by Trisha Leigh
I wake up drenched in sweat, my heart in my throat, no idea where I am or how I got here. My immediate response is to fly into the Clubhouse, and the familiar surroundings lift the boulder off my chest. The sight of Mole asleep in his chair, his dark hair shooting in every direction, returns oxygen to my lungs. Vegetable lies in his typical spot on the floor, eyebrows raised at my expression, which must be panicked. Haint’s asleep here, too, curled on one of the beanbags abandoned by the twins, who are flopped on either end of the couch.
I guess we all needed a little comfort.
In the quiet, the events of the past few days rush back. The compromise of Darley, the arrest of the Philosopher and his staff. All of the Cavies stuck in the hospital, examined and debriefed and corralled into an explanation the real world can accept.
It’s soothing being here with them, even if no one’s awake. This space might not be mine alone, but offers more comforts than the sterile room at my father’s, at least for now.
Mole stirs, tuned into my presence as though it’s his job. His mossy, sightless eyes open and fix on my position. “Gypsy?”
“Yeah,” I say softly so that the others don’t wake. “How are you?”
“Okay.”
He looks away from me. It takes me a minute to realize that he’s not smiling. Mole’s always smiling, even when we’re having the crappiest day, so this makes my heart beat fast.
“Where are you?”
“Still in the hospital.”
“Your genetic results aren’t back yet?”
“They are. My mother is dead, and my father doesn’t want me.”
His flat, emotionless tone punches me in the stomach. There’s hurt wrapped around him, coating his face and voice and skin, and there’s nothing I can do to peel it away. A protest sits on the tip of my tongue, begging to tumble free and comfort my friend, but it’s pointless. “I’m sorry, Mole.”
“Shiloh.”
“What?”
“That was my name. Shiloh Adams Lee.”
It’s all wrong for him, which makes me giggle and him frown. “I’m sorry. It sounds like some kind of Civil War general or something, that’s all.”
The amusement keeps coming, with snickers flying unapproved out of my mouth, and after a few more, Mole’s lips start to twitch. His first snort crashes between us like a gift, like a flower I can’t decide whether to pick or leave be in the hopes it blooms into more. Our laughter struggles free of our clutches, bounding around the room and banging into our sleeping friends until they’re shoved into consciousness.
Pollyanna shows up while Mole and I try to escape the twins, annoyed at being woken, but the nice thing about Athena and Goose has always been that as much as they enjoy dealing out a good noogie, they’re never truly angry.
Haint grabs Goose by the hair, dragging him off Mole and ending the ruckus. The gales of laughter ease from our guts and we settle down, the room crowded with only three of us missing—Reaper, Flicker, and Prism.
Prism’s the second of our three Unstables, the other person besides Vegetable that Sandra expressed concern about in the hospital. Her powerful empath abilities mean she experiences every nuanced emotion of the people around her, and after years of failed research and drug therapy and lessons in attempting to control it, the staff had no choice but to keep her in a drug-induced stupor.
We hate it, but after her ninth—nearly successful—suicide attempt, the options were limited. Are limited.
“What’s so funny, anyway?” Polly grumps, dropping to the floor and pulling her knees into her chest.
“Mole’s real name,” I blurt before he can stop me.
“You think mine is so funny? What’s yours?” he shoots back, arms crossed over his chest. A twitch still toys with his lips.
“Norah.” I stick out my chin, waiting for the hoots.
Mole and the others study me with thoughtful expressions. Even Pollyanna doesn’t jump at a chance to poke fun at me, instead studying her cuticles.
“It fits you,” Mole, aka Shiloh, declares.
“Yeah,” Haint adds. “I agree.”
“Who else knows their names? Everyone?” I’m so hungry for information even though there’s no room left to stow it.
Silence drapes the room, muting our previous lighthearted mirth, and it takes a second or two to puzzle out why.
