Thumped (7 page)

I’M SPEECHLESS.

I can’t believe my husband just did that. We’ve always had a special if not traditional matrimonial bond. All this time I thought I was protecting
him
by pretending.

“Harmony.”

I can’t bring myself to look at Jondoe. Maybe it’s unfair, but I have to ask: If he really cared, wouldn’t he have jumped first?

Jondoe crouches down and puts his hand on my knee. I shrink at his touch.

“Please don’t.” I clutch the unopened canvas bag to my chest like child would hug a rag doll.

“But . . .” he splutters. “I’m just so happy to see you. . . .”

Melody puts an arm around me, as if to shield me from his advances.

“Not now, Jondoe.”

“But it’s not like that!”

“I know,” Melody says. “But I think this reunion is just a little more than my sister can handle right now.”

She’s right. I close my eyes and take comfort in her company. I try to forget there’s anyone else in this cabin but the two of us. My sister and me.

NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING FOR THE REST OF THE TRIP BACK TO
Princeton. I assume Harmony and Jondoe are lost in their own thoughts, as I am in mine.
What’s happening to Ram? What will happen with Harmony, Jondoe, and the twins?
And finally, reluctantly,
What has happened with Zen and Ventura?

Once inside my house, I turn to Jondoe.

“Can you give us some time alone?”

Harmony is totally closed off. She drops the canvas rucksack onto the kitchen countertop, hugs her belly, keeps her eyes to the floor.

“Sure,” he says, trying to paste on a cheerful smile. “Whatever Harmony needs! I’ll be in my room!” He slams the door behind him harder than necessary.

“His room?” Harmony asks.

I explain that my house has served as Jondoe’s unofficial home base ever since she went back to Goodside.

“It was good for keeping up appearances,” I say. “He also thought that you’d eventually come around to leaving Goodside and that this would be the first place you’d show up. He wanted to be here when you did.”

Harmony nods slowly. “Well, he was right.”

“I guess he was.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” shouts Jondoe from the opposite side of the wall.

Harmony’s mouth twitches. I take her by the arm and lead her to my parents’ bedroom on the opposite side of the house where we can talk in private.

“Jondoe can’t hear us in here.”

Harmony takes in the perfectly unrumpled bed, the clutter-free if dusty dressers and beside tables, the foto collage with pictures of me that are no less than two years old.

“Where are your parents?” she asks.

“Oh, they’re off building their brand,” I say, not really wanting to elaborate.

After I got famous, requests came in from desperate parents all over the country begging Ash and Ty to share their secrets for raising a super-successful Surrogette—like me. Thus, BestEgg was born, a private counseling service “empowering girls to maximize their financial and reproductive potential.” My parents travel all over the country developing personalized training programs “from infancy to puberty” that will transform anyone’s daughter into a prime candidate for a triple-platinum-level Conception Contract—like mine. In addition to the income they earn as counselors, my parents get a finder’s fee for referring the most reproaesthetical girls to Lib. Lib, in turn, posts the top profiles on Hatched.com, his subscription-only site for potential parental units shopping around for their perfect Surrogette.

“You haven’t told them the truth?” Harmony asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed that hasn’t been slept in for months.

“No,” I say. “They’re actually avoiding me until after I deliver. They’re afraid of Phantom Grandparent Syndrome.”

“What?”

It’s not surprising that she hasn’t heard of this relatively new phenomenon. Even with the suggested regimen of therapeutic and pharmaceutical interventions, many RePros’ parents find themselves inexplicably saddened by the giving away of what would have been their grandchildren. The shock of their own conflicted feelings has even inspired Ash and Ty to develop a special seminar, “Giving Up Your Grandchild, Giving Up the Guilt.” That Ash and Ty are genuinely afraid of getting all cradlegrabby is baffling to me, because they’ve never really liked being around kids. Myself included.

I try not to think too much about how they’ll react when they find out I’ve betrayed my brand.

And theirs.

I eagerly change the subject, not that the next topic is any easier than the last.

“What’s your plan?”

“My plan?”

Okay. Maybe it was unreasonable for me to think that Harmony had figured this all out. After all, it’s only been about a half hour since she decided to leave behind the only life she has ever known, and everything she has been brought up to be and to believe.

“I’m thrilled that you’re here, it’s what I’ve always wanted,” I say. “I just wish you had made the decision sooner. So we could have, you know, prepared for the twins’ arrival. . . .”

Harmony nods once but doesn’t say anything.

