Raven: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 6)

by Ryan Schow

  3

  Julie Sanderson. Staring in the bathroom mirror. Hating herself and what she’s become. She’s packed and ready to leave for Astor Academy, but all she can think about is how much she hates.

  She hates everything…

  She hates herself for sleeping with family, her step-brother for being gorgeous and in love with her, her erotic step-sister for her carefree, seductive ways.

  “You’re abnormal,” she said to her reflection.

  “Which I think is sexy,” Emery said from behind her, causing her to jump. Emery was standing on the other side of the slightly opened bathroom door. He pushed it open enough to enter the bathroom and said, “Well summer’s fuckfest was a success, don’t you think?”

  Constance slipped in behind Emery, shut the bathroom door behind her and said, “I’d call it that if I was you, but only because you’re terrible at sharing. And only because you got more of her than me.”

  Constance went and stood next to Julie. Julie had her back to the mirror, fully focused on Emery. Constance had her back to the mirror, too; she slipped her hand into Julie’s hand. They both stared at Emery who was looking at both of them with perverted eyes.

  God she loved this…

  “When we get free of our parents,” he said, “we should all live together.”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” Julie said. She’d been feeling sick the last few days. Perhaps it was the idea of leaving them and going back to Astor, with those…people. She kept waiting to miss her friends, but as of that moment, she couldn’t care less about them.

  “Oh, yeah?” Constance asked. “Why?”

  The way she gazed across her shoulder at Julie with those sexy, artificially plumped lips and those huge Persian eyes, Julie measured her words very carefully. “Because my tits hurt,” she said, thinking if Constance were any thinner, she’d look like Jasmine from Disney’s movie Aladdin, “and I’m sick. Again.”

  “Sick how?” Emery said. The casual playboy expression dropped right off his face with the insinuation.

  Normally when he was nervous, he’d run his hand through his hair. It was getting long now, the lightly curled, lightly shined bangs almost down to his lips, and the back all the way down to his shoulders. He used to look like a club rat; now he looks like a male model. Like every dessert Julie’s never had, the same dessert she’d been having since he stole her virginity at age fourteen.

  “Sick like…before, maybe,” she said, suddenly shy, like she’d done something wrong. Which she had.

  Emery sucked in a deep breath, twisted his head enough to make his neck pop, then purposely looked away from her. Julie felt so sad, so ugly, so pumped with shame and self-loathing.

  Constance was different. She turned into Julie, her breasts on Julie’s right arm, close enough for her to smell the sweetness of her step-sister’s skin, the fruity scent of her hairspray, the grapey scent of her spray-on shine. Constance, the free spirit that she was, she took Julie’s earlobe into her mouth, sucked it a minute, then bit it slightly. Goosebumps trailed up Julie’s neck.

  “Are you going to keep this one?” Constance said, sensuous, lusty. “You know how I love children.”

  She shook Constance off her, glared deep into her naturally green eyes and said, “If you love children so much, have some of your own.”

  Making an extra pouty look, she turned to Emery, laid her eyes all over him and said, “He’s always pulling out early. With you, he’s different.”

  “Am not,” he said.

  The weight of Julie’s dilemma was like gravity doubled. All she wanted to do was lie down. Constance put her arms around her, sideways; Emery came in close and hugged her, too. She let them. When Emery said, “I hope it’s a boy this time,” Julie started to cry.

  “I hate you,” she said to Emery, to Constance.

  “I hate you, too,” Constance said lovingly.

  “Me, too,” Emery said, his voice so tender. “I hate you both so much.”

  Julie couldn’t stop the tears from coming. They were ruining her perfect makeup. “I don’t want another baby,” she said between hiccupping sobs.

  “I want a boy, too,” Constance said, speaking more to what Emery wanted than what Julie was going through. “We could find a way to keep this one.” She was looking at Julie like what Constance wanted was simply her choice for the making, and everyone else was going to have to just go along with it.

  “Yeah,” Emery agreed. “I’m tired of looking for the others.”

