by A. E. Rought
“You don’t understand.” I’m getting defensive, and there’s a shift to darker and scratchier tones in my voice. “Look. I know I haven’t said much about my past, and I appreciate you not prying–”
“You’re welcome,” he interjects.
“As I was saying, there’s a reason I haven’t told Em. My father was into some questionable stuff at the lab. Hailey works there. She hid the information. Now she’s trying to blackmail me with it.”
There. Enough said without telling him everything.
“And Hailey is your ex?”
My expression says it all.
“Not good, man. I still say you need to tell Emma.” He stands and boots his chair in with a foot. “That girl is head over heels for you. She’s also not stupid. No girl is. Eventually they find out everything you’re hiding.”
Hailey is the last skeleton I want Em finding in my closet. My ex-girlfriend will ruin Emma just because she can, just because she stands between Hailey and what she wants.
Since I’m baring my soul… I put my phone on the table in front of me, and open the text folder. My ex-girlfriend’s thread is the only one indicating a new message, and a photo attachment. Oh God. Lifting a glance to Jason, I hold my breath and click on the thread. Almost immediately, a picture of me and Hailey – less-than-fully-clothed – from last year looks up at me. One arch of Jason’s eyebrows asks permission to see it, and I nod and show the phone to him.
He exhales a little huff of breath, his head tips slightly as he looks from the picture to me, and then back again.
“Yeah,” he says, “I can see where that could be trouble.”
I stand, and gather my bags. “Still think I should tell Em?”
“Soon,” Jason stresses. He looks one more time, then shakes his head. “Before Em sees something like that,” he adds on his way out of the food court.
“Yeah.”
Wind whips past the opening doors, sucking a sheet of packing paper out of one of my bags. It whisks over the filthy packed snow of the parking lot, falling to its death beneath the tires of an oncoming car.
I know exactly how it feels.
The world is black and white and blowing snow as I drive away from Jason and the Ford Bronco’s death rattling engine.
My phone vibrates, alerting me to another text message.
Not Hailey again. When will she get the clue? I free the phone from my pocket, and breathe a sigh of relief.
Emma Gentry, the display screen reads.
Didn’t want you going to bed tonight without a goodnight kiss :-*
So different from what Hailey might’ve said.
The protective side of me hates to admit Jason’s right. Instinct says to keep the two girls as far apart as possible, but Emma needs to know about my ex-girlfriend before Hailey makes the introduction herself.
Ignoring Hailey hasn’t worked. Being nice didn’t work, either, despite my Gran’s insistence it would. There has to be something Hailey wants more than me… God knows there’s nothing I want more than Emma. That will never change. And I don’t think Hailey will either. The only person who might have had any power over her is dead. But my father left someone in charge in his absence. Maybe Paul has an idea.
I quick text Em back.
:-* Sleep well. Talk to you soon!!
With a sense of direction, finally, I steer the Acura through a gas station and stop at the curb. Before driving to Ascension Labs, I send Emma one more message;
Truth is, nothing makes me happier than you.
CHAPTER SIX
“You know…” The intercom by Ascension Lab’s main door distorts Paul’s voice when he speaks. “It’s Wednesday night – you should be going to bed soon. You have school tomorrow.”
“Can you just buzz me in?” A gust of wind threatens to dislodge the packages in my arms. “I have a larger than life problem to deal with who doesn’t attend Shelley High.”
“Well, OK then.” I’m glad this seems to humor him. I hear it in his voice. “I’ll drop the pseudo-parent gig. Come to the office.”
Sharp sterilizer smell leaks out, invisible and ugly, when the electronic door opens.
I step into the perfectly-controlled atmosphere of my mad scientist father’s laboratory. For a second I pause, certain I hear breathing behind me in the hall, claws clicking on the linoleum flooring. But that’s stupid – the lab animals are securely locked in their department.
A few rooms down the hall, Paul’s door stands open, waiting. Nothing’s changed inside his office. Cozy with an extreme air of nerd. His old, cracked leather wingback chair sits in the corner, empty and a perfect place to stow the presents I bought at the mall. With a nod in the chair’s direction, I say, “Do you mind? I’m not exactly comfortable leaving these in the car.”
