by Sybil Nelson
"Well, maybe that's why this creature didn't seem completely developed," my mother said. "Didn't you say it seemed really dumb and kind of deformed? Maybe that was a side effect of the chromosomal dispersion."
Everyone sat back in their chairs to think this over for a second. My mother started rubbing her head. She was thinking too hard.
"Another thing to consider," my dad said after thinking in silence for a while, "is that phone call Xi got during the fight." He turned to me and said, “Priss, one more time. Repeat everything you heard her say.”
I concentrated and tried to repeat everything. When I finished I said, "So it sounds like Dr. Witherall had no idea where Xi was or that she was trying to kill me. What do you think that means?"
My dad shrugged.
"Maybe Xi went off on her own," Josh volunteered. "She was trying to kill you without permission from Selliwood."
"Or," my mother began, "maybe she had permission from Colonel Selliwood, but not Dr. Witherall. Maybe they don't agree about the fate of the escaped specimens. Maybe Selliwood wants us dead, but Witherall wants to preserve us. If that's the case, maybe we can use them against each other one day."
Josh and I exchanged a glance. We still hadn't told our parents about our meeting with Dr. Witherall in River's Bend. It made sense to bring it up now. It seemed like Dr. Witherall and Colonel Selliwood were starting to oppose each other and that Dr. Witherall was on our side. He didn't want us dead. I was just about to bring up the birthday present he gave me when Josh sent me a message telepathically.
Don't. Not yet.
That was enough for me. I kept my mouth shut.
Will Smith said, "That's risky. I wouldn't trust either one of them if I were you. Witherall might not want us dead, but he would still want to use us for genetic experiments. Personally, I'd rather be dead."
My mother put her arm around Will to comfort him from the memories of what happened while they were at the Institute.
"Wait a minute, Priss," my Dad said suddenly. "Did you say Xi mentioned something about Saudi radar?"
I nodded.
"That’s not good," he said, starting to type on his laptop.
"What's wrong?" Josh asked.
"Witherall must have figured out a way to track the jet on radar. Priss, are you sure you were cloaked?"
"Positive," I said.
"Great, I'm going to have to reconfigure the cloaking mechanism before you use it again, okay?"
I nodded again and yawned.
"Why don't we call it a night?" my mother said after she yawned as well. "Everyone's exhausted." I looked over at the kids and noticed Peter and Ryan leaning on each other. Katya was trying to slap herself awake. Marco yawned as well. I couldn't help thinking that maybe we were all too young for these meetings. But then again, Katya, Marco, Peter and Ryan had spent their lives in the Institute. They had seen and probably done some terrible things in their short lives. I'm sure they wanted nothing more than to help take down Colonel Selliwood and Dr. Witherall one day. They wanted to be a part of this and so did I.
My dad stood and stretched. "You're right, Quin. Go to bed, kids. We'll try to figure things out tomorrow."
We all stood from the table and started heading out. Suddenly, my dad said, "Priss, Marco, I want you two to spend as much time together as possible during the next couple of days. Try to pick each other's brains about what went down and see if you can come up with anything, okay?"
I nodded then took a peek at Marco. He was smiling.
"Uh, Dad, I think Katya and I should spend some time together as well," Josh said.
Katya looked at me, then Josh, then my dad. She cocked her head to the side like a tall, blond, confused robot.
"Why?" Dad asked.
"Well, Katya and I have the strongest psychic abilities. I thought we could try to figure some things out together."
"That could work," my dad said.
Josh clutched his fists like he'd just won a prize. Katya shrugged and bounded up the stairs.
I looked over at Marco. He was still smiling. "What are you so happy about?" I asked as we walked up the stairs together.
He looked at me and said, "I guess I am just looking forward to spending time with you." He stared at me with his gorgeous green eyes and I think my heart stopped for a split second. Why did he have to be so flippin’ cute?