  Now Julie looked up at him, pushed him back with both hands. He seemed to realize his mistake, but could only stare at her slack jawed. God, Julie thought, he was gorgeous. She hated that she only saw him for his looks, that she was shallow and it got her here. If he only had some substance and a different mother, this could all work out. But he doesn’t, so it won’t.

  “The others, Emery?” she said, horrified. Constance tried to take her hand. Julie pushed it away. The hurt, fear and shame boiled into bitter contempt. A deep, wretched fury. “There’s only been one.”

  One baby taken to term. One abortion.

  “He considers your abortion a child with a spirit. You killed it, but maybe the spirit is out there in some other baby, looking for you, looking for Emery.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, Constance,” Julie said.

  “They say before you’re born, you choose your parents,” Constance continued, as if Julie hadn’t snapped at her. “The dead baby, it chose you, Julie. It chose Emery.”

  “Get the hell out,” Julie said, glaring at Emery who just stood there looking gorgeous, his mind caught on a single thought: the baby. “Both of you. Seriously. Get out.”

  Before Constance left, she licked the side of Julie’s face. Julie backed away from her with an offended look. “Serious, Constance, go.”

  “Say you want to stay,” Emery said, stepping forward. His eyes were dying for her love.

  “No,” Julie said, resolute. “I’m going back to Astor.”

  “Say it to us,” Constance pleaded.

  It was always two against one. Constance made her lips pouty. Then she made her eyes wet with the need for approval. Julie rolled her eyes at the same time as Constance was looping her finger inside Emery’s jeans pocket. Not taking her eyes off Julie, Constance sidled up next to Emery like a cat anxious for its owner’s affection. Like a cat in heat.

  “You two deserve each other,” she said.

  “You deserve us, too,” Emery said, unmoved. “It’s going to be our baby. And we are going to find the last one, the one our parents made you give away. I’m still looking.”

  “He’ll always be looking,” Constance said, her hand now on Emery’s butt.

  “I’m going to Astor and that’s it. End of discussion.”

  4

  When Netty got home, she walked in and found her mother and the pseudo Christian Grey boy-toy lounging together at the table eating an afternoon snack, gazing at each other like they were in love for the first time.

  “Ew,” she said.

  “Looks like little miss manners is home,” her mother said, not at all happy with Netty’s entrance.

  “Late lunch?” Netty said as she dropped her book bag on the countertop. She hated how good looking and how young her mother’s boyfriend was. She didn’t know if she wanted to kick him in the nuts or sit and stare at all his dreamy features.

  “Hi,” Fifty Shades of Douchery said to Netty. Why did he have to be so damn…sexy?! His face was two days unshaven and chiseled, like something you’d see in a GQ magazine. She felt weak at the sight of him. Full of wanting. Full of irritation because her boobs still hurt and the makeshift panty-pad was wetter than before. She burned him with her eyes.

  “Would you like me to go?” he asked, taking a hint.

  “Do what you want,” she said. The way she said it, he could jump out the window to his death and she’d be like, “So…what’s on TV?”

  “What I want,” he said, t
aking her mother’s hand in a show of solidarity, “is to get along with you.”

  “If you’re going to be puppy-dogging around my mother, it would be best if you told me something remarkable about yourself otherwise I’ll just keep hating on you.” She was all hands on the hips, head tilted sideways, lips pressed together and pushed sideways like, Whatchu got now you Fifty Shades knockoff?

  He looked like he was fighting the urge to laugh. Irenka, however, was not smiling at all. It looked like she wanted to hit Netty all over again.

  “I’m a hedge fund manager at a—”

  Rolling her eyes, she said, “Yeah, yeah, I know your type. But the truth is, I don’t care about your job. You’re not your job.”

  He smiled away her rudeness, which was nearly disarming because his teeth were perfect. And white. OMG, they were so straight and white and beautiful!

  “So what’s my type?” he said. He let go of Irenka’s hand, sat back and crossed his arms.

