Radiant (18 page)

Mary rested her head on his shoulder.
"I had a good time."

"
Me, too," he said.

They
didn't move for a minute. Then, rather reluctantly, Mary pulled away. "I'll see you on Friday."

He nodded. Finally, he climbed into the Aston and started the
ignition. The engine growled. Mary watched him drive away. Even after the car was out of sight, she stood in the empty street for a while.

Mary
turned and headed for the front door. As she looked for her key again, she couldn't help but feel that there was something else she was forgetting. She had managed to get his blood. What else was there?

"
Crap!" she cried. "I still have his jacket!"

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- 1
8 -

Ghost

As Carter had said he would, he missed the whole week of school. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Classes dragged for ages. Even Art. Mary thought often about Carter. Actually, she thought about him all the time.

On Monday
before Art class, Mary sat next to Sienna. David was on an overnight trip with his hockey team, so it was just the two of them at their table.

"
Hey," Sienna said as she doodled in her sketchbook.

"
Hey," Mary said. She watched Sienna for a moment. "I'm sorry I called you a moron."

Sienna stopped drawing and looked at her. "What?"

"It was a while back," Mary said. "I don't think that at all, and I shouldn't have said it. I'm sorry."

Sienna stared at her. Then she shrugged. "It's okay. I forgive you."

Carter was right. Being forgiven really does feel good. "Can I ask you something?" Mary said.

"
Sure," Sienna said.

"
Am I…intimidating?" Mary asked. "Do I, you know, scare people?"

Sienna
said nothing for a moment. Then she put her pencil down. "A little, I guess. But not like freaky scary. You just…you don't take crap from anyone. But not in the fake, rebellious way that most kids do it, like they got something to prove. You're real, and people respect you a lot for that."

Mary wrinkled her brow.
"Really?"

Sienna nodded.
"I do. I know I'm such a gossip freak. I can't help it sometimes. But I don't want to be. I'm working on it. You kinda inspired me. And David helps keep me accountable."

Mary
stared at her for a moment. She was starting to see that Sienna was actually a pretty cool person.

"I need accountability
, too," Mary said. "If I start being scary, will you let me know? I don't want to be."

Sienna smiled. "Sure."

After school one day, Mary changed into regular clothes again and took the bus to the university. But rather than go back to the jack ugly Sci-Tech building, Drew had emailed her to meet him at a coffee shop near campus. He sat at a table in the corner, wearing a t-shirt this time that said, "I'm an Astronomer. Not an Astrologer. Learn the Difference."

He looked up when
he saw her coming. "Hey."

"
Hey," she said as she sat across from him. "You got those blood test results back quick. I wasn't expecting to hear from you for a couple weeks."

"
I have a friend who works at a lab, and she owed me a favor." He pulled out a stack of papers from his backpack. "Well, your friend's really healthy. I don't think he's gonna die of heart disease any time soon."

"
What else? Did you find anything unusual?" She lowered her voice. "Anything
alien
?"

"
Not from just the blood test. Which is why I also asked my friend to do a DNA test," he said as he flipped to the middle of the paper stack. "He sorta has an extra pair of chromosomes."

"
What do you mean
sorta
?" Mary asked.

"
I mean just that." He turned the papers around and showed her what looked like an X-ray of a bunch of little bones. "Humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. Twenty-two autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. So, forty-six in all."

Mary stared at him blankly.

"Just hang with me for a moment," he said. "Forty-six for humans. That's the magic number, got it?"

"
Got it," she said.

"
Your friend
sorta
has two more," he continued. "Here, the analysis picked up something, but it's not conclusive. They're like shadows or ghosts of chromosomes."

"
Okay," she said. "What's wrong with having more chromosomes?"

"
Remember the magic number?" he asked. "Humans have
forty-six
. Not forty-four. Not forty-eight. People with one extra chromosome, depending on where it is, have things like Down Syndrome. But this is a full pair. Having more or fewer chromosome pairs means you're not human. You're wheat. Or an earthworm. Or a goldfish. Got it? But these are only
sorta
there. And here's the really weird part. All the other chromosomes seem to be responding to these ghosts at some subatomic frequency."

Blank stares from Mary again
. She actually made good grades in science, but this was a little over her head.

Drew tapped his hand on the papers
, obviously thinking of how to dumb down the explanation for her. "It's like…it's like music. You hear bad music, you get irritated. You hear good music, you listen in. These ghosts are giving out music that the other chromosomes like. Whatever mutations or genetic anomalies that he has are getting in line. He's like an optimal human being."

"
They're healing him," she said to herself.

Drew continued,
"Granted, this is just one test. And there wasn't a lot of blood to work with. I wish I could get more samples from him. Hair. Urine. Skin. Hell, I'd love to put him through an MRI and see what his brain is like."

Mary frowned.
"I'm not going to ask him to pee into a cup."

Drew shrugged and arranged the paper stack.
"Anyway, this is what I found with what you gave me. Nothing conclusive. But wow. Anyway, now we need to figure out a way to get rid of this thing."

