by Schow, Ryan
I let the towel peel away from the more damp parts of my body until all that remains is my skimpy body wrap. At least I’m not completely naked in front of my…in front of Margaret.
“Turn around,” I tell her. She huffs out a sigh, then turns around.
“It’s not like I haven’t seen tits before.”
I pull the gauze away and smile. Perfect b-cup breasts with perfect matching nipples. Not too big, not too small. Just right. Turning in front of the mirror, I see my butt and there isn’t a dimple in sight. Plus, I have just the right curve. Even though I won’t say it, I couldn’t be happier. I wrap the gauze again and, still smiling, I say, “Okay.”
She turns around and says, “You’re so lucky, Savannah, I mean Abigail, whatever.”
“Jesus, Margaret, just pick a name and stick with it.”
“Fine, Abigail. Whenever I needed implants, or touch ups, it was like I was Frankenstein’s monster, trying to heal from all the cutting and stuffing and stitching. You, you get a mini-vacation, and you come out flawless. Honestly, I’m jealous.”
“I need to dress.”
“I’ll help you.”
“I’d rather you not.” She frowns at me. “Go out.” After a minute, she goes out and I all but collapse on the cold toilet seat from the exhaustion of sleep.
4
Dressed and walking like someone with severe injuries or diaper rash, I return to the room and to a memory that sharpens my focus. Behind my canister are more canisters, all with bodies in them. But they aren’t the bodies of the non-triplets, like before. They’re…other people. It’s like the scene at Astor Academy, and just as startling. Actually worse.
I was one of those bodies.
I start thinking about Damien, about Brayden (did he even call?) and I think about Netty, my best friend.
To my father, I ask, “Have you seen Netty? What did you tell her?”
“I told her you were undergoing treatment to correct the problems.”
“So how long has it been?” I ask. Everyone exchanges worried glances and that’s when I start to worry. “How long?”
“Six and a half weeks, sweetheart,” my father says.
I’m stunned at the revelation. It felt like only hours had passed since I went into the tank, not weeks. I lean against the nearest wall, my small body feeling heavier than ever. Suddenly I’m as tired as the dead.
Gerhard says, “We hoped we could fix the corrupted tissue, and keep you looking the way you were, but the damage was extensive. You were too far gone.”
“This things take time,” Nurse Arabelle says.
The empty canister is now standing, its glass door wide open. On the bottom of the canister sits a wet pile of brownish mud.
“That sludge is the rest of your damaged muscles and tissue,” Gerhard says. I think to myself, that’s half my face and my left breast in that pile. “Your insides couldn’t be salvaged without you undergoing an entirely new treatment.”
“What about my blood?”
“It’s clean. The treatment cleanses the blood and purges the body of impurities, defective tissue and objects or items foreign to the body. Such as miniature radioactive isotopes.”
“So I’m healed? I’m okay?”
“As long as you don’t create any more problems. You have to stay off their radar, for both our sakes.”
Looking at the bodies in stasis, knowing I remembered nothing while I was in my own pink tube, I wonder if letting go might be the best bet for me.
“I’m done with that,” I say. Maybe. Truly, I still don’t think I’ve decided. Not until my mind feels right and I’ve had a chance to collect my thoughts. But no one else needs to know that.
“Good,” Gerhard says.
News of me giving up the fight brings my father and the monster closer together. Their relief upsets me for some reason. I don’t want to be the thing that brings my parents back together.
5
I expect a short drive home, but it’s a late Saturday night when I’m ushered out of Gerhard’s lab and it takes a moment for my still jumbled brain to realize I’m not in San Francisco, but at the lab at Astor Academy. All the way home I think about all the time I missed, about Netty, about missing the start of school. Do my friends miss me? Do they think I’m dead, or gone? Have they forgotten about me? Most of all, I’m worried about Netty. About how she’s holding up, what with her father in jail and all.
When I get home, the first thing I do is take a long, hot shower, then take like ten minutes to check myself out in the mirror. All night long I fight with sleep, with nightmares.
In the morning, when I’m dressed and ready, and both my father and the monster have checked up on me, I close my bedroom door and start making calls. The first person I call is Netty.
“Holy cow, Batman,” she says, “I’ve been sooooo worried about you!”
“Can you come over?”
Through her phone, I hear a door slam shut. “I’m already starting my car,” she says.
Hearing the engine turn over, I say, “I’ll see you in a few minutes. I have to make a quick phone call before you get here.”
“Um, it’s going to be longer than that. I’m in San Francisco right now.”
“Oh, okay. See you when I see you.”
“Ditto.”
We disconnect and I gather the courage to call Damien, but then I chicken out, and twenty-five minutes later, the doorbell rings. I hurry to the door, anxious to see Netty. To my horror, I find myself staring right into the dreamy eyes of the one person I didn’t expect to ring my bell: Jacob Brantley.
Son of a beeyatch.
6
I nearly address him with the usual Savannah Van Duyn brand of cruelty, but instead, working off my newly minted desire to not be so abrasive or pushy, or even foul-mouthed, I say, “Hi, how can I help you?”
It’s practically a miracle that I remember I’m not supposed to know him.
