The Blood Between Us (8 page)

My plate of food had remained relatively untouched since I’d finished my pudding. The subject of my sister had this funny way of stealing my appetite. “What do you mean? A lot of people don’t get along with their sisters.”

Quinn pointed at me with his spoon. Apparently he had just sampled the banana pudding as well. “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. She must’ve really done a number on you at some point.”

“Let’s just say that it’s complicated. Bottom line is that I don’t trust her.” This topic of conversation was sending pinpricks up the back of my neck, so I opted to change it.
“What about you? Have any siblings?”

Now it was Quinn’s turn to look uncomfortable. “A half brother and half sister. But we don’t really get along. I mean, my sister doesn’t speak to me. And my brother . . . well, we’re not really close.”

I cracked open a can of Mountain Dew. I might not have been hungry anymore, but there was nothing that could ruin my love for the citrus splash of cold Dew. “I wonder if part of the problem is the whole boarding-school thing.”

“What do you mean?” He licked the yellow goop from his spoon and made a face. Apparently, he was not as much a fan of the banana pudding as I was.

“Well, you and your siblings, me and Grace. There’s a definite lack of closeness in a family when you all go to boarding schools.” I leaned back in my chair, propping my foot on the empty chair across the table from me. “Think there might be a connection?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “But in my case, I think parental bullshit has definitely gotten in the way.”

“Favoritism?”

“Definitely.”

Grace was seated several tables away, laughing at something that one of her friends had said. Her laughter was soft and pleasant, but my ears translated it as shrill. It was funny how like and dislike of people could change the way
that they sounded in your head. “I never had that on my end. My mom and dad always treated Grace and me as equals, despite the adoption. Neither of us was the favorite, as far as I could tell. Grace just never liked me. Not even when we were toddlers.”

“That sucks, dude.” He spoke over a mouthful of mashed potatoes. Something told me Quinn didn’t get a lot of action. If any. “Let’s talk about something else. What do you plan on doing when you graduate?”

Actually, I hated this question. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. It was just boring. The kind of question people asked when they ran out of things to say. Like
How’s the weather?
or
Nice day, isn’t it?
I tipped up the green can, draining its contents. “I’d like to get a degree in chemistry. My dad was a chemist. I’d love to follow in his footsteps. If not that . . . I dunno. Maybe I’ll become a car mechanic or something. To be honest, I don’t really know what I’m gonna do after high school. What about you?”

He shrugged as he swallowed his potatoes. Then he picked up his soda can and said, “I’m torn. Part of me enjoys the idea of becoming a forensic pathologist. You know, cutting up dead people and figuring out how they died? But the other part of me just wants to chuck it all and live in a van.”

I couldn’t contain the horrified expression I had to be
wearing when he said it. “Like a minivan? Like a mom-mobile?”

It was all he could do not to spit soda out of his nose. “Hell no! Like one of those giant monstrosities from the seventies with the ridiculously huge murals painted on the side. Like Zeus throwing lightning at a village of psychedelic angels or Satan having a barbecue with a group of pigs. You know. Something messed up like that.”

“Sounds like a good time.” It didn’t. Not really. But you know—to each their own and all that.

“Yeah. Something to do until I come to my senses and get a job and a place and a life. Y’know?”

There, I knew exactly what he was talking about. Some people, the lucky few, had a solid plan for how their life was meant to pan out. But the rest of us—most of us—had no clue what tomorrow might bring.

Across the room, Grace and her friends were suddenly having quite the animated chat. Several of them were looking over at me, but I had no idea what they might be talking about. Still, I tried not to care. Why should I? They were her friends, not mine. If I gave a crap what anybody thought of me, it was in this order: 1. Myself, and 2. Anybody I deemed worthy enough to include in my life. I pulled my attention away from Grace and her crew, back to Quinn.

He’d given up on the cafeteria food and pushed his tray
away from him. “You ever daydream about the stupid shit you’d do if you didn’t have to make a responsible choice for your future?”

