Designed : A Young Adult Dystopian Romance

Heath took my hand, caressing my cold fingers with his warm ones, while I listened in stunned silence.

“You’re a Gebby. Like Daniel. All the kids you know on the base are Gebbies. You’re all Genetically Engineered Beings.”

I sat frozen in shock, feeling disconnected from my body.

As Heath continued to explain, his voice floated around me, landing on my head and shoulders and ears like falling ash.

“You were each placed with a military family who’d lost a young child in the Calamity. Your parents, I believe, had lost a baby girl, so you were given to them. The thing you told me—about your eyes? You were right—they did change color. I checked your records after I saw you at the base, after I nearly ran you down. Your mother put in a request for the change last year. Your sister’s eyes were brown. Your mom believed any baby of hers would have had brown eyes, like hers and your father’s. The green eyes had always bothered her and made her feel… ‘uncomfortable’ was the word she used. She thought the change might help with her attachment issues.”

This can’t be real. This isn’t happening.

But it was. I knew he wasn’t lying. It explained everything—my mother’s unwillingness to be close to me, my inability to please her, my parents’ detachment.

I hadn’t imagined their indifference. And now I understood it.

My parents weren’t my parents. I hadn’t lost a sister. Mom and Dad had lost their real child—their human one—and received a replacement.

An artificial child replacement. That’s what I was.

That’s all I was. A walking, talking security object for a grieving couple.

Apparently unaware my life had just imploded, Heath kept talking. “Your memory of the eye color procedure was removed. I hadn’t seen you since sometime before that—that’s why it surprised me. I wasn’t supposed to go to the base anymore because of our past connection. But that day the delivery operator who normally does that route was out sick. I covered for him.”

Finally, he addressed my silence and near-inability to breathe.

“Reya? You okay?”

What could I say? What could I do? My world as I knew it had ended.

It didn’t seem that the planet should keep on turning, the wind overhead should keep blowing, the insects in the forest should keep chirping and clicking and going on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

In an abrupt motion, I leapt from the log and ran to the dark edge of the tree line. I might not be a real person, but I still felt a very real aversion to tossing my MRE cookies in front of a hot guy. I leaned over into the underbrush as every calorie in my calorie-dense dinner made a reappearance.

Seconds later I felt Heath’s hand on my back, rubbing gently. He offered me a water bottle.

“You okay?”

I took a drink and swished the water around my mouth before spitting it out. Handing the bottle back to Heath, I looked him in the eye.

“No. I’m not.”

I was far from okay. The nagging thought I’d struggled with as long as I could remember—that something was wrong with me—hadn’t begun to scratch the surface of the truth of my life.

Something wasn’t wrong. I was wrong. I shouldn’t exist.

I’d read the history of the failed experiment with Gebby soldiers—and the subsequent ban on Gebbies in military operations and in the civilian world except in specialized, supervised facilities.

We weren’t just banned—we were dangerous.

Despised.

I turned around to face Heath. “Why did they do this to us? Why didn’t they tell us?”

“You’re part of a study—to determine if raising Gebbies from birth in human families would yield better results. If you were aware of your origins, it would have altered the evidence.”

“So I’m… an experiment?” I yelled. “Daniel is an experiment?”

Large hands gripped my shoulders lightly.

“Don’t think of it that way. You’re amazing. You’re a miracle. You’re smart and beautiful and strong. You don’t even know what you’re capable of yet. You’ve always had this spirit about you, this grit and determination that just captivated me from the first time we met as kids.”

I flung an arm out, knocking his hands away. “Stop it. Stop talking like you actually like me. I’m not your girlfriend, Heath—I’m a product, a thing to Gideon.”

“I’m not Apollo Gideon. In my eyes, you are fully human… and then some. But you’re right—I don’t like you.”

My heart ripped in half, ceasing to beat until he reached out and took my hands.

“I love you, Reya. Exactly as you are. I’ve been in love with you for years. Why do you think I’m here? Why do you think I risked everything to be with you? You’re not a thing to me. You’re everything.”

Tears flooded my eyes, and my face crumpled. I had to swallow repeatedly and blink to keep the full-on ugly cry at bay.

Heath tugged me closer. “I would do anything for you. You have to believe me.”

I’d longed to hear words like these my entire life. To have someone love me like Heath claimed to—just as I was.

But how could I believe him when I couldn’t trust my own self?

I shook my head, turning my face away to keep from looking into those otherworldly eyes. I swallowed again, hard.

“I can’t. I can’t trust my memories. I can’t trust my feelings.”

He brought my hands up between us, flattening them against his chest. His heartbeat under my palm was strong and steady.

“You can trust these feelings—the ones between us. They are real, and they always have been.”

“You should have told me the truth earlier,” I bit out, trying desperately to hang onto my anger.

“I wanted to—believe me. I wanted to so many times. But every time you began to show self-awareness, they erased those memories. It would have been pointless, and I was afraid one of these times they’d take it further than that. I was afraid they might decide you were ‘unmanageable’ and do something drastic.”

