Sir Walter was trying to get our car started again, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. I rolled my window down, sticking my head out to see how bad it was up ahead.
Sir Walter cursed, looked behind us to confirm what Mick and I could both see. “Grab your sister and let us disappear.”
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“I do not wish to have our identities brought to anyone’s attention while we stay in Rome. I will instruct the
nonna
to report the vehicle as stolen.”
He extended one hand for me to grab, looking in all directions to see if it was safe to disappear. Everyone’s attention was directed away from us. “Go!” he said.
My hunger disappeared the moment my body did. That was a relief anyway. The three of us eased through the screechy metal doors, and then Sir Walter must’ve decided passing through all that metal and all those angry Italians was too much, ‘cause he angled us towards a strip of dirt planted with trees every ten or so feet. That felt a lot better. For Sam’s sake, I tried to pay attention to what the trees tasted or smelled like, but honestly, I wasn’t picking up on anything much.
Eventually, we made our way back to the alley where our apartment sat. As soon as we solidified, Sir Walter excused himself.
“I believe there is a vendor selling pizza around the corner,” he said.
Pizza sounded good. Bed sounded good. Never, ever driving in Rome again sounded good.
We ate and crawled off to bed.
Any hopes I had for sleeping in late were dashed way too early the next morning. Mickie and Sir Walter were talking in very excited voices that I couldn’t sleep through. I stumbled into the kitchen.
“The sun’s not up,” I complained, grabbing a roll off the table.
Mickie looked at me, her face wrinkled with worry as bad as I’d ever seen it.
“What?” I asked.
She looked ready to burst into tears.
Sir Walter indicated the computer. I looked and saw an news article about last night’s car pile–up. With a photo showing about a mile of cars, although only those in front were really visible.
And then I saw what had my sister so upset.
Me. Sticking my head out the window, which I’d done for, like, all of two seconds. In front of me, looking ridiculous in a Nintendo stretch–cap, sat Sir Walter.
Thanks to some stupid cell phone camera, we were officially headline news.
AROUND ALL THE TIME
·
SAM
·
“Hey, Christian,” said Gwyn. She sidled herself next to him in the one–person passenger seat of my Blazer.
“Really, Gwyn?” I muttered, pulling the car into reverse.
She’d called, insisting it looked like rain and would I please swing by the bakery to pick her up. The bakery was directly across from the school parking lot.
“Over there,” she said, pointing to the far side of the lot. “I saw a good parking space.”
What she saw was an opportunity to hang out thigh to thigh with Christian. She flung an arm around his neck as I revved over a speed–bump.
“Hey, careful, Sam! Not all of us are seat–belted in here!” She smiled at Christian and murmured, “Sorry,” indicating the drape of her arm along his shoulders.
She was patently
not
sorry.
“Oh, darn,” she said as another car took the spot. “Guess we’ll have to circle around again. I didn’t see David Lopez aiming for that parking spot.”
I’d bet crazy kinds of money she
did
see him. I was familiar with the species
Gwynicus Prowlicus
and its devious ways.
Later, over lunch, Gwyn timed her seat–grabbing perfectly. That is, she waited until she could tell which seat Christian meant to take and then angled herself in so that he spent a brief moment upon her lap.
As he stood and apologized, she blinked at him innocently, something she’d perfected through years of hiding bad behavior from her mom.
Christian flushed while speaking to Gwyn. “Allow me to point out that this might be avoided, had you allowed me to remain standing until you had chosen your seat.”
Gwyn had told Christian he should quit doing things like remaining standing until the girls were seated. Or rising from the table if a girl got up to buy another soda. As far as I could tell, Gwyn’s ideas of Christian’s habits came from watching Jane Austen movies with her mom rather than from actual knowledge of seventeenth century court life in France. But Christian was too polite to say anything to embarrass her. Or maybe he found it all amusing. Or maybe he wasn’t listening. His vigilance on my behalf had definitely scaled way up since my kidnapping.
