Blood Colony

  Sometimes when Fana meditated, she let herself get lost, hiding from herself the way she’d first learned when she was three and the world had gone badly wrong, when she’d stayed lost for years. Life was hard again, and Fana wanted to step out of it.

  Fana felt her grandmother’s fingers beneath her chin, and the kitchen came into sharp focus: rows of cookbooks, watermelon knickknacks and a polished floor. Did I trance that fast?

  Gramma Bea looked her in the eye, knowing. “Try to get used to things on this side, too. Not just the universe in your head, Pumpkin,” she said patiently. “Start with this.”

  Gramma Bea held up a tube of lipstick the color of ripe mango pulp.

  “It’ll do wonders for your smile,” she said. “You just put some on and stare at yourself in the mirror. It’ll make you feel good. Sit in your skin a while, child. Now, pucker.”

  Fana pouted her lips, and her grandmother painstakingly guided the tube over them. Fana smelled perspiration, talcum powder and sweet, familiar Giorgio on her skin. Fana would know her grandmother’s scent with her eyes closed.

  “Look at that!” Gramma Bea said, glowing as if she and Fana shared a face. She held up the shiny aluminum toaster for Fana to see her reflection: blurred brown features and a shimmer of orange-yellow light. “A little color works miracles. See how it brings out your lips? I still feel naked if I go outside without my lipstick, and nobody’s noticed my face for years. But, once?”

  She laughed, her eyes twinkling with memories both joyful and sad. Gramma Bea rarely saw how beautiful she was; she only noticed what had changed since she was seventeen, too.

  “Don’t worry, Gramma Bea,” Fana said. “Nobody’s noticing me either. Ever.”

  Everyone else who lived at the colony was related to her by blood or marriage, or was just a kid or old enough to be her ancestor. Not to mention that she was also a freak.

  “Somebody will notice you when you’re driving,” Gramma Bea said, certain.

  “Like who?”

  “You never know who, Pumpkin,” she said. “That’s the fun part—finding out. Twice in one lifetime I was blessed with a good man. Twice. True love is an experience everyone should have, but you can’t find anyone when you’re hiding.”

  Gramma Bea was from a generation when girls got married right out of high school, Fana remembered. They couldn’t be more different in that way. Fana had known since she was three that she would always be alone.

  “Men have the curse of their eyes, Pumpkin,” Gramma Bea said. “Their eyes catch onto things first. It never seems right or fair, but it’s in their makeup. Until a man sees you with his eyes, it’s like he can’t see you at all. And if a man’s eyes take hold of his heart? He’ll move a mountain for you.”

  “That just sounds shallow,” Fana said. “Why would I want anyone like that?”

  Gramma Bea shrugged. “We didn’t make this world. The Lord did. We just visit here.” Fana sighed and picked up the toaster again, adjusting its angles in the light from the window to try to see her face through a stranger’s eyes.

  “Do you see what I see now?” Gramma Bea said.

  Fana nodded, forcing a smile.

  The lipstick’s color was a promising speck, but Fana still couldn’t see her face at all.

  Two

  Berkeley

  Friday

  6:57 a.m.

  Johnny Jamal Wright thought he must be dreaming.

  He was too confused by the sight of Ryan LaCroix at his dorm room door to hear what he was saying. Ryan’s orange-brown hair was cropped short, marine style, and his two hundred pounds filled the doorway. At the Cotton Bowl, Ryan LaCroix’s quarterback sneak at the end of the fourth quarter had made him a folk hero and gotten him on Saturday Night Live.

  Now he was clasping Johnny’s hand in a grip that was too hard.

  “What?” Johnny said.

  “I said…I need some Glow,” Ryan said, his grip a bit tighter. When Johnny tried to tug his hand away, Ryan held on. His eyes were blue ice. “Where do I get it, Wright?”

  “Uh…I don’t know,” Johnny said. Glow! If Ryan LaCroix had roused him from bed to get drugs, he was a year too late. Caitlin was gone.

  Suddenly, the grip wasn’t a handshake anymore—Ryan was pinching off Johnny’s circulation. Johnny almost told Ryan he was hurting his hand until he realized Ryan wanted to.

  Ryan sounded like he was whining. “Who’s your supplier? Come on! What’s her name?”

