Red Blooded

by Caitlin Sinead

  He steps away but Annie stays planted. “Peyton needs to lie low tonight.”

  Tristan frowns and runs his hands through the air, as though he needs to process this, but soon he’s right back into being all Tristany. “Okay, I gotcha. Let’s just go hang by the pool. But first, I’ll get you a beer and Peyton a...Diet Coke?” He points at me.

  “Yeah, that would be great,” I say.

  He pulls me close, his hot breath tickling that soft spot under my ear, and whispers, “It’s okay if there’s just a little something special in it, right?”

  “No,” I whisper back. “Not tonight.”

  He nods and saunters off.

  Annie and I wander outside. The DC heat sticks to us, but it’s not intolerable. The pool water rolls pleasantly as lights illuminate the chlorinated water. A few kids dangle their legs in the blueness, water splashing on their clothes.

  Some people from school gather around me, asking about the campaign. At first I can’t make much sense of it. So many words and noises coming at my imperfect ears. Or, more accurately, my imperfect brain. But I’ve trained myself to focus in these situations. If I just look at one person...

  “What is Governor Ruiz really like?” a girl I played field hockey with chirps.

  “Nice, friendly,” I say. I look to the cute guy from my senior biology class who’s next to her.

  “Are there Secret Service members hiding in the trees ready to go all ninja on me if I touch you?” he asks.

  “Um, no, I don’t think so.” I laugh and run my fingers through my hair. “But Tristan might.”

  “Did you know that Governor Ruiz thinks the morning-after pill should only be available for people 18 and over, while your mom thinks it should be available to everyone?” Jim, the editor of the school newspaper gets so close to me. I have to shield myself from his spittle. “And your mom has advocated for dam removal when Governor Ruiz supported the construction of two new dams in California, and—”

  “Jim,” I stop him. “No two politicians are going to agree on everything, okay? But they’ve talked a lot and my mom thinks he shares her vision for how to improve the country. They’ll figure out the nitty-gritty stuff as they go.”

  He takes a sip of his beer and eyes a girl talking on her phone a few feet away. Good. Maybe if he gets distracted by a girl, he’ll leave me the hell alone.

  Tristan comes back with my Diet Coke just in time.

  “Also,” Jim asks as he lowers his chin, “do you really think that, you know, maybe your dad wasn’t your dad?”

  Annie shoots him a glare. Tristan takes a step behind me, as though he’s spotting me.

  “I, um...” I say.

  “Look,” Annie says, “I have a friend who has blond hair and both her parents have dark brown hair. These things happen. It’s called recessive genes—you may have learned about it in middle school?”

  Annie can get a little smart-assy sometimes, but when she’s using her smart-assness to defend me, I’m cool with it.

  “Blond hair is one thing,” Jim says. “But red hair?”

  “I looked it up,” I say. “It’s completely possible for phenotype genes, including the gene that causes red hair, to be recessive for several generations. Sometimes, all of a sudden, red hair just pops up. It doesn’t mean that my dad’s not my dad.”

  “You looked it up?” Jim’s eyes shine in the shifting, reflected light of the pool. His body practically vibrates. He’s inching toward me more than I’d like. I step back, into Tristan’s waiting arms, pressing my back to his chest. Jim continues, “If you looked it up, then that means you must have thought there was something to it?”

  I shake my head and take a big swig of my Coke, which probably isn’t the best idea because, true to his word, Tristan didn’t put anything else in it. I’m feeding my overexcited nerves with caffeine. Great.

  I sigh. “Just because I looked it up, doesn’t mean... I didn’t think... It’s just... Of course I was curious...”

  I flounder, a fish flipping and flopping in the heat. Tristan’s hand on my shoulders and Annie’s dagger glare can’t save me. “I’m sure anyone in my position might wonder. It’s only natural to be curious about who your parents are.” I bite my lips. “But that doesn’t mean I think there’s anything to it. I was just...curious.”

