Revived Page 11

  “How did you die?” he asks, concerned.

  “I was in a school-bus crash in Iowa,” I say. “The bus skidded off a bridge into a lake.”

  I can practically see the wheels turning in Matt’s brain.

  “Not the one they made the miniseries about?” he asks, taking it in.

  I nod.

  “So…” he begins, the pieces clicking together for him. His eyebrows knit tighter and he shifts in his chair a little. After a few moments of puzzling, Matt asks what I’ve been waiting for him to ask: “Audrey?”

  He says only her name, not daring to speak the rest.

  I shake my head, not wanting to go there at all. But I realize that I have to.

  “It’s not…” I say, my voice trailing off. I regroup and try again. “It doesn’t work on people with diseases or really serious injuries. It can’t regrow damaged tissue. It’s more like an electric pulse to your entire system at once. It shocks you back to life from the inside out. Revive can’t help bodies that weren’t healthy when the person died.”

  Visibly processing the information, Matt says, “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.” He’s borderline monotone, distracted, looking from me to the desk to the walls and back, searching for answers. He swallows hard; I think he’s shell-shocked.

  “I know.”

  “And… I don’t… I mean, I’m not sure if I even want to know about this,” he admits. He fidgets, then wipes his palms on his pants. “I mean, what am I supposed to do with this stuff? If it can’t do anything for Audrey, I mean, what good is me knowing about it? It’s not really fair.” Matt stops talking and looks down at his hands. The sadness in his eyes makes me wonder if I’ve done the right thing.

  “I’m sorry for telling you,” I say, a little hurt that he doesn’t understand why I did it. “I just thought… Well, I wanted to give you something. Like a part of me. I felt like I wanted you to know the real me. But I understand why you don’t want to know about Revive.”

  “No, I get that,” Matt says, his eyes softening when he looks up and meets my gaze. “It’s just that I’m conflicted, you know? I want to get to know you, but it’s hard hearing about something like this without thinking about Audrey. Without feeling like crap because it can’t help her, too.”

  “I understand,” I reiterate. “Believe me, I agree with you,” I say, standing. “Let’s just go hang out in my room some more. I’m really sorry for bringing it up.”

  Matt watches me stand but stays in his seat.

  “Daisy?”

  “Yeah?”

  He pauses, then forces a half smile that makes my chest feel like it’s caving in.

  “I want to hear it,” he says. “Tell me about your life.”

  Thoughts jumbled, I’m all over the place in the beginning, jumping from our move to Omaha to the fact that the program is managed by the Food and Drug Administration to the rigorous annual tests and back again. I know from the look on Matt’s face that he’s having a hard time following the story, but when I start to describe the agents and their function, the wall crumbles and it seems like he’s not only getting it, but he’s genuinely interested, too.

  “The program was formed about a year before the bus crash,” I say. “Basically, they were waiting for something to happen so they’d have human test subjects. The agents were handpicked across industries for their specialties, and I’m sure they were anxious to get going.”

  “Where did they come from?” Matt asks.

  “Other branches of the government,” I say, shrugging. “Or civilian jobs. Some were recruited out of school,” I say, thinking of Cassie.

  “What do they do?” Matt asks. “Now, I mean.”

  “Some are scientists in the main lab in Virginia,” I say. “All those guys do is death science. Others are like bodyguards—watchers for the kids in the program. My friend Megan’s watcher is also a computer expert. He trolls the Internet for any flags about the program. He’s got the personality of a computer on a slow connection, but he’s a genius. He hacked the FBI mainframe as a teenager and once sent an email from a former president’s account, just because he could. I swear, if he wasn’t part of the Revive program, he’d probably be in prison—”

  “Wait,” Matt interrupts. “Your friend Megan… you mean Fabulous? From the blog? She died in that crash, too?”

  “Yep.”

  He shakes his head. “This is insane.”

  “I know,” I say quietly. “It must seem so strange to you. But this is me. I’m only being honest.”