  “Wh-what the hell, Ryan?” Johnny said. Ryan shoved, and Johnny took two stumbling steps backward, into the room. Ryan kicked the door closed behind him, not letting Johnny’s hand go.

  One glance at his roommate’s bed and Johnny remembered Zach’s late-night gig. As usual, Zach hadn’t come home. Johnny was alone with a crazed Ryan LaCroix.

  And Ryan was about to break his hand.

  “You said she’s got a pipeline,” Ryan said. “She can get Glow any time she wants.”

  Had he said something that stupid last year? Johnny’s elevated pulse made him dizzy. Maybe he’d been trying to pump up his connection to impress a football player and his friends. There had been girls involved. And alcohol. The memory tried to surface, but all Johnny remembered was how much he’d ached to lose his virginity. Johnny had made a lot of unlikely friends freshman year when word had gotten around that he’d known how to find the underground drug called Glow. Football players. Celebrities’ kids. Professors, even. Good days.

  But the best part had been Caitlin. Those days were gone.

  “I was kegged when I said that!” Johnny said. He hoped the lie wasn’t plain on his face. “I knew a girl who got lucky and snagged some Glow. That’s it.”

  Caitlin would asphyxiate him for what he had said already. Never talk about me. Her number one rule. And he’d given out too much information: Ryan knew she was a girl who’d dropped out of Berkeley in the past year. Someone could find her if Ryan opened his mouth.

  Caitlin had hooked Johnny up with Glow only once, and she’d agreed only because he had exaggerated Ryan’s better qualities and the depth of their friendship. Johnny had never told her it had only been for Ryan’s herpes.

  And this wasn’t Ryan. The guy standing over him might as well be a desperate junkie.

  Suddenly, Johnny saw a hospital in his future.

  Johnny hoped the feeling was chickenshit nerves, not the psychic bone Mom was always talking about—but the notion felt real. Johnny had gotten through middle school and four years at Leon County High without a fight. Ryan LaCroix was a bad choice for his first beatdown.

  “Just give me her name, Johnny,” Ryan said. Now he was almost begging.

  “She’s gone,” Johnny said, his mouth dry. He tried not to sound as scared as he was. “Whatever you’ve got this time, they’ll give you meds at the clinic.”

  “I don’t want it in my medical report,” Ryan said. “Coaches see it. Selective Service. My dad and mom, too. I don’t want that shit in my blood. I want my test clean, like last time.”

  Ryan flipped Johnny’s wrist into a painful wrist-lock. Johnny’s shoulder twisted, his face shoved against his pinewood closet door. “Stop being a dick,” Ryan said. “Give me her name.”

  Was this why Caitlin had left Berkeley? Caitlin had said Johnny was too childish to understand the stakes, and maybe she’d been right. Especially after what happened to Maritza.

  Johnny felt his stomach constrict into a cold, hard ball of fear. But his outrage won out.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Johnny said.

  Johnny felt his head snap backward as Ryan yanked a handful of his shoulder-length dreadlocks and slammed his face into the closet door. Hard. Johnny had enough reflexes to turn his head so his nose wouldn’t break, but his cheekbone met the door with enough force to hurt. Johnny felt the inside of his lip tear against a tooth.

  Blood. He could taste it in his mouth. Johnny was too shocked to move. No one had hurt him before. He had never considered what to do if s
omeone did.

  Ryan pulled Johnny’s head again, winding up for another throw.

  The sound of the room door opening made them both jump. Ryan’s claw loosened enough for Johnny to shake himself free and duck to the other side of the room.

  Johnny’s roommate Zach walked in, bleary-eyed, pushing dyed black hair out of his face.

  Until that instant, Johnny had never truly appreciated Zach. They were a random housing assignment practical joke: Johnny was a near-virgin premed who had almost gone to a seminary before deciding to be a doctor. Zach was the lead singer of a crunk-rap band who thought sobriety was a mortal sin and whose major area of study was soulless sex. Zach was a gentle weedhead, but he was big. His chest was a tapestry of tattoos.

  Johnny had never been so happy to have a roommate.

  “Fresno,” Zach said, looking Ryan in the eye.

  “What?” Johnny said.

  “I heard about Glow in Fresno,” Zach told Ryan. “From a chat room.”

