Though this conversation had that told me absolutely nothing about Mercy, I said quickly, “Thanks, Mom.”
“Sure,” she said. “Harper, excuse me for keeping you waiting. Shall we continue the tour?’
Harper was quiet as Mom Gwen continued to talk about intensive care and PT and other stuff, then when we turned the corner, she whispered, “He didn’t see who hit him.”
Luckily, she turned back to Mom Gwen before she could see the pulse of hatred I couldn’t hide. As the three of us walked up to the maternity ward, which Mom Gwen cheerfully said, always ended tours on an upbeat note, I struggled with that sick feeling that the first person I’d liked in San Diego had been turned into someone else, and Harper had ruined my friendship for me.
Or was that what Harper wanted me to think? What did I think?
I don’t care what’s Mercy’s got in her jeans, I thought angrily as I looked at all those little babies. You couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls. They didn’t care if they were boys or girls. What was gender anyway, really? I mean, do you think about what’s inside anyone’s jeans, if you aren’t actually wanting to have sex with them?
If I was about to have sex with Mercy, would I care? So far in my life, all I’d had were two crushes. Two very distant crushes. I’d never gotten close enough to anybody to even think about sex, but I knew that people weren’t completely one thing or the other. Mom Gwen had said when we had The Talk that she’d always thought she was a lesbian only, until she met my dad. You fall in love with a person. Then you love all the person, whatever kind of body they have.
Right?
“… Laurel?” Mom Gwen said. “Elevator’s here.”
I turned away from the babies, my eyes burning. Why was there so much hate? What was hate going to do to those babies when they met it? Their parents were supposed to be happy to have them, but how long would that happiness last? Who among them would get bullied or abused … or dumped?
Harper shook hands with Mom Gwen again, thanking her profusely for the wonderful tour, then we walked out, to where we found Bec and Fletch waiting.
The second Harper and I reached them, Fletch said, “Found Michael’s clothes.” He looked grim. “Don’t know if anyone knows this, but Michael was whacked by a baseball bat. I will recognize the wood, the varnish, the resin, and the sweat on it. Definitely guy sweat. His hands were all over that bat before he used it.” I remembered those girls chasing Mercy, and for the first time considered that Michael could have been attacked by girls. Then I remembered despising Kyle for his assumptions, and grimaced, thoroughly depressed. “And I also know what Michael’s blood smells like,” Fletch went on. My stomach boiled even more.
He turned to Harper. “The easy way is if someone can get me something your suspect has touched. Everybody has a distinct scent. If the scent on the bat matches his, then we’re done.”
“I’ll get it,” I said.
Fletch nodded. “If the scents don’t match, you’ll have to get me to the place where Michael was jumped. I can take it from there. The jerkwad has to have let that bat hit the ground or a fence or a wall sometime, or maybe even stepped in the blood. All it takes is a drop, and I’ll have a trail.”
“Everybody in school knows where it happened,” Harper said. “And has been there, looking around and oohing at the blood splatters. Will all those people mess up the scent?”
“For mundane noses,” Fletch said. “Not for my magical sniffer.”
Harper’s brother drove up right then. Nobody spoke on the way back.
* * *
I continued to worry about my bio-mom, like, did she dump me because I had a talent, or had something happened to her because she had one?
My life seemed to be filling up with questions I couldn’t ask, because there were personal secrets to be kept as well as the weird ones.
But this question, at least, I could ask, I thought when I got home and found dad on the couch, reading the news on his tablet. “Did my mom decide she hated me, or is there some other reason why she dumped me?” My heart thundered. “Or did she just vanish, leaving me behind?”
“No.” Dad sighed, his eyes closing. A little vein beat in his eyelid, and somehow, seeing that made me go hollow behind my ribs. “As for her choice to give you up, it wasn’t that clearcut. Life seldom is.” He gave me a tentative smile, and I could tell he hoped we were done.
Magic seemed to be out, but still I had to know. “And?”