“Sure,” Paul says, one eyebrow raised above his glasses, “then you can explain what has big, bad MMA champ Alex scared.”
Despite his smartass comment, he looks more haggard than last time. His clothes are rumpled, stubble still in need of shaving, and lab coat hanging askew from the back of his chair. Part of me wants to let my guard down, lean on him like he seems to offer. The other part of me can’t get past the questions I harbor about his feelings for my mom, and the truths he’s hiding about the lab.
I open my mouth to say something, I’m not sure what, and then close it again.
“So,” Paul says, that wary expression settling back over his face, “what’s the larger than life problem you need help with? I see it’s not a shopping deficiency.”
“No,” I agree, “I did just fine with that. They are,” I stress, nodding at the packages, “part of the reason I’m here though.”
“Oh really? Out with it, then.” He sits behind his desk and motions to the small chair in front of it.
“They’re in here because I don’t want to leave them where they could be tampered with.” I perch on the edge of the seat and drop the bomb I’ve been avoiding. “Hailey needs to go. She’s stalking me, harassing me through texts, making threats…”
His neutral falters, and flatlines. His gaze sinks. “You know I can’t do that, Alex. Her research is critical to some of the medicines Ascension is developing for local doctors. Besides being the one to protect the truth of what you really are, and hiding your father’s files, she’s part of Ascension.”
Paul’s response is so canned I can almost smell a hint of metal.
“That’s bullshit. She stole those files, and you know it. She’s not protecting me, she’s blackmailing me with them.”
He won’t meet my eyes when he says, “We have to believe her.”
“Well, I don’t,” I say. It’s impossible to argue with my gut. “She might be obsessive, but she’s not usually a liar. And what’s this ‘part of Ascension’ crap?”
“Regardless,” he says, refusing to answer my question. “Hailey cannot be removed.”
Something I’ve heard before. It wasn’t good enough then, and isn’t now – especially when I can feel he’s avoiding booting her out because of something else.
“Come on, Paul.” I lean forward in the seat, pressing closer to his personal space. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Such a loaded question, and I regret it the second I say it. I didn’t think Paul had the kind of secrets that could cut us both until I saw the expression on his face when he touched my mother’s picture.
“Hailey’s part of an ongoing experiment, the ongoing experiment. It’s what your father piggybacked his procedures on…” his sentence trails off as he gestures vaguely at me.
Enough said. Ascension Labs has been engineering a better future through questionable practices for years. Numerous scientists, dozens of hypotheses and experiments based on the belief that life is absolute, death is optional. The type of practices my father built on to resurrect me. The same practices I shut down – or thought I had.
“Even if you succeed in shutting it down here,” he adds like he’s reading my thoughts, “ther
e are satellite labs, investors and shareholders with agendas. It’s impossible to stop it all – especially since her living and breathing means the experiment isn’t over. She is one of your father’s pet projects.”
Wait…
This shoves the past couple years under glaring new light.
“She’s an experiment,” I force the word out. “Hailey is a product of the lab, and my dad set me up with her?”
“I understand you’re upset.”
“Pissed off is more like it.”
“It doesn’t do you any good, now.” Paul faces the portrait of my family. “You know how your father was,” he says, his voice dead even. “He did what he wanted, had ends he intended to meet, and he wanted you with Hailey.”
“And you just let him?”
“You know as well as I that your father…” he pauses, lays the family photo on its face, and spares my mother’s image a lingering glance, “…had ways of inspiring obedience.”
He did. Reward and punishment, manipulation and lies. Trying to understand my father’s motives feels like dipping a toe in a septic tank. Dark, unknown depths of shit. Do I really want to find the bottom?
How is any of this OK? A person being a lab project is wrong on many levels. The sad irony is, in some ways, I am one. Still, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Hailey is overtly brilliant, criminally cunning, pretty to the point of surreal.
What else? To what end?
Why can’t I be free of Hailey Westmore?