Haint and Pollyanna and Goose and everyone else, we’re all friends. We know each other. Our Darley names represent not only who we are but what we can do, and claiming a different one feels like shedding part of my identity. For them even more than me, probably, since their abilities have defined them. Brought them praise and pride and purpose.
Mole is one of two major successes, a lethal Operational. Shiloh Lee is a boy no one wants.
“Becca,” Haint whispers. “I’m Becca.”
“Are you still at the hospital?” My stomach hurts at the thought of more stories such as Mole’s. That I could be the only one who gets lucky, if indeed that’s what living with my father means.
“No. My paternal grandparents came early this morning and took me home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Mount Pleasant.”
A little relief loosens the knots in my neck. She’s close, but since my father lives in the historic district of Charleston, we won’t be going to school together. Still, we can visit.
“What about you guys?” Pollyanna joins the conversation, directing the question at the twins.
“Our dad came late last night. Bit shell-shocked,” Athena admits with an impish grin. “Didn’t know there were two of us.”
“He lives in Beaufort,” Goose adds. “And I’m Hosea. He’s Theo.”
Mole snorts, relief cloaking him like ivy crawling over the corner of a house. Shiloh isn’t the dumbest name anymore, at any rate.
“Anyone talked to Reaper?” I haven’t seen my old cabinmate in over a day. The longest we’ve gone in seventeen years.
“Yeah, last night,” Haint says. “Only for a second and I didn’t get any details, but her father came. He lives in the city.”
“So, I’m the only one with no one, huh?” Pollyanna spits. Typical venom sears the edges of the words, but the threat of a sob shows up in the tightness of her jaw.
“No,” Mole answers, quiet. Strong. “No one’s coming for me, either. But that Sandra lady says there will be foster families willing to take us in. Or a group home.”
“I vote for group home,” she declares, her voice finding strength in his company.
Polly’s like the sibling or the cousin that busts everyone’s balls, that kind of ruins everything, but losing her would change everyone else in unknowable ways. We love her, but I’m pretty sure Mole’s the only one who would claim to like her.
“I’ll do a group home if you want to stay together. Mole and Pollyanna, together forever.”
She rolls her eyes, regaining her attitude and easing the tension in the rest of us. “What about Shiloh and Tate?”
“We’re less intimidating that way. Don’t want to scare the normals. Much.”
With Mole’s quick smile and blind eyes, and Pollyanna’s perfect face and shiny, blonde, waist-length waves, intimidating others won’t be off the table, but the somewhat typical names help.
Becca. Tate. Shiloh. Norah. Hosea. Theo.
We sound so normal. So average. It’s almost easy to forget that we’re not. That we’re a bunch of kids that some might want to kill, and others would want to take advantage of. We have to be careful, and our new names and families and lives aren’t a proper disguise
“Vegetable’s name is Geoff,” Goose adds. “I heard the social worker telling the doctors so they could put it on his chart. I think it’s better.”
We all glance his way, and his eyebrows go up and down, up and down. The grunt he manages sounds like agreement.
“Geoff it is,” Mole agrees, his smile slipping away as a telltale wrinkle appears on his forehead. “Has anyone seen or heard from
Flicker?”
The Philosopher lost track of our third Unstable over three years ago. She travels—teleports—without warning and has, on the rare occasion, landed in the Clubhouse. She never stays long. We don’t think she knows how.
We all shake our heads and I wish we could tell her what’s happening. That she could know who she is, where she came from, but it won’t change anything unless she learns how to control her ability. The genetic mutations we’re dealing with are random, errant, and the staff at Darley has spent seventeen years attempting to help us grow and learn, to harness the alterations that try to control us. In that moment, all of us silently thinking about our lost Cavy and the fact that our days of being helped are over, fear creeps into the room.
We’re being separated. New lives, not a new life.
There’s a knock on the door of my bedroom, and my father’s voice filters into my ears. “Norah, if you’re up, there’s coffee in the kitchen. I think it’s best if we get an early start.”
