Page 36 of Mate
Oh.Alex, Koen and I are not . . .
And if you do mention it to him, could you maybe give me a heads- up? So then I can, you know, burn my fingerprints with my sister’s curling iron and go underground and maybe buy some fake documents—
I could have an orgy on Koen’s yard, and he wouldn’t give a shit. And . . .I liked Alex. He was, most days, the smartest person in the room. He reminded me of the kind of guys I used to date— friendly, kind, cute. And the idea of touching him made my stomach roll and my insides putrefy.I’m sorry I said no, but you do not want to hook up with someone who doesn’t even know what species box to tick on the census form.
“Is there any strife?” I ask Amanda now. “Between Koen and the huddle leaders?”
“No. Or, no more so than usual. Koen does thrive on pissing people off— it’s his main pastime.”
“Is it okay to say that about your Alpha?”
“If it’s true. Which it totally is.” She grins and rotates her shoulders, arching up in a stretch. I can’t quite swallow a gasp when my eyes stumble on her nails, elongated into sharp, lethal weapons. When she yawns, her canines are no longer blunt. “Oh, shit.” She laughs and immediately backtracks her shift. “It’s been months since I last was in human form for over a day. Not used to it, I guess.”
Ana told me something similar.When I was in the north, Uncle Koen spent four days in wolf form andneverchanged back, she said, sounding the same mix of titillated and scandalized as when I’d explained to her that no, Sparkles was not going to have kittens, because his testicles resided somewhere at the bottom of a vet’s composting bin. RIP, Sparkles Jr. and Sparklette.And it was anewmoon! Sooo cool!
Here, wolf is the default. Human form is somewhere between an unavoidable hassle and an embarrassing constraint thataffects only the least dominant Weres. “Feel free to shift,” I tell Amanda with a smile.
“Why don’t we go on a run together?”
My stomach drops. “I . . .”
“Wait, you have that call, right?”
“What call?”
“The Southwest geneticist. Juno? She has something to share, but Koen wanted me to remind you that you don’t have to talk to her if you prefer not to. Shall we just go frolic in mud?” Amanda asks hopefully, and as little as I want to discuss genetics . . .
I take a big-girl breath. “Actually, I’mdyingto catch up with Juno.”
A MEETING WITH JUNO THE GENETICIST— LOVELY ALLITERATION— can mean only one thing: she inserted my DNA sample into a Big Science Machine, and the Big Science Machine spat out information about my blood relatives.
For my entire life, I’ve felt ambivalent about learning anything regarding my parents. Not your average orphan’s attitude— though maybe it is? I’m sure some of us seek to uncover our past to better define our future, and all that therapy stuff, while others are as blasé as I am. Children raised like me develop a unique brand of pragmatism, born of the knowledge that nothing will stand as a shield between us and reality. On my second-grade career day, when I told a teacher that I wanted to become a journalist, and he laughed, saying that I was more likely to be found dead in a ditch by eighteen, no helicopter mother waltzed in to have a stern talking-to with the principal. When the cafeteria served us spoiled chicken and the dormitory looked like a splash pad of projectile vomiting, no loving father made sure we stayed hydrated. When the creepy orderly with theeasily discoverable felony convictions insisted on watching us change after PE, no probation officer came to arrest him.
We had to take care of ourselves, so we did. Some pining for our lost families was involved, sure, but holding on to an idea, just like holding a grudge, takes up a significant amount of energy, one that could be used to . . . well, bully other orphans, in my less-than-uncommon experience. If Ruth from the group home had been more in touch with her emotions, maybe she wouldn’t have forced me to drink toilet water for refusing to give up my sandwich.
So I haven’t spent my life searching for my parents, because there’s little room for this to work out in a satisfying way. Either they wanted to get rid of me (tragic, tear-jerking, the stuff where trauma thrives) or they were forced to (tragic, tear-jerking, the stuff where trauma thrives). Neither option comes with a happy ending. Sure, there’s room for variation in the levels of rejection, self-loathing, and genericmal de vivreI’ll experience as my backstory unfolds. But unless Juno’s report comes with a time-travel machine and a redo in which Mommy, Daddy, Fido the goldendoodle, and I picket-fence it in the suburbs— and maybe in which I get to spit in Ruth’s coffee just once— I doubt any good will come of it.
Ignorance, bliss, that kind of stuff.
Andyet, about two months ago, after hearing my prognosis from Dr. Henshaw, I decided to not return home to Misery right away. Instead, I stopped by Juno’s place. And told her that, at last, I was ready for her to compare my DNA with the available databases, to see if she could find any relative of mine.
Maybe being reminded of my own mortality made me curious. Maybe I’m afraid to be insubstantial, and that no part of me will be left once I’m gone. Maybe I’m just filling time, sitting at the desk in the bedroom where I slept last night, wrapped in a thick blanket. I’d love for Misery to be present for this, but it’sthe middle of day, when Vampyres are at their sleepiest. I don’t want to bother her. So when I accept the call and see her next to Juno, mouth wide open in a huge, fanged yawn, my heart squeezes.
“She doesnotneed to be here,” Juno tells me, pointing at her.
“Eh,” Misery says. “I kinda do.”
Juno ignores her. “I explained the concept of confidentiality to her multiple times.”
“Serena wants me here. Right?”
“She can stay, I guess,” I say with an exaggerated, disaffected tone that has her blowing me a kiss.
Juno is almost pathologically humorless. Nice, though, and the flowchart I use to decide whether to consider someone a friend is made up of a single question: Have they tried to kill me or Misery? No? Fantastic. Let’s have a spa day. Go zip-lining. Overshare about recurring UTIs.
“First, I’d like to say how sorry I am about your experience with the Human genetic counselor. He was being interviewed as an expert and had no right to disclose information aboutyourreproductive health to the public.”
“Oh.” I swallow. “It’s fine. I’m sure they didn’t mean— ”