  “I’m glad you are,” he says, but his expression is uneasy. He takes a deep breath. “Keep going.”

  “Okay. So, like I said, the agents all have jobs,” I say. “Mason and Cassie both have medical backgrounds, so their job is monitoring the health and well-being of the bus kids—”

  “Mason and Cassie?” he interrupts. “As in your parents? Your parents are government agents?”

  I frown. “Sorry,” I say. “I skipped that part.”

  Matt shakes his head again, then runs a hand through his hair. I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t, so I go on. I tell him about being adopted, which he says he knew from Audrey, and about living with nuns before the crash. I explain that no other bus kids live with agents, but since there was no family to relocate with me, they had to assign me to someone.

  “Wait, they told nuns you were dead?” he interrupts again. I don’t mind; I like that he’s paying attention.

  “They told the whole town of Bern that everyone on the bus was dead. The program is totally confidential.”

  “But nuns? That feels especially wrong.”

  “I guess lying to nuns is bad,” I say. “The funny thing is that God lied to them.”

  Matt looks at me blankly until I remember that I haven’t shared that part yet, either.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say. “I forgot about the nicknames. Because Revive brings you back from the dead, and that’s a God-like ability, the core group of agents started calling the program the God Project. They secretly dubbed the guy in charge God; they called themselves Disciples; and eventually, when they had human test subjects, they named us Converts. The nicknames stuck.”

  “That is totally messed up.”

  “I guess,” I say, shrugging. “Are you religious?”

  “I believe in a higher power, if that’s what you mean,” he says. “But not necessarily religion.”

  I nod but don’t comment. So much of religion seems to revolve around death and what happens when you die that being part of a program like Revive has made religion seem unnecessary to me. And come to think of it, not a lot of the science-possessed agents in the program are religious. But I still have faith. In that way, Matt and I are the same.

  “Okay, enough God talk,” I say, sensing that I’m losing Matt. “I brought you in here in the first place to show you some of the program’s secret documents and stuff. To give you a better picture of what it’s like. To be honest, I thought maybe you wouldn’t believe me unless I showed you proof.”

  He looks at me, surprised. “You thought I wouldn’t believe you?” he asks.

  “I… I guess so,” I say, slightly embarrassed.

  “Of course I believe you,” he says with a quiet intensity, holding my stare for a few moments. Electric currents seem to pass between us as we survey each other, and somehow the warmth I get from them makes this whole situation seem okay.

  “But I still want to see the cool stuff,” Matt says finally, breaking the tension and with an easy smile. I laugh a little, then wave him closer.

  “Drag that chair over here behind the computer. I’m about to blow your mind.”

  nineteen

  I wave my hand to activate the computer, then touch the monitor so it recognizes my fingerprints. It prompts me for a password and I say the first three-syllable word I think of: xenophobe. Matt chuckles because he probably thinks the password is real when, really, the computer just needs me to speak more than two s
yllables so that it can use voice-recognition software to verify my identity.

  “Duck for a second,” I say to Matt. He looks at me funny but crouches down a bit, enough for the computer’s “eye” to scan just me. When it’s satisfied that I’m Daisy and not some imposter, the computer lets me into the directory for Program F-339145.

  The God Project.

  “They let all the kids in the program mess around in the files?” Matt asks.

  “No,” I murmur as I navigate the welcome screens with my hands instead of a mouse. “Like I said, I’m the only one who lives with agents. Mason in particular is really open. He says that I’m almost an agent myself, and that I should be able to access information if I want to. He trusts me.”

  “That’s so cool,” Matt says, mesmerized. I don’t answer, choking on the irony of my words.

  I motion open the folder with the archived newspaper clippings from the Iowa crash. I choose the longest, most informative story, then scoot my chair aside so Matt can read.