“Having you was my idea. She went along with it, though she never wanted children. Our marriage already had problems. I thought, if there was a child—more people to love—that love would strengthen. I still believe that. But I guess there are different kinds of love. And you can’t force your kind on someone else.”
He shifted, and sighed. “She fell in love with someone else. One day I came home. Found a note saying she’d sign any papers I wanted, but she was going off to a new place, to start a new life. She ended it by saying that she loved us both, but love wasn’t enough.”
Love wasn’t enough. So her disappearance wasn’t because of some mystery group, or because of secret powers, it was because she hadn’t wanted me or Dad. All those babies back in that hospital, was that the lesson they were heading for, love isn’t enough?
The hollow place inside me filled with an ache that no talent could fix, crowding right up into my throat. I leaned into Dad, smelling coffee, the soap he uses to wash his hands, a whiff of felt tip pen.
The couch creaked, and Mom Tate dropped on my other side, her hip bumping against mine, and I put my head on her shoulder. She smelled like vanilla, and sliced onion, and herbal shampoo.
Then cool fingers pressed gently against my neck. Mom Gwen had come up behind the couch and began to knead with scientific expertise, sending little zings through me as all the knots began to melt. Footsteps announced the arrival of Noah, my youngest brother, who promptly launched into a full dive, and as he landed across the laps of us on the couch, shouted, “Tickle me!”
“Here come the tickles, buddy,” Mom Tate said. She and dad made hand spiders to attack all of Noah’s favorite tickle places, as he writhed and giggled, and Mom Gwen just kept kneading my shoulders until all the sick drained away.
One time she’d told me how, in the old days, the preemies that no one thought had chance, survived way more often if they got skin to skin touch, what she called tenderness. Tenderness, I thought sleepily. It’s a real power, one anybody can have.
* * *
When Kyle slammed his notebook onto his desk the next day, it was so easy to zap it I almost didn’t have to pull. But I did pull, hard, sending his papers spilling.
Half the class thought it an excellent opportunity to get up and kick the papers all over the room, making noise chasing them. Safe in the bobbing, milling crowd, I nipped up two test papers that should have his scent on them, since I wasn’t sure who actually did his homework.
I slipped them into a waiting folder, and the folder into my backpack as the teacher scowled everyone back into their seats. Mercy never looked my way—until after class, when our eyes met, I did a brief thumbs up.
When the dismissal bell rang, there she was, waiting with her bike to ride with me to the park.
She eyed me for about two seconds, then said, “Let me guess. Harper got her hate on, and you got to hear it.” She looked away, then back. “Well, I kinda asked for it.”
“How?” Zoom. There was the anger again. I tried to bat it down. “How could … making the decision you made be asking for it?”
“It is when you set fire to the school, and nearly kill someone’s brother,” Mercy said, and I shut up. “You really want to hear this?”
I grimaced. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Then stop me if it gets too much.” She paused, as if hoping I’d say too much.
But I didn’t.
She said slowly, “I’d hoped to meet people as me. Now. But you don’t get to escape your past.” Mercy looked away
again. “Dom and I knew we were two girls from the time we were born. The one difference didn’t mean anything to us. As soon as I noticed how clothes marked gender, I was always putting on hers. Why should she get to wear girl clothes when they made me wear boy’s? At first everybody thought it was cute. They said stuff like how it was good I was exploring my feminine side. But when I kept saying that I was a girl…” She shrugged.
“Did they punish you for it?” I asked, slimily remembering my stupid comment about twins. Never again, I promised myself. Never.
“No. My parents aren’t like that, but, well, my grandfather is this important admiral. He kind of pressured them. ‘We don’t have any history of that kind of thing in our family,’ I remember him saying that. What kind of ‘thing’? Mostly they offered me bribes. If I did boy stuff, I got rewards. They signed me up for every kind of boy activity there is. I told you about the soccer.”
“How you could leap high and your sister couldn’t.”
