Clone: A Contemporary Young Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 3) Read online

Maggie’s father, Buford Jaynes, owns one of the largest waste management firms in the nation on the outskirts of Sacramento, California, so naturally he wanted her laid to rest in their home town. I’m certain he will bury Maggie next to his wife.

  We run into very little traffic and arrive at the funeral home in Sacramento right on time. Inside, I find myself trying to hide. I don’t want to talk to these people. I don’t want to share my grief, or answer difficult questions, or have to force a smile. Chances are, the minute I even think about Maggie being gone, I’m going to turn into a blubbering mess.

  At this point, I haven’t even ventured inside the main chapel. If I see her laying in the casket, her hands crossed over her chest, her eyes sewn shut, her body prepped for an eternity in the dirt…I just don’t think I’m brave enough for that yet.

  The one saving grace is that I have the people I love close to me: Brayden, Rebecca, my father and—Jesus strike me down for me hypocrisy—Margaret. She said she wanted to be with me to show her support and love, and for a second there, I actually believed her. She can be convincing when she needs to, just as any addict can. It’s a survival mechanism.

  Me and the monster still haven’t spoken about the douchebag writer, and the way it looks, I might be able to avoid that dreaded conversation altogether. Especially now. Having your best friend die trumps having your mother’s boyfriend hitting on you any day of the week.

  Then, to my steep and utter surprise, I lock eyes with Professor Teller (just Jake), who’s making his way toward me through the gathering of mourners. First rule of going to funerals: don’t lust after the guests. Crap, too late.

  Damn he looks good!

  He pulls me into a hug and just having the warmth and strength of his body pressed into mine both settles me and makes me nervous.

  How can I forget his office after class last semester? The intense need, that sensuous kiss, his eyes on my bare chest. We almost got in the worst trouble ever by nearly hooking up. In the seconds that I first see him, before he can speak my name or even utter a single word, I’m once again overcome with desire. And regret. The way my emotions are, I feel conflicted. Vulnerable. Not being with him could very well have been my worst mistake ever. Looking at him now, I should’ve gone for it. But I didn’t. Was I a fool for choosing my head instead of my heart? Maybe. The way he looks—black suit, black shirt, black tie—my heart aches for him all over again.

  He says my name and it leaves his mouth like warm honey with a hint of bourbon: “Abby.”

  The very tenor of his voice makes me shiver, which I think is totally inappropriate. In fact, I actually hate what’s happening to me. This sexual vulnerability, it’s got me feeling out of control. My God, I’m so freaking soaked for this guy right now!

  “Hello, Professor Teller,” I manage to say.

  “Jake,” he corrects with a sad smile.

  “I know your name,” I say, letting a little ice into my voice. Snarkiness and brooding are my only defenses at this point.

  “Are you okay?” he says.

  “No,” I whisper, leaning close so other people won’t hear me. “She killed herself in my guest bathroom. My…niece…found her.”

  Until now, I wasn’t sure how to introduce Rebecca. Apparently she’s going to be my niece. It seems as good as any other idea I’ve had this week.

  Thinking of Rebecca and how destroyed she was finding Maggie, it makes my heart ache. Like I swept this poor girl into a world she barely understands only to show her how much the soul can hurt. If ever she was a clone, this would be a perfect lesson in humanity. Tears stand poised in my broken eyes, boiling over and ready to fall, ready to drain even more strength from me. Instead of deepening his hug, Jake puts his hand on my shoulder and leads me into the chapel and into a seat. He collects a box of Kleenex, hands me a tissue. I think that’s so sweet.

  Would Brayden have done something so nurturing? Or Damien? Probably not. Brayden and Damien are boys, whereas Jake is a man, a fact that isn’t lost on me.

  Speaking of Damien…

  He breezes into the funeral home only seconds after I’ve dabbed my eyes, looking as gorgeous and as ruined as ever. He’s searching for someone, for me perhaps. I stand and go to him and suddenly I’m drawn into his arms and he’s crying and I’m crying and it’s all one big mess. He and Maggie were close, like boyfriend/girlfriend close. I never really got the full story on them; now I’m more curious than ever. Not that I have the stones to ask. Rule number one when first dating: when you want a boy for yourself, try not to ask about ex-girlfriends.

