Twist (16 page)

“Why?” I asked. There was no need to finish that question.

She tapped her nails against the side of the press then placed it on the counter and reached for the kettle.

“I know what you're thinking, but it's not Dad's fault,” she said.

“Don't call him that.”

He hadn't earned “Dad.” Dads let their daughters dance on top of their shoes. Dads took their daughters to the park and tucked them into bed at night. Dads
met
their daughters. He had barely earned “sperm donor.”

“Your father didn't … doesn't approve of me taking that sleep aid.” She sighed. “It's been hard maintaining two different schedules, sometimes falling asleep there, sometimes here.”

“So your schedule got complicated and you decided to try out narcotics?”

“I didn't realize, not at first, what the ingredients were. All I knew was that it worked.”

“It says ‘laudanum' right on the bottle.”

“Bree, it's been over twenty years since I've studied historical medicine, and I wasn't good at remembering that stuff even at the time.” She plunged the coffee grounds down and smashed every last ounce of caffeine out of the dregs at the bottom. “I found an expired bottle in his medicine cabinet. My days and nights seemed so flipped at first that I took it out of desperation. If I could have just stayed a full night there without worrying about you being here alone, I think—”

“Oh, so this is my fault?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Well, if it's not his fault and it's not your fault, then it sounds an awful lot like it's my fault.”

“It's no one's fault.”

“Ha!” I threw my hands up in the air without realizing that I was still clutching the bottle of Dr. Feelwhatever's Magical Liferuiner. It slipped from my grip, and I just barely caught it and stopped it from shattering on the floor.

Mom lunged for it, too, and the look of terror on her face—that her precious drug might be lost—made something in me snap even further.

“You're not getting this back.” I held the bottle up. “You realize that, don't you? You're lucky you didn't seriously hurt yourself.”

“Watch your tone. And, obviously, I'm not going to take any more of it.”

“Good.” I pocketed it. “You won't mind that I keep—”

“No.” She didn't even wait to let me get the last word out. “That's too risky. Leave it here. I'll dispose of it the next time I go to see your father.”

Like blark was I giving this back to her.

“I'll toss it in the incinerators at the Institute. Students get rid of junk that way all the time.”

“That's not necessary.”

“That's not up to you.” I was left to imagine what hurt etched Mom's face as I slammed the back door on it.

*   *   *

I got to my dorm room just as Mimi was heading out, which seemed to have become our modus operandi these last six months. My frequent unexplained absences had stolen a spark from our friendship. It was like a glass wall had shot up between us. But of course, I still loved her more than Finn loved chocolate chip waffles.

“Hey,” I said. “Where are you headed?”

“Date with Charlie,” she said, snapping a jeweled cuff over her earlobe. I wasn't sure why, but it was a relief to me that the alterations in my timeline hadn't somehow prevented her from getting together with Charlie. They'd still found each other no matter what changed. Their love went down to the roots.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“It's not the most romantic, but it was his turn to choose. We're going to grab breakfast burritos from a food truck on the way to the tour. So, y'know, I'll call it brunch, I guess.”

“Tour?” I'd sat down at my desk and was rifling through messages. One from Wyck popped up right as I had started sorting them. It read: “Approved for first Shift tomorrow. How does it feel to be dating the hottest Neo in D.C.?”

“Tour of ICE, silly,” said Mimi. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Charlie got the official acceptance this morning.”

“He what?”

“Bree.” There was a tinge of chiding in Mimi's tone. “I told you he had applied to become a Neo last week. Why are you acting surprised?”

“I just … I didn't think…”

“Did you not think he'd get in?” She laughed. Kind of.

The truth was, I was acting surprised because I
was
surprised. Shocked. I had no idea Charlie had even been interested in becoming a Neo. On the timeline I remembered, he wasn't. (Or at least, he hadn't admitted it.)

