Twice Shy (18 page)

People whispered about Dylan, but it was just talk—nobody seemed to lend the rumors any credence. Ani talked and went to school and hung out, so she couldn't possibly be what Dylan said she was—he had to be crazy. It did have the unfortunate side effect of earning her a new nickname from the evil three.

After the initial shock, she got used to "Dead Girl" in minutes and began to appreciate the irony of it. She started responding to it as if it were her name, and they stopped. It was probably for the best that she went back to being "Cutter" and "freak."

Saturday morning she went to an interview with Luz's Soaps and Scents, a boutique that suited her needs as well as the Lair ever did. The shop was cloying, an allergist's worst nightmare of floral scents; and in addition to soap, lotion, incense, and bath salts, it also displayed work from local artists—it was perfect, and she looked forward to an excuse to get out of the house more.

She wore a nice, modest dress and toned down her makeup to the minimum possible that would still maintain her image. She took the safety pins out of her cheek—the scar was almost invisible—and carried another copy of her resume in a portfolio. She put on her best smile and walked into the shop, the jingling bell atop the door announcing her arrival.

The curly-haired Latina behind the counter smiled at her as she approached. "May I help you?" Her accent was charming, but Spanish rather than Mexican or Puerto Rican. "Bath salts are on sale, twenty percent off."

"Are you Luz?" she asked. The woman nodded. "Hi, I'm Ani Romero. I have a ten o'clock interview."

Luz gave her a flat smile, folded her hands one atop the other, and her eyes walked over Ani's pierced eyebrow, nose, and lip. "I'm sorry, but the position has been filled. We'll let you know if it opens up again."

Ani glanced at the 'Help Wanted' plaque on the counter and snorted. "Sure. Thanks for your time."

She walked home grumpy, slowing as she turned the corner to her street. An unmarked delivery truck sat in her driveway, the ramp down. She stepped behind a tree, watching. Her mom directed two men in dark blue coveralls as they maneuvered a large wooden crate on a hand dolly up the sidewalk, over the stoop, and into the house. About five minutes later, they returned with the empty crate, loaded it onto the truck, and drove off.

She let herself in—the doors were locked, as usual—and called out. "Mom?" There was no answer. She took a quick look around, and no one seemed to be home, which meant that Mom was in the basement.

She heard scrambling as she slid back the bookcase, and ran down the stairs as fast as her dysfunctional legs would let her. Her mom sat at the lab table, writing, but her face was flushed and she breathed harder than a person writing should. She looked up as Ani hit the landing.

"Slow down, sweetie, you might hurt yourself." She turned back to the legal pad.

"What was in the crate?" she asked.

"Hmm?" Her mom shook her head without looking up. "Nothing to worry about. Just something I'm working on."

Ani looked around the room. Everything seemed to be in its place. No new glassware or equipment, no boxes, no package peanuts, no nothing. Her eyes lit on the 'just in case' room door, and the padlock dangling from the handle.
Why would that be locked if I'm not inside?

Ani didn't bother trying to be subtle; she shuffled straight toward it.

Her mom spoke up without lifting her eyes from the page. "You don't want to look in there."
Oh, yes I do.
She kept walking.

"I said stop."

Ani stopped but didn't turn around. "Why? What is it?"

"Something I need to continue my research, to push it to the next level. Nothing that will make you happy."

"I have to know—" She took another step.

"Do not look in that room. I forbid it."

Her mom frowned as Ani glanced back. "Sorry, Mom." She walked up to the door's tiny window. She put her hands around her eyes and pressed up against the glass. In the gloom she saw a figure strapped to the chair, head lolled a little to one side, gag in his mouth.
Dylan.

She whirled around, catching herself on the door lest she fall. Her mother was right behind her, wearing her doctor face.

"Mom, you can't do this."

"Too late, it's already done." She raised a finger.

"No. We can let him go before he wakes up. He'll never know, and if he remembers something, they'll think he's crazy." Ani braced for the explosion.

Her mom opened her hand, put it to Ani's cheek and brushed her hair back with her knuckles. "Ani, sweetie, we can't let him go. He's too dangerous."

