Thumped

  Zeke clears his throat. “These Othersiders say they need to call on you, Sister.”

  My tongue is trapped in my throat.

  I haven’t said a word to Jondoe since the morning after our one night together, when I slipped out the window and ran away. I remember how angry I was that morning, how humiliated and betrayed I felt after giving Jondoe the part of myself that I was supposed to save for my husband.

  “She’s my sister,” I say. “And I know him.”

  And it’s only after the words have left my lips and reached Jondoe’s ears that the alternative meaning of those words come to mind.

  Oh yes, I know him. I have known him.

  I blush. And unless I’m imagining things, I see red creeping across Jondoe’s cheeks too, just above his counterfeit beard.

  “Ram said they want you to minister to them.”

  “He did?” Then I redirect the question to Jondoe and Melody. “You what?”

  “We came to convert,” Melody says, clasping her hands together at her chest.

  “Yes,” Jondoe adds. “We want to join the Church.”

  The sound of his voice makes me woozy. I close my eyes in a long, exhausted blink.

  “Reckon I’ll leave you to it,” I hear Zeke say. “I gotta get back to my post.”

  I listen to Zeke’s footsteps fade away. When I slowly open my eyes again, Jondoe is all I can see.

  “Harmony.”

  I try to focus on his face.

  “Jondoe.”

  Oh, what a joy to say his name again, not hidden behind a pronoun. All these months I’ve been unable to resist talking about Jondoe in the only way I knew how: by praying for his anonymous soul in prayerclique.

  Please pray for a man who put his material riches before Heaven’s rewards.

  Please pray for a man who shared his body outside the marriage bed.

  Please pray for a man who lied to the girl who loved him.

  Every time I clasped hands and looked Heavenward in secret prayer, my heart sprang up and sang inside me:

  I’m praying for you, Jondoe! Can you hear me?

  He heard me. And now he’s here.

  His face is the last thing I see before all the lights go out.

  melody

  JONDOE CATCHES HARMONY BEFORE SHE DROPS TO THE FLOOR.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s obviously in shock!” I say, helping Jondoe pull Harmony’s limp body into a sitting position. “I told you it would be too much for her! You should’ve waited with Ram in the air taxi!”

  “Oh, sure!” he says, as he frantically fans Harmony’s face. “So he could borrow Zeke’s shogun and blast my balls off!”

  “He just saved your life, remember?”

  Ram told Zeke that Jondoe and I had paid big money to be ministered by Harmony in person. He also convinced him not to turn us in to the Elders until after we’d accepted the Lord.

  “They’ll know you were responsible for the highest-profile conversions in the Church history!” Ram had claimed.

  From the skeptical look on his face, it seemed less likely that Zeke obliged because he believed what Ram was saying, but more because Ram is the one who had asked him to believe it. Zeke did insist that it was his duty to escort us to Harmony’s household while Ram covered his post. I’m just relieved he was so eager to get back to it. Again, I’m guessing that had more to do with some business with Ram than with us. Zeke made Ram promise that they would “have a talk” when he returned. I can’t help but think that Zeke is going to be very disappointed when he gets back to find Ram already gone. The whole incident made no sense to me; then again, very little on this side of the gates did.

  “I don’t know,” Jondoe is saying now as he fans Harmony’s face with his hands. “Ram could have spared me just to have the pleasure of punishing me for sleeping with his wife!”

  “Ram wouldn’t do that,” I say. “He’s not the vengeful type.”

  “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Harmony mumbles, her eyes fluttering open.

  “Harmony!” I exclaim, relieved that she’s come to. “We’re here to take you out of here. Ram should be here any second with the air taxi. . . .”

  The words aren’t out of my mouth when I hear the buzz of the air taxi. Something must be wrong because Ram is standing at the open hatch, gesturing frantically for us to get inside. Jondoe doesn’t need to be told what to do. He simply scoops Harmony up into his arms and carries her out the door and across the yard.

  “Oh my grace!” Harmony shrieks.

  This is serious business, and yet the expressions on both of their faces can only be described as ecstatic, in the truest sense of that word.

  “The Elders are on their way out here!” Ram shouts. “We have to go now.”

  Harmony is pulled inside first, then me, followed by Jondoe. It’s only a two-seater, so for a few awkward seconds we’re all kind of stumbling all over each other to try to fit inside the tiny cabin. The taxi lifts and dips, lifts and dips, in a struggle to take off.

  “Oh no,” Jondoe groans. “We must be over the maximum weight limit.”

  Harmony’s eyes fly open in panic. “It’s the Elders!” She points out the window at the truck tearing down her driveway. “They’re going to force me stay! They’re going to take the babies away!” Such vehicles are used only in emergencies, so it’s safe to assume that Harmony is right.

  The taxi is still wobbling in midair, just a few feet off the ground.

  “I’m not going to let that happen to you!” Jondoe says.

  “No!” Ram says pushing past Jondoe and toward the door. “I’m not going to let that happen to you!”

  He reaches behind him and thrusts a small canvas rucksack into Harmony’s hands.

  “This is for you! Use it well!”

