Origin Read Online Free PDF

is ready to see
you
, I’m afraid Little Cam will have to suffice.”
    “All right,” I respond meekly.
    He smiles and squeezes my hand. “I was here the day you were born, you know. I was the first one to hold you. I was the one who chose your name.”
    “You were?” He’s never mentioned it before.
    “Yes.
Pia
, because it means reverent, and that’s exactly what I felt when I saw you.”
    His eyes, locked on mine, are warm and earnest, and I find myself smiling.
    The rest of the examination goes as usual. It doesn’t take long. I’m so used to the exam that I could do it myself. Heartbeat, saliva sample, eyes, ears, and nose, check, check, check, and we’re done. Uncle Paolo gave up on taking blood samples years ago. No matter what material the needles aremade of, and no matter how hard he presses, nothing punctures my skin.
    “All done, Pia. Go and work on planning your party or something.”
    “I need to water my orchids.”
    He nods and does a few more little tasks around the lab before he leaves.
    I am watering the first flower when I hear footsteps and turn to see what Uncle Paolo forgot. But it isn’t him. It’s Dr. Klutz.
    “What do
you
want?” I ask.
    She raises her eyebrows in surprise. They are as red as her hair. “Relax, why don’t you? I just want to chat. We didn’t get to properly meet one another yesterday.”
    Great
. I turn back to my orchids. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”
    “Nice to meet you too,” she returns in an equally blank tone. “Good heavens, girl, at least give me a chance before you decide to make an enemy of me. Here, let me help.”
    She tries to take the watering can from me and ends up knocking it over and pouring water all over my shoes.
    “Oops!” she says, and as I stare openmouthed at the mess, she finds a towel and hands it to me. I sop up the water, biting my tongue to keep from snapping something I’ll later regret. Dr. Klutz perches herself on the examination table and looks around.
    “Terrible pictures,” she says as she studies my portraits on the wall.
    I normally wouldn’t throw it in someone’s face like this, but I can’t help it. The woman rubs me the wrong way. “They’re
perfect
.”
    “That’s right,” she says thoughtfully, eyeing me. “I hadn’t even had a chance to wash the dust from the road off my face when your Doctor Paolo Alvez had me cornered. I got the whole Pia talk, oh, yes.”
    “The Pia talk?” My curiosity bests my stubbornness for a moment, and I step closer. “What’s that?”
    “You mean you didn’t get it too?” She draws a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lights one. I hate cigarettes. They are the only thing in the world that make me ill, though Mother tells me that I just don’t like the smell and that I’m not really ill at all. “Yes, I was properly backed into a corner, with Alvez breathing down my blouse about secrecy and signing contracts and consequences and all sorts of spookiness. And at the center of it all”—she inhales deeply and blows a stream of disgusting smoke toward me—“was you.”
    “Well,” I reply stiffly, “I
am
the reason this place exists.”
    “I must confess, I had no idea what I was getting into when I took this job. Thought I was coming down just to study the cell structures of mosquitoes, maybe clone a few rats. They told me this was a research center that targeted the ‘big ones’—cancer, heart disease”—her face goes suddenly still, as if she’s looking at something far off—“cerebral palsy. Though I did think it odd I had to sign on for a minimum of thirty years, but…” Her cigarette seems forgotten between her index and middle fingers. Its thin tail of smoke curls across her face. “Well, let’s just say the deal this place offered was very convincing.”
    Her eyes refocus, finding me and then narrowing suspiciously. “And
then
there was all the cloak-and-dagger stuff on the way here. That giant moose of a man, Timothy, wouldn’t tell