by Malinda Lo
Her mom nudged the coffee table away from the couch and sat down on its edge, facing Reese and her dad. “Fine. We’ll hire the media consultant. Are you okay with that, honey?”
Reese glanced from her mom to her dad and crossed her arms. “Do I have any choice?”
Her dad scooted toward her and put an arm around her shoulders. “I know it feels like we’re taking over here, but we’re only trying to keep you safe.”
All of her dad opened up to her as he drew her into his embrace, and Reese was too startled to resist.
“Your mom and I—no, I shouldn’t speak for her. I am really, really glad that you’re back in one piece. I don’t know what I would’ve done if we hadn’t gotten you back, sweetie.”
Her father’s interior landscape was an unsettling combination of the familiar and the strange. His physical body—the way his muscles moved, the beat of his heart—was new to her, and she almost recoiled from the intimacy of knowing him this way. But his sense of self, his consciousness: These were indelibly stamped with a deep-rooted relatedness to Reese. He was her father. As he spoke she could barely pay attention to his words, because she was so overwhelmed by his feelings. He felt guilty. Guilty for his absences over the years. Guilty that he hadn’t been able to prevent what had happened to her. And he had a desperate fear that she would never forgive him.
Reese had to pull away. It was too much, and she couldn’t even manage to put up her mental walls. She was shaky and sweaty as she stood up, breaking contact with her dad.
“Reese? I’m sorry if I—”
“Dad, I can’t—you know I can feel how you’re feeling when you touch me. Don’t you?”
His face seemed to crumple. “I—no. I didn’t realize.”
She perched on the edge of the armchair, knees too wobbly to remain standing. “Well, I can. So can David. That’s what they did to us—the Imria.”
“I thought it was only between you and David,” her mom said.
“I think it works with anyone, if we’re touching them.”
Her parents sat in silence for a few minutes, absorbing what she had said. She couldn’t look at them—she was too conscious of her dad’s feelings—but she saw her mom reach out and put a hand on her dad’s knee.
“If that’s true, I’m glad you felt how I was feeling,” her dad finally said. His voice was husky, and Reese didn’t know what to say. Her dad didn’t act like this around her. He was funny and charming on his best days, and on his worst he might be distant or cold, but he was never vulnerable. Unless she had simply never noticed before.
She got to her feet. “I’d better call David and warn him about Highsmith,” she said, and fled the living room before her parents could respond.
CHAPTER 4
Diana Warner had dark brown hair cut just above her shoulders in expertly sculpted layers—the kind of hair you saw on female senators and businesswomen—and her red-brown lipstick was applied so flawlessly it didn’t come off at all when she sipped the glass of water Reese’s dad brought her. Reese soon learned that Diana did everything with the same precise, purposeful conviction. Reese suspected that her father had spent a lot of money to hire her.
She had arrived at their house on Saturday morning at ten o’clock sharp to interview Reese and her parents about what happened in the time between her abduction and her return a week and a half later. Then she drove off to do the same with David and his family, coming back a few hours later to take Reese and David shopping for clothes to wear on camera. She looked a bit breathless upon her return, and as Reese grabbed her bag to follow, Diana said, “The crowd is feisty this afternoon. There are police outside who will escort us to my car, but why don’t you pull that hood over your head? And put on some sunglasses.”
Reese’s parents were standing in the hall behind her. “Are you sure this is safe?” her mom asked.
“We’ll be fine,” Diana assured her. “We’re just going to Nordstrom, and I have a driver. There’s no need to worry.”
Reese doubted a hoodie and sunglasses could do much to help, but she had watched the crowd through the cracks in her blinds upstairs, and she definitely didn’t want to go out there totally exposed. She tried to prepare herself for the onslaught of the crowd’s emotions by imagining a brick wall around her, blocking people off. “Let’s go,” she said.
“We’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Diana said, and she opened the door.
