“What? I don’t—”
“Let me finish.” She takes a breath like she’s preparing to dive into deep waters. “You’ve been uninvited.” Her lip curls at this last bit. Everton Academy never expels students. They “uninvite.” As though the gentle euphemism could mask the reality of what being uninvited means.
I slide a step back. My hip bumps into a table holding an assortment of framed family photos. One hits the floor with a loud crack. I don’t even move to pick it up. Shaking my head, I whisper, “Why?”
It’s Dad who responds, his voice biting deep with the words that will change everything forever. “You have the kill gene.”
U.S. Department of Justice * The Federal Bureau of Investigation * Criminal Justice Information Reporting Division
*HTS testing yet to become protocol in many state-level jurisdictions
**HTS testing fully realized at every state-level jurisdiction
TWO
I CAN BARELY RECALL WHEN THEY TESTED US FOR HTS at school. It was at the start of the year. Before the leaves started to fall and calculus made my head hurt. Before Homecoming. Before Zac asked me out.
The Everton Board of Trustees decreed that all students needed testing. Not such a surprise. Everyone in the country is being tested these days. Dad even started requiring it of all employees at the bank. That’s some bitter irony now.
All advisory periods were sent to the nurse’s clinic. For me that meant leaving the orchestra hall and missing practice time. I think I remember that the most. Being mad about that.
One quick cotton swab in the mouth and it was done. My DNA stuck in a tube.
I think someone joked about Albert Adolfson obviously being a carrier. The Swedish kid is the star of our wrestling team and has serious anger issues. I always suspected steroids, but then the joke became HTS.
Now the joke is me.
Once everyone finds out. That bit of realization makes it hard to breathe. I don’t stay long in the living room with Mom and Dad. I can’t. Dad’s anger. The weird way Mom looks at me. It makes terrible sense now.
And Mr. Pollock with those small, mean eyes . . .
He makes sense, too. He’s part of my life now.
Images fire across my mind. One after another. An endless flash of killers in their prison jumpsuits. And the victims, the grieving people left behind. The media loves to zoom in on them. I never turn on the television anymore.
I flee to the sanctuary of my room and stare at the pictures of Zac and my friends all over my dresser mirror, wondering how they’ll react. Of course, I’ll have Zac and Tori, but what about the others? Will they still be my friends? I pace, humming an aimless tune, searching for my peace, my solace. Ever since I was a child, I’ve heard music inside my head. It lulls me to sleep at nights and calms me whenever I feel anxious. Lyrics and notes trip through my head as I wait for the terrible tightness in my chest to go away. For the calm to come. For the panic to fade.
But no matter how much I hum, no matter how much the music plays in my head, it doesn’t happen.
I open my laptop and search HTS.
I can’t ignore it. I can’t ignore me. NO. Not me.
Not me, whatever some stupid DNA test says. My stomach rolls, rebelling at the idea. They might say I am. But it’s not true. It’s not.
It can’t be.
My search lasts only a few minutes. The first thing that pops up is footage from the 20/20 feature on HTS. Death row inmates are interviewed by Dr. Wainwright. I listen as they share the horrific accounts of their crimes with the stoic-faced man. Some of them smile weirdly as they recount their transgressions. Those curving lips make my skin crawl. A breath shudders from my lips. I’m not them.
I punch fiercely at the keyboard and move to another site. A video of some extremist group brutally assaulting three men . . . three HTS carriers. From the comment feed below, everyone thought they got just what they deserved.
It’s too much. My already churning stomach pitches. The laptop falls from my lap as I dive for the bathroom, retching until my stomach is empty.
After that, I stagger back into my room and pick my laptop off the floor. Logging off, I set it on my desk and drop back on my bed.
Gradually, sunlight fades from behind my blinds. My phone rings and I glance at it. Zac. I can’t talk to him right now. Not yet.
I roll on my side and close my eyes, pressing a hand to my lips, smothering the cry that rises up in my throat and seeks escape. But there is no escape. No running from this.
After a while, I breathe normally again and feel like I can face my parents. I have to. I can’t pretend nothing happened. I need them to tell me everything is going to be okay. I need to know the next step. The plan. Sucking in a breath, I open the door. As I descend the stairs, I stop at the sound of Dad’s voice.
“She’s not a carrier. We would know something like that! You’ve seen those monsters all over the TV. The Minneapolis Bomber . . . the Atlanta Day-care Shooter. We’d know if our daughter is like them!”
I flinch and ease down one more step.
“The kill gene,” Mom says. “That’s what they call it. It can be dormant until something triggers it. They don’t all start out as monsters. . . .”
I sink down on the step and hug my knees, unable to face them after all.
It sounds like Mom believes I’m this . . . thing. A monster waiting for darkness to come so that I can leap out.
I bury my face in my knees. My shoulders shake but I don’t cry. Don’t make a sound. I’m not a killer. Although I’m going to become one. It’s just a matter of time. That’s what being an HTS carrier means. At least that’s what everyone says. Apparently, even what my parents believe. Or at least Mom.
“No. It has to be a mistake.” Yes! I latch on to these words. It is a mistake. It is. I hear the clink of glass and guess that Dad is pouring himself a drink.
