“I’m pregnant.”
She screams, causing me to leap up and clamp my hand on her mouth.
“Shut up!” I whisper.
“Sorry,” she says. “It’s just . . . I always expected to be the first one to have to say that. How do you know?”
“There was a doctor on the plane that brought me here. She did tests. She sent an email to the site. Riley thought it was something else and read it.”
“Oh,” she says. “Fathom?”
I nod.
Bex sits down next to me on the floor. She takes my hand in hers. “I’m just going to say that I feel somewhat vindicated. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, thought I was the slut.”
I growl. “I’m a moron! Bex, I know better than this. I’m a smart girl. Why wasn’t I careful? I know how all the stuff works. Why didn’t I stop him? Why didn’t you stop me? Why don’t I understand by now that if my life can get harder, it will?”
“This is going to be all right, Lyric.”
“Bex, don’t bullshit me. This is not going to be all right.”
I have never been the kind of person who thought much about the future. The present was either too much fun or too much to handle. College was a moth flitting toward a distant star. I never really thought I’d get there, but now I know it’s at the top of a list of never evers. Jobs? Marriage? Kids? All of them were vague notions that required none of my mental energy. When the Alpha came, they put everything that might have been for me on hold. I was too busy keeping my head down to look toward the future, even though, I realize now, almost everyone else was trying to get ready for it. Mr. Ervin asked me what I had planned hundreds of times, and I blew him off. While kids like Samuel were busting their asses with academics or athletics, hoping to find someway out of the Zone, I was sneaking into bars and flirting. I thought everything would take care of itself. Even after the attacks, even in Trident, I always assumed that there would be a time when things would settle down and return to normal. When that happened, a door would open for me, some opportunity—maybe I’d open a clothing store or design dresses. I didn’t know. But something was going to happen, right?
“Your father is going to have a coronary, but he’ll get over it. No . . . no he won’t. We may have to drug him.”
I drop my head into my hands.
“Riley will be all right with this eventually,” she whispers.
I shake my head. “You saw his face.”
The door flies open. Bex and I scream from the surprise. My mother charges into the room, then closes the door behind her.
“Whose is it?” she says, sitting on the floor beside us.
“How do you know? Is Riley talking?” I ask.
“No,” she says, pointing to her ears. “Alpha hearing.”
“It’s Fathom’s,” Bex says. “Duh!”
“Don’t tell Dad,” I beg her.
“You’re kidding, right?” my mother says. “Lyric, you can’t hide that from him. He will be crushed if we lie.”
“He’s going to hate me.”
“No, Lyric, he’s not,” she says.
“He’ll just ground you until your baby graduates from high school,” Bex says, reaching over to rub my belly.
My father opens the door and pokes his head inside.
“What’s wrong? Why is everyone slamming doors and screaming?”
“Nothing,” my mother says. “Girl stuff.”
“Tampons,” Bex adds.
My father cringes, clearly remembering our last conversation. He’s not eager to repeat it. He closes the door behind him.
“I guess that explains all the barfing. We should get you a pregnancy test just to be sure,” my mother says.
Bex and I hoof it over to a pharmacy a few blocks from the house. Getting out without being noticed was nearly impossible. I’m sure the whole crew is still chattering away about how mysterious and awkward our exit was and why we were so tightlipped about where we were going. Riley was nowhere in sight when we left. I didn’t see him outside, either. He’s found a place to hide, and he’s staying there.
“The evacuations happened in the middle of a workday,” Bex explains when she forces the automatic door to the store open. “People didn’t have time to lock up. Everything is pretty much wide open. We’ve stocked up on everything—well, almost everything.”
I squeeze through the door.
“Follow me,” she says as she leads me down the aisles like she’s been in this store a million times. She finds the pregnancy tests right away.
“I am not going to bring up that you found these very quickly,” I tease.
“They’re in the same place in every store,” she says, giving me the sideways eye. She snatches a test off the shelf, and we head back down the aisle. On the way, she snatches a bottle from the vitamin aisle and stuffs it into my hands. They’re prenatal vitamins.
“Just in case. What are you going to do about Riley? Want to get him a card?” she says, gesturing to the Hallmark section.
“You’re not funny.”
“No, I’m not.”
All the way back to the house, the test is a burning coal in my pocket. I can’t keep my mind on anything else. When we arrive, all I want to do is take it and get it done, but my father wants to brag about the work they did to get our secret headquarters ready. Chloe wants me to work on her coloring books with her. I am not even on this planet, and it’s obvious.
“Are you all right?” Brady asks. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” I stammer. I can’t even fake it. He knows I’m not. I might as well have a sign on me that flashes the words TEEN IN CRISIS.
The house doesn’t have any working toilets, so Bex leads me into the backyard behind the garage. I can see my breath, and my fingers go numb, so she has to open the package and take out the test for me. It’s sealed inside a thick foil bag that fights against tearing. Once it’s out, she throws all the evidence over a fence into the neighbor’s yard. With the amount of trash floating around town, no one in our camp is going to notice.
“I don’t know how to use this,” I confess.
“I do.”
