Authors: Peter Lerangis
She’s passing out.
“Breathe!”
Eve urged. “Hang on, they’re coming!”
Tanya nodded vaguely. Her eyes opened, frightened and pleading. “Help me.”
Arms. Pushing.
Eve lost her balance. She scrambled to her feet.
Three burly ski patrollers were kneeling around Tanya.
They asked her a few questions, then gently eased her onto the sled. One of them began to shout into a walkie-talkie.
As they pulled her away, a crowd formed around Eve. A bright sea of Gore-Tex and nylon. In the distance, she spotted an ambulance swerving into the parking lot to meet the sled.
She tried to elbow her way forward.
“Eve, are you all right?” Mom’s voice.
“Yes!” Eve shouted. Tanya was vanishing, swallowed up by the gawkers.
“What did you do to her?” That was Kate.
“It wasn’t me!” Eve said.
She could hear mutterings: “food poisoning”…“broken leg”…“hotdogging.”
No. Something worse.
As the ambulance sped away, siren blaring, Eve began to shiver uncontrollably. The wind seared through her coat.
Mom and Dad were on either side of her now.
“Sh-she skied r-right into me,” Eve explained. “S-s-something’s wrong with her.”
“Let’s go inside, honey,” Dad said, putting his arm around her.
There. Tanya’s family.
A mom, dad, son. The resemblance was unmistakable. They were being escorted by a ski official toward a station wagon.
“Excuse me?” she called out, jogging after them. “Wait!”
The man helped the family into the backseat and shut the door. He shot Eve an impatient look.
“I was the girl Tanya collided with,” Eve said. “Where did they take her?”
“Keene Mountain Hospital,” the man replied, climbing into the driver’s side.
“Is she going to be okay?” Eve pressed on.
The window rolled open. “Too early to tell,” the man said.
“What happened to her?”
The car’s engine roared to life, but not enough to obscure the answer.
“Heart attack.”
Bernsen. Second case this week.
The girl with her is Case 1449.
So there’s hope.
But she doesn’t know.
How old is she?
By their measurements, thirteen years, eleven months, and two weeks.
She’d better find out soon.
“N
O HISTORY OF HEART
trouble on either side of the family, Mr. and Mrs. Bernsen?”
“No.”
“Has Tanya been taking any new medication?”
“No.”
“Any signs of illness, weakness, shortness of breath?”
“Well, yes. But she has occasional asthma. She insisted she’d be all right skiing…”
Eve could hear the voices all the way in the waiting room. They floated in from an examining area down the hall. She hated listening. Tanya’s parents sounded so wounded and confused, the doctor so cold and clinical.
She tried to ignore them.
Sit tight. Give it a few minutes.
Someone would be out soon. A doctor who knew about cases like this, who’d tell them that Tanya was going to be just fine.
Kate was sitting to Eve’s left, eyes fixed on a TV that droned overhead. Mr. and Mrs. Hardy sat to Eve’s right, reading magazines. Around them, patients walked in and out, some on crutches, almost all wearing plaster casts—sprains, broken bones, injuries you were
supposed
to get at a ski resort.
Not a heart attack.
The eyes.
Eve couldn’t stop thinking about Tanya’s eyes. The way they’d looked
at
and
through
Eve at the same time. The way they’d seemed to focus on something just behind her. Something dark and horribly unexpected, but somehow inevitable.
Just once had Eve ever seen anything like it—a year earlier, the only time she’d been hunting with her dad. They’d just about given up when they’d spotted a deer within range. The moment Mr. Hardy had taken aim, it turned toward them. Its eyes had instantly flashed with the knowledge that it was going to die. But rather than run, it had leveled its gaze at Eve. Not in fear, exactly, or even panic. Something more like accusation. As if to say,
Not now. Not like this. Not fair.
Eve had screamed. Her dad’s shot had gone wild, and the deer had fled. Even so, Eve thought about those eyes for weeks.
Now she’d seen them again. Closer.
But human. And much more terrifying.
Tanya was her age. Fourteen-year-old kids didn’t get heart attacks.
Things like this happen, and there’s no explanation.
