Shallow Pond (22 page)

“Are you running away from home?” Zach asked.

“No, we're going to find your benefactor,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Just drive,” I told him.

“You're doing it again,” he said. “You're shutting me out.”

“I'll explain along the way.”

Thirty

We'd been on the road for a little more than half an hour without speaking. I was thinking through what I'd say when we got there. Zach mostly watched the road, but every few minutes he would turn and glare at me. Finally, he pulled off the highway into a truck stop parking lot. He killed the engine and turned to face me.

“I'm going to run in and use the facilities, and then, when I get back in the car, we're going to turn around and drive home.”

“Do you really consider Shallow Pond home?” I asked. “You don't even know why you're living there.”

“I'm okay with not knowing who my benefactor is,” Zach said. “Obviously, he or she doesn't want me to know, and that's fine with me. I'm not going to drive through the night just to find someone who doesn't even want to be found.”

He got out of the car and slammed the door after him. I weighed my options. I could tell him what I knew, but I suspected that would make him want to hightail it back to Shallow Pond even faster.

My phone rang. I assumed it was Annie calling. I realized I'd never left her a note. I felt only slightly bad; it wasn't exactly like she'd done such a good job of sharing information with me over the years. But when I looked at the number, I realized I didn't recognize it. In an instant, I knew it had to be Gracie.

“Hello?” I said into the phone.

“Barbara? Where are you?”

“Officer Hantz?” I couldn't imagine why he was calling. With everything that had happened, I'd forgotten that he was out on a date with my sister. Wait, if he was on a date with Annie, what was he doing calling me?

“I had to take Annie to the hospital. She collapsed.” For an officer of the law, he sounded panicked and nervous. “Barbara, you need to come here immediately. Do you have someone who can give you a ride?”

Zach unlocked his door and got in. He saw I was on the phone and silently mouthed the words, “Who is it?” I waved him away.

“What seems to be wrong with her?” I hoped Officer Hantz was overreacting. He probably wasn't used to his date collapsing on him. It was unfair of me to get him to take her out without telling him she was sick.

“She had some sort of seizure,” Officer Hantz said. “She's in a coma.”

I felt like I had just plunged into a tub of ice water. For a moment I forgot how to speak.

“Barbara?”

“I'll be there as soon as I can,” I said.

I felt numb and drained. I clicked off my phone and stared out at the truck stop's glowing sign.

“What's going on?” Zach asked.

“It's Annie,” I said. “She's at the hospital. She's in a coma.”

“What? Was she in an accident?”

“No, it's the disease. She collapsed.”

“Which hospital?” Zach asked as he started the car. “I'll drive you there.”

I looked down at the papers still clutched in my hand. The overhead lights at the truck stop shone down into the car like a spotlight, illuminating the scrawled handwriting on the front of the envelope.

“We need to go to Dunmore first,” I told Zach.

“Your sister's in the hospital.”

“And
he's
the one who put her there.” I waved the envelope in his face.

Zach grabbed me by the wrist, his hand tight around me. His face was inches from mine. I stared into his eyes and could feel my heart speed up, but this time I felt something else as well, a sickening sense of revulsion.

“How did my benefactor put Annie in the hospital?”

“Because your benefactor and the man I used to think was my father are one and the same person.”

“I thought your father was dead.”

“Until an hour or so ago, so did I. Zach, we're alike.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Zach released my wrist. He popped the car into gear and stepped too hard on
the gas, but he bypassed the entrance to the highway that would take us back toward Shallow Pond and instead turned onto the ramp toward Dunmore. “Who is Donald Haley?”

“He made me,” I said, “and he made you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you're his clone.”

“And you know this because … ?”

“Because you look like him. That's why my sister freaked out when she saw you before.”

“This is a bit much to believe,” Zach said.

“Yeah, I know. I've been there before, believe me.”

“Just give me a moment to think about this.” Zach held up his hand to silence me. He didn't take his eyes off the road, but I saw his brow furrow as he considered what I'd told him. A few minutes later he said, “Why would he do something like that?”

“That's one of the things I plan on asking him.”

“We're the same age, which means he must have created us at the same time, right? He leaves me on the steps of a convent until he has me move to Shallow Pond.”

“We're like puppets,” I said. I rested my head on the window. The cool of the glass helped to chase away the new wave of nausea that washed over me.

“I don't like this,” Zach said. “I don't like any of this.”

