Inheritance (32 page)

“Hey,” he said, his face expressionless.

“Hey,” she answered.

Some of his teammates continued toward the locker room, but a few hung back until David said, “I’ll be there in a minute.” They nodded to him—brief, masculine nods that made Reese aware of exactly how far outside of his world she was at that moment—and left them alone in the hallway.

She plunged ahead before she could lose her nerve. “I’m sorry
I didn’t tell you what happened from the beginning. I should have. It just freaked me out so much and I couldn’t deal with it right then. I can show you what happened. Will you let me?” She held out her hand and he looked at it as if it contained a weapon. Her face burned, but she kept her hand out, her fingers curled up from her palm.

Just when she thought he was never going to accept her offer, he stepped forward. He took her hand.

She showed him everything. She made sure she left nothing out, and she was more open with him than she ever had been. In a way she felt as if she was stripping off all her clothes in the middle of the school hallway, and even though she was afraid he would hate what he saw, she did it anyway. Through his hand she sensed his emotions changing as she took him through her memories. At first he was tense and defensive, but gradually the tension was replaced with sadness. When it was over he let go of her and she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he said in a low voice. “I’m not angry that you didn’t tell me. Not anymore.”

“Really?” she said hopefully. “Then we’re okay?”

He sighed. “No.”

Her heart seemed to stop. “What? What do you mean?”

He wouldn’t meet her gaze. His eyes seemed fixed on some point over her left shoulder. “I can’t do this. I can’t deal with the way people talk about us. About me.”

“You mean the assholes on the Internet? You can’t listen to them. You told me that yourself.”

He shook his head. “Not only them. People at school. Everywhere.” He finally looked at her, and he was wrecked. There was
pain in his eyes, desperation in the set of his mouth. He took a step closer, lowering his voice into an intense whisper. “Those photos made you look like a cheater, but they made me look like an idiot. And I know you have feelings for her. Even if you didn’t kiss her last Saturday, you kissed her before. I
remember
how you felt about kissing her. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”

She flinched. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and it sounded ridiculously inadequate—like attempting to apply a Band-Aid over a chest wound.

“I can’t compete with her.” David rubbed a hand over his face and pushed his damp hair back. “I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have to.”

“You’re not competing with her,” she insisted. It came out sounding like a shriek. She moderated her voice. “I want to be with
you
.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that, but you have feelings for her too.” His jaw clenched.

Heat flushed her body, and suddenly she was angry—angry at herself, angry at David, angry at Amber. “Why can’t you hear me? I have feelings for
you
. I may be the most inarticulate person on the planet when it comes to telling you how I feel, but I don’t have to tell you. You
know
. I showed you everything, and you know that I want to be with you—not with her. I don’t trust her. I trust you. I’m in—” She stumbled over the words and tried again. “I’m in love with you.”

David’s cheeks darkened. “Reese…”

“Shouldn’t the way I feel about you be more important than what other people think?” She reached for his hands. He was a
mess of conflicting emotions: anguish and hope and brittle self-doubt. She had never felt him like that before, his conscious self sharp as crystal.
David
, she thought.
I’m in love with you.

I know
, he told her.

Isn’t that enough?

“You’re in love with her too,” he said softly. “It’s not okay with me.”

She felt like she was about to fall off a tightrope. “Are you breaking up with me?” she asked in a small voice.

He looked somewhat startled. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

She pulled away from him, backing up until she hit the wall, the cinder blocks cool against her sweaty palms. She was dizzy. Everything felt unreal: the glare of the fluorescent overhead lights, the shadows they cast over David’s face, the dark doorway to the boys’ locker room down the hall.

His cleats clicked on the floor as he shifted in place. “It’s not like I don’t ever want to see you again. We have to do this—this thing on Saturday. We have to talk about all that. But maybe we should take a couple of days to think about how to handle it. Okay?”

The idea of having to continue their charade with Mr. Hernandez, of taking more lessons with Eres Tilhar, of being with David when she wasn’t
with
him at all—it made panic explode inside her. She couldn’t do it.

“I know we can still be friends,” he was saying. “Can’t we go back to that?”

She was about to start crying at any second. “Yeah,” she choked out. “Of course.” And then she turned so he wouldn’t see the tears spill from her eyes, and picked up her backpack and
slung it awkwardly over one shoulder. She tried not to stumble as she walked away. He didn’t call her back.

She pushed through the front doors of the school half-blinded by tears. She was assaulted by flashbulbs as the door slammed shut behind her.

She recoiled in shock, having forgotten that the photographers would be out there. But there were more than photographers; there were protesters. They shouted at her, their voices rising in a barrage of demands, and she remembered at that instant that she was supposed to wait inside the school for her mom’s phone call. She backed away and reached for the door handle, but it wouldn’t open. She tugged at it, but it didn’t budge. She turned her back to the crowd and tried the other door. It was locked too.

Of course. The school doors were locked after 5:00
PM
. She banged on the door frantically as the shouts of the protesters rose, but nobody came. Could they not hear her?

She turned around slowly. Down on the sidewalk, police barricades kept the people back on two sides. Paparazzi were jammed in at the front. On the right were demonstrators she vaguely recognized from the pier: men and women holding signs about the new world order. New signs had been added too, and as she read the words her stomach seemed to shrink into a tight fist.

TRAITOR.

HUMAN RACE NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?

HOMOSEXUALS ARE POSSESSED BY ALIENS!

GOD HATES FAGS. FAGS = IMRIA. GOD HATES IMRIA.

