Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) Read Free Page B

leaned
closer.
    It
was a glass vial, rounded at both ends so it was completely sealed. Inside, a
glowing red liquid crawled along the glass.
    “Do
you know what this is?” said Clive, smirking, his face now fully illuminated.
    “Plasma?”
    “This
is what drips out when you cut a hole in your clairvoyant channel.”
    Aaron
felt a wave of cold, separate from the ocean. “Is it yours? ”
    Clive
shook his head. “Whosever it is, they’re sorely missing it right now. Want to
hold it?”
    Aaron
took the vial from Clive, but when the glass touched his skin, the sudden
stabbing at the back of his scalp nearly made him drop it, like something
trying to exit his head through too small a hole. The red fluid scurried inside
of the vial, forming tendrils, as if searching for cracks. And Aaron had the
impression that the vial was somehow filling up, glowing brighter and brighter,
too bright to look at—
    “Hey,
how’d you do that?” said Clive.
    “Hold
on,” said Aaron, now mesmerized by the luminous substance. The glass, he
noticed, was stamped with some sort of ID code.
    “Give
it back—” Clive lunged for the vial.
    Aaron
held it out of reach, straining to make out the letters, but Clive caught his
wrist. The impact splayed Aaron’s fingers wide open, and in slow motion, the
vial flew from Aaron’s palm, bounced off the buoy, and plopped into the water.
    ***
    “Shit!”
Clive plunged his arm in, but the vial slipped through his fingers, briefly
lighting their toes on its way to the bottom.
    Clive
dived. And Aaron had no choice but to dive in after him. About eight feet down,
blind and out of breath, Aaron clamped his arm around Clive’s ankle and took a
bare heel to the forehead. He held on, though, righted himself, and thrust down
hard. With sheer will, he hauled Clive out of the ocean and forced him against
the buoy.
    “Let
it go!” Aaron yelled. “It was my fault.”
    “You idiot ,” Clive gasped, “you stupid idiot! Now we’ll never find it.”
    “Then
it’s lost,” he said. “It could be thirty feet to the bottom. What was that
thing, anyway?”
    They
both looked down as they caught their breath, and their last glimpse of the
vial was a fuzzy dot, no brighter than the reflection of a star, before it was
gone.
    “My
father’s going to kill me for this,” said Clive.
    Aaron
let go of him and lowered himself into the water. “Come on, let’s go back. It’s
freezing out here.”
    When
Aaron made it back to the beach, he was relieved to find that most of Corona
Blanca had gone home, and the few smoking weed by the bonfire’s dying embers
had forgotten about his and Clive’s race to the buoy.
    Aaron
reached his shoes, still disconcerted by what he’d seen in the vial and
determined that he would have nothing to do with Clive Selavio, his vial, or
Amber Lilian ever again, Clive’s half or not. No point in trying to see her if
the guy was that protective. Besides, Aaron and Amber’s birthday was only a
month away. Then they would know.
    There
was something in his shoe, wedged down by the toe. Aaron pulled out a bright,
powder blue smartphone.
    Amber’s
cell phone. Damn.
    ***
    When
Amber pulled in front of Dominic Brees’s gate to drop off Clive, she felt his
body go tense—as it usually did when she was doing everything wrong.
    “So
you’re making me walk up the driveway?” said Clive, and Amber barely heard the
vulnerability beneath his irritation. He was getting better at hiding it now
when she pushed him away, which made her nervous.
    “Can
you just go?” she said. “I’m really tired.”
    “You
sure got cozy with number eleven, didn’t you?” he said.
    She
sighed. “Why do you always do this?”
    “I’m
keeping you safe,” he spat.
    “Wow,”
she said, “I must really be something if every guy I meet is trying to
steal me away from you.”
    “I
saw the way he looked at you,” he said.
    “Actually,
Clive, he was asking about you ,” she said, and all at once,