by Trisha Leigh
“I think the place I come from might be the exception to that rule.”
“I doubt it. You seem healthy. You have people who love you, who you care about, right?” He smiles at my nod. “See? What else do you need? You’ll figure this new school thing out in no time.”
“If you’re so good at changing schools, how come you’re so… quiet?” I finish lamely. The description I keep swallowing back is aloof, and it rolls on the back of my tongue. It’s the right word.
“That’s a nice way of saying that I’m a loner.” He shrugs, but doesn’t look away. His dark eyes swim with thoughts, with unspoken secrets, and they make me want to know him.
Of course, the fact that he’s not going to die—or that I can’t see it—already pushed me that direction. Every day I’m surrounded by the dead, people with expiration dates hanging over their heads. I like spending time with Dane for the same reason I like sitting in graveyards—the people here are dead already, not walking around trying to make me care about them.
I don’t have to keep Dane at arm’s length unless I want to. And I don’t.
“I’ve always been a little shy,” he finally shares. “I don’t know… The more friends I make, the more people I have to say good-bye to when we move again. I’m more of a one or two close friends kind of guy, anyway.”
“That makes sense.”
It does, and the personal tidbit brings us closer together. We understand each other, I think. He knows about my self-consciousness about coming from a weird situation, and his reasons for keeping his distance lie bare. They take up the few inches of cold stone in between us, new pieces of an entity that’s no longer him or me but a combination.
The new closeness does nothing to help me uncover why he has no number. My initial guess is that he has some kind of gene mutation of his own that’s incompatible with mine. Maybe I want it to be his issue, not mine, so I’m not the loser with a crappy ability that’s getting even crappier.
Dane bumps my shoulder with his a moment later, then shoots me a smile that shows off his dimples. It transforms his hesitant face into one that reminds me he’s really handsome. “I’m going to go. I promised my mom I’d come by her office and help with some clerical stuff.”
“Okay. I’m going to sit a minute. Thanks for bringing me in here. And, you know, for helping me out and everything.”
“All I did was listen. You’re fine.”
Dane wanders toward King Street, disappearing into the foliage before my ears lose track of the crunch and sweep of his footsteps on the path. The chat was nice. It allowed me to pretend that fitting in is my biggest worry, and has left me with a smile.
It disappears as my actual problems crowd my mind, and they roll around, not gathering any answers, until the afternoon turns chilly. I stand up and stretch, then follow Dane’s steps toward the other end of the graveyard, pausing to run my fingers over a chipped headstone that stretches almost to my waist.
The name and dates on the front are rubbed away, with only the year of birth, 1768, still visible. The number 23 burns into my mind, flickering a little like a cheap neon sign, and I stumble backward in surprise.
I squat, rubbing the front of the decrepit stone in an attempt to verify what I saw, but to no avail. I have never before seen death ages for those who’ve already died, and Darley was crowded with graves—marked and unmarked—which means this is new.
The puzzle of our pasts bleeds into the mysteries of the present, tangled and hopelessly snarled, concealing truths that could mean real freedom. If we don’t find a way to uncover them all, the Cavies are going to live forever in a strange kind of purgatory.
We’ll never truly be able to leave Darley behind while the different aspect of our existence chases us down alleys with syringes and changes us without asking permission.
The rest of the Cavies may not want the normal life that appeals to me, but none of us can live trapped between worlds. Not forever. Not before it pulls us apart.
Chapter Twelve
We’re encouraged to make use of the tables and chairs in the library, the commons, or the courtyards during independent study period. Lots of kids choose those spots, but some wander off to hidden pockets of the school that I’m discovering little by little.
There’s the theatre—popular with the drama kids, obviously, but also other artsy types. The yearbook and newspaper participants prefer to lounge in their advisor’s office or their workrooms. And those are only a couple of options for electives next semester. Too many choices for someone who has never really had any, and thinking about the future embeds a seed of sorrow in the lining of my stomach. All of the things that could go wrong before then drop roots deep into my tissue.
With everything that’s happening with the Cavies, who knows if I’ll even be alive.
I brush off the errant thought, swallowing bile as I push open the door to the courtyard where overcast skies cast a pall on the afternoon, trying their best to convince us that winter has arrived south of the Mason-Dixon Line at last.
I’m supposed to meet Jude in the commons for our tutoring session; I’ve got fifty minutes and a plan to corner Reaper first. She’s been avoiding the Cavies in the Clubhouse and me in real life, ever since our initial conversation in the cafeteria. She doesn’t talk to anyone at school, either, except the occasional conversation with Dane, and my friends decided she’s had plenty of time to calm down and adjust.
And lucky me drew the straw of confrontation.
I find her huddled at the edge of the courtyard, shivering a little and staring through the chain-link fence with a moody expression. It surprises me to feel a twist in my chest that says I miss her. Then again, after a week away from Darley, I’m even missing Pollyanna.
The chilly wind whips my hair into my face as I cross to her, noticing that no one else braves the weather and we have the place to ourselves. The sour look on her face suggests she’d rather be alone than have a chat with me, but it doesn’t slow me down.