I found myself keeping my eyes open as well. I scanned faces in the halls instead of tracing the flow of cracks in the concrete as I moved from class to class. But no one was looking at me. They all stared at the guy walking beside me. He’d altered his gait since coming to California. I wondered how he’d been able to do it so well until he told me that walking lessons had been part of his daily routine as a young courtier.
“We studied the rules of motion and how to present ourselves most attractively to the world,” he’d said. “I understand an entire art–form has grown from our efforts and survives to this day—the ‘ballet,’ Sir Walter informs me.”
All I knew was that Christian had figured out how to blend in and yet still attract a heck of a lot of stares. As the three of us walked together to biology, every girl we passed turned her head back over her shoulder to keep her eyes on Christian.
“Dr. Yang’s going to wonder why the sudden outbreak of neck strains in high school girls,” I murmured to Gwyn as we sat for class. “It’s ridiculous.”
In her seat beside me, Gwyn scribbled for a few seconds and passed a note to me.
Sad–looking eyes—check.
Amazing hair—check.
Ass–to–die–for—check.
What part of this confuses you?
This time when I rolled my eyes, they ached from repetitive motion strain. I had to admit she was right about Christian’s eyes, though. They did have this sort of sad–puppy–dog look to them.
Haunted,
Sylvia had called them.
Gwyn reached back to pull a stray leaf from Christian’s long hair. “Flowing locks of gold,” she’d said when he wasn’t in hearing range, “Hair that belongs to a bass player in a really cool band.”
I could hear a girl seated behind Christian quizzing him on what biology was like in French schools.
“Do you study reproduction?” she asked. “Or anatomy?”
I glanced back to see her adjusting a tight tee–shirt to display her own body parts to advantage.
Christian’s face was red when he turned forward. Gwyn stared at the girl looking like she could shoot lasers from her eyes.
She passed me another note.
OMG Can you believe the girls at this school?
I snorted back a laugh while she waited for me to respond. On the board, Mr. Polwen had written: HUMAN CLONING—ETHICAL OR UNETHICAL?
Gwyn sent me another note.
Do you think Christian gets lonely here?
Ignoring her, I scribbled notes on a controversial cloning facility that had come to light last fall. I’d heard about their claimed success with humans. The location of the facility had been kept secret, but in the photos you could see the Cyrillic alphabet, so it was somewhere in the former Soviet Union, people surmised.`
Gwyn kicked my foot and looked at me with an eyebrows–raised expression that asked,
Well, don’t you have an opinion?
Probably
, I wrote at the bottom of a scrap of paper. I left it on my desk where she’d see it. My stomach was doing sick flops as I tried to copy Polwen’s notes on zygotes and blastocysts, the names for the earliest stages of human embryo development. I
had
to get my egg back. And soon.
Class dismissed and Gwyn linked one of her arms through mine, the other through Christian’s.
“Looks like rain again,” said Gwyn. “Do you mind driving me?”
I made a choked laughing noise.
Gwyn guffawed. “Okay, it’s not going to rain. I just like your company.” She winked at Christian.
The two carried on a discussion of the merits of American versus French pastries, about which Christian knew little and all of it centuries out of date. They’d be pretty cute as a couple, I had to admit. Gwyn climbed in the front of my Blazer cab again, snuggling against Christian for the three–hundred–foot drive across the parking lot and Main Street.
Our school’s three cheerleaders waved and called out, “
Bonjour
, Christian,” as I idled in front of the Las Abuelitas Bakery Café.
“
Au revoir
,” said Gwyn, planting a quick peck on his cheek as she stared down the trio.
The door closed and I pulled out into the Las Abs rush–hour of school–letting–out.
“You suffered distress today,” said Christian. “During the lesson which the biology master taught. Are you recovered?”
I swerved the car around Main Street’s large pothole. “How did you know … what I was feeling?” It was true, the discussion of creating life in test tubes had me pretty upset.
“I felt it,” said Christian. “Like an assault almost physical in its nature.”
“You felt … my feelings?”
“Indeed.”
“Can you do this with other people or just me?”
Christian shrugged. “The thoughts of others I catch easily. Feelings, I am less accustomed to…overhearing. But I think that your feelings were of a strong nature. And we are both of the family de Rochefort.”