  “Guys like you are always boring girls like me with the details of their jobs, about all the money they’re making, what they drive—”

  “A Bugatti.”

  Inside, her breath caught. Wow. “Bugatti, Bentley, Buick,” she said as if she could care less, “to me they’re all just cars. Ways of getting from point A to point B.”

  Goddamn, she thought. A Bugatti?! That’s kind of a big deal. The biggest deal ever in the car world. What an asshole! It almost pissed her off that he didn’t drive a BMW or a Benz, or even a Ferrari. Those cars she could live with, but a freaking Bugatti?

  “They’re not just cars,” he said with both grace and a slightly cocked eyebrow.

  “Metal and rubber. Maybe some leather and a radio. Surely you’ve got something more interesting to say about your life—”

  “I’m one of ten kids, the baby, which means I know what it’s like to be doted over—”

  “My mother is Russian, so don’t expect us to wipe your ass or tell you how special and unique you are—we’re not like that.”

  “Netty!” her mother snapped. The boy-toy turned and said, “It’s okay, Irenka. This is how we’re getting to know each other.”

  “Don’t talk about me like I’m not in the room,” Netty said.

  “As I was saying—”

  She turned and went to the refrigerator for food, not even listening to him. But that’s because he stopped speaking. When she turned around, she saw both his and his mother’s faces were blushed red.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s just that I’m over you already.”

  He made this frustrated look of throwing in the towel. Netty, relentless as she could be (because she missed Abby, hated herself for sleeping with Brayden, hated her mother for giving herself to a man who was not her father—a man she herself would sleep with in a hot second—and hated her father for being in jail), she said, “If you’re this discouraged by a one little girl, how in the hell are you any good at your job?”

  “No one drives a Bugatti unless they’re good at what they do,” he reasoned. His voice changed, contained notes of irritation.

  “Oh, look at the sour little man-boy justifying himself to a child. You’re not your car, man. I keep telling you that.”

  “That’s it!” her mother snapped. “Go to your room!”

  “When we’re done talking, mother. As your boy-toy said, we’re getting to know each other.”

  In a voice that sounded like deeply restrained puppy love, he said, “I first met your mom at lunch in the city. There were dozens of people around, but she was the one I saw. Her smile stands out in a crowd.”

  “My mother doesn’t smile.”

  “Perhaps not around you,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, grinning inside, “I’ll give you that. Please continue.”

  Taking the rope she was giving him, he said, “Throughout the meal, I barely even looked at her. It’s not polite to stare at a woman over lunch, at least, that’s how I feel. In the end, it was your mother who pursued me. Not the other way around. So maybe you could stop stepping on my balls so much. Perhaps you should step on hers instead.”

  “Hey!” Irenka said to him smacking him on the arm with a half mad, half amused look on her face.

  Netty said, “I’m fine with what my mother wants, I’m just not so sure my father will be as appreciative.”

  “You’ve already warned me about him,” he replied.

  “Then you know when he gets out of prison your best chance for survival is to vacate the city. Perhaps even flee the state.”

  He leaned back in his chair once more, blew out yet another uninterested sigh, then snuck in a sort of casual, James Dean look. Like he just decided he could care less about Netty’s veiled threats.

  “It’s time for you to go to your bedroom, Netty,” her mother said. “This is the last time I will tell you.”

  “That’s fine, mother. But please make sure he’s gone by dinner. I know you favor him, but I don’t. No offense.”

  “It’s Dante, by the way,” he said. “Not boy-toy.”

  God, Netty thought, he’s really sumptuous. As she was leaving, she thought about how she’d given herself to Brayden, how she lost her virginity. Did that make her a woman? Had he opened up something in her that was now responding to people other than Brayden? She thought about her mother being with Dante, and then she tried to think of herself being with him, but the thought repulsed her. And now the idea of having given herself to Brayden repulsed her, too.

  When she came out of her room for dinner an hour later, he was still there, smiling at her. She glared at her mother like she wanted to spit at her.

