Adaptation (21 page)

“Thanks.” She took the paper cup and headed into the living room, dropping onto the couch.

Julian followed, sitting in the armchair and propping up one foot on the coffee table. “So, are you gay now?”

She choked on her coffee. The hot liquid burned down her throat, and she had to gasp for cool air.

“Sorry,” Julian said, smiling. “Maybe I should’ve given you a warning.”

“I’m not gay,” she said, throat raw. “I’m just… not straight.”

“I knew it!” he crowed. “I totally knew it. And there’s a word for that, you know. Bisexual.”

“I don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “That seems pretty definite. Like: Yeah, I like both.”

“Don’t you?”

The question made her squirm, and she peeled the lid off her coffee and blew on it. “I guess, but I don’t want to put a label on it.”

He took a sip from his drink. “I felt the same way when I first realized I was gay. I didn’t want to name it.”

“Really? Why?”

“I think because I wasn’t comfortable with it yet.”

She hunched over, gazing down at the milky coffee. Julian always remembered how she drank it. “Yeah,” she said finally. “Maybe that’s it. Not that I think it’s wrong—I don’t. But it’s really new.” She took a careful sip. “Besides,
bisexual
… it makes me think of girls on reality TV making out in front of guys.” She made a face. “I don’t want people to think that about me.”

“People are always going to think something about you that isn’t real. It doesn’t matter what they think. Nobody ever knows
what to think of me. I’m not black enough for some folks, and I’m not Jewish enough for others. I mean, my favorite food is bacon. And then you throw in the gay thing, and it messes it up even more.” Julian sounded strained. He sighed. “This is getting too heavy. What’s up with this chick Amber? When did you meet her?”

She smiled faintly. “Last week. And… thanks. For telling me that.” She and Julian had been friends forever, but she couldn’t remember talking about this stuff with him before.

Julian waved it off. “It’s the way it is. So: Amber. How am I supposed to be your best gay if you don’t tell me all the dirty details?”

“Don’t only straight girls have best gays? How is that going to work if I’m not straight anymore?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He gave her an arch look. “I apparently am not friends with a straight girl.”

She laughed. “I ran into her near Dolores Park. I mean, I literally ran into her—or she ran into me. She wasn’t looking where she was going. When I went back the next day, I saw her again, and she wanted to buy me a cup of coffee. We started talking, and then it… sort of went from there.”

“Where does she go to school?”

“She doesn’t. She graduated in June and is taking the year off.”

“So she’s an older woman.”

“Whatever, she’s a year older.”

“And what do her parents do?”

“Her mom is a scientist.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.” Reese had never thought to ask.

“What about her dad?”

“She never said anything about her dad. I think her parents are divorced or something.”

“Where does she live?”

“She’s staying in her uncle’s apartment on Dolores Heights.”

“What’s she doing in San Francisco?”

“Hanging out for the summer.” Reese frowned. “What’s with the third degree?”

Julian’s face softened. “Sorry. I just want to make sure she’s not a serial killer or something.”

“She’s not a serial killer. But thank you.”

“And you like her?”

Reese blushed. “I like her.”

He smirked. “So are you done with your plan to not date anybody?”

“I totally meant it when I decided that,” she protested. “You know I did.”

“But you’re done?” he pushed. “Like, you’re dating this Amber chick?”

“I went on
one
date with her,” Reese objected, putting down her coffee.

“You’ve only seen her once?” Julian was incredulous. “You looked pretty tight.”

“We’ve only gone on one official date,” Reese explained, and as she said the words she saw Julian’s face light up.

“How many
un
official dates did you have? And how long did they last?”

“I’m not telling you everything, jeez. What about your ‘I never
kiss and tell’ policy? But yeah, I guess I’m dating her.” Saying the words suddenly made it real, and her stomach flipped. “Shit. I’m dating a girl.”

Julian broke into laughter and had to put down his coffee cup so he didn’t spill the liquid. “Aw, I always knew you were family, Clarice.”

