After the End

“So after a few days with her, you think you know her?” he retorts.

“Better than you do, obviously,” I say. “When I talk to her, she doesn’t have a breakdown.”

“Sometimes stating the facts as directly as possible is the best way to make someone respond,” he says. “To shake their answer loose.”

“Looks like that worked real well for you,” I say, narrowing my eyes.

My dad gets a supremely pissed look on his face, and then exhales deeply and shades his eyes with his hand. “Why don’t you go talk to her then, Miles? She won’t speak to me anymore. She won’t even look at me. I have no doubt she has the formula for Amrit stored somewhere in her head. Somewhere she doesn’t even know, because she didn’t realize what it was. We need to get her comfortable with us. We need her to trust us, so that she will talk.”

I hate my dad in this instant. This is the business side of him, willing to negotiate anything to get what he wants. His human side gets turned off until his bid is successful, and then—maybe—he acts like a real, caring person again. Well, you know what? I can do the same.

“What’ll you give her back if she talks? Will you pour all your resources into helping her find her family?” I ask.

“Every resource I have,” he promises, and looks so sincere that I have to look hard to see that twitch at the corner of his eye that says he’s lying.

I pause for a second, thinking about what to do. I have to make him think I believe him. “Thank you. That’s the only thing she wants. I’ll see if I can get her to share any information, Dad. I’m sure she’ll talk to me.”

“Good boy,” Dad says, clapping me on the shoulder. “Any details. Anything at all could be valuable, even if she doesn’t realize it. Just . . . well, be careful, son. You can’t even imagine how much she is worth to us.”

Loathing rolls off me in black waves, but Dad keeps his positive-outlook face on until I leave the room. There are so many things I would like to say to him. To hurt him. But I bite my tongue and walk to the “guest room” to see what, if anything, I can do.

Nothing has changed in my mother’s room since she left. She and Dad shared a room until she was hospitalized the first time. He moved out. And then she left. My heart is in my throat. I have avoided coming in here for the past few years.

But there, lying in a tiny lump under the covers, crowned with her black spiky hair and a sickly pale face, is Juneau. The nurse is reading a paperback in a chair on the far side of the room, but when she sees me, she stands.

“My father wants me to talk to her,” I whisper to the woman. She nods and lets herself out, leaving the door open. I close it and carefully sit down next to Juneau on the bed. I want to touch her but don’t know how she’ll react. “Juneau,” I say, and her eyes flutter open. “It’s me, Miles,” I say. “Are you okay?”

She bites her lip and shakes her head no.

“What happened?” I ask. “What was it that my dad said to upset you?”

She closes her eyes and lets out an exhausted sigh. “Your father basically suggested that my starburst—and those of the other children in my clan—is a genetic anomaly. A mutation caused by our parents taking some sort of strong drug. The drug he’s looking for. ‘Amrit,’ he calls it.”

“And what do you think about that?” I ask carefully. Her eyes are brimming with tears. She wipes them away with her knuckle and sighs again.

“It makes a lot of sense,” she says finally. “Which means it’s just more proof of the web of deceit that’s been spun around us since we were born. I am the product of deception. My whole life has been a carefully formulated and maintained lie. Your dad inferred that I and the rest of the clan were part of a ‘field study’ that Whit was ru

I don’t know what to say, so I take her hand and hold it between mine. It’s cold, and I rub it between my palms as she continues.

“I had begun figuring out what from my past I thought was true,” Juneau says. “But after what your father said yesterday, I don’t know what to think. It put me back at square one. I’m totally lost again. Worse than before.”

She closes her eyes.

“How are you feeling, physically? Think you’re strong enough to walk?”

Juneau’s eyes pop open. “Why?”

“Because I have a promise I need to keep,” I say. “Something about getting you to the Wild West so you can find your family, if I recall correctly. Even if your dad and the others lied to you, they’re still your family. They still need to be found.”

A light goes back on behind Juneau’s empty eyes, and a smile blooms on her lips. She leans toward me, and I take her in my arms for a hug while she nestles her head against my neck. After a long moment, she pushes back a little so she can look at my face, and traces it with her fingertips, ru

We’re so close that I can feel her warm breath on my face, and then she lifts her head slightly so that our lips meet. And she kisses me. Her skin is so soft, it’s like brushing my mouth against flower petals. I taste her and she tastes like the lemon drops that the nurse has set by the bed in a bowl.

This kiss isn’t urgent and needy like the last one. It’s a slow kiss that promises more to come. Which is exactly what I want: more Juneau. More time.

“We need to get you out of here,” I say finally, forcing myself to pull away from her embrace.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” she says.

“I am going to tell my father that you were too tired to talk,” I say. “That I can try again in a few hours.”

I start to get up, and she squeezes my hand to stop me. “Miles?”

I raise an eyebrow, waiting. Keeping a totally straight face, she says, “Even though you make a crappy fire and wouldn’t survive more than ten minutes in the wilderness, there isn’t anyone I’d rather be with at a time like this. You’re my desert island friend.” And she grins.

I laugh. “Even though you could probably kill me in fifteen different ways with a table fork, and even though you barbecue bu

“A very good plan,” she says. I stand and lean over the bed and kiss her forehead. She gives me her crooked mouth-closed smile, and I feel a rush of relief. She’s going to be okay.

My dad is waiting in the den, wearing his “caring father” expression. “Did she tell you anything?” he asks expectantly.

He probably thinks I can’t see through his act. Well, I learned my lying skills from the very best. I rearrange my face to show concern and disappointment. “She was too tired to really talk,” I say, and his face falls. “But she did mention that you said something about her eye being a genetic mutation?” Dad nods and, leading me into the kitchen, grabs a bottle of apple juice out of the fridge. He pours us both a glass and takes a swig from his.

“The girl’s eye is a mutation, and if all the children in her clan have the same one, as she claims, it means that their parents all did something that would produce that dramatic of an effect in their offspring.”

“And you think this has something to do with a drug.”

“What I was told, Miles, is that a group of greenie scientists were working on a drug to solve the problem of endangered animals. To help species that were dying out resist disease and extinction. They tried it on themselves and found that they were immune to every illness they tested. It would have been at least a year—nine months, of course—before they could find out that it had an effect on a developing fetus. And when they knew what they had, they escaped America for somewhere they could live undetected, in seclusion.”

“Just to hide their kids’ eyes?” I ask doubtfully.

My father sets his glass down on the counter and looks at me intently. “I’m guessing that they didn’t initially know what they had. But they stayed when they discovered they had stopped aging.”