I'm Not Who You Think I Am

by Felicitas Ivey

  “Rat, my parents are here,” I said.

  He straightened up and looked horrified. “You need help getting up?” I asked. “We ordered some soup for you.”

  He held out his hand, and I helped him up.

  “You okay?” he asked, his eyes sliding toward my parents, before giving me a hug.

  I didn’t miss the gasp of horror my mother made. Rat looked like he’d been stomped on a couple of times. Sutekhgen had done a lot of damage for a guy who didn’t fight. And I had done a little of it too.

  “Fine,” I mumbled into his neck before ending the hug. He wandered off to the bathroom, Mafdet guiding him a little.

  “What kind of name is Rat?” Father asked.

  “A perfectly good nickname,” Xiu said. “And don’t worry about him. My-My—”

  “Is wondering what the heck those doctors gave you,” I said. She wasn’t going to out me to my parents.

  “It’s so good.” Xiu nodded enthusiastically. “I really don’t want to stop taking them, even if it’s making me more off than I usually am.”

  “Nainai is going to kill me,” I muttered, vowing to hide those stupid pills on Xiu.

  “If the real gwáilóu couldn’t…,” Xiu said in Mandarin. She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oops?”

  “What exactly happened?” Mother demanded.

  “We were in a gas explosion,” I said, looking her straight in the eye.

  Xiu nodded frantically, knowing she’d almost blown it. She would’ve if my parents knew the language.

  Father nodded. “I’m sorry we weren’t here for you,” he said.

  I don’t think he was buying the story. He knew there was something we weren’t telling them. He wasn’t going to start grilling me now, though.

  “Indian food?” Mother sniffed, realizing we needed to change the conversation. “You order any naan?”

  “What kind of man do you think I am?” Uncle Yushua demanded.

  She looked at him, as if sensing there was more to the question then he was saying.

  “A man who took care of our daughter admirably when we dumped her on him.” Father smiled. “And I do apologize for the mix-up.”

  Mother nodded slowly, a thoughtful look on her face.

  “You’re not going to say that when you see the credit card bill,” I muttered.

  Uncle Yushua laughed at my parents’ confusion.

  “What—” Father started.

  “How many yarn shops did she clear out?” Mother asked, amused instead of angry.

  “Not that many,” I protested. A minor argument would keep them occupied. They might not ask too many probing questions, then. “Uncle Yushua only took me to one.”

  “Only one,” Father teased.

  I wanted to ask them what these people had done with my parents, but I could see how this was straining them. They were trying to accept what had happened without lecturing me, which was usually their first reaction. I think hearing I was in the hospital had scared them.

  “Why don’t we eat, and you can tell us how you’re doing,” I said.

  “You seem to have had a much more interesting time,” Mother said.

  The look in her eyes promised I was going to tell her all about it, even if she had to hold my yarn hostage.

  “Train bathrooms are disgusting,” Xiu announced, appearing next to me. She looked at all the food we ordered. “We’re going to have to clean off the dining room table for this.”

  “Just pile everything together. I can go through it later,” Uncle Yushua said.

  “I can help,” I offered. I turned to my parents. “Egyptology is a science.”

  Both Mother and Father winced at my statement, while Uncle Yushua laughed. I wasn’t going to tell them I had chosen that as my major, because I hadn’t. I just wanted to tell them there were a lot of things outside their little world I was interested in.

  That bomb dropped, Xiu and I cleaned off the dining room table and set it. Mother and Uncle Yushua unpacked the food.

  Rat wandered out of the bathroom and went to get the plates, with Father helping him.

  “So do you live here?” Father asked.

  “Just hanging out with the rest of the walking wounded,” Rat said.

  “Because you were there too,” I said. “When do you think we’ll be able to head out for a run again?”

  “You need to get down to New York so I can introduce you to Nainai,” Xiu added.

  “I’m not being your beard,” Rat said. He looked at us like we were crazy. “Or dating your grandmother.”

  My parents looked horrified.

  “She’s not dead, just old,” Xiu said. “Rat’s too much of a handful to be her kept man.”

  “Chaperone for all those arranged dates?” I asked.

  I wanted to shout we still wanted to be his friend but not with my parents around.

  “I was thinking you could do that,” she said. Xiu looked at my parents. “My parents think a nice boy’s going to cure me of lesbianism.”

  “I don’t think it works that way,” Rat said. “Or all the nice girls my folks introduced me to would have done it for me. Being queer, not a lesbian.”

  “Food?” I said, cutting the sudden tension in the room. “Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m just a little hungry.”

  We all moved to the table, and Mother counted the place settings. She frowned, noticing an extra one. “Is there someone else here?”

  “Just my cat, Mafdet,” Uncle Yushua said.

  “And she eats at the table?” Mother gasped.

  “It’s better than eating on the table,” I pointed out.

  “She has better manners than my brothers,” Xiu chimed in.

  “When did you get a cat?” Father asked, giving in to the inevitable and calming Mother with a look.

  “She followed him home about a year ago,” Rat said. “You try arguing with a cat that it’s not supposed to be someplace. And she’s a lot less to deal with than a dog.”

