Monarch: A Contemporary Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 2)

by Schow, Ryan

  All in all, our first date is a bit of a snoozer because he didn’t know what to talk about but himself. The new version of me, in spite of my completely remodeled interior and exterior, still retains some of my more classic features. Like telling the brutal and honest truth.

  “You know Jacob, at first, girls dig a guy who is cute and charming, which you most definitely are, but after about five minutes this same guy had better be interesting otherwise the girl will be like, oh, whatever. To be honest, right now I’m more interested in how that cake is going to affect my hips and thighs than anything you’ve said all day.”

  He looks startled, like he’s about to get bent when I hold up my hand and say, “That doesn’t mean I can’t be into you. It’s just, I want to give you a late Christmas present, one you’ll thank me for later, so don’t spoil it by getting all butt-hurt and defensive.” He seems to calm a bit. “If you say one interesting thing to a girl, she’ll find your story interesting. If you say ten interesting things, she’ll find you interesting. Jacob, darling, be interesting.”

  He’s already red in the face, but he isn’t looking away and he isn’t defending himself, which I totally give him brownie points for.

  “I want you to think about this over the next few months—”

  “Few months?” he says.

  “I’m heading back to school tomorrow and I won’t return until the summer.”

  “You’re not going to school here?”

  “Well thank Christ I’m not,” I say before I can catch myself. “I mean, I go to school in New York. It’s an all girls school, which means we’re not always having to deal with boys.” Feeling licentious, even a little sexually charged by my new DNA, which is both exciting and uncomfortable, I say, “Of course, I’m so freaking horny all the time it’s a wonder I haven’t turned into a nymphomaniac by now.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so in love with you right now,” he says, looking serious and scared at the same time.

  “Is your little Vienna sausage twitching?” I ask, unable to help myself.

  He laughs, but not like he means it. Later, in the car, when he says the whole Vienna sausage thing isn’t true, I say, “Prove it,” and he does. It isn’t a genuine lap hog or anything, but it isn’t super small either. What surprises me most is how I don’t really like how it looks. He’s bummed that I won’t touch it, or do anything else with it for that matter, but I’m nervous, so whatevs. The thing is, in spite of my raging hormones, I’m still trying to have some morals.

  We kiss at the end of the date, so it’s not a huge loss, but part of me is sad I won’t see him for several months, but I’m also glad, too. I want to see what he does with my advice. And I want to think of his kiss as perfect. Which it pretty much was.

  10

  By four o’clock that afternoon, I’ve got the S5 packed and I’m giving my father a big hug good-bye. That’s when Margaret comes blazing up in her Bentley. She jumps out of her car, and runs up and grabs me in a hug looking panicked. “I was afraid you were gone already,” she says, nearly out of breath.

  “Mom, you can’t let our neighbors see you hugging me! They’ll start asking questions. Or have you forgotten. We have to stay on the WDL right now.”

  She pulls back, her face bone-white with shock. Right then I realize I called her mom instead of Margaret. Oh, boy.

  “Okay, don’t read into that too much, Margaret. It was just a slip.”

  Her eyes almost misting over, she says, “Yes, but it’s a start.”

  Maybe it is a start. And maybe it was just an honest mistake. Either way, I look right at her and say, “Maybe when you dump that scumbag boyfriend of yours I’ll call you mother for real.”

  “He’s not a scumbag.”

  My father looks away, obviously uncomfortable, and I say, “Any guy who would sleep with some other guy’s wife is a class-A, blue ribbon butthole. Period, dot, end of story.”

  How to Not Play Nice with Others

  1

  With three weeks of classes already lost, I’m starting out school way behind the eight-ball. At least my father made sure I got my own room back. Instead of being registered as Savannah Van Duyn, however, I’m registered as Abigail Swann, which is going to take some getting used to.

  Too late for dinner, I check in with Janine, and though I am polite to her, she shares neither the care nor concern she did when the me several versions ago came here looking fat, pathetic and all alone. I still treat her with kindness, and she smiles after leaving me for the evening.