“Patrick.” Mom says his name sharply. “You heard the headmaster. He had them double-check the DNA. That’s why it took so long to get the results from the fall. We can’t live in denial. We have to deal with this.”
Dad doesn’t respond. After a few moments, Mom adds, her voice clipped and efficient, “I’ll take her to her appointment with the caseworker tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you do that.” Even from where I huddle on the step, I don’t miss the bite in his voice.
Mom didn’t miss it, either. “You blame me? Is that it?”
“She certainly didn’t get this damned gene from my side of the family.”
“So this is my fault?” Mom’s voice is a snarl. “It’s recessive. It took both of us for this to happen! You always have to blame someone anytime anything goes wrong. You blame me for Mitchell and you might as well blame me for our daughter turning out to be a sociopath.”
I gasp.
There’s a loud crash. Dad’s glass hitting the wall or floor.
My hands grip the edge of the step, needing something to hang on to, something to keep me from splintering apart. A fingernail cracks under the pressure.
In the distance, I hear the faint ring of my cell phone in my room. Zac calling again. Or maybe Tori.
Mom’s raspy voice drifts to me, quieter now, subdued. “Feel better?”
“No. I’ll never feel better again, Caitlyn. Should I? I just lost my daughter.”
I bow over, clutching my waist, the words a painful blow. I cover my mouth so that no sound escapes. I want to shout that I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m the same girl I was yesterday. I’m no different. But somehow I am. To them, I am. I’m lost. Tomorrow the world will know that, too.
I hear the creak of the French doors followed by my brother’s voice. “Hey, what’s for dinner? I’m starved.”
“We haven’t cooked,” Mom snaps. No. No dinner. We forgot about food. “There are leftovers from last night.” I hear glass rattle and guess that she’s digging through the fridge. “Lasagna. Some garlic bread. I’ll warm some up. Sit down. We need to talk. . . .”
I rise and lightly tiptoe back to my room, not wanting to hear the inevitable conversation.
When they tell Mitchell that his sister’s not who they thought she was. That girl is gone and never coming back.
Sleep eludes me. Zac stops calling around midnight. I lie in bed, a song whispering through my head, fingers laced over my stomach as I stare up at the ceiling. My eyes are dry as bone. Strangely, I haven’t cried even though it feels like I lost everything. My head spins against the backdrop of an aria, thoughts racing through everything that’s happened, everything that’s going to happen. Zac will still be there. My real friends. They won’t change because they’ll understand that I haven’t.
Anxiety gnaws at me as I try to process how everyone will react. I remind myself that it’s just a few months until graduation when everything is about to change anyway. But then that leads to thoughts of the future, college. I’ve been expelled. What now? Will my new HTS status prevent me from going to Juilliard? I groan and rub my hands over my face. I don’t know. Don’t know anything anymore. Except what I am. What I’m not. Not a killer.
A knock sounds at my door and it pushes open. My brother stands there. “Hey.”
He looks like Mom. Brown eyes and dark hair. I’ve got the eyes but lighter hair. Like Dad. My father is mostly gray now, but when he was younger he had blond hair. Mom met him when he was lifeguarding at the country club. She said he looked like a young Brad Pitt. Whoever that was.
Mitchell wears his hair long and shaggy. Not because of any style he’s going for. He’s just too lazy to care. Staring at him now, I know Mom told him. He knows.
I force a smile. “Guess you’re not the family troublemaker anymore, huh?”
“Shut up,” he says without heat. He digs his hands into his pockets and walks into my room. Dropping his slender frame down on the bed beside me, he announces, “It’s crap. You know that. No one can predict the future. Your future.”
Sitting up, I cross my legs and drag a pillow into my lap. “There’s something to it. Why else are they testing people? You see the news? Some states even have special camps—”
“Yeah. Like ass-backward states. Not here.” He shakes his head. “You’ll see. In a few years, they’ll say HTS is all bogus. Some doctors will come up with something to discount the validity of it and all that.” He waves a hand like he’s swatting a fly. His gazes captures and holds mine.
I want to believe that. Really I do. That in a few years, maybe even sooner, all this will be a bad memory.
He leans onto his side. “There are a lot of bad people out there, Dav. These are dangerous times. People are scared. And when people are scared they need to feel in control. HTS lets people feel like they still have control against all the bogeymen out there.” He squeezes my arm. “No way are you one of them. Anyone can take a look at you and see that.”
I nod, his words feeding me hope. “In the meantime, I’m uninvited from Everton.”
“Everton sucks. I tried to get kicked out of that place but Dad kept getting me back in.”
I roll my eyes and laugh. It feels good.
He gently nudges my shoulder. “Hey. You’ll be fine. Everyone loves you. You’re, like, perfect—”
I sigh. “Mitchell. I’m not.”
“I’m serious.” His brown eyes look earnestly into mine. “This will all blow over.”
“I just want my life to stay the same,” I mumble into my pillow. “Or at least continue according to plan.”
It was a great plan, too.
“I know.” He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. “But nothing ever stays the same, Davy. You just have to adapt. . . . Show them this HTS is all a load of shit.” He laughs brokenly. “I mean, if anyone in this family is a carrier, it should be me. I’m the screwup.”