His mouth won’t work and his eyes won’t stop staring at me. Obviously me and my beauty have shaken all his charm loose. I almost laugh. But I don’t.
“You must be Jacob,” I say, letting him off the hook. “My father told me all about you. About the problems you’ve had with my half-sister.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“She’s gone, you know,” I say. Gone for good.
“Your father said she was away at school.”
“Causing problems there I’m sure. I’m the sweet one, she’s the hellion. The good news for all of us is my father shipped her off to boarding school in England. Isn’t that great? She won’t be here to dump anymore buckets of goop on your head anymore.”
He coughs out a nervous laugh, and hides his embarrassed face. “That was bad,” he says. “I’m glad you’re not like her. She was a—”
“A rotten bitch?”
He looks up and holds my eye. “I was going to say she’s a sadist.”
I start laughing, a sultry, suggestive giggle that catches us both off guard. He reaches out his hand and says, “I’m Jacob, but you already know that.” I shake his hand and in that moment it is like seeing him for the first time. I’m smitten. Totally into him. Which is both comforting and frightening. This new DNA has me battling a whole new set of feelings and emotions.
“I’d invite you inside, but a friend of my half-sister’s will be coming by any minute.”
“You don’t look anything like her,” he says.
“Because I’m white and she has darker skin?” He nods. “Same father, different mother. Her mother was a monster.”
“Oh.”
Right then Netty pulls up and I feel overjoyed at the sight of her. And then all the sudden I’m worrying about Jacob and her seeing each other. Or her not knowing how to address me. She’s expecting the half-Hispanic me to be here.
Oh, great.
“We can continue this conversation later if you’d like,” I hear myself saying, a little too fast. “I mean, I have guests tonight, but maybe tomorrow or the n
ext day?”
Netty shuts off the car, opens and closes the door. Damn!
“I’ve got school on Monday, but maybe tomorrow we could get lunch?” he says. Sunday. Do I have school Monday? My father hasn’t mentioned school since I returned to the world of the living. Before I can say anything, I see Netty rounding the corner and bouncing giddily up the walkway.
“Maybe,” I say. “I mean, if I haven’t got other stuff to do.”
Smiling, Jacob turns and the moment he and Netty trade glances, friction bristles the air between them.
“I thought maybe a dog crapped on the lawn,” Netty says, thick tongued and boiling with spite, “but it turns out it’s just you.”
I know in my heart Jacob is aching to lay into her, but him meeting me for the first time and trying to impress me, he’s reluctant. Now it’s Netty’s war of words to win.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Jacob Brantley? Nothing, that’s what.” He opens his mouth to speak, but Netty cuts him off. “Beat it, cockroach.”
Then she sees me and before she can react, I say, “My half-sister left your clothes on her bed. Just head inside.”
Thank God Jacob wasn’t looking at her the moment she recognized it was me because she was not subtle about widening her eyes. Fortunately for us both, she put her poker face back on and took my lead. Brushing by Jacob, giving him the f*ck you face every inch of the way (that’s right, I added an asterisk to my thoughts, because the new me wants to keep things clean), she passes me and heads back to my bedroom.
“She’s not a nice girl,” Jacob says.
“Actually she is. She’s just really protective of her friends and you offended one of them quite severely. That is, if you’re the Jacob who posted some nasty things about the Van Duyn family online. Was that you?”
His face burns beet red; he shoves his hands in his pockets. He gives an embarrassed nod, then looks up with pleading eyes and says, “It was wrong, doing what I did. Savannah no longer goes to my school, otherwise I would apologize.”
Okay, I’ll give him credit for this. But the vengeful part of me doesn’t mind driving the point home, for posterity’s sake at least.
“I knew Savannah, not like Netty did, but occasionally we crossed paths. The thing you don’t understand about her was how much her mother despised her looks. From what Netty says, you took that pain and humiliation and you made it so much worse.”
“Do you know Margaret Van Duyn?” he says.
“She’s an acquaintance of the family, unfortunately,” I hear myself say. Not feeling bad in the least, I say, “Before rehab, that woman was shit-housed most of the time, totally blitzed on coke and Xanax and Oxy, and when she wasn’t sailing through the stratosphere on that garbage, she was taking her problems out on Savannah.”
“I didn’t know,” he says.
“Of course, you didn’t. You’re just a stupid boy, no offense, but that didn’t matter to Savannah. The abuse she took from her psychotic mother, from the paparazzi, and from people like you, it’s no wonder she tried to kill herself.”
“I felt bad about that.”
“You didn’t feel bad. You felt guilty. Otherwise you would have tried to do something about it.” I pull the reins on my anger, remind myself I’m no longer that girl, and grace him with a generous smile instead. “It’s a good thing I’m all about second chances or I’d do what my crazy half-sister did and shower you with something unsavory.”
He doesn’t say anything. His head is down, the weight of his shame nearly crushing him. I almost feel bad for the guy. For his past transgressions, though, he’s already paid his due.
“So, maybe tomorrow then,” I say, perking up. He looks up, conjures a smile and nods. I step outside, lean in and kiss the side of his face and say, “I’m looking forward to it,” and he just stares at me in disbelief.