“So, we’re all in the area. Beaufort’s what, an hour away? We can keep in touch here and figure out how to get together in real life. Yeah?” I suggest.
We all agree, even Pollyanna. Facing the world—outside Darley or in—without them feels impossible, and it must be worse for those with harder to hide mutations. Even mine affects me on a daily basis, since it means I avoid touching people. If I knew all their numbers, a roomful of people would look like a graveyard to me. Me, alive, and everyone else already dead.
Knowing what age people are going to die never fails to infect me with a helplessness that takes days to shake, but at least it’s not dangerous. If I forget, or accidentally use my “gift,” I won’t disappear like Haint, or set something on fire like Mole. I’m safer than they are, no matter how hard it is to keep my distance sometimes.
“Gotta go.” I stare into Mole’s eyes, hanging on for dear life, wishing I could give him a smile. Make him feel better the way he does me. “Later, Shiloh.”
His eye roll stays in my mind as I return to the room at my father’s, toss off the covers, and head for the bathroom. I’m halfway through my shower, luxuriating in the hot water and floral-scented suds, when it occurs to me that not one of our mothers is alive.
Chapter Five
Saturday passed in a whirl, with my father dragging me around a giant, color-splashed cave called Target to buy things for my bedroom, plus some things he claimed I needed for school—notebooks and pens and a backpack, plus some tablet computer thing he insisted I couldn’t live without, even though it cost a lot of money. There are malls in some of the movies, but this is different. I’m starting to think that nothing is actually like the movies and wonder more than once who I can complain to in Hollywood.
Dear Mr. Producer, I’ve been kept away from normal society my entire life, with nothing to show me how it really is except your movies. Now I’m outside, and I am a lost little sheep. PS: You failed.
The money thing boggles me. It’s always been an abstract idea, since I’ve never had any or even seen any until now. I guess my father has some? Enough? Maybe more than most? But I never dreamed that getting a few things to hang on the wall and add color to the bed, plus school supplies, would add up to over a thousand dollars. We stopped at a clothing store afterward, which overwhelmed me, but we managed a couple pairs of jeans, some sweaters and shirts, plus pajamas and three pairs of shoes before I needed to go home or collapse in the store.
I’ll be attending Charleston Academy, a private school, and wearing uniforms anyway.
Sunday we hung around the house, except for two hour-plus walks that acclimated me to the city. Robert shared his love of Charleston, along with a few stories I’d never heard and some of his favorite spots along the way. Cemeteries and graveyards waited at every turn, and their names and locations went onto my mental list to explore later.
We grabbed lunch at a great little place on Market Street, Lowcountry Bistro, where the chicken and waffles tried their best to put me into a coma. At Darley our meals were regulated, tasteless, but packed with a perfectly tweaked balance of nutrition. Ingesting mostly crap since getting out should concern me, but it tastes too good to regret.
He showed me the few pictures he still has of my mom, too, and even though her hair was blonde instead of dark brown, my resemblance to her hurts my heart in the very best way possible. It’s the weight of connection, to this world and to her. The knowledge that she’s part of me even now.
One photo, her senior portrait, smiles at me from a frame beside my bed. She’s barely older than I am now but had already been through so much—giving birth and having her baby taken away. Even though she’s smiling, her eyes tell sad stories, and it makes me sure we had more in common than our looks.
When the alarm goes off on my new cell phone—another purchase my father made despite my protests—adrenaline shoots through me. It’s my first day at my new school. Even though there are only three weeks until holiday break, my excitement and my nerves tussle for prominence.
Excitement about a chance at a new life, one where if I’m not normal, at least other people think the weirdest thing about me is where I grew up. Nerves about keeping my distance from my peers, about fitting in, about being the dumbest one in my class after missing more than ten years of traditional schooling.
A bundle of anxiety over missing the Cavies, wondering what their days are like or what they’re going through and not being able to know right away, sits in my peripheral vision and mocks me. The Cavies will always be part of you, it lectures. You can’t deny you’re one of them.