  All of them were pretending Johnny’s lip wasn’t bleeding, that things hadn’t just gone too far. Johnny was so relieved to avoid a beating that he was afraid he might piss in his briefs. The army wanted him to pick up a rifle and fight after college?

  He’d better pray he got into a good med school.

  “OK,” Ryan said. “Give me the site.”

  Zach burrowed through the clutter on his nightstand, looking for a pen. “Watch what you put in your veins,” Zach said. “It’s called Blast, Cure or Glow. Whatever you call it, most of the stuff out there is fake, and people get fried shooting up bad shit. There’s test strips for sale on the website. The government’s putting out fake shit, trying to make it look dangerous. If somebody got you the real deal, you were one of the few. Good luck in Fresno.”

  Ryan snatched the paper from Zach’s hands and headed for the door. Zach gave Ryan the finger on his way to the door. “You can’t throw deep for shit, LaCroix,” Zach mumbled.

  The door slammed behind Ryan, and it was a typical day again. Except for the blood.

  “You all right, man?” Zach said.

  Johnny wasn’t all right, and he had a problem far worse than a split lip or bruised feelings.

  He would have to tell Caitlin.

  How R U? Call me ASAP

  Johnny typed the text message to MIDNYTE on his slender silver Wyre phone, which he kept strapped to his forearm. His phone was the pride and joy of his life, the birthday present that brought him in step with the real world: big screen, holographic keyboard option, great sound for movies, GamePort compatible, and plenty of memory for his lab reports and Af-Am lit papers.

  Johnny was walking toward the science building for his 10 a.m. quiz, but his mind wasn’t on RNA molecules and protein synthesis in sophomore bio. Only Caitlin. Her number only led to a voice mailbox that was always full, so he had to wait for her to text him back. Or, even better, maybe she would call him.

  “Yeah, sorry your girlfriend died,” Johnny rehearsed aloud as he sidestepped a busty, red-faced faculty member jogging with her black Lab. “Now I feel like a jerk for trying to talk you out of moving in with Maritza. So…how ya’ been?”

  God, he’d been so pathetic.

  Johnny had known Caitlin O’Neal since he was twelve, when his father had taken him to the retreat in the woods that had been so secretive he still wasn’t sure whether it had been in Oregon or Washington. They had flown to the Portland airport, but they hadn’t been able to see a thing outside the blackened windows in the backseat of the Town Car that had met them. It had seemed like an adventure out of a James Bond movie, even though Dad had seemed more nervous than excited.

  It had been a scientific research facility. That was all Dad had ever said. He’d heard about it from his scientist friend, the one people called Dr. Voodoo. A government thing, Johnny had figured. But the place had seemed more like a commune; just a few families living in the woods.

  While Dad had been in meetings with scientists, Johnny had met Caitlin and Casey O’Neal playing dodgeball outside. The O’Neal girls were two years older, blonde-haired and blue-eyed identical twins. But the twins were nothing alike.

  Caitlin had been adventurous, sneaking cigarettes in the woods and grabbing his hand to give him the forbidden tour. She had taken him to the long cedar building called the Council Hall, where she’d said, the children were never invited. She’d dared him to peek into the window, and he had seen his father sitting side by side with Caitlin’s at a long table, talking to two black men who’d been wearing only white. The strangers’ stern eyes had found them immediately, so they’d run away.

  But Johnny had never forgotten that gathering. Those men in white had looked like royalty.

  Johnny was sure Glow had something to do with that commune. Johnny’s father had never been invited back, as far as he knew, but Johnny had kept in touch with some of the kids he’d met there. Caitlin had pretty much dropped contact with him since Maritza died, but Casey still posted letters to him on ShoutOut every couple of weeks. And Fana wrote too, now and then.

  He had missed a message from Fana, Johnny realized as he scrolled on his phone. ALIYATOKYO had posted a note two days ago, and he’d overlooked it. Fana’s visual sig was a photo from the 1800s, Harriet Tubman or someone. Intense kid.

  I’m worried about C. Have you heard from her this week? Her heart is traversing territories she doesn’t have maps for. -F.

  Much shorter than usual for Fana. She was seventeen by now, but Johnny always pictured Fana as the amazingly shy ten-year-old girl who barely met anyone’s eyes, his Lil’ Sis. Fana was the most sheltered person Johnny had ever known. Casey and Caitlin lived in New York, but he didn’t think Fana had been anywhere else.