  “I have something interesting to tell you,” Dante said to her as if he had no clue about her feelings.

  “I’m breathless with anticipation,” she quipped in a monotone voice, while still refusing to meet his eyes.

  “The reason I wanted to see your mother, socially and privately, is because she reminds me of my babysitter. The one who took my virginity when I was eight. I’ve been in love with her since I was a kid.”

  Her mother’s eyes got wide, but it was Netty who smiled first. It took a long time, but Netty said, “Finally, the boy-toy becomes a human being.”

  “Eight?” Irenka asked, flabbergasted.

  “Almost nine.”

  Something in Netty stopped fighting Dante. It was useless anyway. She was developing the worst crush on him. Reaching out, she offered her hand. He took it and she said, “I’m Netty, by the way. Pleased to meet you.”

  He laughed and said, “Dante Barowski, pleased to finally meet you, too, Netty.”

  “I know,” she said. “So are you staying for dinner or what?”

  “At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, and socially ignorant,” Irenka said, her eyes bright with amusement, “you two are soooooo retarded.”

  5

  “How’s Georgia?” I ask.

  Quentin says, “The mutation process in the initial serum was not stable, so we have been Skyping back and forth with New York and we feel we have a viable solution. It has to do with the carrier virus. With her we needed a different super-virus. It’s working better now.”

  “When did you initiate?”

  “Yesterday,” Quentin says.

  It was the third variant of serum this week, and it has me wondering if this was what it was like when her formula wouldn’t take before. When we lost her for an entire semester. A part of me is still scared for her.

  “We need to transport her to Astor with us,” Holland says to Quentin. “Prep her and my things. Raven you’ll come with me.” I do as asked, but not because he asked me. I really don’t have any other place to go.

  When Holland walks into the office lounge, Alice is on the couch watching TV. Her hair is flat, unwashed from the original cut and lacking sheen. It’s parted down the middle again, like she brushed it that way on purpose. The five year old says very little, and she looks like she’s up to something, or nothing. She’s a
mystery. I hate so many things about her, but out of courtesy, I keep my opinion to myself.

  “Ah, my little fire starter,” Holland says upon seeing her. Alice looks up, but doesn’t say anything. “C’mon Alice, we have work to do. Lots of packing.”

  “Where are we going?” she asks. Her voice bears an innocence her look and her history specifically contradict. I feel anger just looking at her. Then she turns her eyes on me, and she smiles, and I soften to her the slightest little bit.

  “We’re going to Astor Academy,” Holland says. “All of us.”

  “The baby, too?” Alice asks.

  It worries me that she’s thinking about Rebecca’s child. And it worries me how she has been looking at me since I saw what happened to her when she was younger. The secret lab with those doctors changing her fundamental genetic structure. Her parents complicit in it. Did Alice know I was in her head? That I saw these things? Perhaps she consciously escorted me through her past on purpose. So many if’s I’m too afraid to ask about for fear of the answer.

  “The baby’s coming, too,” Holland says, reassuring her.

  For the next few days Holland, Quentin, Jasmeka, Brooklyn, Alice and I pack up the lab and various things around the apartment. We rent a moving truck large enough to transport it all.

  Regarding Georgia, the final serum remains stable in her body—enough for us to remove her from the canister and administer a drug that will hold her unconscious for the trip ahead.

  Darkness falls; the coast is clear. We transport Georgia’s limp body to Holland’s Porsche (double-parked in front of the lab in the dark cover of night) and lay her across the back seat. I’ll be driving the Porsche. Alice will be riding shotgun. Quentin, Jasmeka and Brooklyn will leave with Quentin in his Jaguar and Holland will drive the moving van.

  Talk about the traveling circus.

  We make it to Astor by midnight and I have to say, it’s good to be back. At least, I start feeling that way. The way the campus looks, all the stonework, and the massive size of it sitting in its deep gulley in the Sierra foothills, it has me thinking about my time here. All the versions of myself starting with fat Savannah.