On the left side were the Imria supporters with their
WELCOME TO EARTH
signs, but a new group had joined them. They waved rainbow flags and carried signs that declared
GAY RIGHTS DON’T STOP WITH HUMANITY
. One was done up with glitter and neon paint and stated
ALIENS ARE FABULOUS!

Reese’s phone rang, and she pulled it out of her pocket in relief. “Mom, are you here?”

“I’m across the street by the café. I can’t turn. There’s too much police presence. Where are you?”

“I’m on the school steps. I’ll come to you.” She hung up and repocketed her phone before heading down the steps. As she approached the two mobs of demonstrators their chants grew louder, but she kept her gaze straight ahead, not looking directly at anyone. She focused on herself, pushing back the waves of ferocity on the right and the pressure of curiosity on the left. She was on the sidewalk now. She only had to cross the street, passing the police who were watching her with expressionless eyes. Her mom was barely a block away, but getting to the Prius felt like navigating through a mile-long obstacle course. By the time she reached the car and slid inside, she was wired and breathless.

“Are you okay?” her mom asked, pulling the car around the corner onto Eighteenth Street.

“Yeah,” she said, still clutching her backpack. “Some of those people are crazy.”

“You can’t pay any attention to what those homophobes are saying,” her mom said grimly. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing.”

Reese glanced at her mom in surprise. When they had parted
that morning, they hadn’t been on the best of terms; Reese knew her mom was still mad at her about the argument she’d had with her dad. Her mom’s apparent change of heart startled a question out of her that she hadn’t even known she wanted to ask. “You don’t think I’m a freak for dating an alien?”

Her mom shook her head decisively. “No, honey. I don’t.” Her mom pulled the car to a stop at the red light and turned to her, squeezing her knee. “You’re not a freak. You’re my daughter and I love you.”

Reese hugged her backpack closer, trying to swallow the tears that kept pricking at her eyes. “Thanks, Mom.”

Her mom sighed and turned back to the street. “But you’re still grounded for what you said to your dad.”

Given the fact that David had just dumped her and
paparazzi kept tailing her, Reese decided that being grounded wasn’t the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world was being forced to go to school.

In the hallways, students snickered at her behind their hands. The story of David breaking up with her outside the boys’ locker room had spread quicker than wildfire. “She deserved it,” some people said loud enough for her to hear as she walked past. She tried to ignore them, but it was hard, because to some degree she agreed.

David made no attempt to talk to her about their potential trip to the UN or what they would do on Saturday when it came time to deliver those photos of the adaptation chamber to Mr.
Hernandez. She had no idea if David had truly asked Eres Tilhar about the chamber or if he had been lying to Mr. Hernandez. She knew she should ask him. The situation with the Imria and CASS was much bigger than her breakup with David, but she couldn’t bring herself to face him yet. Not when he had responded to her revelation that she was in love with him by telling her
I know
. That hurt more than anything else.

On Wednesday night she overheard her parents on the phone with David’s parents, discussing Dr. Brand’s invitation to bring them all to New York. Reese was in the living room watching a DVD of a zombie movie instead of doing her homework, but as soon as she realized what her parents were talking about, she fled upstairs to her room. She loaded the same movie onto her laptop and plugged in her headphones so she could drown out any sound of the phone call. There was something soothing about the fake mayhem: the hordes of zombies lurching across fields and parking lots; the heroes with their makeshift weapons fighting them back. It was black-and-white, survival of the fittest. There was nothing debatable about it.

She fell asleep with the movie playing, only to awaken with a start several hours later. A high-pitched, ear-popping alarm was beeping over and over. The smoke detector. She sat up, heart pounding as she blinked in the light of her bedside lamp. Her headphones fell out of her ears, making the noise even louder. The computer screen was blank.

She smelled something burning.

She scrambled to her feet and ran to the door, pulling it open. Across the hall her mom rushed out of her room.

“Reese, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Where’s Dad?” They looked down the stairwell at the same time, and at the bottom there was an orange flickering light.

“Oh my God,” her mom said. She raced down the stairs, calling back, “Reese, stay up there!”

Reese didn’t obey. She followed and saw her father coming from the kitchen with a fire extinguisher. “Go outside!” he cried. “It’s in the living room.” The smoke was thicker down here, and Reese covered her nose and mouth with her arm as she looked through the archway into the living room. The rug was on fire, flames billowing bright orange and sending hot, gasoline-scented fumes toward the hallway. Something glittered on the floor, and as Reese stared, transfixed by the fire, she realized it was shattered glass.

Her mom seized her by the arm and pushed her toward the front door. “Move!”

Reese saw her dad pull the pin on the fire extinguisher and a spray of white foam launched at the flames. “What about Dad? Is he coming?”

“He’s coming,” her mom said, grabbing her purse off the hall tree. She opened the door. “Go!” she ordered.

Outside the air was fresh and cool, and as Reese went down the front steps Agent Forrestal came barreling up. She heard her mom talking to him in frantic tones as the shrieking of the fire alarm receded. At the bottom of the steps she turned to look back at the house. Agent Forrestal had gone inside, and her mom was coming down to the street. The living room window—illuminated by the dying glow of the fire—was broken. Dread
slid down her back, vicious and cold. Someone had thrown something through the window on purpose. That’s what the glass on the carpet was from.
Who would do that?

She didn’t have to guess for long, because her dad and Agent Forrestal soon emerged from the house together. Her dad hurried down the steps toward her and her mom and said, “The fire extinguisher’s empty. I got most of it, but the alarm’s still going off.”