Rating: PG-13 (Language, mature themes)

Karen

It's a Friday morning in early June, and the sun is hot on my hair as I pull into the parking lot of Newport High. Everything is covered in the red haze of summer, from the oily pavement to the gray-tinged sky. L.A. is south of here but I can still smell the smog, and like the scent of hay and dung to a farm boy, it smells like home to me.

My car is a red Ferrari. I'll be honest here: my parents are filthy rich. I'm pretty sure they bought this car just to show off to their friends, because they know I prefer a sturdy old Volvo any day. I park near the front of the school lot, taking the stop just vacated by a pizza delivery boy. It isn't even eight in the morning yet and people are already partying.

I get out and my best friend, Amanda Reinerth, tosses me my book bag. She climbs over the door rather than open in and we walk toward the school and air-conditioning. My nerves are standing on end with I'm almost skipping over the asphalt.

"I'm going to pop out of my body, I swear," I tell Amanda.

She smiles. Amanda has a great smile, even if she does flash it a little too seldom and sometimes at the wrong moments. She has light brown hair cut short in the usual style, and blue eyes, just like the color that comes from a magic marker. She's beautiful, but you have too look, and it's an acquired taste. Maybe I'm just saying that because every girl thinks her best friend is beautiful.

She doesn't care much for style and is dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, standard Amanda stock. I am more carefully attired, wearing a sleeveless silk blouse and a loose olive skirt. "Why are you nervous?" Amanda asks. "This is the last day, not the first."

I shrug, feeling a light breeze lift my hair. "Don't you think that the last day of high school should be special?"

"You want every day to be special."

That's true. I'm always coming up with reasons to celebrate, because I do want my life to be special, every minute of it.

"But even if that weren't true, wouldn't you think that today should be special?"

Amanda gives in. "Oh, alright. Today can be special." She glances at the Rolex on her wrist. Everybody who lives around here is rich. The diversity level is equal to the number of people who eat Spam for fun. "I'm late. I'll catch you second peroid, okay?"

"Yeah." She runs off torward the building. She wouldn't be late if she hadn't signed up to be on the yearbook committie six monthes ago. I told her then that she would hate it, and she has. Amanda is forever getting into activities and then finding out that she hates them.

There's another ten minutes before school starts, and I'm glad that I have nowhere to go. I stride down the hall feeling great, waving to people I know, Meg, Todd, Darla, these poeple who will always come to mind when I think of my high school years.

The school is little more than a building with rooms. Aside from the fact that lots of rich kids go there, it has no interesting qualities and could be mistaken for just about any other kind of building in existance.

I spin my locker combination, 9-14-29, and the lock opens with a resounding clink. In four years, I've never had to turn the dial more than once before the lock opened. People think that's strange, but if you just put the numbers in right, it happens automatically.

My locker is filled with photographs. There must be two dozen of Amanda, and at least as many of my boyfriend, Christopher. I'm good with a camera; he looks great. He looks great in person, too, but that's beyond the point. I have photography first peroid.

My camera is set on the top chelf of my locker, and I check to make sure it has plenty of film. There is more in my backpack if I need it. I plan on taking pleanty of pictures today.

There are none of me in the locker. People don't like to take my picture, and I don't like having it taken. I've skipped picture day since the first grade. Under the bed in my room I have a photo of myself, but I look strange, like an animal caught in a trap. All my pictures come out looking like that.

It's not that I'm not pretty, I am. Newport High is full of beautiful people, and I could still be their queen. I wouldn't say that if it weren't true, just like I wouldn't say I'm filthy rich if I weren't. I have strawberry blond hair, more strawberry than blond really, and bright green eyes that are absoultely huge. My face is long and oval, I have an exceptionally small nose, and rosebud lips. I did some modeling last year, but the photos spooked the photographer. He said I should see about doing adds for funeral homes. It doesn't matter. I look great in person.

I can tell I'm attractive by the way people look at me, sort of half interest mixed with half facination. I'm a mesmerizing person, and that's not just my own flattery of myself. There's something about me that catches people's attention.

I've been standing front of my locker for so long that I could have died and decomposed already. What good would my looks be then?

Christopher is in my first peroid class with me. I think he took it because of me, which is sort of sweet. My pictures of him look better than his pictures of anything, but it's the thought that counts.

I see him the minute I step in the room. His hair recently cut, neatly trimmed above the ears. It's red, like mine, only much darker, almost a burgundy. Strangly, he has gray eyes, and the two make for such an interesting contrast. His is a classic beauty, with a wide mouth and high cheekbones.

He's sitting at a table with Meg and Todd, who've been together forever, or as long as I can remember. Which ever came first. Christopher is listening to them talk, but seems distracted. He often seems only mildly interested in something, and it makes me think that there's a lot going on in his head. Christopher is very smart, we both are, he's just a shitty photographer.

He looks up and sees me in the doorway. Smiles. I slide my camera bag strap onto my shoulder and smile back, walking over. The tap of my shoes is like the ticking seconds on a bomb that will go off when I get there. I lean over, kiss his cheek, and sit down next to him.

"Hello."

"You look great."

"Thanks. I figured today should be a special day."

Christopher doens't complain. He likes my special days, think's they're sweet. I think he's sweet.

"Of course it's a special day. This is the last day of our last year."

"What are you doing this summer?" Meg asks. Christopher lowers his head and smiles.

"You know, just hanging out, soaking up some sun," I tell Meg, glancing over at Christopher. We're actually planning to spend most of the summer holed up in one of my parents' summer houses.

Meg doesn't miss it, but she can pretend she did. Good girl. Meg's alright. I don't have a lot of friends, really just Christopher and Amanda. That suits me fine. Why do I need a half dozen luke warm buds when I can have a darling best friend and a boyfriend who adores me?

"What time are you going to pick me up tonight?" I ask Christopher.

He looks up at me and breaks into a grin, still thinking of Meg's question. He can be such a nut. "Seven. Sound good?"

"Fine."

The teacher comes in and calls us to order, but there's really no point. I feel like yelling at him, "Hey, it's the last day of school! What do you think you're doing?"

I manage to refrain from hollering at him, knowing that he is probably frantic because this is his last chance to knock some sense into us all before we graduate and take over the world. I can't bear to take such a simple pleasure away from him. That wouldn't be fair, would it?

Things may rarely be fair, but I'd say they've gone pretty well for me. My parents are Lenore and Alec Bride, and Alec is in congress. People find it strange that I call them by their first names, but they call me by mine. We have a house in Brooke, a big one even by California standards, and seven other houses spread around the world. One on each continent. Lenore is quite pround of that. She's Russian, and Alec is Polish, but I don't look like either of them except for my straight and impossible to curl hair. Lenore works at a zoo as some sort of agriculutral advisor, and in her spare time she raises purebread Newfoundlands. The dogs, there are thirteen currently, all seem to distrust me.

I day dream as the teacher talks about how to take a good party photo. This is the third time he's explained it this week, and I think I've got the picture, no pun intended.

I've lived in our house all my life, all eighteen years of it. We did a lot of traveling during the summers when I was a kid, but these last few years I've prefered to stay at home with my best friend and my boyfriend and the hired help. My parents aren't exactly doting on me, exept when it comes to that stupid car. Were on earth did they get the idea that I wanted a Ferrerri? We aren't hostile torward each other, we just have nothing in common. And I mean nothing. They almost remind me of Christopher sometimes, the way they always seem preoccupied.

But they are nothing like Christopher.

Sometimes I wonder if they have emotions at all, if it's not a set of flesh covered robots who run the household. I swear, I'm closer to the cook than I am to my mother, and I don't even know her first name.

There is one area where they pay attention to me: school. They are obsessed with my getting a full education, and that means that I have to take pretty much every advanced course available. I don't care one way or the other. School is easy, too easy. I can read a passage and then recite it word for word. Christopher says I have a photographic memory, but I think it's more that I'm just good with information.

But school holds no interest for me. I look forward to collage because it's a chance to get away from them for a while, and not have Lenore checking to make sure my homework has been done every time I turn on the TV.

"Karen?" Christopher asks, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Hm?"

"What were you doing last night? I called, and you weren't home."

"Went out to dinner with some friends of my parents. Your usual stuff-faced meal where everyone plays nice."

He nodds. Christopher's parents are in polotics, republican, though I think that's the least of his problems with them. They just don't seem to like him very much. The fact that Alec's a democrat hasn't scored me any points with them, either.

"Where are we going tonigh?" he asks, and I laugh.

"Nell's."

"I thought that was tomorrow night."

"No, tonight. Keith is tomorrow, and Susan's throwing a lunchon, if you're interested."

"A lunchon?" he asks skepticly. "Sounds like something my parents would go to."

"Yes, I think they were invited."

The peroid ends, and I kiss Christopher good bye. "I'll see you after school?" he asks.

"No, I've got some stuff to do. I'll see you when you pick me up."

"Okay." He looks surprised but doesn't mind. We spend most of our time together, and it's understandable when one of us wants to be alone. I think that's why we get along so well, we talk. Communication is deffinately the key to a good relationship.

My next peroid is public speaking, and I sit next to Amanda. Her face is full of thought and I can already tell that she has one hand in the philosophigal cookie jar this morning.

"Do you ever wonder if you're going to get anywhere in life?" she asks me.

"I don't have much of a choice with my parents. They're going to get me somewhere even if it kills me."

Amanda shakes her head. "That's not what I mean."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you ever wonder what your purpose is?"

"My purpose in life? I don't think I have one. I guess my mission in life is to rid myself of my parents."

Amanda smiles and shakes her head. "Never mind."

I'm exaspered. Clearly I'm not giving her the answers she wants. "What can I say? I haven't looked that far ahead in my life. Have you?"

"No, but I get the feeling that I'll never amount to much."

"Yes you will. You'll get everything you deserve."

She laughs. "That's not saying much. Now you, we all know that you're going somewhere. You're somebody special."

"Where do you come off saying that?"

"There's just something about you, Kare. Maybe your accent, or that way you look at people."

"I don't have an accent."

"Of course you do. You've heard yourself on tape."

"And I don't look at people any differently than you do."

"That's not true. You know, I think it scares Christopher. One day, he told me that if he ever figured out who you really were, he would probably have some sort of spiritual epiphiany and accend to a higher realm."

"Why are you buttering me up? Do you have some bad news?"

"No, I'm just letting you know what's what."

"You're as crazy as Christopher. Last week he forced me to eat a banana and I threw up all afternoon."

"A banana made you throw up?"

"Yeah, and it tasted awful. I'm never eating fruit again."

Amanda looks at me for a minute and I don't like the feeling it carries, but then she smiles and I forget.

The day passes almost as quickly as the year has. I say good bye, yack with people about collage, hug a lot. My teachers say how much they'll miss me. Of course they don't mean it, but I lie just as much.

I have my yearbook signed by almost every senior in the school by the time I leave for the day. Graduation was yesterday, so there's nothing left for me to do but clean out my locker. I have a folder, a special one, ready to put the photos in, and then a plastic bag for junk. There isn't much, I keep a clean house. That's the way Lenore likes it.

Amanda shows up, looking completly worn out. Her hair's a mess. She gets tired easily, or more, she gets tired of going through the days, doing nothing important, and feeling like she has acomplished nothing. It can wear on a person. Still, she looks great. Something about the melancholy favours her, like it's her natural habitat. Despite the day she's had, she smiles at me.

"Hey, how are you?"

Sometimes I wonder how long Amanda will be able to keep going like this before she snaps.

"Good. How was your last day of high school?"

"Special." I laugh.

"Am I giving you a ride home?"

"No, Ryan's picking me up." Ryan is her older brother, three years older to be exact.

"Did you talk to Jeremy?"

"His pen broke, I gave him one of mime. That was it."

I shake my head. Amanda has been mooning over Jeremy since last summer, yet refuses to make any sort of move in the right direction. She says simply that she and guys don't mix, that they find her weird and pointless, and that she isn't going to make a fool of herself in front of everyone just because Jeremy has a nice face.

In the meantime, she's making a fool of herself to me. I don't think she can actually hear herself when she talks about him, which is sort of interesting. Through a teacher's mix up, she got to read his senior writing portfolio, and was apparently swept away by several of his pieces. "He just sounds so much deeper than your average America teenager," she told me once. "It was like stepping into a Twilight Zone episode."

So apparently it's his brain that attracts her, and it has nothing to do with the dimple in his chin.

"I can't believe you've gone the whole year without letting him know you feel like this."

"I don't feel like anything," she tells me tightly.

"You adore him."

"I don't bloody well adore him. I just admire his writing talents."

"You admire his ass every time he walks down the hall. At least send him a note or something. It could be simple, like, 'Dear Jemery, all year I've been meaning to meet you, because I read some great stuff you wrote that really intrigued me, but the chance never came up. Anyway, if you get bored this summer, here's my number, give we a call.' See? It's classy without being drippy."

Amanda rolls her eyes and slouches deeper into her tee-shirt. "What the hell do I need a guy for anyway? They're just trouble."

"Except for Christopher."

"Naturally. Look at the time, I've got to run."

"I'll see you at the party then?"

"Sure." I wonder if she really wants to go. Amanda never misses a party, but she never enjoyes them either. She smiles again. "See you there," she says, and starts off down the hall.

I look around and try to photograph this moment in my memory, another one that I want to be special. Moving down the familiar hallways, and I smile to myself, saying good bye to the people I pass.

The day beckons clear and bright. I climb into my car, and let out a hoot of happiness. The rest of the world is waiting.

But first things first. I have to get home and do something I have been putting off.

It's pink.

It's unpleasant.

It's a pregnancy test.

This is something I have deffinately put off for too long. I've had my worries for a month now, but I wanted to wait until school was out.

If I'm pregnant, my parents will never fogive me. I don't know if I care. I guess it would be fair to say that I have a bad relationship with my parents. We never fight, we never joke, we never do anything even remotely emotional. You could almost say that they're my associets, not my parents.

I don't know how I'm going to tell them.

If any of this is nessissary.

I haven't mentioned anything about it to Christopher or Amanda, and I hardly dare to think about it. This is really my nightmare.

I have three pregnancy tests at home. I figured two out of three was going to be more accurate, and I can't end up with a draw.

The wind whips my hair away from my face. I look over the coast as I drive along it, thinking that I'm going to handle this like an adult.

I have a craving.

I've gotten these cravings all my life, and I assumed everyone did until I got to school. So I learned to hide my habits, and everything worked out.

I yank open the glove compartment and remove the plastic box of nuts. It takes both hands to open it, so I momentarily drive with my elbows. The nuts are hard and dry, almost stale. I'll pick some more up later.

I eat much more protien than most girls my age. It's not uncommon for me to sit down and devour a whole jar of peanut butter, or three T-bone steaks. Fruit makes me sick to my stomach. I just can't hold it down. Yet I don't gain a pound, and the doctor says that I'm in excelent health.

Go figure.

I have more nuts in my plastic bag, if I want them. I always keep a pack in my locker, and unsually one in my purse. When I need protien, I need protien.

My head is pounding with worry, and all of a sudden I can't think. I pull the car over in one dangerous swerve and put my head down on the stearing wheel.

I can't be preganat.

But I can be. Christopher and I were careful, sometimes. Sometimes we weren't, and it's those times that count. What were we thinking? Well, I know what we were thinking, and it wasn't the right things.

Have I ruined my life? My parent are going to be furious.

Wait a second. I don't even know if I'm pregnant. Be sure before you freak out.

And then go for it.

I pull back into traffic, calm and in control, but not in denial. I try to enjoy the ride home, turning on the radio and letting the front half of my hair down so that it too can blow in the wind. My cheeks are pink and my lips chapped by the time I pull into our circular driveway.

Lenore and Alec are still at work; they will be for several hours. I walk in the front door and glance around like a fugutive on the run. There is no one about, so I head into the kitchen and take the back stairs up to the second floor. My parents have a large suite to the left of the bottom of the stairs. I have my room, a full bathroom, and a sitting room. It occures to me as I pass through it that it would make a good nursery.

There are three different brands of tests, and I read the instruction of each carefully while sitting on the floor of my box shower. I'm not stupid; I won't leave the tests out on the bathroom counter for someone to find.

There's a problem; I don't have to go. I dart downstairs and drain a half gallon of whole milk. It is my favorite drink. While I'm waiting for the tests to do their magic, Christopher calls. I have my own line.

"Hey," he says. "Do you want me to pick you up a little early? We could stop and get something to eat."

"Yeah, that sounds good. What time?"

"Six?"

"Alright. I have to go. I'll see you then." The timer has just gone off on my tanning light. I'm glad he's called, because no matter what the results are, we're going to have to talk.

"Bye."

I drop the phone carelessly back into it's cradle and dash into the bathroom, jerking open the shower stall door so hard that it pops off it's tracks. That happens all the time. I impatiently reset the door and then turn to the tests.

Positive.

Positive.

Positive.

Christ. This is bad. This is really bad. I sit on the bathroom floor, numb with shock. Daddy's little rich girl just dropped the bomb.

There are tears running down my face, nice fat ones. I wonder if I look beautiful when I cry. I might. This can't be happening. How could we have been so stupid?!

The shadows are deeper when I stand up than they were when I sat down, and I move stiffly to turn on bath water. I undress and take a look at myself. I look the same, which is to be expected. I know I have caught this reasonably early, which is good. That still leaves all my options open.

I lay down in the bath and let the warm water soak into me. There's the smell of the lavendar soap laying next to my head. I wonder what Christopher will say. I don't think he'll make this my decision alone. I can't imagine it. We are young, but that doesn't mean that we don't care about each other, and he won't just abandon me. No, not Christopher.

When my cheeks are dark rose and my head pounds to the beat of my pulse, I get out and dry off, wraping a cloth robe around myself. I still feel cold inside. I wish Christopher were here, because I can't stand the waiting anymore. I glance at the clock. It reads 5:15. Froty five minutes until he picks me up. I may as well get ready, at least it will be a distraction.

I hunt through my endless closet and discover that there is nothing I want to wear inside. But it doesn't really matter if I don't feel like it, just as long as I put some clothes on. Finally I settle on a brown off the should shirt and tan pants. I blow dry my hair, and try to get the redness out of my eyes. I slide a tiger's eyes necklace on a gold chain out of my jewlry box and slip it over my head. I look a little dressed down compared to my usual party attire, but still good.

I sit on the front steps until Christopher pulls up in his good old car. We've had a lot of good times in that car of his.

He knows something's wrong when I get in the car. I let him know, I guess. I can't quite smile all the way.

"What is it?"

I suddenly don't want to tell him. I really don't want to tell him. What's the rush? It can wait a day.

"Nothing. I'm great."

"Where do you want to eat?"

"Serena's. We have time."

"Do you mind if we're a little late?"

"No. It'll be an allnighter."

We drive to Serena's. It's my favorite restraunt, a little place on the edge of a bluff overlooking the ocean. The waiter doesn't quite know us, but he knows we've been here before. I think that's nice.

Chistopher has called me a hopeless romantic, and he may be right. I want every moment to be perfect, and it upsets me when life doesn't follow my planned course. I suposse this is the worst things have ever gone for me.

"Amanda says you're afraid of me," I say.

Christopher looks up from the menu. "I'm not afraid of you. I just think that you're a very...powerful individual."

"What does that mean?"

He shrugs. "You're just one of those charismatic people. That's all I meant."

"Okay."

"Karen! What do you think I meant?"

"I don't know. I guess what I really want to know is how much you care about me."

Confused, he says, "We went from me being afriad of you to how much I care?"

"Are you avoiding the question?" A waiter appears at my side. "A minute please," I say, so curtly he practally runs from our table.

Christopher is looking at me with his mouth open. "Are you okay?" he asks gently.

"I'm fine," I tell him. "Are you having the chicken?"

"I was thinking maybe salmon." He looks at me again. "Did something happen?"

"Just drop it, would you?"

Hurt, he replies, "Sorry."

We order drinks, water for him, milk for me, and then sit in silence and wait for our beverages. I stare out the window at the horizion, where the sun is causing lengthening shadows as it slides away. My irritabilty bothers me, but also keeps me from apologizing.

Christopher sits back in his chair and watches me for a few seconds. "What just happened here?"

"I asked how much you cared about me and you balked."

"I didn't balk. What the hell is wrong with you tonight?"

"Nothing, I'm fine, forget it." I wish we hadn't come. I wish I'd called and told Christopher that I'm sick for the first time in my life. Anything but this.

"Oh, I see," he says suddenly. "I know why you're mad. You're pissed because I didn't talk to you about it first."

"What?" I ask, looking over at him.

"I wanted it to be a surprize, that's why I didn't talk to you about it. I thought you'd like it. You've always wanted to go-"

"What are you talking about?" I break in.

"The trip."

"What trip?"

He pauses, before saying slowly, "No trip, who brought up a trip?"

"You planned a trip?" I ask.

"Well..." He scratches his head. "Um, yeah. You know, it's our second anniversary, and you've always talked about going to Venice....so I thought..." The look on my face must give away my surprize. "You didn't know about the trip, did you?"

I shake my head numbly, and then tears start spilling out of my eyes. Oh lord, I feel so bad. This is Christopher being Christopher, trying to sweep me off my feet.

"Can we take the baby?" I ask miserably, and his fingers stop massaging my wrist.

"Who's baby?" he says carefully.

I look up, and his figure is blurry through all the tears. "Ours. I'm sorry. I'm pregnant."

The expression falls off his face like a mask he's dropped, leaving behind a bloodless marble maniquin. In a stiff, hoarse voice, he asks, "Have you seen a doctor?"

"No, I took a test at home."

"They can be wrong."

"I took three. They all came out positive." He doesn't say anything after that, and I wish I'd told him at home. "Toph?"

The waiter reappears. "Are you ready?"

"She'll have the filet minion, I'll have the grilled salmon. No salad with hers, blue cheese dressing on the the side with mine. That's all."

He's never ordered for me before, but at the moment I'm grateful for his male cheavounism. I don't care what I eat, steak is fine. He knows I never touch salad, so that's fine as well. I just wish his expression weren't as distant as my appitite.

"When did you find out?" he asks me finally.

"Today. About three hours ago. But I've been suspecting it for a while."

"How long is a while?"

"A month, a little longer."

His gray eyes flash up at mine. "A month? You waited a month to tell me this, Karen? A whole month without seeing a doctor or checking to be sure? What the hell's wrong with you?"

I let him yell, knowing he's got to get angry some time. And this is as good a reason as any, I've been an idiot and I know it.