  “But if you didn’t think there was anything to it, why did you even look it up?” God, Jim is annoying. Can’t he see I’m upset?

  “Get off it, okay?” I say as heat rushes to my face.

  “This is important,” Jim says. “And not just for you. If your mom cuckolded your dad, she can’t be trusted.”

  Cuckolded? That’s not a word to use when talking about my dad. “Just shut the fuck up.” My head hurts and anger prickles all over my skin.

  Tristan takes my hand and pulls me away before I can dig myself further into an angry hole. He walks quickly, around the pool, to the corner of the yard. “Annie,” I mumble, but she flutters her hand at me, telling me to go, as Tristan pulls me along. Soon we’re at the far end of the pool. It’s dark and reasonably secluded, as an amorous couple has already discovered. Our intrusion breaks their flow, though, and with one look from Tristan, they both leave.

  Tristan narrows in on me, and, god, do his green eyes look nice. “Look, love, you’re here because you’re trying to get away from all that. So let’s get away from all that.”

  I hug myself and look at my shoes. “I didn’t handle that well.”

  He pulls me into one of his healing hugs and rubs my back. “It’s okay. It’s just Jim. He likes to poke bears.” He laughs into my hair. “I mean, like with a stick.” His laugh grows louder and he pulls back. “I really wasn’t meaning for that to sound sexual.”

  “You just can’t help yourself.”

  He shrugs.

  I swallow. “It’s not only Jim. It’s like I’m just a spectacle now. And if my mom wins, I’ll be a spectacle for the rest of my life.”

  “It’s not like you were some unknown wallflower before.”

  “I know, but my dad’s book only sold about two million copies. I mean, that’s a lot, of course, but two million readers is nothing compared to America.” I spread my hands out, you know, to encompass America. “A lot of people in Virginia don’t even know who my mom is, or who my grandpa is. Vice president, maybe even president, that’s different. Everyone is watching us. Half of them are waiting for us to fuck up. They’re waiting for me to fuck up.”

  He puts his hand on my neck and rubs it—a nice side massage that trickles down to the rest of my tense muscles. How does he do that?

  “You aren’t going to fuck up. And if you do, the other half will still love you to tears because you’re sweet and strong and smart and gracious, even if you are a little...um...overly passionate at times.” He strokes my hair back and grins.

  “You, Tristan McCoy, are saying I’m overly passionate?” I pull back, but in a mocking way.

  “I’m passionate about one very particular and rather important thing. You’re passionate about everything.”

  He leans closer to me and a part of me wants to arch my back, let his mouth meet mine. He was a good kisser; that was never the problem. And he’s a great guy when he’s being a friend, so that isn’t the problem either.

  I step back. “Tristan, look, I love that you’re so open to people. I love that you want to take the stigma out of sex work. And I know you’d hate to be exclusive, you want to be able to do whatever you want with whoever you meet. That’s fine, but it’s not for me.”

  He nods. “Maybe one day, love?” He’s the only 20-year-old guy I know who would call his best friend “love.”

  “I don’t think so. If I’m old-fashioned as an 18-year-old, do you think I’ll become less old-fashioned as I get older?”

  He smiles. “
Well, one can hope.” But he pats my shoulder.

  I surprise myself. I pull him in for one quick kiss. His lips are tense at the shock, but they soften easily, and he kisses me back. He doesn’t force it, there’s no tongue action involved. I pause and rest my nose against his.

  “Would you like to go upstairs?” Tristan asks, his voice smooth as always.

  “No,” I say. And I don’t. All I’d want to do is spoon. “I love you, and always will, but you don’t work for me. Not the way you want to.”

  He nods, jostling his nose against mine. He doesn’t fight me on it. We’ve already had more than enough fights about it until he finally got that asking me to be in an open relationship was like me asking him to be straight and exclusive.

  “I’ll always love you too, Peyton. You know that, right?”