“Bex!”
“Tammy had to take one at least every other month. It’s pretty simple. You just pee on it and wait.”
It’s so damn awkward and weird. I’ve peed in front of Bex a zillion times, but never did it hold such importance. I do my best not to make a mess, and when the stream is over, I place the stick on a cinderblock leaning against the back of the garage. Bex and I stare at it in silence, watching the little window that promises answers.
“If it turns blue, it’s yes. If not, then you aren’t. What are we hoping for?”
“I can’t be pregnant, Bex.”
The window hypnotizes me, swallows me whole, like I have fallen into it and can’t crawl out.
“I’m nervous,” she admits.
“You’re nervous?”
Bex pulls me into a hug. “Of course I’m nervous. I’m your best friend, Walker.”
“Bex, what am I going to do?”
“Whatever happens, you’re going to be fine. I will help you do whatever you need to do, and I will take care of you no matter what, so stop acting like you’re alone.”
“I can’t look at it anymore,” I say, and turn my back to the test.
“I know. This sucks,” she says. It’s followed by a long, unusual silence from a normally talkative person.
“It’s blue, isn’t it?” I say.
She hugs me tighter than usual.
I don’t know if I can cry about this. I can’t say I’m numb, but the feelings are spinning so fast I can’t hang on to one long enough to feel it completely. I have never wanted to be a mother, but I don’t even know if I could get an abortion the way the world is right now. It’s not like there’s a clinic around the corner, and even if there was one, I have no idea if I could get myself through the door.
Husk steps around the side of the garage and scares the two of u
s, so we scream again.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you, Your Majesty,” he apologizes. “Is it safe to assume that you know you carry the heir?”
“Husk, you know too?”
He nods. “There is a smell—”
“Okay, let’s stop the conversations about my smells,” I beg.
“The others are pleased. They have vowed to protect him.”
“Oh, good, you’re all discussing my pregnancy,” I grumble. “Husk, I don’t know if I can keep this baby. The Tardigrade are coming. We’re going to war.”
“Then we have another reason to win,” he says, and leaves us alone.
“I guess he’s pro-life,” Bex says.
We sit behind the garage for a long time, comfortable with the silence around us. I stare at the test until all I can see are blue crosses when I close my eyes. When it gets too cold to stay outside, I cup my hands and dig a small hole in the soil. I bury the test, pressing the earth into place so that it looks undisturbed. Maybe someday the people who own this house will come back here and find it. They’ll wonder about the girl who hid it while they were away. They might worry for me. I hope so. I need all the good thoughts I can get.
Thomas Johar is on the computer when we go back inside the house. He’s sitting in his office, staring at my father.
“Ms. Walker, so glad to see you again,” he says.
I contemplate the dark circles under his eyes, then his corneas and pupils, hoping I’ll find something I can trust about him, but there’s just no way to know. I’ve run out of options. I need the Alpha to save the world. I need Fathom. I guess I need White Tower to make it happen, especially with a baby growing inside me.
“All right, Johar. This is how it’s going to work.”
The rest of the evening, we study maps of the roads and highways that will take us to the Verrazano Bridge, one of the main paths from New Jersey into Brooklyn. Johar promised that White Tower would meet us there and escort us the rest of the way to the detention center.
He also sent satellite images of Coney Island. There are tens of thousands of soldiers stationed there, fully ready to fight with tanks and rocket launchers. There’s a battleship sitting off the coast, watching the sea for another invasion. Scattered along the beach are tiny buildings used for storing weapons and keeping the camp’s electrical grid safe. There are also twenty long buildings open to the elements, which he claims are used for housing the Alpha.
There’s a makeshift fence that surrounds most of the neighborhood. It’s assembled from whatever junk the soldiers could scavenge, built in a hurry after protestors stormed through the original fence built five miles away. Guns are trained on it twenty-four hours a day and have been known to fire on people who have attempted to climb it. Fifty-seven people have been injured doing just that this month. Ten of them are dead.
It’s late afternoon when I send everyone to bed.
“We have two days to get to Brooklyn. We’re traveling slow and at night, so you need to get as much sleep as you can before we leave.”
The littlest ones drift off to bed. I suspect they have a sleepless night ahead of them after Harrison’s death and all the worries that we’re making a mistake with White Tower. I won’t be sleeping, either. I hover, hoping to get Riley alone. I don’t know what to say to him, but I feel like I need to try. Unfortunately, the first opportunity I get, he stands and offers to read Chloe to sleep.
“Give him some time,” Bex says before cuddling up next to Finn.
Eventually, it’s just Husk and me, watching the videos Johar sent us of the Tardigrade. They’re now in South Carolina, but luckily they came ashore at an evacuated town. Sadly, there was a small group of National Guardsmen stationed there. They were no match for the beasts.
“I can feel them getting closer,” Husk says.
I nod. They’re a nagging poke in my thoughts that I try to ignore. Their voices are like low murmurs under everything.
“We will be ready,” he says confidently. “The best we can.”
“I abandoned you,” I say. “I feel like I need to explain why.”
“You are the prime. Your choices do not have to be explained to me,” he says.