The safe house was about thirty minutes away from our house. I could have hopped in the car with Mom and Dad, but I decided to jog home. I hoped the cold air on my face and the pounding of my feet against the pavement would take my mind off of Marco.
After the long run and a shower, I still couldn't shake Marco from my thoughts.
Chapter 11: Sitting in a Tree
This next day I woke up to a knock on my door. I rolled over and looked at the clock. Eight fifteen wasn't especially early but considering the night I'd had it might as well have been four a.m. It had already been two in the morning when I got home from the briefing room and then I spent the night tossing and turning to thoughts of Marco, Xi, and that Zero thing.
"Who is it?" I called while heaving myself out of bed.
"It's me, Priscilla." That meant it had to be Marco. No one called me Priscilla but him...and Xi. But considering she had no hands right now, she probably wouldn't be knocking on my door any time soon. I smiled at the thought of beating her once again. Even though I didn't do it alone, it still felt good to knock the smile off of that conceited little fashion freak.
I got up and opened the door to let him in, swinging on my bathrobe in the process.
"Hey," I said as he came in. In some ways, Marco was just a regular fourteen year old boy. He was at times socially awkward and didn't quite know where he fit in. Take his clothes for example. He always wore solid colors, which isn't odd by itself, but add the fact that his shirt was always the exact same color as his pants and it got a little bland after a while. It was like he never wanted to experiment with patterns or designs. Maybe he didn't want to stick out and be noticed. Hey, that was probably it. He probably felt that by wearing solid colors he could just blend into the background and not be noticed. Today he wore a tan shirt and tan khaki pants.
"I thought we could go for a walk and try to storm our brains," he said.
"Brainstorm," I corrected him.
"Yes, that is what I mean."
I yawned and stretched. "Sure, let me get dressed."
I didn't mind going for a walk with Marco. It's not like I had other plans. Of course, Dad had made out a schedule for me for every day of the week and that morning I was supposed to work on Algebra. Since I wasn't in public school I kinda had to teach myself with the occasional guidance from Mom, Dad, and Josh. The only thing worse than having to go to school and do school work was having to stay home and do school work. Algebra was a worse enemy than Xi.
"Have you ever had a girlfriend?" I asked as we walked around the farm. It was kind of out of the blue. I was just tired of talking about Xi and the creature over and over again.
He clasped his hands behind him and stared at the ground.
"Yes, I had a girlfriend once," he said, nodding.
"Well, what happened to her? What's her name? Do you still keep in touch with her?"
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Suddenly I was a little embarrassed. Were those questions too personal? I was being nosey. "I'm sorry. You don't have to answer that."
"Her name was Adrianna," he said after a few minutes. "We were in school together."
"Was she pretty? What did she look like?"
He stopped walking and sent me a mental picture of her. She was absolutely beautiful. Blonde hair, blue eyes, high cheek bones. She looked like a blonde version of Selena Gomez.
"Wow, she's gorgeous! Why'd you ever let her go?" I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. What was I thinking? How could I ask a question like that? Marco looked visibly hurt.
"It was for her own good," he said not making eye contact with me.
"What do you mean? If you cared about her and she cared about you, why didn't you try to make it work?" I had to admit, I was asking this question for personal reasons. I kind of knew what he was going to say, but a part of me wanted to justify my relationship with Kyle.
"We were too different. I didn't want to hurt her."
"How would you have hurt her?"
He sighed. "Remember what I told you about Calypso Jacques?"
I nodded.
"Well, imagine if I had kissed her instead. What if I had turned her into a block of metal? I have no idea how a normal human body would have reacted to the metallic conversion."
"Well did you try? Maybe it wouldn't have hurt her at all."
"That wasn't a risk I was willing to take. With someone with our genetic mutation I know transferring my powers won't hurt them. Dr. Witherall performed an experiment while I was in the institute. But with an unmutated human...I'm just not sure. I didn't want to put her in danger." He sighed then looked out into the morning sky. "I just think it's better if people like us stick to our own kind. It's safer that way."