“No, that's not it. It's only…” Blark it all. I had to navigate this carefully. If I let on that ICE was up to something shady, Mimi would take that info straight to Charlie who would either tell Wyck or ask ICE about it. Either way, it jeopardized my plan to sneak into that black tube during Wyck's first Shift. I was so close. But the thought of Charlie getting snarled up in all this was unbearable. I'd seen firsthand the toll that NeoShifting could eventually take on someone. I couldn't let that happen to him. Not if I could prevent it.

“I'm not sure Charlie is the best fit for the Neo program is all,” I said.

“Why not?”

“It just doesn't seem like it would be his thing.”

“So no qualms about your boyfriend Shifting? Just mine.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“So then what?” Mimi said through gritted teeth. “Wyck is better than Charlie?”

She clutched her forehead and winced.

“No! Of course not,” I said.

“Well, which is it?” She rubbed her forehead and reached for her Buzztabs, but the bottle was once again running low. She began to root around in her desk for another. “Either my boyfriend's not good enough to become a Neo, or there's something you're not telling me.”

“Neither.” I handed over a few Buzztabs without her even asking. “But, Mimi—”

“Y'know what, Bree, I'm getting kind of sick of your moodiness. Ever since you were Anchored, you've been … you've been…”

“I've been what?”

“You haven't been the easiest person to live with.”

If anyone else had said that, I would have laughed, but for Mimi, that was the equivalent of a vicious verbal thrashing.

“I know.” It was all I could say.

She popped the Buzztabs into her mouth. Immediately, her wince eased.

“It's Charlie's dream to Shift someday,” she said. “If you can give me one good reason why I should crush that dream, then go ahead.”

“I … can't. But—”

“I have to go.”

“Wait.”

But she didn't wait. And she didn't turn around. There was no point in chasing her down. There was nothing I could say that wouldn't threaten my mission with Wyck.

I laid down on my bed and pulled Wyck's message back up. Tomorrow. That would give me only twenty-four hours to prepare. This was too soon. I needed more time to set a plan into motion. I hadn't even figured out how to break into that Cryostorage Room. Yes, Wyck was my link to ICE, but I still needed a way around the building once I was in.

I headed toward the incinerator room to destroy the rest of Mom's laudanum, but the reverter went off on the way. I was tempted to dump the drug first, but after the previous change that had affected me, it didn't seem prudent.

It ended up being a simple fix, nothing that involved me personally. A middle-aged woman stood outside a wedding chapel, staring at the open door as whispering guests filtered out. A man atop a hovercycle kissed a younger version of her passionately, situating her frothy no-longer-wedding dress around the seat. It didn't take me long to put together the “what-if” that had plagued this woman for the last twenty-odd years. She had just stopped her own wedding to run off with some other guy.

I walked up next to her wordlessly.

In one hand, she clutched her IcePick. In the other, a photo of two teenagers. Both hands trembled.

I touched the picture, and she flinched.

“I don't think you want to do this,” I said.

The tremor continued in her limbs. I couldn't tell if it was from the physical pain of NeoShifting or the emotional pain of realizing what she had just set into motion. Probably both.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“It doesn't matter.” Once I reverted the change, she wouldn't remember me, only disjointed bits of a life that never was.

“If you go through with this, your children won't exist when you get back,” was all I had to say for her to dissolve into sobs.

“I can fix this,” I said. “Do you want me to?”

Usually I didn't ask permission to perform a reversion, but something about this woman's brokenness made me voice the question. She gasped and nodded. I pressed the reverter against her skin and activated it. She dissolved before my eyes, but as she was disappearing, she whispered, “Thank you.”

She'd be haunted by this. Flashes of what-ifs. I hoped that in the crevices of this woman's soul, comfort would nestle in with those what-ifs. Comfort that, ultimately, she'd chosen well.

I felt a rush of sympathy for my mother. She wasn't trying to hurt me or my father—or herself. She'd lived with seventeen years of big what-ifs, and now she was faced with the reality of what-now. She wanted everything to be like it should have been—she wanted the fantasy—but that wasn't possible. It was what it was.