"How far along does that put you?" he asks, pulling himself back under control.

"Four and a half months." I compared dairy entries noting "special occasions," with the dates of my menstrual cycle marked on the calendar to came up with that.

"Four and a half months?" he cries. "You realize that's it much harder to-"

He stops, but I know what he wanted to say. There's a much higher risk of complication with abortions preformed during the second trimester than the first. I can't believe that the first thing he thinks of is to if we'll still be able to get rid of it.

"Damn." My voice is breathy and my cheeks are still wet as I jump up, knocking my chair over, and flee to the ladies room.

"Kare, don't," Christopher says, following three feet behind me. I'm not entirely surprised when he pursues me into the handicapped stall and locks the door. "I don't want to do it like this," he tells me. "Don't cry, come here."

I can't tell if he's crying or not, but his shoulders are shaking slightly as he holds me. "I love you. This is screwed up but I do love you."

"I love you, too, sweetheart. I don't want us to yell at each other again, alright? There's no sense in regretting this, there isn't. Am I moving too fast? I am, I can't stop thinking. What are we going to do? What do you want to do? Whatever you want is fine, anything, Karen. We can keep her, we can give her up, we can abort if you're okay with that-"

"Her?"

"Did I say that? I don't know why I said that, I just can't see us having boys. I mean, the options are still the same if it's a boy, but I'm thinking girl."

I'm leaning my back against the wall. "You're thinking abortion."

"No, it was just when you said the date, you know, all the statistics came crashing down in my head. Don't think of it like that, I don't know what I want to do."

We stand in the bathroom with our arms around each other for at least a solid five minutes. He smells like wine and sweet shampoo and the ocean wind at night, and my terrible mood is lifting slowly.

"You were going to take me to Venice?" I whisper.

"Yeah." A warm chuckle rises up in his throat. "We can still go, we still should. I told Amanda what I wanted to do and she went to a travel agent and took care of everything, all the arrangements. It's going to be wonderful, if you still want to go."

"I want to. I just don't know if I should."

"You're okay to fly, until six or seven months, I think."

"That's not what I meant. I have to tell my parents about this. They're going to kill me."

"Think what my father will say when I tell him I knocked up a democrat's daughter."

It's not funny but I laugh anyway. The heavy scent of floral air-fresheners fails to mask the underlying reak of urin. Christopher rests his head atop mine and rocks slowly on the balls of his feet, and I realize this is one of those special moments. Not special like I'm always hoping they'll be, but special in the way that I'll never be able to forget it. The moment I told Christopher we were having a baby. The moment I concievably ruined both our lives. The moment my boyfriend and I were standing in the handicapped stall of a public resteraunt when a group of twelve year old girls walked in...

Christopher is laughing silently. He lifts me off the floor and goes to stand in front of the toilet so that anyone looking under the stall door will think there is only one of us in here. My face is flushing I'm laughing so hard, and in the midst of waiting for the girls to use the toilets, brush their hair, gossip, and leave, we start kissing. Little kisses, quick kisses. I sit on the back of the toilet and he turns around as if straddling it. His lips close over mine for a long, still moment, as if we're both waiting for some tragedy to rip us apart, and when nothing does, the silence is broken by the sound of the girls slamming the door on their way out.

Suddenly we're moving, and the buttons on my blouse are slipping open. There's a cruelty between us, like we're trying to exeorcize each other. I don't know if this sort of sex comes out of love or fear of loss, but it doesn't matter too much once we're on the cold tiled floor.

The first time we slept together was one of my most special days, naturally. We planned it ahead of time, went all out from food to mood, planned it like a New Year's Eve party. Amanda was pleased to recieve a professionally printed card announcing the loss of our mutual virginities. (She and Christopher's cousin were the only ones who got one.) That was a year and a half ago.

My father was in Washington D.C. while Congress was in session, and my mother decided to take a quick safari and study lions in their natural habitat. All my grandparents are dead, and as far as I know I have no living relatives, so Lenore decided it would have to be alright for me to stay home alone. The house staff would be here in the day, and the cook promised to stay until after dinner every night to make sure I'd finished my homework. I was sixteen, and more than capable of slipping Christopher into the house.

It was perfect; what are the odds of that happening? I filled my suite with candles and strawberry incense, dressed in a V-neck chemise and pajama pants. He swung by the store for condoms (In the beginning we were too nervous to be swept away by passion and had time to think of practical things like birth control), was tripped in the parking lot and arrived at my house covered from head to toe with thick black mud. All I could think to do was recite one of the seventy-five stupid limricks I'd memorized to use as ice breakers. Of course, since he was filthy he had to take a shower, that thing got going a lot more smoothly than I had expected.

There's something in the memory of it that always makes me smile. We were both so nervous, and the fumbling has turned to nostalgia with the time. Sure, it was awkward. For all our reading and TV watching, neither one of us knew what the hell we were doing. Science books give you the order of operations, movies address the emotional side, but where they meet the color hits the canvas in unexpected ways. And the one thing they don't teach in school is how to decipher the whole picture.

Afterward, we sat up most of the night eating honey roasted nuts and watching infomercials, and finally fell asleep close to dawn curled together in the hamock on my deck. Around 10 A.M. Amanda snuck in through my back door and cooked up a huge breakfast. My life was perfect. My heartless parents were nowhere to be seen, my boyfriend loved me, and my best friend was the most thoughtful person in the world.

Yeah, I think to myself as we roll around on the bathroom floor, we've come a long way from romantic weekends home alone.

"This is nuts," Christopher whispers.

"What if the girls come back? What if somebody has to pee?"

We both sit up, knowing its better to stop now than memo it and try again later. Not that it matters any more, the damage is pretty well done. Funny, I don't feel as much like a damaged good as I always thought I would. Despite the social repercussions of this mess, my body feels very happy to be building a baby.

Christopher hooks my bra back together using only one hand, a trick he's always been good at. "Our food is probably there by now," he says, as I help him up. "Was it alright that I ordered the steak for you?"

The tension is easing off. We return to our table, where within seconds two steaming plates arrive, and I dig into the exquisitly prepared chunk of beef. Eating, we talk about the trip to Venice, we stare at each other and wink between sympathetic smiles and hopefull ones, and then we pay the bill and head to the party.

"I'm not really in a party mood," he says in the car. "I'd rather just go back to your place to talk about this for a while."

Even though we didn't discuss it during our meal, we both know what "this" is.

"I promised Amanda we'd be there."

"Have you told her yet?"

"No. I guess we can do it at the party, if you want."

"I don't know."

"Neither do I."

Another sympathetic smile. I was right, he isn't going to just desert me.

The party is at Nell's house, all of Nell's house. There are people in every room, the game-watchers in the living room, the romantics in the bedrooms, the drunks in the yard, the pot-smokers in the basement, and the vomiters in the bathroom. Christopher and I find Amanda on the screened porch with her cousin, Madeline.

"You're late," she tells me tartly, as I slump onto a couch.

"Sorry. We stopped to eat."

Christopher hands her a doggie bag. "Brought you this."

"What is it?"

"Some grilled salmon and a slice of chocolate cheesecake. Help yourself."

"Thanks."

"Beer?" Madeline offers. Christopher takes one, I don't. He won't have more than one because he knows he has to drive me home in a few hours, and pending decision about my pregnancy, I'm not taking any chances. Despite the fact that our reputations for responsibility aren't exactly shinning white, we know automatically to watch the booze.

"So what's happening?" I ask lazily.

"I'm trying to talk her into saying hello to Jeremy," Madeline answers, and Amanda's eyes flare up. Unlike the rest of us, she's still wearing her jeans and black tee-shirt.

"What you said was that I should pretend to trip and then throw myself into his lap, which it stupid and degrading, and he isn't here anyway."

"Yeah he is," Christopher corrects. "I saw him in the kitchen scooping ice cream cones."

Madeline leaves to go downstairs and smoke. I lay on my back, stretched out on top of Christopher, his hand resting over my stomach. The baby's heart is already beating, and I wonder, If we had a stethascope, could we hear it?

"I'm feeling bitter," Amanda announces. She appears to have stolen a couple dozen packs of sugar from resteraunts and is eating them one by one. It's something she usually does at parties, to help pass the time.

"Over what?" Christopher asks.

"I don't know. This is a stupid party."

"You think they're all stupid parties."

"They are. The whole conecpt of the party is stupid, that we're all going to sit around in a stranger's house and get ourselves drunk, hyper and irrational. You know like eighty percent of teen murders occur at parties?"

Christopher laughs. "You're making that up, Mandy."

"Am not. I mean, that's not the exact number, but it's a good estimate. These parties are just blood baths waiting to happen."

"Especially in this part of the country," Jeremy says from the doorway. I roll my head back against Christopher's shoulder to watch him walk onto the porch. His hair is black and sporadically highlighted with gold, his face is abrupt and unreadable, and he appears to be wearing the same outfit as Amanda.

She immediately goes silent.

"I brought your pen back," he says, holding it out to her.

She frowns, taking it from him like a dingo snatching a baby. "It's only a Bic," she points out.

"Whatever, I thought you might need it."

Grudgingly, "Thanks."

He nods. "Does anyone mind if I sit down, or is this a private party?"

"Help yourself," Christopher says, and Jeremy settles himself in a wicker chair, making a rough square between himself, Amanda, and the couch Christopher and I have taken over.

Tired, worried, and oddly content, I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Jeremy is good at conversation, at knowing when to jump in and how to stimulate people, and while he babbles Amanda is silent and Christopher rubs my stomach. Although I've constructed a sort of mental sensory deprovation tank around myself, I feel that we're communicating. Telepathy is too far out and sci-fi to describe it, the sensation is simpler and purer, and without structure. Despite taking part in the discussion with Jeremy, Christopher's thoughts are about me; I sense it as if it were tangible. I feel his thoughts in a cocoon surrounding me.

I doze for a little while, always coming back when someone laughs or a car starts outside, or the team makes a points and everyone screams. By the time I regain full consciousness it's almost midnight, and the four of us are still sitting on the porch talking.

"Hey, Amanda," Christopher says. She's been silent for as long as I can remember.

"What?"

"Karen and I are pregnant."

I open my eyes, blinking sleepily. Amanda has dropped her package of sugar and granuals are sprinkled all over the black carpet.

"Are you for real?" she asks.

"Yes," he tells her. Her eyes dart to me and I nod.

"Jesus christ. When did you find this out?"

"Today. Hell of a way to start the summer, isn't it?"

Jeremy says, "I thought your breasts looked bigger."

"Mine?" I ask, sitting up a little to see him.

"Yeah, I thought you'd gotten implants."

"Do you make a habit of examining other people's girlfriend's breasts?" Christopher asks. He sounds vaguely amused.

"No, I just happen to take a picture of her one day and noticed they looked bigger than I thought they were. Creepy picture, by the way. You look suicidal in it."

"She always looks that way in photos," Amanda says, as if he should have known that already. "You're serious about this, aren't you, Kare?"

"Completely serious, I am pregnant with Christopher's baby."

"What are you going to do?"

"Beats the hell out of me." I run a hand through my hair and kick my remaining shoe off.

"What did Lenore say?"

"Drawn and quartered, tomorrow at noon. You can come if you want, Lotsa Pasta's catering."

"Don't be stupid."

"I haven't told her yet. But I can guess what she'll say."

"What?" Jeremy asked.

I stare blankly at the ceiling. "Get rid of it. Alec will make the appointment and that will be that. The only real decision is which credit card to put it on."

"Not to stick my nose where it doesn't belong, but has this happened before?"

"No, but I know that's what they'll say. After they finish screaming and throwing things."

"Do you want to get rid of it?"

I wonder who the hell he thinks he is, asking me questions like that. His face is serious, unwavering, and in a preverse way I can understand what Amanda sees in him. The boy's intense, no question, intense and unafraid and completely upfront. Look at what he said about my breasts.

"Karen and I aren't sure what we want to do," Christopher says when I don't answer.

"It's going to be a mutual decision then?"

"What else would it be?"

"I saw a movie once about a guy who's girlfriend was going to abort their baby, and he kidnapped her and held her hostage until it was too late."

"Christopher isn't like that," Amanda says shortly. She's quick to bash anything Jeremy says, which makes about as much sense as what Christopher and I almost did in the bathroom at Serena's.

"No," Christopher agrees in a muffled voice. "I'm not."

"I didn't think so." Jeremy picks up a piece of newspaper off the table and plucks Amanda's pen from her shirt pocket. She looks ready to hit him. "I don't want to encourage you one way or another," he says, beginning to write, "but my sister, Suzette, is a doctor at a clinic on third street, and if you're going to pick the abortion this would be a good place to do it. Trained doctors, steril instruments, good security. I've been there a couple times, so I know. Besides, Suz would be real sweet to you."

I take the torn piece of newprint and fold it carefully. "I'll keep it in mind," I promise, tucking it into my purse. Christopher is very quiet, barely breathing. "You tired?" I ask as I turn my head to look at him. His eyes are closed, I think he's near sleep. "Come on, why don't we leave before you konk out?"

"Alright."

"I think I'm on my way out, too," Jeremy says. "Hey, Amanda, feel like seeing a movie? I have tickets to a showing of the origional Nosferatu."

Hiding a smile, I retrieve my purse. "Go," Christopher tells her. "It's a great movie, you'd be crazy to miss it. It has exactly your style."

"Please?" Jeremy asks.

She gives in through gritted teeth, and the four of us head outside. "Why didn't you say I was going home with you?" she hisses as we walk down the street to our car.

"Because it would have been a stupid opportitunity to pass up. Did you see how suave he was with the whole thing? I'm telling you, he planned this ahead of time."

"I hate you."

"Just don't bite his head off every time he says something. You'll always regret it if you blow this."

"Why?"

"Because you'll always wonder what might have happened?"

She jerks open Christopher's car door and beckons me inside like a disgruntled servent. "I'll tell you what's going to happen, Karen. We'll get in the car, he'll realize he forgot the tickets at home, and then he'll pass it off and say we can drive down to the beach and stare at the moon. Next thing you know I'm stranded on a penensula at high tide with the front of my shirt ripped open and the zipper on my pants broken, muttering oaths against all men and instead of U.C.L.A. I'll end up in a convent wearing a pair of Hanes-Her-Iron-Protection. Well, thanks but no thanks, I think you've done enough screwing for the both of us."

She slams that door shut, almost catching my leg, and I gape open mouthed at the window. The handle clicks and the door flies open again. "Never mind about that last part, that was mean. I'm just pissed off. Call me tomorrow."

She's just scared, that's what it is. Guys scare Amanda more than neculear winter. Christopher climbs in and we take off, and I'm surprised to find that Amanda's words didn't hurt. I knew the moment they came out that she didn't mean them.

"I'm going to tell my parents when I get home," I tell him.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"I want to get it over with."

"Call when you're finished, no matter how late it is."

"I will. Thanks."

"For what?"

I shrug. "Not running away, not hitting me, not asking if it's yours. I don't know, you've just been really cool about this."

"You think so? I think I've been terrible. Doesn't the ultimate I'm-having-you-baby scene include me getting down on one knee?"

I pat his thigh. "The baby isn't born yet, Toph."

The house is quiet. Alec calls out a hello to me from his study. I walk into the red papered room. He is standing by his desk, rummaging through a pale blue file, and humming.

"I need to talk to you and Lenore."

He looks up at my tone of voice. He has pale skin, with none of my golden tone, and black hair. His eyes are black, too. "Are you in some sort of trouble?"

Why is that always his first question? When I told him I had a surprise in fifth grade, he asked if I was in some sort of trouble. I was just excited that I had won Young Authors. I swear, if I didn't have a life outside my house, I would have no self esteam.

This time I lean against the wall and drop my purse on the floor. "Yeah, Alec, I'm in some trouble."

Alec looks from me to the doorway and then calls, "Lenore! Come down here! Karen's gotten into some sort of trouble!"

Lenore comes downstairs in a cloud of artifical perfume. I swear, she smells like a fresh issue of Cosmopolitan. She has just slightly darker skin than Alec, and more slanted eyes. I guess people think she's beautiful. I don't. I wonder why Christopher and I both have such problems with our parents.

"What kind of trouble?" Lenore asks. She looks annoyed.

"What kind of trouble?" Alec repeats.

I really don't know how to break it to them gently. I blurted it out to Christopher, and he didn't know what to say. I doubt they'll be able to come up anything more than, "Get out!" The sad part is, I really don't want my parents to hate me. All my life I've been trying to please them, and I've never been able to. Now I've really screwed up.

And now it hits me. I can be the mother Lenore never was. I can give this baby all the love and understanding my parents never gave me. I can do something right. Just because it has a rotton beginning doesn't mean that it has to end badly.

"I'm pregnant," I say flatly.

Alec drops his folder. Lenore screams.

"You aren't!"

"I am."

"You bitch!" my mother yells at me.

"What were you thinking?" Alec is shouting at me.

I stand back and close my eyes. They'll scream for a while, I know. They have to get it out of their systems, although they won't be able to do it as quickly and efficiently as Christopher did. I wish I could just go upstairs and lay down.

What was that?

"Betray our race, our nation! A half bread freak of a baby!"

"A what?" I ask. Half bread? Is she talking polotics?

"A monster baby! A sick, disgusting creature!"

"It's just a baby."

Alec is trying to stop her. "She doesn't understand, Lenore!" "Shut up, Alec!"

"If you would be quiet, we would be able to explain this to her, dammit!"

I rub my head and sink into a leather arm chair. "What is wrong with Lenore?" I ask Alec. "What is she yelling about a monster baby?"

Alec looks at me like he can't figure out why I'm asking. Then he snaps out of it. "You've ruined us, Karen, all three of us, do you realize that?"

"Would you get a grip?" I yell. "It's a baby, it's a big deal but it's not the freaking Armaggedon!"

Lenore is screaming like someone has cut off her arm. I can't help holding my hands over my ears.

"Didn't you care? You and your bloody gigilo have made a mutant baby!"

I wonder if she's trying to tell me she's upset that we aren't married. Is this some repressed religious thing?

"The BBBLLOODGGGNNNAA is going to kill us for this, you stupid little bitch!"

With the exception of that word I couldn't understand, the words sting.

"Come on, Karen," Alec is saying, "remember when you were little and we went for that long trip? We flew to England in the private plane, and then we took a car to the Connors. You hated the long ride, you wouldn't stop fidgiting, and your mother-"

"I'm not her mother!" Lenore screams as she disowes me.

"-was carsick the whole time. And the Connors had that little girl you played so much with, Mary Ann."

I can vaguely recall this trip. Being cold, trampling through wet grass in the middle of the night, unable to understand what we're doing playing in the yard so long after bedtime. And then the sky filled with pure light and...

"Aunt Vchip was there, and Uncle Twatlo."

"Who? They were at the farm?"

"No, on the ship, after we left the farm. They told you about the star monsters and you made fun of Twatlo's face."

I don't remember taking a cruise, and I've never evan heard of my aunt and uncle. We went to a farm in England, that much I remember, but after that weird fireworks display in the fields...

Suddenly I'm thinking of corn circles.

"Where did the ship take us?" I demand.

"Back to Jeemheajsdfh;hdf."

Another word I can't understand. "What the hell are you trying to tell me, Alec? That I'm some kind of alien having a crossbred monster baby?"

He glances silently at Lenore, who is leaning against the wall sobbing.

"Oh get real. If you're going to be upset because I'm pregnant, that I can understand. You have every right to be furious with me. I was stupid and irrerisponsible and the whole nine yards. But don't go giving me a load of crap like this."

I don't know what's going on here anymore. I really didn't walk into the house anticipating this kind of scene. The crying, of course, the screaming, sure, but not the revelation that I'm an alien. Which I'm not.

"I'm out of here," I say, and have to stop myself from kicking Lenore as I go into the living room.

"Don't you dare leave this house!" Alec shouts as he follows me. "Karen! Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah, and you sound like Mulder. I'm sure the next thing you want to discuss is my new job at the Pentagon and when I can meet the Smoking Man. Give me a break."

The shock factor doesn't really set in until I enter Christopher's neighborhood. By the time I pull into his driveway my hands are shaking and the ease of parental dismissal has worn off. There's something standoffish about speaking to Alec and Lenore, some inner power than keeps me cool and sassy. Now it's gone, and I'm sitting in my car, unable to climb out because I can't remember how to move or where I'm going.

The sky is full of stars that look like the droppings of fire birds. There's no wind, only the unmoving glow of porch lights, and the entire neighborhood carries a feeling of domestic contentment. An old man is standing on his front porch a few houses down watering his lawn with a garden hose. A dog barks, but the sound is muffled through the car walls.

The front door of Christopher's house opens and he walks out. "Karen?" I hear him call, but I still can't seem to move. Its like I'm being suffocated by my seatbelt.

When I was there, it actually made a little sense. Being an alien would explin my odd eating habits, my exotic looks, my air of other-worldlyness. At the time I was so stunned my reality sensors automatically shut off.

Christopher climbs in beside me. "What are you doing?" he asks, and I can move again when the breath of fresh air hits me.

"They said I was an alien."

"What?" He leans his back against the door.

"When I told them I was pregnant, they said I was an alien and that I would have a horrible, deformed alien baby."

"Are you joking?"

"No. They're crazy or something, I swear. Lenore was on the floor sobbing and Alec..."

I tell him the scene exactly as it happened, and he sits with his mouth hanging open and listens. "It had to be some kind of paniced reaction," he says finally. "Maybe they just couldn't accept it, so they made something up."

"To make the sitaution even worse? If anything, most parents of pregnant teenage girls think they must have been raped. Mine want to compound my sins."

He runs a hand through his dark wine hair. Except for the strands hanging stray, the cap looks almost black in this light. "They must have been in shock, that's all I can think of. You're a human or I'm a girl."

"You aren't a girl," I assure him.

"I sure as hell hope not. If I am, you've got some explaining to do."

We looked at each other and start laughing. "It was creepy," I say as he unbuckles my seatbelt and pulls me close. "I know they're wrong, but it was weird hearing them just say it. It was like I was watching my parents go insane."

"I bet it must have been. Look, you shouldn't be living there while they're acting like this. Come stay with me. You and the baby."

I sigh, letting my head fall into the crook of his neck. "We're sort of a packaged deal."

Christopher sighs, too. "My deal. Is it weird for me to be feeling so pleasantly possesive?"

"Probably not. You've got a car and a little woman and a baby, what more does a guy want?"

