Free The Secret Sea by Barry Lyga Page A

upset. Eventually, after his umpteenth apology, she’d said, “Zak, it was my favorite.… Sorry doesn’t actually fix anything. Sometimes sorry isn’t enough.”
    He’d never understood that. Sorry had always been enough. Until now. His parents and Dr. Campbell could apologize until the end of time, and it wouldn’t be enough. If it wasn’t enough for a skirt, then there weren’t enough sorry s in the world to fill the hole left by his twin. Until that moment on the floor at home, that moment when he’d seen the birth certificate, he’d never realized that the gap in his life hadn’t always been there. He’d thought he just hated being alone, that it was as simple as that. But no. Something vast and important had been missing. The world had been incomplete.
    Something had been taken from him that could never, ever be returned.
    Unless.
    â€œDon’t tell.”
    â€œZak, can you hear me?”
    Unless there was still a way to be with Tommy after all.

 
    TWELVE
    They left him staring at the water-stained acoustic ceiling tile above him, willing Tommy’s voice to return. His efforts, his strains, rewarded him with precisely nothing.
    He’d thought his life was a good one. A full one. But now he knew the truth—it was a life of lies, and only half a life at that. A life of fractions. He was a fraction. Exactly one-half of what he was supposed to be.
    Tears came on unexpectedly. For himself? For his brother? Probably for both. He’d never really known his brother, but the ache and the sorrow and the loss were all too real for him. Zak couldn’t shake the notion that there should be a hand to clutch, eyes to gaze into. That there was a half of him missing.
    Missing. Or taken away.
    When the door opened, he thought for sure it would be his parents again; he’d been rehearsing an agonized rant of epic proportions, eager for the moment when he could let loose on them. Instead, it was Khalid, followed steps later by Moira, and all of Zak’s anger was quenched by sheer joy and relief at the sight of his friends in the flesh. Even the hollow soreness in his chest—a pain literal or figurative or both, he couldn’t tell—lightened some.
    â€œWhoa!” Khalid exclaimed. “You are life-sized! I was starting to think you’d been shrunk down to fit in a video chat screen.”
    Khalid grinned broadly, his eyes no doubt dancing behind the sunglasses he wore. He’d recently started wearing them every time he left the house, no matter where he was. Even in movie theaters. He insisted it was the coolest thing in the world, and that even if it wasn’t, “I’ll make it cool.” He came close and clasped, then reclasped, Zak’s hand in a complicated ritual that was more a dance move than a handshake.
    Moira rolled her eyes, whether at Khalid’s comment, his sunglasses, or his handshake, Zak couldn’t tell. Probably all three. Her hair had been cut recently, right around her ears, with sleek, shiny strands of it flying away every time she bobbed her head. She wore a pair of heavy-framed glasses and a painfully bright T-shirt with the words 100% GEEK and 100% GIRL inscribed across it, as well as a cluster of overlapping pins on her right shoulder that looked like the beginning of a growth of multicolored plate-armor. One of the larger buttons was a new one that Zak hadn’t seen before. It read I like you ironically .
    â€œHow did you guys get in here?” Zak asked as Moira came closer. She wasn’t much for shows of affection, but she did brush a stray hair from his forehead.
    â€œWe used the door,” Khalid said in a tone of overwrought concern, pointing. “Did they operate on your brain , man?”
    Moira sniffed. “As usual, Khalid’s being a moron. We basically threw fits until our parents let us come to see you. The doctors didn’t want to let us in, but we