My heart sank. That wasn't the response I wanted to hear. I knew it was true. I knew our genetics could make us a danger to normal humans, but I still tried to convince myself that I wasn't going to hurt Kyle in any way. I was trying to fool myself into thinking Kyle and I could have a normal relationship.
Marco looked at me. "You're bleeding again," he said reaching into his pocket to pull out a handkerchief. He tucked my hair behind my ear then gently dabbed my stitches.
"Thanks," I said. That's when I remembered a detail of the fight that I had completely forgotten before. "You know, that reminds me of something. When Xi pulled out my hair, she actually stuffed it into a zipper pocket on her boot."
"She saved your hair?"
"Yeah. Why would she do that?"
Marco shrugged as he stared into my eyes. Wow, his green eyes were so intense they made my lips tingle. Was he about to kiss me? I think a better question would be would I kiss him back? Fortunately, I didn't have to answer either of those questions as suddenly, I got smacked in the head by something warm and stinky.
Charlie and Chester ran up to us and started pelting us with...cow poop! "Priss and Marco sitting in a tree. A-B-C-D-E-F-G," they chanted.
"That's not how it goes, you idiots," I yelled, grabbing two handfuls of snow and launching it at their heads. Unfortunately, there was no cow manure in arm's reach. "It's K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" As soon as I finished spelling the word, my face flushed. The new handful of snow I'd picked up melted in my hands.
Marco blushed as well then he took off running after Chester. Marco let Chester think he could outrun him for a few seconds before turning on the super speed. Almost all of the specimens from Selliwood could run at the speed of sound. Peter and Ryan couldn't, but hey, they could fly so it didn't really matter. Mom thought that some super speed as well as telepathy might develop in me as I grew older. Until then, I used what I knew. I sent a stream of fire and singed a hole in the back of Charlie's jeans. He screamed and ran all the way back to the house with his little white butt sticking out.
"Mom! Prissy's trying to kill me!" I heard him yell.
I followed Charlie into the kitchen where I found him hiding behind my mother's legs.
"Prissy, don't burn your brother," my mother reprimanded me as she tried to shake Charlie off her legs.
"What?" I replied innocently. "I was just trying to warm him up. It's cold outside."
"Priss, he's just a baby. You can't use your powers on him. You might hurt him."
"If I'm lucky," I mumbled.
"I heard that, Priss. I may not have super powers, but I'm not deaf. Now you apologize to your baby brother."
"Yeah, I'm just a baby," Charlie said in a baby voice while reaching up with his arms. My mother picked him up and kissed him on the cheek. Charlie stuck his tongue out at me. I wanted to singe every hair on his little blond head. "I'm waiting for my apology, Prissy," he added.
Josh rolled his eyes. He had been sitting at the breakfast table reading a gamer magazine.
"I'm sorry," I said through clenched teeth. Then I mouthed the words: You're dead.
My mom set Charlie down and then left the kitchen probably to make sure baby Chester was alright. What baloney. Those two were evil geniuses, not babies.
After mom left the kitchen, Josh closed his magazine and stared at Charlie.
A second later Charlie said, "Josh? What are you doing? Get out of my head. Get out." But it was too late. We all looked at the floor and saw that Charlie was standing in a puddle of his own pee. Josh, the resident expert at hypnotic suggestion, had just made our little brother wet himself.
I went over and hi-fived Josh, then said. "Shall I get you a diaper...baby?"
Chapter 12: Upper Body Accessories
Later that morning, I called Tai on the brush phone to make sure she was still coming for her visit. The brush phone was a contraption that my genius best friend Tai put together before I moved away from River's Bend. She knew my dad wouldn't let me have a cell phone or anything normal like that so she created a phone that looked like a brush and that called her compact. It was very James Bond-ish.