Eve had to see her again. She had to see what Tanya really looked like. Without the death stare. With hope. With something like a normal, everyday
kid
expression.
It seemed like hours before Tanya’s parents finally returned to the waiting room.
“She’s out of Intensive Care,” Mrs. Bernsen said. “Serious condition.”
“Meaning better than critical,” her husband explained. “But worse than stable. We’ll know more tomorrow.”
Tomorrow?
They’d all be home by then.
“Well, best of luck,” Eve’s dad said, standing up.
“We’ll call,” her mom added.
After a grim farewell, Eve left with her parents and Kate. A light snow was falling as they walked into the parking lot.
“A teenage kid with a heart attack?” Kate murmured. “It’s bizarre, Eve. It’s
unnatural.
Especially with no family history.”
“Stuff like that can skip generations,” Eve suggested. “Maybe she got it from, like, a great-grandparent.”
Kate shook her head. “Dream on.”
“What do
you
think it is?”
“I think it’s something big, Eve. Like an epidemic.”
“It’s a
heart attack.
You don’t get a heart attack from germs!”
“What if it’s something that makes the body
get
a heart attack?”
“Oh, please.” Eve reached the car and opened the back door.
“Five years ago a kid in California dies of hardening of the arteries,” Kate said, climbing in after Eve. “A couple of years later, a girl in Ohio loses her hair and develops osteoporosis. That’s weakening of the bones. An old-people’s disease.”
“Where do you
get
this stuff?” Eve asked.
“I surf, therefore I am,” Kate replied. “It’s been on a lot of the news sites. I couldn’t believe the first case, so I kept looking.”
“The storm is breaking up,” Mr. Hardy remarked as he pulled out of the lot. “I say we head home now, while it’s still daylight.”
“Shouldn’t we eat first?” Mrs. Hardy asked.
“We can eat on the road,” Mr. Hardy suggested.
“Another girl’s teeth fall out,” Kate barreled on, “and she develops chronic constipation—?
“Kate!”
Mrs. Hardy exclaimed.
“I
was
hungry, up until a minute ago,” Eve grumbled.
“All I can say is, there’s more to this than meets the eye,” Kate said, folding her arms.
Eve threw herself into frantic packing. The weekend was over. Time to move on. Time to stop thinking about
The eyes.
They were following her still. Telling her something. Still looking over her shoulder.
“Dad,” she said as they loaded the luggage into the car, “can we stop by the hospital?”
He smiled impatiently. “It’s only been an hour and a half. We’ll call from the road, okay?”
Eve and Kate settled into the backseat. Mr. and Mrs. Hardy sat up front.
As the car pulled away, snow crunched dully under the tires. Mrs. Hardy turned on the radio and surfed for a weather report.
Eve settled back. She tried to block the memory, but the image kept returning
(the eyes)
.
Soon Tanya would be all right, and the eyes would disappear.
Stop thinking.
She tried to focus on the radio. Listen. Block out all memories.
The stations blipped in and out. A Top 40 song. Static. A scratchy classical piece. A foreign-language broadcast. More static.
“…at a loss to speculate on the latest development at Keene Mountain Hospital…” a voice intoned.
Eve sat up.
“Leave it there!”
“…where tonight a fourteen-year-old, Tanya Bernsen,” the voice continued, “after a heroic attempt to save her life by a team of specialists, has died…”
Tally of deceased has risen to seventy-three.
Pending?
At least a dozen others. Very few are related. The mutation is occurring at random.
The strain is stronger than we thought.
T
HE WORDS “L
EBANON
V
ALLEY
G
AZETTE
OBITUARIES”
flashed across Kate’s computer screen.
“ ‘Sarah Fischer, fourteen,’ ” Eve read, “ ‘of complications from gout.’ ”
“See?” Kate said. “Who gets gout at our age?
Nobody!
”
Eve began clicking furiously, opening Kate’s bookmarks. Names and faces blinked on and off. More deaths: Meryl Haber, Walter Gilbert, Bryann Davis, Francine Etkowitz…
“This is sick, Kate.”
“I
know.
Scroll to the bottom. One of the names has a link.”
