Adaptation

by Malinda Lo

  Excitement rose on Julian’s face. “Are you saying that I was right about where you had your accident?”

  “Well, the car crashed near where Area 51 is supposed to be.”

  “I knew it!” Julian cried.

  “I don’t know for sure that’s where I was,” Reese cautioned him. “But the fact that it happened during the June Disaster, and I almost hit that bird—I know it’s a lot of circumstantial evidence, but I feel like there’s some connection there, you know?”

  Julian was shaking his head, his mouth twitching.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Do you know how funny this is? You’re trying to convince me that there’s something shady going on. I’m already there. What exactly is this weird stuff that’s been happening to you and David?”

  She stalled for time, taking another sip of coffee while she tried to figure out how much she should—or could—tell him. He gave her an expectant look. “I really want to tell you, but I don’t think I should,” she said, settling on the truth. Julian would see through her anyway if she lied.

  The anticipation on his face changed into sober thoughtfulness as he studied her. “Okay,” he finally said. “You think David will really go for this?”

  Relieved, she said, “Yeah, I do. He wants to know what’s going on with us as much as I do.”

  “Then how about you get him to pick us up at midnight?” Julian stood to leave.

  “Do you want to wait while I call him?”

  “Nah. I have to get home and make sure my recording equipment is ready. Just text me after you’ve talked to him.”

  “All right.”

  Reese followed Julian to the front door. As he opened it he added, “Wear black. And bring a flashlight.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Reese was right. David didn’t hesitate to say yes, and they quickly agreed that he would pick her up first at midnight, and then they would head over to Julian’s. After she texted Julian the details, she took the paint upstairs and looked around her room. She decided to start with the wall next to the door, where the bulletin board hung beside the closet.

  As she unhooked the bulletin board to lay it on her bed, a couple of photos that had been stuck beneath others tumbled to the floor. She bent to pick them up. One was of herself with her mom and grandparents at the Marin County Fair when she was thirteen. It startled her to see how young she looked, all braces and awkwardness. The other picture was of her and David after the first debate tournament they had won last winter. They both had giant smiles on their faces, and David was holding up their trophy. She remembered how excited they had been. Afterward they went out with the whole team to IHOP and vowed to win all the way to nationals. Too bad that hadn’t worked out. The memory of how she screwed everything up still hurt, and she forced herself to drop the photos on the bed and ignore the twinge of embarrassment that pinched her.

  She spread newspapers on the wooden floor in front of the now blank wall. At the hardware store, she had bought a large can of bittersweet root and two cans of yellow paint. One was called “morning sunrise”; the other, slightly lighter in color, was “downy gold.” She pried open the can of morning sunrise with a flathead screwdriver and unwrapped one of the new brushes, running her fingers over the stiff bristles before dipping it into the paint. She swept the color, glistening and bright, over the blue-gray wall in a curving streak of yellow. A thread of excitement began to hum through her. She felt as if her hand were being guided by instinct, and the more she painted, the closer she came to remembering what was so familiar about that dream.

  After most of the wall was covered in morning sunrise, she switched to downy gold, using a clean brush. The bottom layer wasn’t dry yet, so the two colors smeared together. When she saw the new color that created, her stomach lurched. That was it. That was the color of the room in her dream. She painted the lighter yellow all over the wall, mixing it in with the darker shade in quick strokes. When the whole wall was yellow, she knew she was ready to add the red, but she had to wait until the yellow paint dried or else the mixed colors would turn into orange.

  Impatient, she went downstairs to make herself a sandwich for lunch. As she ate it in the kitchen, staring out at the backyard, all she could see was the yellow room in her dream. She could picture exactly how the red veins spread down the walls, but now she also remembered a thin layer of iridescent gel over the red, like a caul protecting a newborn. How could she paint that? She glanced around the kitchen and her eyes alighted on a box of plastic wrap. She opened it and peeled off a piece. The edges stuck together, and as she stretched the plastic flat, her fingers sliding against the sleek surface, something inside her clicked.

  She was the newborn within the caul.

  She had been inside the yellow room with its bleeding, pliable walls.

  She couldn’t breathe for a minute as the truth uncoiled through her: After the accident she had been in this place that she dreamed of. She knew it in her bones. It was an incubator, and after she emerged, she was different.

  She ran back upstairs, clutching the box of plastic wrap. The yellow wall gleamed at her, still shining wet in some places, but she couldn’t wait any longer. She opened the can of bittersweet root and began to drag the red across the yellow, like the branching limbs of a tree. She loaded the brush so heavily that paint began to drip down the walls, sliding down over the electrical outlet. She put down the brush and went to get the screwdriver to remove the faceplate so that she could wipe off the paint.

  There was a red light blinking inside the wall, attached to the outlet.

  She froze. What is that? The red light was part of a tiny device that looked like a round battery. She reached into the wall and pried it loose; it seemed to be stuck with some kind of adhesive. In the palm of her hand, the device continued to blink like a little red eye, opening and closing. A trail of cold crept down her spine. She flipped it over. Engraved into the bottom of the battery were minuscule letters that she had to squint to read: EC&R.