  And before we can do anything to stop him, Ram jumps out of the air taxi and we zoom upward and away.

  harmony

  I’M SPEECHLESS.

  I can’t believe my husband just did that. We’ve always had a special if not traditional matrimonial bond. All this time I thought I was protecting him by pretending.

  “Harmony.”

  I can’t bring myself to look at Jondoe. Maybe it’s unfair, but I have to ask: If he really cared, wouldn’t he have jumped first?

  Jondoe crouches down and puts his hand on my knee. I shrink at his touch.

  “Please don’t.” I clutch the unopened canvas bag to my chest like child would hug a rag doll.

  “But . . .” he splutters. “I’m just so happy to see you. . . .”

  Melody puts an arm around me, as if to shield me from his advances.

  “Not now, Jondoe.”

  “But it’s not like that!”

  “I know,” Melody says. “But I think this reunion is just a little more than my sister can handle right now.”

  She’s right. I close my eyes and take comfort in her company. I try to forget there’s anyone else in this cabin but the two of us. My sister and me.

  melody

  NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING FOR THE REST OF THE TRIP BACK TO Princeton. I assume Harmony and Jondoe are lost in their own thoughts, as I am in mine. What’s happening to Ram? What will happen with Harmony, Jondoe, and the twins? And finally, reluctantly, What has happened with Zen and Ventura?

  Once inside my house, I turn to Jondoe.

  “Can you give us some time alone?”

  Harmony is totally closed off. She drops the canvas rucksack onto the kitchen countertop, hugs her belly, keeps her eyes to the floor.

  “Sure,” he says, trying to paste on a cheerful smile. “Whatever Harmony needs! I’ll be in my room!” He slams the door behind him harder than necessary.

  “His room?” Harmony asks.

  I explain that my house has served as Jondoe’s unofficial home base ever since she went back to Goodside.

  “It was good for keeping up appearances,” I say. “He also thought that you’d eventually come around to leaving Goodside an
d that this would be the first place you’d show up. He wanted to be here when you did.”

  Harmony nods slowly. “Well, he was right.”

  “I guess he was.”

  “I was, wasn’t I?” shouts Jondoe from the opposite side of the wall.

  Harmony’s mouth twitches. I take her by the arm and lead her to my parents’ bedroom on the opposite side of the house where we can talk in private.

  “Jondoe can’t hear us in here.”

  Harmony takes in the perfectly unrumpled bed, the clutter-free if dusty dressers and beside tables, the foto collage with pictures of me that are no less than two years old.

  “Where are your parents?” she asks.

  “Oh, they’re off building their brand,” I say, not really wanting to elaborate.

  After I got famous, requests came in from desperate parents all over the country begging Ash and Ty to share their secrets for raising a super-successful Surrogette—like me. Thus, BestEgg was born, a private counseling service “empowering girls to maximize their financial and reproductive potential.” My parents travel all over the country developing personalized training programs “from infancy to puberty” that will transform anyone’s daughter into a prime candidate for a triple-platinum-level Conception Contract—like mine. In addition to the income they earn as counselors, my parents get a finder’s fee for referring the most reproaesthetical girls to Lib. Lib, in turn, posts the top profiles on Hatched.com, his subscription-only site for potential parental units shopping around for their perfect Surrogette.

  “You haven’t told them the truth?” Harmony asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed that hasn’t been slept in for months.

  “No,” I say. “They’re actually avoiding me until after I deliver. They’re afraid of Phantom Grandparent Syndrome.”

  “What?”

  It’s not surprising that she hasn’t heard of this relatively new phenomenon. Even with the suggested regimen of therapeutic and pharmaceutical interventions, many RePros’ parents find themselves inexplicably saddened by the giving away of what would have been their grandchildren. The shock of their own conflicted feelings has even inspired Ash and Ty to develop a special seminar, “Giving Up Your Grandchild, Giving Up the Guilt.” That Ash and Ty are genuinely afraid of getting all cradlegrabby is baffling to me, because they’ve never really liked being around kids. Myself included.

  I try not to think too much about how they’ll react when they find out I’ve betrayed my brand.

  And theirs.

  I eagerly change the subject, not that the next topic is any easier than the last.

  “What’s your plan?”

  “My plan?”

  Okay. Maybe it was unreasonable for me to think that Harmony had figured this all out. After all, it’s only been about a half hour since she decided to leave behind the only life she has ever known, and everything she has been brought up to be and to believe.

  “I’m thrilled that you’re here, it’s what I’ve always wanted,” I say. “I just wish you had made the decision sooner. So we could have, you know, prepared for the twins’ arrival. . . .”

  Harmony nods once but doesn’t say anything.

  As calm as I’m trying to appear on the outside, I’m for seriously freaking out on the inside. She is married to one man and carrying the twins of another. And now she’s got two new humans on the way with absolutely no plan for what to do with them after they arrive. Harmony seems about as ready to deliver her twins as I am, which is totally wanked because my twins are high-tech holograms and hers are, like, real human beings. We’re all liars in this, but Harmony’s deception runs deeper because she’s got two innocent lives to consider.

  “What do you think will happen to Ram in Goodside?” I ask.

