Freaks in the City (18 page)

Caro’s complexion paled even more, making
her auburn hair stand out like a fiery corona. Jay realized she’d
erred, and only contributed to Caro’s worries. She hurried to make
amends. “Your mother is healthy. She has a normal body weight, her
blood pressure is fine, and she’s does not have diabetes or any
chronic illnesses that I can detect. There is no reason to presume
she was, is, or will be, at risk.”

“Thanks,” Caro whispered.

“I should not have said anything. I do not
personally subscribe to the belief that ignorance is blissful
but—”

“Don’t sweat it,” Caro said. “It’s weird but
I kinda do feel better now I know the deal.”

Jay focused her attention on Tyler. “And
you?”

“Yeah. Me, too. But promise me you won’t
bring any of this up in front of my parents. Mom is a worrier.”

Jay nodded. “And doubtless she prefers
information to come from her chosen medical professional.”

“Yeah.” He heaved his feet from her lap,
then sat up to squeeze her hand. Jay’s stomach swooped in a wholly
pleasant way, and her breathing rate quickened. She squeezed back…
Would he keep his hand in hers? She hoped so.

He did. And her breath released in on a
sigh.

Caro had picked up on the subtext. She
always had been astute.

She scrunched her brows, pinning them both
with her “you two better come clean” look. “So what’s the deal with
Mom and Jay?”

“Marissa is not happy about our
relationship,” Jay said.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Tyler
muttered.

“Oh.” Caro pursed her lips, mulling this
information. “What did she say?”

Tyler shook his head at Jay, cautioning her
not to repeat Marissa’s words verbatim for Caro’s benefit. He was
probably correct in this instance. It was bad enough that Tyler was
at odds with his mother. Best not to put Caro in a similar position
of having to choose sides, or having to tiptoe around both her
brother and her mother for fear of upsetting either.

“Well?” Caro said.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Tyler said,
and even though he’d kept his tone light, Jay could feel the
tension thrumming through his body.

“That bad, huh?” Caro’s tone oozed
sympathy.

“Yeah.”

“Probably hormones, right, Jay?”

“Yes.” Jay doubted either Caro or Tyler were
convinced.

Caro wrinkled her nose. “Change of
subject?”

“Would be good,” Tyler agreed.

“So, Jay.”

Jay caught a “Wait for it—” sideways glance
from Tyler and suppressed a smile. They both knew Caro too
well.

“I’m dying to know if your
super-cyborg-vision can detect whether the baby’s gonna be a boy or
a girl.”

“Sheesh, even I didn’t see that one coming.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “But… That would be kinda cool. So can
you?”

“My optics don’t work like that,” Jay said,
opting for simplicity over a lengthy and complicated explanation
neither of them would comprehend. Of course to be one hundred
percent certain she would require a sample of Marissa’s blood to
check for fragments of DNA floating in her bloodstream. If the
fetus were male, analysis of the blood sample would show minute
fragments of a Y chromosome that would not be present if the fetus
were female.

“Shame.” Caro mock-pouted. “Then I wouldn’t
have to keep to neutral colors for the baby outfits I’m making. I’d
be able to do the whole pink or blue thing.”

Jay accessed her databanks to ensure she
understood Caro’s reference. “Pink is for girls. Blue is for
boys.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t understand why it should make a
difference. Blue is a perfectly nice color for both boys and girls.
I’m female. I wear blue jeans
and
blue t-shirts.”

Caro grinned. “Yeah. But if you dress a baby
girl in blue, people are gonna think she’s a boy. And vice
versa.”

“And when they’re older,” Tyler said, “boys
get teased and made fun of for wearing pink. If my mom had dressed
me in pink as a kid, my life would have been a living hell. I’d
probably be in therapy by now.”

Jay didn’t understand the significance
humans placed on colors. Why should a color provoke such unpleasant
behavioral reactions?

She must have given some indication of her
confusion, for Caro wore an expression that suggested she was
preparing for a lengthy explanation.

“Colors can be labels,” Caro said. “Pink for
girls. Blue for boys. Red can mean anger or signify an emergency.
Purple can denote royalty. White’s for weddings. Black’s for
funerals—”

“In some Asian cultures white is the
traditional color for mourning,” Jay said.

