Cloneward Bound Read Free

bush.
    —Amanda Cantrell, Practice Harvard Admissions Essay
    By the time science class ended, Fisher felt as though his heart was plastered to the soles of his shoes. Kevin Keels? Kevin Keels, whose hair actually glowed as if a helicopter with a spotlight followed him everywhere he went. Kevin Keels, who sold out arenas so big you needed an astronomical telescope to see him from the back row. Kevin Keels, who had a basketball shoe named after him
even though he didn’t play basketball
.
    Kevin Keels! Really?!
Fisher fumed. His music was cheesier than a map of Wisconsin cut from a four-cheese pizza. And how could an accomplished English student like Veronica get so—
blushy
—over someone who had a hit single titled “Not Never Wouldn’t Leave You”?
    He had just stepped into the hall and had started toward his next class when he was seized by a hand on his left shoulder.
    As Fisher found himself spun roughly around, hefumbled into his back pocket, preparing to defend himself with his Instant Nose Froster.
    Then he saw Amanda Cantrell’s angry face and stopped mid-draw. The tiny plastic device was knocked from his hand. As it collided with a bank of lockers, the Nose Froster let out a fine plume of white spray, turning a passing sixth grader’s nasal passages into a miniature model of a glacier formation.
    The girl let out something between a scream and a honk, her arms flailing as she ran toward the nearest bathroom.
    “Amanda!” he cried out in surprise, choking a bit as she pinned him against the locker. “Is, uh … something wrong?”
    “Something is
very
wrong,” she said, her dark hair whipping around her face like deadly vines. She freed one hand to adjust the black-rimmed glasses that her ambush had jostled out of place. The other arm was more than enough to keep Fisher pinned. Amanda was short, but she was
strong
. She was head of the debate team
and
captain of the wrestling team. “And you’re going to tell me what.”
    “What—what are you talking about?” stuttered Fisher. Little beads of sweat rolled down the back of his neck.
    “When you started acting weird a few weeks ago, I was confused, but I figured you had finally evolved from a sea slug into some kind of vertebrate.” Apparently, Fisher’s new fame hadn’t made people forget about his father’s Bas-Hermaphrodite-Sea-Slug Hypothesis. Fisher tried to wriggle away from her grasp, but there was no escape. He was at Amanda’s mercy. “
Then
you crawled out of TechX completely unhurt, even though the whole place blew sky-high moments earlier—”

    “Look, Amanda, if we could maybe—”
    “After you came back to school, you were right-handed, even though you’d been left-handed the week before. And you have a third freckle on your nose that I
know
wasn’t there before.”
    Fisher’s eyes darted around the hallway, willing someone to help him. But the few people left in the hall were busy at their own lockers or shot a terrified glance at Amanda before scurrying away. He’d never had help when the Vikings bullied him. He wasn’t going to get it now that Amanda practically had him in a headlock.
    “You understand how these events conflict, don’t you? Did you think no one would notice?” Her steely eyes bore into Fisher. He could practically feel a little burning spot on his forehead. His knees were beginning to twitch.
    “L-listen,” he said, struggling frantically for excuses, “I know a lot of weird things have happened, but I don’t know what you’re—
ow
!” Her fingers dug into his left shoulder as she fished a smart phone out of her pocket. She held the screen inches from his face.
    “Shut up and watch,” she said, and with a few rapid flicks of her fingers, pulled up a video on her phone.
    The screen faded up on a simple setup: a small room with blank walls and floor, and a chair in the middle.
    A chair in which Fisher was sitting.
    Only it wasn’t Fisher. It was Two. Showing his