“So how do I deal with her if I can’t get rid of her?” My voice scales up in timbre, ripe with my frustration. “If she goes public with my files, they’ll lock me away in a lab somewhere. I’ll die without my weekly inoculation!”
“It’ll also bring down Ascension…” he says in a soft voice. Paul paces back and forth behind his desk, touching this, adjusting that. He stops at the picture of the three of us, the muscles around his eyes tightening a little.
“Paul?”
“Let me talk to her.” There’s steel in his voice, and I can’t help but hope he can hone it sharp enough to cut the green-eyed devil of an experiment loose. “She’s due for blood work in the morning. I’ll call her into the office for a chat.”
Most of me wants to refuse. If he won’t get rid of her, then I will have to deal with Hailey on my own. I am the one she’s threatening, after all. If I go down, so does all of Ascension, which doesn’t make any sense. As close as Hailey and I used to be, I know she’s making threats for a reason. I feel like a ball in an old school pinball game, whacked from paddle to bumper and back. She’s planning something, and so far avoiding her isn’t working out so well.
Choking on my pride, I nod.
The look on Paul’s face says, “That’s a good boy.”
“I’ll keep you informed,” he says.
His lab coat falls to the floor when he steps around the desk. His warm, familiar smile comes back when he claps a hand on my shoulder. I nod when he mentions getting some rest, and allow myself to be steered from the office. Paul does nothing to fill up the awkward silence as he guides me down the hall.
Words are empty, anyway. Action means everything. And apparently he can’t do a damn thing when it comes to Hailey and Ascension Labs. Why was he left in charge if he can’t actually do anything? Is it possible for my father to meddle with people from beyond the grave?
Knowing him, leaving Hailey on the loose and Paul’s hands tied, I have to say yes.
Hurry up! Emma’s text reads, The party’s already started. I miss you <3
It’s Friday, Christmas Eve, and a visitor to White River would think the town is having a Merry Breemas, instead of a Merry Christmas.
Energy races through my nerves, and I’m probably too jittery to be out in public. Emma would never forgive me if I missed Bree’s party, though, so I’ll keep my hands on Em – which is where I want them anyway. She understands the electric tingle, the static charge and where it comes from.
A ridiculous number of cars pack the neighborhood streets. With snow banks throttling the way, the parked vehicles narrow the roads to single lanes. Multi-colored Christmas lights hang in the Ransoms’ trees and line the walk to their front door. The windows of Bree’s house dump glowing kaleidoscope puddles onto the snow, the walls bleed music into the air. Somewhere in the backyard a girl lets out a high-pitched laugh.
A snowball whizzes at my head, well-timed with me opening the Acura’s door. With the extra wattage forcing my senses into overdrive, I easily duck out of the way. Jason appears, peeking around the Ransoms’ garage, then fades back into the shadows to pack another snowball, I’m sure. Eyes on the garage corner, I scoop snow from the hoods of the parked cars and pack my own ball as I walk toward Bree’s house, and Emma who’s somewhere inside waiting.
One house away from the Ransoms’, Jason pokes his head into firing range. I cock my arm back and lob the snowball at his head. Direct hit. The snowball explodes against his temple in a satisfying cloud of white.
“Fashionably late, Franks?” Jason teases, and shakes his head to dislodge the snow.
“Up yours, Weller.” I pat the little package swelling my coat pocket. “I had to stop at Ascension. I forgot my bags there last night.”
He arches an eyebrow, and needles me with a look full of suspicion. “Isn’t that your dad’s old lab?”
“Yeah. I inherited it when he died.” A familiar blond head peeps through the garage’s open side door and her face lights in a smile. My pulse kicks up a notch, and the welcome rush races through my nerves. She’s so much more than a girlfriend to me.
“Hurry up!” Emma commands again.
As if I could deny her. Snow brushes my jeans when I leap over the neighbor’s hedge. Landing on my feet, I glide through the white piling up on the grass. Drawing even with Jason I say in a whisper, “Remember that talk we had at the mall?”
How could he forget that picture, or how Hailey’s been harassing me?
Thankfully he nods. “And I’m sure you’ll explain later?”