Thirty-One

“Wake up. This is the exit.”

My eyes shot open. I'd dozed off, but now we were almost there. A thin drizzle had begun to fall. The wipers squeaked as they dragged back and forth across the windshield. I sat up and helped Zach find where to turn as we squinted at the street signs. It was late, and I realized that Donald would probably be asleep. It wasn't like I was worried about inconveniencing him, but now I worried that he might not hear us at the door or that he might be the sort of person inclined to greet a midnight visitor with a shotgun in his hand.

Zach rolled slowly down the road while I read off the numbers on the doors. “This must be it,” I said. We were in front of a shabby-looking triplex, its front porch crowded with old furniture and bits of trash. Zach found a parking spot and the two of us stared at the house for several minutes.

Suddenly Zach began to laugh. I turned to stare at him and he got his laughter under control, wiping the tears out of his eyes.

“What's so funny?” I asked.

“It's just that all these years, I've tried to picture my benefactor. Who it was, where they lived, that sort of thing. I always pictured someone who was wealthy, who lived in some big old mansion. Maybe they had a tennis court and a pool, maybe they kept champagne and caviar in their refrigerator. Whatever it was, I knew it had to be someplace pretty swank.” He gestured at the shabby house. “Turns out he lives in some dump.”

“I guess he hasn't figured out a way to turn his hobby of cloning people into a cash cow,” I said.

“Well, or maybe he's spent all his money supporting us over the years and he doesn't have much left. My car is nicer than every single one parked on this block.”

“Hang on—are you siding with him?”

“No, but I don't think he's the selfish bastard you seem to think he is, that's all.”

I got out of the car and slammed the door after me. Almost immediately I saw someone's light come on across the way. Apparently this was the sort of neighborhood where a slammed door late at night was enough to get the neighbors out of bed. Zach followed me up the stairs to Donald's front door.

“We probably should have called first,” Zach said.

“And give him the chance to run and hide? I don't think so.”

I yanked on the handle of the storm door, but it was locked. So I pounded angrily on the aluminum frame, loud enough to rouse a few neighborhood dogs. Someone in a neighboring building yelled at me—or perhaps the dogs—to shut up. Finally, I heard someone on the other side of the door fumbling with a chain. The door creaked open, and we found ourselves staring at each other through the storm door.

I'd always remembered my father as looking sort of old, but he looked even older now. His hair had gone completely white. It was a mess on top of his head. There was the beginning of a patchy beard on his face. The robe that he wore was so filthy, I doubted it had ever seen the inside of a washing machine. His tired eyes suddenly brightened as he recognized me. He unlocked the storm door.

“Susie!” he cried out, lunging toward me with his arms outstretched. I dodged away, and Zach was suddenly between us with a murderous look in his eyes.

“Don't touch her,” Zach said.

Donald stared at Zach, and then a smile stretched across his face. He'd realized who Zach was. I wondered if it was the first time he'd seen Zach since he was an infant.

“Look at you two,” Donald said. “Have you come all the way from Shallow Pond? What are you doing here? I have so many questions.”

“You have questions?” I said, incredulous. “What right do you have to have questions?”

I looked around. I was pretty sure that more lights in the neighborhood had come on. The dogs were still busy alerting everyone to our presence.

“We're only here because we need your help,” Zach said.

“Let me guess. You're in love and you want to be married right away. Wait, you're not pregnant, are you?”

“Annie's in the hospital,” I said. “She's dying. She's in a coma.”

His face fell. He shook his head, as if trying to shake my words right out of it. Then he glanced past us, as if just then noticing the barking dogs and the lights.

“You better come inside,” he said.

His place looked worse inside than outside. The room we stepped into was strewn with boxes and piles of crap. Pizza boxes and used dishes littered the floor like this was a stereotypical college dorm room, not the home of a grown man. He led us through the messy room and into a kitchen, which was just as bad, but at least there were chairs. He invited us to sit down, and we did. He didn't sit. Instead he paced back and forth across the small room.

“She shouldn't be sick,” he said. He looked puzzled. He ran his fingers through his messy hair. “I'm pretty sure I fixed all that. Are you sure she's sick?”

“She's in a coma!” I yelled. I hadn't meant for my voice to come out so loud, but I had a hard time being civil to this man. “You need to help her.”

“What am I going to do?” he asked. He waved his hands in the air helplessly. “I'm not a physician.”