Whoever’s DNA I received—this flirty, sexual side of Savannah version 4.0—I’ve got raging lady wood for it. Yeah, I think I’m going to like the new me just fine.
7
In my bedroom, Netty’s practically coming out of her skin. When I walk in the room, she unleashes herself on me.
“You look unbelievable—it’s you, right?”
“It is.”
She gives me the biggest hug and she’s like, “If we were lesbians, I’d totally marry you right now.”
“I know!” I say, exuberant. “Me, too!” We hug again and squeal together like little children.
“So tell me everything,” she says, animated. “Leave nothing out.”
I’m about to speak when there’s a knock on my door. My father is asking to come in as he’s opening the door and I’m thinking, why ask to come in if you’re going to barge in anyway?
He looks at me and then Netty and how overjoyed she is and he knows. My insides squirm at the frown forming on his face.
“How long?” he says. He wants to know how long she’s known.
“She’s my best friend in the world, dad. How can I keep anything from her?”
He’s about to say something when Netty says, “She looks great, Mr. Van Duyn, I mean, Mr. Swann, and you’re really hot, too.” She blushes saying this, and so do I, and even my father gets a rosy glow in his perfectly sculpted GQ cheeks. “Your secrets are safe with me.”
“Thank you, Netty, but I don’t think Abigail has explained the repercussions of knowing us. I mean, who we really are.”
Me and Netty look at each other.
“The family killed in our house almost two months ago, they were butchered because the killer thought they were us.” Looking right at me, he says, “He was coming after you.”
I stare at him, incredulous. “What? That’s impossible.”
“Is it, Savannah?” he says. “It’s not.”
“Abigail,” I reply. “Not Savannah. Besides, how do you know?”
Netty’s jaw is hanging open at this point and all her excitement about reuniting with the new, new version of me is slipping fast.
“Because, just after you went to Gerhard’s, a former partner of mine left a message on one of my old lines, a message service few people know of. She said she was the one who put the hit out on you, but that it wasn’t her decision. It was my former partners. The Virginia Corporation. ”
“What? You had her arrested, right?”
“No,” he says. “I didn’t.”
“Well you’re going to have arrested, or I’m going to do it for you,” I say, my tone getting feisty.
“Neither of us are going to do any such thing.”
“And why not?”
“Because she dove head first out of her seventh floor condo the day that family was killed. She’s dead. Or murdered. I can’t be sure.”
“Holy shitballs,” Netty says, quickly covering her mouth from the slip. “Sorry, Mr. Van Duyn, I mean, Mr. Swann.”
“My sentiments exactly,” my father says. “And please, call me Christian.”
8
That night, Netty fills me in on the media circus that for a short while surrounded her father’s incarceration. Pictures were plastered on every news station. She was fired from the bookstore. And for two weeks, the cockroach paparazzi wouldn’t leave her and her mom alone. This made things even worse because now not only was her father gone, she lost her job and her nerdy book friends, too. When Netty went on a five minute tirade about how that horrible profession turned normal photographers into vultures, I was like, “Hey girl, you’re preaching to the choir.”
Netty and I have always shared a mutual distaste for entertainment media and their voyeuristic minions, but now she knows firsthand the damage these people can inflict on a person and their family.
“We’ve moved since you’ve been gone,” Netty says, and it takes me off guard. News like this is yet another reminder of how much time I’ve lost. “It’s not bad enough that I’ve been excommunicated from my nerdist community, now I’m living somewhere else entirely.”
“Where are you living now?”
“I’d just run a load of clothes over to the new place when you called. We’re in the Marina District,” Netty says. Rolling her big, beautiful eyes, she says, “Apparently it’s more fitting for my mother’s income. But my room is a shoe box. And my closet?—what a travesty!”
She told me travesty is her new favorite word.
Irenka, Netty’s mother, has business cards saying she is an events planner, but Netty says mostly what she plans are upscale swinger’s parties for the elite. In Palo Alto, cocaine-addled wife swapping is a big thing, and an even bigger secret when you consider who’s involved and what really goes on. Netty says the real travesty here is that these people, all their life they pretended love mattered most, but that changed when they found out some guys’ wives are happiest doing the Chinese Five Star on a Saturday night with strangers.
“What’s a Chinese Five Star?”
“If you have to ask, you don’t want to know.”
“Now I really want to know.”
“The point is, my mother needs to look like she’s living within her means, otherwise my dad said the feds and the IRS will get suspicious and eventually find the money he hid.”
9
The next day my father tells me I’m heading back to Astor Academy, that going there is the safest place for me right now. A huge part of me feels relieved. Until he told me this, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. He still could have sent me to stay with my horrible aunt and go to public school. Now, more than ever, I’m really looking forward to catching up with Georgia, Victoria and Bridget and seeing how their treatments turned out. Plus, I can’t wait to surprise Damien.
Around noon, I let Jacob take me to this quaint eatery downtown where we share a veggie sandwich and a thick slice of chocolate cake. The frosting is like an inch thick and I’m all over it. I barely even share. Jacob laughs at me and it’s the first time either of us really seem relaxed.