Outside, the crowd moved in a slow, continuous circle down Reese’s street, around the block and back again. Reese had heard on the news that the City of San Francisco was considering what could be done to clear the neighborhood, but there was no law against walking down a public sidewalk—only against lying down on one—and none of the gawkers lay down. Diana led the way down the front steps, where two uniformed police officers were waiting for them. “I’m parked two blocks north,” she told them.
The onlookers nearby had watched as Reese came outside, and she felt the tiny psychic jabs that accompanied their glances. She tried to focus on her imaginary wall as the cops told them to move on.
Most of the crowd was heading west to circle the neighborhood, but Reese and Diana had to go east to get to the corner, where they would turn north. They were forced to push against the tide of onlookers, and even though they had a police escort, it was slow going. Luckily, the pedestrians were so intent on keeping their eyes on the sky that most of them didn’t notice it was Reese trying to walk in the opposite direction. She couldn’t avoid sensing the crowd’s feelings, but they weren’t directed at her, and that made them easier to ignore. Their curiosity was about the thing in the sky above.
As they crossed the street at the intersection, a fake cable-car tour bus parked nearby. Usually they kept to San Francisco’s tourist destinations, but since yesterday several of them had shown up in Reese’s neighborhood. A group of tourists poured off the bus, jabbering excitedly and pointing at the black triangle. They swarmed around her and Diana and the cops, paying them no attention. Reese tried to avoid touching them, but she couldn’t prevent them from bumping into her. Their excitement and confusion prickled all over her, and the effort to deflect their emotions made her feel like she was holding her breath underwater.
They were nearly through the crowd when someone accidentally rammed into her right shoulder. She winced and looked up to see a cardboard sign held way too close to her face. Giant block letters stated COLONIZATION IS COMING. She flinched away and tried to keep going, but the demonstrator was stuck to her. A button on his jacket had snagged on the strap of her messenger bag, and as he tried to tug himself free he saw her face. He was a boy perhaps a couple of years older than her, skinny and tall with a smattering of freckles across his face. He halted, his mouth falling open, and Reese knew that he recognized her. She froze. The crowd continued to move around them as if they were at the center of a whirlpool. She heard the police officer ordering people out of the way, but she was transfixed by the boy’s shocked gaze.
He reached out and grabbed her arm, and his emotions flooded into her: excitement fueled by adrenaline, layered over deep, dark anxiety. He was terrified of the ship, but his fear was tangled up with what Reese understood as yearning. He wanted the ship as much as he feared it. The end result was a tumult of feelings that made Reese dizzy.
He leaned into her space and demanded, “What did they do to you? Are they watching you? Did they experiment on you?”
Someone knocked into the boy, unceremoniously pushing him aside, and his hand fell away from her. Freed from her connection with him, Reese reeled as he was borne away by the crowd. He kept turning back to look at her, shouting things she couldn’t hear over the noise, and then in a blink he was gone.
The police officer was at her side. “Miss Holloway, we’re almost there.”
She felt his fingertips on her elbow, and she pulled away before she could sense any of his feelings. The edge of the crowd was only a few feet away and she pushed through, the memory of the boy’s desperate yearning
like acid in her stomach. She saw Diana waiting next to a town car with tinted windows, and someone opened the door for her. She slid into the backseat, breathless.
David was inside. He reached out as if to touch her, but he hesitated at the last second and his hand fell to the leather backseat. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice shook.
The front door opened and closed as Diana Warner climbed in. “That wasn’t much fun,” Diana said grimly. She turned to the driver. “Let’s go.”
Reese reached for the seat belt as the car pulled away from the curb, trying to erase the disturbing trace of the boy’s feelings from her memory.
At Nordstrom, Reese, David, and Diana were ushered into a large, private dressing room outfitted in plush couches and several three-way full-length mirrors. It was so calm in comparison to the chaotic street outside Reese’s house that she felt as if she had entered an alternate dimension.
