Happy Birthday, Dear Amy (Replica #16)

From her perch on a comfortable lounging chair, Amy Candler basked in the
sunshine and gazed out at the shimmering crystal-blue water in the oval
swimming pool. This was very clearly not the community pool where she and
her friends usually congregated. There weren’t any screaming kids
splashing each other, and no one was jumping up and down on the diving
board, yelling like Tarzan. There was no chain-link fence, and no bored
teenage lifeguard was ordering people out of the pool. Best of all, Amy
didn’t have to worry about anyone using the pool as a gigantic toilet.

This pool was surrounded by a stone terrace, and the terrace was
surrounded by rosebushes. The terrace led to a large, modern house, where
there was a bar. Amy knew she could help herself to a soft drink or juice
whenever she wanted one, free of charge. From unseen speakers, her
favorite radio station played the top ten songs of the week at exactly the
right sound level. If she wanted, she could turn it up and not worry about
bothering the neighbors. Up here in Beverly Hills, you couldn’t even see
the home of your next-door neighbor.

An uncle of Tasha and Eric Morgan’s lived in the house. He had left keys
with the Morgans so that they could use the pool while he and his family
were on vacation. What Amy couldn’t understand was why people who had a
house and a pool like this would need
to go away for a vacation. But she was certainly glad they had.

“Summer,” she murmured blissfully.

“Yeah,” Eric sighed.

And Tasha punctuated this with a little moan of pleasure.

Even in Los Angeles, where you could hang out in sunshine practically all
year long, there was something special about summer. It wasn’t just the
weather. Summer meant no school and no homework, and for Amy, it meant her
birthday. In fact, her greatest problem
at that moment was deciding what kind of cake she wanted for the great
event, which was coming up on Saturday. One thing was for sure: It would
have to be a big cake.

“Do they make cakes big enough to serve forty people?” she wondered out
loud. “Maybe I’ll need two cakes. Does that mean I have to blow out two
sets of candles?”

“Yeah, but you’ll get two wishes,” Tasha told her.

Eric pretended to groan. “Do we have to sing ‘Happy Birthday to You
twice?”

Amy giggled in delight. She’d never had such a big birthday party before.
But then, she’d never turned thirteen before. Thirteen. The beginning of
her real teen years.

“Do you feel any different now that you’re thirteen?” she asked Tasha. Her
friend had celebrated her birthday two months earlier.

“I’m not sure,” Tasha said. “Most of the time I think I’m exactly the same
as I was when I was twelve. It’s not like I look any different. But
sometimes I think I feel a little different. More mature.”

“That’s just in your head,” Eric said.

Tasha looked at him scornfully. “That’s where mature feelings are, Eric.
In your head.”

“Yeah, in my head,” Eric chortled. “Not yours. I can guarantee, you are
absolutely no more mature now than you were two months ago.”

“Okay, you guys, cut it out,” Amy said mildly. She was accustomed to
hearing the brother and sister tease each other. As an only child,
sometimes she even envied them. “Eric, did you feel any different on your
thirteenth birthday?”

“That was two years ago,” Eric replied. “I don’t remember. I don’t think
so. I mean, it’s not like anything changes overnight.”

Amy yawned and stretched lazily. She thought she was beginning to change a
little. Nothing major. She was just dimly aware of an achy sensation in
her arms and legs. She wasn’t worried, though. After all, she was going
through puberty, and according to all the articles in all the teen
magazines she read, these were perfectly normal growing pains.

Except that Amy wasn’t a perfectly normal girl. She certainly wasn’t like
any ordinary twelve-year-old on the verge of turning thirteen. For one
thing, she hadn’t been born thirteen years ago. In fact, she hadn’t been
born at all—she’d been genetically engineered. Along with thirteen others,
she’d been designed and created from carefully selected cell samples and
had developed inside a series of test tubes and under microscopes.

She, along with the others, had grown from fetus to infant inside an
incubator. What she called her birthday was the day that Nancy Candler,
scientist and junior member of Project Crescent, rescued the last
remaining experimental unit from the burning lab. The scientists had
intentionally triggered the explosion after learning that the government
agency funding the project wanted to create a master race using the
clones. Nancy and the others felt this was unethical. So they set fire to
the lab to make the agents believe that the clones had all perished. In
reality, the clones had been whisked away and sent to live with adoptive
families around the world. Nancy had taken the infant clone Amy, Number
Seven, home to raise as her own daughter.