"Come on in." He opens the door and takes my hand. "I was about to hit the sack when I heard you pull up."

"No, I'm going back to the house."

"What? Why?"

"I don't have any clothes, my toothpaste, my hairbrush. It's awakard. What will your parents say? They aren't exactly fond of me. Besides, Alec and Lenore are probably asleep by now."

He frowns and glances around as if expecting them to jump out of the bushes. "Promise you'll call if anything happens. Even if they just look at you funny, call and I'll come over."

"I promise."

He gives me a long kiss good night and then hesitates before kissing my stomach as well. As I watch him walk up the steps in front of his house, I get the feeling we aren't going to be able to give up this baby no matter what my parents want. Funny how Christopher already values his daughter more than my father does his.

I pull into the driveway and notice that Alec's office is still full of light. They must be waiting up for me, christ. After killing the engine and sliding my car into driveway, I slink though the yard and around to the back of the house. The kitchen door opens to my key and I slither inside like the shadow of a ghost. Alec's office is on the other side of the staircase, and as I'm inching up it on the balls of my feet, I hear him talking.

"It has to be done soon, within the next week," he says. His voice is slower and more controlled than it was earlier, steady and steely. I can smell his cigar, and the smoke from it curls and dances in the light pouring from the office.

"How? We can't have the authorities asking questions or else we'll have to exacuate and leave the whole plan."

"What about the boyfriend? Can we set it up to look like he killed her when she told him?"

My knees drop out from under me and I collapse on the steps.

"Did you hear that?" Lenore asks.

"Hear what? I've never liked that little son of a bitch, I think it's only fitting that since he's screwed our lives, we screw his. How would an angry adolescent kill his girlfriend if he was furious at her? Maybe they went down to the beach in the middle of the night and he drowned her. Or stabbing, stabbing with a letter opener would be good. Something sloppy, with lots of fingerprints and blood."

My parents are going to kill me. My mother and father are going to frame Christopher for my murder. They want me dead.

They are completely insane.

All air lodges in my throat and I temproatily stop breathing. I crawl backward up the stairs until I reach the landing, then stumble to my feet and into my suite. The door closes with a quiet click, and I roll the deadbolt. With some measure of safetly restored my lungs kick into overdrive as if trying to make up for lost time and I fall back onto my canopy bed hyperventilating.

Between my hip bones and under my flesh is a child I made. It's probably a her, and I already know that even if she does turn out to be a deformed mutant baby, I'll think she's perfect. She has a sweet heart, she has my hopeless romanticism and Christopher's depth and the thought of her dying makes my vision blacken. I don't understand how my parents can speak of it so casually. More than ever, I don't understand how it is that they don't love me. Forget failings and merits, I don't care if this baby can't add two plus two by the time she's fifty, I still love her. If she were a serial killer or a child molester, I think I'd still love her.

I start thinking of the scene in Alec's office, of the smoke and his cigars. I start thinking about the baby and Christopher and what self preservation means. I start thinking about how not to get caught.

The sheets are cool against my hot skin. I don't turn on any lights, but there is enough left in the sky for my purposes. I undress and put on a silk slip. I like the way it hangs, cool and out of the way.

As the plan forms in my mind, I stare at the white ceiling and at the moonlight pouring in through the window. I wonder if Christopher sleeps and if he dreams of me. I contemplate Amanda and Jeremy at the movies and can't help but smile. I will still have them when this is over.

If I'm still here when this is over.

I get up and push a heavy dresser in front of the door, then cut the bells off a skirt's tassles and tape them to each window. I put my own letter opener under the pillow, along with a pin cushion and scissors. It's hard to relax, but I won't let fear ruin my sleep. I can't be tired tomorrow.

I sleep in late and Alec and Lenore are both gone before I get up. For a moment I lay between the sheets and try to feel regret for what I'm about to do, to experience guilt. If I don't feel guilty, what does that make me?

The sensation doesn't come, and finally I get up to take a shower. Then I pack a duffle bag with some clothes, not too much, because if my room doesn't burn down, I won't want people to notice that things are missing. I put a pair of jeans, a sweatsuit, and two T-shirts in the duffel bag, along with my diary, and some old love letters from Christopher. I throw in the photo albulm and my camera as well.

Then I head for the nearest gas station and fill up, and drive the hundred miles to my parents summer house up north. At the speed I go, it only takes an hour and ten minutes.

I drop off my things at the cabin, making it appear as if I always keep them there. Then I hit the mall and buy three ugly dresses. I put it all on Alec's credit card.

My next stop is a drugstore, where I buy a mortar, pestal, and three boxes of the strongest homeopathic sleeping pills I can find. I doubt that I will actually use these thing, but they might come in handy. I quickly return to the mall, chat with a sales lady aobut some shoes, and try to make a distince impression. It will help if the police want proof of where I was all day.

The things I buy within the mall are paid for with the credit card, but my other purchases are made with cash. I don't want them to be tracable.

The raunchiest store in town is glad to sell me four pairs of fur laced handcuffs, two pair of the hands, two pair for the feet. The guy at the counter gives me a look but doesn't say anything. His shop is swamped, and I know I will be just another customer who he'll forget.

I go back to the mall and buy some earings. They cost three hundred dollars, and I think they might be the ugliest I've ever seen, but Lenore would like them. I also nab a bottle of her favorite perfume.

By the time I have them gift wrapped, along with a tie for Alec, it is evening. I drive home, and leave the presents on the hall table, with a note saying how sorry I am, and run upstairs to call Amanda.

"Hey, what are you up to?" I ask.

"I'm trying to decide what to wear to that execution of yours. I talked to your mom and she said I could ride one of the horses."

"Things went that badly last night?"

"Where do I begin?"

"Wait, before you do, can I ask a favor?"

Sigh. "Alright," she says grudgingly. "What is it?"

"Last night I told my parents that I'm pregnant and they had a fit. Things are kind of tense in here and I hoping you wouldn't mind if I came over tonight."

"Oh, sure. I thought it was going to be something much worse. Yeah, come over. Madeline loaned me a couple of really stupid home videos from when we were little."

"Great. I'll be over there in about a half an hour, okay?"

"That's fine."

"Thanks, you're the best."

"Somebody's got to be."

I call Christopher next.

"I've been calling all day, where have you been?" he cries. "I thought maybe your parents ate you or something."

"Sorry, I meant to call but I got caught up."

"Doing what?"

"Shopping."

He pauses. "You went shopping?"

"Yeah, I got them some presents. I know it's phoney, but maybe it will take the edge off them. Anyway, I'm going to Amanda's tonight so they'll have some time to cool down."

We talk for a few more minutes before hanging up. He sounds so relieved to hear my voice that I start getting sappy, and by the time I'm back in my car I'm on cloud nine. My mood darkens considerably as I drive and think about the night ahead of me.

I pull up in Amanda's drvieway and hope to God that this works. If it doesn't, I'm going to be in much deeper shit that I was when I started.

She greets me at the door. I have my duffel bag repacked with some clothes and basic over night supplies.

"Hey, come on in." We head for her bedroom, and begin lounging. With a little prompting she starts telling me what happened the night before, and except for wondering how a simple, casual date like that got turned into such a complicated mess involving so many people, I don't say much. My mind is pretty well blank, and it's a relief that she will fill up the space.

We turn on the movies, and I watch them without seeing about them. I'm at my wit's end here, strung at tight as a violin. Amanda thinks I'm just upset and scared and does everything a good best friend could. I wish I weren't using her.

I have a small bottle of the powdered homeopathic sleeping pills which I ground up before coming over. Then I smashed the gravel with a hammer and burried it on the beach. I carefully stir a large amount of this into her drink. It will be alright, she can't overdoes on the stuff. What a great invention.

She doesn't drink it and then just fall to the floor, but by eleven, she's let her eyes shut and at midnight I know she's asleep.

"Thanks, Amanda," I whisper, and I crawl out the window, making sure to leave it propped open a crack with a marble. If it closes, my plan is ruined.

I jump in my car and take off into the night. It occures to me again how high me chance of getting caught is, but I think I can do this. Truly, I have more confidence in myself than ever before. Maybe it's just because I'm finally standing up to them.

The house key still lets me in, meaning they haven't changed the locks on me. I doan two pairs of kitchen mits, one layered over another, and get my handcuffs.

Alec and Lenore are asleep. I've never seen them asleep before, and it's a weird sight. I don't know why I think that, except that they already look dead. I've turned off the air conditioner, and it is slightly warm. They don't stir and, taking my sweet time, I roll each one onto their backs. I want them both in position before I do anything. There is probably no going back after this step.

In ten seconds, I have their wrists cuffed. Next, their ankles. I yank a stip of duck tape, and Lenore stirs, so I tape her mouth shut first. Then Alec's. God, this is going so well!

Here comes another tricky part. I have to get them up onto the roof, and that won't be terribly hard, but what to do with the other one? I have an idea, and roll a sheet around Lenore, then tape it shut. She wakes up and begins screaming, which is shockingly loud in the bedroom. I roll her onto the floor with a hard thud and shove her under the bed. I stuff the comforters in around her. Maybe she'll suffocate before I get back.

Alec weights a ton. I wrap him in a sheet as well, because it makes him easier to haul. I stop to check on the fire I have going in the living room fireplace on my way upstairs. Alec has woken up, and he's yelling at me, his round black eyes getting even rounder and buldging. I put a pillowcase over his head so that he can't see me.

The chimney forms one wall for my balcony, and I have a chair waiting. The trouble is how to get Alec onto the roof to where I can stick his head in the chimney. The problem almost solves itself. I just stand Alec up on the chair, and press his chest against the roof ridge, which lands at about his brest. Jump, I say, jabbing a pencil from my desk into his back. He thinks it's a gun, and I've made my voice sound deeper. He begins to panic and scramble onto the roof, with me helping to push from behind. I have to keep from giggling hysterically.

The smoke from the chimney seems to alarm him, but it's going to have to do more than that in a minute. I have the square opening padded with pillows, and my oven mits create a firm grip that won't allow bruising.

I have towels, thick terry cloth ones, ready for when I pull off the pillow case. Alec begins to struggle and choke. His mouth is still tapped, and I'm sitting on his back. He won't get away.

I have to admit that my need for revenge has gone a little far. As I sit on my father and force him to breathe smoke, I try to keep thinking about how much easier my life will be when he's dead. I'll sell the house, most of the houses, and my car, and just get a little place for myself. I can hire a full time nanny to be there while I'm at school. I won't ever need to get a job if I handle my finances right and don't buy anything too outragous.

I'm so caught up in my fantasy that I don't notice when Alec gets limp. Besides, I'm not going to fall for a trick. I pinch his nose shut for three minute, timed by my watch, before I let him up.

He's as limp as a sack of potatoes. Seeing that his face is black with soot, I momentairily panic and drop my hold on him. He rolles off the roof and onto the balcony. That was close. If he had gone off the side of the house.... Anyway, he's dead. I untape him and remove the handcuffs, carefully checking for bruises. There's one on his knee, but those are pretty common. Maybe he walked into his desk.

I grip him with pillows as I haul him downstairs, because I have the strange idea that dead flesh is more likely to bruise. I put him on the bed and arrange him so that he's in the same position he was when I came in. "Sweet dreams, Daddy," I whisper, before I pull Lenore out from under the bed.

Shit! She kicks me hard and I fall down on my knees. She's gotten a good look at my face, I'm sure of it. I put the pillow case over her head anyway, and force her up on her feet. She got the sheet off when she was under the bed.

I make her walk up the stairs, since she's awake. We're near the top of the stairs when she pulls her stunt, throwing herself onto me. I'm not ready and fly backwards, rolling down a dozen steps before I stop. Lenore has managed to sit down, and she's still in place.

I take a deep breath and rub the lump forming on the back of my head. Looking up, I see that Lenore is standing again. How did she do that? She's going up the stairs as fast as she can, but it's not easy with her feet jerking against the cuffs at every step.

"If you bruise yourself," I warn, bolting up after her. I take her firmly by the shoulders, and, standing slightly to the said, force her into my room.

"I have a gun, Lenore, and I'm not afraid to use it. You saw me kill Alec, you know that I'm serious."

She knows. I get her up on the roof, but she doesn't help much. Thank God she's so much lighter than Alec is. Was. Got to start thinking like they're dead, Karen. You're an orphan.

I've always been an orphan, I just didn't admit it. They weren't parents to me, so they don't count. I don't care if I came from their flesh. It's my flesh now.

It's almost pleasant to shove her head in the chimney, and I don't flinch the way I did with Alec. He was always nicer to me. She thrashes, and I have no doubt that she's covered with burises, but I carefully cover her in pillows anyway. Hopefully, she'll be all burned up, and the coroner won't be able to tell that they were bruises.

Draging her back downstairs is a piece of cake compared to getting her up. I get a wet wash cloth and clean their faces, pull the tape off. I make a trip back up to my room to get my things from the roof, carefully retracing the steps in my mind so that I won't leave anything around. I dump the pillows, the cuffs, pillow cases, tape, mits, and everything else that I used or oved in my car, along with one of the batteries from the smoke detector in their bedroom. Then I put out the fire in the fireplace and make it look like it hasn't been used in a while.

They look like they're sleeping. I stand at the foot of the bed and look at them for long minutes. I feel sorry for them, because I don't think they were very happy in life. Then I realise that it's getting late, and I don't want to worry about complications involving time of death. I kiss Alec on the cheek and light up one of his cigars, setting in not in the ashtray, but on the book on Alec's bedside table. I blow on it until it lights up, and then jump back in surprise. I pull the window curtains closer so that in a few seconds, they'll lit up as well.

I'm tempted to stay and watch. There's something beautiful about watching the fire run up the curtains. It is bizarrly facinating, but not worth forty years in prison, so I glance back at them over my shoulder one last time, my darling parents asleep in their bed, and lock the door on my way out.

I dump the stuff off at the cabin, and then go back to Amanda's. I hope she doesn't notice that I'm not wearing the same clothes I was when we went to bed. How could I have been so dumb? Oh well. I put on something similar, and fall into bed next to her.

I wake up when Amanda shakes me. "Karen, get up! There was a fire at your house!"

I roll over and look at the T.V. Nothing registers. "What?"

"Your dad's cigar lit the house on fire. Watch." It was the early news, and yes, there was my house. The photography must have been from last night, it's dark outside on the T.V.

Then I remember what happened. Oh, God, I did it! I go limp with shock and my head cracks against the wall.

"The wareabouts of Karen Bride, Mr. and Mrs. Bride's daughter, is unknown." The picture changes, and we see the cook crying on the lawn while fire engines try to put out the blaze. God, that whole half of the house is gone.

"Mr. and Mrs. Bride perished in their sleep, unawakened by a broken smoke detector."

Amanda looks at me. "Oh, Karen. I'm so sorry." She's as stunned as I am, but has the presence of mind to lean over and put her arms around me. "Are you okay?"

My mouth opens and closes. "I don't know. I just...Oh jesus." The phone rings.

"What?" Amanda asks. She pauses. "It's Christopher, do you want to talk to him?"

I reach out for the phone, still watching the images of the house burning. "Hello?"

"Kare, are you watching this?"

"I'm watching."

"Are you alright? The police said they don't know where you are. What happened?"

"I spent the night at Amanda's. I wasn't there. Can you tell them that for me?"

"They'll want to talk to you."

"My parents are dead?"

His voice is very gentle. "Yeah, I'm so sorry, Karen. If the police want to talk, should I come get you?"

"Okay." I hand the phone to Amanda, and she starts telling him that I'm in shock.

There are interviews with my neightbors, who were kind enough to round up Lenore's dogs after their pen caught on fire and they escaped, and then they speak with the cook again.

Things get blurry. Time begins passing like hullucinations in the fog.

Amanda's parents are crying, I don't know why. Her mom keeps asking me if I won't eat something until Amanda tells her to leave me the hell alone. Christopher arrives; I can't see him but I smell his shampoo. I bury my face in his shoulder and Amanda says we should go. I don't know where we're going but I get in Christopher's car anyway. Amanda's mother hands me a tin of cookies just before the door closes.

The cops are nice. They ask me if I want a drink and eat the cookies. Christopher tells them I'm in shock and they promise not to drag this out. I was at Amanda's all night, Alec smoked a lot of cigars, I'm a legal adult.

"Okay, thank's for coming down, hon. I don't think we'll have any more questions, but if we do, where will you be staying?"

I shake my head. "She'll be at my house," Christopher says, "let me give you the number."

Amanda helps me up and suddenly I'm crying. They think I'm grieving, they think I'll miss them, but these are tears of relief. My parents are dead and nobody knows I killed them. Nobody will ever know.

As we walk out of the office, I hear Christopher say, "Karen and I were planning to go to Venice in a week. I don't know how she'll feel about that now, but if we decide to go I'll call you."

"Thanks, son, you take care of her."

"I will."

I leave Christopher and Amanda in the kitchen and go upstairs to Christopher's room. Laying on his bed with the door locked, I alternately laugh and cry hysterically. The pillow gets soaking wet, the trash can is soon overflowing with wrinkled Kleenex, and Amanda is beating on the door.

"I'm fine," I call. "I'm just crying is all."

My parents are dead, really and truly dead. I have money, I have Amanda and Christopher, and I have a baby. I can't stop laughing.

They don't ask questions. Amanda has no reason to, Christopher has tact. We spend a week at the cabin, quietly watching movies and going for long picnics. The air is warm and after my initial giddiness I slip into a kind of quiet sadness. Sad for who my parents were, and who they weren't. I wonder what kind of lives they led when they were so crazy. It must have been scary for them.

We sit down by the creek on a big rock and eat lunch. Amanda has rolled her jeans up and is sloshing through the water with her dog, Minorah. I slather peanut butter on a Ritz and drink whole milk. The current ripples along over the mossy rocks.

"Minorah, stop it!" Amanda shouts. "Sit! Sit!" The flabby black lab continues splashing her, barking joyously.

Christopher puts his hand on the back of my neck and rubs it. "How are you doing, Kare?" he asks. There's a look of sweet concern on his face that makes another rush of relief sweep over me. It's been a week since my parents died and I'm still feeling relieved.

"I'm managing. I'm not going to miss them, you know."

He watches Amanda and nods. "I know. I won't miss them either."

"That's really mean of us to say. But it's true."

"It's true." Minorah jumps up on Amanda and they go crashing into the water together. "Did they ever bring up that thing about the aliens again?"

I think he's watching too closely for my reaction. Dammit, why did I have to fall in love with someone smart?

"No," I tell him evenly. "I never spoke to them again after we had that fight."

The idea is distant in my mind, like a soap opera plot, and because it's so far away I can understand what it would have felt like for a pregnant young woman to loose her parents tragically just after having a terrible argument with them. I can feel her pain and regrett. We aren't the same person but I can understand her. A tear rolls down my cheek and Christopher pulls me close. In his head, I know he's wishing he hadn't brought it up and cursing himself for being so suspicious.

"I'm tired," Amanda says, dripping out of the water. "I'm heading back. Come on, you piece-of-crap dog."

"We'll be along in a minute," I tell her, and close my eyes to bask in the sun. The wind is just strong enough to be refreshing, and I think this must be paradise.

"Karen?" Christopher asks.

"Hmm?"

"I know this is a bad time with your parents and everything, so if you don't want to talk about it just say so, but we need to start thinking about this baby. What we want to do."

I open my eyes and brush a lock of maroon hair off his forehead. "I'm keeping her. I hope you don't mind."

His mouth opens in surprise. "I don't get a say in this?"

"She's inside me, I have an advantage. And I want to keep her."

He sighs and lays his head on my shoulder. "I was hoping you'd say that."

Everything is perfect for a time.

It's while we're in Venice that the trouble begins.

I'm laying in bed, damp and naked, a sheet wrapped around myself. I haven't been out of the shower for two minutes and my skin is still steaming. The room overlooks a plaza, and has a balcony with wide French doors. They have been opened so that I can smell the air, thick and sweet. Los Angeles smells like a garbage can compared to this.

My pillow is getting soaking wet again, but I don't mind. This fairytale has continued and I would be in heaven if I didn't wonder about how much longer it can last. Will it be like a stretched piece of silly putty, growing longer and longer and thinner and thinner until it finally oozes into nothingness?

Christoper is sitting in a chair by the window with a legal pad on his knees, working on his screenplay again. He won't let me read it until it's done, but I did manage to juice him of a few details. The story's about a man who falls in love with his dog because he thinks it's his dead wife reincarnated, except somehow the movie focuses more on the daughter. Christopher says it makes a lot more sense on paper.

"What do you want to name her?" I ask for the hundred time since we got here.

He glances up, smiles and shrugs. "I told Amanda we were thinking of naming the baby after her, but she just said that then there would be two Amandas running around and it would be confusing."

"Typical. What do you want to call her?"

"I don't know. Something a little older, you know? From the nineteenth century. With some length and a couple different sylibles. Like Henrietta, only prettier."

"What do you think of Elisabeth?"

"Eliaabeth is good. How about Guinevere?"

"Guinevere!" I laugh, rolling onto my back. The ceiling is decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars, which maintenance has yet to discover. "That's adorable. We could call her Gwen for short."

"How about Amanda Guinevere? Or Guinevere Amanda?"

"Guinevere Amanda Thrice. Gwen Thrice."

Christopher comes to sit on the bed beside me, facing the headboard. "You don't want to make it Thrice-Bride? That's the trendy thing to do, this being the age of women's lib and all."

"Screw women's lib, I'm not consigning my daughter to two divorces."

Chuckling, he leans down to kiss me. "Already the thougtful mother, aren't you?"

His lips slide over my throat as he pulls the sheet down and touches my stomach. "Gwen," he says again. "Gwen and Karen Thrice."

I run my fingers through his impossibly thick hair and savor the feeling of his mouth on my breasts. "When are you going to tell your parents?" I ask, and the minute the words are out of my mouth I know I shouldn't have brought it up. Why are woman always picking the wrong moments to ask these things?

He turns his face up and rests his chin on my chest. "When I get home. I thought I should do it in person, you know?"

"They'll be upset. They don't like me."

"They didn't like your parents. My mom likes you, and I don't think my father cares one way or another as long as..."

I've heard it before so I fill in the blanks. "As long as you don't knock me up. Oh god, he's going to disown you, isn't he?"

"It's possible. He'll probably disown me when I tell him and then take it back later. Not that it matters, I could get by."