“Hey,” I start, sitting down. The tables are black, some kind of plastic woven in a honeycomb pattern that’s uncomfortable and cold through my uniform skirt.
I pull my navy peacoat, a hand-me-down from my father, tight around my shoulders. It helps thwart the breeze slicing through my navy tights, and it smells like him.
“Hey.” There’s no hostility in her voice. Resignation, maybe, which burrows my sorrow deeper.
“How are things at home?” I venture. It feels like sturdier ground than asking about school.
“It’s not home, Gypsy. Darley is home.”
Or not.
“Not anymore.” I toss the rebuttal as softly as possible, but still flinch when it smacks a soft spot. “Darley is gone, Reaper. If we don’t start figuring out how to live in this world, without being attacked or discovered, they’re going to take it from us, too.”
Even without being able to put a name or face to they, I know everything’s at risk. Our chance at a future. Our ability to be together, even if it’s only once a month on the weekends.
She must sense it, too, and her body folds in on itself. “Have you gotten your blood test results?”
“No, but I’m thinking it should be today. Tomorrow at the latest. I guess we’ll know if a hazmat team shows up in full gear and tackles me in the middle of physics.”
My weak joke softens the harsh defeat bending her in half and she gives me a hesitant, weak smile. “I’d be sorry to miss that.”
“I think, because we’re going to school together and everything, you and I should work on using our given first names, at least out loud. It’s okay to use the old ones in the Clubhouse and in our heads, but it would be weird if anyone overhears us.”
“Why? They know we came from the same place. So what if we have nicknames for each other?”
“Well, for one, mine isn’t exactly politically correct.”
It came to my attention some time ago that the moniker given to me at Darley is considered derogatory.
I’ve often wondered if the person who assigned it to me didn’t know, too.
“And the South is so concerned with political correctness,” she sneers.
The shift in her behavior, from quiet and sad to this—claws out, ready to slash—smarts at least as much as the wasps from a nest the gardener ran over a couple of summers ago. We’d all been studying on the back lawn and the little buggers dealt us more than a few stings each. This is the same—tiny but excruciating stabs every time her nails come out for no reason.
“Reaper, we’re friends. We lived together for the first sixteen years of our lives. I know you’re having a hard time, and I know you think it’s easier for me, but the attacks make it pretty clear that this isn’t easy for any of us. We need to stick together. Everyone misses you.”
The fight bleeds out of her and her shoulders slump, the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes smoothing out. Tears well in her eyes but she looks away, blowing out a breath that goes on forever. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this, and you make it look easy. Like you don’t even care that we’ve lost everything.”
“Please. There are mornings when I wake up missing the silence, the way the sunlight dripped through the oaks on the front drive. The way we couldn’t sleep because of Mole’s snoring from the next cabin.” I pull my cardigan sleeves over my fingers and cover her hand with mine. “But you don’t have to look at it in terms of loss. Look at what we’ve gained.”
She gives me a look. “So help me, if you say the awesome cool kids at Charleston Academy I’m going to pull your platelets out through your nose.”
Pleasant, and not an idle threat. We’d all learned not to get attached to any animals the Philosopher brought out to the plantation once they began testing Reaper’s limits.
I shake away the darker memories, the ones none of us should be sorry to leave in our rearview mirrors, then manage to smile as if her threat doesn’t scare me even a little. “No. I’m going to say something cheesy like a chance to know your biological family. To find out where you come from, to maybe figure out how to be something other than what you can do. That’s all that mattered to the people at Darley—our mutations. No one knows about them out here.”
Her fingers touch the tiny red speck on her neck. “Someone knows.”
The reminder shoves a shiver down my spine. Someone knows. The thought pushes more pressing issues to the forefront of my mind. “Speaking of changes, did Dane Kim show you around when you first got here?”
“The hot Korean guy? Yeah. Principal Jacobs had him walk me through my schedule, and he’s insisted on eating lunch with me a few times. Why?”
“What do you think of him? Aside from hot?” I don’t want to cloud her opinions with mine, and her first assessment of “hot” suggests our impressions differ.
Although he is. Hot. Maybe it’s not a matter of opinion.
“I don’t know. I’m not really looking for a new friend, but I like him well enough. He’s not pushy and he never asks about Darley. Why?”
I pause, for some reason, instead of telling her he doesn’t have a number. Maybe because it kills me to admit to a failure.
She gives me a sly smile, more like the old her. “Maybe it’s because you’re all googly-eyed over that basketball player.”
“Who?”
“Oh, come on. The blond-haired, puppy-dog-eyed Boy Scout who came over to innocently check on you after your needle incident.”
“Jude?” My face feels hot, so I turn it into the brisk wind. “He’s friends with Maya.”
“Hmm.”
Our easy friendship pulls me into a comforting embrace. Even though she’s been awful, and even though she was quiet the last time we were in the Clubhouse, she listened. She knows the reason that Jude’s a problem for me: I touched him and saw him die.
She doesn’t know he’s going to die this year. Another thing I’m not ready to say.
Between the two, I can only bear hearing one aloud. “Dane touched me, and I didn’t see anything. No number at all.”
“What?” Her face turns white. “Before or after the attacks?”
“Before.”
