by Laura Winter
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure everything is normal… besides your thoughts in my head. Oh, and the temperature.”
Clara groaned and propped herself up on her elbow to look at me. I let out a small laugh, tracing the line on her face that had been left from the pillow. Slowly, I wrapped my fingers through her hair and tried to pull her into a kiss.
She scrunched her nose and leaned away, smiling. “Gross. Morning breath.”
I groaned internally. We hadn’t actually kissed since the night of the volleyball game, before we fought. I missed that… a lot.
Clara shook her ehad and reached down to her waist to adjust her jeans, but her sleeve caught my eye. Small streaks of blue blood had dried through the gray fabric.
“You bled through your bandage,” I said, reaching out to turn her hand over.
“Shit, sorry,” Clara said, frowning.
“Why are you apologizing? I think you should be blaming the guy who wrapped it,” I replied, using her distraction to pull her in tighter.
The movement caused the covers to drag her already messy hair over her face as she laughed, squirming and giggling as she tried to get out of my grip and avoid morning breath kisses. I pressed my lips to her jaw, but that was as close as I would get as our fun was cut short.
“Nathaniel, are you up?”
My dad’s voice echoed from downstairs as the color drained from my face. Clara’s eyes widened as her hand shot over her mouth, barely disguising her laugh.
“Shit,” I breathed, my stomach clenching as I threw the covers off the bed. “Clara, this is not funny. You have to hide.”
“Oh my god, are you serious?” she asked, still unable to hold in her laughter.
I yanked her off the bed and ushered her into my closet, the only place I could think of to hide her as my dad’s footsteps grew louder.
“He should be on assignment. Oh, god, he’s going to kill me.”
Clara folded her arms as she nestled herself in the corner. Do you treat all your sleepover girls like this?
I’ll make it up to you, I promise.
I latched the closet door just as my dad knocked.
“You up?”
“Yeah,” I replied, sprinting over to the bed to kick Clara’s shoes underneath.
He opened the door as I quickly sat. “Hope I didn’t wake you up. I just wanted to tell you that my assignment got changed last minute. I’m going to be here permanently.” He casually strolled over to my desk and sat down in the chair.
“Really?” I replied, feigning interest. “That’s great news.”
What else was I going to say after that? I looked around, uncomfortable with the silence, but Dad didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was making himself at home, adjusting the papers and trinkets on my desk before leaning back and crossing his arms. God, he looked just as intimidating sitting there in his suit as he did standing, amplified by the fear of him finding the girl I was hiding in my closet.
“So,” he said, breaking the silence. “How long are you going to make me wait to meet your overnight guest?”
Shit. My cheeks burned as he sat there expectantly, but surprisingly not upset. Was this the calm before the storm? I lowered my head and walked back to the closet, pulling the door open.
Clara had somehow changed shirts already, stealing one of my black long sleeves to hide her bleeding arm. She stepped out and pulled the sleeves into her palms to hide the bandage.
“Dad, this is Clara,” I sighed.
She started to stick her hand out but hesitated and pulled it back, drawing her shoulders tighter into her body.
My dad didn’t flinch as he studied her. “I assume you’re the ex-girlfriend.”
“Uh, we worked things out,” she replied, shifting in her stance and bumping into me.
This could very well have been the most embarrassing moment of my life.
Dad half nodded. “I can see that.” His gaze turned to me. “Doesn’t help your case.”
“Dad, nothing happened,” I replied, possibly a little too quickly.
He shook his head. “But you do know how this looks, right?”
A small groan echoed in my gut. Of course it looked bad. Clara was wearing my shirt, hiding in my closet, and very obviously looked like she had just woken up.
“Yeah, I do,” I replied, hanging my head. “Won’t happen again.”
Won’t happen again?
Clara’s voice startled me but I regained my composure.
Shush. I snapped back in my head, wishing I could have elbowed her without it being obvious.
“Clara,” my dad said, pulling our attention back. “I wish we had met under different circumstances. You won’t mind seeing yourself out now, will you?”
“Yeah,” she said before frowning. “I mean, no? I’m… going to leave.”
If I didn’t think I was about to get in the most trouble of my entire life, I might have laughed. Clara bent down and pulled her shoes out from under the bed and hurried out the door.
Good luck. Call me later.
A few seconds passed before the front door opened and closed, signaling my dad to finally break the silence.
“Interesting,” he said. Wow, that was not the first thing I expected to hear. He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. “I didn’t picture your first girlfriend like that.”
“Wait, what?” I asked, still shocked that I wasn’t being yelled at.
