Best Kept Secrets
Loose Id Titles by Evangeline Anderson
BEST-KEPT SECRETS
Evangeline Anderson
www.loose-id.com
Best-Kept Secrets
Copyright © February 2014 by Evangeline Anderson
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eISBN 9781623007775
Editor: Maryam Salim
Cover Artist: Reese Dante
Published in the United States of America
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter One
Josh and I used to be normal siblings—well, stepsiblings, I should say. His father married my mother when I was seventeen and he was nineteen. It was a whirlwind courtship followed by a beautiful wedding, but Josh and I were just amicable strangers at the time. The plan was for him to go off to the Mars U while I stayed with my mom and her new husband on the orbiting Earth station to finish my last year of prep school. Josh and I probably wouldn’t have had any relationship at all if it hadn’t been for the tragedy…
Barely a month after they had been married, my mother and Josh’s father—both xenogeologists by trade—went off on a honeymoon-slash-specimen-collecting expedition to the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system just past the orbit of Neptune.
They never came back.
We got a few garbled transmissions of their last moment, and at least it looked like they were happy up until the very end. They only had seconds to see the rogue asteroid looming in their viewscreen before their ship was smashed to icy, floating chunks. In a single instant, Josh and I were both orphaned.
I was devastated. My mother was everything to me, and now I was a minor on my own. I had only two choices: go into foster care for the final year until I legally became an adult, or go and live with my one remaining relative—Great-Aunt Gertrude. Foster care off Earth wasn’t a good option—there were rumors of abuse and slave trading. Ever since humankind had left Earth and struck out for the stars, they’d lost a great deal of their humanity. So I called my great-aunt.
Aunt Gertrude was living on Titan at the time—Saturn’s largest moon—and I hadn’t seen her since I was six years old. She had dry, dyed blonde hair and unnaturally bright blue eyes, which had been surgically enhanced. In fact,
everything
on her had been enhanced from her artificially high cheekbones to her unnaturally large breasts. She was in her eighties, but she somehow managed to pull off the look of a hard forty probably because, as my mom had always said, she spent most of her wages on rejuvi treatments and plastic surgery. When I called her on the commu-link to tell her what had happened, she wasn’t exactly sympathetic.
“Well, I
suppose
we can find some room for you
somewhere
, Cassandra,” she said testily, pursing her lips which were puffy from collagen treatments. Her face had the unnaturally tight look that only a laser face-lift can give. “Of course I won’t turn you away—Miranda wouldn’t have wanted that.”
Miranda was my mother and just hearing her name brought tears to my eyes.
“Thank you,” I managed to choke out. “I just…I don’t know where else to turn.”
“Of course you’ll have to get a job and pay rent,” she went on. “Life on Titan is getting
so
expensive these days. What with the atmosphere dome always needing repairs and the tax hikes they claim are paying for it. Although if that’s so, why do I still have a liquid methane leak in my living room? Answer me
that
.”
“I’ll help out,” I said humbly. “I’ll do everything I can. And don’t worry—I’ll take care of all the paperwork to transfer to my new school.”
“You won’t have time for school—not unless you can squeeze in a few night classes,” she said sharply. “I
told
you, you’ll have to pay your way.”
“I will,” I said hastily. “But—”
“No buts.” Her weird bright-blue eyes flashed greedily. “Unless you have some special skills I don’t know about, you’ll have to take a minimum wage job for at least, oh…say ten to twelve hours a day. That should about cover your share. And all your wages are to come directly to
me
. After that you can go to school—
if
you can afford transportation to get there.”
“But…I want to finish prep and go to college,” I protested. “That’s what my mother wanted for me. I was going to go into xenobiology.”
“Well, life changes,” Aunt Gertrude snapped. “I’ll get the spare room ready for you. Oh, and you’ll have to get your own ticket here. I hope you can afford it because I don’t have a single credit to spare.” She patted her leathery cheeks. “It takes every bit I have to keep body and soul together.”
“
Especially
the body, huh?” A new voice from the doorway spoke up.
I looked up in surprise to see Josh standing there. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his muscular arms crossed over his broad chest and a frown on his face.
“Excuse me?” Aunt Gertrude peered up at him from the screen of the commu-link. “
What
did you just say?”
“I’m talking about your face, lady,” he said, motioning at her. “How much did all that cost, anyway?”