“I knew that had nothing to do with girls or boys, because nobody on any of the little kid teams could spring any more than Dom could. So I stopped doing sports. Then I stopped doing schoolwork. I almost stopped springing—you call yours the zap, I call mine the spring—but I really wanted to dance, to fly.”
She pedaled faster. I kept pace, and she talked to her handlebars. “So one day I was alone at the palisades, springing as high as I could. I can get pretty high. Especially when I’m, um, intense. I was almost ready to spring right off a cliff, and end it all, and then I thought, why should I end me? It was their fault. I was a girl, but they were making me be a boy because it was right for them, and so … well, I tried to destroy all their stuff.”
“That fire you mentioned?”
“Yup. I leaped up on the school roof with burning newspapers, starting with my classroom. Kyle Moore got the blame, at first. Even when I told them I did it. They didn’t believe me because Dom and I were such good kids. Kyle had been in trouble from first grade. So he got the blame, he even got stuck in juvie overnight, until they believed me.”
A quick look, her earring hitting her cheek, then away. “That was after I was bribed to go on this scouting thing. Harper’s big brother Phil was the Eagle Scout in charge of us. Well, I set fire to his tent. I really thought he was gone, but he’d come back and fallen asleep … well, anyway, the short version is, I got put in counseling, and when I told them everything, they told my parents that gender identity usually begins young, blah blah.”
I nodded, remembering what Mom Gwen had said.
“Actually, the therapist was pretty awesome. My parents were told to let me express my preferred gender. Even change my name, if I wanted. So I picked my great-grandmother Mercy’s name. The mother of my grandmother who disappeared. I always thought she just wanted to get away.”
Like you did, I thought. And my bio mom.
“But maybe she was into something secret. Maybe her mother was, too, but if she was, mysterious talents—whether it’s magic or some kind of blip in the laws of physics—aren’t very strong, or evil power is really strong, because look how hard it was to bring down the Nazis. Great-Grandma Mercy was a Jew in Lithuania during World War II, and went underground when they invaded her town. She managed to save a bunch of people before the Gestapo caught her group and killed them.”
“She sounds really awesome,” I said. “But that reminds me of something I read, that the Nazis were into researching magic and weird science. The thought that those guys might have gotten any kind of powers is really, really creepy.”
“I know! Which is why I am totally happy with keeping our talents secret until we know more. Anyway, Great-Grandma Mercy is my hero, whether she had a talent or not. Okay, back to my stupid story, so I can get it over with. I got my own clothes. I started doing schoolwork again. But some people think I got away with murder. Next to murder.” She shrugged tightly.
I’d already stepped in it a million times, so I was determined not to now. I could tell by her tension that she’d hate pity, and anyway we only had a few block left. There was the long blue line of the bay.
So I said, “I kinda get why Harper holds a grudge.” Then I remembered what she’d actually said, and got that sick feeling again. To hide it, I asked, “How exactly did she discover your talent?”
Mercy hunched her shoulders. “At juvenile court, after I nearly toasted Phil. Both families were there. She always tests out anyone she thinks might possibly have a talent, though she was expecting my talent to be pyromania, because of the school fire. She bumped against me. She saw my spring, along with all the anger and hate.”
I couldn’t help shivering, though the wind was hot and dry.
“I’m not going to say I know all her issues. I’ve had too many people telling me what I’m supposed to think. She kept my secret for three years. I thought I was the only one in the world who had a talent. She waited until she figured out that I keep secrets. She knows I work every summer to pay for the damage I did. She knows I don’t get in trouble now.”
Mercy’s voice sped up, and I could tell she was bothered, though she was trying to sound normal. “So when she appeared as one of the student representatives at my middle school last year, and got me alone long enough to say that she knew my secret, and what did I plan to do about it, and I said nothing—nothing bad—I was done with being a brat because I was now Mercy, she said she didn’t believe me. But then, last spring, she called. Told me there are others, and did I want to meet them.” She glanced ahead, where the gazebo sat in the distance.
There was time for one more question. “Those girls chasing you?”
