Karma was one of the most private people I’d ever met.
Mom had told me a bit about Sheri: that she’d had a rough childhood, that she’d had a bit of a problem with drugs, that some of her boyfriends hadn’t treated her well. So I had a pretty good idea how it might have been for Karma before she came to live with us. Not the details, of course—but there were some things you could guess without needing to hear them said aloud, and I didn’t blame Karma for not wanting to talk about that stuff.
Karma had even less information about her dad than I had about mine. Sheri had always told her she didn’t know who her father was. Karma knew she looked like him though. Sheri had been white, blond-haired and sharp-featured, but Karma had black hair, dark eyes, brown skin and a round face. Everyone always assumed she was First Nations, but Karma said she didn’t even know that for sure.
There was one thing I hoped Karma did know for sure: she was my sister, and Casey could never change that.
At lunch, Toni was waiting at my locker, looking cute as ever in skinny jeans, furry boots and a pink heart-patterned hoodie. “Hey,” she said, grinning widely. “I feel like I haven’t seen you for ages.”
I tried to grin back, but my smile felt stiff and forced. It was hard to forget the feeling I’d had on the phone the night before. I was pretty sure that Toni would rather be with Finn.
“Come on.” Toni tilted her head to one side. “Cheer up.”
Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was being insecure and oversensitive. Mom always said I blew things out of proportion. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk. Like, outside.”
It was raining—a slow, cold drizzle leaking from a lead-heavy gray sky. Toni wrinkled her nose in disgust, and I zipped up my windbreaker.
The nearby coffee shop was packed, its windows steamed up and every seat taken. Toni ordered two hot chocolates, and while she paid, I swooped down like a vulture on an about-to-be vacant table.
“Okay,” Toni said as she put the drinks down. “So tell me. How’s it going with Jax?”
Disposable cups. “You should have said the drinks were for here.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on. What’s up?”
“I don’t know if I really want a boyfriend, you know?”
“He’s pretty cute. I mean, I get that.” She stirred her hot chocolate, but her eyebrows were drawn together in a frown.
“What is it?”
“Don’t be mad, okay?”
“Why? Is this about what Finn said about Jax?”
She nodded, still looking down at her drink. “He said he wouldn’t leave his sister alone in a room with him.”
“So? His sister’s what, twelve?”
“Thirteen.” Toni shrugged. “I don’t know, Dylan. Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”
“He was kind of a jerk last night anyway. I don’t know. It’s not, like, the biggest thing in my life at the moment.”
“Your dad?”
“Uh-huh. All that.”
“You said things didn’t go so well.”
I stirred my drink slowly, tracing three perfect circles, and licked the spoon. “That’s an understatement,” I said at last. “Turns out his kid has leukemia and he wants me to be a bone marrow donor.”
“Whoa.” Toni leaned back. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Kind of weird, huh?”
“He shows up after sixteen years because he wants your blood for his kid? Jesus. That’s intense.”
“Bone marrow. Not blood.”
“Whatever.”
I scowled. “Easy for you to say. It’s not your hip bone that’s going to get needles stuck in it.”
Toni winced. “You are going to do it though? Right?”
“Yeah. I mean, what choice do I have?”
“No choice, really.” Toni took a cautious sip. “It sucks though. I figured he wanted to get to know you or something.”
I watched the steam rising from my drink. “Mom told me something last night. You know how I always thought Mark never wanted to meet me?”
She nodded.
“Turns out he never even knew about me.”
“What do you mean?”
The room felt too small and noisy and crowded, and sitting still suddenly seemed like torture. “Mom never told him she was pregnant.”
“Whoa. You’re serious?”
I nodded. There was a big lump in my throat. “Can we walk?”
Toni nodded and picked up our drinks. “See? Good thing I got to-go cups.”
I followed her out the door and into the cold drizzling rain. She handed me my cup, and we started to walk. “Thanks,” I said. “Too many people in there.”
“So, did your mom say why?”
“Why she never told him? Or why she lied to me about it?” I shook my head. “No to both. She just said that when she realized she was pregnant, he was already with someone else—the woman he’s married to now—and so she never bothered to tell him.”
“Weird. I mean, I can see if she’d decided to have an abortion, but to have the baby and not tell him?” She frowned. “So how did he find out about you?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t going to ask Mom either. I didn’t trust anything she told me. “I’ll ask Mark,” I said.
“Do you have plans to see him again?”
“Not exactly.” I looked at her. “What are you doing tonight?”
Toni stopped walking, turned to me and grinned. “You kidding? I’m coming with you.”
SevenTeen
At dinner, Mom told me I’d have to miss homeroom the next day. I had an appointment in the morning for a blood test, to find out whether I might be able to be a donor for Casey.
I needed to talk to Toni and figure out how we were going to find Mark tonight. I was too restless to sit or read or do homework. I’d tried calling her, but her phone went straight to voice mail. No doubt she was talking to Finn. I stared at the phone for a few minutes, wondering what to do.
