The Unhappening of Genesis Lee Read online

  THE

  UNHAPPENING

  OF

  GENESIS LEE

  Shallee McArthur

  Sky Pony Press

  New York

  To Danny

  For giving me the motivation

  For providing the inspiration

  For encouraging the perspiration

  For being my relaxation

  Aishiteru

  Copyright © 2014 by Shallee McArthur

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Sky Pony® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyponypress.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Manufactured in the United States of America, September 2014

  This product conforms to CPSIA 2008

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

  Cover photo credit Thinkstock

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-647-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-229-1

  Book group questions, Common Core teacher discussion guides, and behind-the-scenes bonus content can be found at www.shalleemcarthur.com.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A book doesn’t begin with the first words on a page. This one began decades before that, which means there are an awful lot of people who helped out. In no particular order, thanks go to these people.

  To my team: My agent Hannah Bowman, for being a ninja wizard of editing and the warrior who championed the book. My editor Kristin Kulsavage, for loving the story and being so dedicated to getting the best version possible out to the world. Everyone at Sky Pony who worked behind the scenes, even when I didn’t see you there.

  To my teachers: Mr. Richard Soto, who taught me in sixth grade never to use the word “can’t.” Miss Sharon Bodily of AP English fame, who showed me that my true love really was literature. Mr. Neil Newel, who taught me what a story truly is—thank you, thank you, Master Newel. Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells, who gave me the tools to take the next step.

  To my critique group: Chersti Nieveen, Rachel Giddings, Kevin Smith, Joel Smith, and Karen Krueger, for finding me, welcoming me, strengthening me, amusing me, improving me—and for Doctor Who. Michelle Merrill, for rooting for the book from draft one to the end. And to Chersti one more time, for always, always being there.

  To the WrAHM girls: Who listened to me gripe and squee, made me actually LOL, and gave me enough gifs of Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch to keep me motivated. Keep WrAHMpaging on!

  To my beta readers and fact checkers: Teralyn Pilgrim, Melanie Fowler, Lily Herrmann, Tanya Reimer, LaChelle and Darren Hansen, Madeline Bartos, Kami McArthur, Jessie Humphries, Nancy Heiss, Jeni Tolley, and Liesl Shurtliff. Thanks for taking the time to help make this book more than it was.

  To my grandmothers: Delores Tanner, Evelyn Cutler, Opal Rowley, and Rose Mower, who all made little appearances in this book, for the shaping experiences that made me a better person and a better writer.

  To the author who inspired me: Lois Lowry, for the book that changed and disturbed and inspired me, and showed me, even as a child, that I not only wanted to read great books—I wanted to write them.

  To the family I grew up with: Mom, for being my perpetual cheerleader, and Dad, for being my first ever critique partner. Kylee, for not killing me for exercising my privilege as big sister to turn playtime into a chance to act out my stories. Camri, for helping me keep my French (and creativity) sharp. Preston, for loving my previous book so much I had to write another one.

  To the family I created: Danny, for your patience and love and faith—you are the reason I made it this far. Asher, for keeping me laughing and always assuring me that you like me. Amaya, for your smooshy kisses and squeezy hugs that remind me I’m more than just a writer.

  To the God who gave me everything: All I can say is thank you, even though it will never feel like enough.

  Just as a book doesn’t begin at the first word, it doesn’t end at the printing press. So thank you to all you readers for giving this book a chance and making it your own. You are why I do this.

  A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.

  —Edward de Bono

  1

  An awful thought, a life removed . . .

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam XIII

  The Low-Gravity Club pulsed with music and memories.

  Chinese techno-trad blared from the speakers, the rhythm thrumming inside me like a delicious double heartbeat. I stood just inside the club entrance and swayed my hips, tuning my body to the beat. And trying to tune out the other rhythm in the club. Memories. The inaudible buzz of a hundred different lives, like an earthquake in my brain.

  Every Mementi in the club bore a perfect recollection of their existence inside their Link beads. Hundreds of Links. Lifetimes of memories within them. The Links wrapped around gloved wrists and bulged under long sleeves and scarves. Always present, always hidden.

  Cora stepped out from behind me and wrinkled her nose. “What are we listening to?”

  “It’s Destinations Night,” I hollered over the thumping bass. “Welcome to Hong Kong, chica!”

  I spun in a gleeful pirouette, taking in the full circle of wallscreens glowing with a city skyline half a world away. Clusters of buildings reached toward murky clouds. Their light cast rainbow streaks on the lapping waters of Victoria Harbor. A wooden boat with dragon-wing sails—a junk, my Hong-Kong-born grandpa had called it—sliced through the colored sea. Like a magical kingdom we in the Arizona desert could only dream of.

  Cora waved a gloved hand at the packed club. “This is number two on your list? Take earplugs when you go.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ll put them on my packing list when I leave in, oh, like, never.”

  Mementi didn’t leave Havendale. This was the only place we belonged.

  People around me headed toward the low-grav dance floors, their movements staccatoed by neon strobe lights. So many of us in one place, more than I’d ever seen. The buzz of memories behind my forehead surged and drowned out the music.