“No. Can’t say I have.” And it was true. I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t trying to figure it out. In the back of my mind, my dad’s voice echoed,
“You need direction in your life, Adrien. You’re such a bright young man. If only you’d just apply yourself.”

“Well then.” Quinn smiled at me as he reached for the macadamia nut cookie on my tray. “It looks like I’ve got a month to fix that.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him, but if my idea of a good life was something a guy like Quinn could fix for me, I was in big trouble.

Locks of bright red hair caught my eye as a familiar curvaceous figure passed behind Quinn. I looked up and put on my best smile. “Hey, Sherry. Long time no see.”

I guess you could say that Sherry had been my first girlfriend. We made out in the hallway during the seventh-grade formal dance. Hers were the first boobs I’d ever touched. To be honest, they’d also been the last.

Sherry turned toward the sound of my voice, looking as though she was bothered by the intrusion. I blinked, hoping she’d recognize me. “Adrien Dane?” I said. “Remember me? We went to the seventh-grade Snow Ball together.”

“Yeah, sorry.” The look on her face suggested that there might have been a foul odor in the air, but I was pretty sure it was just me that had that effect on her. She turned away and walked off.

I couldn’t be sure if she was apologizing for not remembering me, or saying she was sorry she’d gone to the dance with me. My second life at the Wills Institute wasn’t off to a good start. I wondered what Grace had been saying about me in the past four years. If she’d been poisoning ears, I had major damage control to attend to. Otherwise, my time here was going to be miserable and stretch on into eternity—which is what freshman year was supposed to be like. Not senior.

Quinn said, “Nice girl.”

“She used to be.” Sherry sashayed away in the direction of the front door.

“So what was California like?” One thing was for sure. Quinn was a chatty companion. I had a feeling I was going to have to invest in several cases of Tylenol if we were going to spend much time together. But then, some people can’t just sit in the quiet and be. Some people can’t resist the urge to fill the quiet with noise. I liked the quiet. It gave me time to think. Or not think. Depending on my mood.

“Warm. Good school. Nice people. I liked it. I mean, who doesn’t like palm trees, am I right?”

“Must’ve been hard to leave.”

“Yeah. But it was important I come back. My guardian is pretty sick. He asked me to. So I did.”

“Guardian?” The word was almost indistinguishable coming from around the cookie in his mouth.

“Legal guardian. My godfather. My parents passed away a few years ago. One of the reasons I moved to California.”

“I’m so sorry.”

The mashed potatoes on my tray were starting to take the shape of a rather impressive volcano. All I needed now were some peas to represent the citizens of Pompeii. “It happens.”

It seemed to be the mention of dead parents that finally slowed Quinn’s appetite. “Listen, do you wanna maybe check out the Hub or something? I’ve heard that’s kind of the place to be around here.”

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who had finished eating. Grace had broken away from her clan and was heading for the exit. She made sure to cast me a venomous glance as she passed. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’ll catch up with you later.”

There was something about the way that Grace was carrying herself that piqued my interest. I could see that her friends were as confused as I was about why she was leaving them. And there was something different about her as
she left the dining hall. Something suspicious. Something sneaky. Normally I would have just dismissed it. But with everything else that had been going on, I felt like I needed to find out what she was up to.

I followed Grace across the school grounds. She passed right by the dorms, so I knew that she wasn’t on her way back to her room. I was careful to stay out of sight, ducking behind trees and hiding in the shadows. The last thing I wanted was for Grace to catch me spying on her. She made her way into the library and headed straight out the back door. I was about to follow her when a hand grabbed my shoulder, spinning me around.

“Adrien Dane. I can’t believe you’re here.” It was Penelope, Grace’s roommate. I hadn’t seen her since before I left Wills four years ago. She didn’t like me much then, either. “When Grace told me you were coming back, I was in absolute shock. You’ve got some nerve, you know that?”