“I think you deserve better than that, Husk. All of you do. I want to say I was afraid you and the others would get killed if you came onshore with me. The truth is I was a coward who planned on running.”
“You overcame your fear. That is what matters,” he says. “Just as we did when we walked onshore. All of us are aware that our presence causes hostility. We know we could be killed despite our intentions to help.”
“But you came anyway?”
“The other clans may say terrible things about the Rusalka, but they can never say we aren’t loyal.”
“Maybe a little too loyal, Husk. You got pushed around a lot.”
“That is the life of a Rusalka.”
“No,” I say. “That’s no way to think. There is no difference between you or a Ceto or a Feige, or a Triton. You deserve to be treated as well as the rest.”
“Well, you are the prime. If you wish it, then it will be.”
“I do wish it,” I say.
“Perhaps I will live to see these changes. I tried so hard to make them happen for my brothers and sisters and failed over and over again. The rest of the nation knows me as the agitator, the one who urged the Rusalka to rebel. Little did I know how it all would end. Change asks a heavy price, Your Majesty.”
“Well, chances are the Tardigrade will kill us all and I won’t have to pay it,” I say.
“When I was small, my father used to tell me the story of a lost Alpha clan called the First Men.”
“I’ve heard Fathom call himself one.”
Husk shakes his head. “The Triton stole the name and made it their own. The story challenges their superiority, and that can’t be tolerated. No, the First Men were the original tribe, the ones that gave birth to us all. The story says they spawned everyone—the Nix, the Ceto, the Sirena, the Triton, even humans.”
“Humans?”
“Like I said, it was a story for a child,” he says. “But I always loved it. I begged my father to tell it to me over and over again.”
“Because in it all the Alpha were equals,” I say.
He nods. “All of us were brothers and sisters.”
“So what happens in the story?”
“The children of the First Men flourished and spread throughout the oceans. The darkest depths and the most horrible dangers did not stop them, because they were connected to one another. Together they were strong, and their parents watched with wonder and admiration.”
“Connected,” I say.
His face darkens. “Yes, connected.”
“You think this story has some truth to it?”
“I believe the Tardigrade are the First Men. They talk of links and connections. They refer to us as their children. You can feel their anger, correct? They are enraged that we are separated from them. For some reason, it threatens them.”
“They fear it.”
“I sense that, too,” Husk admits.
“They’re going to kill everyone who isn’t linked,” I say. For a long time, the room is silent. “We’re going to have to kick our parents’ ass, Husk. I just have no idea how we’re going to do it.”
“The Nix have a saying. ‘The day offers problems. The night provides solutions.’ ”
“You’re sending me to bed.”
“Good night, Your Majesty,” he says, then wanders out of the room and outside to join the rest of his people. It’s cold out there, and I’m tempted to call him back, but if they welcome him, then that is where he should be.
I find a quiet room at the back of the house that has a twin-size bed with a railing on the side. There’s a sewing machine in the corner and an antique dresser. The floral wallpaper is peeling slightly at the seams, and there’s a faint hint of mothballs circulating in the air. I am too tired to look at all the photos on the w
all, but there is an oval picture frame made of porcelain resting on a side table. Inside it is a black-and-white photo of a tall, handsome man in a Navy uniform. He’s smiling in that vague way people do when they are proud of themselves but trying to hide it.
I kick off my shoes and crawl under the blankets, feeling the plastic sheet beneath me. Whoever lived here might have been sick, a person who would be difficult to move in an emergency. I wonder if he or she survived the evacuation.
The door creaks open, and my mother enters, kicking off her shoes as well.
“Make some room,” she whispers.
She nestles in until we are so close we are sharing the same air, then runs her fingers through my clumpy locks, trying to tame an unruly patch, over and over again, until finally giving up.
“I don’t know if I can take care of it,” I confess. The words rattle around the room, slamming into things, looking for an escape.
“No one knows,” she says. “I didn’t know. I found out pretty fast, though, kind of the second you were in my arms. We had you in the bathtub, you know. I couldn’t go to a hospital for fear someone would figure out what I am. Your dad told everyone it was a yoga thing.”
“Yeah, how did that work with the tail and everything?”
“Oh, we didn’t fill the tub,” she says. “I can’t actually give birth in my other form. Sirena find land when their babies come. It’s safer that way—no predators.”
“But why the tub, then?” I ask. “Wasn’t it uncomfortable?”
She shrugs. “Our apartment was tiny, Lyric. The bathroom had the most space,” she says, then laughs. “It was over fast. You were eager to see the world. One second I was trying to catch my breath and focus on what was about to happen, the next you were out, with no instruction manual in sight. I figured it out, and so will you. The first couple years, there’s not a lot to know, really—one cry means the baby is hungry, another means they are tired, and the third means uh-oh, boom-boom.”
“Uh-oh, boom boom.”
“That’s what your dad’s mom called it. Sounded right,” she explains. “Listen, I have no worries about you. You have a mothering personality. You take care of Bex. You take care of your dad and me. You took care of that mangy cat you found by the waffle place for two weeks.”