His tone was light, but she was touched by what he said. It made her a little uncomfortable, though, so she laughed and said, “Don’t get all sappy on me.” She threw one of the couch pillows at him.

He ducked, and the pillow bounced off his shoulder. “Hey! Watch it.”

Reese took another sip of her coffee. “So are we done with the processing? I want to get started painting.”

“Wow, you’re like Martha Stewart on a mission.”

“I just want to get it done.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “All right, chill. Do you have any plans tonight?”

“No. Why?”

“You know how I told you I was doing some work for Bin 42?”

“Yeah.”

“Someone sent me a lead on something in the Bay Area. There’s a warehouse north of the city where the government might have stored some wreckage from one of the plane crashes.”

“From June nineteenth?”

“That’s the theory. I want to go there tonight and check it out, and I need you to come with me. I want to get video footage of the warehouse and hopefully whatever’s inside, and I need you to back me up.”

“You need me to drive,” she said dryly. “Isn’t that it?” Julian still hadn’t gotten his license.

He grinned sheepishly. “Well, we have to get there somehow, and it would be great if we could use your mom’s car.”

She turned the coffee cup around in her hands. “When would you want to go? And where exactly is this warehouse?”

“It’s west of Petaluma in the middle of nowhere—maybe a two-hour drive from here. I looked it up online. I think we should wait till after our parents are asleep to leave.”

Reese didn’t think there was much chance that her mother would give her permission to drive two hours north in the middle of the night to sneak into a government warehouse. That meant she’d have to lie about where she was going or steal the car keys after her mom went to sleep. “I have a better idea,” Reese said. “David has his own car. I could ask him to drive us.”

“David Li? You think it’s a good idea to bring in someone else?”

“Well, he’s kind of already involved,” Reese admitted reluctantly.

“What do you mean?” Julian gave her a pointed look. “What haven’t you told me?”

She hesitated, thinking of the nondisclosure agreement. Even if it didn’t hold water, she wasn’t sure if she was ready to ignore it. “Ever since I got back, some weird things have been happening to me and David. Remember when you showed me that photo of Area 51?”

Excitement rose on Julian’s face. “Are you saying that I was right about where you had your accident?”

“Well, the car crashed near where Area 51 is supposed to be.”

“I knew it!” Julian cried.

“I don’t know for sure that’s where I was,” Reese cautioned him. “But the fact that it happened during the June Disaster, and I almost hit that bird—I know it’s a lot of circumstantial evidence, but I feel like there’s some connection there, you know?”

Julian was shaking his head, his mouth twitching.

“What?” she demanded.

“Do you know how funny this is? You’re trying to convince
me
that there’s something shady going on. I’m already there. What exactly is this weird stuff that’s been happening to you and David?”

She stalled for time, taking another sip of coffee while she tried to figure out how much she should—or could—tell him. He gave her an expectant look. “I really want to tell you, but I don’t think I should,” she said, settling on the truth. Julian would see through her anyway if she lied.

The anticipation on his face changed into sober thoughtfulness as he studied her. “Okay,” he finally said. “You think David will really go for this?”

Relieved, she said, “Yeah, I do. He wants to know what’s going on with us as much as I do.”

“Then how about you get him to pick us up at midnight?” Julian stood to leave.

“Do you want to wait while I call him?”

“Nah. I have to get home and make sure my recording equipment is ready. Just text me after you’ve talked to him.”

“All right.”

Reese followed Julian to the front door. As he opened it he added, “Wear black. And bring a flashlight.”

Reese was right. David didn’t hesitate to say yes, and
they quickly agreed that he would pick her up first at midnight, and then they would head over to Julian’s. After she texted Julian the details, she took the paint upstairs and looked around her room. She decided to start with the wall next to the door, where the bulletin board hung beside the closet.