I still needed to dump this useless drug as soon as I could. I debated leaving it here in the past, but I worried about somebody getting ahold of it. Seriously. What was my mother thinking? This stuff had put her to sleep within minutes, and she probably didn't even remember me yelling in her face trying to wake her up. She'd been totally knocked out.

Knocked out.

I clutched the bottle and smiled.

Maybe it wasn't completely useless.

 

chapter 14

“HEY!
I STILL OWE YOU
that celebration.” I stood outside Wyck's door holding up two soda bottles like champagne flutes. That amount of sugar had used up every discretionary eating point I had for the month, but it was the only thing I could think of that would mask the bitter aftertaste of the laudanum. Twenty-two drops of it, to be precise. I peered around him and smiled. His roommate was gone, which simplified things greatly for me. “I'm here to give you Shifting pointers for tomorrow.”

“Wow. A Blitzenberry Bomb. I don't think I've had one of those since I was a kid. They're really sweet.”

“You're … really sweet.”

He gave me a funny look.

Hold it together, woman. I took a sip of my Bomb and had to hold back a retch. Maybe I should have gone with strong coffee instead. This stuff was nasty, but it was the best thing I could come up with on short notice.

He took a polite sip and winced.

“I don't remember them having this much of an aftertaste.”

Distract, distract, distract.

I thrust my lips against his and forced them to move in a close approximation to a passionate kiss. I sang the alphabet backward in my head to stop myself from screaming. My heart started racing but not the good kind. The I'm-cheating-on-Finn kind. Although I wasn't sure it was cheating when he was already with Jafney. At least she wasn't anywhere nearby with her blarking camera this time.

I checked to make sure Wyck's eyes were closed and swished the contents around his bottle to keep them from settling at the bottom.

“Does that help?” As I pulled my lips away from his, I quickly replaced them with the bottle. He took another gulp, laughing.

“Mmm. More aftertaste.” He pulled me close.

Kiss. Sip. Kiss. Sip. Kiss. Sip.

What a fun game this … wasn't.

After I drained the last dregs into him, I snatched it away and tossed it down the recycle chute. There was no way I'd leave that thing lying around as evidence. When I turned back around, he reached out to embrace me again but veered off course and stumbled toward the couch.

“Whoa, there.” I barely managed to catch him and lower all his heft down to the couch.

“M'sorry. Room feels duzzy.” He clasped his hand to his mouth. “Dizzy.” Then he looked around like I'd said something. “What?”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You're pretty.”

“And you're pretty tired.”

“No. No! I'm going to give you”—his eyes wandered around the room before settling back on me with a startle—“poinkers. No. You give me … pointers. Ha! Poinkers.”

“Yes. Pointers. For Shifting. Well, first thing is to relax. How about you start by telling me things that you find really relaxing? Maybe something like deep breathing or meditation or singing lullabies to yourself … or…”

But he was already zonked. I tapped his shoulder, and he let out a snuffling snore.

Score one for the Gilded Age.

“Wy-yck,” I crooned in his ear. Nothing.

“Wyck!” I yelled. Still nothing.

Okay, now to really test it out. I pulled out a pair of hair pincers, the kind I'd used to remove my own hair last year for Finn. The kind that hurt like a fireball of a dickens. I chose a spot at the crown. Seemed like it might be a little less sensitive than right at the hairline. And yanked.

“Wassuh? Huh?” Wyck sat up and rubbed the top of his head. My muscles clenched, ready to prattle off an excuse as to what I was doing, but his eyes slid out of focus, and he slumped back down.

“Aww, kitty cat,” he mumbled. “Rurr, rurr, rurr.”

His purring sounds receded into light snores, and my lungs released the sharp intake of breath they'd been storing this whole time. So twenty-two drops … definitely enough. And, bonus, I didn't accidentally kill him. Yay.

I had the hair, that was the important part. There was no telling what I'd encounter, security-wise at the end of that black tube, but Wyck's access upped my chances considerably of getting past it.