“Okay, so I’m simplifying but you get the
picture, right?”

Jay nodded.

“Most people have favorite colors, too. For
example, mine is the same as yours. Purple.”

“What makes you think purple is my favorite
color?”

“Your iThings and your eReader are all
either purple or have purple covers.”

“I can see why you would think that, however
your deduction is faulty. I chose purple simply because a shop
assistant once told me that purple was feminine and still stylish
without being too girly, like pink.”

Tyler let out a little snort that sounded
smugly satisfied. “Sorry, sis. Seems you’re not so smart as you
think you are.”

“Okay then, smartass. What
is
Jay’s
favorite color?”

“Blue.”

Jay knew Tyler was thinking of the robe he’d
bought for her, and again, it was a logical assumption. In truth,
she liked the robe because Tyler had bought it for her, and
specifically chosen it to complement her eyes. The color had little
to do with the pleasure she’d displayed upon receiving the
gift.

“So…. You don’t have a favorite color?”

Again, Caro must have seen something in
Jay’s expression that she hadn’t realize she’d revealed. How
disconcerting to be so easily read. She was becoming more human by
the day.

“No. Color is simply a result of the
absorption and scattering properties of various materials, and the
varying incoming wavelengths of the light that illuminates those
materials. It neither pleases nor displeases me.”

Tyler pulled his hand from hers, and she
realized she’d disappointed him—perhaps even wounded him. She had
to fix this, had to make him understand what she’d felt upon
receiving his gift had not been faked. “I wasn’t pretending,” she
told him. “I love the robe because you thought about
me
when
you chose it. The color doesn’t matter. If you’d bought me one that
matched my hair, I’d have loved it just as much.”

His answering smile and the warmth of his
gaze told her he did understand. And she felt… relieved and
thrilled and content all at the same time when he draped an arm
about her shoulders and played with a lock of her hair. “I’d have
had a hard time finding anything to match this,” he said. “The
nearest thing in sleepwear would be boring old chocolate
brown.”

“There’s nothing boring about chocolate,”
Jay said. She’d recently developed an appreciation for chocolate
that bordered on greed—much to Tyler’s amusement.

Caro was still chewing over Jay’s
revelations. “Everyone has a favorite color,” she insisted. “It’s,
like, an unwritten law or something. What do you feel when you look
at certain colors? Don’t some please you more than others? And what
about combinations of colors? I mean, I haven’t seen you mixing
colors that make my eyes bleed, so it seems logical to assume you
have
some
sort of internal process for selecting
colors.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it
before.”

“You should,” Caro said. “Irrational likes
and dislikes and all our weird little quirks are an important part
of being human. They help you fit in.”

“I don’t care for the taste of pickles,” Jay
said. “I extract them from my burgers and give them to Tyler.”

“Well, that’s a good start, I guess.”

“But I find it wholly irrational that I
don’t care for pickles. I can consume and extract nutrients from
substances that would make a human very ill. Pickles provide
nutrients. I should not have such an irrational dislike.”

“Irrational is good,” Caro said. “Leave
rational to geeks and scientists.”

“Quit trying to change her, Caro. I happen
to like her warts and all.” Tyler’s voice had an edge to it.

“I assure you I don’t have any warts,” Jay
said.

“You’re impossible.” Caro sucked in a shaky
breath before exhaling noisily—noisily enough that Jay considered
monitoring her friend’s breathing rate to ensure her breathing was
not impaired. Oh. Perhaps that breath was meant to be a snort to
convey fond exasperation. Jay had not intended to be amusing. She’d
merely wanted to make it very clear she did
not
have any
warts.

“Pot, meet Kettle,” Tyler said, referencing
his sister’s comment about being impossible and provoking the
appearance of Caro’s tongue again. “Gee. Attractive, much? Give it
a rest, sis. It’s a wonder Jay puts up with you picking on her
about this sort of stuff. If you were
my
BFF, I’d have told
you to put a sock in it long before now.”

“You don’t think I’m picking on you, do you,
Jay?”

Jay observed the dismay flitting across
Caro’s face and hastened to reassure her. “Of course not. I find
your observations useful. And as you have suggested, I will
endeavor to ascertain which color or colors happen to please me the
most.”