Mary said nothing.

Drew raised an eyebrow. "You still wanna help your friend, don't you?"

"
Yeah," she said hesitantly. "But…I don't know now."

"
What do you mean you don't know now?" he asked.

"
Well…it's kinda…complicated," she said.

Drew stared at her.
"You're not, like,
in love
with it. Are you?"

"
No!" she said quickly. "I mean—"

"
Mary," he said. "This thing isn't human. It needs to be studied in a lab, not out and about possessing human hosts. How would you like it if some kind of alien parasite or something attached itself to your brain and made you do whatever it wanted?"

"
I wouldn't like that," she said.

"
Then, there you go," he said. "I've got to get to work. But I'll look into some stuff and let you know if I come across anything. And you'll let me know of anything, right?"

She nodded.
"All right. Thanks, Drew."

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-
19 -

Translation

Friday finally came. Mary and Mom ate dinner with Ba before Mom went to work.

"
I spoke with Mrs. Carmichael a little yesterday," Mom said as she poked at the last of her food. She had liked the leftovers from Spice more than she had admitted. Mary figured that out when Mom showed up that evening with containers of Indian food instead of the usual Vietnamese fare.

"
Who?" Mary asked.

"
Scotty's mother," Mom said. "You and Carter were in his room that night at the hospital."

"
Oh," Mary said, poking at her own food. "How is he?"

"
He went home," she answered.

Mary looked at her
, surprised.

"
That's wonderful!" Ba said. "It's always nice to hear when the little ones are well enough to go home."

"
The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with him," Mom said. "Last week, he was dying. But yesterday when he left, he ate like a horse and laughed all the way out the door." She looked at Mary again. "Are you sure Carter didn't do anything to him?"

That was such a loaded question. Surely, Scotty would
've told them everything. "Didn't you ask the boy?" Mary asked.

Mom nodded.
"He said he didn't remember seeing either of you."

Mary barely breathed a sigh of relief. She could stick with the story that
Carter gave that night. But how could Scotty
not
remember that?

Mary shrugged.
"Like we said, he was asleep when we saw him."

Mom didn
't look entirely convinced. But she didn't press the matter further.

After Mom left for the hospital
, Mary stayed to play a round of gin with Ba, Julia, and Emma. Then, she went home.

At nine o'clock
, the buzzer rang. Mary mowed down a neighbor to answer the front door.

"
Good evening, Mary," Carter greeted politely.

He didn
't look like James Bond tonight, but it didn't matter. She didn't realize until that moment that she had really missed seeing him. But she composed herself. "Hey. So, where did you want to talk?"

He looked around.
"If we were at school, I'd say the Art room. Is there some place we can go where we won't be disturbed?"

Mary thought for a moment.
"Let's go to the roof. That way, we won't break Mom's rule about the apartment."

"
That's fine," he said. "But you will need a coat. And shoes with socks."

She looked at him curiously.

"You asked for the truth, did you not?" he said.

"
All right," she said. While he waited in the hall, she switched out her flip-flops for her sneakers and grabbed her jacket from the closet. "How's this?" she asked when she returned to the hall.

"
That should be fine," he said.

As usual, no
one else was on the roof.

"
All right. Now what?" she asked.

Carter
moved towards her and wrapped his arms around her.

"
Whoa, what are you doing?" she asked.

"
My apologies," he said. "But I've not done this with another person before. You may want to put your hands on me, too. It will be easier the more we're touching."

She looked at him,
seeing if he was trying to mess with her. He certainly seemed serious enough. Finally, she placed her arms around his shoulders.

"
All right," he said. "Hold on."

Mary began to ask him to hold on for what. Then, her weight was gone.
It was like when an elevator starts going down. But the feeling didn't go away, like gravity had been shut off. Mary also couldn't understand what she was seeing. There was the city, but it was far away, like looking at it from an airplane. There was also water, though she couldn't tell if it was from a lake or an ocean, or even if she was standing next to a sink and watching it drip each individual drop. There were faces, but no features. Not even skin color. And there were stars. Millions of them. More than Mary had ever seen in all her life. She couldn't tell how much time had gone by. Seconds? Minutes? Days? Weeks? Years? Lifetimes? It was like time was switched off along with gravity.

And
just like that, everything felt normal again. Gravity, time, and the colors all returned to their proper places. Mary felt the ground beneath their feet and saw an open, dusky sky above.

Carter
let her go and stepped back. The sandy, rocky ground grumbled beneath his feet. That was the only sound just then. No cars. No sirens. No video game explosions. Mary never knew that quiet could seem so loud before. The cold air nipped at her skin. Mary spotted some bristly bushes just behind Carter. There was also a giant rock. And not far away was a…cactus?

"
Where are we?" she finally managed to say.

"
Arizona," he said. "Watch your step. It's a long way down."

Mary stared at him. Then cautiously, s
he turned and gasped. Yawning before her was a massive chasm in the earth. At the bottom, she could faintly make out a thin line of water that was a river.