Christopher sold his first screenplay last year. It was a shmultzy romantic comedy that made me precisely aware of how shmultzy our relationship is. The movie did decently at the box office, but the critics hated it. Christopher didn't mind since he really wrote it for the money. The dog-lover story isn't the only one he's working on; he has another romantic comedy on contract with Paramount. He's been planning to break free of his parents for as long as I can remember.

"When we get married, you can have all my money," I promise. "I'll probably sell most of the summer houses, and I have a ton of insurace from Alec and Lenore. And the house." Sighing, I add, "I'm loaded."

He's laying next to me now on his side, nuzzling my neck. "I'm sorry," he says in a soft voice, "that all this happened at the same time. Sometimes it's like we wait and wait and wait for life to change, and then when it finally does the whole planet drops out from under us and we just want the normal world back."

Suddenly he seems so far away. Or maybe I'm the one far away, slipping out of his understanding. For a terrified moment I wonder if this change that has taken me over since I murdered my parents has made me unlovable. Tears flood my eyes before I can stop them, and now I'm crying again but I don't know why. Christopher puts his arms around me and I lay here in paradise sobbing because for the first time in my life I really have lost my innocence.

We don't get out of bed all day. The hours are counted in phases of crying and kissing and whispering and laughing. By the time dusk rolls around we're dressed again and he's sitting behind me, brushing my hair.

"Jeremy called me just before we left," Christopher says.

"Really? What for?"

"He wanted to talk about Amanda. It was weird, I think he might be really serious about her."

"That is weird, but I don't know why. Why don't guys ever go after her, anyway? I mean, she's not a knock-out,-"

"Like you."

"-but she's pretty, and she's a great friend. She planned this whole trip, she's been great since this thing with my parents. But guys never even think of her."

Christopher begins French braiding my hair. His knowledge of women's hair fashions is stunning. "She's too deep, and way too intense. Most guys are looking for a girlfriend, not a soulmate. Amanda just doesn't want to play around."

"What about us?"

"We were an accident. I mean, you didn't put an add in the personals saying that you were looking for a guy to marry. We just starting going out and things got better and better and now here we are. You even went out with somebody else while we were dating."

"What? I did not!"

"It was right after our second date, with Rory Crahan."

"Oh, I remember. That was the worse date I've ever been on, he had such a big ego."

"So it was a good thing, because then you realized what a catch I am."

I turn my head to kiss him, and see from the corner of my eye the door fly open like the lid of a jar under pressure coming off.

Three men in black clothes wearing ski masks run in. One is pointing a gun at us, and Christopher turns to stone at my back.

The one with the gun yells something in what sounds like German, and waves his weapon at me. The other two rush forward and grab me by the arms, trying to pull me off the bed, and my legs work without thinking. I catch one in the stomach with both feet and he staggers back, doubled over. Apparently they weren't expecting me to have taken self-defense.

The second one tries to pin me and I wonder what Christopher is doing with himself. I could use a little help here; this guy is strong as an ox and I'm kind of pregnant. Then I see the guy with the gun duck, shouting again, and a vase smash against the wall over his head. A glass ashtray holding potpurie gets him square in the jaw and I wedge my foot between the German's legs. The one I kicked a moment ago is holding my head down as I try to bite his hand, and I grind the German's cock into his hip bone as if making gravel. My other foot crashes against the steely muscle of this thigh, and I know my heel must be hurting him at least a little.

More shit is flying against the wall, and I hear the thump of my suitcase banging into the gun holder. I get the German off balance enough that he has to move one leg to steady himself, giving me the opportitunity to kick him hard right where I want to. His face is beat red and he falls to the floor. The other one has my arms pinned, but I manage to hit each side of the German's head with my heel bones. Then I go about pummeling his face with my feet, turning my head just in time to see Christopher straighten up with the gun in his hand. Several people are standing in the doorway, including the hotel manager and some guests.

"Call the police!" Christopher yells at them, and it doesn't appear to matter that they don't speak English. He spins, pointing the gun in my direction, and motions the guy to let me go. I sit up slowly, wondering why Christopher still looks so intemmidating even when I know he wouldn't ever shoot me.

The police have already been called, and arrive shortly. Until then, we all sit tensely. My hair has come unbraided and is falling around my face, and there's a huge mess at Christopher's feet where he used almost everything in the room that wasn't tied down to throw at the gun holder.

The cops are no help; they can't understand a word we're saying. By the time the interpreter has arrived, the hotel manager has already explained that we're guests and he doesn't think we're involved. He's very sweet, especially considering how much of the room we've trashed.

"What the hell happened?" Christopher asks the interpreter, a nice man named Rick. He has a goatee and a beer belly, and he seems to like us.

"Well, what do you think happened?"

Christopher has his arm around my waist as we sit on the bed, and it could be equipted with magic fingers we're both shaking so badly.

"We were getting ready for dinner when the door flew open and they attacked us. That's it. I started trying to distract the one with the gun by throwing things at him, Karen was wrestling with two on the bed."

Rick doesn't know any more than we do. We talk with the police through him and give our statements, and then they say that they'll investigate. When they leave, we're both still upset and confused.

We're both crying a little. "It was probably just a robery," Christopher tells me.

"Then why were they trying to grab me?"

"Rape, probably. Grab our stuff and have a little fun while they're at it. Oh god."

"I don't want to stay here."

"Neither do I. I'm going to call the agency and tell them to book us the first flight out."

Three hours later, we're on a plane to America.

Amanda meets us at the airport. Jeremy is with her. "Are you okay?" Amanda immediately asks, throwing her arms around me. "Is the baby alright?"

"We're fine, we both--all, made it."

She smells so good, like hard candy and clean carpeting. I press my face into her shoulder.

"I'm sorry I booked such a crappy hotel, I should have checked around more to make sure they were safe."

"No, it's not your fault. The manager said nothing like that has ever happened there before."

We pick up the luggage and go to Amanda's house. Her mother likes me, likes Christopher, and she acts more like a mother to me than Lenore ever did. Once again, she's determined to feed me. This time it's large quantities of watermelon, which I politely decline about a hundred times.

"They still have no idea what happened," Christopher says as we sit in the living room. I'm in a plush arm chair with my knees pulled up to my chest, he's on the couch with Amanda. Jeremy is stretched out on the floor, and I wonder what he's doing here.

"Maybe it was a mistake," he suggests. "Some kind of drug deal, but they got the wrong room."

"Sounds like a bad comedy," Amanda mutters.

Her tone isn't nearly as defensive as it was at Nell's party, but she doesn't show Jeremy any warmth, either. I'd like to know what he really thinks of her, to check and make sure this isn't a game for him. I can tell you right now, Amanda doesn't dance.

"I'm never going back to Europe. They say L.A. is crazy, but at least the crimes around here have a purpose. Nobody just barges into your hotel room and points a gun at you."

"It was scary," I agree. "I would have wet my pants but I'd just gone."

"Lucky timing," Jeremy notes.

"I guess."

"You said they were speaking German?"

"It sounded like they were coughing something up, so I assume it was German. The manager thought it was Dutch."

"What did they look like?"

"They were wearing masks."

"But they weren't deformed or anything, were they?"

"Deformed?" I frown. "No, we weren't attacked by a band of Venetian circus freaks, christ. They weren't even that built."

"Then they probably weren't professional."

"Why would professionals be after us?" Christopher asks. "This makes no sense." He sighs. There are bags under his eyes from the jet lag and lack of sleep, and I want to hold him.

"Why don't we just try to put this behind us," I suggest. "It was weird, it was singular, and now it's over. I'd like to just forget about it."

He nods. "Good idea," Amanda compliments. "By the way, have you two made a decision about this baby of yours?"

His gray eyes meet mine from across the room, and a smile touched the corners of his weary mouth. "We're keeping it."

"Good for you." Amanda seems genuinely pleased.

"Interesting," is all Jeremy says.

"You aren't still thinking of naming it after me, are you?"

"We've settled on Guinevere Amanda," Christopher tells her, and her jaw drops.

"What? You're going to name your baby after an adulteress?"

"And the sweetest best friend in the world," I add. "They'll balance each other out."

Jeremy closes his eyes and nods. "Balance is what we're all seeking."

I'm dreaming of my parents. We're sitting in Alec's office, and I've just told them that I'm pregnant. Lenore is crying and screaming about my mutant baby, and I can't understand what's happening.

The scene doesn't follow as it should. Rather than trying to make me recall my childhood trip to England, Alec pulls something that looks like a remote control out of his desk and shoots it at me. A beam of golden fire bursts out and strikes me between the breasts, knocking me onto my back. My bones begin breaking as my body warps like wood left under water, swelling and expanding and bending unnaturally. Both arms crack and twist and my spine is doing something exceptionally painful.

I become aware that I'm dreaming and quickly wake up. I hate them, I hate them for making this happen. If they're dead, then they're haunting me, if it's only my imagination, then it's my own stupid guilt.

You murdered your parents, Karen. They were crazy to begin with and now it's over. All you have to do is live.

I'm alone in bed. Christopher and I are going to tell his parents tomorrow night, so at the moment we're still keeping up the stupid facade that we aren't sleeping together. Parents can be so nieve, I swear. We've been going out for two years, he's spent weekends at my cabin, what are the chances that nothing has happened?

Well, tomorrow it will be over. We'll probably be sleeping at Amanda's, or the cabin, since there's a good chance his parents really will kick him out. Hell, he's already packed a suitcase and tucked it into his car.

Just get through tonight. Don't dream, just sleep, and tomorrow you'll be out of here. You can go back to the cabin with Christopher and Amanda, maybe even invite Jeremy for the fun of it.

Tomorrow we'll be together again, but somehow that doesn't seem very comforting when I'm laying along and cold in the guest bedroom next door to Mr. and Mrs. Thrice.

"Karen and I are having a baby," Christopher tells them.

Lucretia Thrice drops a full goblet of red wine on the white table cloth and screams. Christopher puts his head down and squeezes my hand under the table.

Drew just stares at us open-mouthed, and Christopher's little sister, Sephia, begins giggling smugly. "Oh my god," Lucretia cries. "How could you?"

Actually, I think, it was pretty easy. If I had a choice, I might even do it again.

Christopher doesn't saying anything, keeping his mouth in a hard line, and I feel guilty for making wise cracks in my head when I know this must be ripping him apart. It doesn't matter if you're expecting the blade; it will still cut your head off.

They begin yelling, much the way my parents did, minus the You're-an-alien part. Sephia's giggles turn into a torrential fit of gufaws and Drew sends her to her room. We hear the usual things; why didn't you use condoms?; you're too young to be having sex; what kind of little hormonal sluts are you; get out of this house!

We wordlessly go out the front door and climb into Christopher's car. He starts the engine and pulls out, expressionless.

"I'm sorry," I say, and I get a nod.

Sometimes when he's hurting the most he prefers not to say anything. Amanda is up at the cabin with my car, so we head to the expressway. Christopher's face relaxes a little as time passes and my eyes grow hot with tears. It seems like I'm always crying these days, but in a way I'm happy. They treated me as they would have a real daughter, and I feel that I've come full circle to cut away the memories of my parents' insanity.

"Hi," Amanda says, looking up from the paperback she's reading on the couch. "How'd it go?"

Christopher shruggs and heads for our bedroom. "'Bout like we expected," I tell her, and she nods as if to say she understands that we need a little time. God, what would I ever do without her?

He sits on the edge of the bed and stares blankly out the window. I rub his shoulders from behind, and he says, "I never realized until today how much I wanted to please them."

Oh, how I know that feeling.

The evening gets better. Christopher and I take a shower and he lets me wash his hair, and then his back, and then--well, let's just say I manage to relax him. By the time we're out Amanda has made a pot of Cambel's soup. I talk about the weather and the summer and college, and Amanda and I discuss nannies.

"Don't get an au pair," she warns.

"Of course not, not after Matthew Eappan. No, we'd get somebody professional, and live in."

"You might also think about one of those home survalance systems, so that you can make sure they aren't beating Gwen up while you're at school."

Christopher looks up at her, and I'm pleased to see him smiling. "You do realize that you just called her Gwen, right?"

Amanda touches a hand to her mouth. "Did I? Oh god, now it's really stuck. We're going to call the baby Gwen even if it's a boy."

"It's a girl," Christopher assures her.

"How do you know?"

"Just do."

"Hmm."

"If it's a boy we can call him Glen," I tell her. "Jeremy Glen."

Christopher laughs but Amanda doesn't. The two of us stay awake long after he's gone to bed, sitting on the porch swing that overlooks the river and eating pop corn.

"So seriously, what's going on with Jeremy?" I ask, and she sighs. Night has fallen and the river is nothing but a black satin ribbon cutting through the forest, like a line drawn by a giant wood-burning pen.

"Damned if I know," she says finally.

"But what's happened?"

I was so worked up over killing my parents I barely registered anything Amanda had told me about her date with Jeremy, and now that I'd had time to go over it, the story made no sense.

Here's how she told it: She got in Jeremy's car, and immediately asked to see the tickets. He told her that they were being held at the counter, and started driving. On the way, he saw one of his buddies hitching on the side of the road and stopped to pick him up. Turned out the guy was high on crack and had a gun. Not the best combination, I can tell you. Teddy instructed Jeremy to drive him to a wearhouse downtown and go inside with him, where Amanda met Lawarence and Hodunit. Lawarence went behind some crates with Teddy and Hodunit it got progressively more and more drunk as he asked Amanda and Jeremy questions about their sex lives. When he dropped his bottle of gin and began trying to lick the beverage from the cement floor, Jeremy and Amanda ran to the car and sped away.

They made it to the theater halfway through the movie, and bumped into another of Jeremy's friend, Wicker, out front. Somehow they ended up at Wicker's house with a bunch of carnival-ride ponies and a video camera, holding a seance with about twenty of Wicker's neighbors.

Amanda fell asleep on chaise lounge outside and came awake in the dead of the night to find herself entirely alone. The house was deserted, the driveway empty except for Jeremy's car. Even creepier, the power had been turned off. She found a flashlight in the kitchen and began searching the house. While bungling around upstairs, she heard crying coming from a back bedroom and turned her flashlight off, then pushed the door open. She told me that seeing Jeremy sitting on the floor in the corner crying by himself was one of the most powerful moments of her life.

"I didn't know what to do, and finally the flashlight fell out of my hand and made this big thump on the floor. And since he knew I was there I couldn't really just leave, so I went over and sat down beside him, and I just sat there while he dried his eyes. Neither one of us mentioned it."

"So what happened after Wicker's house?" I ask as we swing on the porch swing.

"He drove me back to Nell's, and I got in my car and drove home."

"And after that?"

"Well, he called a couple days later and asked me if I wanted to go to this poetry reading with him, which I thought was kind of weird, but it didn't matter anyway because that was the day of your parents' funeral. So I told him that and he said he'd be glad to come, like I'd invited him or something."

I've been wondering how he ended up at my parents' funeral.

"Then things got weird again. I woke up one night to find him beating on my bedroom window, and when I opened it he said his friend's horse was about to give birth and did I want to watch? I figured, what the hell, and got in his car."

"Wait a sec," I interrupt. "On your first date you got held up, your second was to a funeral, and on the third you went to watch a horse give birth?"

"That's it." She rolls her eyes. "Life is getting to be so strange."

"Keep going."

"Alright, so we drive out into the country and just when I'm beginning to wonder if this is some kind of setup, he pulls up to the barn. There's like a dozen other people there, including Wicker, all watching the horse give birth and drinking black coffee. It was really gross, by the way. Then they have a toast and name the colt, and the next thing I know, everybody's dancing. The dancing turns into messing around, and pretty soon half the room is on the floor in the hay, just having sex right there in front of us. Jeremy's lookin' like he doesn't know whether to appologize or make a pass at me, and so we keep dancing for like twenty more minutes. Not normal dancing, kind of ballroom without designated steps."

She stops. "And then?" I have to prompt.

"And then he vetoes the apology and kisses me."

I let out a whoop of triumph.

"How was it?"

Her shrug is genuinely careless. "Nothing worth really remembering. And it only lasted a second, because with my eyes closed I accidently stepped in the placenta, and that's when we decided to leave."

"Bad way to end the evening."

"I thought so. Ruined my Jordans."

"You haven't really told me anything, you know."

Her fingers play with a strand of hair. "I know."

"You do like him, don't you?"

"I don't know, probably. But I don't want this to turn into one of those things."

"Which things?"

"The ones where it turns normal. Things are going alright for the moment, but pretty soon he's going to start acting like normal stupid guys, doing stupid things like bringing me flowers."

Intersting philosphy she has. "So you want him to keep acting weird because it's more intersting than if he was doing the normal things normal couples did?"

"No, it's not specifically the flowers. It's just..." She thinks hard, her brows pulling together. "At the moment I feel like we're connecting on a level that's deeper than your average relationship, and I'd like to avoid jeopardizing that. You know? Just keep things where they are and work from there, instead of loosing that so that we can do the required stuff."

"Huh." I remember how Jeremy was laying on the living room floor yesterday, how unusal it was and how natural he looked. The stories he wrote that so swept her away. Huh, I think again. Amanda may have met her match afterall.

We head inside close to two, and Amanda heads for the bathroom while I straighten up the living room. I love doing that at the end of the day, just walking around touching a pillow here and smoothing out afgans. It always covers me in a feeling of contentment, and has become one of my special rituals. It occures to me as I bookmark Amanda's paperback that this job is going to get much bigger after Gwen's born.

The bathroom is empty, so I go inside and brush my teeth, loosely braid my hair and pull on a long black tee-shirt. The bedroom is quiet and warm, and Christopher wakes up enough to put his arm around me.

"Shouldn't you be fatter?" he askes.

"Well, that's not something you ever expect your boyfriend to say."

"No, seriously. We're halfway to parenting time and you're maybe five pounds heavier, if that."

"Jeremy says my breasts look bigger."

"Like I said, five pounds."

I mock shove him and roll onto my back. "I was thinking that since Gwen's due mid-October, I should wait to enroll in classes until the semester after Christmas. I won't have to try to get to class while I'm all big and pregnant, and it'll give me a month or two to just hang out with her. Hold her all the time so she doesn't get that fear of intimacy disorder."

"Good plan. Karen, I was seriously when I asked if you shouldn't be fatter. My aunt had gained almost twenty pounds by five months."

"Didn't she had triplets?"

"Yeah, but you should still be fatter. Does that clinic Jeremy's sister work at do pre-natal?"

"I don't know, why?"

"You should be seeing somebody. Ultrasounds, vitamins, that kind of thing."

All the warmth drains out of my skin and I'm stranded in Antartica under a pale blood moon, and shadowy creatures circle beneath the ice I'm standing on. A wind blows my hair around my face and the creatures press up against the ice. I see Lenore's face.

Monster baby.

"I don't want to see any doctors."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't."

"You've never had a problem with doctors before."

"Well, I do now."

Christopher's looking confused. He picks up one of my hands and plays with my fingers. "Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine, I just don't want to see any doctors. I don't want them poking me and Gwen."

"Kare, if something's wrong-"

"Nothing's wrong!"

I sit sharply up in bed and try to wipe the image of Lenore's face from my mind. Absurd, rediculous, absolutely insane. I'm not having a monster baby.

"I don't know what's wrong with me, Toph."

He's understanding, pulling me gently back into his arms. "Nothing's wrong, sweetheart, it's probably just the horemones. You want to talk about this tomorrow instead? It's been a rough day, we're both tired."

He tucks the comforter in around my shoulders and I lay my forehead against his neck. "I'm sorry. The idea of being proded by people wearing rubber gloves isn't particularly pleasant."

"I know. I'm sorry, too. But Amanda and I will be there, and we just want to make sure Gwen's alright."

"She's alright. She's just short."

He laughs and strokes my hair. "I'm sure you're right."

By morning, the insane fear has returned. "It's not that big a deal," Amanda says. "It takes ten minutes, they're real professional, no shots."

"I don't want to go."

We argue and argue, but everytime I go to give in my mouth stops working and I'm covered in a paralyzing fear. No matter how many times I tell myself that my parents were full of bull, I'm still scared that the doctor will find something wrong with Gwen. She'll have gray skin and huge black bug eyes and tenticles...

I let Christopher and Amanda think it's an intimacy issue. I don't care about doctors, where they want to look, what they want to sample. But I'm not going to let them find out that there's something wrong with my baby.

And there is something wrong. There has to be. I can't be five months along and still not showing at all. Shouldn't she be kicking, shouldn't I be getting odd cravings and swollen feet? Why was there no morning sickness, ever? Why doesn't my bladder feel like it's being squished under a ten-pound bag of cement?

What is wrong?

The summer passes in a great arc. At first things are lovely, jovial. Christopher and I stay at the cabin while he begins the slow process of making peace with his parents, and I occasionally swing by the old house to see what kind of progress the revonators are making with it. Amanda and Jeremy date under the solomn pact never to kiss each other, which seems to please them both despite the strangeness of it.

The arc begins to angle downward.

I still don't see the doctor, and by fall the fights are becoming daily. There's a curve to my belly now, but it's much smaller than it should be. Still no kicking. I begin to wonder if Gwen has died and I'm just getting fat.

I won't consider what Alec and Lenore said, I won't. It's poposturous. A human-alien hybird baby, and what does that make me? I'm no alien, I can tell you that. My internal chemestry is a little unusual, and my eating habits are odd, but I'm not ET for crying out loud.

They're determined, but I won't give in. When I think of doctors, of offices and orifices, I feel like I'm trapped inside a hot house in the swealtering heat with a huge Doberman that's trying to eat me and the door is so small I can't squeeze through. It's that kind of hysterical panic that makes me loose all sense of reality.

Amanda and Christopher are both going at me, but Jeremy just sits on the couch looking disturbed.

"You have to see someone, okay?" Christopher cries. "This shouldn't even be a discussion any more! You're seven months pregnant and look at you! You've only gained like three pounds."

"Five," I tell him, and he gives me a look I don't see very often.

For the first time, Christopher is truly angry. His cheeks are flushed almost as deep a red as his hair. "If you don't go of your own free will," Amanda warns, "we'll drag you there kicking and screaming. We're drug you and say you OD'd, then tell the doctor to check while you're asleep."

"Something's wrong, I can feel it," Christopher mutters, pacing back and forth on the run. Jeremy's eyes follow him hyptnotically.