“She’s tall, and the purple hair is a new one. Just surprising to see you together after she broke your heart.”
“Like she told you, we worked it out. I really like her, Dad. Can you please not ruin this?”
He held up his hands defensively. “Alright, sorry. But just so you know, you have a curfew now.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” I replied as he stood and walked out the door without another word.
24
Clara
House was overjoyed when I got home, setting out all of my favorite foods again. It had been so long since I had an appetite, and even longer since I’d been free of that headache.
I was about halfway through the table of food when Glitch texted to meet them at the coffee shop in an hour. I laughed to myself. Of course he’d be the first to know we were back together. He probably should have known an hour wasn’t long enough for me to get ready. I shoved a donut in my mouth and hurried to the bedroom.
The bandage Nate had wrapped stuck to my arm as I tried to peel it off in the shower, regretting all the junk I just ate as my stomach churned watching the blue blood run down the drain. I cleaned it as best I could without fainting, then did a terrible job wrapping it back up. Nate was definitely a better medic than I was. I smiled as I left the bathroom, noticing that House had folded Nate’s old sweatshirt on the edge of my bed. I’m not sure he was going to give me the option of leaving it ever again.
By the time I made it to the coffee shop, Nate and Glitch had already found a table in the corner. I’m not sure why they put up with me when I was late all the time, but the smile on Nate’s face when he saw me melted that worry.
Glitch, as usual, interrupted my train of thought. He jumped out of his seat and picked me up in a hug, swinging me around.
“Thank goodness you’re back, C. Nate’s a total downer when you two fight,” he cheered, giving me a final squeeze before setting me down between them.
Nate pushed a coffee in front of me, followed by the sugar jar. Well, there was no denying they knew this version of me pretty well.
“So,” I said, leaning across the table to grab a stir stick. “How much do you know?”
“All of it, duh,” Glitch replied. “And I have questions, but first, please tell me how awkward it was to meet Nate’s dad right after you two slept together.”
“Dude,” Nate grumbled, throwing a straw wrapper at him.
I shrugged. “He did technically catch us sleeping together.”
Now Nate turned his annoyance toward me. “Not helping, C.” He poked the sugar jar th
at I was still dumping into my coffee.
I grimaced and turned to Glitch. “You had questions.”
“Yes, first one. Do you have a headache right now and are you going to blow shit up?” he asked, leaning forward to look into my eyes.
I leaned away from him. “No, I’m not going to blow shit up. I don’t even know for sure if the gym was my fault. But the library was pretty bad.” Oops. I had completely forgotten the library back home. I’m sure that was still a disaster I’d have to clean later.
“Okay, so if the Blue Star thingy took your memory, what did it do to Nate?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, besides the scar and the telepathic connection to me.”
“Wait,” Glitch blurted. “You guys can third wheel me even more?”
“Focus,” Nate said, kicking him under the table.
“Fine. I think this is the last big one. You said the man was already dead when you came to. What about the woman?”
My heart stopped and I felt an unfamiliar chill run down my spine. “What woman?”
Glitch frowned and pulled out his phone, oblivious to my panic. “There were two bodies found the next day.”
Nate reached over and moved the coffee cup away from my shaking hands, sliding his fingers through mine. “C, it’s okay. We’ll figure this out.”
“Nate, it’s bad enough that I can’t remember anything, but now there are two people dead.” I lowered my voice, remembering I was in a public place talking about how I might have killed two people. “What the hell was I involved in?”
The longer I went without memories, the worse things seemed to get.
“Glitch,” Nate said, breaking eye contact with me to look at Glitch. “Please tell me you found something.”
The color in Glitch’s face had drained as he passed the phone to Nate who had the same reaction. They glanced at each other hesitantly before looking at me.
“What?” I asked, reaching across the table to grab the phone.
A woman’s face looked back at me, her kind, green eyes sparkling in the photo. Police had identified the other body as Elizabeth Shorter, concluding that she died in self-defense of another man who was also found dead from injuries. I skimmed the details before returning to the photo of Elizabeth.
“Do you… recognize her?” Nate asked, his voice soft.
I opened my mouth briefly before closing it. I couldn’t find the right words, because though Elizabeth Shorter was older, she looked very similar to… me.
“I didn’t even recognize myself that night,” I whispered. “I don’t know if this feeling is because she looks like she could be my mom or because I actually recognize her.”
I could feel how distant my voice was as I ran through the possibilities of that night. My mother and this man died because of me.
No. No matter who I used to be, I could never kill my own mother. That wasn’t possible. I was running away, and the man had to be chasing me. Somehow my mom got caught in his path, and my instinct was to retaliate. Maybe some part of that nightmare was true. He was going to use his power on me too, but I fought back.