  And for just a second, I wished I dared to go somewhere the Link buzz wouldn’t be a constant reminder of who I was—and who I was supposed to be.

  “I’m beginning to doubt the brilliance of this brilliant idea,” I said. “I swear the whole town is here. I can barely think with the buzz this strong.”

  I tugged at my long gloves, making sure they hid every inch of skin. One accidental touch with any other Mementi, and we’d glimpse each other’s memories. The insistent pounding of music in my head became a shudder.

  Cora shimmied her shoulders at me, laughing. “Don’t think. Dance!”

  I ran my hands over my outfit: gloves, scarf, long sleeves, leggings. Everybody here wore the same touch protection. Nothing to worry about. Technically. But all of China wasn’t as crowded as a club full of Mementi, no matter how far apart we danced.

  Still. Dancing the night away on the streets of Hong Kong . . . even enduring this mob was worth th
at.

  I turned to Cora. She stood on her tiptoes, scanning the throng with a hopeful expression. Too hopeful.

  My eyes narrowed. “You aren’t by chance looking for a particular someone, are you?”

  She ignored me.

  I groaned. “Kill me now. If this whole plan was just to hook back up with Dom . . .”

  She whirled, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “There will be no rehook-uppery tonight, my friend. We’re on idiot patrol.”

  “Uh, I’m on dance-to-crazy-Chinese-music patrol.”

  “Oh, there will be dancing. It just needs to be done in front of Dom. Where he can watch all night, then watch me walk away, and see exactly what he can’t have.” She flashed a sneaky smile.

  I laughed. Now that was a plan. “I love you when you’re devious. One problem, though. How are we supposed to find him in this horde?”

  “I’ll text him again. He said he’d meet us at the door, but, well . . . it’s Dom.” The hint of a scowl crossed her face.

  Great. The couple-storm was brewing already, and he wasn’t even here yet. Visions of twirling in a low-gravity Hong Kong gave way to nightmares of playing referee. A memory of my last encounter with the happy couple played in my mind. A double date. A disappearing Dom. An irate Cora when we finally found him watching a life-sized holo-cast of a soccer game instead of ice skating with us.

  The Link bracelets spiraling up my forearm kept the memory sharp, and I focused on a specific moment. I could feel the skates pinching my toes, the chill of the ice rink raising goose bumps on my arms. Each word that Cora yelled, each flimsy excuse he’d retorted with, the number of times she’d blinked away the tears when he’d called her a controlling shrew.

  Yeah. And then he’d broken up with her.

  I tugged at the short blue skirt over my black leggings and thought up half-a-dozen nasty names I’d never call Dom to his face.

  Cora’s phone buzzed. “He bought us drinks and saved us a table. We can meet him there,” she reported.

  I waved at the dozens of occupied tables. “That narrows it down.”

  She bit her thumb through her glove. “Not in the Mementi section. The only table he could find was at the back. On the Populace side.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  My gaze drifted to the left, where the club churned with near-violence. A girl flipped her long hair and pushed the guy next to her, knocking him into a couple locking lips in the middle of the floor. People elbowed others aside and squeezed through too-small spaces.

  Short skirts, bare heads, and exposed shoulders. Not a single Link bead gleamed in the strobe lights. Populace. Their memories still lived in their brains. If you could call it living, to have your imperfect memories fade like colors in the sun. Bleed out of you once a moment had passed, leaving you with a sad kind of half-life. I clutched the Links around my wrist—the perfect entirety of my life—gratefully.

  Of course, Populace also didn’t pass memory through touch. I was safe from them. Despite all that skin.

  “He is so not worth that,” I said to Cora.

  “Making him feel like a complete and utter loser is worth anything.”

  I gave her a dubious look.

  “Come on, Gena, please?” She raised clasped hands in mock pleading. “He wouldn’t have sat there if it was dangerous.”

  My opinion of his ability to be smarter than your average goofball was not as high as Cora’s. Maybe not every Populace was dangerous, but one of them was a thief.

  A Link thief. The person who did what no one in Mementi history had ever done: stole entire lives. One moment, you’d have your entire life at your fingertips—the next, your mind would be empty, grasping at a past you no longer had. Family, friends, private moments that had made you who you were, all taken away. No future, because you had no past. All because of one terrible Populace with a grudge against Mementi, or maybe a mad desire to experiment with our Links, or a sick fetish for taking lives and watching his victims stumble in the dark. No one was quite sure which.

  “No way,” I said. “Not for Dom.”

  Cora bit her lip, then raised her eyes to mine. “We held hands, you know,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “Just once, through our gloves,” she said quickly. “Not skin to skin. The night before we broke up.”

  She’d trusted him enough to touch him, and he’d dropped her twenty-four hours later? No wonder she couldn’t let him go. Every time she thought about him, that touch had to be the first memory that came up. Feeling that moment of extreme trust even in the midst of his betrayal.

  Oh, he was going down.

