Matters of Circumstance (20 page)

And Farrah, who was quite possibly suffering from over-exertion, couldn’t understand a thing she was hearing because of all the blood pulsing in her ears. She was too hot in this hoodie, against this body—whose was it, anyway?—but if she didn’t have this support she would collapse. Her eyes were still scrunched shut, but the world swayed around her like jello. It was like she had just come off of that teacup ride at Disneyland. The notion was kind of nice, though; she kind of liked it. But she also couldn’t breathe, and she was tired. She just wanted to go to sleep.

If asked later she would never be able to say if it had been intentional or not, but she slept all the same.

In all honesty Farrah didn’t remember what happened after she passed out, or even what being unconscious was like. Now she was waking up in her bed without her hoodie. A bottle of water was on her bedside table next to a note telling her to call Neal, and a terrible ache resided in her thigh muscles.

At first she was confused, but then the memories came back to her and she was overcome by a crushing sense of dread. What was going to happen next? What exactly had she destroyed with her little sprint?

Had she really been surrounded by all of those authoritative voices?

Wanting someone to talk to and too sore to go downstairs and speak with her parents, she reached behind the water bottle for her cell phone and called Neal.

When he answered she could hear another conversation going on in the background.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?” But even as she said it she could hear said conversation fading, almost as if he was walking away from it.

“Yeah, I’ll be right back,” Neal said distractedly. Then to her, “Did you check the time before you called me?”

“I know it’s still daytime…” she said somewhat sheepishly, eyes roving to the patterns that the shade made on her closed curtains. “Probably, like, three or four or something. What day is it?”

“It’s 3:43, to be exact. You slept the entire day away, Farrah.”

That got her attention. “What? It’s not Saturday anymore? Are you kidding me?”

Neal made a noise of amusement and said, “I think that should be my line. Your ability to hibernate is incredible.”

She heard a knock on her door as said as the knob started to turn, “Oh, hold on. I think someone’s coming in to check on me—come on in. I’m awake,” she said loud enough for the person on the other side of the door to hear.

With everything that had happened over the past few months—heck, the past
day
—she really needed to learn to predict some things. But no, instead her jaw dropped when none other than Neal stepped into her room. He left the door open, and pocketed his cell phone as he approached her.

At least the grin on his face didn’t catch her off guard.

“What are you doing here?” she said anyway, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She disconnected her end of the call and let the hand holding her phone fall to her lap slowly.

Neal’s grin morphed into a smirk as he sat down next to her—but gently, so she wasn’t joggled. “Why thank you for taking the time out of your precious Sunday to spend time with my parents and wait for me to wake up instead of doing your own thing, Neal,” he said in a high, girly voice. And then he put a hand over his heart and pretended to look honored. “Oh, thanks Fare. Really, it was nothing. I know how much my presence means to you.”

He couldn’t have been more right with that, but she supposed he didn’t need to know. Well, he did, but she wasn’t going to say it right now.

Farrah smiled. “I knew I had you well trained,” she joked. “I don’t even need to say anything anymore. You’ll do it for me.”

“Arf.” His voice was dry, but he was looking right through her. The stare sent chills raking down her spine. When he spoke again, it was much more seriously: “But you are okay, aren’t you?”

She could have winced. “I’m never going to run that much in my life again, but otherwise—”

“That’s all I need to know,” he said, leaning in and kissing her softly. Not having expected it, it took Farrah a moment to gather her wits. Then she nearly rejected him, because her breath had to be
horrible
right now, but when his arms started going around her she forgot all about breath. If he didn’t care, then neither did she.

She put her hands on his neck and curled her fingers into the base of his dynamic blonde hair. His mouth felt so delightfully perfect that Farrah just couldn’t help the way she acted. She didn’t allow herself to go any farther than Neal had asked her to, though, because she knew what it meant to him.

But would it be wrong to really, really want to?

Neal was the one to break the kiss, drawing away and locking eyes with her intently. “You are a huge moron. You know that, right?”

She leaned back, a little affronted. “Pardon me? You weren’t acting like you thought I was such a huge moron two seconds ago.”

“That’s because I was overwhelmed with relief that you were okay. Now that I’ve moved past that, do you even realize how needlessly dramatic your little stunt was?”

“Um, I guess I was unconscious for the last day or so,” she drawled, acid in her voice and her eyes somewhat narrowed. “So I don’t realize at all. Care to fill me in?”

The worst part was that she didn’t even know if she meant to be so acerbic.

Farrah hadn’t even noticed the newspaper he had brought with him until it flopped across her lap. She almost expected her own face to be staring back at her, but no, it was her pediatrician.

‘Local doctor performing illegal animal testing’
the headline read.

“Are we considered the animals in this?” she asked, glancing up.

“Just read it,” said Neal. “It’ll answer all of your questions.”

‘It’s a lot like a TV show: Inconspicuous local pediatrician Richard Roe has been exposed as a practitioner of illegal animal testing. And it’s not just any old tests: most of his test subjects—mice, cats and dogs—have wing-like appendages growing out of their backs,’
the article read.
‘CIA agent Dorothy Williams has been posing as the doctor’s secretary for the past several months investigating the case. Williams was not available for questioning, so it is unsure of what she thinks of the case, but Zone Magazine reporters Peggy Carvalio and Craig Invanko have also been following the case for nearly two months. “At first we didn’t think the rumors were anything but rumors,” Carvalio admits. “But—being Zone reporters—we kept at it and eventually got enough evidence to confront the doctor, which actually resulted in this whole bust.”

