Eve and Adam by Michael Grant, Katherine Applegate Page B

right arm and hand.
    I bend my crushed fingers, wave my mangled hand, flex my broken elbow.
    It’s as if nothing ever happened.
    You’re genetically modified.
    Don’t think about it.
    I take a hot, hot shower. I can’t believe how good it feels. Standing upright in the stinging spray is a gift. Shampooing my hair with both hands is bliss.
    I towel off, change into fresh clothes, actual jeans with two legs. Then I reach—with my right hand, no less—for my sketchbook and pencil.
    Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
    I open to the unfinished sketch I’d been working on for Life Drawing.
    The pencil feels smooth and certain between my fingers. The whispered resistance of point on paper is music.
    I make a few random lines, just to get the rhythm right.
    Don’t think about it.
    I study my drawing. It still sucks.
    It needs something. Energy, spark, soul.
    Life drawing, my ass. This is a still life.
    It’s the eyes. The eyes are all wrong. They’re nothing like the eyes I’ve been creating with the aid of my mother’s software.
    Adam’s eyes pulse with possibilities.
    These eyes … well, they’re granules of graphite on recycled wood product.
    Don’t think about it.
    I start to erase the left eye, but suddenly I picture the dog-eared poster on the art room wall: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
    I turn to a new page, tear it out, and write Aislin a quick note.
    I put the paper by her pillow. She’s kicked off her blankets, so I tuck them around her chin. Her cheek looks like an overripe plum, purple-black and swollen.
    I stash my sketchbook in a drawer.
    Then I flee for the safety of Adam.

 
    – 20 –
    I settle into my workstation. A shaft of sunlight slices the air. The twinkling ficus tree has dropped a leaf onto my keyboard. A couple of workers glance up when I appear, then quickly return to their monitors.
    I enter my password. Click, click, tap, tap.
    I can type again. Two hands, ten fingers.
    Adam materializes.
    He is a good-looking guy, Adam. Very good-looking.
    Apparently, the other workers think so, too. They stare, as if hypnotized, at his hovering form.
    “I want her job,” someone murmurs.
    I glance over, and, in perfect sync, all gazes return to their respective monitors. I am, after all, Terra Spiker’s daughter: Eye contact is not an option.
    Terra Spiker, who’s apparently capable of anything.
    I wiggle the fingers of my right hand. My perfect, pain-free fingers.
    They were trying to save my life. They did save my life.
    If they hadn’t cut corners, ignored the FDA, I wouldn’t be here.
    Wouldn’t I do the same thing for someone I love? For Aislin?
    Yep. In a heartbeat.
    But would I have kept it a secret from her, a secret she has to hear from some stranger?
    Solo’s not a stranger, some part of my brain protests. But he is, of course. I know virtually nothing about him, except that he hates my mother.
    Click, click. I focus on the monitor.
    I realize that Adam’s eyes—which, yes, happen to be the color of Solo’s, which, yes, is just a coincidence—aren’t as lifelike as I’d remembered.
    Like my sketch, the gaze is blank. There’s an emptiness, a void. Still, there’s a feeling of, I don’t know, possibility with Adam.
    This isn’t like art. I know how to fix this problem.
    The set of tools for designing the genetic components of the brain are different. They aren’t as simple as the first steps in creation: Plug in this gene and presto, you’ve got blue eyes or dark hair or lungs.
    I scan the instructions. They make clear, in a playful, user-friendly way, that genes may lay the table for the brain, but they don’t cook the meal. Brains are about experience, too. And even at the genetic level, the interactions are so subtle and so intertwined that you can never be sure what you’re getting. The brain is a tangle of wires, billions and billions of wires, with some areas relatively sparse and other