An energetic redhead named Bonnie offered them drinks as she pulled items of clothing off a rolling rack of clothes. Reese and David refused, but Diana accepted a small bottle of Perrier. Bonnie then showed Reese to a curtained dressing nook in one corner of the room, and took David to another on the far side. While Diana sat on the couch with her water, Bonnie brought Reese and David several outfits to try on.
First there were dresses for Reese: a little black one that seemed more appropriate for a formal dinner than an interview, even if it was on television. Diana nixed that one with a sharp shake of her head, saying, “Too cocktail hour.” Next, Bonnie brought over a spaghetti-strap number with a bubble skirt in a gauzy blue-green fabric. Reese felt half-naked when she put it on, and when she came out of her curtained nook to stand in front of the mirrors, she crossed her arms over her chest. Bonnie approached her with a pair of shiny white heels and Reese stepped into them, wobbling, as David came out of his corner wearing black pants and a gray shirt with a vest and tie. He looked like he was going to a gentlemen’s club—the kind with cigars and scotch—while she looked like she was going to a nightclub—the kind with a velvet rope and starlets.
“They’re high school students,” Diana said, sounding cross. “Don’t dress her like an actress, and don’t dress him like the 1950s. We’re going for young, approachable. Genuine.”
Bonnie murmured an apology, saying she was only getting started. Reese caught David looking at her in the mirror and he grinned. Nice dress, he mouthed. She blushed and took off the shoes.
After that, the clothes were a little more normal. Bonnie pulled out a pair of jeans that had a price tag so high Reese couldn’t believe she was allowed to try them on, and an appliquéd T-shirt that was so soft and thin Reese had to wear a tank top beneath it and a nearly see-through sweater over it. To her relief, Bonnie gave her a pair of sneakers to go with the outfit, and this time when she walked out into the dressing room, she felt much more like herself.
“That’s more like it,” Diana said approvingly. “You looked so nervous before. This suits you much better.”
David got new jeans too, as well as a long-sleeved blue-gray button-down shirt printed with faded pinstripes, worn over a black T-shirt.
“That’s it,” Diana said, jumping up. She adjusted the sleeves on David’s shirt, rolling them up over his forearms. “You both look great. The audience will love you.” She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her burgundy suit jacket and snapped photos of the two of them. “I’ll e-mail them to you so you know how to dress on Monday. Now why don’t you change back into your own clothes, and then come out here so we can have a chat.”
Once Reese and David had emerged from their curtained corners, Diana handed Bonnie a credit card and asked her to ring up their new outfits and give them a few minutes alone. Then she gestured for David and Reese to sit on the couch while she perched on the chair nearby.
“I’ve been in touch with Jeff Highsmith, and we’re arranging to shoot the interview at your school,” Diana said.
“At Kennedy?” Reese said, surprised.
“Yes. It will underscore the fact that the two of you are still high school students. It was my idea, and Jeff agreed. If we play our cards right, everyone who sees the interview will adore you two.”
Reese glanced at David, who seemed a little uneasy. “What do you mean?” he asked.
Diana smiled. “There’s more to this interview than telling the world what happened to you last week. That’s certainly important, but there are other things that can influence the public’s perception of you.” Diana gave them both a frank look. “You must be aware that there’s been some talk about your relationship.”
Reese stiffened.
Diana reached out and patted her on the knee. “It’s mostly harmless. But the sight of the two of you holding hands really fired up the imagination, shall we say. I’ll ask Sophia to go easy on you, because you deserve your privacy. And she won’t push you too far; you’re both under eighteen and everybody has a soft spot for a high school romance. But you should be prepared to reveal something—you can determine what that is—about your relationship. If you’re simply friends, that’s fine.” Diana’s smile turned mischievous. “Although to be honest, it’s going to be hard to sell that. You both have little tells that indicate something’s going on.”
Tells? Reese wanted to ask what they were, but she bit her lip instead.