  Her phone rang, startling her. She dropped the device, and it clattered onto the wooden floor. Cursing, she picked it up and put it in her pocket, then answered the phone. It was Amber.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Amber asked.

  “What? I’m—nothing,” Reese said. Was that a bug? Is someone listening to me?

  “Are you at home?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I’m outside.”

  Reese went to the window and pulled up the blinds. Out on the sidewalk, Amber was standing with a bouquet of flowers in one hand.

  “I brought you something,” Amber said through the phone, sounding coy. “Can I come in?”

  Reese could feel the pressure of the tiny object in her pocket. She had to get this thing out of the house. “I’ll be there in a sec. Hang on.” She hung up and ran downstairs to the kitchen, unlocking the back door. She headed for the potted geraniums and shoved the blinking device deep into the soil before she went to let Amber in. She would have to examine it later.

  They were gerbera daisies—orange and fuchsia and purple—and even though Reese had already glimpsed them from her bedroom window, seeing Amber hold them out to her sent a warm glow through her. “Nobody’s ever brought me flowers before,” Reese said. She was pretty sure there was a goofy smile on her face.

  Amber leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. “I’m happy to be the first.”

  She followed Reese into the kitchen, where Reese took down a vase for the flowers and filled it with water. “How come you’re covered with paint?” Amber asked.

  Reese glanced down at herself, faintly surprised to see yellow and red smeared all over her shirt. “Crap,” she muttered. “I’ve been painting.”

  “Obviously,” Amber said, laughing. “What have you been painting?”

  “My room.”

  “Really? Can I see?”

  Reese hesitated, arranging the flowers in the water. “It’s not finished yet. And it’s kind of weird.”
<
br />   Amber came behind her, sliding her arms around Reese’s waist. “I promise I’ll like it.”

  Reese turned to face her. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she teased her.

  “No,” Amber said, shaking her head seriously. “Only to you.”

  Heat flared in Reese’s belly. The light from the kitchen window drew out darker flecks in Amber’s gray eyes so that they looked like granite, solid and steady. “Okay,” Reese said. “I’ll show you.”

  When they entered Reese’s bedroom, Amber gasped. The paint was still wet, and the red drips that streaked down the wall ended in gleaming little droplets. Amber’s mouth parted slightly, and a shadow seemed to pass over her face, as if she were seeing something that struck a nerve in her. She turned to look at Reese, who was standing in the doorway with the vase full of daisies.

  “You painted this?” Amber said, her voice hushed.

  “Yes. I told you it’s weird.”

  But Amber said, “It makes me think of rebirth.”

  Reese’s heartbeat quickened. “Rebirth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you come up with that?” Reese entered the room and put the vase on her desk.

  “I don’t know; it’s just a feeling I get. It’s intense.” She took out her phone. “Do you mind if I take a picture?”

  “No, why?”

  “I think it’s really cool.”

  “Oh.” Reese was flattered, and the phone’s camera clicked.

  “Have you ever painted before? Like, art stuff?”

  “No. Not outside of school.”

  “You said you weren’t finished. What else are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to put plastic wrap over part of it.” Hearing the words out loud made Reese realize how odd they sounded.

  Amber gave her a quizzical look. “That’s an interesting decorating idea.”

  Reese shook her head. “It’s not… decorating.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Before she could stop herself, she was explaining the whole thing. “I had this dream—I keep having this dream over and over again. I see this yellow room with these bleeding walls, and… this morning I woke up and knew that I had to paint it. I actually got the idea after seeing the bathroom in the club last night.”

  “The bathroom?”

  “Yeah. It was all blue. It reminded me of the dream. Except, of course, the colors are different. I know this sounds totally bizarre.” She wondered if she had made Amber think she was crazy.

  “No, it’s really interesting,” Amber assured her. “Do you have a lot of dreams like this?”

  “No. Just this one.”

  “When did you start having this dream?”

  “After the accident,” Reese said, and then stopped. There was something in Amber’s face—an excitement—that Reese didn’t understand. But as soon as she noticed the odd expression, it was gone.

  “The one that damaged your suitcase?”

  “Yeah.”

  Amber gave her a concerned look. “What happened in the accident? Was it really bad?”

  “Yeah.” Reese sat down on the edge of the bed, unsure of what else to say. She couldn’t tell Amber the whole truth, not only because of the nondisclosure agreement, but because it would sound insane. And she didn’t want Amber to think she was crazy. “It was bad,” she finally said. “I had internal injuries, and I was in the hospital for a while.”

  “But you’re better now?”

  “Yeah,” Reese said, even though she wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

  “Good.” Amber sat down beside her, and the bulletin board slid over to knock against her.

  “Sorry.” Reese reached over to move it out of the way.

  The loose photos that had fallen off earlier fluttered onto the bedspread. Amber picked them up to look. “Oh my God, is this you?” she asked, examining the Marin County Fair photo. “You’re so cute—and so surly.”

  “Hey, I was thirteen,” Reese said, taking it from her. “Give me a break.”