Okay
, I thought.
Super–freaky that Christian has a window into my soul
.
“I’ll try to keep my thoughts to myself in the future,” I said.
“Just as you wish,” said Christian. After a brief pause he added, “Perhaps you felt it inappropriate that I ‘listened’ to you?”
I pulled the car down our long drive. I didn’t want to appear impolite. “It was nice of you to ask how I was doing.”
Inside the house, Sylvia had left a note on the fridge white–board. “Shopping,” the note said.
“Samanthe?”
I closed the fridge. Whatever I needed right now, it wasn’t in there.
“I have been considering our wisest course of attack whereby to remove the egg from the possession of our enemies,” he said.
Half my mouth curved up into a sad smile listening to his funny turns of phrase. “What did you come up with?”
He frowned. “I am unsatisfied on all counts. To go alone would be the wiser course, but I cannot allow myself to be parted from you again.”
“I thought I might go on my own,” I said.
His eyebrows raised; the lines furrowing his forehead made him look older than a high school boy.
Which he was.
“That would be unthinkable,” he said. “I beg of you,
Mademoiselle
, place me not in the position of being unable to account for your wellbeing.”
“Yeah, I didn’t figure you’d go for that,” I said.
The hard part of having Christian around all the time was just that: he was around all the time.
BESETTING SINS
·
WILL
·
Mick and I were good at packing up quick, and we left Rome before the sun had risen. Sir Walter led us invisibly towards the outskirts of the great city where we stopped briefly at a car dealership, with really sweet rides like DeLoreans and Mercedes and Alfa Romeos. Sir Walter bought a midnight blue Alfa Romeo
Giulietta
and the world’s smallest Mercedes, paying cash.
“If we’re splitting up,” said Mick, “I think it needs to be you two who stick together.” Her eyes held back tears.
“No, no,” said Sir Walter. “The Mercedes is to compensate our landlady for the loss of her vehicle.” He arranged to have the car delivered to her.
“The Alfa Romeo’s for us?” I shook my head. “Flashy, much?”
Sir Walter shrugged. “It is considered the safest compact car on the market.”
We piled in the car and Mickie started crying. “It’s all my fault.”
I wrapped an arm around her. “Don’t.”
“No, it’s the truth. And I’m not just talking about yesterday. I never should have taken the work Pfeffer offered all those years ago.”
“That work kept us in shoe leather and groceries,” I said, trying to turn around the Mickie–guilt–fest.
“But I took the job because I wanted … what’s the word?” She paused, sniffled. “I wanted
glory
, Will. I wanted to do great research and become known and respected.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that, Mick.”
Her sobbing got a whole lot worse. “I was willing to endanger
you
to get what I wanted. I brought you into the lab so Pfeffer would be sure to keep me on.”
I made a small snorting sound. “Well, you can quit beating yourself up on that one. You think I would have stayed home, knowing you’d met someone who was researching Rippler’s Syndrome? Mick, I would have snuck in to see him if you hadn’t taken me.”
“You’re—just—saying—that.” She made these little hiccups–sounds between each word.
I shook my head. “Sorry, Mick, you’re stuck with a deceitful, sneaky little brother. I totally would’ve gone to see him on my own.”
She looked at me. “Really?”
“I swear.”
“It doesn’t excuse that I was willing to use you,” she said, wiping her eyes on her shirt–sleeves.
“Hmmm, so I’m a lying deceiver and you’re guilty of, um, I think it’s called ‘vainglory.’ Both pretty bad. What a team we make, huh?” I bumped her from the side, trying to make her laugh, which she wouldn’t do.
“We each carry within us the seed of a great evil,” said Sir Walter.
“Yeah, dude, what’s your sin of choice?” I asked.
“Will!” murmured my sister.
“My besetting sin, that is, the evil by which I am most sorely tempted is
sloth
,” he said.
“You’re fond of sleep?” I asked.
Sir Walter laughed. “No, no. I am fond of sitting by whilst others are allowed to work great harm.”
“You’re not sitting by this time,” said Mickie.