  The first thing I do is call Georgia’s room. Some other girl answers who clearly isn’t Georgia. In fact, the girl doesn’t even know a Georgia. I try Bridget’s, then Victoria’s room, but the same thing happens both times: wrong number. And all their cell phone numbers? Disconnected, or no longer in service.

  Damn, talk about a freaking buzz kill.

  I think of calling Brayden’s room, but something in me wants to reconnect with the girls before I go running off with him.

  It takes me the better part of the evening to get settled in, and by the time I’m done, it’s after ten and I’m beat. A knock on the door makes me smile.

  I open up, but it’s not anyone I’ve seen before. Facing me with a photogenic smile and too much makeup for being this late at night, is a girl about my age. She’s pretty, but in a generic kind of way, like a young Jennifer Aniston but without the start of old lady laugh lines and smoker’s lips. What stands out most about her is her haircut. She’s wearing a short A-line dyed jet black with several loose strands covering her eyes, and I really like it. Apparently this is the “it girl” haircut if you want to be a vampire, or maybe queen of the Goth crowd.

  She says, “Hi, I’m Blake Fischer. Your next door dorm neighbor.”

  She shakes my hand and I shake hers. “Abigail Swann,” I say. “Abby.”

  She asks if I want to go to breakfast with her in the morning and I’m thinking, since I can’t get in touch with any of my friends just yet, it might be nice to try and play with others.

  “I’d love to.”

  “Great,” Blake says. “We can compare class schedules.”

  When she’s gone, I can’t help thinking about these last months, how everything seemed to fall apart, then get restored. For a minute, I was the pig-sloth Humpty Dumpty, but now all my pieces have been put back together again. This time, however, I am a Swann, and not some giant loser.

  I only pray to Jesus things will be better this time around.

  2

  An hour before classes start, Blake is knocking on my door. I’ve got everything ready. Well, everything except my makeup. I’m a brown girl in white girl skin, so sufficed to say my colors are a little off. Okay, maybe a lot off. Whatever. I’ll have to figure it out on another day.

  Me and Blake walk to the cafeteria and I’m thinking she’s really nice, that I like her and I’m glad to know someone here, in addition to the non-triplets. Of course, if given the chance, I would drop her in a second to see Georgia, Victoria or Bridget, but the truth is, unless my friends somewhat resemble their former selves, I probably won’t recognize them. They won’t recognize me either. No one knows I am now yet another newer version of my previous self.

  Oh boy, I’m thinking, this could be tricky.

  When we get into the cafeteria, I see a lot of familiar faces, but no Brayden or Damien, and certainly not any of my other friends. The feeling of being alone and brand new hits me pretty hard. Only in that moment do I realize how much I was depending on my friends to make this easier. And now…

  ….great!

  Who do I see sitting at a nearby table but Julie Satan and the Diabolical…two? Maggie isn’t with her. Hopefully she smartened up. But Theresa and Cameron, they’re sitting there looking beautiful and fake, and they’re looking right at us. I’m thinking, here we go. I’m thinking, Jesus f*ck I hate those freaking runway trolls.

  I want to tell Blake we can sit somewhere else, but she leads us right to Julie’s table a
nd that’s when it dawns on me. Blake Fischer. As in Maggie Jaynes’s step-sister Blake?

  Holy balls, could it be?

  Blake introduces me to Julie, Cameron and Theresa, and it’s surreal smiling at them and meeting them for the first time, especially since Cameron’s hand still looks stiff from me breaking it at the start of winter break. I’m looking at her thinking, I did that you basic bitch, but smiling through it and saying things like, “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “So where are you from?” Julie asks.

  “Pacific Heights,” I lie.

  Cameron says, “I’ve been to Pacific Heights and it looks like everywhere else in the city.”

  “Tell that to Danielle Steele,” I counter. What a shit! “I mean, sure her house is ostentatious, but she owns an entire city block. Where else can you go to own an entire city block in San Francisco but Pacific Heights?”