I caught her right before she headed out to catch her plane and told her everything about Xi and Marco and Josh and the…the creature. She responded with her normal exclamations of "holy hot dogs" and my new personal favorite "holy homemade chili."
But what got the biggest reaction of all was when I told her that my dad might cancel my date with Kyle.
"He can't do that!" she yelled causing me to pull the brush away from my head.
"Gosh, Tai. You don't have to yell. I have super hearing remember?"
"Sorry. But that's really upsetting. You haven't seen Kyle in months. And this was supposed to be really romantic and I'm supposed to come see you and help you get ready."
"I know. This totally stinks."
"The bruises can't be that bad. Can't you just tell Kyle you fell while tap dancing or something?"
"Tap dancing? I don't tap dance."
"Well, you know what I mean."
I knew what she meant. She wanted me to lie to Kyle…again. I always had to lie to Kyle. We couldn't risk another person finding out about my powers. I was just glad my parents allowed Tai to know the truth. I needed someone to talk to. Besides after being kidnapped and held hostage with my family, she was basically an honorary Sumner.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm just sick of lying all the time. I feel like our whole relationship is a lie."
Tai was silent for a moment. Then I heard a loud crash and had to pull the phone away from my head again. "Tai, are you there? Tai, you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," she said after a second. "I just dropped my compact...wait...that's it!"
"That's what?"
"I know what to do. You're gonna look great. Just pick me up at the airport and don't worry about a thing. It's Tai to the rescue."
Three hours later, Josh drove me to the airport to pick up Tai. Normally, he wouldn't take time out of his busy schedule of video games and Sports Illustrated to do me a favor like that, but he had a reason. A big one. See, a few months ago he had a vision that Tai was going to shoot and kill me. Ever since then, he didn't really trust her much. I tried to assure him that his vision was wrong and that my best friend wasn't going to kill me, but he was convinced. He'd probably flip if he knew I talked to her on the brush phone nearly every day.
It probably would've been easier to just pick up Tai in the jet myself but for a long list of reasons we thought it would be better to just let her take a regular airplane. First of all, it was too much to try to explain to her parents. It would look pretty odd for her to just walk into the woods and not walk out. Second of all, picking her up in broad daylight was a little risky. Someone might see the jet leaving the woods outside of River's Bend. So, instead, Josh and I were just going to pick her up from the Kansas City airport.
&nbs
p; Picking up Kyle tomorrow was going to be even trickier. Since we didn't want him to know where I lived, we were actually going to pick him up from an airport in Indiana, fly him to Missouri in the jet, then erase his memory when he got to our house.
Tai's plane wasn't due to land until three, but I made sure we were there and waiting at two just in case she was early. I didn't want to miss a second of time with her.
I paced the lobby so much that people started to stare at me. Or they could have been staring at the bruises on my face. When they started giving Josh dirty looks I figured they thought he was the one who had beaten me up or something.
I decided to sit down and plopped on a baseball hat to cover my face somewhat.
Finally, I heard Tai's flight announced. I hopped up then went and studied the line of people coming through the door. When I saw her, I screamed. She dropped her bags and ran to me. When we hugged I noticed something…new.
"Holy homemade chili! What are those?" I said, stepping back and staring at her chest.
She pulled her jacket closed and whispered, "I forgot to mention. I kinda grew some upper body accessories."
"You sure did! You're wearing a bra and everything. You've gotta be like a B cup or -"
"Shhh! Priss, you're embarrassing me."
She wasn't the only one I was embarrassing. Josh turned a fiery shade of red and walked away as fast as his legs would carry him. So much for his fearing for my safety.
***
On the short drive from the airport to our little farm, Tai showed me all the cute little bras she had bought. I was so jealous. This was so unfair. So freaking unfair. Why did she get to have boobs and I didn't? I could shoot fire out of my fingers, carry a two hundred pound boy over my head while swimming through frigid water, oh and I could hear Chester fart from the other side of the house but I couldn't grow any boobs.