“ ‘Alexis Wainwright…several days before her fourteenth birthday’…blah blah blah…‘premature hardening of the arteries’…‘for more information, click on…’ Bingo.”
Eve clicked. Another site assembled itself on the screen:
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF GENETICS
AND
PATHOLOGY
Premature Telomere Foreshortening in Chromosome of Adolescent
Speculation over the role of telomere length in the aging process took a leap forward in the death of a teenage girl in Cold Harbor, whose aberrant genetic makeup was seen as a primary cause of preternatural senescence. Further investigation revealed the existence of the damaged chromosome in one of the parents, who remains asymptomatic.
“You’re the science genius,” Kate said. “Do you understand this
at all
?”
“I think I do,” Eve replied. “You have these things in your body—chromosomes. You get them from your parents. They contain DNA, which make the genes, which build the proteins that make you
you.
Sixth-grade biology, right?”
“I must have been absent that day.”
“Anyway, the chromosomes have these wavy things at the ends, like tails. They’re called telomeres. Ours are, like, totally buff, because we’re young. But once you hit our parents’ age, forget it. The telomeres shrink. Some scientists think that telomeres control aging. They give the body instructions on how to get old—you know, they tell the skin to sag, the hair to fall out…”
“That is so disgusting.”
“Anyway, this girl’s telomeres shrank too early,” Eve explained.
“Duh.”
“She inherited this mutated gene from one of her parents, who didn’t actually have the disease. Her mom or dad just carried the gene, then passed it on to her.”
“So this girl died of
old age
.”
“Or some part of her body aged too quickly.”
“Like I said. Same thing with Tanya’s heart. Same thing with the other kids. See? I’m not as dumb as I look. It’s an epidemic!”
“It’s a
theory
, Kate,” Eve cautioned. “Read the first word of the article. ‘Speculation.’ They don’t know.”
“All great discoveries start this way.” Kate grabbed the mouse. “We are on the verge of something big, Eve. A Tony Award.”
“Nobel Prize.”
“Whatever. We’ll split the proceeds. I think I can find some other sites, too.”
As Kate began surfing, images flickered on the screen. Photos. Icons. Text.
A face.
It had flashed briefly. Not long enough to get a good look.
“Wait!” Eve said.
“What?” Kate asked.
“Go back.”
Kate clicked once, twice…
Blink.
The face again. A yearbook photo. Staring off into the distance. Like a million other poses of a million other junior high school kids.
It was captioned
ALEXIS WAINWRIGHT.
But the face was familiar.
My face.
No. The hair was different. Shorter. And Eve would never have worn a ripped T-shirt in a formal photo.
Eve knelt. Looked into the eyes.
The eyes.
I know them.
Mine.
But not mine.
“Weird.” Kate’s finger was frozen over the mouse. “She looks exactly like you.”
She’s a stranger.
That’s all.
A photo of a face.
She probably looks nothing like you in person.
Looked
like you. She’s dead.
“Eve? Earth to Eve!”
Eve’s eyes were glued to the name now.
It brought something to mind. An image.
A girl from her past.
The strong one.
The angry one.
The eyes stared at her.
It’s me
, they were saying.
Me, Alexis.
NO!
This is ridiculous.
A coincidence.
No. Big. Deal.
“Eve?” Kate repeated. “You’re scaring me.”
Eve took a deep breath. “Sorry. I was thinking about when I was little—when I was upset. I’d become this bratty kid, and her name was—?
“Alexis!”
Kate blurted out.
“You remember?”
“Do
I? You were, like,
possessed
.”
“Well, so, you know—the face, the name. It kind of freaked me out.”
Kate fell silent. She was staring at the screen now. “Oh, my god.”
“What?”
“Why did you pick that name—Alexis?”
Eve shrugged. “It sounded cool, I guess.”
“You didn’t know
anyone
by that name?”
“Nope.”
“Not even from your deepest past? From before you were adopted?”
“I was a newborn! How could I?”
“We don’t
forget
our early memories, Eve. Even I know that. You
had
to have seen your birth mother, right? Maybe your birth father, too. You heard their voices.”