"No he's not, Mom. He's crazy, so they'll keep him locked up. No one will ever believe him. We can let him—"

Her mom grabbed her face with both hands and pulled her close. "You don't understand. I infected him with ZV just before you got here."

Ani blinked in disbelief. "What?"

"You heard me."

Ani stepped back against the door and slid to the floor. "You..." She wrapped her knees with her arms. "You killed him."

"No," her mother said. "It's just until I can cure him. It gives me a specimen that I'm not so concerned with losing, so I can be more aggressive with the testing regimen."

Aggressive.
"And then what? If that fails, you just find another
specimen
?"

Her mother nodded. "If I have to. I told you I would do anything to protect you, and I meant it."

"Jesus, Mom. I...
Jesus
. Have you done this before?"

She hesitated, then shook her head. "Not personally."

Ani scowled. "I have a right to know."

Her mother returned her scowl. "I suppose you do." She licked her lips. "My colleagues have done it before, and it's the reason I left their employ. They infected a pregnant woman to see if ZV transmits through pregnancy."

"Oh, my God," Ani said, horrified. "What happened to her?"

"She died."

Ani bit her lip. "And the baby?"

Her mom hesitated. "Also dead."

Ani shook her head. "You can't do this," Ani said. "It's wrong."

"We don't have a choice. It's time to grow up, Ani. Sometimes you do what you have to."

*  *  *

Ani got out of the bath at two-thirty and crept through the darkness. Her mother's breathing didn't change as the stairs creaked, but she froze anyway, waiting for a trap. A minute later she tiptoed to the bookcase, eased up the latch, and opened the basement door. Well-oiled, it made no noise. She stepped through and eased it shut. The concrete floor was cold on her bare feet.

Her mother took meticulous notes, years and years of spiral notebooks filled with drawings, ideas, arguments, chemical formulae, and experimental results organized by date in a mountain of filing cabinets. Ani found the earliest set of files in the back of the basement. A moan escaped the coal furnace, and Ani closed her eyes.
I'm so sorry.

After a moment she opened them and gripped the handle. The drawer squeaked as she inched it open, and with gritted teeth she forced herself to patience. Millimeter by millimeter the drawer came open, revealing stacks of notebooks sprinkled with ancient dust. She wiped the dust off the top notebook, and found dates printed on the front in her mother's meticulous hand. She skipped forward six notebooks and found the entry for July 9th, seventeen years previous. She caught herself humming
Happy Birthday
under her breath, and stopped
.

She scanned the entry, picking out important phrases.
Jane Doe stable under serum 2... C-Section scheduled... live birth, female, four pounds, eleven ounces... child is symptomatic, fever 103... time of death 9:32 p.m., remains incinerated... biopsy ZV positive...

She looked up. Her mom frowned at her from halfway down the stairs. Her voice was soft, husky. "What are you doing?"

"Reading," Ani said. "About me?"

Her mom froze, then nodded. "Lies about you, yes." She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. "I couldn't write the truth, not about that. If they found it..."

Ani swallowed, a useless reflex. "What is the truth, Mom? About me? My real mother?"

"I'm your
real
mother," she growled, then schooled herself. "Your birth mother, you mean."

Ani nodded, and waited.
Please, no more lies.

Her mom looked through her as she talked. "Jane Doe. I never knew her name, where they got her. She was maybe seven months pregnant when they brought her into the lab and infected her. They kept her in an induced coma until she came to term, and the child was removed via C-section. Healthy, pink and precious, a baby girl. It was my job to test it for ZV and then destroy it. I took it—her—to my lab and administered the tests. ZV positive. And yet alive. No symptoms, no fever. Healthy. Beautiful."

Her sad smile never touched her eyes. "If they ever realized what they had, what a miracle this baby girl was, she'd grow up in a lab, forever strapped to a table, a test subject from violent birth until they found no more use for her and incinerated her. I couldn't let them do that. I couldn't. It was too far. Even for me." Her gaze drifted to the floor. "Even for me...."

Ani waited. Her mom looked up but didn't appear to see.

"So I faked the documents that she was destroyed and took her home." Her eyes snapped back to the present. "I named her Ani, and I raised her as my own, and I never told them."

Ani stood there, her mouth open in dumb shock.