  I watch his chocolate eyes float back and forth across the screen. At first, they’re wide and bright: He’s engrossed in the story. Then they narrow, making him look pensive. Finally, when he winces and his face freezes in a pained, uncomfortable expression, I force myself to look away. With nothing else to look at, I read the story again myself.

  TWENTY CHILDREN, DRIVER DEAD AFTER BUS CRASH ON HIGHWAY 13

  By Jolie Papadopolis, Staff Writer

  Thursday, December 6, 2001

  The Iowa Highway Patrol has not yet released the names of the minor children confirmed dead yesterday after a Brown Academy bus drove over the Highway 13 bridge and plummeted into icy Lake Confident below, killing all aboard. Police have not determined the cause of the collision; bus driver Peggy Miller, 22, of Briarwoods, also died in the crash.

  Though paramedics arrived at the scene in less than 15 minutes, none of the 20 children aboard, ranging in age from four to eleven years old, nor Miller, could be resuscitated.

  “It’s the worst tragedy this town has ever seen,” said Phillip D. Grobens, chief of police for the nearby city of Bern, where Brown Academy is located. “My heart breaks for the parents of these children, and for Ms. Miller, too.”

  According to an eyewitness, the bus swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle that had crossed over the center divider of the two-lane bridge. The witness speculated that icy conditions on the bridge could have contributed to Miller’s loss of control over the school bus. Witness Lacy Pine, 18, of Bern, said, “The bus fishtailed and it looked like she got control for a minute and then the back end swooshed hard to the left and the bus was going too fast and it went over. Broke clean through the guardrail. It was horrible. The ice ate it up and there was nothing anyone could do. It just sank.”

  Despite Pine’s and corroborating eyewitness statements, Grobens says the county will perform an autopsy on Miller to rule out substance abuse or illness that might have contributed to the accident. Miller had been driving buses for only six months.

  “With this many families destroyed, we have to investigate every possibility,” Grobens said.

  The names of the children will be released once all of the families have been notified. According to Grobens, one child’s parents were out of the country at the time of the accident and have not yet been reached.

  One of the state’s top private schools, Brown Academy matriculates children from preschool to senior high and has received accolades for both its high standardized test scores and its scholarship programs for low-income families. Brown Academy director Elizabeth Friend said in a statement: “Our hearts go out to the families and friends impacted by this most terrible tragedy. Every one of those children was special, and deserves a special place in our hearts forever.”

  Brown Academy is closed this week and is offering free counseling for students and parents, as well as a meal service for families directly involved.

  Police ask anyone who witnessed the crash to notify the Iowa Highway Patrol at 555-2301.

  “Whoa,” Matt says after he finishes reading. “That’s heavy.”

  “I know, but look at how it turned out. Nearly everyone was fine.”

  “How many weren’t fine?” he asks.

  “Uh,” I say, swiping aside the newspaper file and opening the document that contains the list of people who were on the school bus. “Six kids died for real. And the driver. So, seven people.”

  Matt scans the names of the kids and I do, too.

  Tia Abernathy, Michael Dekas(X), Andrew Evans(X), Timothy Evans(X), Nathan Francis(X), Cody Frost, Marissa Frost, Joshua Hill, Tyler Hill, David Katz, Daisy McDaniel, Elizabeth Monroe, Anne Marie Patterson(X), Marcus Pitts, Chase Rogers, David Salazar, Wade Sergeant, Gavin Silva, Kelsey Stroud(X), Nicole Yang.

  I look at Matt and see that he’s still scrutinizing the names.

  “Your real last name is McDaniel?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “We would have sat near each other at graduation if you didn’t change your name,” he says, dreamlike. I can tell he’s fascinated by the list so I don’t wipe it off the screen just yet.

  “You’re a year older than me,” I say. “We won’t graduate together.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forget because you’re in English.”

  “And if I didn’t change my name—if I didn’t die—I wouldn’t be in Omaha.”