Scott and my mother were downstairs, and I didn’t want to be around them. And there was nowhere else to go. I wanted to throw something—hurl something heavy right out the window. And scream. I felt as if my insides were boiling: a bubbling seething poisonous mess. I dug my nails into the palms of my hands as hard as I could and dropped down onto my bed. Don’t freak out, I told myself. Get a grip. I lay on my back and studied the dead flies in my ceiling light. Five of them. Ugh.
There was a knock at my door. “What?”
The door opened a crack, and Karma poked her face in. “Can I come in?”
I sat up, both annoyed and relieved at the distraction. “Yeah.”
She inched inside the door and stood there, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
“What’s wrong?” I crossed my legs and leaned toward her. “Are you okay?”
She shrugged. “I was just wondering. You know what you said this morning? About helping Mark’s kid?”
“Uh-huh. What about it?”
“I don’t know. Just, you know, I realized something. You have a real sister now.”
“She’s not really my sister,” I said quickly, “and Mark’s not really my father. He’s just some guy who happens to share some of the same DNA as me. That’s all.”
She didn’t say anything.
I pulled a face. “It’s like, what if you found out that your mom had had another kid and given it up for adoption or something? Or that your dad had other kids? They wouldn’t really be your family.”
“My dad might have,” Karma said. “If I had brothers or sisters, I think I’d want to know.”
“Would you?”
“Yeah. Definitely I would. They’d be family, wouldn’t they? Real family.”
“We’re real family.” I knew what she meant though.
“Yeah, I know. Still, I think you’re lucky to meet your father. Even though, you know…”
“Even though he just wants my bone marrow.”
“Yeah.”
I didn
’t say anything for a minute. Karma had never met her dad; she didn’t even know who he was. Until recently, it had been something we’d had in common.
“So are you going to meet her?” Karma asked. “If you do, can I come too?”
“No and no.”
“Aren’t you even curious?”
Karma, of course, was curious about absolutely everything—including things that were none of her business. I ignored the question. “I suppose Scott’s still downstairs.”
“Yeah. How come you don’t like him?”
“How come you do?”
“He’s nice. He asks questions about school and friends and my bike, all kinds of stuff. And he actually listens.”
“Yeah, because he’s taken all those social-worker classes on listening skills.”
“It’s not fake listening,” Karma said.
“Sure it is.”
“It’s not.” Karma’s voice was hard-edged. “I’ve talked to lots of social workers, believe me.”
I was silent for a moment. We never talked much about Karma’s life before she came to live with us. When she first came, I was so freaked out by the idea that her mom had died that I could hardly speak to her at all. I couldn’t possibly talk about her mom, and talking about anything else had felt kind of inappropriately trivial. Insensitive. Now too much time had passed and it seemed strange to bring it up. Plus, I was superstitious about discussing death. My mom’s mother had died in a car accident when my mom was my age. Just the thought made me anxious. “Okay,” I said at last. “So Scott’s really listening. I don’t talk to him, so how would I know?”
“I think Amanda’s going to break up with him,” Karma said. “I wish she wouldn’t though.”
“He’s not her type.”
“He is too.” She looked as if she might cry.
My cell phone rang and I pounced on it. “Hello?”
“Hey. It’s me.”
“Toni?” I made a face at Karma and gestured toward the door. Karma hesitated for a moment, no doubt hoping to hear something interesting. Finally she left, banging the door closed behind her.
“Sorry, I’ve been on the phone. My aunt called.”
Not Finn then. “So can you get your mom’s car?”
“Yup. Is your mom going to let you go?”
“I haven’t actually asked.”
She laughed. “Okay. Sure. See you soon.”
Mom and Scott were sitting in the living room, talking in low, intense voices. Maybe Karma was right. The tone of the conversation did have that breaking-up feel to it. I’d seen it plenty of times before.
“Mom?”
She looked irritated. “What is it?”
“I’m going out with Toni, okay? Just for a bit.”
“Dylan, it’s…” She broke off to look at her watch. “It’s almost nine. A bit late to be going out.”
A hard ball of anger was lodging itself in my chest, right in the hollow between my collarbones. “I need to talk to someone, Mom. And apparently you’re busy.”
She stood up. “Don’t be like that. If you want to talk to me, you know that all you have to do is say so.”
I shrugged. For no good reason, I was suddenly fighting tears. “Whatever.”
“Amanda.” Scott hesitated. “If you want me to leave…”
She shook her head. “I don’t want you to leave.”
I jumped in. “So can I go or what?”
Mom hesitated. “Yes. Okay. But don’t be late. Tomorrow—”
I cut her off. “Don’t worry. I’m hardly going to forget about tomorrow.”
Toni picked me up in her mom’s Honda. Because she had a December birthday, her parents had started her in kindergarten a year late so she wouldn’t always be the youngest. So she’d always been the oldest in our grade instead. This year, she’d been the first to get her driver’s license, which had given her a lot of popularity points. I had decided never to get a license, on principle, but there were times—like now, when it was dark and cold and pouring rain—that cycling wasn’t all that appealing.