  A few minutes later, Blake, her mother and Maggie’s father arrive. They look unified. Shell-shocked. Morose. Blake won’t even spare me a glance. I don’t blame her. The way I heaped so much guilt on those narrow shoulders of hers, who could blame her?

  “Give me a second,” I tell Damien. He looks at me like I’m crazy, just leaving him like this. Discretely he wipes his eyes.

  Buford Jaynes and I have never formally met. He’s an imposing man in both height and muscle tone. The look on his weather-beaten face bears the kind of expression you’d find on a lumberjack, or a seasoned mob boss. Stone cold. Calculating. Like if he wanted, he could turn those dark, deep set eyes on you, and the look alone would tunnel through you like rusty barbed wire.

  A mogul in the waste management industry, Jaynes is the worst kind of man to cross. Maggie had me watch a YouTube “hidden-video” of him dressing down an employee for having shown up to work late and it was downright abusive. She loved her father, but she was also scared of him. And embarrassed. Now seeing him face-to-face, I see her point. I’m terrified of him. Of what he must think of me. Of what he must want to do to me. After all, he has no idea why his daughter killed herself, only that she did it in my house. For this, I owe him something. Acknowledgement at the very least.

  “I’m really sorry for your loss Mr. Jaynes,” I force myself to say. He looks at me for the first time and all the fear I expect to have melts away. His eyes grow big and watery, and looking closer, they are as red and defeated as mine. He’s clean shaven, and even though he’s at least six foot five and stacked with muscle, the pillar of a man looks lost, and vulnerable. I don’t even look past him to Blake and her mother. I can’t.

  “You must be Abby,” he says. I nod. The reason he looks so solemn is he’s trying to hold it together. I see that now. “Never thought I’d have to do this twice.” He’s shaking his head like he still can’t believe it. First his wife, now his daughter. “Thank you for trying to cheer her up. She said she was really happy to be with you, although, to be perfectly honest, I’m sad to have missed my baby’s last days.”

  “Are you mad at me for that, Mr. Jaynes?”

  He looks at me with deep channels of confusion. Things pass through his eyes, old memories, perhaps, or sadness, and then he shakes his big head and says, “You cared about her enough to want to help her. Of course I’m not mad at you. I’m just sorry she did this to you.” Then in a more wounded tone, “To us.”

  The minute he says this, his chest jumps with a sob, and second by second I watch the man unravel. He’s fully crying and dammit, now I’m crying, too. This whole grieving process I wanted to not go through, I’m lady-balls deep in it and it’s so much worse than the internet said it would be. My face and heart hurt so bad I just want it over with. I want to be alone. He takes my hand and it swallows mine. I feel the roughness in his skin, and it’s sad.

  “Thank you,” he says, and I nod. I try not to think about how different things would be if he knew I was withholding the truth about Maggie’s suicide. At this point, I haven’t decided if it would be better or worse for him to know her reasons. Then again, I feel selfish because I want the pleasure of killing Demetrius myself. But shouldn’t something like that be a father’s vengeance?

  Deep down, I know it should. And I believe Buford would gut Demetrius like the pig that he is. Not that anyone would blame him.

  After a few parting words with Buford
, I sit down between Rebecca and my father. I still refuse to look at the casket. Brayden sits next to Margaret at the end of our long wooden pew. Damien sits on the other side of the aisle with his father. I steal a look around in time to see Theresa Pritchard taking a seat in back. Alone. No Cameron O’Dell. No Julie Sanderson. These were two of Maggie’s closest friends and they’re not even here.

  Un-freaking-believable!

  Theresa, with her tanned face, her stunning green eyes and her dark, shoulder-length hair, she gives me the stink eye. Yes, it’s official, we still hate each other.

  She looks away; I look away.

  A moment later, the soft murmur of voices and bodies shifting in their seats has me and a few other people looking over my shoulder. Cicely Wright (a.k.a. Victoria Galloway) and Tempest Hill (a.k.a. Bridget Montgomery) have arrived. My friends. They’re almost late, but they’re here.