  There’s a pause in the conversation when I really want to ask Matt what he’s thinking despite it being probably the most cliché thing to ask a guy. When Matt still doesn’t take his eyes off the names, I open my mouth to ask if he has any questions. He beats me to it.

  “Where’s Megan?” he asks.

  “Oh, she was Marcus Pitts then,” I say. “She was born a boy. Her dad took the accident as an opportunity to leave them, mostly because he couldn’t take the transgender thing. After they moved, Megan’s mom let her wear whatever—be whoever—she wanted. She dressed in girl clothes from then on out.”

  “But she was only, what, like five?”

  “I guess when you know, you know,” I say with a shrug.

  “Oh,” Matt says. “So are the X’s—”

  “The ones who died,” I say, nodding.

  “Were those kids brothers?” Matt asks. “The Evanses?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they both died?” Matt says, horrified.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s so rough. Their parents must have been devastated.”

  “I’m sure they were.”

  “I’m sure they still are.”

  I glance at Matt: He’s holding his jaw in his right hand, and his forehead is distorted and distressed. His dark eyes are clouded over like a rainstorm. He’s affected by these people he’s never met. Maybe it’s because of Audrey, or maybe he’s just empathetic in general, but Matt’s reaction makes me question my own. I have to be honest: For all the times I’ve logged on and researched the program, I haven’t often dwelled on the ones who died for real. In this moment I realize that I haven’t thought of them much at all.

  Have I taken on some of Cassie’s robotic tendencies after living with her all these years? Or is it just my developing scientific mind that makes me look at the program so coolly? Or is it the program itself? By teaching me that death is optional, has the program desensitized me to real death?

  How will I react if Audrey dies?

  Or should I say when?

  Thrusting that morbid thought from my brain, I wave away the list. I hear Matt inhale next to me like he’s been holding his breath for a while. I consider logging off but decide to keep going since Matt seems so sucked in. I open the folder where they keep the files on all the victims: one for each, living or dead. They’re not numbered—they all start with F-339145, and then have a random letter after the program identifier—so it’s hard to tell which folder belongs to which person. Matt watches as I play a silent game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

  When I open “moe,” I immediately recognize M
ason’s handwriting. The page is dated December 5, 2001: the day of the bus crash.

  Back when the program started, apparently God was paranoid about the Internet and made agents take notes on paper. Eventually, he got over his technophobia and had all of the paper files scanned in and then destroyed. But the handwritten notes are the most real. As I look at Mason’s harried scrawl, I actually feel how dire the situation was, much more than if I was reading a typed report.

  “Wow,” I murmur.

  “What?” Matt asks.

  “Nothing, it’s just the handwriting,” I say. “It’s Mason’s, and it looks so… crazy.”

  Matt nods, but he still looks confused. I point at the date.

  “This was the day of the crash,” I explain. “The agents had to take quick notes between patients. I’m sure it was chaotic. And it had to be so frustrating for them. Mason and the others were supposed to bring twenty-one people back to life with only a syringe, and that’s it.”

  Matt lets my words sink in for a few seconds. “But if the drug didn’t work, they tried other ways to save you guys, too, right?” he asks.

  “No, that’s the point,” I say. “To truly test the drug, they could only use Revive. Like, they couldn’t even do CPR.”

  “But…” Matt’s words fade.

  “Can you imagine being a doctor and knowing all these lifesaving techniques and not being able to use them?” I ask.

  “Kind of like having a sister with cancer and knowing about a lifesaving drug that she can’t have,” Matt says, staring right at me.

  “I guess so,” I say quietly.

  “Sorry,” Matt says.

  “Don’t apologize. You’re right.”

  Matt steers the conversation back to the screen. Or rather, he looks at the notes and starts reading. Not really knowing what else to say, I read, too.

  CASE NUMBER: 16

  NAME: KELSEY STROUD

  AGE: 6

  PARENTS: JONATHAN AND NANCY STROUD

  (CONSENT GIVEN AT 9:17 AM)