As calm as I’m trying to appear on the outside, I’m for seriously freaking out on the inside. She is married to one man and carrying the twins of another. And now she’s got two new humans on the way with absolutely no plan for what to do with them after they arrive. Harmony seems about as ready to deliver her twins as
I
am, which is totally wanked because my twins are high-tech holograms and hers are, like, real human beings. We’re all liars in this, but Harmony’s deception runs deeper because she’s got two innocent lives to consider.

“What do you think will happen to Ram in Goodside?” I ask.

“I hope they’ll just let him go,” she says, her forehead furrowed with worry. “He
is
my husband. And I
am
going to have these babies very soon.”

I’m almost afraid to ask this question. But if I don’t do it now, I never will.

“He knows the twins aren’t his, right?”

Harmony shrugs with a nonchalance that is at odds with the subject matter.

“He never asked.”

“He never asked?” I’m losing it. “HE NEVER ASKED?”

Harmony snaps into focus and fixes me with a serious look. “He’s my husband, Melody,” she says sharply. “He shouldn’t have to ask.”

Could Ram really convince himself he’s the father? Does his denial run that deep? I’ve never asked for the details of what happened on their honeymoon—the one and only night Harmony and Ram slept in the same bed—but I’m pretty sure they were fully clothed the whole time. Only Jondoe could successfully bump under those impossible circumstances, and he apparently didn’t need to go to such heroic lengths to do so.

“What about Jondoe?” Harmony asks. “Does he know?”

“Of course he knows! He’s always known. Why do you think he tried to contact you so many times? I’ve spent the last eight months putting up with his brokenhearted moping over what he knows.”

He’s written sonnets. He’s composed love songs. I can’t tolerate Jondoe when he gets all emo over Harmony because if I let him start, he’ll never stop.

She rubs her belly. “He’s concerned about the twins then.”

“He’s concerned about
you
,” I say. “And I am too. We need to figure this all out, Harmony. As you just said, you could deliver any day now. . . .”

Harmony yawns, grabbing at the weighty fabric of her maternity gown. “Right now I need to get out of this dress and get some rest.”

I pull at the fabric of my copycat version of her same dress. “Me too,” I say, now yawning also. “I’ll bring you a change of clothes and everything you need.”

Harmony purses her lips.

“What?” I ask.

“No one person can provide everything I need,” she says with a sad smile.

“Then it’s a good thing we’re all in this together.”

Harmony yawns again. “We’ll work it out tomorrow.”

I don’t like the idea of another day going by without a plan. But Harmony does seem too weary to think straight.

“Jondoe. Ram. The twins. Everything.” She presses her palms together. “I promise.”

I want to believe her more than I actually do.

I’M MAKING IMPOSSIBLE PROMISES TO MY SISTER WHEN—OH
my grace—I feel it.

I feel God laying a message in my heart. I’m warm all over, as if a sunbeam has passed over me, though it’s as black as soot outside. This is the last time it will be like this between Melody and me. Good, bad, a little bit of both . . . change is coming.

The twins thump my belly from the inside. They must feel it too.

I take my sister’s hands in mine. She looks startled at first because neither of us are the touchy-feely type. After countless hours at work in the fields and in the barns, my hands will always be rougher than hers. It’s one of the few differences in appearance that the press loves to point out about us. I also have freckles smattered across my nose. And until very recently, the braid I’d been growing since the day we were born.

Melody’s face relaxes and a look crosses her face that resembles something like relief.

“Love you,” I say, squeezing her smooth, uncalloused fingers.

“Love you too,” she says, squeezing back.

This is the first time we’ve ever said those words to each other. We’ve felt it but have never said it. Melody has kept her feelings to herself because she’s not the emotional type. And I’ve kept my feelings to myself because I guess there’s still part of me that believes my “godfreakiness” could scare her away. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever said those words out loud to anyone, though I’ve imagined saying them many, many times to someone else . . . and with an entirely different meaning altogether.

I watch Melody as she walks down the hall and pauses at Jondoe’s door. She raps a knuckle on the wood twice before entering. She’s probably telling him to leave me alone.

How strange it is, how not even a year ago my sister didn’t exist to me.

Neither did Jondoe.

Nor the twins.

The Bible says that nothing on earth remains the same, only God is unchanging. And at this point in time, that’s one verse I’m still inclined to believe.

OH, WHAT A SURPRISE. JONDOE IS BEING MELODRAMATIC.

He’s lying on the bed on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. He’s still wearing the fake beard and suit, but the Goodside hat rests on his chest, rising and falling with his every breath.