I can feel it, too. Something's wrong or else I'd be bigger and heavier and less comfortable. My eyes wander to the cross hanging around Amanda's neck, despite the fact that she renounced the church years ago. Oh God, why did something have to go wrong? Is this some kind of karma? I know I killed my parents, but they were real assholes, and it's not Gwen's fault.

"I'm going to bed now," I say, getting to my feet. I walk easily without waddling to the hallway. Silence follows me, but I know they'll be talking about it again in a moment, so I duck into Amanda's room. It used to be mine, and I drilled a hole in the closet wall so that I could hear what was being said in the living room.

Without turning on the light, I slip into the closet and brush the sweaters away from my head. I got a lot of use out of this peephole during my teen years, and while Christopher and Amanda both know it exists, I doubt they'll be expecting me to use it.

"What the hell are we going to do?" Amanda asks. Her voice is clear as a bell.

"What choice do we really have? It's her body."

"It's your baby."

"You think I don't know that?" He's trying to keep from yelling again.

I peer through the hole on my hands and knees, and the living room setting looks like the picture on the TV screen, glossy and bright. It's even full of beautiful people; Christopher, all burning with angst; Amanda, firey and loyal; Jeremy, powerless and aware of it.

Christopher sits down on the couch and puts his head in his hands. "She's killing me, you know. Killing me. Just like..."

I clench one of Amanda's boots and hold my breath. Christ, he knows.

"Like what?" Amanda finally asks, but he only shrugs.

Jeremy straightens and says firmly and with the air of knowledge, "This is perfectly normal, you guys. Ask my sister. A lot of mothers go through a phase where they need to protect their babies no matter how irrational it seems. Even they don't understand it. Like this one lady Suzette had in a couple weeks ago. She wouldn't go inside the building. She said the doctor could look at her through the waiting room window, but she wouldn't go inside because the baby might get hurt by the air fresheners. That woman had a PhD and her pilot's license. Karen's just doing what's in her nature to do. She doesn't even know why she doesn't want to see the doctor, she just doesn't. The whole thing's probably been intensified by the fact that she's a young mother and she just lost both her parents."

A cool wash of air rushes over me. That makes so much sense, if you look at it psychologically. Yeah, Alec and Lenore were jerks, but it's still been weird having them dead. I even find myself missing their questions about homework and prefunctory nods when I did well on a test. I guess sometimes we learn to love in even the worst of situations.

I'm a little freaked out by the idea of rasing Gwen. The diapers, the feeding, the gates on the staircases, I can handle all that. But what if I accidently make her think things? Like what if I give off the air that I won't be satisified with anything she does that isn't prefect? Even if I don't mean to, what if I fail to help her understand how to speak to others? What if she turns into a snob because I screwed up?

I want to create the most wonderful atmosphere for her, one where she just exists and can be safe and happy. None of these expectations Christopher and I grew up with, none of the teasing that's made Amanda so overly sensitive and withdrawn. Am I really going to be able to shape her without squishing her, let her dry without cracking her, teach her to swim without drowning her?

Maybe all that just got channeled through my subconscious and compounded with the whole insanity of my last encounter with Alec and Lenore. It was so frightening to hear them say those things, I barely even knew how to react, so I just pretended it hadn't affected me at all. But of course it did; I probably need some sort of therapy for this. I just lost my parents, that's a fact, and I don't want to loose my baby as well.

I put my hand over my mouth to stifle the giggles. What a mess, what a bloody stupid mess. I can't believe I've been so crazy the last two months over nothing, and why on earth didn't Jeremy say something sooner?

I've missed most of the conversation in the living room, and I realize with a start that Christopher is the only one left. He's still sitting on the couch, now holding a framed picture of my parents. I should have thrown the thing out when we moved in, but there aren't many photos of them.

And now there's one less. Christopher bursts into a startling sneer, turns the picture upside down, and smashes it against the corner of the coffee table. The glass shatters all over the rug and he tears the picture out, then rips it to streads.

I'm suddenly aware that this is a special moment.

Amanda rushes into the living room and stops short. "You're hands are cut," she tells him, and her hesitation makes me think she's a little scared. When he doesn't respond, she says, "Chris, you're bleeding all over the carpet."

He glances up, and there are tears running down his face. "What do I have to do?"

She steps over the glass and sits down next to him. With a Kleenex, she starts wiping the blood off his hands. "You're doing everything you can do."

"Bull. Everything I can do? Why didn't I take her to the doctor the minute I heard, when she would have been too surprised to protest? Why didn't I just think to stop and grab a condom in the first place? Why didn't I get her out of that house? Her parents were crazy, you know, not just the way all parents are but like assylum crazy. They used to tell her this shit about...just all sorts of stuff, and I thought it never had any effect, but maybe it did and that's what this is all really about. Is this about me? Is she really trying to tell me in some weird way that she doesn't want me involved?"

"Of course not. She would have just told you."

"Maybe not, Mandy. Sometimes I think there's this other person in her I don't know, and...what that other person does...I don't know. Or is it possible that she wasn't pregnant at all, that she never was? Or that she didn't get pregnant until like the week after she told me and that's why she's just now beginning to gain a little weight?"

Amanda bites her lip. "I think you're tired. You're talking crazier than Karen." She puts an arm around him. "Get some sleep, Chris. Maybe we can talk her into at least letting Suzette come over here and cop a feel, but it'll have to be tomorrow."

Christopher is opening his mouth when I hear Amanda's bedroom door open and then close. Jeremy, I forgot about Jeremy in all this. I'm hiding in my best friend's closet while her boyfriend waits for her to finish consolling my boyfriend. Life is twisted.

The tiny stab of light goes out as Amanda shuts off the lamp in the living toom. "I'm going to get something to eat," Christopher tells her as they part in the blackness. "Maybe some tea or something."

"Try burbon, that's what my mom always uses to sooth her nerves."

"Thanks, Mandy."

"You're doing great, just keep your head on."

Well, at least I don't have to worry that they're having an affair. Not that I was ever really worried. Christopher is nothing if not loyal.

The door opens again. "I thought you went home," Amanda says as she closes it. Her voice is muffled but intelligible.

No answer, but I hear her steps stop at the foot of the bed. "Where are you clothes?" she asks.

"I took them off. They're on the floor next to the desk." He pauses. "This is a nice mattress."

Amanda chuckles. "Karen and Christopher both lost their virginities on it."

I can't believe she told him that. My face is turning a bright enough red to illuminate the tiny closet.

"Interesting. Did you put it in here with the intention of making it a tradition?"

"Is that an offer?"

"I don't know. If it is, I'm not expecting you to take me up on it. I haven't kissed you in sixty-eight days."

"Sixty-nine, it's after midnight. We really have to stop counting now."

"Why? Sixty-nine, that means I have one thousand and twenty-six days left until I get to sleep with you."

"I was kidding when I made that promise."

"I wasn't."

Do they always talk to each other like this? There's an intensity in Jeremy's voice that says he means every word, but the whole conversation is weird. I assumed that when they promised not to kiss each other they would cheat. Apparently not. I know I've never gone anything close to sixty-nine days with kissing Christopher. What kind of girlfriend would I be then?

"You about ready to get out of here? I'm wiped out."

"Yeah, but I told you a secret, and fair's fair."

"What secret?"

"Can I point out that I'm laying butt naked on your bed and allowing you to puruse my body at great length? That's quite a concession."

It sounds like Amanda has sighed. "Alright, what do you want to know?"

Pleased, he replies, "What's your greatest fear? Truly."

Now I'm starting to feel guilty. I mean, this isn't the sort of thing I'm supposed to be hearing. I guess I could justify it by saying that this is my house, but spying is still spying, and I don't think turning myself in just now will improve the situation any.

Amanda is quiet for a long time and then says, "You are."

"How so?"

Another pause.

"Put your clothes on, Jeremy."

"Not until you explain yourself."

Footsteps, hers. "Why do you have to make this so damn hard?"

Jeremy says gently, "We knew it would be hard. The harder I am, the deeper we go."

There's a tense moment of silence, and then they both burst into laughter. "That didn't come out the way I meant it to," Jeremy says. "I swear, you know what I'm talking about."

Bedsprings. This isn't looking good. I'm acutally trying to decide if I might be able to squish myself through the peephole.

More bedsprings, but the sound of kissing is still absent. Jeremy groans and the floorboards crunch together as he gets off the bed. "One thousand twenty-six and counting," he says. I can hear the rustle of his clothes as he puts them on. "I'll give you a call in a couple days, okay?"

I can see it in my head, Amanda sitting on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, Jeremy zipping his pants. The moonlight coming in through the lace curtains, the sheets of his latest story on the floor by the bed.

"Wait." She's hesitating again.

"What?"

Sniffle; is she crying?

"My deepest fear is that you'll see parts of me I've never had the guts to show anyone and you'll hate them. You'll hate me."

His hand must be on the doorknob, his shoulders turned so that he can see her. She's sitting on the bed with her chin on her knees, praying he's strong enough to keep this going.

"My deepest fear is that I'll loose you," he tells her, and there's another stab in my heart. I so shouldn't be here.

The door opens. "Oh, and Anda?"

"Yeah?"

"You owe me one."

She laughs, then gets off the bed and, I assume, walks him to his car. While they're gone, I scramble out of the closet and make a mad dash for the bathroom. Leaning against the sink and trying to get the kinks in my legs to go away, I realize there's a stupid grin plastered to my face. I can't help it, everything is falling into place. I've been stupidly paranoid, I'm killing Christopher by his own admission, things with Amanda and Jeremy are weird but they both seem to be pretty happy. It can all be okay now.

As long as the baby's okay.

Gwen, got to get Gwen checked out. Got to make sure she's all right. No problem, go see Suzette. Steril instruments, good security, all that stuff.

Christopher is drinking black tea in the kitchen with all the lights off.

"I'm sorry," I tell him. "I'm being a real bitch."

He reaches up and pulls a beaded cord. The discus lamp hanging above the table comes on and I notice how tired he looks. There are lines forming around his eyes.

"Don't call yourself that. You want some tea?"

"If I say no, will you smash my picture?"

"Sorry I didn't clean it up. I'll get it in the morning."

I ease into the chair across from him. "I'll see a doctor, without protest. Tomorrow, if you want."

The tea mug almost falls out of his hand. "Are you joking?"

"No?"

"Are there conditions?"

"No, I'm just giving in. You're right, I'm being irrational. I heard what Jeremy said about getting scared and over protective and my parents and...It just all makes sense suddenly. I've been freaking about a lot of things, and this is how I took it out. Forgiven?"

His gray eyes are as big as gumballs.

"Have you been drinking or something?"

"Christopher, no."

"Did you hit your head?"

I give him a hard stare and he breaks out in a smile.

"You are so fogiven it's not even funny. You aren't going to change your mind, are you?"

"No, I'll do it."

"Oh my god."

He looks like a kid who's just found out he might walk again after all. His hands are shaking.

"It's okay, Toph," I tell him. "It's really okay. Don't hyperventilate or anything."

I haul him off to bed but he can't fall asleep.

"You mean it?"

"Would you quit asking me that? I mean it."

"Can we go right now?"

"It's like one in the morning. We'll go tomorrow."

"What if you change your mind while you're asleep? How do I change it back?"

"Darling, go to sleep."

He wakes up during the night, which is pretty common. I don't think he's slept a night through since he was born. Tonight he rouses me up when he stumbles into the dresser and knocks my brush to the floor.

"Oh, sorry, sorry, go back to sleep."

I'm staring at the ceiling again, as I so often am during special moments with Christopher. Just now I feel contented, domestic and caught in time. This is exactly how it would be if we were married, him bungling around, me waking up to loud noises. The smell of his shampoo engrained in my pillow, strands of his hair caught under my fingernails. I don't think the charm will ever wear off.

Suddenly I'm hit with a craving. "Toss me the nuts, will you?"

Everyone's in a preverted mood tonight, it must be in the air. "They're kind of attached," he replies.

"Dammit boy, give me the nuts."

A pack of Planters lands on the pillow beside my head and I tear into it. "Third one this week," Christopher notes. "Maybe Gwen's just a late bloomer after all."

I nod prefunctorially, too busy trying to get more nuts into my mouth.

"She's not an alien, you know."

I'm so stunned I choke on the peanuts and spit them all over the sheets. Christopher laughs so hard he doubles up, but I just groan and wonder if I should change the sheet or what. There are gooey brown specks all over.

"That wasn't funny," I snap, disgruntled.

"Well, I know that's what you've been thinking. You can't believe that crap, Kare, your parents were wacked, fantasy prone, Heaven's Gate members, whatever. They were probably all hyped up on heroin or something, and that's why they said that stuff. They just made it up, or they saw it in a movie and pretended it was real."

He picks me up off the bed and sets me in the rocker by the window, then tears the sheets off the bed. "This is nasty," he notes.

"I really thought maybe that's what's wrong with her," I tell him, embarrassed that I've been so stupid.

"I can even see why, I mean, parents don't usually say that kind of thing unless it's true. But this isn't Dark Skies, and you were probably right from the start: Gwen's just short. Lots of babies are little. You were little, weren't you?"

"Four pounds."

"See? It's a genetic thing. And you've always had trouble gaining weight, so there's that taken care of."

He finishes spreading one of the extra blankets out over the mattress and picks me up again. As I settle back on my coverless pillow, I say, "So if you had all this stuff figured out, why are you so upset that I don't want to see a doctor?"

"I just got freaked out because you were freaked out, and I didn't think you would panic like that unless there was really something to panic about."

He stretches out next to me and I throw my empty peanut package onto the floor and kiss him. "Hmm," he says, "salty."

"I love you."

"I love you, too. Go back to sleep, Karen, we've got to get up early tomorrow and go to the clinic."

We curl up like spoons and darkness washes over me.

I'm standing on the dark side of the mirror that hangs above the dresser, staring into my bedroom. I can see my body twisted up in the sheets and Christopher laying on his back like a drowned man. We're bathed in gray-blue light and bird calls flow in through the open window.

The doorknob turns, and slowly swings inward. A dark head pokes around it and peers into the gloom before pressing the crack wide enough to slip through. It's a man dressed in black, and for a moment I think it's one of those kooks from Venice, but then a shaft of moonlight hits his face and I realize it's Jeremy.

Jeremy? Didn't he go home hours ago?

I put my hand back through the mirror and realize with a start that the glass is solid. "Come on," I mutter aloud, "this is a dream. I get to decide how things work."

Jeremy leans over my sleeping figure, then over Christopher's, but he doesn't disturbe either of us. Stepping quietly around the bed, he slids open the desk drawer and begins riffling through the contents. Postcards and photos mostly, nothing unusual. He closed the drawer and opens the next. What is he looking for?

The file drawer holds nothing that interests him, but the bottom drawer on the left turns out to be his treasure chest. He's squatting on the floor with a pen light when suddenly his back straightens and he jumps. As he stands, I realize he has my dairy in his hand.

He closes the drawer and goes to sit in the corner, ducking down when Christopher stirs. I beat on the mirror a couple times but it doesn't help. There's no lock on the cloth-covered journal, since I never thought anyone would bother to read it. Jeremy flips it open and begins turning pages quickly, muttering. His eyes flitter up and down as if he's only skimming my words. My cheeks begin to flush as I consider what my most private thoughts might look like to a stranger who doesn't understand.

Apparently dull. I time him by the bedside clock, and it only takes twenty minutes for him to flip through my entire senior year. Can't wait until he starts on my junior book. This is so embarrassing; suddenly every stupid thing I ever wrote is leaping up at me. He must think I'm such a flake.

Jeremy returns the diary to the drawer, and I realize with relief that my other volumes are still at my house. Good, I'm not sure I could handle having to watch him puruse my pathetic love poetry. He digs through the rest of the desk, then opens all the drawers of the dresser and musses my clothes, and finally takes a peek at the closet. What is it he's trying to find? I don't really have anything to hide, except for my little secret regarding Alec and Lenore. And I got rid of all that evidence months ago.

Sighing, he stands by the door with his hands on his hips and gazes around. There's nowhere left to search, and apparently he hasn't found what he's looking for. I watch him leave the room and wonder what this dream is supposed to mean.

His car starts up outside and Christopher opens his eyes. Blinking, he peers out the window at the vanishing headlights and then shrugs and flops back. His hand closes around mine and I can feel it, feel it in this not-body behind the mirror. This neverland begins to get foggy and I feel myself slipping backwards so that I'm stretching out. Blankets are tangled around my legs and my bare arms are imprinted with the weave of the blanket I'm laying on. For an instant I can see the ceiling and feel Christopher's hand, and then a deadened weight sucks me back down into shadow.

Jeremy won't admit it, but something's bothering him. He's been quiet all morning and I keep catching him staring at me. He suggested that we go to a different clinic and then shrugged when Christopher asked him why. "I just think you might be better off with somebody besides Suzette."

"I thought you really liked this place," I said.

"Yeah, for abortions. I don't know how great their pre-natal is."

Christopher pointed out that we already had an appointment and that he was sure everything would be fine. Now I'm sitting in the waiting room with my ankles wrapped around the chair legs praying for a fire drill. I don't like the smell of this place, or its too-clean atmosphere. My head hurts and I would rather be at home fighting with Christopher than sitting here examining the unexplainable cloud hanging over my head.

"Karen Bride," the nurse calls, but I don't respond.

"Over here," Christopher tells her as he takes my hand and stands up. "Come on, they're ready for us."

My muscles have turned to steel cord, and are just as ungiving. Fingers clenched around the arm rest, I wonder for the hundredth time if I'm really going to be able to go through with this.

"Kare?" Amanda asks from my other side. "Are you okay?"

"Miss Bride?" the nurse calls again.

"She's on her way," Christopher promises, but I don't think I'm going to be able to walk over there. "Come on, sweetheart," he says softly, "you can do this."

I let him pull me to my feet and look over my shoulder at Jeremy. He's watching me but doesn't look surprised. I asked him if he came back to the house last night for anything and he laughed and told me I had a wild imagination.

Christopher wraps his arm around my waist and starts draging me toward the nurse. I stumble a few steps and then find my own feet and force a smile.

"Nervous?" the nurse asks. "Don't be. The doctor's real good."

"Yeah, I know."

I manage to walk through the winding white halls and into an examining room without Christopher's assistance. I'm shaking all over as the nurse tells me to change into a paper gown and wait for the doctor.

As soon as she's gone Christopher puts his arms around me. "It's okay, you're doing great. Take a deep breath, Karen." He rubs my shoulders and I blink back tears. I don't know where this terror has come from again when I had it all done with last night.

He urges me to put my arms up and slips the shirt over my head. "Relax, I'm here. This is going to be fine. It's just a check-up, poke, prod, take a few pictures. Nothing fancy."

"I look terrible in pictures," I tell him numbly.

"But you look great in person, so I guess it's lucky they'll be seeing you here and not just on paper."

He changes me into the paper dress as if I'm a toddler. My clothes are neatly folded and stacked on the countertop, and when I'm wrapped up like a gift on Christmas morning, complete with an over-sized bow on my back, he sits on the table with me.

Abruptly, there's a sharp pinch in my stomach and I tense up even more. "Careful," Christopher warns. "You're going to break my fingers."

"I think Gwen just kicked," I tell him in a hoarse whisper.

He leaps off the table as if I've electroucted him. "Really? Are you sure?"

I hunch over and close my eyes. I feel sick to my stomach and wonder if I should have forced down breakfast this morning after all.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

He looks so beautiful and happy. His gray eyes are all lit up. "That's wonderful."

I forced another weak smile and try to hide the feeling of dread stirring inside me. Gwen grinds what I'm betting is her ankle against one of my ribs. Is it possible that babies are a lot smarter than their parents even before they're born?

"Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure, of course. Name it."

I tilt my head toward the door. "Wait outside with Amanda."

"What?" His face falls. "Why?"

"I just..." I can't come up with anything reasonable. Gwen kicks again and I almost double over, thinking that I'll have to get Dr. Spock's book on diciplining a child pretty soon.

"I think it's a hormonal thing," I tell Christopher. "I've been feeling all icky lately, all over. That's why you haven't been getting any these past couple of months. I can't really describe it. I feel like I haven't taken a bath in a really long time and I'm all scuzzy."

"And I make you feel scuzzier?"

"No, Toph." I sigh. "Look, this is a little envasive, okay? I'm scared and self-conscious, and it would just be easier for me to have to be humuliated in front of as few people as possible."

He runs a hand through his hair and frowns. "I don't understand, but it that's what you want I'll do it." He kisses my cheek and adds, "If you change your mind, I'll be out in the waiting room, alright?"

I nod. "Thanks, Christopher. A lot."

The room is colder without him. I hadn't realized what a desolate place it was until he left, or how lifeless the wall paper is. A slight breeze from the air vent in the ceiling presses my gown closer against my skin and I shiver. If they're going to make people get half naked in these places, why don't they turn up the heat?

Gwen is quiet. Satisified. Sated. Apparently I interperted her request correctly. Will I be able to know what she wants like this when she's left me, or will the connection be broken with the umbilical cord? I shouldn't have sent Christopher away, I know it hurt him. I'm not even sure why Gwen didn't want him here, but the feeling was too strong to be denied. I'm shaking all over.

The door opens, and a woman with golden hair and the brightest smile I've ever seen walks in. "Hello," she says, extending her hand. "I'm Suzette, Jeremy's sister."

She must be ten or twelves years older than him, too, and they look nothing alike. Her eyes are a light, watery blue and her hands are softer than down.

"Hi," I say stiffly.

"Nervous?"

"Kind of."

She nods and pats my arm. "That's okay. I'm always nervous when I go to the doctor, and I am one." She flips open my chart. "Hmm, you don't get sick much do you? All I have here are physicals."

"I don't think I can ever remember being sick."

"Good for you. How many months pregnant are you?"

"Seven."

She looks me over. "Are you sure about that?"

"Pretty sure."

"You don't look like you've gained much weight."

"I haven't, that's why I came in."

Another nod, and she begins her examination by weighing me. I've gained a total of eight pounds since my last check-up. My blood-pressure's high, my temperature's low, my pulse is off the charts, I don't know what any of this means. Suzette says I'm a nervous wreck and then gives me a pregnancy test. It comes back positive.

"What I'm wondering," she say when the examination is over, "is if it's possible that you aren't nearly as far along as you think you are. Maybe by as much as three or four months."

I shrug, wanting to get away. The door just keeps looking better and better. "Anything's possible, I guess, but I don't think so. I took three different home pregnancy tests and they all came out positive."

