Read Online Vitro by Jessica Khoury - Free Book Online Page B

spine.
She froze, her eyes locked on the face.
No. That’s impossible.
Behind her, the door swung open and light from the corridor burst into the room and washed over the sleeping girl. Sophie’s muscles seized, urging her to turn around, to run, to hide—but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. Couldn’t understand . . .
The girl on the gurney, her eyes shut and her skin pale and her breathing so shallow she might have been dead, was all too familiar to Sophie.
Because she was looking at herself.
Then she felt a shattering pain on the back of her head and she dropped into deep and all-consuming darkness.

EIGHT
JIM
J im woke with a start, launching himself out of the seat only to slam his head into the roof of the cockpit. Sucking in a breath, he fumbled with the door. It swung open and, caught off guard by a sudden pitch of the plane, he tumbled out of the cockpit and fell straight into the sea, where he swallowed a salty mouthful of water and startled a school of bright yellow fish.
    Choking and now fully shocked to wakefulness, Jim dragged himself onto the beach and sat in the sand, blinking through the dripping hair that had fallen over his face. He shook his hair and coughed out seawater, then winced up at the sky. It was still dark, but now the moon was behind him, so he figured it was still a few hours until dawn. His back was stiff and sore and his arms burned from hauling the logs and the plane around. The Cessna rocked on the waves, and a fallen coconut bobbed against one of the floats, clunking with each roll of the surf.
    He climbed to his feet and looked around. There was no sign of Sophie or Nicholas or anyone at all.
Jim wandered up the beach and found his shirt where he’d left it the day before after diving in after the tires. He shook out the sand and pulled it over his head, then found his boots. His socks were damp, so he pulled the boots on without them. Then he stood staring across the channel. The tide was on its way out, slowly and reluctantly pulling away from the islands.
“Where are you?” Jim muttered, scanning the trees on the opposite island.
He swore and scrubbed at his hair, kicked the sand, started back to the plane then turned around and came back. This isn’t your problem, he told himself.
He could just go. He hadn’t made any promises to Sophie Crue. Sure, they’d been friends once and all that, but he’d already gone out of his way to help her reach the island, had done as much as could be expected. She probably found her mom, and they’re both catching up over coffee. Safe and sound. He told her he wouldn’t stay past nightfall. She knew he wasn’t going to wait around. Maybe she thought he was already gone. Maybe he was waiting for someone who would never come. She could have at least come back and said goodbye. For old time’s sake.
This was what he got for ignoring his own inner voice of alarm. He’d known better the moment he heard the words Skin Island. He’d known things would get messy.
Jim stormed around the beach for a bit longer, deliberating and justifying, somehow always finding himself feeling guilty. But for what? He’d done what he said he would do and more—he ought to have gone home hours ago. I don’t owe her anything. In fact, it’s the other way around. He looked at his wrecked plane, wincing as the dollar signs began to pile up in the back of his mind.
“Hey!” he yelled across the channel. “That’s it! I’m going, you hear? I’m counting to ten and then I’m outta here!”
Jim stalked back to the plane. He kicked off his boots, knotted the laces together, and slung them over his shoulders so he could wade out to it. Once he was back in the cockpit he tried the engine; it took a while, but it finally cranked. He was skipping nearly every point on his preflight checklist, but with the landing gear gone, it seemed to hardly matter. Already his mind ran through landing scenarios, trying to plan the best beach to put down at. Then