“Betcha it’s purple,” Caro said. “No way
would you have kept buying purple electronics if you didn’t like
the color—even if it was an unconscious process that made you
choose it.”

Jay’s gaze flicked to Tyler, who was shaking
his head in mock-despair. “No pressure, mind. Or planting ideas in
her unconscious, or any underhanded tricks like that.”

Jay grinned at him, and he grinned back. And
as she gazed at his face—a face that had become so dear to her—it
occurred to her that she would not have to conduct any experiments
to ascertain her favorite color.

She already had one. Her favorite color was
brown—specifically the exact chocolate-brown shade of Tyler’s
eyes.

~~~

Michael had managed to coax Marissa from the
sanctuary of their bedroom, and the instant they walked into the
lounge, the easy banter between Tyler and his sister shriveled and
died. The atmosphere became so drenched with tension Jay could
almost feel it dancing across her skin.

Marissa lowered herself into the easy chair
kitty-corner to the three-seater couch that Tyler and Caro had
chosen, and a portion of Jay’s brain wandered off on a tangent.

Kitty-corner. Also known as
catty-corner.

The phrase tugged on her lips and made her
want to smile. The English language was peppered with words derived
from other languages that had been anglicized, and then evolved
still further until they became… whimsical. The evolution of
quatre
to cater, and then to catty or kitty in conjunction
with corner, was a perfect example of whimsy. In other
circumstances she would have shared her thoughts, curious to learn
what others thought. Here and now, such observations might be seen
as a clumsy attempt to lighten the mood so she kept them to
herself.

When no one seemed inclined to break the
increasingly awkward silence, she stood and rolled her shoulders as
though easing tense muscles. Stretching would have caused her
long-sleeved tee to ride up and show a strip of her bare belly.
Rolling her shoulders was more decorous in current company. Then,
to borrow one of Tyler’s favorite phrases when referring to his
sister, Jay “made a production” of fishing her iPod from her
pocket, clipping it to her the v-neck of her t-shirt, and fussing
with the ear-buds. “Who wants coffee?”

“I’d love one. Black, please.” Michael made
an effort to smile at her. She noticed it didn’t reach his eyes but
she appreciated the token gesture. It can’t have been easy for him,
caught in the middle between wife and son, damned either way. If
Tyler hadn’t been so adamant Jay accompany him things might not
have come to a head so quickly.

She turned her focus to Tyler and Caro.
“Coffee or sodas for you two?”

“Soda, please,” Tyler said. “Whatever’s in
the fridge.”

Caro wrinkled her nose and nibbled her
lip—classic indicators of indecision. “Coffee. Milk and two sugars,
please. It’s the only way I can stomach the stuff.”

“Then why drink it?”

“Soda’s for kids,” she said, her gaze
sliding to Tyler, daring him to comment.

“If you think drinking something you can’t
stand the taste of makes you a grown-up—” Tyler emphasized
“grown-up” with air quotes “—then go for it. Personally, I think it
makes you a dumbass.” He half-turned toward his mother, his
expression expectant, waiting for her to chide him for insulting
his sister.

Marissa didn’t react. Her gaze darted to Jay
and then slid away. “I’ve gone off coffee—even the smell of it
makes me nauseous. And I’m supposed to avoid caffeine.”

“Perhaps you’d prefer an herbal tea, Mrs.
Davidson.”

“We’ve run out of herbal tea.”

“I’ll see what I can rustle up.” Jay popped
in the ear-buds, thumbed up the volume on Pink’s Greatest Hits
album, and left the Davidson family to their forthcoming private
family discussion. If they hadn’t cleared the air by the time she’d
made coffee, she’d go for a run and check out her old
neighborhood.

A quick search of the pantry and cupboards
revealed Marissa had been correct: there was no herbal tea. Jay
searched for fresh ingredients to use as substitutes. Honey. A
lemon from the fruit bowl. Ginger was good for nausea.
Unfortunately there was none in the pantry, save for the ground
spice variety. No ginger in the fridge, either. Finally, in side
door of the upright freezer she got lucky and found frozen fresh
ginger in a Ziploc bag. It was old, covered in ice particles, but
it should do the trick. She broke off a knob and crushed it in her
fist to separate the fibrous flesh before setting it to steep in a
small pot of water on the range.