Her mom walked down the stairs, put her hand on Ani's head and rubbed it affectionately. "I love you, my baby girl. I have since the moment I saw you. I had to protect you."

"You lied to me," Ani said. "Lied."

She nodded. "I did. I was going to tell you when... when all this was over. When you got better." She plucked the notebook from Ani's fingers and closed it. "There are a lot of things I wish I'd never done. Working for those men can't be one of them, because they brought me you."

She reached out her arms, and Ani buried herself in the warmth of her embrace.
Oh, my God.

Chapter 21

Ani trudged through the next few days.
Dylan is dying in my basement. My mom is a murderer. Maybe a mass-murderer. My mom isn't even my mom.
She vaguely recalled blowing off Fey when she wanted to talk about Jake, and being sat down by a concerned Mrs. Weller worried about her shell-shocked demeanor. Called into the nurse's office, she had to listen as her mother snapped at her to stop being childish.
She infected him and now she's waiting for him to die so she can run her tests.

Wednesday was Dr. Seuss's birthday, and she played piano at the assembly in the Elementary School. She just walked her way through the sheet music and hoped she didn't screw it up. The kids clapped along and seemed to like it.

She got back to the upper school too late for the bus. Rather than call her mom, she decided to walk home. A car pulled up next to her, a voice called out. Fey, from the passenger's seat of Jake's car.
No, I don't want a ride.
She waved them off and kept walking. It was almost forty degrees, warmer than her nightly bath, and the air felt good against her skin.

When she got home she could hear her mom in the basement. She didn't want to look, didn't want to know. She slipped behind the bookcase and went downstairs. Dylan was dead in the recliner, straining against the chains, drool leaking out past the gag, soaking his T-shirt.

"Oh, good, sweetie, you're home," her mother said, not looking up from her notebook. "Grab the syringes for me, would you?"

Ani looked at the lab, clean and clinical.
Is this what it looked like then? When they cut my mother open and pulled me out and burned her? Did it happen here, or somewhere else?

"Ani!" her mother barked from above a bank of test tubes.

Ani looked at her. "I don't think I can do this. This isn't right." Dylan moaned.

"It's as right as it can be. Now get me the syringes."

She looked at the syringes, then at her mom. "No."

Her mother raised a finger and opened her mouth.

Ani cut her off.

"Don't you dare raise that finger at me. You're not my mother."

Her mother stormed around the table and grabbed her by the shoulders. She slapped Ani across the face. "Don't you ever say that again." Her voice was hoarse. "I gave up everything to be your mother. Everything. I raised you as my own, and I'm the only thing that's standing between you and the furnace. And now... And now I..." She started hyperventilating, then burst into tears.

Sobbing gasps overwhelmed her. She dropped to her knees. Ani didn't know what to do, didn't know what to feel.
You've always been the strong one.
She stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder, patted it. Her mom grabbed her leg and cried. And cried and cried.

When she finally stopped, her eyes were red and her nose leaked snot. She wiped her face on the sleeve of her lab coat, then hugged Ani's leg again. "I'm so sorry, baby. I just don't know what to do."
Mom always knew what to do, always had a plan, and a backup plan.

"What's going on?" Ani asked. Dylan groaned around the gag and jangled his chains behind her.
Besides the obvious.
She helped her mom to her feet and walked her to the lab table. They sat. Her mom blew her nose, threw away the tissue, then looked at Ani.

"I went to see a specialist this fall. An oncologist."

"I don't—"

"A cancer specialist. I was diagnosed with AML, acute myeloid leukemia. I've been on chemotherapy while they ran more tests. That's why I've been so tired." Ani bit her lip. "While we were in Key West, Doctor Ehrmentraut called and gave me some news. There are some cytogenetic abnormalities in the del-five-Q—"

"What does that mean?"

"It means that it's bad. Very bad."

"How bad?"

Her mom put her palms flat on the table. "Typical cases have a five-year mortality of eighty-five percent."
No no no no no not my mom not my mommy.
"Sometimes it can be cured. The first chemo didn't go so well. We're going to run a more aggressive battery soon. I'm going to feel sick—sicker—and I'm going to lose my hair, and my energy.