  “We could walk back on the Mementi side, then cut over,” I said, forcing confidence into my voice. “The Link thief never strikes in crowds. And nobody’s seen him in practically two months.”

  Two months had seemed a lot longer before this conversation started.

  I yanked my sleeves over my blue vine-patterned gloves, giving my Links a double layer of protection. “Let’s go make your ex-boyfriend feel just how ex he is.”

  “I knew I loved you!” Cora squealed. She adjusted her bright yellow shirt and patted her new sheer scarf, making sure it covered her head and wrapped her neck. “Am I good?”

  Underneath her scarf, Link beads threaded a net woven through her dark hair that trailed down the back of her head, becoming a necklace. A dangerous look, to flaunt her memories that way. Just the kind of thing Dom would like.

  “You are a walking psychological kick in the pants.” I grinned. “He’ll wish he never dumped you.”

  She sauntered ahead. “I think he already does.”

  We stepped into the throng. The crowd on our side flowed in smooth precision, everyone passing on the left and nodding to acknowledge each other, a good two feet of space between each person. We reached the back and stopped at the same time, facing the anarchy a few steps away. I teetered on the edge of the invisible divide between the crowds. Get a grip, Gena. Just because the Populace hated us for being better than them didn’t mean they’d throw us off a cliff or something. With head held high, I crossed into Populace territory. And actually, my stomach did feel like it was falling.

  Cora followed so close behind me I started getting paranoid, but none of the Populace even glanced our way. I noticed a few—a very few—other Mementi in the crowd. Some of the rebel-types liked the appeal of the Populace’s inability to see our memories through touch. A Populace boyfriend meant a lot more . . . physicality, with a lot less commitment.

  Finally, I spotted a letterman’s jacket draped over a chair. Dom’s jacket, but no Dom. Three soda glasses waited for us on the table. Hot and sweaty already, I gulped down half a glass before a bitter aftertaste caught up with me. I gagged. Must be one of his weird “suicide” soda combos.

  Cora frowned at the empty table. “Jerk. He said he’d be here.”

  “Are we surprised?” I said. “He probably never left the floor.”

  The group at the edge of the dance floors shifted as we picked our way through. I peered down the fifteen feet to the low-g pits. And I’d thought it was crowded up here.

  Throngs of people bounced and loped in surreal patterns—slowed by the low gravity and quickened by the colored strobe lights. It was a mass of heads and arms and the occasional full body when somebody flipped in mid-air. Holo-projections flitted among the faceless dancers: a sinuous dragon, hovering Chinese lanterns, an explosion of fireworks. I couldn’t wait to get down there.

  Cora grinned. “Let’s go piss him off.”

  She threw herself off the ledge, arms flung out to catch the flashing colors. She drifted like a falling leaf. The dancers parted as she touched down, giving her the requisite two feet of distance.

  Two dance floors for two kinds of people. On the higher-g floor below me, the Mementi bobbed in place. Definitely more than I’d ever seen here. Not a hint of flesh showed from this angle. Bubbles of space kept the touch risk to a minimum. Still a risk, though. O
ne my parents would kill me for taking.

  Which kind of heightened the thrill factor. And the fear factor.

  The lower gravity in the pit on the left attracted the Populace. They leaped in crazy patterns across the floor. Two barely dressed people collided in mid-air, their momentum spinning each other around. Dancers thrashed in tight groups, grinding skin on sweaty skin. Oh my yuck.

  I edged to the right. The driving pulse of the music welled inside me, finally, finally overpowering the Link buzz. Let Cora piss off Dom. She was good at that. I was going to live a dream the only way I dared. A familiar shiver of anticipation started at my feet, tickling toward my throat. I bounced on my toes to prep for the jump.

  Three. Two. One.

  I launched myself from the ledge with a spin, a shriek escaping as I dropped. Pinpoints of light whirled into streaks. A timelapse photo of the stars engulfed me. I tipped my head back and drank in the dizziness.

  My spin slowed, then stopped. I touched down and took a bounding step that ended in a wobble. Holographic soap bubbles swam around me as the world continued to twirl, and twirl, and twirl. Weird. Dizziness from a spin never lasted long for me.

  I took a flying leap forward, soaring for a moment between magical floating lanterns. I landed, off-beat with the music. Where was the beat? I swayed a little—not on purpose. Step, tilt. Tilt some more. My shoulder brushed dangerously close to someone’s back.

  Crap. My one chance at number two on my list, and I had to go lurpy.

  With a huff of frustration, I bounded to an escalator that led up to the tables, trying not to bump into anyone. Tilt, wobble, sway. Maybe it was the extra strong Link buzz tonight?

  Nauseated by my skewed vision, I collapsed into a chair at our table.

  “What’s wrong?” someone asked over the music.

  Dom sank into the chair next to me. His teeth gleamed in the now-orange strobe lights. Like a jack-o-lantern. A sweaty, obnoxi­ous one. Of course he had to show up now.

  “Not feeling so hot,” I yelled back. I took a sip of the half-empty soda in front of me. Still gross.