  “I hope they’ll just let him go,” she says, her forehead furrowed with worry. “He is my husband. And I am going to have these babies very soon.”

  I’m almost afraid to ask this question. But if I don’t do it now, I never will.

  “He knows the twins aren’t his, right?”

  Harmony shrugs with a nonchalance that is at odds with the subject matter.

  “He never asked.”

  “He never asked?” I’m losing it. “HE NEVER ASKED?”

  Harmony snaps into focus and fixes me with a serious look. “He’s my husband, Melody,” she says sharply. “He shouldn’t have to ask.”

  Could Ram really convince himself he’s the father? Does his denial run that deep? I’ve never asked for the details of what happened on their honeymoon—the one and only night Harmony and Ram slept in the same bed—but I’m pretty sure they were fully clothed the whole time. Only Jondoe could successfully bump under those impossible circumstances, and he apparently didn’t need to go to such heroic lengths to do so.

  “What about Jondoe?” Harmony asks. “Does he know?”

  “Of course he knows! He’s always known. Why do you think he tried to contact you so many times? I’ve spent the last eight months putting up with his brokenhearted moping over what he knows.”

  He’s written sonnets. He’s composed love songs. I can’t tolerate Jondoe when he gets all emo over Harmony because if I let him start, he’ll never stop.

  She rubs her belly. “He’s concerned about the twins then.”

  “He’s concerned about you,” I say. “And I am too. We need to figure this all out, Harmony. As you just said, you could deliver any day now. . . .”

  Harmony yawns, grabbing at the weighty fabric of her maternity gown. “Right now I need to get out of this dress and get some rest.”

  I pull at the fabric of my copycat version of her same dress. “Me too,” I say, now yawning also. “I’ll bring you a change of clothes and everything you need.”

  Harmony purses her lips.

  “What?” I ask.

  “No one person can provide everything I need,” she says with a sad smile.

  “Then it’s a good thing we’re all in this together.”

  Harmony yawns again. “We’ll work it out tomorrow.”

  I don’t like the idea of another day going by without a plan. But Harmony does seem too weary to think straight.

  “Jondoe. Ram. The twins. Everything.” She presses her palms together. “I promise.”

  I want to believe her more than I actually do.

  harmony

  I’M MAKING IMPOSSIBLE PROMISES TO MY SISTER WHEN—OH my grace—I feel it.

  I feel God laying a message in my heart. I’m warm all over, as if a sunbeam has passed over me, though it’s as black as soot outside. This is the last time it will be like this between Melody and me. Good, bad, a little bit of both . . . change is coming.

  The twins thump my belly from the inside. They must feel it too.

  I take my sister’s hands in mine. She looks startled at first because neither of us are the touchy-feely type. After countless hours at work in the fields and in the barns, my hands will always be rougher than hers. It’s one of the few differences in appearance that the press loves to point out about us. I also have freckles smattered across my nose. And until very recently, the braid I’d been growing since the day we were born.

  Melody’s face relaxes and a look crosses her face that resembles something like relief.

  “Love you,” I say, squeezing her smooth, uncalloused fingers.

  “Love you too,” she says, squeezing back.

  This is the first time we’ve ever said those words to each other. We’ve felt it but have never said it. Melody has kept her feelings to herself because she’s not the emotional type. And I’ve kept my feelings to myself because I guess there’s still part of me that believes my “godfreakiness” could scare her away. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever said those words out loud to anyone, though I’ve imagined saying them many, many times to someone else . . . and with an entirely different meaning altogether.

  I watch Melody as she walks down the hall and pauses at Jondoe’s door. She raps a knuckle on the wood tw
ice before entering. She’s probably telling him to leave me alone.

  How strange it is, how not even a year ago my sister didn’t exist to me.

  Neither did Jondoe.

  Nor the twins.

  The Bible says that nothing on earth remains the same, only God is unchanging. And at this point in time, that’s one verse I’m still inclined to believe.

  melody

  OH, WHAT A SURPRISE. JONDOE IS BEING MELODRAMATIC.

  He’s lying on the bed on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. He’s still wearing the fake beard and suit, but the Goodside hat rests on his chest, rising and falling with his every breath.

  “Do. Not. Bother. Her. Tonight.”

  He closes his eyes. Says nothing.

  “Did you hear me, Jondoe? I mean it! She’s fragile right now.”

  Jondoe sits up suddenly, eyes ablaze. “What about me?”

  Gah. He can be so starcissistic sometimes.

  “What about you? Not everything is about you.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean! Why am I not allowed to be fragile in this situation? I have feelings too! I’m a whole person! I’m not just the sum of my private parts!”

  This gives me pause. I had never really considered the effects of professional Sperming on Jondoe’s psyche. What teenage guy would turn down the opportunity to get paid to get laid? For all his heartbroken histrionics, I admit that Jondoe’s reputation has made it very hard for me to totally accept his pure intentions toward my sister.

  I pat his shoulder in what I hope is a comforting way.

  “All I’m asking is that you give her tonight to rest and recover. If you really believe what you have with her is real, then you’ve got your whole future together, right?”

  He grumbles in a vaguely affirmative way.