Glitch’s voice broke me out of a trance. “Says here that Elizabeth was married and had a daughter. Do you want me to look into it?”
“Yeah.” It was a half-hearted answer, but I needed to know. Was this my family? Would they have answers to who I was? Why weren’t they looking for me? I shifted my hands in Nate’s, looking to him. “Something doesn’t feel right about this. I had to have run away for a reason, right? That’s why I have this cover for myself. I used the Blue Star to protect myself against that man, even though previous me kept saying she wanted to fight against those voices. Nate,” I sighed. “I don’t know if I can trust who I used to be. I don’t know if I can trust my dad, or if he even is my dad. What if I was running away from that and I’m walking into something far worse than this?”
“Look, let’s just find out what we can and go from there. If you want, I’ll go with you and we can just gather information.”
“Found him,” Glitch said as he scribbled the address on a napkin. “Richard Shorter. Lives about thirty minutes north of here.”
Nate raised his eyebrow as he snagged the napkin. “How the hell did you find that so quickly?”
Glitch leaned back and shrugged. “The less you know, the better.”
25
Nate
I parked the car a few houses down from the Shorter’s, eyeing Clara as she wrung her hands together. She hadn’t said a single word the entire drive, but I caught a few glimpses of her hesitant thoughts. I couldn’t imagine going through what she felt, especially because she was right that nothing felt right, but if there was even the slightest chance she could piece together her memories, she was going to try.
She finally reached over and slid her hand in mine, still staring at the house. “It looks so normal.”
“I kind of expected it to be more threatening,” I replied. The house looked like a perfect, white-picket fence home you saw in a magazine. Based on what little we knew about her past, normal wasn’t exactly calming. “Do you recognize anything? Could this be The Complex?”
Clara frowned. “No, but I didn’t expect to.” She shook her head. “This whole thing feels wrong. What if Richard isn’t actually my dad? Or what if he is and he was the one I ran away from? What if-“
“If something happened to you, maybe he has answers,” I interrupted. “The Complex people might be able to fill in the details. For all we know, they were helping you when the Blue Star convinced you otherwise. The voices lied to you when we put it together, so how do we know they weren’t lying to get you to run away?”
She pinched her lips and looked at me. “That’s a fair point, but just in case, don’t let them know you have powers, okay? I don’t think they know people can have powers without their Trials. It’s just to keep us safe, okay?”
I nodded. “Okay, you ready?”
“Not really, but I guess we should do this.”
The front gate was propped open and we walked through, carefully observing our surroundings in case we needed to make a run. The yard was perfectly manicured, the grass a perfect shade of green and free of leaves, despite the large tree to our left that was almost bare. I was halfway through planning an escape route when the front door opened.
“Finn? Is that you?”
A guy, maybe early twenties, flung the door open, pausing at the top of the porch only briefly before running toward Clara. She took a step back, but not enough before he picked her up and swung her around in a hug. As he set her down, he pressed his lips into hers in a disgustingly passionate kiss.
Clara shoved him away from her and wiped her face. “What the hell?” she shouted, adjusting my old sweatshirt back over her arms.
Yeah, I agree. What the hell?
I think I actually growled under my breath but no one heard it. The guy stepped back as I realized how much bigger he was standing straight. Broad shouldered and at least three inches taller than me. His face shifted from relief to concern.
“You don’t recognize me?” he asked.
“No. Who are you?” Clara asked, taking a step back. I slid my shoulder in front of her protectively, but the guy didn’t seem to notice, his eyes still locked on Clara.
“It’s going to be okay, Finn. We can help you,” he said.
“Help her with what?” I asked. Now he acknowledged me, looking me up and down with a dismissive stare.
“Hey,” Clara snapped, getting the guy’s attention as she pushed against my arm. “Why do you keep calling me Finn?”
He didn’t have time to answer before a middle-aged man stepped out of the doorway.
“Aidan, is that her? Is Finnley home?” Aidan stepped to the side so the man could see us. He took a few steps toward us but stopped when he saw us retreat slightly. “Oh, Finn. We were so worried about you.”
Aidan pushed his shoulders back. “She doesn’t remember us, Richard.”
Something about his tone felt… off. Like he was reporting?
Richard’s eye twitched as he frowned. “She’s had an episode, just as we feared when she ran away. Please, both of you, come in. We will explain everything.”
I hesitated but Clara walked right past me, following Richard and Aidan up the steps. I hurried to catch up.
C, what are you doing? We don’t know them.
But they know me. They have answers.