Mercy’s grin flared. “At the other end of the street where the bus stops, there’s a car repair shop that everyone knows is a chop shop. They sell drugs, too. The guys who run it have their girlfriends hanging out there, so I took a bunch of the free clinic diversity flyers, and asked those girls if any of them wanted counseling. I figured if they ran me off, you’d see, and that was better than telling Harper and having her read your memories without your knowing. I hate that she saw mine at my worst. Without telling me.” She grimaced. “But I’m okay with her using her talent on Kyle, or whoever did it. Is that what they call conveniently adjustable ethics?”
I had no idea how to answer that, and was glad there was no time as we rolled down the last of the bike path to the gazebo.
Everybody was there, so I took the folder out of my backpack, and gave it to Fletch, who sniffed Kyle’s test papers. Tiny weird sparkles fluoresced around the papers, then Fletch looked up. “This isn’t the guy.”
“He’s not?” Harper exclaimed.
I couldn’t help saying, “He sure acts guilty.”
Mercy said, “I think so, too. I think he might know who did it.”
“All right, let’s go to the place where it happened,” Harper said.
She’d gotten a senior friend to drive herself and Fletch and Bec, giving the excuse that she was going to write an article on hate crimes for the school newspaper. She’d already written the article, but wanted to visit the place where Michael was attacked for visual corroboration.
There was no place in the car for Mercy and me, but as we had our bikes, this was fine. By the time we reached the corner where Michael was attacked, Harper and Bec were alone, Fletch nowhere in sight.
Harper said, “Whoever did it stepped in Michael’s blood, tried to wipe it off, but didn’t get it all. Fletch said it’s easier if we wait here, as he’s faster when no one distracts him.” She turned to Bec. “I meant to thank you in person for helping out at the hospital. Fletch told me there was no chance he would have got into the storage area without you.”
Bec had been biting her thumb. She yanked it down. “This is what we agreed to.” Her voice got softer. “And I like helping. It makes me feel…” She whispered the word, “Stronger.” Then, “But what do we do if we find him? We can’t tell anybody how we did it.”
Harper crossed her arms. “If Fletch finds
the bat, we could confront Kyle with the evidence, and demand the truth.”
Mercy said. “How? Threats won’t work. Not with him.”
Harper eyed her, then said in that challenging tone, “I didn’t think you were friends.”
“We aren’t,” Mercy said. “I hate Kyle Moore as much as he hates me, but I think threats are something he hears every day. The last touch football game I played, it ended at night. I was walking out to the parking lot. He and his dad were ahead of me. His dad kept smacking him on the side of the head. Saying stuff like ‘Why didn’t you catch that pass, dimbulb? Think a scout is going to want you sitting on the bench?’ and the last thing I heard before they got in the car was, ‘Stop sniveling like a girl or I’ll really give you something to snivel about.’”
Harper turned away. Bec looked like she was going to throw up.
Then we heard running feet and Fletch appeared, his face crimson, the chain on the side of his jeans slapping his thigh. “Found the bat,” he said, leaning his hands on his knees.
“Let me guess,” Harper said. “It got thrown down one of the palisades.”
“Got it in one. Whoever threw the bat got a bit of blood on their shoes, and the trail leads straight to a house.” He named the address.
Bec took over, then. I didn’t see her leave, she was just gone. We all stood around awkwardly, Harper checking her e-mail on her phone, Fletch catching his breath, and Mercy and I waiting in silence.
Then Bec was back. I nearly jumped out of my skin. “No name on their mail slot. So I checked their recycle bin.” She wrinkled her nose. “Bill stubs made out to Jason Davies, Sr.”
Mercy’s eyes rounded behind her glasses. “Jason Davies’ dad. I don’t get it. Jason Davies isn’t even part of Kyle’s gang.” She turned to me. “You sit right next to him in math.”
“The blond guy? With the peeling nose?”
She nodded twice.
I couldn’t believe it. Just a boring, everyday kid, who sat there doing his work like nothing had happened.