  “I do.”

  Chapter Seven

  There will come a point, probably multiple points, where Peyton’s mature mind will see a different world than she does now. It will be a world I no longer inhabit. She will have questions. She will wonder about things. I hope, above all else, that this book serves as a resource for her.

  * * *

  I squint at the clock next to my bed. Yes, that’s a six and then a colon and then a zero and then an eight.

  6:08.

  So why the fuck is Lisa calling me?

  I click to answer it and mumble some sort of greeting into the phone.

  “We moved up your flight,” Lisa says. There’s a bite to her words that jabs at my insides. “A car is coming for you in twenty minutes, so you need to get going. Now.”

  I sit up, sleep still duking it out with nervous adrenaline. I must have misheard her. Sometimes I can’t hear so well on the phone thanks to my auditory processing disorder. Apparently, I’ve learned to compensate for my slightly funny ears by subconsciously paying attention to verbal cues. In fact, I hardly feel like anything is different about me at all, except when I’m on the phone or I need to listen to anything complex or I’m in the midst of a big crowd. Though I have my tricks to get around those things.

  When I’m on the phone, I just spend more time than the usual person asking people to repeat themselves.

  Like now.

  “What?”

  “A car is coming for you,” she says with even more oomph than before.

  “Why? What’s wrong with just flying out tomorrow?”

  “We need to talk with you as soon as possible. Until you get here, don’t say a word to anyone. Not the driver. Not the person at the ticket counter. Not anyone.”

  “What, how am I—”

  “Dylan will meet you at the airport. Fortunately, he’s already in DC, meeting with a few reporters. But, given the situation, we pulled him off that. Let him do any talking. To reporters, to fans, to whoever.”

  “Okay, but, I don’t understand, you sound...mad.”

  “Of course I’m mad,” she says.

  “Why?” The phone feels slippery in my hand.

  Lisa sighs. “You haven’t seen it?”

  “Seen what?” My blood pulses so fast all the sleep is pushed out. What could cause this kind of fire drill?

  “Turn on the TV. But don’t watch for too long. Remember: car. Twenty minutes.”

  The phone clicks off. I leap out of bed and turn on my TV, which was already set to CNN. Sure enough, the talking heads are saying Peyton, Peyton, Peyton.

  I have to hold a hand to my stomach and wait till I’m breathing regularly before I can even focus enough to hear the conversation. When I do, Julia Panuski, a reporter from the New York Times, defends me. “She wasn’t saying this to a reporter, or at least she didn’t think she was, and she was just saying that, yeah, it made her curious. She’s a smart, inquisitive girl. Just because she’s curious doesn’t mean that she really thinks it’s true, despite what she said.”

  What? What did I say? My mind gallops through the recent memories of cameras and reporters and interviews.

  “I don’t know.” A bombastic man in a navy blue suit weighs in. “If someone told me my father wasn’t my father, I’d laugh because it’s obvious he is. But Peyton thought to look it up. She probably knows her mother better than anyone, and if she even thinks it’s a remote possibility that there could be something to this, that’s saying a lot.”

  As I reach for my phone to try to figure out what exactly the fuck they’re talking about, the host says, “For those just tuning in, last night an anonymous blogger uploaded a video of Peyton Arthur at a party saying that even she thought there might be something to the rumors that her late father, Richard Arthur, may not be her biological father. She got so upset about it she yelled at the accuser.”

  No I didn’t. I didn’t say that. I didn’t yell at... “I would have done the same thing if some guy was hounding me and he called my dad a cuckold,” Julia says.

  Oh shit. A video splashes on the TV. My image shakes on the screen, due to poor hidden camera work, but it matches my currently shaking body. I clutch at the remote so both my hands have something to hold on to. Pool light reflects on my face and Annie’s. I’m wearing the red top I wore last night. This was last night.

  An infomercial for gold earrings pops up on the screen.

  Shit.

