by Stacey Jay
“I’ve got it in my car. You want to take a walk with me to the parking lot?”
Did I want to take a walk? Hello? Skates? I gave my feet a pointed look. “Um, walking might be difficult.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “I could give you a piggyback ride.”
“Don’t think that would be a good idea in a skirt.”
“Well, you could just put your shoes back on.” He sounded weirdly frustrated, which made me shuffle a few extra inches away, closer to where I’d left my purse.
“Or you could just go get the backpack,” I said, plucking my purse from the bench.
Aaron smiled, but I didn’t miss the vein bulging at the side of his forehead. “Right. I guess I’ll do that.”
“Okay.” I stared at him for a few awkward seconds, waiting for him to go, before pulling out the paperwork I’d snatched from my mom’s lingerie drawer. The medical files weren’t the only reading material on my list, and it was past time for me to get educated about my own case. “Um… all right… I’m just going to take a little practice skate and work on some reading for the classes I missed this morning.”
“Reading and skating at the same time?”
“What can I say? I’m a multitasker,” I called out over my shoulder as I eased out onto the frozen pond, grateful to leave Aaron behind me. His crushy weirdness was the last thing I needed right now.
The ice was still a little rough, but the machine London’s dad had brought to condition the surface really made a difference. It was almost like skating at the indoor rink in Little Rock, but ten times as beautiful. There was a dusting of snow falling, and delicate white lights hung in the trees surrounding the skating area. Over to the right, the place where we used to build snowmen when we were kids had been transformed into a mini carnival. There were three tents selling yummy-smelling food and two fire-pit things for roasting marshmallows. Everything had come together perfectly, including the attendance.
Thirty minutes to go time, and there were already a few people on the ice and more trickling in from the parking lot. The advance couple skate sales predicted a large influx of boy-type people in the next two hours. By the end of the night, we were going to make the booster club some serious cash. And we’d know who won the fund-raising competition.
Unfortunately, I sensed I wasn’t going to give a crap about any of that once I finished my required reading. It wasn’t just a lack of time and privacy that made me put off reading the paperwork. A part of me didn’t want to know what my parents had been keeping from me. I had a horrible feeling that what was inside this bland-looking beige folder was going to change my life. Forever. And not in a good way.
So it was no surprise when I felt like I was going to throw up or pass out or both as I flipped open the folder and started to read.
The first page of the report was a brief and relatively unsurprising summary of what I’d been charged with. But the second page-instead of diving straight into the evidence and blood samples and all that as I’d expected-contained a three-paragraph report detailing the findings of a paternity inquest.
“Idiopathic infertility, causation unidentified,” I said aloud, focusing on transforming the clinical words under my dad’s name into something my addled brain could digest.
Infertility, duh, I knew what that meant-can’t make babies. I wasn’t so clear on the definition of “idiopathic,” but it probably didn’t matter. The message here was clear. My dad couldn’t have kids, he had “never fathered a child.”
Never fathered a child.
My throat closed up and my entire body went numb, and I knew I had to get off the ice before I wiped out. Thankfully, my spot on the bleachers was free with Aaron nowhere to be seen. As soon as I caught an opening in the crowd, I darted over.
Struggling to take a deep breath, I snapped the folder shut, squeezing it closed until my fingers turned white, as if I could trap the horrible things I’d read inside. But it was already too late. The truth was squirming around in my brain, like some horrible worm set on devouring my happy past.
Dad wasn’t my dad. I didn’t get my athletic ability from him, I couldn’t really have his thumb, and I wasn’t one-fourth Italian. Or if I was, it wasn’t from his genes.
Somewhere out there was another man, a complete stranger, who was the other half of me. But how could that have happened? Mom and Dad were married for years before I was born. Had mom gone to a sperm bank or something when they learned Dad couldn’t have kids?
“Yeah, right,” I mumbled.
I had messed-up supernatural blood. What were the chances I was the product of a sperm bank? Not good. The most likely story was that my mom had cheated on my dad. She’d gone and banged another guy and gotten knocked up while they were still living in California. Knowing my mom-how much she loved my dad and how important honesty had always been to her-it seemed psychotic to even think of her as a cheater, but it would explain so much, especially if…
I forced myself to open the folder again and turn past the report proving my father wasn’t my father. On the very next page, things got interesting. The Enforcers had ordered a blood analysis, comparing the blood they had on file for me at SA headquarters with blood found on the hospital beds of patients at University Medical Center’s intensive care unit. The blood type-AB negative-was identical, as I’d suspected. But it also said that both samples had tested positive for the same rare virus, ensuring a nearly one hundred percent probability that they had come from the same person. From there it hadn’t taken SA long to decide who was to blame. After all, they already knew a Settler with AB negative blood who had the virus. Me.
