Michael Grant - Eve and Adam

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Michael Grant - Eve and Adam» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Город: New York, Год выпуска: 2012, ISBN: 2012, Издательство: Feiwel and Friends, Жанр: Фантастика и фэнтези, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Eve and Adam: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Eve and Adam»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

In the beginning, there was an apple—
And then there was a car crash, a horrible injury, and a hospital. But before Evening Spiker’s head clears a strange boy named Solo is rushing her to her mother’s research facility. There, under the best care available, Eve is left alone to heal.
Just when Eve thinks she will die—not from her injuries, but from boredom—her mother gives her a special project: Create the perfect boy.
Using an amazingly detailed simulation, Eve starts building a boy from the ground up. Eve is creating Adam. And he will be just perfect… won’t he?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmRb9iK3-ls

Eve and Adam — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Eve and Adam», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate

EV E& A DAM

for Jean Feiwel

friend visionary responsible party

Eve and Adam - изображение 1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to the dedicated, talented, and just generally amazing people who helped create Eve and Adam - изображение 2Holly West, assistant editor; Rich Deas, art director; Ashley Halsey, interior designer; Dave Barrett, managing editor; and Nicole Moulaison, production manager.

Special thanks to Jean Feiwel, who came up with the concept and agreed in advance to cover post-collaboration marital counseling.

– 1 –

Eve and Adam - изображение 3

I am thinking of an apple when the streetcar hits and my leg severs and my ribs crumble and my arm is no longer an arm but something unrecognizable, wet and red.

An apple. It was in a vendor’s stall at the farmers’ market off Powell. I’d noticed it because it was so weirdly out of place, a defiant crimson McIntosh in an army of dull green Granny Smiths.

When you die—and I realize this as I hurtle through the air like a wounded bird—you should be thinking about love. If not love, at the very least you should be counting up your sins or wondering why you didn’t cross at the light.

But you should not be thinking about an apple.

I register the brakes screeching and the horrified cries before I hit the pavement. I listen as my bones splinter and shatter. It’s not an unpleasant sound, more delicate than I would have imagined. It reminds me of the bamboo wind chimes on our patio.

A thicket of legs encircles me. Between a bike messenger’s ropy calves I can just make out the 30% OFF TODAY ONLY sign at Lady Foot Locker.

I should be thinking about love right now—not apples, and certainly not a new pair of Nikes—and then I stop thinking altogether because I am too busy screaming.

* * *

I open my eyes and the light is blinding. I know I must be dead because in the movies there’s always a tunnel of brilliant light before someone croaks.

“Evening? Stay with us, girl. Evening? Cool name. Look at me, Evening. You’re in the hospital. Who should we call?”

The pain slams me down, and I realize I’m not dead after all, although I really wish I could be because maybe then I could breathe instead of scream.

“Evening? You go by Eve or Evening?”

Something white smeared in red hovers above me like a cloud at sunset. It pokes and prods and mutters. There’s another, then another. They are grim but determined, these clouds. They talk in fragments. Pieces, like I am in pieces. Vitals. Prep. Notify. Permission. Bad.

“Evening? Who should we call?”

“Check her phone. Who’s got her damn cell?”

“They couldn’t find it. Just her school ID.”

“What’s your mom’s name, hon? Or your dad’s?”

“My dad is dead,” I say, but it comes out in ear-splitting moans, a song I didn’t know I could sing. It’s funny, really, because I cannot remotely carry a tune. A C+ in Beginning Women’s Chorus—and that was totally a pity grade—but here I am, singing my heart out.

Dead would be so good right now. My dad and me, just us, not this.

OR 2’s ready. No time. Now now now.

I’m pinned flat like a lab specimen, and yet I’m moving, flying past the red and white clouds. I didn’t know I could fly. So many things I know this afternoon that I didn’t know this morning.

“Evening? Eve? Give me a name, hon.”

I try to go back to the morning, before I knew that clouds could talk, before I knew a stranger could retrieve the dripping stump of your own leg.

What do I do with it? he’d asked.

“My mother’s Terra Spiker,” I sing.

The clouds are silent for a moment, and then I fly from the room of bright light.

– 2 –

I awaken to an argument. The man is simmering, the woman on full boil.

They’re out of my view, behind an ugly green curtain. I try to do what I always do when my parents fight, adjust my earbuds and crank the volume to brain-numb, but something is wrong. My right arm is not obeying me, and when I touch my ear with my left hand, I discover a thick gauze headband. I’ve sprouted long tubes from my arms and my nose.

“She’s my daughter,” the woman says, “and if I say she’s leaving, she’s leaving.”

“Please, listen to me. She’s going to be your one-legged daughter if you take her out of here.”

The man is pleading, and I realize he’s not my dad because (a) my dad was never a pleader—more of a pouter, really; and (b) he’s dead.

“I have superior facilities, the best medical staff money can buy.” The woman punctuates this with a dramatic exhalation. It’s my mother’s trademark sigh.

“She’s in critical condition in the ICU after a fourteen-hour surgery. There’s every chance she’s going to lose that leg, and you want to move her? Because… what? It’s more convenient? Your sheets have a higher thread count? What exactly?”

I feel pretty okay, sort of floaty and disconnected, but this man, who I’ve decided must be a doctor, sounds a little freaked out about my leg, which, as it happens, doesn’t seem to be behaving any better than my arm.

I should probably reassure him, get my mother off his case—when she’s like this it’s best to retreat and regroup—but the tube stuck down my throat makes that impossible.

“I will not release this patient,” the doctor says, “under any circumstances.”

Silence. My mother is the god of painful pauses.

“Do you know,” she finally asks, “what the new hospital wing is called, Doctor?”

More silence. The contraptions I’m tethered to chirp contentedly.

“That would be the Spiker Neurogenetics Pavilion,” the doctor finally says, and suddenly he sounds defeated, or maybe he’s missing his tee time.

“I have an ambulance waiting outside,” my mother says. Check and mate. “I trust you’ll expedite the paperwork.”

“She dies, it’s on you.”

His choice of words must bother me, because my machines start blaring like a cheap car alarm.

“Evening?” My mother rushes to my side. Tiffany earrings, Bulgari perfume, Chanel suit. Mommy, Casual Friday edition.

“Sweetheart, it’s going to be okay,” she says. “I’ve got everything under control.”

The quaver in her voice betrays her. My mother does not quaver.

I try to move my head a millimeter and realize maybe I’m not feeling so okay after all. Also, my car alarm won’t shut up. The doctor is muttering about my leg, or what’s left of my leg, and my mother is burying her head into my pillow, her lacquered nails digging into my shoulder. She may actually be crying.

I am pretty sure we’re all losing it, and then, on my other shoulder, I feel a firm pressure.

It’s a hand.

I follow the path from hand to arm to neck to head, moving just my eyes this time.

The hand is connected to a guy.

“Dr. Spiker,” he says, “I’ll get her into the ambulance.”

My mother sniffles into my gown. She rouses herself, stands erect. She is Back in Control.

“What the hell are you doing here, Solo?” she snaps.

“You left your phone and briefcase behind when you got the call about the”—he jerks his chin toward me—“the accident. I followed in one of the Spiker limos.”

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Eve and Adam»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Eve and Adam» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Michael Grant - Lies
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - Purple Hearts
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - Bzrk Apocalypse
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - BZRK - RELOADED
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - BZRK
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - Dead of Night
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - Hero
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - The Key
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - The Power
Michael Grant
Michael Grant - The Call
Michael Grant
Отзывы о книге «Eve and Adam»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Eve and Adam» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x