Inheritance (6 page)

He smiled at her, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “I don’t think we’re just friends anymore,” he said.

Her breath got stuck in her throat. “No?” she managed to say.

David’s left hand curved over her right, his fingers gently loosening the death grip she had on the couch. “You tell me.”

A flutter of panic rose in her. There he was, at her fingertips. Every time they touched, it never failed to shock her: the intimacy of it, the frightening yet exhilarating closeness. And he was nervous. Despite the confidence with which he spoke, she felt the tightness in his stomach, his uncertainty as he reached out to her. She turned to face him, her leg sliding up onto the couch, their hands resting together on her thigh. He was reading her—the way her body leaned toward him, the blood flushing her skin, the buzz that radiated through her from where their fingers were entwined.

“I don’t think I need to tell you,” she said, and as she spoke the words out loud, wonder rose in her. This thing that had been done to them—this new sensitivity they had to each other, to the world—she was suddenly grateful for it. David could always know how she felt. She could always know how he felt. It was a gift.

“What do you want to tell Sophia Curtis?” he asked.

“I guess we can tell her the truth.”

“Maybe we should go over it, out loud.”

“Okay.” She found that she couldn’t think very clearly when he was looking at her like that—especially when she was holding his hand and knew where his thoughts were heading. If she went along with it, they wouldn’t be talking for much longer. That wouldn’t normally be a problem, except Diana Warner was waiting for them outside and they really did need to figure this out. She pulled her hand away at the same moment that David moved back, looking flushed. “Okay,” she said again, and scooted onto the chair that Diana had vacated. “So, what’s the story?”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “Um. We met through debate?”

“Yeah. We were partners.”

He grinned. “And you had an uncontrollable crush on me?”

“Hey, I’m not taking all the blame,” she said without thinking, and her cheeks burned. Why did she have to blush so easily? But David didn’t seem to mind.

“Oh, I think the feeling was mutual,” he said. Even though he wasn’t touching her, she could swear she felt the warm twist in his stomach as he spoke.

“Really?” she said, and then was overcome with shyness. She probably was the color of an eggplant by now.

David laughed. “Sometimes you’re a little dense, Reese. I can’t believe you didn’t notice.”

“Until nationals.” She made a face. “Where I acted like a total dork.”

“Good thing I didn’t give up.”

She smiled slightly. “You’re gonna spin it that way? It’s sort of old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

“Boy meets girl, girl rejects boy, girl dates other girl—”

“I don’t want you to mention her,” Reese interrupted. David looked startled. “I just don’t want to get into it.”

“Sure. I won’t mention her.”

“Thanks.” She ignored the twinge of guilt that rose in her. “So let’s just say we met through debate, we got to know each other, things happened.”

David considered her for a moment. “Right. Things happened. We went through a traumatic experience that revealed the truth about our feelings.” He paused. “It is the truth, isn’t it?”

There was an uncharacteristic note of vulnerability in his voice, and she knew what he was really asking. He wanted to know if she honestly liked him, even after the way she had felt about Amber. They had never discussed it in detail—that would be way too weird—but he knew she had had strong feelings about Amber. For the first time, Reese realized she might have the upper hand in her relationship with David. Before, she had always thought that
she
was the vulnerable one, because she was the one who froze up and couldn’t deal with her emotions; because David was the guy everybody liked at school, whereas she was just some girl. But whatever had transpired between her and Amber gave her the power to hurt him.

A new tenderness rose in her, and along with it came a sense of responsibility. It made her reach out and put a hand on his knee. “I would never lie to you,” she told him softly. “I can’t, even if I tried.”

He covered her hand with his. Everything was open between them. He could see the truth.

He stood, pulling her to her feet, and when they kissed, it was sweet. Her hands slid around his back, and he was alive beneath her touch, his whole body focused on her, and she trusted him.

Reese knocked on her mom’s door. When she heard
her mom’s voice calling, “Come in,” she rubbed her clammy palms against her thighs and went inside. The bedroom was empty, but she heard the sound of running water from the attached bathroom.

“Reese, is that you?”

“Yeah.” Reese closed the bedroom door and headed toward the bathroom. Her mom was washing her face at the sink.

“Your dad said he’d make pancakes this morning.”

It was Sunday morning, and the statement was so ordinary and yet so incredibly unusual—when was the last time her dad had been there to make pancakes?—that Reese temporarily froze.

Her mom turned off the tap and reached for a towel to blot away the water. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” When her mom looked up, Reese looked away. “I wanted to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Her mom straightened and leaned against the edge of the bathroom counter. “You’re scaring me, honey.”

Reese crossed her arms. “It’s nothing bad. I thought you should know—before we do the interview—that David and I are—we’re—we’re together.” Her face felt as hot as a bonfire.

Her mom’s eyebrows rose, and then a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She hung up the towel. “I thought you were.”

“You did?” She didn’t know whether to be relieved or aghast. Was she that transparent?

“Well, I knew you liked him.”

“You
did
?” Now she was definitely aghast. “When?”

Her mom took out a small jar of moisturizer and began to smooth the lotion over her face. “You’ve had a crush on him for a while, haven’t you?”

Reese sat on the edge of her mom’s bed, still facing the bathroom. “Does everybody know?”

Her mom laughed. “I don’t know about everybody, but I’ve noticed the way you look at him. I have to say, that’s part of the reason I was so surprised about Amber.”

Reese stared down at her lap. “Yeah. That’s over.”