  Discretely I wave at them and they gift me with a pair of ceremonial smiles. The both look like Bloomingdale’s models in little black dresses. If ever there was a Funeral Collection of clothing, they would grace the cover of the magazine, they look that good.

  Cicely kisses me and Tempest hugs me hard then they find two seats nearby. The service begins. For a short time, the old guy who introduces himself as Pastor Tyler talks about the value and measure of life and how it relates to Maggie, and it’s actually a beautiful ceremony. Then, when he does a video presentation of Maggie’s life, I lose it. Everyone loses it.

  After the slide show, Pastor Tyler asks if anyone would like to say a few words about Maggie. I stand and head to the podium, emotionally blitzed and still refusing to look at Maggie.

  In my peripheral vision I see the lovely arrangement of white flowers, the titanium casket done so tastefully, the out-of-focus head at rest on what is most likely a satin pillow.

  Clearing my throat, I remove my notes from my pocket and start. “I want to read a short essay about grief and loss that was written by Rachael Naomi Remen in 1966.” My eyes look up. They find my friends, who smile, and Theresa who doesn’t. Then they land on Jake. He’s looking at me intently and something low in my stomach responds to his gaze. He gives me the kind of smile that would melt most normal girls, and from it I take a much needed boost of courage. Damien, however, doesn’t look too happy that I’m staring at our teacher.

  Good God, if only he knew…

  “‘Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.’”

  I put the paper away, still myself, and speak only from my heart.

  “Maggie was not my friend for very long, but I loved her as if we had known each other forever. I feel like I knew her well. Yet I feel like I never knew her at all. She was hopelessly lost, quietly and privately in pain all the time. You couldn’t know Maggie without knowing there was something deep inside her, a sadness, that was…irreparable. I wanted desperately to save her. To rid her of those things in her head and her heart that made smiling look like the world’s most trying emotion.

  “It didn’t take me long to realize that her smile, which was rare and stunning and heartbreaking sometimes to see, was taken from her long before I arrived. There is no relief from the loss of a loved one. Especially when they leave before their time. Maggie endured her mother’s passing, rather she survived her passing, but the way her mother went, it haunted Maggie. The way Maggie went, the same as her mother, it’s plain to see she never fully recovered.

  “She hated her mother for what she had done, yet she loved her immensely. She sang because her mother sang, because they sounded the same, because this was the only way to stay connected. This is how she loved her mother. Through song. But to people like Maggie, some wounds run so deep, they can never heal.

  “I miss you already, Maggie. I hope you’ve finally found peace.”

  This is when I look at the casket, at my friend, and it’s too much. Tears sting my eyes, my legs nearly fail me, and the inhale of breath sounds like fear, which can be the same as grief. Buford comes to my aid, taking my arm, steadying me, thanking me, saving me.

  His is a gesture of kindness, one I won’t forget.

  I can’t stop the sobbing that overtakes me, and this is the moment I feared so much, but when I look around, everyone else is sobbing, too. Even Jake—who, with a look, gave me the courage to speak without fully coming apart—has tears rolling down his lovely, perfect face.

  I forget to look at Damien.

  I never look at Blake.

  4

  After the wake, before leaving the chapel for graveside services, a reed of a man wearing a colorful yet tasteful suit, approaches me and right away my gaydar is going haywire. He doesn’t strike me as flamboyant as much as he’s using his colorful choice of fashion and a lot of foundation to let his freak-flag fly. Maybe it’s for this reason I am drawn to him. Being different was always my greatest burden, a burden I could never endure in private. This person can hide his sexuality, if he is in fact gay, but he chooses bravery over cowardice. I could never put myself out like him, and for a moment this makes me feel terribly weak. Like I could never measure up. He doesn’t even care that everyone is staring at him and part of me is so envious.

  “Abby,” he says, not sounding gay at all. His voice is deep, masculine. Familiar. He offers me his hand and I take it. “I’m Joel. From the recording studio. We spoke on the phone the other day.”