“Why that’s…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aunt Gertrude sputtered. “I…I’ve never had work done.”
“
Sure
you haven’t,” Josh said sarcastically. “So now, let me get this straight—Cassandra has to get her own ticket to Titan.”
“Well,
yes
.” Aunt Gertrude fluffed her brittle blonde hair. “I’m not made of credit, after all.”
“Right,” Josh said. “And once she gets there, she’s supposed to give up going to school so she can work ten to twelve hours a day at some mindless job for minimum wage.”
Aunt Gertrude’s pink puffy lips worked, making her look like a fish out of water.
“Well she’ll have to—”
“And all to pay for the
privilege
of living with you in your shitty little rathole where it leaks liquid methane in the living room,” Josh interrupted, arching an eyebrow at her. “Is that right?”
“How
dare
you speak to me like that?” Aunt Gertrude’s cheeks went purple with rage. “Who
are
you anyway?”
“I’m Cassandra’s big brother,” Josh said, glaring right back at her. “And I’m not going to let you use her as a minimum-wage slave.”
“She’s not welcome here, anyway,” my great-aunt snapped. She looked at me. “I’m rescinding my invitation. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to manage on your own.”
“No, wait! Please, Aunt Gertrude,” I began but she had already broken our connection.
I sat there in stunned silence for a moment, staring at the blank screen. Then I broke into tears.
“Hey, hey…no, don’t be upset.” Josh sat beside me on the couch, looking alarmed.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” I sobbed, putting my hands over my eyes. “Why did you do that, Josh?”
“To keep you from getting stuck on Titan with no degree and some abusive old lady who just wants you to pay for her surgical addiction,” he said roughly.
“At least she was offering me a place to
stay
.” I looked up at him angrily. “You know the rules about a minor living alone on the space station—it’s not done. What am I going to do now? Go into foster care?”
He looked shocked.
“No, of course not. You can’t do that. With all the stories you hear…” He gestured at me. “I mean, just look at you—you’re such a tiny little thing. They’d eat you up alive.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said acerbically. My appearance was a major sore point with me. Due to prolonged time in low-g environments at critical times in my growth cycle, my physical maturation had been slow. Which is a nice way of saying that, even at seventeen, I was so flat the walls were jealous.
Josh ran a hand through his thick, unruly black hair.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant you wouldn’t be safe—that’s all.”
“Well, it’s not like I have a choice. I’ve got no place to go now—no place to live.”
“Yes, you do. You’re going to live with me.”
I wiped my eyes and looked up at him uncertainly.
“With you? But…how? You’re going off to the University of Mars.”
“Not for another year,” he said. “Not until you finish prep and you’re ready for university yourself.”
“You can’t do that. You can’t just put your future on hold for me. I mean, our parents were married less than a month, Josh. We barely even know each other.”
He got a stubborn look on his dark, handsome face.
“That doesn’t matter. I promised your mom and my dad that I’d take care of you while they were gone, Cassie. I’m not going to break that promise—now or ever.”
I choked back a sob.
“But they thought they’d be gone a month. They didn’t expect to dump me on you forever.”
“It’s not forever. Just until you’re finished university and you can manage on your own. Look”—he put an arm around my shoulders—“it’ll be okay. I’ll take some correspondence courses this year, and next year we’ll both be at Mars U—that was your preferred school too, right?”
“Right,” I said uncertainly. “I mean, if I get in.”
“You will. You’re incredibly smart.”
“Thanks.” I gave him a tiny smile.
“In fact, after you finish your last year of prep, we can even do some traveling like our parents. Mars U has a great field-research program—you can do a lot of your classes by correspondence while you’re out in the field.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “Doing that—traveling around, seeing new planets, new cultures and creatures—that was one of my favorite parts of my life with my mom. I always went with her on sabbaticals during term breaks.”
He grinned. “I went with my dad too. Guess we’ll be following in our parents’ footsteps. I’m going to be a xenobotanist, and you’ll become a xenobiologist like your mom wanted you to.”
“That…that was what she wanted for me. I want it too,” I whispered.
The mention of my mom made me want to cry some more, but I tried to hold it back. I didn’t want to make Josh uncomfortable again. He seemed to understand how upset I was, though, because he gave me a comforting squeeze.