  I’d been holding the remote so tight I accidentally changed the channel. My clumsy thumb finds the right button and I’m back in time to see myself say: “Just because I looked it up, doesn’t mean... I didn’t think... It’s just... Of course I was curious...”

  My body and face are tense on the screen as verbal vomit pours out of my mouth. They loop it around again, because the first time wasn’t enough. I cringe at “I looked it up!” I throw the remote at the ground when they show me getting all red-faced and have to bleep out my curse word.

  Throwing the remote at the carpet has the benefit of muting the TV. This is good until the screen displays another video of me. Tristan and me. Actually, Tristan’s almost completely obscured by an oak tree. While his identity is anonymous, his gender is not. He’s a guy, giving me a rather intimate hug.

  Oh no, the kiss! Maybe they won’t care. They shouldn’t care. It’s not a story. I fall to the floor to get the remote. Unmute! The excited voices flood back into my room.

  “Of course people online are also reacting to this part of the video,” the host says.

  It is a story.

  In the video, I stand on tiptoes and Tristan leans in, face mostly obscured still, and the kiss ensues. I look so happy. I was. Because Tristan is wonderful and his warmth and touch always make me feel happy. He even made me laugh during our breakup. After realizing we were never going to want the same thing, I cried as he held me on the couch. I would have cried all night if he hadn’t launched into a series of jokes about improper uses for lampshades.

  But last night, it was basically a peck.

  Tristan pulls back and the phone recording gets jostled.

  “Seems like Peyton has herself a mystery man.”

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “Peyton’s a teenager. She’s going to do teenage things. This part of the video has no business on a news show.” That was Julia. “She can make out with whoever she wants.”

  But I didn’t make out with whoever I wanted to. It was a peck.

  “You’re right, of course, but that doesn’t stop people from being curious. She’s a celebrity and people are curious about celebrity relationships.” What the fuck? I never asked to be a celebrity. And shouldn’t they be reporting on things that are important instead of some stupid kiss?

  Julia folds her arms. “This isn’t E!, it’s CNN, and we shouldn’t be talking about an 18-year-old girl kissing a guy. That’s not news.”

  I rub my face. I’ll have to remember to thank Julia next time I see her. She’s one of the good
ones.

  The host nods. “You’re right, the real story here is why Peyton Arthur gives credence to these rumors. If she doesn’t trust her mom, how can we?”

  Great flying shit buckets.

  All I did was search Google for some stuff on red hair. Sure, Lisa and Dylan and Bain said not to even address the issue, not to get defensive, just to say there’s nothing to it and move on. But they meant to do all that if a reporter talked to me about it. They didn’t mean when I was chitchatting at a high school party.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, which has become the epicenter of a raging headache. Jim and his questions. Jim continuing to look over at a girl a few feet away who looked like she was on her phone. The angles work. She wasn’t on her phone. She was recording.

  Anyone can record me anywhere. Anything I say can hurt the election.

  Maybe Dylan’s right that we can both help win the election. Maybe he’s wrong.

  But one thing is for sure—I can sure as hell help lose it.

  Chapter Eight

  I call Tristan on the way to the airport.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” he says as soon as he picks up.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  “Why are you sorry?” he asks. “That stupid fuck Jim is the one who’s sorry. At least after I talked to him. Don’t worry, he’s not going to do anything else like this to you again.”

  “What about you?” I say. “Sure, you can’t see who you are from the footage, but I’m sure people at the party can guess. And Jim has to know it’s you.”

  “Like I said, I talked to him. And no one else at the party would say anything. They like me too much.” His grin comes across even over the phone.

  I wipe my face and stare at the brick townhouses streaming by my window. “I hope so. But don’t worry, I’m going to be a lot more careful until this is over.”

  “Don’t be too careful, Peyton. This is still your life, last time I checked. I’d hate to see you all tied up in a confining box. Well, I mean, without a safe word.”