The third page in the file contained the results of an amnio done on my mom while she was pregnant, an amnio that gave all the details about the virus the unborn baby was infected with and recommended termination of the fetus. Termination of me. Guess I knew what Mom’s big “mistake” was now. I was the mistake.
I sucked in a deep breath as everything I’d just read swam around in my brain. It wasn’t a rare blood type that I had at all, it was a virus. A freaking disease!
“WB retrovirus. Type two.” I mumbled the words aloud as I scrolled through the description contained in the amnio results.
The Type II part was apparently significant because it was present only in women, not men, where Type I could be carried by either a male or female. So my mom’s argument-quoted in the last page, right there in black and white-that my bio father, who also had the virus, might be responsible for the attacks was discounted.
My bio father. I had a bio father, and he was apparently enough of an evil bastard that my mom would suspect him of attacking me with living zombies. And, according to the file, he’d given me a virus just by being my stupid bio father. A virus that had altered my DNA, ma�
�king me some kind of super-powerful freak. It had also released potentially harmful metallic elements into my blood, making me “predisposed to violent psychotic breaks involving the use of forbidden magics.”
My cheeks flamed even as the rest of me grew cold. Kitty and the Elders and God only knew who else knew about this. They knew that the man I’d always loved like a father wasn’t my dad, and that I was really the spawn of some evil maniac and had a crazy-making virus.
Of course, just reading about psychotic breaks was enough to make me certain I was having one. Because I was just that crazy. Here I’d thought I was just a little high-strung, but now I knew I was a breakdown waiting to happen. I was a freak, a virus-ridden freak whose parents had lied to her her entire life. It made me feel like I was suffocating. Dad couldn’t not be my dad. I loved him so much, and I’d assumed he loved me.
But what if he didn’t? What if he secretly hated me for being someone else’s kid? A psychopath’s kid? A diseased psychopath’s unholy offspring-
“Megan, I couldn’t find the backpack. I think I left it in my locker at school like an idiot. You want to come with me to grab it?” God! Not Aaron again. Couldn’t he take a freaking hint? “Hey… are you okay?”
I shoved the file back in my purse as fast as I could, keeping my face down. “Fine, I’m fine.” I didn’t want anyone to see me crying, especially not Aaron. His idea of comfort would no doubt involve his hands in places I didn’t want, and I just couldn’t deal with that right now. I’d probably punch him in the nose because that was what people on the verge of a psychotic break did.
“You don’t sound fine. Are you crying?”
“No, I just… I think it’s something I ate.” I swiped at my cheeks and slung my purse over my shoulder. I had to get away from Aaron. Now. “Or maybe something I didn’t eat. I didn’t have time to grab anything after practice. I think I should go hit the tents before we get started.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said, following me onto the ice in his street shoes.
“I’d really rather be alone right now, but thanks.”
“Come on, let me buy you a funnel cake. We can eat it in my car.”
“No thanks, I-”
“I bet you’ll feel better if you sit in a warm car for a few minutes.” He reached for my arm, but I managed to slip away before he could catch my elbow.
“No,” I snapped, skating faster toward the tents, not sure where I was going to go when I reached the edge of the ice, just knowing I had to get away from Aaron. What was with this guy?
“What about some hot chocolate?” He caught me this time, his infuriating paws closing around my waist.
“Aaron, leave me-Ah!” My one hundred and eighty-degree turn to face Aaron turned into a three hundred and sixty-degree spin into a major fall. I hit the ice chin-first with a very unladylike “oomph.” Though I doubted anyone noticed my grunt, considering my skirt was suddenly up around my armpits.
I scrambled to right myself, but between the slippery ice and
Aaron’s efforts to “help” me up, I couldn’t seem to get my kilt back down where it was supposed to be.
“Omg! Granny panties, much?” The high-pitched voice was met by giggles. I looked up to see Nina, the new flyer for the cheerleaders, doing her best to earn her gold scrunchie of evil. Kimberly, Kate, Lee, and a couple other cheer-witches stood next to her, laughing, quickly drawing attention to our side of the pond.