The details of the experiments are murky, but the wings are unmistakable. “It’s like going into a fantasy novel,” reports one source, who would like to remain anonymous. “Except nobody has seen them fly.”

The state of the animals’ living conditions…’

Throat tight, Farrah tore her gaze away from the article. “This is not all because of my drama, you know. I just helped that CIA chick catch him,” was all she could say. It was hard enough just coming up with those words. Her mind was revolving like she was drunk, except she wasn’t. She could not have been more sober than she was right now, and she almost wished that wasn’t true. Knowing that their condition was the product of some sick guy’s experiments was worse than finding out that she had grown wings. And it had been going on for months,
years,
completely untouched—that pissed her off.

The paper hadn’t mentioned her or Neal at all, or the man with the granulomas. Farrah knew they were all connected, so why were the human test subjects kept under wraps? That was the sort of thing that the media would eat up.

And that couple was from some magazine she had never heard of, investigating the subject—they had obviously confronted the doctor about it, but what had they said? How had they known to look at Farrah for information at all? She couldn’t answer any of that. Maybe they had talked to the CIA agent or something?

Good god, who was she kidding? This whole situation was utterly ridiculous!

“Yes, but you drew needless attention to yourself,” said Neal. “They didn’t mention you in the article, but every single person that was in that parking lot would probably recognize you. School is going to be crazy with it, and how are you going to handle all of that stress on top of trying to study for finals and pull your social life back together?”

“How are you going to handle all of that while simultaneously trying to graduate, is the better question,” she retorted, not liking the way he was attacking her.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Fare, but I tend to hold up under stress better than you.”

“I have, but—” she cut herself off and sighed, trying to collect herself. Snapping wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “Just give me a little more independence, dad. I don’t think babying me is the right way to handle it, either.”

Neal opened his mouth, then stopped and seemed to think better of it. He let out a breath of his own. “You’re right. I’m still trying to get over the fact you scared the shit out of me. You’re not—our bodies aren’t made to be pushed anymore, and I guess I thought you broke yourself or something.”

Hearing that made Farrah melt. Neal had had nothing but her best interests in mind, and she was picking a fight with him? That wasn’t fair at all.

“You know,” she said with a hint of humor. The indignant flame that had risen in her chest was long gone now. “We get into fights over the weirdest things, for teenagers.”

Neal looked over at her, smiling slightly. His mesmerizing blue eyes were soft. “We do,” he agreed. “And we fight in the weirdest way.”

“Hey, you said you would be right back,” her father called from what sounded like the top of the stairs. “What’s going on up there?”

“I’m reading the newspaper, Dad,” she hollered when Neal opened his mouth to respond. “It’s real scandalous.”

Neal snorted. “It almost was, actually.”

“My dad doesn’t need to know that.”

“Just saying.”

At about that time her father appeared in her bedroom doorway. He had a teasing leer plastered on his face. “Well, Sleeping Beauty awakes. How are you feeling, anyway?”

“Fine. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around this, though.” She gestured to the newspaper.

He made a sympathetic sound. “Then Zone magazine will really blow you away. It’s the conspiracy theory directory—and they were actually right this time. Talk about difficult to wrap your mind around.”

Well, no wonder she had never heard of Zone before. Conspiracy theories were as good as gossip, in her opinion.

“This should help,” her mother said, brushing past her husband, sitting on Farrah’s other side and handing her a sealed, unmarked envelope without any sort of preamble.

At first Farrah only stared, completely shocked at how casually her mother was acting. Her wings were out for the world to see, and her mother hadn’t been there when she told her father about them, but the former was acting as if she had known all along. Farrah had been under the impression that her mother would have slowly and deliberately went about disowning her.

Well, maybe not disowning, but something. It was hard to predict Tracy O’Brien.

Then she mentally shook the thoughts away—she would deal with them later—and asked Neal and her father, “Did you guys know about this, too?” She lifted the envelope for emphasis.

Neal shrugged. “Everybody knows that I got one. Don’t know what yours says, though,” he said.

“What did yours say?”

“It might be the same. Just read yours.”

She made a face at him and broke the seal on the envelope a little warily. The paper inside was thick cardstock, and there was something that looked like a barcode on the top margin.

‘Farrah O’Brien,

We haven’t met before, but my name is Dorothy Williams. I work for the CIA, and have been investigating the animal testing case since January of this year as Dr. Roe’s secretary. I am aware of your condition, and you have my sincerest apologies for not being able to find enough evidence with which to halt Roe’s experiments in time. You were administered the wing-inducing hormones by mistake, as it is very similar to a flu vaccination in appearance. There were exactly two mix-ups, and when there were no deaths the switches became purposeful and even progressed to Dr. Laura Peterson’s patients (in case you were unaware, Peterson treats adults, and uses the same office). According to Roe’s research, the wings do not mutate DNA and so do not occur in offspring or subsequent generations. It does not seem to affect vital organs or bodily functions, either, but you understand that you are entitled to full financial compensation if you are an exception.

I must also offer my apologies for scheduling the date of your alleged checkup. You were always meant to lure Roe into compromising his carefully assembled façade. Your success will be rewarded via full scholarship to your college of choice.

As you read this a team of accomplished scientists are researching ways to reverse this process, but unfortunately there is no certain timeline. There might never be a cure, but I only say this because I must. Off the record, I don’t believe that you won’t be like this for the rest of your life.