"Oh." She considers. "Well, I'd like to do an ultrasound and take at look at the baby. That will give us a better idea of how old it is."

I agree and Gwen kicks violently. "Okay, just lay back and I'll go get the machine."

Gwen digs her foot into my spine so hard I double up. "Please don't," I whisper, bringing my knees up as if to cuddle her. "It won't hurt a bit, they just want to take a look at you."

The machine doesn't work out. The damn thing explodes the minute it touches my belly. "Oh!" Suzette cries, jumping back and dropping the stick she was touching me with. It's smoking, and the end has been charred black.

"Damn," she says. "Must have been the outlet."

I don't think so. Gwen jumped rather suddenly at the exact moment the flames jumped out of the machine. I've really got to get one of those dicipline books.

She brings in another machine, but this time Gwen kicks so violently we can't get a picture. Suzette sighs, a little annoyed, mostly perturbed.

"How would you feel about using a light sedative?" she asks. "One that won't hurt the baby, just relax it enough so that we can get a look at it."

"Sounds fine."

The sedative makes me groggy, but at least it does the same to Gwen. Soon she's too sleepy to kick me. We lay in a pleasant haze, Suzette's voice coming gently through the fog. She talks, moves machinery around the floor, and I rest with my eyes closed. It's only eight in the morning but I feel exhausted, and I count the minutes until this is over. When I get home I can climb back into bed.

There's a long pause while I heard nothing. I open one eye and peer around an empty examining room. "Suzette?"

She's gone. All the shades of white blend together as my vision wavers like a reflection on water. Slowly, sensing something I can't place, I prop myself up on my elbows. Ug, my stomach is rolling.

There is something wrong.

I don't know what it is, but I can feel it. Every drugged bone in my body is crying for me to get up and get out. The danger isn't in this room but the next-

Christopher? Amanda?

Get out, Karen.

I don't know where the mental voice comes from. Maybe it's Guinevere, maybe it's God.

I sit up, swinging my feet over the side of the examinging table. Gwen rolls over and gives me a pat, then slips back down into my guts. I feel heavy and nausious, and my ears are ringing painfully.

The door swings open and I glance slowly toward it. Jeremy's rushing in with a film of sweat on his forehead and a wild look in his eyes. "Come on," he says, closing and locking the door. "I've got to get you out of here."

Suddenly everything is alive. The morning's slow progression has been blown forward. His words hit too quickly for me to understand.

"Huh?"

He grabs my clothes off the floor and shakes them out. "Pull this on," he commands, and tosses me my shirt.

"What's going on?"

"Don't question me, just do it."

His quick hands begin pushing my shoes on. "Where's Christopher? What the hell is going on?"

"Karen." He straightens, and grabs my upper arms hard enough to bruise them. His chest is heaving. "Do you want to die?" he asks with dead seriousness, staring me in the eye. "Do you want Guinevere to die?"

I think I'm going to faint. A nervous feeling has exploded into a living nightmare. "No," I manage to whisper.

"Then put your clothes on and come with me."

There's no time for modesty, but Jeremy doesn't seem very concerned with it anyway. He rips the paper gown in half, yanks the shirt down over my head without even bothering to notice that it's backwards, and holds out the skirt for me to step into. There's a screech of tires from the parking lot and he looks up sharly, then mutters a curse.

"Come on. We're going out the window."

I've been standing too long. My knees buckle before I can reach the window. Jeremy grabs me and tosses me over his shoulder as if I weigh nothing, then throws the window open and pushes me through.

The screen explodes out behind me and my funny bone hits the frame painfully. I land on the grass, suddenly riddled with aches. My head is fully of woozy thoughts. If I try to stand up now I know I'll pass out.

Jeremy picks me up again in a fireman's carry, and I bounce as he runs across the parking lot. A car door opens...gunshots...Amanda screaming...I close my eyes and wait for it to be over and something hits the back of my head...

I wake up as we pull into the driveway. My body is stiff and cramped but my mind feels clear, and Gwen is using my uterus like a gerbil wheel. It's night, and the car smells of fast food.

"Jeremy?" I ask, turning to look at him.

He tucks the keys in his pocket and nods. "Hi. Do you feel okay?"

"Yeah." I shift and a dozen joints crack. The air conditioner has been on for a long time; my skin is covered in chill bumps. "What happened?"

"You were attacked at the clinic. By the same people who attacked you in Venice."

"Why? Where are we?"

There's a knock on the window, I jump and bang my head on the oh-shit bar. Jeremy leans over and opens the door, and a willowy red-head offers me her hand. "Are you all right?" she asks quickly.

"Who are you?"

Her eyes dart to Jeremy. She carries the air of a woman who wants to help but doesn't really know what the hell she's doing.

"She just woke up," he says as he climbs out.

"Oh." She reaches to shake my hand. "I'm Nora Solle, a friend of Jeremy's. Would you like to come in?"

I don't know what else to do, so I climb out. My side of the car has been badly damanged, as if another car has crashed into, and I remember hitting my head. Someone must have tried to stop us from leaving.

I follow Nora into a large house nestled among thick evergreens. The living room is full of warm orange light and cozy furniture arrangements. Christmas song books spill out of a bench in front of the piano, and a half-empty coffee cup rests on the low table. "What are we doing here?" I ask Jeremy as I sit down on a brocade couch.

He shakes his head. "Give yourself a couple of minutes to wake up. You want something to drink?"

"No, I want to know what's going on. Why didn't you just take me home? Where's Christopher?"

Nora lowers her voice and speaks to Jeremy. All I can make out is the word, "father."

I curl my legs to my chest and run a hand through my hair. There isn't a phone anywhere in sight, or else I'd be using it right now.

"Jeremy," I say, and he shakes his head. There are shadows eclipsing his eyes.

"Listen," he tells me, "there's some wild stuff going on but I promise to explain it all. Calm down and breathe for a couple of minutes, and then we can talk."

"Talk about what?" I cry in exaspiration. I'm being difficult, but it he would just spill...

"Some stuff that's been going on."

"That has to do with me?"

"Yes. You and Gwen."

He turns back to Nora and they start talking in furitatively again, but suddenly it all clicks in my head. My parents, the attacks, Gwen's tiniess.

"But they weren't deformed, or anything, were they?"

Jeremy asked me if my attackers in Venice were deformed. He kept telling Christopher and Amanda to back off whem they got determined to take me to a doctor. He was searching my room, and my diary, for something last night. He didn't want to go to the clinic this morning, he was all jumpy.

He knows.

Oh god, he knows.

I stare at him. It's all true, isn't it? Everything from the trip to Venice to my worst fears. He knows, somehow he knows. Did Christopher tell him? Did my parents?

I want to ask but I don't have the words, and finally he notices that I'm gawking at him open-mouthed and pauses in his conversation. "Karen?" he asks. "Are you okay?"

I swallow and end up coughing. I wrap my arms around a throw pillow, rocking back and forth. There are tears running down my cheeks but they're as cold as winter raindrops.

"Karen?" Jeremy says again.

I nod. My voice comes out in a pathetic little croak. "I'm an alien, right?"

He closes his eyes and lets out a long breath. "I didn't know you knew."

There's something in his voice that sounds bitter and tired, that says he wishes I'd told him that three months ago when I found out I was pregnant. "I didn't until I told my parents about the baby. They started screaming that it would be a mutant. I didn't believe them."

Nora gives me a sympathetic rub on the shoulders. "Who are you?" I ask her.

"Just a friend," she replies.

"She's part of the resistance," Jeremy says. "Look, there's a lot you don't know about all this."

"I don't know anything about it. I kil-" I stop abruptly and cough. "My parents died before they could tell me anything."

I've had my little epiphany, now it's Jeremy's turn.

"You..." he begins, and then rocks back on his heels.

My words come fast. "I had to. They were going to kill me and blame Christopher. I didn't have any other choice. I thought they were insane."

Nore is only beginning to understand, looking from me to Jeremy and then back to me. "How?" he asks.

"Death by smoke inhalation. I held their heads in the chimney until they died, then set the house on fire."

"But you were at Amanda's that night."

"I went home after she fell asleep."

He shakes his head, as if he can't believe there isn't a catch. He doesn't know all the details yet but he sees the solidity of the plan.

"Did Christopher know?"

"I didn't tell him, but I think he figured it out."

"Amanda?"

"No. She didn't know what my parents said to me the night before the died, so she didn't realize I had any reason to kill them. But I told Christopher."

Nora blinks. "You killed your parents?" she says, just now getting it.

I nod. "I thought they were insane, because of what they said about me being an alien. But it's kind of hard to deny it now. I'm coming along and Gwen is still so tiny, but I can feel her kicking. She can't be bigger than a pinball."

"It's okay," Nora says, regaining herself. She's too professional to be just a friend; she's been involved with this for a while, I'm betting. She rubs my knee. "It's normal with hybird babies for them to be very small and for gestation to last much longer. You're what, ten months?"

"Seven."

Her mouth turns up a bit. "Hey, you're pretty big for seven. I don't think there's any reason to be worried."

Jeremy stops messaging his temples and looks back at me. "Just give me the short version, okay?" I beg.

He stares at the carpet for a couple of seconds before saying, "You must know by now how serious this is, Kare."

"Yeah."

"They'll kill us, they really will. You can't talk about this to anyone, not even Christopher." I start to object and he puts up his hand for silence. "If you tell him, it will only get him killed."

There's a lump of disbelief still churning in my stomach. I can only swallow so much of this at once, but I nod anyway. "Go on."

Jeremy sits down on the carpet and breathes deeply. "There's an alien race planning on invading the planet seven years from now. They've been here since the forties, infultrating us so that they can learn our strengths and weaknesses. Your parents were part of that operation, aliens with their DNA manipulated so that they would look like humans."

"Why didn't they tell me before?"

"Because you weren't the same operation. There's something else going on called the Moxy Project. Aliens who look like humans brought up to believe they are human. It was to see if they could fit into society even with their unusual looks and eating habits, phyisology, ectera. Each generation appears a little less human, and the idea of the project is to see how alien kids could look before people started to freak out."

My huge green eyes, my tiny nose, even the accent I developed living in southern California. Photographic memory, stunning aura, there's been something behind this all along.

"How do you know about this?" I ask Jeremy. "Are you..."

"No. But my family is. I'm part of a different project, the one that tests how well human kids can grow up knowing their parents are aliens."

"Suzette..."

His mouth flattens. "Is. She turned you in, Karen. That's why I wanted you to go to a different clinic."

"Turned me in to who?"

"Security. See, if you went to a newspaper and said you'd had an alien baby, and you got the test results to prove it, the secret could get out."

"But people claim to have alien babies all the time."

"They don't have the babies to prove it. Gwen's no hoax, she's the genuine article, and if you take her to a lab and have her tested, you're going to find a DNA reading with all sorts of shit in it. And she isn't going to look human."

As if this weren't horrifying enough, it had to touch Gwen. The tears start coming faster. "What's wrong with her? I mean, are we talking creature from the black lagoon here?"

"Nothing like that," Nora assures me. "The aliens look mostly humanoid, two arms, two legs, facial features. Just more like yourself, and they have tails and extra joints."

"Will she be able to think? Will she be retarded?"

Nora glances at Jeremy. "We can't be sure until she's born, but the chances are good that she'll be fine. These aliens are much smarter than humans, with incredible memories and a stretching ability toward telepathy. My guess is that she'll be above normal intelligence."

"What about emotionally?" I begin, and Jeremy gently cuts me off.

"Karen, you've got to remember something here. These aliens aren't a Star Trek invention or something totally remote. You're one of them. The only part of your DNA that was altered was the part determining how you'd look. But how you think and feel is still absolutely genuine. And frankly, you've got one of the biggest hearts around. I don't think you need to worry that Gwen will be some cold monster that just wants to kill and eat. She's still going to be a little girl. And you're still going to be her mother."

I take a moment to process this. Back to square one: Gwen is a combination of Christopher and myself. He's entirely human, I sure feel like I'm human, and I know I think like one. Theoretically, our child should be fine.

Oh god, I want my baby to be born with a heart that can feel.

"What am I doing here?"

There are twin sighs from Jeremy and Nora. "They'll be after you," he says. "Suzette faxed security the ultrasound pictures, so they know your baby isn't entirely human. They need to get ahold of it before you can make a stink, and that means getting you."

"Where do you fit in?"

"Like I said, Nora and I are part of the resistance. We're trying to keep them from invading. And if we can keep you safe so that Gwen can be born, and then go public with her..." He shrugs. I think he's a little embarrassed at having to ask if he can use me and my baby. "We could blow this thing right out of the water."

A million reasons why this won't work immediately come to me. I wish more than anything that I had stuck to my instincts and refused to go to the doctor in the first place.

"Can I use the phone?" I ask.

"They'll have his line tapped."

"What about Amanda?"

"Same thing. They're determined to find you." He pauses, his eyes trying to read my expression. "Christopher may already be dead," he says darkly, though I suppose the tone was meant to be gentle. "It depends on how he reacted when they showed up at the clinic. If they thought there was even the slightest chance that he knew, they would have shot him right there."

"Did you see anything?"

"No, I was too busy trying to get you out. I think Suze must have given you a stronger sedative once she realized what was going on, because you were total dead weight."

He isn't as upset as I am; I guess he'd been expecting something like this.

"If I help you," I say slowly, speaking the words as they surface in my mind, "Gwen and I will be in danger. Not just while I'm pregnant, always."

"Not always, only until we can put a stop to the invasion."

"What if we don't stop it? What if the government isn't strong enough, or the aliens have better weapons? Let's face it, I'm probably going to get Gwen killed if I do this."

"No, no. The IRS can put you in the wittness protection program. All they need is the proof of Gwen and pretty soon things will start to get explained. They'll find a way to test people and see who's who. After a while you and Gwen won't even matter any more, they'll have other proof."

"Jeremy," I say, and I sound like a dissaproving mother. "You know that's bull. They have people in congress like my father, of course they've infultrated the other branches of the government. For all I know, the guys who drive me to my new house may turn around and shoot me half way there." He starts to speak and I cut him off. "You're not stupid, you must have thought of all this. Why are you willing to risk me and Gwen if you know there isn't even a chance?"

His face is grim-set. "Because we don't have any other options. There is no other chance. The government won't listen to us, they think we're quacks. You only believe because you've got definate proof. I got put in the mental hospital last year because everybody thought I was schitzophrenic. But what else are we going to do? You're the one with the proof here, and you aren't willing to help me show it around. Until I convince more people, there aren't going to be enough of us who know to do anything before it's too late. Karen." He puts his hand on my knee and I fight the urge to kick it off. "You and Gwen are all we have."

I feel for him, I really do. So I'm an alien, so I was concieved on another planet maybe, messed with in the lab. Big deal. I grew up human, I went to school human, I fell in love human. Those are still my values, never mind what the alien ones may be. All those people who believe desperately that they have to find their birth parents are missing the big picture. We're all born orphans; we find our families as we go.

I'm not willing to give mine up, but if I don't...

"What will the aliens do when they invade?"

He doesn't want to admit that he doesn't know. "It's unclear. They'll take it over, they'll set up shop. They'll probably enslave us."

"But you aren't even sure."

"Does it matter? The whole planet still has a right to know ahead of time. And if they don't have malicious intent, they why didn't they just hail us?"

"Hail us?" Nora asks.

"A Star Trek term," I explain off-handedly. I never watched it until Amanda started, and she never started until she met Jeremy. "He means phone us."

"Why are they hiding if they just want to give us a hand and help us achieve world peace?"

"I don't know, but I don't want to assume anything."

He's getting desperate. I agree with him, in my heart I do, but I recognize the fact that Jeremy is a fanatic. Even if I had a good argument to the contrary, even if I had positive, absolute proof that he was wrong, he still wouldn't be able to accept it. He believes this until he is blind, and that makes me not trust his judgment.

"You've got to trust us," Nora says as if reading my mind. "We just want to protect you. Even if you don't want to go public, they'll still be after you. We can hide you."

"Hide me where?" I ask.

A glimmer of a smile touches her mouth, pride in her eyes. "We can put you inside a bio-stasis chamber, shoot it into space, and let it orbit the Earth until your baby is ready to be born."

"Huh?" Huh?

"I know it sounds sci-fi," Jeremy says quickly, "but it's totally safe. We had a guy up there for six months, and when he woke up he just felt like he'd had a long nap."

Nora adds, "It could be another three years before the fetus's gestation period is over."

"Three years?" I cry.

"Alien gestation is four, human is nine months, we have no way of knowing what kind of combination your child will be."

"You want to put me up there for three years?"

"No, of course not," Nora assures me. "Like I said, we don't know how long your baby will need. The bio-stasis chamber will monitor his or her-"

"Her," Jeremy interjects, but she doesn't seem to hear him.

"-progress, and when changes begin that signal that birth will occur within the next couple of days, we'll bring you down."

"How is this going to hide me from the aliens?"

It's Jeremy's turn to look proud. "We stole the stasis chamber and the ship that's carrying it from them, and it's equipted with a cloaking device, the same one that's been hiding them from earth. We've had it for four years now, and they've never noticed it in orbit. We can fly you up, settle you inside, and when Gwen is ready to be born, fly you down again. And if you still don't want to go public, well..." He sighs. "Then I guess we'll have to honor that, as much as it really sucks for all humans."

I ignore his guilt trip. "What about Christopher?"

"If you tell him that you're alive, he could be in even worse danger than he's in now."

"I can't just leave him for three years wondering what happened to me and Gwen. It would kill him."

Jeremy nods in agreement. "Write him a note saying you ran off with me. That you're sorry, but there never was a baby and we're in love, blah, blah, blah."

"What!?" My jaw drops. "Are you crazy? I can't do that to Christopher. And where are you going to go during all of this?"

"I have to find a place to hide. I have to keep working against the aliens."

Blood rushes to my cheeks. I want to hit him, but the clench the pillow instead. We glare at each other. "Amanda loves you," I tell him, and my voice sounds more hurt than angry, "get that? She really does, and here you are willing to break all of that trust and tell her that you've run off with her best friend?"

"This isn't going to be easy for me either," he replies hotly. "I set foot in Brooke again and somebody will shoot me, I guarantee. I call Amanda, and we're both dead. I don't have a choice about leaving her."

"Of course you do. Why can't we just bring her and Christopher along?"

"That's insane. One person I can hide, not three."

"Stick us all in your space ship."

"There isn't room. We've been able to hide it in orbit for four years because of its small size."

I shake my head, unable to believe I'm hearing him correctly. "You're going to shatter her, Jeremy. It can't really be worth it."

He leans forward, his eyes on fire. "If I don't shatter her," he says in a low voice, "in a few years there won't be anything to shatter."

In the end, I have no real choice. Gwen is helpless, it's my job to protect her. I can't do that on Earth, there are people out to kill us both at all costs. We'll fly up into this crappy little space ship of Jeremy's and get in his stasis-whatever and go to sleep, and I'll wake up when she's finished growing. And then...we'll have to burn that bridge when we get there.

The choice has been made.

I never really had a choice to begin with.

But I will not write the note to Christopher. Even in war, there are standards of behavior that must be upheld, and with the arrival of this apparently sinister alien force, those standards are more important than ever. Besides, when this is all over, I'm going to find him again.

I don't want him to pine for me, and I want to reassure him without putting him in danger. The note takes a long time to write.

Jeremy is silent, distant. He was pleased when I told him my decision, after a long night sitting in a windowless room under the basement, but now the triumphant glow has worn away.

"Are you going to be okay?" I ask as I seal the envelope with Christopher's note inside.

A pause. He isn't unsure of his answer, I sense, but the reasons behind it. "Yes."

"Where are you going to go?"

"There are places for people like me, known enemies. If I keep moving, I might make it." He shrugs.

"You won't even try to talk to Amanda?"

"I can't, I told you."

I stand up and walk toward the door, stopping to touch his arm as I pass. "Just assure me of one thing."

"What's that?"

"You aren't doing this because you know it will hurt her more than anything else."

He doesn't speak for a moment. "It will, won't it?"

I nod. "I was hiding in the closet last night when you went into her room. I heard what she said. She'll never forgive you for running off like this and making a fool out of her."

"Amanda could never be a fool."

"Tell her that."

"And kill her? No, we're already risking way too much with the note. Christopher may not even get it; they have people in the post offices."

"I'll take my chances."

I reach out to give him a huge and press the note into his hand. "Take care," I say, and slip away.

Nora and a few others give me a soft cotton nightgown to put on, and then she asks me to lay down. She injects my arm with a solution that will knock me out. The real fun will come later, when they hook me up to the machines and stick me in the tank. I'm glad I won't be awake for that, or the flying.

My mind is cloudy, the way it was when Suzette did the ultrasound that nearly cost me my life. I want to think of something conclusive, so that if I never wake up I'll at least have set my affairs in order, but nothing comes to mind. I'm too young, I think, to sum it all up so easily. There's so little to sum.

Gwen is quiet, although I can feel her turning around slowly as if confused. "It's okay, baby," I tell her, and my eyelids grow heavy. "We're going to be fine."

Her little nailless fingers rake lightly over my innards in a soothing motion. Already, she has Christopher's sensitivity.

I think of poor Christopher,--Will he ever meet his daughter?--but it's Amanda I'm worried about. Christopher will forgive me, he will survive and be all right. Amanda may not. Suddenly I turn to sleep and welcome it.

The Sleep is long and deep. It's hard to come out of, not because it is comforting, but because it is strong. I'm a part of it, it owns me. I've lost my identity to it.

I sit up abruptly and feel my stomach hit my thighs. What the hell?.... The lights are harsh and the sound of grinding motors come up through the metal floor. Not a floor, a bed, a-

What is going on here? I'm awake, but I get the feeling something is wrong. What was the plan? My head is so foggy and blurred, I thought I was supposed to wake up when Gwen was ready, but I don't feel ready.

Stop, think, look around. Take it one step at a time.

I look down and see my stomach. The swollen shape of it gives me a rush, but at the same time I'm aware that it's very small in comparison to other full-term mothers I've seen. Too early, still. How long has it been?

There are bruises on my arms where tubes and needles have recently been removed. One is still bleeding, and the blood stains my over-grown nails. I look like a vampire, all animal and icky.

I feel icky, like I haven't showered in a week. Actually, it's been more than a week, hasn't it? I shake my head, trying to clear it, and realize that the weight I feel is my hair, now tumbling in red strands over my shoulders.