  He was looking at Xiu and me when he said that.

  “I wouldn’t inflict New York on Fido,” Xiu said. “He’s too nice a dog.”

  “He’s the size of a Clydesdale,” I said.

  “I rode him like one.” She grinned, and her lip quivered a little.

  “And he loved every second,” I assured her. “He’s better off with his friend, because I don’t think he’d like snow.”

  Mafdet appeared at the table, perched in front of one of the plates. She glared at my parents, as if she was daring them to make a fuss about where she was.

  “You still can’t have a pet,” Mother announced, sitting as far away from Mafdet as she could.

  Father sat beside her. “I agree with her.”

  “And that wouldn’t be fair to the pet,” I said. “Because a pet is for life. And I’m going away to college in two years.”

  I sat next to Mother and smiled. “I’m glad to see you.”

  She softened. “My heart stopped with that phone call.”

  “We left that place in a hurry,” Father added.

  “We drove all night,” Mother continued, smiling over at Father.

  He smiled back. “We talked and were a lot more honest with each other than we’ve been for years.”

  He reached over and took her hand. This was the most publicly affectionate I’d ever seen them. I liked it.

  “While we still need to talk,” Mother continued, “we’ve decided our marriage is stronger than ever.”

  Father smiled at her and then leaned over to kiss her cheek. “We just needed to see that.”

  Mother kissed him back and then turned to Uncle Yushua. “If you don’t mind Mykayla staying with you for another week or two, we’d appreciate it.”

  “I thought that counseling thing was over?” Xiu asked, before I could nudge her leg so she wouldn’t ask questions. She blinked. “Oh no! You’re like thinking about a second honeymoon or something.”

  I groaned and buried my face
in my hands. “We didn’t need that said.”

  “No. No. No, you do,” she insisted. “How do you think I got all those brothers?”

  Xiu looked at my parents, her eyes serious, nodding her head a little. “My-My doesn’t need little brothers because she isn’t getting a pet.”

  “And you said she was a good influence,” Father murmured, trying not to laugh.

  “Xiu,” I said, my face still in my hands. “You tried to convince the health teacher of the same thing. It didn’t work. In fact, babies don’t work that way, if you remember any of those classes.”

  “I wasn’t paying attention to it after that,” she admitted. “’Cause what did I need to know about reproductive sex?”

  I lifted my head and saw that Uncle Yushua and Rat were smiling, mainly because Xiu couldn’t see them.

  “And,” she continued, now that she had my attention, “this is why I shouldn’t get a concussion. I forget stuff. You need to back me up when they try to put me back on that stupid basketball team. It was so boring.” She took a breath. “No one understood what I was talking about most of the time. Please tell me again why we have such stupid classmates?”

  “So if Xiu will call her parents, the girls can stay here as long as they need to,” Uncle Yushua said. “That is, if they want to.”

  “There’s still a lot of the library I haven’t gone through,” I said.

  I thought my parents getting some time away to themselves was the best thing for them.

  “I need to finish proofing Kyle’s paper,” Xiu said.

  “You do?” Uncle Yushua asked.

  “Who is Kyle?” Mother chimed in

  “Grad student Xiu’s working with,” I explained.

  “You need to mentor him,” Xiu exclaimed. “He’s building on your work and expanding it to Third Dynasty digs in the same area. And his mentor seems like a jerk.”

  “I don’t know,” Uncle Yushua started, but at Xiu’s pleading eyes, he gave in. “Let me talk to him at least.”

  “If you don’t mind, it would be good for us to stay another week or two,” I said.

  My parents looked at each other and nodded. I smiled at them. “I know you worry, because I need to be twice as smart as everyone else, because people are stupid.”

  “Because of that, we aren’t as… flexible as we should be with your interests,” Mother said. “I’d forgotten what it was like to be your age.”

  “All the pressure you have in school to be the best or else,” Father added.

  “What we’re trying to say is that we’re going to try to be better parents,” Mother continued.

  I nodded, my eyes bright, and we spent the rest of dinner listening to Xiu try to convince Uncle Yushua that Kyle was the best thing since sliced bread.

  I DREAMED that night. I was surprised Sutekhgen was still able to contact me. Or wanted to. I was dressed normally, which was the weird part to me.

  “Beloved,” he said, looking like he wanted to touch me.

  I walked over to him and gave him a hug. “Still not the person you think I am,” I said to his chest. “But you need this.”

  “A kind heart is priceless,” he murmured. “I can hope. We might meet again.”

  “You seem to be able to get into my dreams,” I said tartly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get rid of you and Fido that easily.”

  I stepped back and looked around. “Where is he?”

  I heard a yip off in the distance, and Fido trotted over to me. He didn’t look 100 percent, but I doubted he would pass up a chance at pets. I started giving him some, as soon as he got close enough.

  “You were such a good boy,” I praised him. “Xiu was worried about you.”

  “She is unharmed?” Sutekhgen asked.

  “She’ll recover,” I assured him. “Rat too.”

  Sutekhgen frowned. “I don’t know if he ever will.”

  “He was already part of the weirdness society,” I said. “And that jerk screwed him over.”