  That’s when I expect Theresa to chime in, but she sees someone she knows, then leans in conspiratorially and says, “Wow, look at her. All she needs now is sign that says ‘Will sell my soul for air time.’”

  I follow everyone’s eyes and see Maggie coming into the cafeteria, and sure as the sun comes up in the east, she looks like hell on a bender. Slightly disheveled hair, circles under her eyes, no makeup and un-ironed clothes. What happened to her?

  “Who’s that?” I say, playing the game of “I don’t know anyone here.”

  “You wouldn’t know it by the way she looks,” Theresa says, “but that’s our resident Pop Idol to be. She just signed on with Outerscope Records.”

  “Is that like Interscope Records?” I say. Interscope is Lady Gaga’s and Madonna’s record label, as well as a bunch of other posh, overly eccentric Pop stars.

  “Sort of, but not,” Theresa says. She says this fiddling with her blonde hair because some good looking boy just passed us. Then when he isn’t looking at our table anymore, Theresa puts her hair back down and looks at me and says, “Basically some of the higher ups declared mutiny on the even higher ups at Interscope, so they broke off and gave the finger to everyone left. As a way of saying ‘screw you’ every single day, they named their label Outerscope Records.”

  “What’s her name?” I ask.

  “Maggie Jaynes,” Blake says. “My step-sister.”

  “Your step-sister?” Blake nods while making a disgusted face. “Well isn’t she going to eat with us?”

  Julie says, “No. She big-timed the group. Now that she’s got her record contract, it’s like she wants nothing to do with us. No offense”—she says looking at Blake—“but your step-sister’s a self-centered bitch.”

  I want to say, “That’s like the pot calling the kettle black,” but instead I say, “Why would she just leave you because she has a contract? That doesn’t make sense.”

  Cameron says, “It’s because of the whole Savannah Van Duyn incident.”

  Theresa says, “Thank God that super-freak of nature didn’t come back this semester.”

  “I know, right?” Julie says with laughter in her voice.

  “That bitch is lucky she didn’t come back,” Cameron snarls.

  “She’s lucky?” I say, feeling the heat steeling into my face. “Why is that?”

  Theresa says, “Because we were going to beat her almost to death if she showed her perfect, genetically modified face around here again.”

  “I heard she was murdered in her house in Palo Alto,” I say.

  “Nope, they just moved out,” Julie says. “It’s too bad the killer didn’t hit the house when she lived there. The world would be a better place.”

  Now I’m really getting pissed. Calm down, I tell myself. “We should invite her over. Maggie, I mean,” I say. Already I’m making angry little fists below the table. Already I’m looking at these precocious twats thinking this morning I’d like to get into a fight. “Maybe you guys are reading her wrong.”

  “Don’t bother,” Blake says. “She’s got herself in solitude these days.”

  I remember Damien saying something about Maggie being a YouTube sensation, but with the physical problems I experienced over winter break, I didn’t have much time for anything, much less a chance to look up her music.

  Blake says, “My step-father and Cameron’s father made some back door deal to get her signed at Outerscope. It wasn’t her talent as much as it was her connections that got her that contract.”

  “You think she’d show some appreciation,” Cameron mutters.

  With Cameron’s father being a country music sensation and having connections in the industry, I see where Maggie might have had an unfair advantage. Of course, having the inside track is what every artist dreams of because, anymore, that’s the only way things get done in the entertainment industry.

  “Connections will get you everywhere,” I say, my voice a little tighter, a little more on edge. “Unless you want to stand out in the cold and suffer alongside the ever-growing crowd of has-been’s and never-will-be’s. I mean, isn’t this school about us developing unfair advantages to get ahead in life?”

  I don’t wait for an answer because I’m so disgusted with the company I’m keeping I almost forget I’m not Savannah Van Duyn anymore. Somehow, however, I manage to contain myself.

  “Sure,” Julie says, “but don’t forget your friends along the way.”

  “Sounds like you’re all just jealous she got to the finish line first,” I say as causally as can be.