By the time I got to my feet and pulled my skirt down, half the student body of CHS had seen my “granny panties.” And they were grannyish. I hadn’t had time to do laundry in nearly two weeks and was down to my comfy briefs, which were big on fabric and extremely low on sex appeal.
Like it would have been any better wearing a black thong? The voice of reason was so dead-on. There was no “right” underwear to be wearing in a situation like this. Just like there was no “right” response to the laughter floating toward me from what felt like every direction.
Still, I was pretty sure running from the ice in tears wasn’t the coolest choice I could have made, especially since I tripped again at the edge of the lake and nearly bit the dust a second time. I was halfway to busting my face in the frozen dirt when two hands grabbed me and set me back on my feet.
“Come on, this way.”
I clung to the hand Cliff slipped into mine and followed him through the woods, away from the sound of Aaron’s voice calling my name, not even caring that I shouldn’t. No matter how strange it was to feel more comforted by the hand of a dead boy than by that of an alive one, there was no denying I’d rather be here in the woods hiding with Cliff than with Aaron. I was just lucky he still wanted to be around me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, sniffing as we found an isolated place under the trees, far from the crashing sound of Aaron pursuing me through the fallen leaves in the opposite direction. “I’m really sorry I said those mean things earlier.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry too… about your dad. I should have told you this morning,” he said, finding a sheltered place behind one of the larger trees. “Last night, after I left the clinic, I had a vision, the biggest vision yet, really. I knew what you were going to read in that file-I even saw you fall down on the ice. I should have told you instead of letting you find out while you were alone.”
“No, it’s okay.” I sniffed again and swiped the last of the tears from my face. “I don’t think there is a good way to find out my dad isn’t my dad.” Oh crap, shouldn’t have gone there. I was going to start crying again, and after I’d just gotten myself relatively cleaned up.
Cliff pulled me in for one of those hard, loving hugs like my grandmother always gave. My maternal grandmother, who was still my real grandmother. God, I hadn’t even thought about all my dad’s family not being my real family anymore. This just kept getting worse and worse.
“Of course he’s still your dad-genes don’t change that,” Cliff said, hugging me even tighter. “That other dude is just a sperm donor.”
“But I have a virus,” I said, my voice cracking.
Cliff laughed. “You make it sound like a death sentence. From what I’ve seen, that virus only makes you stronger than other Settlers. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.”
“It’s also supposed to make me break psychotically.”
“Nothing could make you break psychotically. You’re too tough.” Cliff pulled back to look me in the eyes.
He was short enough that the action put our noses a few inches apart and our lips only a little further away than that. I knew I shouldn’t have been thinking about his lips, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. As powerfully as Aaron skeeved me out, and as much as what I felt for Ethan scared me with its intensity, Cliff put me at ease just as powerfully. He made me feel safe and weirdly relaxed, a little dizzy, and more than a little… curious.
“Did you hear me, Megan Berry?” he asked, his words a warm whisper that caressed
my parted lips. “You’re strong and smart and you can handle anything that comes your way. You’ve got to handle it, because-”
I shut him up by pressing my lips to his. I hadn’t consciously decided to kiss him, but I just couldn’t deal with hearing about what I had to handle. I didn’t feel like I could handle anything right now-not my family, or my boyfriend, or Settling, or even getting up the courage to go back out on the ice and face the people who had seen my underwear.
And I certainly couldn’t handle learning that Cliff was a way better kisser than I’d imagined.
He didn’t hesitate for a second, simply cupped my face in his warm hands and pulled me closer, like he’d known exactly how he wanted to kiss me for a long time. His lips were confident, but at the same time unbelievably gentle. Cliff didn’t make me feel pressured-he made me feel alive and warm and wonderful.
Dizziness spun through my head, and that giddy, low-blood-sugar feeling descended with a vengeance, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but-
“Megan?”
Oh God, no. It couldn’t be. But there wasn’t much chance I was mistaken. We’d only been going out for few months, but I would have known that voice anywhere.
CHAPTER 18
I read in a book one time that a woman’s voice was “dripping with pain.” I remember thinking it was a weird way to describe a sound. But now I understood. When Ethan said my name, I could feel his pain dripping all over me, like some sort of horrible acid that burned my skin and made my heart feel like it was going to explode.
I jumped away from Cliff, but it was too late. The shock and hurt on Ethan’s face left no doubt he’d seen what I’d been up to.