“You made her!” I screamed at him. I looked at Zach for backup, but Zach was too busy staring at Donald. He seemed mesmerized. Well, how could he not have been? It was like looking at a future version of himself. “How could you do this?” I went on. “How could you just play around with
people without even knowing what you were doing?”

“I knew exactly what I was doing,” Donald said. “I'd performed numerous successful experiments using animals. I had no doubt everything would be fine. Of course, at first I couldn't figure out how to clone a male, but eventually I conquered that obstacle as well.”

“Stop it!” I ordered. “We're not science experiments. We're people!” I stood up from the table. I didn't want to stay there anymore. I didn't want to talk to this loathsome man. “Zach, come on. We're leaving.”

“Leaving?” Donald repeated. “But you just got here.”

I yanked on the sleeve of Zach's jacket and he staggered to his feet. I pushed my way past Donald's old refrigerator, and noticed the old and faded picture there. Susie. I could tell by the style of clothes that it was her and not Annie, but otherwise there was no clear difference between them.

“She's at University Hospital,” I said to Donald, “and if you have even a shred of humanity in you, you'll go there and figure out a way to fix her.”

He reached out a hand as if to stroke my face, and Zach shifted his weight beside me as if preparing to strike.

“What I need right now is for you to be the father you always pretended to be,” I said. I could feel tears streaming down my face, and I hated myself for showing weakness in front of him. I turned and ran out of the house, Zach close behind me.

Thirty-Two

It was around two a.m. when Zach dropped me off at the emergency room and went to park the car. The place looked deserted, and the woman on duty at the desk told me that she couldn't admit any visitors at this hour.

“But it's my sister,” I said. “She's in a coma.”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

Someone stirred on a couch by the doors, and as he re-moved the blanket covering him and stood up, I realized it was Officer Hantz. He looked exhausted.

“How is she?” I asked. He shook his head.

“Nobody seems to know anything, or they aren't telling me. She's still in a coma.”

Zach stepped through the doors, and maybe it was the fact that he looked tired or the poor hospital lighting, but he looked so much like a younger version of Donald that it was a little creepy. Who was I kidding? It was very creepy. The whole thing was creepy.

I introduced Zach and Officer Hantz, and our sleepy-looking group found seats in the waiting area.

“She seemed fine,” Officer Hantz said. “We went to that Italian place, the one just past the bowling alley. We were getting ready to leave and she said something about feeling dizzy; then she just passed out. I have no idea why, and nobody will tell me anything.”

“She's sick,” I said. “She has been for a little while, but I thought she was doing better. I guess not. It's sort of a hereditary kind of thing.”

We spent what was left of the night in a half-awake, half-asleep state in the uncomfortable waiting-room chairs. Visiting hours began at nine the next morning, but Officer Hantz had to be back for his shift. So it was just Zach and me there when one of the hospital's volunteers said I would be allowed to go up and see Annie. It was a family-only thing, so I would have to go up by myself.

“You're practically family,” I said to Zach, in a voice too quiet for anyone to overhear. “I mean, you're the clone of the man I used to think was my father. That's got to count for something, right?”

He didn't bother to answer my question.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked. “Visiting her alone?”

“I think, with all I've been through in the past few weeks, visiting a comatose hospital patient will be like child's play.”

“Okay,” Zach said. “But after this, I'm taking you home to get some sleep.”

It wasn't child's play. When I first saw Annie lying in that bed, I gasped. She was so thin and pale, she already looked dead. There were a bunch of tubes that snaked from her body to various devices in the room. One looked like it was measuring her heartbeat, and I took its steady rhythm as a sign that she was still alive.

A nurse came into the room and began checking on each of the machines. She changed out an IV bag.

“You're her sister?” she asked. I nodded. “I could tell. You two look a lot alike.”

Never heard that one before.
I kept my mouth shut. She was just trying to be nice.

“Is she going to wake up?” I asked.

“I don't know. You know that she's pretty sick.” I nodded again. “You can talk to her. We don't really know if she can hear you, but sometimes it seems to help if you talk to them.”