  The mouths on all three of them fall wide open. The way they’re looking at me, in shock, it’s like baby elephants just stampeded out of my butthole and I’m the only one not paying attention.

  “What?” I say, challenging them.

  “Opinionated much?” Cameron says. There’s that face again. It’s like Shirley Temple grew up and learned how to mimic trolls. For someone so beautiful, she sure has a way of making herself ugly.

  “What’s wrong with your wrist?” I say, my voice chock full of spite.

  “I hurt it helping my dad move some things over Christmas break.”

  “Sure you did, slugger,” I say, getting up. To Blake, I say, “I’m going over to introduce myself to your step-sister. No one should have to eat alone.”

  With that I leave them sitting there to call me names behind my back.

  I head for the food line, fill up my tray with turkey bacon and egg whites, then make a b-line straight to Maggie’s table where she’s sitting with her head down eating eggs. She has half the table to herself. When you’re depressed, or bullied, half a table might as well be a football field. I sit across from her. She looks up and I say, “No offense, but you’re step-sister’s a real dick.”

  3

  I’m introducing myself to Maggie when I see Brayden and Damien heading over to meet me. The first thing I notice about Brayden is everything. OMG, almost nothing about him looks the same! I’m about to say something the way Savannah would say something, but I’ve got this gigantic secret I’m trying to keep right now and I just about blow it being me.

  Where Brayden used to be wimpy looking with a sloppy mop of straight hair and that dopey Tobey Maguire look, now his hair is buzzed, his face looks fresh, almost revived, and his body…holy Toledo, his body is freaking ripped! Like he gained twenty pounds of muscle.

  Seeing me seeing him, his face lights up. Then I see Damien seeing me with a new look on his face and all the sudden, my new DNA is taking over and I think maybe I kind of want them both.

  Brayden sits beside me and Damien sits beside Maggie. They both introduce themselves to me and Brayden’s like, “Just when I thought it was going to be another boring semester.”

  Wow, is he hitting on me? This close, there are more subtle changes to him. Namely his skin looks more clear, his eyebrows are groomed and his teeth seem whiter. Plus he looks older, like the boy inside him is finally being overtaken by the man. What the hell happened? He’s not one of Janine’s ugly five anymore. He’s not orgasm hot, but damn, he’s a heck of a lot sexier than last semeste
r. What did he do over winter break?!

  “So when did you guys start hanging out together?” I ask.

  Brayden and Damien look at each other, then Damien says, “How did you know we didn’t hang out before?”

  Shit. No asterisk.

  “I mean, have you always known each other, or is…I guess…never mind. You know what I mean.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Brayden says, “I’m sure you’re probably pretty smart, first impressions notwithstanding.”

  I’m about to say something when I realize I’ve just been insulted, sort of.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I’m just saying, it’s okay if you’re nervous. It’s your first day. Look, don’t sweat it, I’m going to show you around, introduce you to some people. Let me see your schedule.”

  The world is moving forward, but I’m still stuck on Brayden. Who is this guy and what did he do with my nerdy friend? Now operating on autopilot, I hand him my schedule and he’s like, “Cool, we don’t have first period together. I won’t save you a seat.”

  His comment makes me laugh.

  Another guy is suddenly at our table, and he’s so good looking he almost makes Damien look plain by comparison. My inner nympho is practically writhing. He smiles and it’s so GQ perfect other parts of me start throwing up red flags. We’re talking six feet tall, solid build, medium length blonde curly hair that’s not Justin Timberlake dorky looking. Guys this good looking, they’re always such douchebags.

  “Hi,” he says, sitting next to Damien. He’s soft spoken, his eyes taking me in not as fresh meat, but as a new student. Hmmm. He says, “I’m Caden Reynolds.”

  “Reynolds like the tin foil?” I hear myself ask.

  “Aluminum foil, and yes, that’s sort of me.”

  The shirt he’s wearing is English Laundry. His sleeves are rolled and on his left wrist is the most beautiful tattoo of a playing card. An Ace. Cute. Cliché, but cute.

  “He’s not part of the actual aluminum foil family,” Damien says.