Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) (12 page)

“
Jade,” I say, filling in his unfinished sentence. “It’s cool.”

“
Okay,” he says, obviously relieved.

Jade drops me off and says
he’ll be back in an hour to hang with the family. He seems anxious to get back to his house and I don’t blame him. Being alone is rare for both of us lately.

I don’t have to knock when I get to the door because it’s open, and I swear, my mom would be able to know I was in her house if she was in Thailand.
“Sophie?” she yells from the kitchen. “Come on in, I’m making lunch. You want anything?”

My hands fumble with the buttons of my trench coat. I’m su
ddenly nervous to be back here but it’s not the normal gut-wrenching nerves I’m accustomed to. The familiar feeling that at any moment Mom will snap and the illusion of a family she’s kept together for however long this time dissolves. I’m scared that they’ll know. I mean, she’s still my mother, right? Aren’t there some maternal-instinct rules on this type of thing?

Leena finds me first, slamming into my legs and nearly knocking me over.

“You smell funny,” she says.

I bend down to get a good look at her. She still has her chubby, little girl cheeks dotted with freckles but she’s taller.
“Funny?” I ask.

She nods, grabbing my hand.
“Like mud.” She tugs me forward. “Want to play with Beanie Babies?”

Maybe she’s noticed something different about
me but at least she doesn’t seem to dwell on it.

“
Maybe later,” I say. “I have to talk to Mommy for a little while.”

She shrugs before heading back into the living room.

Mom is standing over the stove when I enter the kitchen, her hair swept up in a ponytail. Surprisingly, she’s wearing jeans and a simple top; something I haven’t seen her wear in a long time. Then again, ever since the accident–well, both of them. Mine and Stevie’s–she’s done a lot of things I’ve never seen her do. Like tell me to come into the kitchen because she’s making lunch, for example.

“
So?” she asks, turning only slightly away from a pot of boiling water. Her voice isn’t too intense and I’m grateful. It sounds like bubbles being blown past my ears.

“
What?” I ask.

“
You want any?” she asks, opening a cabinet and shaking a box of pasta in front of her. “Because if not I won’t make it all.”

“
No thanks,” I say, pushing away the fact that I haven’t been hungry or thirsty since yesterday when I woke up.

“
Well, sit down,” she says, pointing to the table without looking at it or me.

I sling my coat and bag over a chair and sit, declining again when Mom asks if I want anything to drink. She ignores me.

“Where is everyone?” I ask.

“
Adam’s at work.” She shrugs. “If I’d known you were coming sooner, he would have been able to take off. And Laura’s off running errands.”

My heart sinks. I miss them, and now I won’t be able to see them until I come back.

If
you come back, silly girl.
Michael’s voice echoes somewhere in the back of my head and I’m reminded for the first time today about the dream. Was it only a memory? Is it just his remaining blood in my system doing this or is it something more, something worse?

“
Sophie?” Mom is asking, waving a hand in front of my face.

“
Sorry,” I say. “What?”

Mom leans back in her chair.
“So Jade told me how you’re going on tour,” she says, her voice dripping with excitement. Only I don’t think my mom knows how to be excited for me, so it comes off kind of fake and odd-sounding. “When do you guys leave?”

“
Sunday.”

“
Next Sunday?” she asks.

“
No, this Sunday.”

“
Well that’s soon, isn’t it?” Mom smiles. “Is Myles going too?”

I stare down at the mug she set in front of me. It’s got a rainbow painted on the side and a chip in the handle. I’ve used it since I was in middle school.

“No,” I almost whisper.

Myles knew who my family was, every one of us, before I even knew about his existence. I wrap my hands around the mug.

“Oh, that’s a shame, dear!” She reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. My body still stiffens when she tries to touch me; I don’t think I’ll ever get over that. “But you’ll still have a great time!”

I thought that seeing my mom now, like this, as the
new
me, would be somehow different. Maybe she would sense something about me that told her I was stronger than she thought, that she wouldn’t be as inclined to prove how much she cares by skin to skin contact. But I was wrong. To her, nothing about me has changed and though I can’t say I’m exactly surprised that she hasn’t noticed when something about me is irreversibly and undeniably different, I still have a hard time believing it.

“
Can you tell me who my dad was?” It leaves my mouth before it’s even fully formed in my mind. It’s out there, hanging between us, and I know I’ve probably ruined everything by asking this one question I stopped asking when I was little.

I can see every muscle in my mother’s face tighten underneath her tanned skin. Her biceps clench a
nd then relax. Her lips tighten and her eyes get wide. It all happens in the span of a few milliseconds, but I see it all as if it were a feature length film.

“
Why would you want to know that?” Mom attempts smiling again but it’s useless.

I trace the paisley design on the tablecloth, trying to appear casual.
“It’s just that I’m starting this new phase in my life...” I start. “I want everything from the previous chapter tied up.”

I chance looking at her and surprisingly, she doesn
’t look like she wants to tear my head off and throw it across the room. “I don’t feel like I can move on with my life not knowing this huge chunk of it, you know?”

Mom
’s hands flatten on top of the table and she brings them in front of her, pretending to stare at her nails before looking back at me. “Your father...” she starts, but she can’t seem to find the words. “Are you sure you want to know?”

For a moment, I think about retracting the question. If I really wanted to know, I could in theory
, ask Myles. But I don’t think I’d be able to do it and even if I could, would I trust anything that came out of his mouth?