The room is nothing, more of an alcove, or a crypt shelf. Metal is everywhere, tubes and steel bolts connect machines that look like furnices and hum and rattle unnervingly. They come to life without warning just behind me, or above my head.

I sit up slowly, all cramps and stiff joints. My feet touch the floor, disgustingly long toenails first, and then so does the rest of me as my knees buckle. Ow, I try to whine, but there's a blockage in my throat that has to be hacked at for a moment before I can make any kind of coharent sound. "Hello?" My arms are like sticks and deathly white, not even freckles.

"Karen?"

"I'm in...here."

I can't even see where the doorway is until Jeremy sticks his head between two floor-to-ceiling canisters. "You're awake," he says, crouching quickly beside me. "You shouldn't have tried to get up so fast."

"Sorry," I grumble as he help me to my feet. He looks different, his hair has been chopped unevenly off and there's a scar running over one cheek bone. His eyes are blood shot and have a creaky, dried out look to them.

"What's happening?"

He wraps an arm around my bloated waist and mostly carries me out of the machinery forest, althought he makes a good show of just helping. "It's a long story, but basically we have to get out of here."

"Gwen?"

We squeeze between another set of canisters and emerge into a tiny front seat. There's barely room for me and Jeremy to both sit, and he bumps me constantly as he hits various buttons on the multi-colored dashboard.

"She isn't due yet, but they don't care about you two any more."

"Why not?"

"Wait a minute, Karen. Once we're flying I'll explain."

More machines power up and suddenly we jerk sideway. Gwen moves, stretching as if she too has just woken up, and she's so much bigger than before. Laying my palm flat over my stomach, I can just make out the contours of her head and torso.

Suddenly a window in front of me clears and I can see out into space. Earth looms straight ahead, only patches of land and water visible between the layers of cloud. I'm startled to see another ship pass by, this one moving quickly and looking like nothing so much as a huge rasin. It doesn't even seem to notice this crumy little ship, although the shields must be down if I can see out.

Jeremy pushes a stick, flips a few switches, and we lurch into motion, falling steadily closer to the earth. The machinery fades into a background thrum, and Jeremy heaves a deep sigh. One bruised and oil-stained hand comes up to rub his temple, and I notice that half his pinky finger is gone. His clothes are in poor shape, mud-caked jeans and a shirt that a naked man in Alaska might refuse to put on. He looks so tired, so old and worn.

"Are you okay?" I can't help asking.

He turns his face sideways to see me, still resting his head in his hand. We consider each other for a moment, and then he smiles unexpectedly and reaches out to hug me. "I missed you," he says.

I just woke up, I haven't had time to sort anything out, but the hug is nice. "How long was I out?"

"Twenty months and eleven days," he replies, shifting the few inches back to his own seat. "Feels like forever."

"What's happening?"

"The aliens won, we lost. We've got a deal to get out of here, but it's risky."

"But what about-"

He holds a hand up. "I know, why do you think I woke you up? They had the good sense to get the hell out of Hollywood when all this broke, we can still get them before we leave."

"What? Hollywood? You mean Christopher and Amanda, right?"

"Right."

"What were they doing in Hollywood?"

"Well, Christopher's been making movies, and Amanda's acting as his manager. They're well known around town, apparently. Amanda had some kind of scandal involving an actor and...hold on."

The ship is enveloped suddenly in a thick net of clouds, and I stare out the window to see the shadow of our raisin ship on the fluff below. "Aren't we going awfully fast?" I cry, noticing that the altitude meter has fallen from thirty one thousand feet to twenty four in a matter of seconds.

"We'll stop in time," he promises, but I can't help closing my eyes.

Gwen giggles. I can't hear it with my ears, but there's a rustle in my stomach, and I know intuitatively what it means. She's enjoying this, the flight or my probably irrational panic I don't know which.

"Uh, Jeremy?!"

"Just hold on, Kare."

The ship tilts forward and my stomach bumps against the dash board. "Shit!" Jeremy hollars, and something starts beeping.

"Did I do that?" I ask, but the words are cut off as the whole front of the ship seems to explode.

Fire lies a blanket over the window, then clears as gently as fog. "What's happening?" I gasp, fumbling for a seatbelt.

Jeremy wipes the sweat off his forehead. "We entered the atmosphere without the filters on right. I can't explain it simply, but you aren't supposed to do that."

"So I guessed. Is everything okay now?"

"Yeah." He points toward a patch of forest. "That's where we're going."

"Where is it?"

"California, very north. Christopher and Amanda are hiding out there."

"Then why are we turning away?"

"I need to make a stop first."

I find myself relieved. I can't see Christopher just now, I'm too sleep-shocked and time-lagged. And I must look like hell, wearing this frumpy gray nightgown. I snap off the ends of my fingernails as we land several hundred miles away, in a corn field.

Like we used to when I was little.

Compared to the miraculus speed we've traveled at so far, landing takes forever. Jeremy, his hands flying over the controls, explains how this is an old model shuttle and there's no way to deactive the mechanism that will hide it from human detection. We hover, sheilded, and then float toward the earth, slow so as not to cause unusual winds. An energy field that will stun anything within forty feet is sent out before the shuttle touches down, and when Jeremy helps me tumble out the hatch, I find myself standing on flattened corn.

We're parked in the middle of a crop circle.

I turn around, but the shuttle I've just stepped out of is invisible, still hidden behind its shields. "Jeremy!" somebody calls, and he grabs my hand.

"This way. Are you cold?"

"Kind of." I'm freezing, and running through a field isn't helping. "What month is this?"

"June. You've just been in stasis for too long."

A woman appears out of the corn, and it takes me a moment to recognize her. It's Nora, the same Nora who helped hide me in the shuttle, but her hair has gone mostly gray and like Jeremy, she looks ten or twenty years older.

"Karen!" She throws her arms around me as if we're old friends. "I'm so glad you're okay! When the war broke out we started worrying that you might get caught in the cross-fire, since no one knew to avoid you. Jeremy, you look like hell. Let's get you two inside and have a doctor take a look at you."

There's a building not far away. It looks like a barn from the outside, but the inside walls are plated with steel and stairwells lead downward. Nora talks as she leads us underground, through mazes weakly lit by occasional bulbs and hallways that can only be described as dirt trenches. We pass several large men holding shotguns, who nod to Jeremy and Nora and allow us to pass.

"We tried to get to you months ago," Nora tells me, "when the shooting started, but there was a problem with the Vision's--that's our ship--there was a problem with her cloak and we couldn't take the chance of going down. Luckily Jeremy got hold of a one-man capisul and shoot himself up to you."

She starts talking about the war and everything that's gone along with it, and finally we reach a door with a red cross painted on it and go inside. My legs are weak again, Jeremy is mostly holding me up, and I don't feel any better when I see the body bag lying fully inflated on the floor.

"Uhg."

A Doctor Eve introduces herself and leads me deeper into the room. For once, there appears to be sufficient lighting. She gestures to a cot and sends Nora away.

"You staying, Jeremy?" she asks, helping me lay down. I have to move slowly or I'll topple.

"Karen?"

I nod and reach for his hand. "I'm in some kind of shock, I think. Don't leave."

"How's that foot treating you?" Dr. Eve asks Jeremy as she shoves a thermometer into my ear.

"Doesn't hurt a bit."

"Is that because you have no feeling in it?"

Jeremy merely smiles at her. Despite the age in his face, he's still him. That surprises me, that he hasn't become jaded by this war he's so obviously been in. Intensity still rests in the tilt of his eyes and the corner of his mouth.

"How're you feeling, Miss Bride?"

Funny, I expected her to call me Mrs. Thrice. It's June of the year 2000; I expected to be long married by now.

"Kind of shell-shocked and droopy."

Dr. Eve nods and lays a blanket over my legs. She presses her hand to my stomach and smiles faintly. "Still kicking, isn't he?"

"It's a she," Jeremy corrects.

"Are you sure? I've got a feeling this one is a boy."

Jeremy rolls his eyes while she's looking the other way. "Then why don't you pull our your baby x-rayer and see, Bess?"

"I'm getting there. Don't rush me boy, I've got to give this friend of yours some water before she gets all dehydrated."

I end up with a glass of Gatorade that's cool on my throat and sticky in my mouth. "Am I going to throw this up?"

"You might," Bess agrees. "But I've got to get you back on liquids sooner or later."

She reaches for an unltrasound machine in the corner and I go to stop her. "I don't think that will work. I had one before I went into stasis and they had to sedate me just to get a basic look."

"Let me guess," she says, hooking the machine up and slooping some of that clear goop on my stomach, "it blew a fuse."

I glance up at her. "Yeah."

Bess sighs. "Telekenetic alien babies, I swear. They really don't like the unltrasounds for some reason. Can't figure it out."

The goop is warm and smells strongly of chammomile. Gwen rolls around as if mystified, touching the inside of my stomach, and then draws into a ball and stops moving. "Is she okay?" I ask Bess worriedly.

"Fine, just some weeds to make her sleepy. They respond real well to good old fashion herbs. Now, let's take a look here."

A blurry picture appears on the monitor. I can't even tell it's a baby until Bess draws an outline of Gwen's head with a red marker. "Well," she say, "I'll be damned. It is a girl."

Jeremy looks smug. "How long have you been doing this, Bess? Thirty, forty years? Have you ever guessed right?"

She sets the printer to make a picture of Gwen for me and puts her hands on her hips. "I'll have you know that in my forty-three years of doctoring, this is the first time I've ever guessed wrong."

Jeremy rolls his eyes again and pats my hand. "You look wiped out, Kare. You want to take a nap?"

"Actually, what I'd really like is a shower."

"Oh yeah, that can be arranged."

"And some nail clippers."

He hands me his deluxe Swiss Army Knife.

"And a pair of real clothes."

He frowns. "I forgot about clothes. Hmm. Well, you go take your shower, Bess can show you where, and I'll find you something to wear."

"Thanks."

As he starts to stand up, I lean over and kiss his cheek. "Thanks for everything, Jeremy. I'd be a squashed toad on the road by now if not for you."

He smiles, but it's a little sad. "Well, Mandy never would have forgiven me for that."

The shower is deliciously hot. I step into the dingy plastic square and just lean my head back under the spout, letting rivers of wetness rush over my dry skin. I reach for a bar of lavendar soap and feel Gwen stirr to life as I begin scrubbing. My hair has grown down past my butt, which is jiggly like a bowl of Jell-O, and my breasts are definately a cup large, maybe two. There's fat on my thighs that makes the skin gently pucker, but I can't find it repulsive. Even my stomach, with the skin beginning to spread tauntly and stretch marks making blue slashes across my hips don't bother me. I'm happy like this. A little chubby, a little pregnant, all covered in wet warmth.

But I wish Christopher were here.

It worked, I can't believe it worked. Gwen and I are still alive. It might be okay after all.

But I killed my parents.

And I abandoned Christopher.

And I let Jeremy hurt Amanda.

A simple, iron hard voice inside me replies, "You had to."

Whatever it is that is growing inside me,--and I don't mean Gwen--that strength that maybe I didn't have before all this started, is becoming larger. Maybe I'm hardening or growing up, or admitting that life isn't going to go the way I want it to and I can't change that. I'm accepting it. I'm rolling.

Huh. I think this might be a special moment.

After the shower, Bess loans me a bathrobe to wear and trims my hair. Impulsively, I tell her cut it short, so that it hangs just even with my shoulders, still impossibly straight. We work together at help me cut my nails and clean my ears--oh, the wax build-up!--and then Jeremy arrives with a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.

"Sorry, I know it isn't the kind of stuff you used to wear."

From behind Bess's changing curtain, I call, "What kind of stuff did I used to wear?"

"Oh, you know, size four Donna Karen silk things. Shirts with scarves. Fashion belts. That kind of stuff."

I don't have underpants or a bra, but the t-shirt's fairly large and I don't think my nipples are showing. "Frankly," I say, coming out from behind the curtain, "I'm so glad to be out of that tank, I think I'd be happy in a burlap sack."

Jeremy smiles at me, sprawled with impossible casualness in a metal folding chair. "There are some people who want to meet you. Feel up to it, or do you want to take a nap or eat or what?"

No food, I know my stomach isn't ready for that kind of challenge. I'm tired but not tired enough to sleep, and it seems twisted to get out of the stasis chamber and then go right back to unconsciousness. "Sure, if you don't think they'll mind my outfit."

Bess has gone off somewhere; we're alone. Jeremy nods and walks toward the door. I start to follow when I see him close it and turn the lock. He turns around and looks at me squarely.

"Sit down for a minute, okay?"

"What's wrong?"

Another reassuring little smile. "Don't panic, Karen, isn't not as bad as last time."

I sink into a half-dead arm chair and Jeremy resumes this leisurely pose in the folder. "What's wrong?"

Now he leans forward. "All right, this stays strictly between you and me. No exception until we meet up with Amanda and Christopher. Promise?"

He got me in and out of a stasis chamber floating in space. I trust him. "Promise."

"Good. Here's the deal. When the aliens invaded Earth, the humans lost the war. I mean, we couldn't even make a dent in them. I should know, I was out there. We sucked. But they aren't total assholes, the Kru."

"That's what the aliens are called?"

"Yeah. Kru. They're taking over the planet. We get to live, as slaves of course, but we still get to live. Now, I've been part of this resistence since long before the war broke out, and even though I'm only twenty-"

Jeremy? I think. Twenty? My god, that must mean I'm twenty!

"-I've worked my way up. I've got access to everybody, and we've still got resistence forces working. And at the top of that chain, is a woman named Ghennifer Alby. For a while there was something called NATS, the National Association of Truth Seekers. It was a political group trying to force the President to admit the truth about aliens. They got pretty violent, set off car bombs, did huge demonstrations, blew up the first family."

"Clinton's dead?" I exclaim, although I should have anticipated it.

"Yeah. So is Monica Lewinsky, coincidentially. And England's whole royal family. But that's not important. See, Alby was the head of NATS, and they took over Area 51 from the government back last July, before we had definitive proof that the Kru were here. There was no definitive proof--at least not anyone could get publicized well enough for it to be believed--until November. NATS killed a doctor giving a speech in London Square on how this whole belief in aliens was the result of some pollution in the water system. They fire-torched him, right there on national television, and when they hosed him down, it was pretty obvious that his skeleton wasn't human.

"So the panic spread from there. More proof showed up, and people started believing it. People all over the place were getting murdered because they were 'aliens.' Probably more than half those people were just innocent bystanders, but paranoia is powerful. NATS set itself up as the new militia government. Just before the new year, they announced that Ghennifer Alby was the leader of the Free World's Resistence."

He stops and rubs his head, obviously caught up in the train of it. What have I missed? I wonder. What was life like, to live in this time?

"I was a high-ranking member of NATS, Karen. I didn't set off any car bombs or shoot anybody, though, because I was in intelligence. I was a double agent right from the start. My parents thought I was keeping an eye on you, NATS thought I was making sure nothing happened to you. When Ghennifer Alby announced that Gore was an alien and set up a plan to blow up the White House, I warned him ahead of time. When the Kru figured out that they could open that jar of smallpox and wipe all us annoying humans out, who do you think stole the jar? Sometimes I stole files from Alby and sent them to the Kru in exchange for information. It was a vicious cycle, you know? I'm not even sure what side I'm on, and to top it off, there are way too many sides."

No wonder he looks tired. I lean over and take his hand. "Keep going."

"There are basically four different groups fighting here. You've got the Kru, which wants to enslave the humans and take over the planet, and its counterpart, the Free World's Resistence, which wants to kill all the aliens and keep the planet ours. Then there's the Kru resistence, which thinks they don't need slaves and maybe a couple hundred thousand Kru could do kind of a forgien exchange student thing with a couple hundred thousand humans. They just want to be friends, apparently. And there's the human version of that, which naturally has an acrinym, HAKTIP. It stands for Humans And Kru, Together In Peace. Naturally, if we're going to have save the whales and save the spotted owls, we've got to have a save the aliens group. The Kru resistence and HAKTIP work together a lot of the time, while keeping seperate headquarters, which I think is a good idea. Some of the smartest people around are working with them, and if they had more guns this whole situation might not have blown up the way it has. I guess if I had to pick one side to work for, it would be them, since they know all about me. I've been feeding the Kru resistence information for years now, whatever I heard my parents talking about, but I've never stabbed them in the back the way I have FWR and the Kru."

"And you have some arrangement with them regarding me?" I ask.

"Karen, babe, I have deals with all four groups. This is the ultimate intelligence operation. But in the end, our loyality lies with HAKTIP and the Kru resistence. It's important that you believe that. I know you've been asleep and you haven't had time to hear both sides and make your own judgments, but if you want to get out of this, you need to believe me."

It isn't just age in his face, there's a little wisdom, too. He was a fanatic when I left him two years ago, but he's seen a lot since then. Maybe he's come to look at things without the tint of hatred his home life instilled in him, maybe he fell for a Kru girl, like Christopher accidentally did. I squeeze his hand. "I believe you. My loyality lies with HAKTIP and the Kru resistence."

He nods. "This is where it gets tricky. I talked to the Kru resistence, and they're willing to set you, me, Christopher, and Amanda up on a small planet a couple solar systems away. We aren't the only ones trying to get out of this mess, so it'll be a community of both Humans and Kru. You could live with that, right?"

As he once pointed out, I am living with it. I'm biologically Kru, but I grew up thinking I was human. "Sure."

"Great. I figure it's a good thing, Gwen gets to experience some of both her cultures. Hell, so do you. The planet sounds great, it's called Martic-Skol and they say it's like Jamica year round. You'll love it. But the Kru has control over who's getting in and out of the solar system, and they're a lot better defended than we are. They want something in return for our safe passage."

My skin turns cold. "Gwen?"

"No, of course not. I wouldn't ransom your baby, Karen. I've done all this to take care of her. They want Ghennifer Alby."

My whole chest sags with relief. Stupid thought, that they would want a half-breed baby of no importance.

"The Free World's Resistance is still doing some damage. Not enough to really tilt things in their direction, but enough that Humans aren't going to bow down to the new leaders the way the Kru want them to. They figure that if they can take out Alby, most of the FWR foundation will collapse. Which is probably true. But they can't infiltrate this place because of the way Ghennifer set it up. Nobody even goes near her house if she hasn't known them since before the war started, meaning they aren't aliens spies. I guess what she didn't count on what that some stupid Californian teenager would become a triple agent before he could vote and have the patience to wait three years before he stabs her in the back."

"You have to kill her?"

"No. I have to get her out of here. I told them that I didn't think I could kill her, but I could take her to them. I hate to break it to you, but there aren't a hell of a lot of Humans left. I managed to swindle smallpox away from the Kru, but they whipped up a couple of superflues that took out most of Europe and Asia, and I think all of Africa."

"What about here?"

"Less, partially because of Ghennifer Alby. America has always been a big old symbol of freedom, long before the Kru arrived, but once it became apparent that this was going to turn into an Independance Day senario, everybody remembered how that stupid movie ended and rushed over here."

"How many people are left?"

He sighes, it's almost a groan, and says, "I figure about half a billion."

Half a billion. The number is still to large to think of in terms of individual people, but I know it's about a tenth of how many people there were when I went into stasis.

"How did Christopher and Amanda survive?"

"I sent them notes, telling them when to run and where to go. I never talked to them in person, but I let them know what to do, and they did it. They're holed up in the woods a hundred miles from here, with a full stock of bottled water and canned food. But back to what I was saying about the full scheme of things. The aliens want to break up all the resistence forces on the planet before they try to get into control. And that means, namely, getting rid of Alby however they can."

"Do you have a plan?"

"Yes. You go meet some people, have some lunch, talk shop over crappy coffee, and then go to sleep. This evening, we'll go see Christopher and Amanda. Once we tell them the plan, we have to come back here, knock Alby out, and drag her to your shuttle. The five of us pile on, and take off. In space, we dock with the Kru's ship, Jul, we drop off Alby, and from there we'll meet up with a Kru resistence freighter that will take us to Martic-Skol. Where we learn to speak Kru and live happily ever after."

He waits while I think. "There are an awful lot of holes in this plan, aren't there?"

"Yeah, but we can either take the chance or become slaves on Kru-Earth. And with all the help I've given them over the years, the Kru aren't going to screw me over now. They're actually a pretty loyal bunch."

It is a risky plan, but he's right, there aren't any other options. If I want to get out of here with Christoper and Amanda, we've got to see it through.

That is, if Christopher and Amanda will come with us.

"Okay," I tell Jeremy. "Then that's the plan."

He gets up and hugs me, and I know he's as scared as I am. "Want to meet my buddies? They're a stupid group, but they're kind of fun."

His arms hangs over my shoulder as we start toward the door, and it feels good to know there's someone in all this mess who's on my side. "Sure."

"Karen?"

I blink and feel heavy. The room's semi-dark and smells of dirt. Sleep was nicer. "Yeah?"

"Ready to go see Christopher?"

That gets me awake. "Is it already time?" I ask Jeremy, sitting up.

"You've been out for nine hours."

"It felt like minutes."

"After two years in stasis, I suppose it would. Here, I got you some shoes."

I clambor into my sweat pants and shoes and Jeremy leads me upstairs. Guards nod to us as we pass, and I can't help wondering how we're going to get Ghennifer Alby's unconscious body past them and their big guns.

The night's clear and warm on my dry, cracked skin. I'm feeling a little naushious from the food Bess forced me to eat, soup and crackers with tea. I don't think my long-inert stomach was ready for that; it keeps turning over.

"Are we walking?" I ask.

"I've got a car. It's parked at the edge of the corn field."

"Couldn't the Kru just bomb this place to take Alby out?"

"The whole basement is one big bomb shelter. She never comes out, so they'd only have alterted her to their intentions."

On the hour and a half car ride, we talk about the time I've missed sleeping. "So what have Christopher and Amanda been doing?"

"Well, let's see. Right after you vanished, Christopher's new movie came out."

"The one with Meg Ryan and Robert Downey Junior? He told me it was going to be terrible."

"Oh, it was. But it did real well at the box office and was a huge hit with pre-teen girls. Then 'Teen ran a feature article on young, attractive, behind-the-scene guys in Holleywood, and they asked him to be in it. He didn't want to, but Amanda became his agent and she signed him up. The article got him a huge deal with Paramount. They were going to give him four million dollars if he promised to act in three romantic comedies. He said no to that, but he agreeded to give them a script once every three months, with the first one being right then. In the meantime, Mirimax put out three movies he wrote the scripts for. Apparently once you vanished he just started writing constantly and didn't stop. Mirimax released this triology he wrote, three really artsy films that a lot of critics liked and most people couldn't understand, and they got nods from the Oscars people."