  With one eye on the bicyclists navigating toward him on the sidewalk, Johnny wrote back:

  Trying 2 find her too. AWOL for 3 weeks. Call me and I’ll tell u about my weird day.

  But he knew Fana wouldn’t call. Fana’s family must have ’Net phones, at least, but she never used one, just like she never used video feeds. She never talked about her home life either; her family definitely had something to do with the government. Dad refused to say anything about that visit seven years ago, except to grunt when Johnny mentioned it. For the first time in his life, Dad had managed to keep a secret.

  Caitlin had been out of touch with Fana, her best friend? Johnny hoped Caitlin wasn’t in trouble. He scrolled the rest of his ShoutOut posts to make sure a note from Caitlin hadn’t been buried, too. Nothing. Damn. Johnny’s heart pounded, flushing warm blood into his palms.

  He recognized his symptoms: He was still stuck on Caitlin.

  Caitlin had enrolled in Berkeley first, so he’d decided he would go there, too, breaking a three-generation chain of Wright men who attended Florida A&M. Johnny still hadn’t heard the end of that. But he’d thought it would be worth it to be near Caitlin, finally.

  It’s just sex, Johnny. Caitlin had warned him right from the beginning. He had still been a virgin his freshman year, and she’d said she felt sorry for him living like a monk in Tallahassee. Welcome to the world, she’d said, straddling him for the first time, and he’d seen stars. He’d been ecstatic to explore the novelty of a girl’s body and touch, but it hadn’t just been that. He’d fallen for her, hard. Sweaty palms. Dancing heartbeat. Maybe it was because he’d struggled so hard with the conflict between what his church taught and what his body wanted: He hadn’t realized it would be so hard to wait. But why couldn’t he marry Caitlin one day? He’d stayed away from other girls just in case his devotion would matter to her.

  But it hadn’t. Maritza had mattered to Caitlin, and now Maritza was dead. A month ago, someone had kidnaped her from a South Beach clinic and killed her. Probably because of Glow.

  Johnny shivered. He had never known anyone who’d died a violent death, and memories of Maritza gave him a chill. He had cried with Caitlin when she’d first called, hysterical, wailing her lover’s name. He had been waiting to be of use to h
er since he was twelve. But now that terrible voice wormed into his head: Hey, Wright, maybe now you’ll have your chance.

  He could forget it. Caitlin would only be pissed when she heard about Ryan’s visit. Johnny had said too much about Glow. He had said too much about her.

  Johnny had always thought Caitlin was just paranoid. But what if he was wrong?

  Omari was waiting for Johnny on the steps of his dormitory, leaning against his backpack in a sliver of shade. Cornrows wound around his glistening scalp in a succession of U’s, the style worn by the rapper Bizkitz. Students glanced curiously at Omari as they climbed the stairs, since he was barely five-foot-two and looked like he belonged on a playground instead of a college campus. No one would guess he was fifteen.

  He was two hours early. And he was sweating.

  “Hey, little dude, how long you been out in this sun?” Johnny said, trotting up to him. The sun had a clear sky in its favor, so it must have been eighty degrees.

  “Thirty minutes. Maybe forty,” Omari said. With a lanky arm, he grabbed the iron bannister to pull himself to his feet. Omari needed extra support, the way an old man might.

  Johnny gave him a one-armed hug. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  Omari shrugged. “I didn’t wanna’ pull you out of class. Ain’t nothin, man.”

  The first time Johnny took Omari to McDonald’s on their assigned Saturday after he’d joined Big Brothers/Big Sisters in Oakland, Omari had kept his face mean. Making conversation had been like mining for diamonds. “So, want some ketchup?” “I’m just doing this for my mama, so don’t try to be my friend.” “So, how do you like school?” “I’m just doing this for my mama, so don’t try to be my friend.”

  That was six months ago. Everything had changed when Omari had learned of their mutual interest.

  As soon as Johnny had said he was premed, Omari bombarded him with smart questions: “Hey, man, what do you think about gene therapy? And how come all this money gets spent on cystic fibrosis research, but way more people have sickle cell? What’s up with THAT?” Omari knew more about sickle-cell anemia than Johnny did. He had to.