Ordinary aches and pains weren’t a common experience for Amy. Her genes
had been manipulated and treated so that she would develop a perfect
physique. She was always healthy.

“Are there really going to be forty people at
your party?” Tasha asked. “Did everyone accept their
invitations?”

“Everyone,” Amy confirmed. “Even Linda Riviera.”

“How come you invited her?” Eric wanted to know. “You don’t even like her.
I don’t like her.”

“I had to invite Linda because I invited Simone Cusack, and Simone is
Linda’s best friend now. And I had to invite Simone because she invited me
to her birthday party. Don’t worry, there are going to be so many people
there, you won’t even have to see Linda.”

Amy was confident of that. This was going to be a real bash, a mix of boys
and girls from the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades at Parkside Middle
School. They were gathering at the home of Dr. David Hopkins, a friend of
Amy and her mother’s, who had kindly donated his beach house for the
party. There would be beach volleyball, a cookout, and dancing on the
patio.

“Have you decided what you’re going to wear?” Amy asked Tasha.

“My pink crop top and black jeans.”

“Perfect,” Amy said.

“What about you?” Tasha asked. “Did you get something new?”

Amy nodded. “It’ll be a surprise.” She couldn’t help smiling as she
thought about the crisp white halter sundress, still covered in the
plastic from the shop and hanging in her closet. It was so cool, and it
fit perfectly.

“I’ve got a surprise too,” Eric announced.

Amy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “This isn’t a costume party, Eric.”

“It’s not that kind of surprise,” he assured her. “I think you’ll like
it.” He was looking very confident and very pleased with himself, and Amy
just hoped that the surprise wasn’t going to be anything too embarrassing.
Not that Eric would ever try to embarrass her on purpose. He wouldn’t do
anything to spoil her party.

And there wouldn’t be any letdown after the great event. The very next
day, she was leaving with her mother and Dr. Dave for the Grand Canyon,
where they would spend ten days hiking and camping.

Eric and Tasha, too, were heading out of L.A. a couple of days after her
party. At that very moment, Eric was reading about their destination from
a pamphlet titled “Welcome to Camp Riverbend.”

“Hey, Tasha, it says here there’s a weekly dance for campers over the age
of twelve from both camps. If you give me some money, I’ll bribe another
counselor to dance with you.”

“No thanks,” Tasha retorted. “And don’t forget, Eric, you’re just a junior
counselor, not a real one.”

Eric was ready with a comeback. “Better to be a junior counselor than an
ordinary camper.”

“Stop it, Eric,” Amy said automatically. She knew very well that Tasha
wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of going off to summer camp. She turned to
Tasha with a sympathetic expression. “Are you absolutely, positively sure
you can’t get out of this?”

“I’ve tried,” Tasha told her. “But my parents are being really obnoxious.
My mother says she doesn’t want me hanging around doing nothing, and my
father thinks I need more exercise.” She tried to sound casually annoyed,
but there was a slight tremor in her voice and Amy knew why. They’d talked
about this many times before. Tasha was worried that all the other girls
at the camp would be athletic types, which she definitely wasn’t. She was
afraid she’d feel out of place at Camp Riverbend and that the others would
make fun of her. Having her brother across the lake at the boys’ camp
wasn’t any comfort to her.

Personally, Amy thought it was mean of Tasha’s parents to make her go. It
was awful the way parents tried to run kids’ lives sometimes. And the kids
couldn’t really fight back. Amy’s own mother used to give her a lot of
unwanted advice, but lately she’d been letting Amy make more of her own
decisions, and Amy was glad of that.

Lying there in the warm sun, contemplating a dip in the cool water, she
marveled at how lucky she was. She had a super boyfriend and a wonderful
best friend. Her mother was reasonably cool, for a mother. Amy had a
birthday party and a camping trip and a whole summer of fun to look
forward to. Yes, she was definitely a lucky girl, and good feelings washed
over her.

There was no way she could know that in just a few days, she would be in a
very different state of mind.