“I thought so,” her mom said softly. “I’m sorry. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Reese hadn’t thought she would want to, but she found herself recounting, haltingly, how she had discovered that Amber
wasn’t simply a girl she met by accident but was connected to Dr. Brand. How Amber had been assigned by the Imria to monitor Reese’s reactions to the adaptation procedure. How their relationship had been in service to this assignment. Even though Amber had apologized and insisted her feelings for Reese had been real, that didn’t change the fact that Amber had known what the Imria had done to Reese. She couldn’t help thinking that if Amber had really cared for her, she would have told her the truth.

“She wants us to talk to the Imria now,” Reese said, scooting back to lean against the headboard as her mom came out of the bathroom. “She says they want to help us, but I don’t trust her.”

“I wouldn’t trust her either,” her mom said. “She lied to you and she doesn’t deserve you.”

The harsh tone in her mom’s voice made Reese wince. Reese had been as cruel as she could to Amber the last time she had seen her, but hearing anger directed at her by someone else made her uncomfortable. “Mom—”

“She’s a very attractive girl, and she knows it. You can’t trust someone like her.”

Reese’s face burned even more.

Her mom sat on the edge of the bed, facing Reese. “She took advantage of you, and if I ever see her trying anything like that again—”

“She won’t. I’m fine, Mom.” Her stomach twisted as she said the words.
I’m fine
, she told herself. Her mom’s face was hard-edged with a kind of anger Reese couldn’t remember seeing before.

“She’d better not,” her mom said. She ran a hand through her
hair, pushing away the damp dark curls from her forehead. “I want you to be careful, that’s all. I know you had strong feelings for her, and even though I think David is a great guy, you’ve barely had time to deal with what happened with Amber. Are you sure you’re ready to date someone else?”

Reese squirmed. “Of course.”

Her mom gave her a look that said she knew Reese was lying. “If he really likes you, he’ll wait until you’re over Amber.”

Reese’s fingers clenched, crumpling the down duvet in her grip. “I’m over her,” she insisted.

Her mom frowned. “Are you?”

Reese looked at the bedroom window to avoid her mom’s gaze. The blinds were half-closed, exposing slivers of the cloud-covered sky. “Yes. I’m over her.”

Her mom reached out and touched Reese’s foot. Reese sensed the beginnings of her mom’s feelings—concern, doubt—and she pulled her foot away. “Honey,” her mom said.

“I can handle it,” Reese snapped.

Her mom didn’t speak for a minute. Reese watched a shadow move across the sky through the blinds and willed her fisted fingers to relax before they tore a hole in the duvet. “Okay,” her mom finally said. “Then do we need to have a talk about safety?”

Embarrassed, she drew her arms around her knees. “No. You gave me the talk when I was twelve. I know how things work.”

“I’m sure you do,” her mom said wryly. “But if you need anything—a trip to the doctor, whatever—come to me first.”

Reese shook her head. “I know. Jeez, are you going to have this talk with me every time I date anyone?”

Her mom laughed and stood up. She went to the window and
twisted the stick that controlled the blinds, opening them to the morning light. “Point taken. I won’t push it. And I do really like David—”

“Oh my God, what is that?” Reese cried. She jumped off the bed and ran to join her mom at the window.

Startled, her mom moved out of the way as Reese pulled on the cord to raise the blinds.

The spaceship was moving.

Reese ran downstairs and into the kitchen, where her dad was mixing pancake batter. “Reese?” he said, but she didn’t answer. She opened the back door and went outside to look at the sky. The ship was heading north at a smooth, stately pace, and it made no sound and left no contrail.

As it headed out of sight, Reese went back inside, going into the living room to turn on the news. An image of the black spacecraft took up the whole screen as a headline crawled across the bottom:
Imrian Spaceship Moves to Angel Island
.

In a voice-over, the news anchor was reporting: “—City of San Francisco has been dealing with crowd control problems ever since the Imrian spacecraft took up position over the Noe Valley neighborhood three days ago. Today we have learned that the State of California has granted permission for the ship to land on Angel Island, which is a California state park. The park itself will be closed to tourists for the foreseeable future. The Imrian representatives on board the ship are reportedly in talks with the United Nations to meet with diplomats at the annual meeting of the General Assembly this fall.”

The black walls were a familiar sight by now: The ship was seamless and windowless, without a single distinguishing mark on its surface. Analysts had spent hours on cable news shows speculating about why the ship was so blank, with stealth being the most popular theory.

“The crowds that have congregated daily in Noe Valley to view the spaceship are now moving with the ship as it makes its way over the city to the bay,” the news anchor said.

The scene changed to show a helicopter’s view of the streets of Reese’s neighborhood. Thousands of people were packed onto the sidewalks, and all of them were turning en masse to watch the spaceship fly away. Their signs seemed to sag in unison, the motion of their bodies like a giant arrow pointing north. Even the cars had stopped as people climbed out to watch the flight of the Imrian craft.

“California Governor Anthony Moreno will be giving a press conference in a few minutes to explain the state’s decision to allow the Imrian spaceship to land on state property,” said the news anchor. “There is speculation that Angel Island was selected because it can be isolated, preventing large crowds from gathering there.”

Reese went to the bay windows and peeked around the edge of the curtains. The crowd was paying no attention to her house now; they were rushing in the direction of the ship. Reese heard her parents come into the living room and sit on the couch, but she couldn’t tear herself away from the window. The exodus didn’t take long. The street emptied of tourists in barely half an hour, leaving trash strewn across the road and clumped in the gutters: plastic bottles, candy wrappers, brown paper sacks greasy
from the ends of burritos. It was a residential neighborhood, so there weren’t any public trash cans. Reese saw one of the neighbors across the street emerge from his garage with a broom and a trash barrel. As he began clearing the sidewalk in front of his house, she noticed a champagne-colored sedan parked nearby.