As she unhooked the bulletin board to lay it on her bed, a couple of photos that had been stuck beneath others tumbled to the floor. She bent to pick them up. One was of herself with her mom and grandparents at the Marin County Fair when she was thirteen. It startled her to see how young she looked, all braces and awkwardness. The other picture was of her and David after the first debate tournament they had won last winter. They both had giant smiles on their faces, and David was holding up their
trophy. She remembered how excited they had been. Afterward they went out with the whole team to IHOP and vowed to win all the way to nationals. Too bad that hadn’t worked out. The memory of how she screwed everything up still hurt, and she forced herself to drop the photos on the bed and ignore the twinge of embarrassment that pinched her.

She spread newspapers on the wooden floor in front of the now blank wall. At the hardware store, she had bought a large can of bittersweet root and two cans of yellow paint. One was called “morning sunrise”; the other, slightly lighter in color, was “downy gold.” She pried open the can of morning sunrise with a flathead screwdriver and unwrapped one of the new brushes, running her fingers over the stiff bristles before dipping it into the paint. She swept the color, glistening and bright, over the blue-gray wall in a curving streak of yellow. A thread of excitement began to hum through her. She felt as if her hand were being guided by instinct, and the more she painted, the closer she came to remembering what was so familiar about that dream.

After most of the wall was covered in morning sunrise, she switched to downy gold, using a clean brush. The bottom layer wasn’t dry yet, so the two colors smeared together. When she saw the new color that created, her stomach lurched.
That
was it. That was the color of the room in her dream. She painted the lighter yellow all over the wall, mixing it in with the darker shade in quick strokes. When the whole wall was yellow, she knew she was ready to add the red, but she had to wait until the yellow paint dried or else the mixed colors would turn into orange.

Impatient, she went downstairs to make herself a sandwich for
lunch. As she ate it in the kitchen, staring out at the backyard, all she could see was the yellow room in her dream. She could picture exactly how the red veins spread down the walls, but now she also remembered a thin layer of iridescent gel over the red, like a caul protecting a newborn. How could she paint that? She glanced around the kitchen and her eyes alighted on a box of plastic wrap. She opened it and peeled off a piece. The edges stuck together, and as she stretched the plastic flat, her fingers sliding against the sleek surface, something inside her clicked.

She
was the newborn within the caul.

She had been inside the yellow room with its bleeding, pliable walls.

She couldn’t breathe for a minute as the truth uncoiled through her: After the accident she had been in this place that she dreamed of. She knew it in her bones. It was an incubator, and after she emerged, she was different.

She ran back upstairs, clutching the box of plastic wrap. The yellow wall gleamed at her, still shining wet in some places, but she couldn’t wait any longer. She opened the can of bittersweet root and began to drag the red across the yellow, like the branching limbs of a tree. She loaded the brush so heavily that paint began to drip down the walls, sliding down over the electrical outlet. She put down the brush and went to get the screwdriver to remove the faceplate so that she could wipe off the paint.

There was a red light blinking inside the wall, attached to the outlet.

She froze.
What is that?
The red light was part of a tiny device that looked like a round battery. She reached into the wall and pried it loose; it seemed to be stuck with some kind of adhesive.
In the palm of her hand, the device continued to blink like a little red eye, opening and closing. A trail of cold crept down her spine. She flipped it over. Engraved into the bottom of the battery were minuscule letters that she had to squint to read:
EC&R
.

Her phone rang, startling her. She dropped the device, and it clattered onto the wooden floor. Cursing, she picked it up and put it in her pocket, then answered the phone. It was Amber.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Amber asked.

“What? I’m—nothing,” Reese said.
Was that a bug? Is someone listening to me?

“Are you at home?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I’m outside.”

Reese went to the window and pulled up the blinds. Out on the sidewalk, Amber was standing with a bouquet of flowers in one hand.

“I brought you something,” Amber said through the phone, sounding coy. “Can I come in?”

Reese could feel the pressure of the tiny object in her pocket. She had to get this thing out of the house. “I’ll be there in a sec. Hang on.” She hung up and ran downstairs to the kitchen, unlocking the back door. She headed for the potted geraniums and shoved the blinking device deep into the soil before she went to let Amber in. She would have to examine it later.