  “Yes,” I say. I don’t know why, but I give him a hug. The fact that he came all this way to be here makes me think the world of him. Also, I’m embarrassed at having yelled at him on the phone. “Thank you for coming.”

  “I’m sorry for the way I reacted,” he says. “I was…in shock, I suppose.”

  “I shouldn’t have hung up on you.”

  He waves it off like it was no big deal. “Demetrius is a mess over this whole thing.”

  “Demetrius can rot in hell for all I care.”

  “I only mentioned him to tell you I gave him your message.” Leaning in, dropping his voice to a hushed whisper, he says, “Whatever it is you’re coming after him for, when I told him what you said, he sobered up right away.”

  Inside, the biggest tremors ever stomp all over my heart. It’s started, I think to myself. This has officially started.

  “Thank you,” I say, keeping my voice low as well.

  He stands up straight again, smoothes out his jacket and more formally says, “Whatever you plan on doing to that man, I hope it hurts.”

  “I appreciate you coming, Joel.”

  He nods, the steadfast look on his face a ruse. It’s obvious he’s been crying, that for all of his strength and detachment, Maggie’s passing has somehow touched him as well. “I liked her,” he says. “There was something so tortured in her it became beautiful. I can’t explain it. All I know is we are going to miss her.”

  Cicely and Tempest can no longer wait. They both excuse themselves, cut in and give me a most needed girl-hug. We catch up quickly. I tell them I heard from Gerhard, that Georgia will be okay, and that I will provide the details as they come. The movement of the crowd eventually shifts and everyone makes their way out of the funeral home. Pallbearers lift Maggie’s casket from the stand; they’re taking it away, taking her away.

  Outside, everyone is preparing to leave for the cemetery, for graveside services. Damien offers to drive me. Margaret drove my father in her Bentley, and I drove Rebecca and Brayden in the S5, so really I don’t need a ride. I do have an extra seat, though.

  “We’ll follow you,” Cicely says. They’ve got a rental car that’s parked illegally because they were late getting in.

  “Okay,” I tell the girls. To Damien I say, “I have room for one more in the Audi. I can bring you back here after the services.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Thanks.”

  Any fool can see he lik
es me, and any fool can see I like that he wants to be around me. Brayden sits up front, making Damien pause. Did he think he was going to sit next to me? I know he wants to, but Brayden is territorial. I stifle a smile.

  “Go around the other side,” Brayden says.

  Damien shakes his head, then goes around the other side and crawls in back with Rebecca. Again I’m struck with the feeling of being a terrible person. I made out with Professor Teller, and both he and Brayden have seen me naked, and yet I’m wanting Damien, whom I kissed after kissing Jake. Plus there’s the whole Jacob affair that I don’t want to think anything about.

  What a slut, I think to myself. What a whore-a-saurus rex.

  My mind is a wash of lust and guilt and grief and hatred, and it sickens me. It’s a cesspool of everything wrong with me right now and it’s too much. But is it really that awful that I’m comparing my maybe-boyfriend to Jake and Jacob right now?

  Yes, I decide, it is.

  Just before leaving the parking lot, a lowered white Bentley with white and chrome rims and blacked out windows drives up, making Margaret’s stock Bentley look bush league by comparison. I pull up beside it and the driver rolls down the window, and holy shitballs, the driver looks exactly like Brittney Spears.

  “This is the wake, right?” she says. “For Maggie Jaynes?”

  “You knew her?” I hear myself say.

  “We met in Demetrius’s office a while back. She was one of the best singers he had ever seen. I wanted to be near her. To pay my respects.”

  Say what you want about Brittney, but to be so successful, to be so loved and tortured by the paparazzi, I think the girl is amazing. I should be in awe of her at this very moment—if this is her—but what I feel instead is an immense respect for her. That she’d come to Maggie’s funeral for the reasons she mentioned makes me appreciate her even more.

  “The wake is over, but if you follow me, we’re going to the cemetery to bury her.”

  She reaches out a bejeweled hand. From her car window to mine, I take it and say, “Abby Swann.” She then lets go of my hand. Strange. I roll up my window and follow the hearse to the cemetery.