  Amber still held the photo of Reese and David, and she looked from the picture to Reese. “Who’s this? You two look cozy.”

  Reese reached for the photo, but Amber wouldn’t let go. “Give it back to me,” Reese said.

  Amber quirked an eyebrow at her. “Who is this guy?”

  “My debate partner.”

  “He looks like more than that.”

  “He does not.”

  “Look at the way his arm is around you,” Amber insisted. “And you’re practically draped all over him.”

  “We were just happy because we won that day.”

  “Sure you were,” Amber teased her.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Reese objected, ruffled.

  “It’s fine with me if you still like boys. It’s a free country.” Amber held out the photo. “As long as you still like me.”

  There was more than flirtation in Amber’s expression; there was challenge. Warmth rippled through Reese. She took the picture and threw it on her desk before she pushed Amber back onto the bed. “I still like you,” Reese said, and kissed her.

  Like every time, time melted away. A minute could have passed, or an hour. There was only Amber: her mouth and the movement of her body against her own. Reese felt as if she could kiss her forever, and she would never grow tired of it.

  Someone coughed.

  Reese knew that cough.

  She scrambled away from Amber, who was lying stretched out on the bed, her shirt hiked up to reveal her bare stomach. Reese looked up, and her mouth went dry. Her mother was standing in the open doorway. “Hi, Reese,” her mom said.

  She pulled down her own shirt. “Hi, Mom.”

  Amber sat up, her face turning white. “Shit,” she said, and then her hands flew to cover her mouth.

  Reese’s mom broke out into laughter. “I just wanted to let you know I’m home, since you didn’t seem to notice.” Reese turned red. “I’ll be downstairs. Come down and say hi when you’ve collected yourselves.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Reese’s hands were clammy as she entered the living room, Amber in tow. Her mom was sitting on the couch, pretending to read a newspaper, but when she saw them she dropped the paper onto the coffee table. “Hi there,” her mom said as if they hadn’t already greeted one another upstairs.

  “Hi, Mom. This is Amber.”

  Cat stood up, extending her hand. “Hello, Amber. It’s so nice to meet you.”

  Amber stepped forward and shook her hand. “Hi, Mrs.—Mrs.—”

  “Cat. Please, call me Cat. I’m nobody’s Mrs. anymore.”

  Amber smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Would you like to sit down?”

  “I’m really sorry, but I have to get home,” Amber said. “My mom’s in town for a few days, and I’m supposed to meet her for dinner. I, um, lost track of time.”

  “Well, you’re welcome anytime, Amber.”

  Amber seemed surprised. “Uh, thanks, Mrs.—um, Cat.” She began to head for the front door and added, “It was great to meet you.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine.”

  Reese rolled her eyes at her mom. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and followed Amber down the hall.

  Out on the front steps, Amber whispered, “I hope she doesn’t hate me!”

  “She doesn’t.”

  Amber looked skeptical. “If you say so. Will you call me later and tell me what she says?”

  “Yes.”

  Amber went down the steps toward the sidewalk, waving. Reese closed the door, took a deep breath, and returned to the living room.

  Her mom had a mischievous look on her face. “She’s cute.”

  Reese stared at her. This was definitely not the reaction she had expected.

  She grinned at Reese’s expression. “What? I grew up in San Francisco. You don’t think I’ve ever kissed a girl?”

  Reese’s mouth dropped open.

  “So,” her mom continued, �
��is she your girlfriend?”

  “Oh my God,” Reese muttered. She sat in the armchair and dropped her head into her hands so that she wouldn’t have to look at her mom.

  “Well, is she?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “How long have you two been together?”

  “I’ve only known her for a week.”

  “That’s all? You looked like you knew each other pretty well.”

  Reese felt like her face was on fire. She heard the couch creak as her mom shifted over and laid a hand on her knee.

  “You know I love you no matter who you fall in love with,” she said gently.

  The word love made Reese cringe. “You make it sound so serious.”

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  Reese stared at the edge of the coffee table, unable to look at her mother.

  “Are you sleeping together?”

  “Jesus Christ—”

  “The lord isn’t going to help you with this, honey. Are you using protection?”

  Reese’s head snapped up. “Mom, even if we were sleeping together, which we’re not, she’s a girl. What are you talking about? I’m not going to get pregnant.”

  Her mom frowned. “There are still STDs you can get from having sex with a woman. If you’re having sex, we need to talk about—”

  “We’re not having sex,” Reese interrupted, completely mortified to be having this discussion with her mother.

  “Not yet.”

  “Oh my God, can we not have this conversation?”

  Her mom raised her hands. “All right, all right. I just want to make sure you’re being safe, honey.”

  “I’m fine,” Reese insisted.

  Tears sprang to her mom’s eyes and she reached out to cup Reese’s face in her hand. “You know you can tell me anything, honey. You don’t have to keep secrets from me.”

  Reese was astonished. “I’m not—” And then she realized what her mother meant. “Mom, I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know until I met Amber. I haven’t been keeping it a secret from you. It’s still new to me.”