I waited until the nurse left the room, then pulled up a chair so that I was sitting beside the bed, as close to Annie's head as I could get. Then I talked. I told her all about Zach, how crazy I'd been about him, and then how I realized our meeting was engineered and not some twist of fate. I explained how I wasn't sure what I felt about him anymore. Without mentioning Donald or the fact that I knew he was still alive, I told her that we were going to figure out a way to fix all this, that she was going to get better. Then I told her about how sweet Officer Hantz was, staying all night in the waiting room even though they wouldn't let him up to visit her, even though he had to be at work in the morning. She needed to get better, I told her, because she had a sweet, handsome guy who wanted to take her out again. I talked until my voice grew hoarse, then lay my head down on the
bed beside her. I shut my eyes and silently counted to fifty, promising myself that when I opened my eyes, Annie would open hers as well.

When I reached fifty and opened my eyes, Annie's re-mained closed. I sighed and pushed my chair a few inches back from the bed.

“How was she doing before this?”

I half-expected it to be Donald, but when I looked up it was Dr. Feld. He gave me a lopsided smile that wasn't at all reassuring.

“She seemed to be doing okay,” I said. “But things have been stressful. Our other sister ran off.”

“When you have a chance, I think we need to sit down and have a conversation. There are some things I need to tell you about.”

I thought of when we'd first brought Annie to the hospital, when she'd asked to speak with the doctor alone. He must still think I was in the dark.

“I know about the cloning thing,” I said, “if that's what you want to talk about.”

His eyes grew large and he looked into the hallway to make sure no one had heard me.

“I tracked him down,” I continued. “Joseph. He goes by Donald now. He should be getting in touch with you. He's going to figure out a way to fix her.”

“I see,” Dr. Feld said. He patted his belly as he considered this. “Of course, we will do whatever we can, but you need to understand that Annie is very sick.”

I told him I understood, but the truth was, I didn't. I didn't understand how someone who'd gone through as many bad things as Annie had should also have to have her life ripped from her at such a young age. It wasn't fair—and I clung to the hope that she had to get better, if only to make up for all the suffering she'd patiently endured.

Someone who worked at the Italian restaurant where Annie had collapsed knew Shawna's mother, and, in typical small-town fashion, the news of Annie's coma spread quickly through the town. When Zach drove me home Sunday afternoon, Jenelle and Shawna were waiting for me on the front steps.

“My mom wants you to stay at our place,” Jenelle said.

“I'm fine here,” I said, but the truth was, being in our house alone spooked me out. Other than for a few hours here and there, I'd never been home on my own before.

A half-hearted debate ensued in which Jenelle, Shawna, and Zach insisted that I should stay with Jenelle, and I offered up increasingly feeble protests. In the end they won, and agreed to help me pack up some things to bring with me.

Annie's room was in a sorry state from the ransacking it had received at my hands the previous evening. Shawna even wondered if a robbery had occurred, but I assured her that it was fine. I packed a suitcase with clothes and grabbed all my school things, though the idea of going to school the next day seemed out of the question. When I grabbed my pile of school books, my scholarship letter fluttered to the ground. Jenelle picked it up, but before I could grab it from her hands, she read what it said.

“This is fantastic! Bunting, why didn't you tell us about this?”

“What is it?” Shawna asked.

“It's nothing,” I said. I saw Zach standing awkwardly in the hallway and felt the need to keep the news from him. Fat chance of that with Jenelle around.

“She's getting a full college scholarship,” Jenelle said.

“Awesome!” Shawna threw her arms around me, nearly suffocating me with her embrace. I saw Zach watching from the hallway.

“It's just an offer,” I said. “It doesn't mean anything. I haven't signed anything yet.”

My nonchalance did little to dim the enthusiasm of my two friends. Zach's look was penetrating and accusatory.

“I'm not sure I'm going to be able to go,” I said, but nobody seemed to be listening to me.

We went back downstairs and were about to head outside when Jenelle gasped, and I turned around to see that she was looking into my father's old office. I'd left the door open, and I saw what she saw—the urn tipped over on the ground, the ashes scattered across the floor.

“Somebody has been here,” Jenelle said. She quickly shut the door to block the view. “Bunting, you do not need to go in there.”

“What is it?” Shawna asked.

“It's not what you think,” I said. I knew that explaining further would mean telling them that my father's death had been faked, and I couldn't think of any way to explain
that without telling them everything. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of confessing the whole thing. I imagined the look of horror on their faces. I could see how the story would spread through the town. I imagined a Frankenstein-like revolt by the residents of Shallow Pond, in which they attempted to exorcise their little town of its demons. I imagined that the next time I came back to this house, it would be burned to the ground.

So I kept my mouth shut, and we filed silently out of the house.