"Replica15 - Transformation - Kaye, Marilyn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kaye Marilyn)

"Yeah, me too," Eric said. "I'm going to ask around, find out how much they cost." He took off, gliding across the parking lot toward a group of his ninth-grade basketball buddies. Amy skated around the rim of the lot and looked for some of her own seventh-grade friends.

She knew that her best friend, Tasha, Eric's sister, wouldn't be there. Tasha was never wild about sports fads. Amy herself loved the sensation you got from moving fast, and she hoped the in-line skating fad would go on for a long time. She liked it so much, she decided she just might go on skating after the fad had gone the way of baseball caps.

She had to swerve suddenly to avoid colliding with Alan Greenfield, a homeroom classmate who was fooling around on a skateboard, and she gave him a withering look. "Watch out, Alan," she yelled as she zoomed past him. Skateboards were so not cool anymore. Personally, she thought skateboarders should be banned from the lot so the inline skaters could rule.

But she couldn't complain about anything today. The sun was shining, and in just a few weeks school would let out for the summer. She didn't have any homework hanging over her head, she hadn't fought with her mother for at least a week, and she had a boyfriend to go skating with. Well, not exactly with Ч they would arrive and leave together, and that was about it. But that's the way boyfriends and girlfriends acted in middle school, and she wasn't about to try to change the rules. She popped a lemon Cocodoodle into her mouth and skated faster.

Actually, she wasn't that crazy about Cocodoodles. She thought they were too sweet, and they were so gummy they stuck to your teeth. But when it came to fads, she usually tried to go along with them. Not because she was a mindless follower Ч it was just that she didn't like to call attention to herself. She was already so different from everyone else, she didn't really need to isolate herself even more from her peers.

Like right that moment, when she was tempted to move really fast, to fly across the lot until she reached a vacant area and go into some rapid spins. That would feel great, so exhilarating, and everyone would be terribly impressed. But then they'd want to know how she could perform such extraordinary feats, and what was she going to tell them? The truth? That she was a genetically designed clone who had physical capabilities way beyond theirs?

"Amy!" a voice called out.

She identified the direction the voice was coming from and skidded to a stop in front of Simone Cusack and Linda Riviera. Both of them were in her math class at Parkside.

"Did you understand the homework assignment for tomorrow?" Simone asked in a plaintive voice.

Amy hedged. "I got some of it," she said. Just as she couldn't demonstrate her prodigious athletic skills, she tried not to show off how much more easily she could learn than most people.

Linda scrutinized her through tiny, hostile eyes. "I don't suppose you'd consider sharing your answers with the rest of us."

Amy pretended Linda was joking. "Ha, ha, very funny. See ya."

She moved on, but she heard Simone moan, "I'll bet she aced it, she gets everything right in math."

And Linda responded with "I can't stand Amy Candler."

Linda spoke more loudly than Simone, and Amy was pretty sure she wanted Amy to overhear her. She could have saved herself the effort Ч Amy would have heard her even if she had whispered. That was part of Amy's genetic makeup too: She could see and hear better than regular people. Sometimes, like now, this ability wasn't a blessing.

It didn't ruin her good mood, though. There would always be nasty, snotty girls like Linda Riviera, and Amy didn't waste her time feeling bad because Linda didn't like her. On her next lap around the lot, she paused to talk to Layne Hunter and Carrie Nolan, two much nicer classmates. They were in the midst of an animated conversation and drew Amy right in.

"Amy, what's your opinion about Billy and Brianna?" Layne asked. "Do you think something's starting up between them? Carrie says yes, I say no."

"There's definitely something going on," Carrie insisted. "Of course, what's really tragic is the fact that Jenny still thinks Billy's in love with her. Is she stupid, or what?"

"She just doesn't want to face the truth," Layne said sadly. "I feel sorry for Jenny. She's so sweet. But Billy is never going to think of her as anything more than a friend."

Amy was trying to recall classmates with those names, but no one came to mind. "Who are you talking about?"

The girls looked at her in surprise. "Jenny and Billy," Carrie said.

"And Brianna," Layne chimed in. "On Cherry Lane."

Now Amy got it, sort of. At least, she understood where the names had come from.

Layne and Carrie were talking about a TV show, a teen soap opera that everyone at Parkside was watching. At least, almost everyone. Amy was too embarrassed to tell them that she had never seen it. It came on at four-thirty every day, the same time as Sunset, another soap. Amy had been watching Sunset for years. No one else watched Sunset, and even Amy admitted that it had become very boring, but it was a habit.

She really had to force herself to break that habit, or learn how to program the VCR. It seemed like nowadays everyone was talking about the exploits of Jenny and Billy, not to mention Brianna, Tucker, Mitchell, and Danielle. Even though she'd never seen the program, Amy knew all the names from hearing them discussed in the hallways at school. Cherry Lane was now even bigger than Dawson's Creek.