“Do. Not. Bother. Her. Tonight.”

He closes his eyes. Says nothing.

“Did you hear me, Jondoe? I mean it! She’s fragile right now.”

Jondoe sits up suddenly, eyes ablaze. “What about me?”

Gah. He can be so starcissistic sometimes.

“What about you? Not everything is about you.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean! Why am
I
not allowed to be fragile in this situation? I have feelings too! I’m a whole person! I’m not just the sum of my private parts!”

This gives me pause. I had never really considered the effects of professional Sperming on Jondoe’s psyche. What teenage guy would turn down the opportunity to get paid to get laid? For all his heartbroken histrionics, I admit that Jondoe’s reputation has made it very hard for me to totally accept his pure intentions toward my sister.

I pat his shoulder in what I hope is a comforting way.

“All I’m asking is that you give her tonight to rest and recover. If you really believe what you have with her is real, then you’ve got your whole future together, right?”

He grumbles in a vaguely affirmative way.

I shut his door behind me.

“I helped myself to your closet.”

Harmony is watching me from the doorway to my parents’ room. She’s already changed into black leggings and a T-shirt. She’s running her fingers through her raggedly chopped hair. She looks exactly like me, if I had gotten butchered by my stylist.

“And I look like I’ve helped myself to yours,” I say, tugging at the gown with a laugh.

It’s pretty surreal to be standing there as our alternate selves, the girls we could have been if my parents had adopted her and hers had adopted me.

“He promised not to bother you tonight,” I assure her.

She says thank you, but I swear I catch what looks like a flicker of disappointment crossing her face. I’m too exhausted to take this up now though, and practically crawl to my bathroom.

Tired as I am, I need to take a shower so I can scrub off all my makeup. I take off the gown I—or Harmony—will never wear again. I avert my eyes from the full-length bathroom mirror and run the hot shower so the glass will steam up quickly. I’m still for seriously icked out by the sight of my ginormity. And it’s not, like, a lazy lump of excessive poundage. This thing
gets around
. The B$B is designed to move the way real twins would as this point of gestation, as they must be moving inside Harmony right now. She’s never once complained about not having seen her feet since August. But I’ve never gotten used to seeing myself like this, as if an alien race of parasitic gymnasts have colonized on the other side of my belly button.

Unfortunately, I can’t avoid looking at myself once I’m in the shower. The B$B looks every bit as convincing when I’m naked. It’s really freaky. As I soap up my body, I can’t detect where my abdomen ends and the synthetic skinfeel of the bump begins. These nasty stretch marks had better be part of the illusion or I’m going to need a major skinfeel transplant when this thing is over.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d actually believe I was pregging.

Could I be pregging?

Gaaaaah.

Jondoe had warned me that the B$B could mess with my mind. He won’t give us any details about how he got it or from whom. All he’ll say is that he had been approached by a multinational conglomerate to help find the perfect test subject for it.

And that guinea pig is me.

Of course, I had to ask the obvious question: Why would a corporation in the business of
faking
preggs offer a sneak peek to someone rich and famous for
making
preggs? Well, it turns out that getting mocked up is far more common among certain circles of RePros than anyone on the outside would ever imagine. A top-earning Sperm will fake a pregg (or two, or more) in a desperate bid to delay his inevitable obsolescence and retirement from the industry. The faux Surrogette is usually an aspirational famegamer. She gets paid handsomely for signing on for the con, not to mention a major boost to her brand, which she can later trade up for a career as a singer, actress, or brand ambassador. Apparently, it’s kind of an open industry secret. I sometimes wonder if Lib has turned a blind eye to the truth all along. Money talks, sure, but it also shuts up when it has to.

There’s also a huge market out there for obsolescents who want to experience pregnancy long after the Virus has shut down their reproductive systems. I can vouch that ALTERR is the closest to the real thing. It’s so convincing that I sometimes worry that the joke is really on me, that Jondoe is really that skilled and has succeeded where other Sperms before him have only failed: the fabled insemination without penetration. Maybe this bump is legit and I’m, like, already dilating and about to deliver the world’s most anticipated twins
any day now
.

I doubt I’d be any less prepared for the occasion than Harmony is.

Gaaah. This is crazy talk. I just need to finish up here in the shower and go to sleep because I’m beyond exhausted from all of the drama. Harmony and Jondoe. Ram and Zeke. The Jaydens. Lib. Ventura.

Zen.

“Hey, Mel.”

ZEN!