Whispers From the Grave by Leslie Rule

around me, I felt terribly, terribly alone.
    “No one can understand how I feel,” I said.
    As it turned out, I was wrong. I spent the next morning with the one person who knew exactly how I felt.

11
    Early Wednesday morning, I dressed hurriedly and left the house. I did not want to see or talk to my mother—or rather, the woman I’d thought was my mother!
    I’d never forgive her! She had betrayed me by lying to me my entire life. It didn’t matter that she had justified the lie by claiming she was trying to protect me. I could not forget the fact she had repeatedly lied to me about who I was.
    I didn’t want to be home, and I didn’t want to be in school. Instead, I took the solar-bus to the mall where I plopped down on a bench on the moving sidewalk. There I sat, watching the stores drift past as the sidewalk moved along its never ending path around the circular mall.
    The pungent aroma of brewing coffee mingled with the fresh, clean scent of new clothes. Shoppers bustled about, their canvas bags bulging with purchases as they hopped on and off the sidewalk. Canned voices emanated from the shops, announcing sales and specialty items. I closed my eyes, losing myself in the reassuring sounds and smells of the mall.
    Suddenly, a familiar male voice pricked my ear. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone before,” he said. My eyes flew open. That sounds like Kyle! I sat upright, straining to hear.
    “I feel the same way about you, Kyle,” a soft, feminine voice replied. She too sounded familiar. “Let’s order some champagne to celebrate our engagement.”
    I stepped off the sidewalk and slipped through an arched doorway toward the sound of the conversation. I found myself in a long dark hallway, with dozens of doors on each side. Apparently, I’d stumbled onto a new restaurant with private dining rooms.
    Delicious, buttery aromas drifted through the slightly open door of the closest room. “Let’s make a toast, sweetheart,” Kyle said. He was apparently having a romantic breakfast with his girlfriend. My stomach churned with jealousy as I turned away, ready to step back onto the sidewalk when he said, “You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, Suki.”
    Suki? Something very strange was going on. I moved toward the doorway and peered in. There was Kyle, his eyes filled with love as he gazed at Suki across a linen tablecloth decorated with silver candlesticks.
    I gasped involuntarily. Suki turned her head sharply. “Jenna!” she cried, sounding very embarrassed.
    “I’m sorry!” I mumbled, turning to go.
    “Don’t leave, Jenna,” she said. “You’ve already seen. You might as well stay.”
    “Suki, darling, I long to hold you in my arms,” Kyle said as if he hadn’t even noticed my intrusion.
    “Computer, end program,” Suki said. Kyle and the beautiful table instantly disintegrated as bright lights filled the room. Suki sat by herself in a nearly empty cubicle.
    “Oh!” I cried. “This is the new virtual reality arcade you were telling me about! I thought Kyle was really here!”
    “I wish ,” Suki said. “He seemed really real, didn’t he?”
    “Everything did. I even smelled the omelet.”
    “I programmed that in. You can write your own program and make people do whatever you want them to.”
    “How did you make Kyle seem so real?”
    “I got ahold of a videotape of him, put it in the computer, and it did the rest. But you can get the same effect with photographs. All I’ve got left of my mother is three still photographs. I fed those into the computer and came up with a program where she talks to me and apologizes for what she did. It makes me feel a little better.”
    “Apologizes? What did she do to you?”
    “The same thing your real mother did to you, Jenna.”
    My mouth fell open, and I stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.
    “My mother sold me to science so she could buy a new car,” Suki said.
    “ You were the other embryo?”
    “I tried to