The car was warm, heat blasting. Some electronic-sounding music I didn’t recognize was playing on the car stereo, and Toni turned down the volume as I got in. “Do you know for sure that he’s still at the hotel?” she asked.
“He has to be,” I said. “His wife and Casey are flying out on Thursday.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Seriously? Are you going to meet her?”
I shook my head. “I just want some answers, that’s all. I don’t want a whole new family.”
“What does Karma think about it all? You having another sister, I mean?”
“I don’t know. She says she’d be curious, if it was her.”
Toni nodded. “Me too.”
Why did everyone seem to think I should meet her? “Well, not me,” I said shortly. After a couple of minutes, Toni turned the volume back up. I leaned my head against the window and watched streetlights flash past as we drove through downtown. Down by the harbor, the buildings were all lit up, fairy-tale pretty against the dark sky. “She might not make it,” I said. “Casey, I mean. She’s pretty sick.”
Toni didn’t say anything right away. She took a couple of turns, pulled into a parking spot at the side of the street across from the hotel, turned off the engine and shifted in her seat to face me. “Is that why you don’t want to meet her?”
My throat ached with holding back tears. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
She held my gaze for a long moment. “Remember when we used to say we were going to live forever? That by the time we were old, science would have found a cure for death?”
I gave a startled laugh. “Of course. I really believed it too.”
“I know you did.”
“Didn’t you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not really.”
“I guess it was easier to believe than the alternative. Death is so weird.” I wondered if she had ever believed that we’d live together and rescue stray dogs, or if she’d just been pretending about that too.
“Yeah. Well, we were just kids. We didn’t know anything.” Toni unbuckled her seat belt. “Come on. Let’s go get you some answers.”
The front desk clerk called up to Mark’s room and told us he’d be right down.
“You want me to stay?” Toni whispered.
I nodded. “Yeah. If you don’t mind.”
“Are you kidding? I’m dying of curiosity.” She watched the elevator doors. “I can’t believe I’m actually going to meet your father. Does he look like you?”
“Kind of. I don’t know. Well, you’ll see.” I wiped my hands on my jeans and wondered where to start. Did I owe him an apology? I’d been kind of a bitch last time I saw him, all snarky about him making small talk and then taking off when he told me about Casey.
“This is so intense,” Toni said. “I’m actually kind of nervous.”
I snorted. “Please. You’re nervous?”
The elevator door opened and Mark stepped out. He was more casually dressed this time, wearing jeans and a blue sweater. Toni leaned close to me. “Dylan! He’s totally hot.”
“Shut up. He’s totally old.”
Mark waved and headed our way. I waved back.
“Hello, Dylan.” He glanced at Toni. “I’m Mark Wheatcroft.”
“Sorry. Toni, Mark. Mark, this is my best friend Toni. Uh…” I looked at Toni frantically and she came to my rescue as always.
“Dylan had some questions and she wanted to talk to you, so…” She shrugged. “So here we are.”
“Here you are.” Mark nodded solemnly, but one corner of his mouth twitched slightly, as if he was holding back a laugh. “How about we go into the restaurant and I buy you both a Coke or something?”
“I have money,” I blurted out. “I mean, you don’t have to pay for us.”
Toni elbowed me. “Thanks. That’d be great. I’d love some tea, actually.”
We took a corner table, and Mark orde
red tea for all of us. “So,” he said, once the waiter had gone, “I’m glad to get the chance to thank you, Dylan. For trying to help Casey. For agreeing to be tested.”
“Sure. I mean, of course I would.”
He smiled and I noticed that his mouth went up more on the left than the right, same as mine. “I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. I thought you might be pretty angry with me. You know, for not having been around all those years and then showing up like this.”
Toni kicked me under the table.
“Yeah. Well, I kind of was.” I cleared my throat. “Mom always told me you didn’t want to meet me.”
“But now? Did she tell you…?”
“Yeah. You never even knew about me. She never told you she was pregnant.”
Mark put his hands on the table and leaned toward me. “God, I’m so glad. I can’t tell you what a relief it is that you know that. I so wanted to tell you. I hated to think that you imagined I was some…”
“Deadbeat,” Toni put in helpfully.
He nodded. “Mmm. Yes. Thank you.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me yourself?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“When I called your mother, she agreed to let me meet you as long as I promised I wouldn’t talk about any of that. And—well, I didn’t want to cause problems for you or her.”
“Weren’t you angry though?” I asked. “I mean, that she’d never told you? Don’t you think you had a right to know that you were, you know…”
“A father?” He nodded. “Yes. Very angry, at first. But I’ve had a couple of years to come to terms with that.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“I said, I was angry, but I’d—”
Toni broke in. “Hold on. You’ve known about Dylan for two years?”
He looked at me, frowning. “I thought you said your mother told you.”
“Not everything, I guess.”
“Argh.” Mark rubbed his forehead, pushing the skin into wrinkles. “I’m not sure what to do here. I don’t want to create difficulties for you and Mandy. Amanda.”
“She’s the one who’s created difficulties,” I said. “I think I have a right to know the truth.”
Hummingbird Heart Page 10