“It’s nice to see you, too, Penelope.” I could only hope that she hadn’t seen me following Grace. If she had seen that, I was screwed for sure. “What do you mean, nerve?”

“Coming back here after what you did.” She poked me in the chest with a perfectly manicured nail a little harder than I thought she was capable of.

“What exactly did I do?”

“You totally abandoned your sister after what happened
to your parents. She was left all alone, without any family at all.” A second poke in the same spot.

I rubbed my sternum at the site of Penelope’s digital assault. “Is that the story she’s been spreading around? Because that’s not exactly how it happened.”

“You’re just a heartless jerk, if you ask me.” Her hand was poised for another poke. Luckily, mine was still rubbing my chest, blocking her attack.

“Well, I don’t recall asking you.” I had more important things to do than to sit here and be berated by my sister’s “bestie.” Finding out exactly what my sister was up to, for starters. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

I made my way out the back door to the library, but Grace was already long gone. I wasn’t surprised. She had seemed like a woman on a mission. I guessed I’d have to wait for another opportunity to find out what that mission entailed.

I crossed to the parking garage behind the library and made my way to the back of campus. The school sat on several acres, some of which were heavily wooded. There was even a small lake on the property. I remember when we were first accepted to Wills, how my dad had gone on and on about the ecosystems that we would be able to explore in our biology classes and how excited Mom got when she thought about the indigenous plant life in the forest. More important for me, it made for a great place to walk when you wanted to clear
your head. Not many students came out this way unless they were with a class. That is, of course, unless they were getting private lessons in anatomy from one another. But those students tended to stick to the dense parts of the woods where it was easier to hide from the security guards. Walking by the lake was a relatively safe bet.

I walked for probably an hour or more, stopping every now and then to skip a stone or watch a bat fly over the glass-like water, darting this way and that in search of a meal. So many thoughts ran through my mind. What was Grace up to? Why did she take those pages from Dad’s journal? Where were those pages now? Who was sending me the text messages? How did that mystery person know so much? Why wouldn’t they just come out and tell me what was going on?

There was one question that stuck out in my mind more than any other. I hadn’t thought about it in years. But being back here at the Wills Institute, back at the place where I had first heard the news, brought it to the forefront of my mind. And now I needed to know the answer more than ever. I needed to know what had happened that day at my parents’ lab. The official report listed it as an accident, likely attributed to the mislabeling of some pretty volatile chemicals. There was no more detail than that in the report. But it had to be wrong. My parents were too careful to let something like that happen. My father’s obsessive nature extended much
further than his journal. He was just as meticulous, if not more, in his lab work. There was something more to their deaths than what was being told, and I needed to find out what.

I had thought that taking a walk would clear my head, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect. Now I needed to lie down. I made my way back to the main part of campus and into the lobby of the tower. A few kids were lounging in the common room playing video games. A student teacher sat at the front desk listening to the campus radio station. Today must have been the first day it was back on the air for the year. I recognized the unmistakable guitar playing of Billie Joe Armstrong as the Green Day song faded, only to be replaced by an equally familiar voice. A voice that I hadn’t heard in four years, and one that I was very happy to hear.

I darted out of the tower and made my way back to the library. Skipping the wait for the elevator, I ran up the three flights of stairs to where the radio station was located. Sitting behind the window was Josh Davies, my roommate and best friend from the last time I was at Wills. Other than his dark hair being a bit longer and his left ear being pierced, he looked exactly the same. It was great to see him doing his thing on the radio. He looked right at home. It had always been his dream. I couldn’t count how many times I’d walked
in on him practicing into a hairbrush between songs on his iPod.

I waited for the red
ON AIR
light to go off before I opened the studio door. I couldn’t stop my lips from curling into a smile at the sight of my best friend. A worry crossed my mind that he might not like me anymore, but I pushed it away.

“Some things never change.”

Josh pulled the headphones off his ears as he turned. His green eyes were as bright and sharp as I remembered them. “No way. Adrien friggin’ Dane. How the hell have you been, man?”