“Yeah…”
People, in party clothes and winter jackets huddle around a space heater in the corner of the garage when we step in. Speech puffs up from them in wispy clouds. Tables full of cold fruit salads, candies, desserts, and a huge birthday cake line the garage walls. The sweetest treat stands shivering in a sparkly white dress.
Forgetting Jason at my side, the little birthday gift in my pocket, the whole damn party, I close the distance between Em and me. My heart beats harder, resonating within my ribs. Her eyelashes dip to half-mast, inviting me in. I take advantage of her unspoken invitation. Wrapping my arms around her, then sliding my hands over the curve of her butt, I scoop Em up by her thighs. She gasps a little, and clings to me as I lift her. She’s warm despite her shivering, solid and real in my arms. Taking a few steps, I prop her butt on a table’s edge and stand between her knees.
“Mmm.” She slips the fingers of her free hand into my hair. “I love your Friday spurts of energy.”
“Me, too.” Every little sensation is heightened, and she gives me so many.
I duck in for a kiss, but hardly feel the tingle of her breath on my lips before Bree appears in the breezeway door. “Really, Alex? Here? Now?”
“Wherever, whenever!” Em answers for me, curls her hand in my jacket and pulls me in for a deep kiss. A warm electric thrill runs through me when our lips meet. The heat spreads, settling, steaming… I slide my hands from her shoulders, down her back, bring her tighter to me. Em inhales when her slippery dress picks up a static charge.
“Enough you two,” Bree says. “You’re just lucky I’m well-adjusted and know how to share, Alex.” She hooks a hand around Emma’s cast and steers her toward the house.
I drift along, tethered to Em by linked hands. Bree, in full queen mode, waves like she’s on a parade float and weaves through the crowd. Inside, the house is a crazy mishmash of Christmas and birthday decorations. A huge tree dominates the living room,
otherwise empty of furniture and full of people from school. Shouts of “Happy birthday!” and “Merry Christmas!” mingle with laughter and off-key singing. Presents litter a table beside the tree, all for Bree’s birthday judging by the girly packaging.
“Did you bring it?” Em whispers close to my ear.
“Yeah.” I reach to fish the package out of my pocket, but Em stops me. She locks those blue eyes on mine, and I stand transfixed, all of me alive, awake and waiting. Her hands are light, the right kind of teasing touch as she searches pockets she knows that box won’t fit. Her fingers dip into both front pockets of my jeans, she smiles, then finally takes the wrapped silver bracelet she insisted I pick up “from both of us” from my leather coat. Then she pops on her toes and kisses me.
This social thing isn’t so bad with a girl like Em.
She spins, her skirt flares and shows off her legs to tease me. Then Em swishes toward the pile of gifts and places the shiny silver-wrapped package atop the pile. I wade into the crowd, bent on getting my hands back around her, when an adult yells from the direction of the kitchen, “Emma! Six o’clock call from your mom!”
“Right on time,” I mutter.
“Painfully punctual,” Bree agrees near my shoulder.
“Merry Birthday and Happy Christmas.” I say, while I watch Em pace in the kitchen. “You and Jason have big plans tomorrow?”
“Depends on what you call ‘big’,” Bree says, making quotation marks in the air with her fingers. “He’ll be back over tomorrow after breakfast and gifts with his parents, and then will stay for dinner here.”
“Any idea when Emma will be allowed off the landline leash?”
“Never?” she teases, then says, “I have no clue. We do breakfast here, and then a fussy supper. So, most likely between 9am and 6pm? I can ask Mom if you can join us for dinner.”
I have a polite refusal ready, but can’t utter it. Something scrapes my nerves, a hint of perfume maybe, a flash of dark hair.
Suddenly my night hits the skids.
Hailey.
Why is she here? Why the hell won’t she leave me alone?
Black hair tied back, glasses framing the false smile in her eyes, Hailey’s all saccharin sweetness and artificial light as she walks up. If girls had hackles, Bree’s would be up from her nose to her butt. The girl is bristling, and doesn’t know why – I do, though. Hailey has that effect on other girls.