Entanglement
by Dan Rix
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction
"...the scientific explanation is quantum entanglement, whereby the boy and girl—even when separated by great distances—react instantaneously to changes in each other's states..." —Dr. Casler Selavio, on the entanglement of halves.
In a world like ours, humans are born in pairs. When a newborn boy takes his first breath in the coastal town of Tularosa, the exact time is noted, recorded in the Registry, and later compared to the birth times of other newborns around the globe. There will be one identical match—his half. They will meet on their eighteenth birthday and they will spend their lives together. Except this time, there is no match.
Hotheaded heartthrob Aaron Harper is scheduled to meet his half in twenty-nine days, and he doesn’t buy a word of that entanglement crap. So what if he and his half were born the same day and share a spooky psychic connection? Big deal. After breaking one too many teenage girls’ hearts, he’ll stick to brawling with the douchebag rugby players any day.
Until the day a new girl arrives at school and threatens everything he takes for granted.
Cold and unapproachable, Amber Lilian hates the growing list of similarities between her and the one boy she can’t read, Aaron: born the same day, both stubborn, both terrified of meeting their halves. . . . All the more reason not to trust him. That she would rather die than surrender herself as her half’s property is none of his damn business. But once lost in Aaron’s dangerous, jet black eyes, she’s already surrendered more than she cares to admit.
Tangled in each other’s self-destructive lives, Aaron and Amber learn the secret behind their linked births and why they feel like halves—but unless they can prove it before they turn eighteen, Aaron faces a lifetime alone in a world where everyone else has a soul mate . . . and he’ll have to watch Amber give herself to a boy who intends to possess not only her body but also a chunk of her soul.
EXCERPT
Emma Mist came in late
and slogged to her seat, and Aaron noticed something off about her. Her face
was pale, and her hair, usually full and glossy, looked wilted. He caught her
eye as she slumped into her seat, and Aaron knew this was his chance to
apologize. Before she could look away, he mouthed, “Can we please talk?”
She stared at him, her
brown eyes clouded by weariness, then gave a stiff nod. Aaron felt a weight off
his chest already.
But while his eyes
were still on her, her back arched suddenly. She gasped, and her bony shoulders
tensed before she fell forward, shivering. Students’ heads swiveled toward her,
and Mr. Sanders, who had started his lecture, trailed off.
“Emma!” Their
teacher ran to her desk and knelt beside her. “Emma, talk to me—what’s wrong?”
She clutched her
stomach, and a tear slid down her cheek from her wide, terrified eyes.
“Is it a stomach
ache?” said Mr. Sanders.
When Emma spoke, her
voice was a whimper. Almost too low to hear across a classroom, but Aaron
heard.
“I…I can’t feel him,”
she said, and another tear splattered on her desk. “I can’t feel my half.”
“Let’s get you to the
nurse,” said Mr. Sanders, helping her to her feet. “It’s going to be
fine.”
Emma touched the back
of her own head, winced, and collapsed against his chest. She was breathing too
fast, hyperventilating.
Mr. Sanders looped his
arm behind her knees, scooped her up, and carried her to the door. Only Buff
ran forward to help. The rest of the class sat white-faced and frozen.
Mr. Sanders addressed
them before he left. “Explain how the discovery of halves pushed the world
toward greater international cooperation in the late thirties, I want at least
a page from each of you when I get back—and NO talking!”
Then the door slammed.
All eyes turned on
Aaron. Nervous, shifty-eyed stares, wary of his reaction to what had just
happened to his ex-girlfriend. They knew the symptoms.
Her half was dead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Rix
Dan Rix majored in Architecture at UC Berkeley and considers himself lucky to have graduated during one of the worst housing market crashes of the century. "It made writing an easy choice," he says.
His favorite novels include Michael Grant's Gone, Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why, and Dan Brown's, The Da Vinci Code. High stakes, high concept page-turners. That's what he likes to read, and that's what he likes to write.
Dan lives in Santa Barbara, California with his girlfriend. His debut thriller, Entanglement , is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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