“Like send me back to the factory?” My tone was harsh with sarcasm.

“Like wipe all your memories. Or even kill you. I even considered taking you and escaping with you earlier, but then I was afraid of what would happen to Daniel if I left. And for all I knew you’d fight me the whole way, terrified, because you didn’t remember me.”

He sighed. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I’m asking you to anyway. All I’ve ever wanted was to protect you—and to be with you—but since one of those was forbidden, I tried my best to do the other. Maybe I went about it all wrong. I did my best.”

I thought about it. What if he had come to me on the base and told me all of this before? How would I have reacted? Would I have even believed him?

To my swiss-cheese brain, he would have been a stranger. He was probably right. I would have thought he was insane or lying. I certainly would never have left with him.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. “I can’t tell, and it’s killing me. Is your faith in me damaged beyond repair? Do you hate me now?”

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “You did help me escape Atlanta, got me I.D., bought me a train ticket. You’ve tried to help me find the Haven. And I know for sure you love Daniel and you’re trying to do your best by him.”

I paused. “I don’t hate you. But I’m afraid it might be really stupid of me to love you.”

His shoulders drooped, and the light drained out of his eyes.

“That’s what I was afraid of. I knew I had to tell you at some point, but that look on your face, the sound of your voice right now—that was my greatest fear. I wanted to show you who I am first. I wanted you to see you could count on me before you found out the truth.”

I wanted to believe him—oh God, did I. I wanted to tell him I forgave him and that everything would be okay between us.

I wanted to count on him and love him and spend the rest of my days with him, living happily together in the Haven.

But I needed time to process, to figure out if that was even possible anymore.

“So where does this leave us?” he asked, his eyes shadowed and wary. “Where do we go from here? Do you want to keep trying to find the Haven? Or should I take you back to Charlottesville and buy you a ticket to… wherever you want to go?”

Even through my hurt and grief, I noticed his word choice. He’d said, “buy you a ticket.” Not us.

“What about you and Daniel?”

“We’re going to keep searching. I can’t take him back. Not now that I know what’s going on.”

I let out a long breath, suddenly exhausted. “I need to sleep on it, let it all… sink in before I decide what to do next.”

“Of course. I understand. Take your time.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Well… I have to put out the fire. If you want to go on ahead and go to bed, you can.”

Without another word to him, I went into the cabin and entered the small bedroom, intending to brush my teeth and then stretch out on the cot to sleep. The first thing I saw in the triangle of light shining in from the doorway was Daniel—stretched out on the cot, fast asleep.

The low camp bed was very small, obviously intended for a child. It made perfect sense for Daniel to sleep there—or would have, if the only other sleep option for the remaining two people hadn’t been a lone queen-sized bed.

Surely Heath didn’t plan on the two of us sharing a bed. When he came into the cabin a few minutes later, I confronted him.

“Where exactly were you planning on sleeping tonight?”

“The floor.”

“The floor,” I repeated, incredulous.

“Yeah. The cot is obviously not an option. It was too small even for you to use. Besides, when Daniel saw it was child-sized, he got all excited about the ‘tiny bed’ that was made for him, as he put it. I wasn’t going to suggest sharing the bed, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

It had been exactly what I was thinking, but I said, “No, I know.”

In the face of his calm denial, though, and his utter willingness to sleep on the bare wood floor, giving me the comfortable bed, I reconsidered.

“We can share it. It’s a queen—big enough for both of us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. As long as everyone stays on their own side.”

“Of course.”

It was only after we’d both gotten under the covers that I realized—a queen mattress isn’t all that big when you’re sharing it with someone as large as Heath. The presence of his long, heavy body beside me made me feel like we were sharing a twin bed. I felt every move he made, heard every exhale.

I tried to ignore my growing discomfort and let sleep take me away from the incredibly awkward situation.

Focusing on my own breathing, I worked to keep it even, to breathe deeply instead of hyperventilating like I really wanted to.

“Reya? You asleep yet? You still awake?”

I hesitated before answering. It would be simpler to feign sleep. I wasn’t sure I could handle any further conversation with Heath tonight, especially while lying so close to him.

“What is it?”

“I just wanted to say… I’m sorry.”

A sweet pain pinged my heart. “Okay,” I whispered.

“You’re right. I should have told you sooner. There are a lot of things you should know—about yourself… and about me.”

I was sure he was right. I was also sure this was too intimate a setting to get into it. The rumble of his deep voice so close to me set me off-kilter.

Add that to his enticing scent, and I could barely think straight. I wanted to be clear-headed when we spoke again about our relationship, past and present. There was so little possibility of a future for us it wasn’t even worth mentioning.

“We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“I know you said you wanted to sleep on it. But there is one thing I want to tell you tonight. It’s important.”

“Isn’t it all important? I don’t think I can handle one more thing tonight. Let’s just… let’s both go to sleep. Whatever it is, I’ll be able to handle it better when I’m not exhausted.”

The silence told me he disagreed, but finally, he said, “Okay then. Sleep well, Reya.”