hormones to produce eggs, and then he examined all the eggs to search for one without HD.”

  “Yes.” My father seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Originally, I thought we should just not have children. Not take any risk. But your mother was determined. She was functioning from desperation, and Wyatt—to be honest, I thought he had to be both immoral and a crackpot to come up with this plan. But your mother begged me. And despite all my doubts—I couldn’t say no. I let myself be persuaded.”

  He looked at me intently then. “And I will never be sorry that you exist. Never. Even if you did have HD—and you don’t, we accomplished that—I would not be sorry.”

  “But then why do you hate Dr. Wyatt?” I asked. “Why aren’t you grateful? Mom was grateful, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” said my father. “She was.”

  “Then—”

  “Eli,” said my father quietly, “have you ever heard the saying about nothing coming without a price?”

  “Of course.”

  “There was a price for you, Eli, and your mother agreed to pay it without consulting me. I suppose that was her right. But I don’t have to like it, and I never will.”

  I thought I knew. But I asked anyway. “What was the price, Dad?”

  He turned and looked at me, even though, in the dark, I - couldn’t see his expression. “The other eggs. Wyatt got all of your mother’s extra eggs to keep.”

  My stomach convulsed.

  Kayla.

  “I didn’t know at first.” There was a pleading note in my father’s voice. “I swear to you, Eli, I didn’t know about that part of the bargain until after Ava was pregnant with you and Wyatt had assured us that you did not have HD. Ava knew I’d have a problem with their agreement.
She told me it was her business, hers and Wyatt’s. Her body, her choice. Not mine. I was only involved in your conception.”

  “Dad . . .”

  “But I dream about them,” my father said starkly. “I feel that they . . . wherever they are, maybe still in embryo, frozen—that they are my children somehow. Not genetically, I know that. But my responsibility. And I’ve failed them, because . . . because he’s not a man you would trust with a child. I knew that the minute I met him. Brilliant, yes. But that’s not important. At least, I don’t think it is.”

  He swallowed. “Eli, we let him have the eggs. We gave him dozens of potential children to play with, in exchange for you.”

  CHAPTER 34

  LATER THAT MORNING, my father drove me to work. He’d asked me if I wanted to take another day off and spend it with him, talking, but I said no. I think we were both a little relieved. It wasn’t that there was no more to say between us. It was that there was almost too much.

  I had said to him, “But Kayla’s okay.” I had not had to say more. He knew exactly who I meant. Of course, he had known who Kayla must be when he saw her at the memorial service; when he gave me my mother’s picture. “Kayla’s okay,” I said. “I know her; I tell you, she’s fine. Or at least she’s as okay as I am.”

  My father hesitated. “I suppose.” There was a note of doubt in his voice that puzzled me. “But what about the others?” he went on. “If there are any others?”

  I had not had an answer. My stomach had roiled again. My father thought Dr. Wyatt was unethical. But there wasn’t evidence of that, was there? I was fine. Kayla was fine. Others—if there were others . . . conceived in vitro, born to surrogate parents . . . why wouldn’t they be fine, too? He was a genius, even my father had had to concede that.

  Waste products.

  “We’ll talk more later,” I had said to my father.

  But now, as I stood in front of the Wyatt Transgenics building and watched him drive off, returning to the packing up of all the bits and pieces of my mother’s final life, I was filled with so much sadness and fear that I had to turn abruptly away. I wanted to bawl like a child that I needed him and he ought to know better, even if I didn’t, than to leave me alone, alone with the weight of what I now knew. But I breathed in and out and then it was over. I wasn’t a child. I wouldn’t let myself feel or act like one.