Diana continued: “The thing is, if there is something romantic going on, it’s absolutely to your advantage. You’re both attractive, smart young adults.”
Reese’s face grew warm. Maybe that was a tell. She couldn’t help it if she got embarrassed easily.
“You look good together. You obviously have a strong connection because of your debate team experience. And like I said, everybody loves a high school romance.” Diana leaned forward, her expression turning serious. “You don’t have to reveal everything. There’s no need to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. But the two of you will need to discuss what you want to reveal, so that you’re both on the same page.” Diana stood. “Now I’m going to leave you alone while I make sure Bonnie’s got everything rung up correctly. Take your time and talk about this. I’ll be waiting for you outside.” She gave them a quick smile and left, shutting the door behind her.
The room seemed unnaturally quiet in her wake. When Reese shifted on her end of the couch, the slide of her jeans against the upholstery sounded as rough as sandpaper. She looked at David sideways, not quite meeting his eyes. “So,” she said, and then didn’t know what else to say.
“So,” David repeated.
Reese was nearly overcome by a desire to flee, and she dug her fingers into the edge of the couch cushion, as if to anchor herself in place. She had run away from this before. She didn’t want to run anymore, but it was so hard not to fall back into old habits. If she got up right now and left, they could avoid all of this. Maybe Sophia Curtis wouldn’t ask at all, and then Reese could entirely avoid the possibility that their kiss had been an anomaly. David wouldn’t do that, she told herself. He wouldn’t kiss you if he didn’t mean it. She made herself look at him.
He smiled at her, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “I don’t think we’re just friends anymore,” he said.
Her breath got stuck in her throat. “No?” she managed to say.
David’s left hand curved over her right, his fingers gently loosening the death grip she had on the couch. “You tell me.”
A flutter of panic rose in her. There he was, at her fingertips. Every time they touched, it never failed to shock her: the intimacy of it, the frightening yet exhilarating closeness. And he was nervous. Despite the confidence with which he spoke, she felt the tightness in his stomach, his uncertainty as he reached out to her. She turned to face him, her leg sliding up onto the couch, their hands resting together on her thigh. He was reading her—the way her body leaned toward him, the blood flushing her skin, the buzz that radiated through her from where their fingers were entwined.
“I
don’t think I need to tell you,” she said, and as she spoke the words out loud, wonder rose in her. This thing that had been done to them—this new sensitivity they had to each other, to the world—she was suddenly grateful for it. David could always know how she felt. She could always know how he felt. It was a gift.
“What do you want to tell Sophia Curtis?” he asked.
“I guess we can tell her the truth.”
“Maybe we should go over it, out loud.”
“Okay.” She found that she couldn’t think very clearly when he was looking at her like that—especially when she was holding his hand and knew where his thoughts were heading. If she went along with it, they wouldn’t be talking for much longer. That wouldn’t normally be a problem, except Diana Warner was waiting for them outside and they really did need to figure this out. She pulled her hand away at the same moment that David moved back, looking flushed. “Okay,” she said again, and scooted onto the chair that Diana had vacated. “So, what’s the story?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “Um. We met through debate?”
“Yeah. We were partners.”
He grinned. “And you had an uncontrollable crush on me?”
“Hey, I’m not taking all the blame,” she said without thinking, and her cheeks burned. Why did she have to blush so easily? But David didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh, I think the feeling was mutual,” he said. Even though he wasn’t touching her, she could swear she felt the warm twist in his stomach as he spoke.
“Really?” she said, and then was overcome with shyness. She probably was the color of an eggplant by now.
David laughed. “Sometimes you’re a little dense, Reese. I can’t believe you didn’t notice.”
“Until nationals.” She made a face. “Where I acted like a total dork.”
“Good thing I didn’t give up.”
She smiled slightly. “You’re gonna spin it that way? It’s sort of old-fashioned, isn’t it?”
“Boy meets girl, girl rejects boy, girl dates other girl—”