It’s hard admitting that I’m even more inconsequential than ever, at least when it comes to Dane.
“But you said when you touched Jude, you saw more.” I nod, and Reaper bites her lip until it goes as colorless as her face. “I haven’t noticed anything weird about Dane, but I’ll pay closer attention.”
“It’s probably a dumb thing to worry about with everything else going on.” I blow shaky nerves out through my nose. That my strange quirk doesn’t work on Dane isn’t as worrisome as the people lurking out there who might be like us but who definitely know about us.
It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy his company or be his friend. Maybe it’s even more of a reason to continue spending time with him—no risk.
“You’re probably right. We’ve been in a pretty controlled environment all this time. It could be that people with complementary or opposite genetic material aren’t affected by us.”
Relief cools my overheated skin. “Yeah, I guessed the same thing. Listen, I’ve got to go. I agreed to tutor Jude in Latin and I was supposed to meet him ten minutes ago.” I pause, wishing again for a way to make Reaper more comfortable here. “We’re going to the basketball game tonight. Maya and Savannah and me. You should come.”
A massive gust bats dried leaves and bright-pink camellia petals across the uneven gray stones of the courtyard. They swirl in little tornadoes, catch in the sharp branches of the forsythia bushes that form an extra layer of privacy.
“I’ll think about it, Norah. Okay?”
The use of my proper name doesn’t escape me, but making a big deal out of it would be the surest way to make her retreat. “Let me know, Eve.”
She huffs, but we share a smile as I ease off the uncomfortable cold bench and head back into the school.
Being late might be rude, but it can’t be helped. Discovering who wants to prevent the Cavies from settling into our lives takes precedence over pretending everything’s fine, and making sure Reaper’s not about to lose her shit counts as part of that. Cavies first. Everyone else second.
The look on Jude’s face betrays nothing except delight at seeing me, and maybe that he’s not thrilled about being tutored in Latin.
“Hey,” he says as I approach, and the common area feels too warm.
“Hi. Sorry I’m late. I had to stop in the bathroom.”
“Long stop,” he comments with a grin, then squints at me. “Are you okay? You look a little off.”
“I’m fine. I just…” My mind spasms, upset at how easily he reads me, then stumbles trying to come up with a response. What bothers people? Normal people? “You’re going to think it’s silly.”
“Try me.” Concern soaks his dark gaze, locked on my face.
I force a hollow laugh, partially to help with my story and partially to erase the wrinkle of worry between his eyebrows. I hate that I put it there. “I thought I saw a ghost. In the bathroom mirror. Stupid.”
His cheeks stretch wider and his hair flops onto his forehead. “That’d be our Catherine, though I can’t say I’ve ever heard of her haunting the toilet. She usually sticks to the courtyard, where she died. Sometimes the library or the theatre.”
It shouldn’t surprise me that Charleston Academy—or CA, as everyone refers to it—has a resident spirit. Catherine’s existence lets me off the hook, so I send her a quick, silent thank-you as my adrenaline levels recede. “Well, when you gotta go you gotta go. Lucky me, on the same potty schedule with a ghost.”
“Potty? Do all you Darley Hall kids talk like you’re still in preschool?” His teasing tone softens the crack about Darley, one obviously not meant to be cruel.
Jude doesn’t seem to have a cruel bone in his entire body.
“Well, this is mixed company. I’m not sure about your vocabulary level, is all.”
“Is that right? If you’re interested in knowing more
about me, all you have to do is ask.”
The shift in his tone, from playful to husky, strums my nerves, then engulfs them with heat. It gushes everywhere—my chest, down my abdomen, into my legs. My knees turn to goop. “I was just being a smart-ass, that’s all. It’s a problem.”
“I can see that,” he murmurs.
The rest of the common area is empty. The chairs are hard, and no amount of shifting makes them comfortable, which explains the students’ lack of interest. “Okay, so where do you want to start? Vocabulary, or maybe we could go over your last page of translation?”
He shrugs, closing off in the beat of a heart. There’s nothing to clue me in as to what he’s thinking, something I’m learning isn’t typical for Jude. Instead of telling me, he pulls two stapled pages from his backpack and slides them across the table before settling back in his chair.
Most people would pull out their phone or tablet, maybe read something, but it appears he’s going to sit and watch. I try to act as though his perusal doesn’t make my heart race to the point where reading Ovid feels nearly impossible. We’ve only got about a half hour, and it takes me twenty minutes to make it through a read that should have taken half that time.
He raises his eyebrows when I put the paper down, covered in red pen now. “Well? How dumb am I?”
A pattern stuck out to me about halfway through the page, and I’m sure of what I saw, but not sure whether or not bringing it up is appropriate. There’s no way to learn how to navigate normal friendships without trial and error, though, and I want to figure Jude out.
“You’re not dumb at all. In fact, the errors you made seem like they were on purpose. Wrong conjugations, but just by a single declension. Every time.”
The pause keeps expanding until it shoves us so far apart it’s as if our chairs have scooted to opposite sides of the room. Jude runs his fingers through his hair, avoiding my gaze, until he doesn’t. There’s anger when he looks at me, and frustration. Nothing that’s been there before today.