“
Yes,” I say.

She takes in a deep breath, picks up her mug a few times without drinking anything.
“He left when you were very young,” she finally decides. “Without telling me. Without leaving any phone numbers or addresses, but you know all that.” She looks down at the table. “He didn’t have any relatives I could call. He didn’t have any family that I knew of.” Her eyes are back on mine. “He just vanished. Completely.”

“
Why don’t we have any pictures of him?” I ask.

“
I threw them all away.”

I blink a few times.
“Every single one?”

She lets out a huff of a breath.
“I might have kept one.”

I gulp.
“Do you know where it is?”

Her mouth screws up in a twist of sadness and maybe even fear.
“What do you want to see that for?” she asks. She’s trying to sound like her normal, semi-bitchy self, but the words are heavy with unshed tears. “He doesn’t care about you,” she says. “I told you, he just left. What kind of a father does that?”

I have to hold back my own tears now. She has no clue. Not a single one as to what actually happened to him. That he died. That he left his family and died never seeing them again because he wanted to protect us. Me.

“I’d just like to see it,” I say. “That’s all.”

I
’ve asked her in the past, but every time I did, she told me that there were no pictures. Now, suddenly there is one. I can place a face to the other half that made me.

“
Alright,” she says. “But you have to give it back.”

“
Sure,” I say.

Mom stands and pushes her chair out from the table.
“It’s the only one,” she reminds me. “It’s all there is left.”

She reaches above the stove, over the cabinets hanging above it, and takes a small book that must have been
lying flat so no one could see it. When she comes back to the table and flips through the pages, I can see that it’s an empty address book. She stops turning the pages when she gets to an old, faded photograph. I can tell how hard it is for her to not look at as she hands it to me but I think it might be harder for her to look.

It’s
hard enough for me. The man staring back at me has green eyes, like me and Jade, and light blond hair sticking out from a baseball cap. He’s wearing a sweatshirt and standing on some kind of a dock, a grey sky behind him as darker grey waves surround the rest of the background. I think he has a nice smile, something warm that I’ve seen in Jade a few times, when he’s been really happy.

“
His name was Ryan,” Mom says.

I glance at her, and she’s gone back to the stove so she can drain her pasta. Steam flows from the pot and into her face as she pours the boiling water out into the sink. I look back at the photo.

“I’m sorry, Ryan,” I whisper, just low enough so she can’t hear.

Once she has food on plates, she takes the picture from my hands and puts it awa
y in the address book, placing it above the stove again. “Don’t think about him anymore,” she says, setting down two plates, one for her and one for Leena. “He doesn’t think about you, so don’t think about him. Okay?”

“
Okay,” I choke out.
I’m sorry, Mom.

***

Jade comes back earlier than he said he would and I’m grateful. Going from having him around 24/7 to not having him near for a whole hour is weird and I don’t know if it’s a sensitive vampire thing or because everything in my life and everything I thought I knew has changed. Probably both. But we hang around the house for a little while longer, catching up the best we can with Leena and Mom without actually telling them anything.

Then we leave, making excuses about having to be up early the next day. We don’t admit to each other the real reason: that it’s hard being around
humans...humans who don’t know.

When we get back to my apartment, I lug the suitcase out of my closet, deciding that keeping busy is the best way to ignore the image of Ryan,
the who that now has a face that looks a lot like mine. Green eyes, small nose. I’m half his and he’s dead.

Looking at my clothes proves to be harder than I thought. It
’s not just picking what I should pack for a few weeks of touring around in a bus and it’s not trying to fit it all into one suitcase. It’s because these are all clothes I’ve worn tons of times before. Before I was turned. Before I came here. Before I was expected to act normal when nothing will ever be normal again.

“
You still packing?” Jade asks from the doorway.

My hands are resting on the dresser.
“I–” I swallow. “I don’t know where to start.”

Jade comes i
nto the room and moves past me and into my sock drawer. “It’s not too bad when you just think about how many days you’ll be there, and how many times you’ll realistically be able to wash your clothes.”

I nod.
“Right.”

He scoops up an armful of assorted colored socks and drops them on the bed.
“That looks about right.”

“
Great,” I say, letting myself relax a little. “Now my feet are covered.”

Jade goes i
nto the closet and inspects the clothing hanging up in there. “Yeah yeah,” he says. “Just match around the same amount of underwear for me, will you? I don’t want to be touching that business.”

I do as he says, scooping up underwear an
d placing it next to the socks.

Jade returns to the bed with clothing on hangers, and they clink together as he drops them onto the bed.
“There,” he says. “Now all you have to worry about is toiletries and extra shit like that.”

He sits on the bed so I do too. We start folding and rolling up everything so it
’ll fit into the suitcase. “So,” he says after a while. “How are you feeling about all this?”

I shrug.
“Nervous,” I admit. “Nervous on more than one level.” I think about telling him about the photo, about what Myles told me, about everything, but it’s so calm that I can’t bring myself to end the peace.

Jade smiles a little.
“Yeah, me too.” He flips some hair out of his face. “Did you ask Myles about the whole...evil guy situation?”

I swallow
. Yeah. Among other things. But I’m just barely hanging onto all of those other ideas myself. I can’t tell Jade. “Yeah,” I say. “Apparently, there’re people keeping watch.” I laugh a little. “And that maybe he just doesn’t want to kill me anymore.”