Immunity Index by Sue Burke (ebooks children's books free txt) 📕

own desk, closer to Avril. “If it’s not a fake, if you’re really a clone, I want you to know that it doesn’t matter. I know better. I’m in bioscience. I know what cloning really is, DNA engineering, and it’s nothing. You’re as human as anyone. All the rest is just lies and horror movies.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“But I’m not a clone. I’d know if I was.”

“Yeah.” She looked down at her phone. “Look, I didn’t do this to hurt you. I’m sorry. I thought you should see this before … Hey, maybe you should talk to your parents. I can leave you alone, if you want. Will you be okay? Or I can stay with you if you’d rather. I mean, clones, there’s lots of kinds of things that are clones. Like bananas. People don’t understand that. They don’t understand biology.”

Avril’s thoughts were swarming like bees. “I’ll be okay,” she said automatically. “Yeah, I should call my parents.” And say what? Is this true? They would know. And if it was true … “Where did you find that video?”

“Here, I’ll send it to your phone. I can go now for as long as you want. But if you need anything, call me. If anyone tries to hurt you, I’ll hurt them.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to. I know what kind of person I want to be.”

“It isn’t your problem.”

“That you’re a clone, no. That you’re safe, yes.” She flexed her arm. She was on the swim team and had enough muscle to hurt someone permanently. “And if you want to keep this a secret, I’m good with that, too. It’s like in a writing class yesterday, we were supposed to write about our biggest secret.”

“Oh. One of those assignments.”

“Yeah, you know. I mean, I went through all this before in high school. It’s like if you tell a story, then everyone expects you to keep living that story. You’re always that thing. Like, and this is for example, it’s not true, if you told how your father raped you as a child, you’d always be the raped little incest girl.”

Avril nodded. Maybe Shinta’s secret had to do with the death camps China had set up in Indonesia. Maybe that was why she hated China so much. Or maybe something else. It didn’t matter. Maybe it could be even worse than being a dupe.

“Some secrets I want to keep,” Shinta said. “You understand. Like this with you, if there wasn’t a way that anyone could find out.”

“Yeah. If I got that assignment, I’d make up something.” She would pretend that she’d never seen that video.

“Telling the truth is overrated. Truth needs to be optional. You can give people it like a gift. You choose to give it if it makes you happy.”

“Yeah.”

They sat for a while thinking. Avril had once heard an idea sort of like that debated: confession equaled authenticity. That worked only if your authentic self was your public self, fully transparent, no secrets. But instead, you might actually want to keep your different selves separate. Because if you confessed, you’d always be that thing, and you couldn’t grow and change. Everyone who really wanted to could figure out what Avril was now, if that video went viral, and people on campus had already seen it—and maybe she really was a dupe. Somehow. And maybe that was different than her real self, whatever that was now.

“So do what you have to do,” Shinta said, “and tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. Stay safe. I’ll be back when you tell me it’s okay. Or when it’s necessary.” She stood up, patted Avril on the shoulder, picked up her backpack, and left.

Stay safe? As soon as the administration found out, she’d be thrown off campus, and Shinta couldn’t do a thing about it. Unless the video was a sham, or maybe it was real and Shinta was going to turn her in, because everyone knew dupes weren’t fully human and now they weren’t first-class citizens. Her father had been furious in June when the law changed, and he never got furious …

Because he knew.

He knew. Her parents had lied. And that meant they weren’t really her parents, not her biological parents.

She sent the video to them. No words. They could do the talking.

There was a family rule: no lying and no secrets, which were a form of lying. Even if the truth hurt, it had to be told. Lies were what got Avril in trouble. But that worked both ways. If she asked a question, her parents answered honestly, no matter what. If she had a problem, they listened. She’d tell the truth, and her parents would keep their part of the bargain.

They’d have to tell her the truth now, not as a gift but as a duty.

And that woman in the video? Shinta said she used to attend Madison. Avril could ask around and get her name—if she left her room, which she wasn’t going to do, not anytime soon.

What if Avril really was a dupe? Everyone said that dupes were unnatural, so they had no innate moral compass. Nothing stopped them from turning evil. The spark of divine burned inside people because God made them in His image, and if people were made in an unnatural way that God hadn’t intended, the spark wasn’t there. Dupes were cold inside. None of her building blocks of DNA was labeled “soul.”

But not for a moment had she ever believed it, not at all—and for that matter, neither had her parents. It was just superstitious mumbo jumbo: natural law doctrine. Her father hated that doctrine.

Of course he did. He’d bought a clone for a daughter.

Worse—and this was for real—sometimes the DNA engineering left dupes crippled or superpowered. Like extra smart, and they went insane. Extra ambitious, and they became serial killers. Did she have a superpower?

Her parents had never let her make dupe jokes, but she knew them: If you cloned Henry IV, would he be Henry V,