I don’t want to lose my friends, but how can I fit in with the normal kids when I’ll never be normal?
I stare in the mirror and comb my hair, trying to breathe through my nose to avoid passing out on the floor. It helps to wander into the Clubhouse while the blow dryer runs, where I find Pollyanna and Athena playing a violent game of slapjack. When I get back to the bathroom at my father’s, my hair is dry and my nerves have loosened to a dull hum.
They stay that way while I get dressed—one of my new uniform polos and a purple-and-black plaid skirt, since the weather still hasn’t realized it’s winter. There’s an empty bowl and a box of cereal on the table in the kitchen and I finish off the half-prepped meal with a banana and skim milk from the fridge.
My father comes down while I’m rinsing my bowl in the sink, and lurks in the doorway in a suit and tie. He switches his briefcase from hand to hand. “You ready for this?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.” Honesty feels good, even in a dry mouth. “Only one way to find out.”
A brief, sad smile. “You look like your mother when you stick your chin out like that.”
That makes me smile, too. Maybe she didn’t like people thinking she was afraid, either.
He helps me stuff my backpack with goodies, then reminds me to turn my cell phone on vibrate. Then he shows me how to put my cell phone on vibrate. “Remember, you have to go to the office first thing. I registered you online, and the assessments you took yesterday should be there, but they’ll need to pull them up and print you a schedule.”
The online assessment had been simple. So simple that I’d missed 5 percent of the questions on purpose, worried that too good of a score would be as big a red flag as one that’s not good enough. We discussed it in the Clubhouse, too, and the others followed my lead. Except Pollyanna—Tate—but if one of us can get away with being in the limelight, it’s her. If anyone gets suspicious she can make them feel perfectly fine without lifting her pinky finger.
“I won’t forget.” I pause at the door, waiting for my legs to steady underneath me. They’ve been wobbly since I woke up. My shoulders straighten out under the weight of the backpack, and I force a smile. “So I walk down to Meeting Street, then take a right on King, and a left on Queen. Right?”
We traced the fastest path to the school yesterday. It takes ten or fifteen minutes, depending on the pace, and I shake my head at another
request to let him drive me. “No. The walk will be good. Clear my head and everything.”
My father looks at me as though he’s afraid to let me out of his sight but also anxious to get back to his life, one that made sense three days ago. He’s trying hard, and so am I, but three days together just isn’t enough to make us more than we are.
I reach out and touch his hand, trying to get used to it. “I’ll come right home after school. I could order something for dinner, if you want.”
“Don’t you dare. We’re going out to celebrate. Just… do your homework while you’re waiting for me.” He chuckles. “Man, that sounded fatherly.”
“It’s cool. You’re still new enough that I like it.”
He surprises me, and maybe himself, by bending to kiss me on the cheek. His scruff tickles but I don’t pull away, breathing deep and trying not to fall apart before the day even starts.
“Have a good day, Norah.”
“Thanks.”
I still haven’t decided what to call him. My inclination is Father, but it’s so formal and I’m not sure if it’s weird, so nothing remains the reigning option. He shuts the door behind me, leaving me alone on the street. He’s some kind of lawyer, and also sits on a couple of historical restoration councils, which is how he lives in a perfect old house south of Broad. He leaves for work the same time I leave for school and promises he’ll be home by six-thirty, latest. Which means I have three hours to kill after Charleston Academy lets out at the end of the day.
It’s not as though I have any friends or plans. Yet.
The last thought lifts my lips into a smile, pushes my feet into a brisk walk, and drowns out my worry of accidentally touching someone. I’ve gotten through the reentry—the chats with the cops, the pokes and prods from the doctors, the school registration—and not one person seems to think there’s anything different about me at all. Or the rest of the Cavies. Sometime last night I started to relax, at least about being plucked up and deposited in a laboratory.