  “Like I did you, if I am understanding you correctly,” he said. “I should have known one who follows the Lord of the Sky would have no boundaries.”

  I laughed at his injured tone. Rat shouldn’t have been involved. I bet if I looked at those photos again, none of those men would look so much like Rat that I thought they were him. I had been panicked and more than a little overtired, so I’d imagined those men were Rat.

  “Wait… then who was the Shadow Pharaoh?” I asked.

  Sutekhgen sighed. “He is neither of the Light or the Darkness—”

  “Because you need both to have shadows,” I finished.

  Horus was the light to Set’s darkness.

  “Exactly.”

  “Are you going to be all right?” I asked, after a couple moments of silence.

  “We need to rest, that is all.” He smiled. “I should ask that of you?”

  I sighed. “I think I’m going to be okay. I just need to get used to all these new things in my life.” I looked him in the eyes. “You did what you thought was right, although it was the wrong thing for me. But Rat… Harper was pretending to be his friend and maybe a whole lot more, all the while he was using him.” I remembered all those photos I’d found. “And I don’t think this is the first time he’s done it. It was just the time he actually had to use him against us. That’s what hurt Rat more than any blow or curse you did to him.”

  “Being betrayed by a friend is never easy,” Sutekhgen said.

  “Did I betray you because I’m not remembering who I was?” I asked.

  He hugged me again. “I’m not betrayed, I am saddened. But the you who you are now is also wondrous. I will mourn my past. Her name was Nefraha.”

  “I might remember,” I said, while I didn’t think so. I had my past life’s language and fighting skills, and I didn’t think I’d get more. If I was even the person he was looking for.

  Sutekhgen smiled at me. “You have her kind heart.”

  “I don’t think it got weighed yet,” I blurted out. “Nefraha might not have passed the Judges or the Crocodile on the path to Duat.”

  “She might still walk the paths, like I do,” he agreed. He didn’t sound like he believed me.

  “Nefraha was an important person in your life… lives. You shouldn’t have to give that up,” I insisted. “Don’t. Look for her, she might just be a little lost.” I laughed. “You know I might be someone else’s beloved companion.”

  “Your fierce friend wishes for that,” Sutekhgen teased.

  “Xiu knows a lot more about my boundaries than you ever would,” I said. “She knows that I can never give her what she wants. She’s content with my friendship. I need to find her a nice girl sometime.”

  “I will release you to do that,” Sutekhgen said.

  Epilogue

  I WISH I could say that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. Xiu whipped Kyle’s dissertation into shape, while I helped Uncle Yushua clean out Harper’s office and then later his apartment. We didn’t let Rat near either place, even if he showed no interest in helping us. Uncle and I decided it was better not to talk about the fact no one found a body in the ruins of the Expo Center.

  Uncle and I found lots of interesting things, priceless items from all the dynasties of Egypt. But we never found the Casket of Night, whose loss had started this mess. It may have never existed for all I knew. We did find the original photos from all the Peribsen digs. I haven’t looked at them, but I was willing to bet they weren’t the same as the ones in the reports now.

  Sutekhgen visited me no more in my dreams. I still had nightmares of that fight. I hoped Xiu never did, but I was too scared to ask her. While I saw Sutekhgen no more, I remembered his last words to me: there is no shadow without the darkness or the light. And Harper had been all light, a faithful follower of Horus to the last.

  So then, who was the Shadow Pharaoh? Would he be someone I had to worry about in the future?

  FELICITAS IVEY is a frazzled help-desk tech at a uni
versity in Boston who wishes people wouldn’t argue with her when she’s troubleshooting what’s wrong with their computer. She lives with three cats who wish she would pay more attention to them, and not sit at a computer pounding on the keyboard. They get back at her by hogging most of the bed at night and demanding her attention during the rare times she watches TV or movies. She’s protected by her guardian stuffed Minotaur, Angenor, who was given to her by her husband, Mark. Angenor travels everywhere with her, because Felicitas’s family doesn’t think she should travel by her lonesome. They worry she gets distracted and lost too easily. Felicitas doesn’t think of it as getting lost, more like having an adventure with a frustrated GPS.

  Felicitas knits and hoards yarn, firmly believing the one with the most yarn wins. She also is sitting on hordes of books, which still threaten to take over her house, even with e-books. Between writing and knitting, she brews beer, wine, mead, and flavored liqueurs. Felicitas also bakes, making cakes whenever she needs to work out an issue in her novels. Sometimes this leads to a lot of cakes. Her coworkers appreciate them, though, with the student workers buzzing about on a sugar high most of the time.

  Felicitas writes urban fantasy, steampunk, and horror of a Lovecraftian nature, with monsters beyond space and time that think that humans are the tastiest things in the multiverse. Occasionally there’s a romance or two involved in her writing, with a happily-ever-after.

  Website: www.felicitasivey.com

  Facebook: Felicitas Ivey

  Twitter: @felicitasivey

  By Felicitas Ivey

  I’m Not Who You Think I Am

  Published by HARMONY INK PRESS

  www.harmonyinkpress.com

  Published by

  HARMONY INK PRESS

  5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  publisher@harmonyinkpress.com • harmonyinkpress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.