"Wow. Did you see them?"

"Yeah. It's pretty sad, Kare. He wrote about you, and how you run off with his kid to a religious cult and stuff."

"Are you sure it was me?"

"Let's see, the male lead is named Chris, the female lead is Kara, and the baby's name is Jenn. Yeah, I'd say it was about you. Anyway, the three movies span forty years of something, and they're pretty good. But in the meantime, he's still been putting out these stupid romantic comedies with Paramount. There was 'Heartfelt,' and 'Prom Night," and one other. Oh yeah, 'Inevitably Yours.' That was the worst one. He wrote some disgustingly sappy crap while you were away. But now everything's shut down, so I guess he's out of work. Everybody in Hollywood says he's gay."

"Is he?"

Jeremy laughs. "You mean, did you drive him to homosexuality? No, he just doesn't date."

"What about Amanda?"

"She's not gay, either."

"No, I mean what has she been doing?"

"Oh." He sighs. "Well, she went to Hollywood with Christopher to be his agent, and she met this actor named Robbie. They got married last July, divorced in October, and he was executed in February for being a planetary traitor. Amanda went to FWR and said he was an alien, that he used to do all kinds of shit when they were alone, so they killed him."

There's an edge to Jeremy's voice that makes me think that there's more to the story than he's telling me, but I expect I'll hear it all soon enough.

"You really haven't talked to her since that day?"

"I really haven't."

"Are you going to....I mean, do you still care?"

He glances at me. "That's a very strange question."

I just wait silently until he gives in.

"Maybe. I don't know if I still care about her, people can change a lot in two years. Maybe we're both older and it could never work now. But....I know there are still things between us that have to be resolved."

Fair enough, I think.

The roads are seemingly endless. The highway stretches out silently in all directions, one miles the same as the next. Jeremy and I are the only ones out on the road tonight, just us and the occasional car stranded in the middle of the road. We weave slowly around a pile-up, and I see the bodies left unattended in the cars, rotting in the June heat. Where were they running when they died?

The gentle jolt of the car relaxes me, and I tilt my chair back a little. Gwen plays tic-tac-toe on the inside of my stomach and Jeremy pushes the car to eighty-five. I would be worried, but there's no one to hit and no traffic to maneuver.

"Tell me about the war," I say.

"What do you want to know?"

"Was there pandimonium in the streets?"

"Lots. People went crazy. You know how it is, they get suspicious, they get scared. During the middle ages, when the plague was still around, people who were infected got bricked up inside their houses with their whole families. Even if the other family members weren't sick, they just bricked them all up and left them there to die. That's kind of how it was here, only with guns. People came up with all sorts of tests to check and make sure you weren't an alien. The most popular was a pregnancy test, for men anyway. Some of the women were just genuinely pregnant, but I can't tell you how many of those damn tests I had to take, just to get through the cities. Even if you wanted to buy gas, you had to piss on one before you could fill up. Then there was the blue-eyes out-break, when somebody decided that everyone with blue eyes was an alien, and I can't tell you how many people died in that panic. The symptoms went through fads, eye color, hair color, if you have an extra finger, if your thumbs are double jointed, or your elbows."

"My elbows are double jointed."

"I know. All the Kru are. Knees, too. Some of the symptoms were based on fact, and some were just nonsense. I actually had to recite the alphabet backwards before this one lady would let me into the grocery store in Kansas."

"Were you scared?"

"Hell, yeah. Everybody was. I'm still surprised some mornings to wake up and find out I'm still alive."

The sky is clear above us, cloudless and full of stars, but some of those stars are moving. Not with flashing colored lights like airplanes, or quick bursts of motion like shooting stars, just dripping gently along the edges of the great blue dome.

Jeremy slows and turns onto a side road, and we bounce over a few miles of gravel before it turns to damp dirt. He gets the spedometer hover at twenty-five as the car shuffles forward. I close my eyes and wait until he kills the engine and touches my arm.

"We should walk the rest of the way," he says. "The road's a mess, and it's only a few blocks."

He takes my hand and waves a flashlight in front of us as I stumble in my slightly-too-large shoes. There's mud everywhere, and chilly rainwater drips into my hair from tree branches above.

"They're messing with the atmosphere," Jeremy tells me, his voice just above a whisper. "They like it wetter."

A light appears between the trees, and my heart begins to throb in my chest. I scramble along the road, which is littered with pot holes and puddles of dank smelling water, until we reach a flagstone path that leads to the front door.

"There's a slim chance we may be shot," Jeremy whispers as we approach. "Maybe you should have stayed in the car."

"No," I hiss, and reach out to hit the doorbell.

His strong hand clenches on my arm. "Only aliens use doorbells," he tells me, and knocks solidly on the door. I had thought it was wooden, but now I hear the hollow bang of reinforced steel.

Jeremy pulls me back a foot and points to the ceiling. "There's a camera built in there, look up at it so they can see who you are."

I look up, try to compose my face in a friendly but not smiling expression. It doesn't seem right to smile now, I know Christopher is going to be so angry.

After a solid two minutes, the door slowly swings open into a living room.

Amanda looks beautiful. Her jeans are torn and her sweater is ragged from too many washings. The yellow light in the room gives her face a pallid, shadowed look, but her eyes reach out, as dark and intense a green as ever. Her hair is a mess, one check marked with the pattern of a pillowcase, and her lips part damply.

"Hey, Anda," Jeremy says.

She looks at him, looks at me, then away. My legs tighten with the urge to leap forward and throw my arms around her. Give her time, Karen, give her time. It's been two years for her, and one long night for you.

Now the airconditioning from inside begins to seep out, and I can feel it around my still chilled body. Amanda glances at the floor, as if she can see the cool air flooding out, and steps slowly back, opening the door further.

Jeremy tugs me gently inside. The living room is faded orange, the window covered with thick curtains, the walls bare. Crates of books line one wall, across from the plaid sectional that curls around two sides of the room. A few comforters have been tossed on it, I imagine Amanda was sleeping there when we knocked.

She closes the door behind us, locks it carefully, and replaces a huge steel bar. Then she turns, and I'm suddenly horrifically aware of my stomach, of how it's grown, of what a proclimation of innocence it must seem to her, a sign saying I've done nothing wrong, that I'm just a young mother trying to protect her child and she has no right to be angry at me for it. But I don't want to deny Amanda her hurt and fury, and I can't help blushing with shame.

"Where the hell have you two been?" she says, breaking the silence. Her voice is simply Artic.

Jeremy steps forward and she waves a hand to stop him. "Don't come near me. For all I know you could be one of them, both of you. I'm an idiot just for letting you in here."

"Don't panic," Jeremy says, his voice soft but firm. "There's a lot going on here, I know you're stunned to see us, but if we can just sit down, I can explain everything."

Amanda's eyes travel over me, over the buldge in my waistline. "I see you knocked my best friend up," she says to Jeremy. Then to me, "Jesus, Karen, didn't you learn your lesson the first time?"

Her eyes are furious. The tucks at the corners of her mouth were carved with daggers and her eyebrows are the work of a furious painter slashing at his canvas. I turn away and touch the back of the couch.

"Don't," Jeremy says harshly. "The baby is Christopher's."

There's a moment of pause, and then Amanda says, "Oh christ," and I look over my shoulder in time to see her pull a gun out from the small of her back. It's slender, it fits snugly in her hand, and the black metal reflects the orange light from the lamp on the coffee table.

Jeremy streches his hands out automatically, to let her know he isn't armed. "Amanda, stop this. Don't do anything crazy here."

"I'm not the crazy one," she says, and I can see from the expression on her face that she isn't. Her faculties are in full focus, it's the world that's gone mad.

There's a dog barking from the direction of what must be the kitchen. A large dog, with a deep, threatening bark.

"Mandy," I hear myself say, and she looks at me. She's lost weight, how much I can't tell, but too much. The jeans she's wearing a clenched with a leather belt, the loose end flapping against her thigh.

"Karen?"

Oh, his voice. I turn my head, and he's standing at the bottom of the stairs, one hand holding the banister, poised, one foot still resting on the last step. His hair is so much longer, longer than mine is now, a thousand shades of maroon, of wine, of glittering scarlet and crimson.

His eyes are wide, and I can almost see him trembling inside.

"Christopher?"

He looks at Jeremy, then at the gun. "Amanda? What are you doing?"

She grits her teeth. "He says the baby is yours. You know what that means. You were right, she's a goddamn alien."

My knees start to buckle and I ease back onto the arm of the couch. Amanda swings the gun in my direction at the sudden movement and I lift my hands weakly.

Christopher steps beside her, and we all stare at each other, stunned. "It's true then," Christopher says. "What your parents said about you, that Gwen...."

Tears fill my eyes. "It's true.

"What about you?" he asks Jeremy. "Are you an alien, too?"

"No. I was part on an experiment, just like Karen. I grew up in an alien family, knowing they were aliens, she grew up in a Human family, unaware that she was an alien."

"The Moxy Project," Christopher breathes. "I heard about it on the news."

"I didn't know," I blurt out. "I swear I had no idea until I told them I was pregnant, then they just went crazy on me and started screaming...."

He's nodding, and I'm crying, and Amanda is slowly lowing her gun. "Why are you here?" she asks.

Jeremy sighs with relief and I just keep crying, staring into Christopher's beautiful gray eyes. He starts to step forward and hesitates. His face breaks and he turns away, his hand clasping onto Amanda's arm.

"I've got a way for us to get off the planet," Jeremy is saying, but it's like background music. All I can see is Christopher with his forehead pressed against the wall. "We can get out of here, go to a safe place. Karen can have her baby and no one will kill it because it's a half breed. It's not much, but it's a little peace in all this, and it's the only chance we have."

Suddenly the gun is back up, and Amanda is striding forward, slamming the barrel into Jeremy's chest. "What the hell are you doing here, Jeremy?!" she hollers. "It doesn't work like this. You left, you're gone, you don't get to come back."

"I'm here to help you," he protests as he stumbles backward.

"You don't get it, do you? I don't want you back!"

I watch numbly as he tears the gun out of her hand and throws it against the wall of the living room. I can't help ducking as it flys past me.

"Am I just supposed to leave you here and watch while the Kru make you into a slave? I did all of this because I thought you'd want me to. Karen's your best friend-"

"Karen's dead!" Amanda shouts, and Jeremy steps back. Christopher slides to the floor, back against the wall, his face twisted in a perpetual wince.

Jemery points at me and says lowly, "Karen's right there." Amanda continues to stare resolutely at the wall, and he lashes out, grabbing her head and twisting it, thrusting her onto her knees before me.

"She's right there, Amanda! Right in front of you, pregnant, scared to death, and totally alone. She didn't do this, I did. I was the one who got her out of the clinic, I was the one who stuck her in a biostasis chamber floating in space for two years. Look at her, Amanda, that's your best friend sitting there, and she hasn't done jackshit to you."

All I can see in Amanda's face is the hurt, the holes my vanishing poked in her paper heart. I'm crying but her eyes are dry, dry as the desert and just as painfully brite. "Don't blame her," Jeremy finishes in a rough whisper, and stumbles back as he releases her, then reaches up to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

Amanda softens, bites her lip, and I can't help sliding off the couch and into her arms. "I'm sorry, Mandy, I didn't know what else to do. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry...."

Amanda doesn't respond, only presses her face against the shoulder of my tee-shirt and holds me with an iron grip. She smells of cheap laundry detergent and moth balls, but I don't mind. Her body is small and warm, and still Amanda, and still missing me, and still mine.

She finally pulls away, never one for displays of affection, and says, "I'll go find you a Kleenex."

I can't stop crying. I don't know if it's relief, or sympathy for the hell Christopher and Amanda have been put through, or just frustration and fear, but the tears keep coming and coming. "Kare," Jeremy says gently, "come on, it's not that bad. Get up off the floor."

I allow him to shuffle me onto the sectional, and the angle blocks me from seeing Christopher as Jeremy speaks to him in a quiet, simple voice.

He talks with hurry about his family, about growing up Human in a Kru household, about the experiments, the eventual outcome, the planned take-over. He tells Christopher about the lack of proof, the government infultration my father was a part of, about how he discovered me, an unaware Kru child believing herself to be Human. He speaks of getting close to me, of hopelessly stumbling into Amanda instead, of Gwen and his fierce determination to save her.

"I admit," he says without ego, "at the time I wasn't really thinking of you or Karen or your baby. All I could see was the bigger picture, that we could use Gwen to expose the Kru to the government, and maybe stop things before they went too far. That's why I worked so hard to keep her safe, why I rigged up the stasis chamber and arranged everything. All I could think was that I could save everybody."

Christopher's voice is so rough and broken I can barely hear him. "And now?"

Jeremy's sigh echoes clear across the room. "The bigger picture is gone, Chris. The war is over, and we lost. The best chance we have is for the four of us to get the hell off Earth while there's still some confusion going on and I have bargining chips left."

Amanda comes to sit beside me, a handfull of toilet paper folded between her fingers. "It was all I could find," she says, and then stares at her knees.

Jeremy is helping Christopher off the floor, leading him to the couch, and a fragile silence comes over the room. I feel Amanda shudder beside me. The chill covering my skin has yet to go away, but the air conditioner has shut itself off.

"You couldn't have written?" Amanda asks suddenly. "You couldn't have made a quick phone call, or had somebody deliver a message or anything?"

"I did write. I left notes in your mailbox."

"You didn't even sign them! They were so cryptic, couldn't you have at least added, 'Oh yeah, Karen and I are fine.'"

"This is meaningless, Amanda."

"Meaningless? How can you call this meaningless? Do you know how I worried about you? Do you know how many times I thought Christopher was going to kill himself? Is it meaningless if it tore us both apart? And here you are, Mister Adjusted, Mister Fix-It. You think we're just supposed to accept that you had to do it, that there was no other way?"

"This wasn't easy for any of us."

"I asked for one thing from you. Just one thing." I can feel her trembling beside me. "It wasn't too much to ask."

Christopher meets my eyes, and the shock is gone from his face. He looks at me with clarity, with the strength I remember, and breathes deeply. His gaze strays to my stomach, and the corners of his mouth pinch. "Gwen," I mouth. He shakes his head and I nod quickly.

Jeremy and Amanda are still fighting, in dark, griding voices that strike like lightening with each word. "I needed you," he says. "When I was out in the middle of space, alone, believing I was going to die, all I could think of was you, and of how unfair this whole situation has been."

"You hurt me!" she rages. "You found out where I was volunerable and then you stabbed me as hard as you could!"

"Is that what you think? That I used you for some arcane purpose? Jesus, Anda, did it mean anything that I told you every sad, disgusting secret I know about myself?"

"Then why?"

"Because there was no other way!"

I let them yell and scream. Amanda gets up to pace and Christopher eases onto his feet. The smell of him comes back to me, ocean air and wine, as he kneels against the couch and reaches out so hesitantly. I think he'll reach for Gwen, stroke the skin surrounding her, but his hand comes to rest on mine, warm and dry.

"I loved you, I did. I always have."

"Then how you could you do this to me?"

Christopher's face turns up to mine, and I feel him searching me with his eyes, trying to see the age in me. I see the age in him, buried in the corners of his mouth, tucked between the creases in his brow.

What he finds in my face he doesn't say, but he straightens and helps me up from the couch. Aware of my toddler-balance, he guides me upstairs, into a dark hallway and then through the door of a bedroom. The curtains here have been parted so that the moonlight can shine along the sharp edges of the boxes and crates lining the floors. Christopher closes the door with a soft click and gestures for me sit on the bed before positioning himself beside me.

He's still holding my hand, and the light turns his face blue and white, like the surface of the moon. There are tears streaming down my face; they tickle until Christopher reaches out and brushes them away.

Without warning we're hugging. I'm crying, he's shaking, from below furious voices rise through the floorboards.

I can't help laughing a little. "You can yell at me if you want."

"I don't want to. I can't even think about yelling."

"I'm so sorry, Toph. I didn't want to do it, but I was scared they would come after Gwen again like in Venice. All I could think was that I had to save her before I did anything else, and Jeremy was there with this crazy idea about a biostasis chamber-"

"That's where you've been?" He's laughing even as he cries. "You mean all these times I've wished on stars, I was actually wishing on you?"

Still so romantic. Still so sweet to me, so angerless.

"Have you been okay?" he asks.

"Yeah, it was just like taking a really long nap. It feels like I just saw you two days ago."

"Instead of two years."

These are scars on his hands, as if from burns. "What happened?"

He lifts them into the moonlight for me to see. "I got caught in the mall during a riot last year. Somebody blew up a Sears and a piece of debris landed on me."

I run my fingertips over the riased marks and then guide Christopher's hands slowly to my egg-shaped stomach. "No," he whispers.

"She's there."

"Karen, I can't-" He breaks off, and I know it's too much for him to process. "I stopped hoping. I gave up."

"But she's here." He keeps dragging his hands away and I keep dragging them back. From downstairs, I can hear Amanda screaming at the top of her lungs.

"Christopher," I say.

He looks up at me, his face is streaked with tears.

"It's okay. You can have a little hope again."

I put my arms around him again and we melt into the bed, his cheek pressed to my stomach. Gwen kicks and he sobs.

Later, when Christopher has fallen asleep, I get hungry and go downstairs. There's a broken vase at the bottom of the living room wall, but the screaming stopped almost an hour ago. Jeremy is gone, and Amanda is sitting silently on the couch without much expression. Next to her is an enermous Newfoundland with gray fur. It's at least the size of a small pony, but its head rests peacefully on her knee.

"Hi," I say hesitantly. She glances over, nods slightly. I see a box of Ritz crackers and grab them, then sit down beside her. The room is warmer than it was before, mostly because of cozy shadows the lamp throws over everything.

"Is it okay if I eat these?" I ask.

She nods. "Chris and I robbed a supermarket before we came up here; there's six cases of those crackers in the basement."

I tear open a package and eat one whole, famished. Amanda accepts one and chews it slowly, her eyes trained on the far wall. She seems so distant that I'm startled when she speaks.

"Jeremy went to bed," she says. "I told him to, that I wanted him to go to bed and die in his sleep. I said then this whole thing would come to a nice end, he could screw me over and then die the American dream. I guess that was kind of mean." She reaches for another cracker. "He started crying."

"Christopher cried, too," I tell her.

"Probably out of happiness. I'm surprised he didn't faint when he saw you. He's been passing out since you left, even at the Golden Globes."

"Did you go with him?"

"Yeah, me and my abusive husband. I gotta tell you, Karen, I never would have married that asshole if you'd been around. Just wouldn't have happened the way it did."

"Mandy." I reach for her hand and she doesn't shake me off. "I'm sorry."

"I know. It's not even you I'm angry at. What were you supposed to do, call while you were asleep? And you did it to protect Gwen, I can't fault you there."

My stomach turns and I wonder if maybe I should have waited another day before attempting solid foods. "Jeremy did what he thought was right. He really did."

"Yeah, right. He left these notes in my mailbox, saying stuff like, 'Leave L.A. immediately.' Like he's my freaking fairy godmother or something."

She's so old, I think. There's some sweetness that life on Earth has burned away. The wars, the riots, this jerk she married. She's in pain and it isn't going away.

I eat another cracker and feel my stomach rise up in my chest for a moment. Carefully, I set the cracker roll down on the couch and stand up. "I'm going to sleep, okay?"

"Sure, go. But Karen?" She grabs the back of my shirt as I start to turn. "If you ever hurt Christopher like that again, good reason or no, I'll kill you."

Her eyes are dead serious, the green a covering for some black abyss that has grown in her over the last two years. I don't want to see it; she's my best friend.

But I know there's something wrong with Amanda.

I nod and tell her goodnight. She continues to sit silently on the couch, staring at nothing. I duck into a bedroom and find Jeremy asleep on a matress on the floor, his face deflated and worn with shadows.

The crackers continue to bother my intestinal tract. I stop by the bathroom and feel much better afterward.

Christopher wakes up when I climb under the blankets beside him. "You're still here," he says.

"I just went downstairs to talk to Amanda."

His arms are hesitant around my shoulders. "Don't worry," I tell him, "I won't go poof."

He nods and buries his face in my shoulder.

What happened to the old days, when Christopher was my hero and Amanda my sarcastic sidekick? They are so bruised and heartsick, I barely recognize them. This war has made strangers of everyone. Jeremy, if anything, seems more rational. His fanaticsm has faded, but with it his enthiusasm.

Where does that leave me? The day we graduated the world was paradise. I was young and in love and the stars in the sky were only stars. Now as I look out the window I see a couple of them moving around each other, like fairies doing a Spanish stalking dance.

Even I am not untouched. True, I slept through the war, but my transformation began long before that, the night I smoked my parents to death. There's an iron in me that I'm not totally comfortable with, a determination to survive that goes beyond anything I've ever felt before. I have to take care of Gwen. I'm her mother.

"Karen?" Christopher whispers. There's dread in his voice.

His hands are on my stomach. Which is flat....

"Oh god," I breathe.

Every little girl's worst nightmare of giving birth has come true.

I shat my baby out in the tiolet.

Getting caught up in the blankets, I throw myself out of bed and dash for the bathroom. My shoulder catches painfully on the doorframe but I ignore it. "Karen?" Christopher says again as I vanish into the hallway.

I have to force my fingers to the lightswitch. I don't know if I want to see this.

The toilet is white, with one of those puffy seats that make a farting noise when you sit on them. Clasped over the side of the seat is a tiny hand, greasy with blood.

I step forward on weak knees.

There's a baby in the toilet.

The little arm is attached to a tiny body, which is sitting in a pool of redish water. Christopher appears behind me, and his breath is ragged in my ears.

"Is that....?"

I kneel beside the toilet and I touch the little hand. It's warm, and as I rub it gently with one finger, the head turns to look face me. Oh, oh. She has Christopher's hair, deep wine red laced with strands of maroon and silver, and my eyes, bright green edged with blue.

She blinks at me. She's sitting in the toilet, my alien baby. Her eyes are huge, and her nose is tiny, but she looks so human.

I have to get her out of the toilet.

"Christopher, grab a towel."

She isn't crying. Her eyes go from me to Christopher, so alert, so aware of everything going on around her. I slide my hands into the toilet bowl and wrap them gently around her waist, and she looks down at them, interested at her first human contact. She doesn't complain as I lift her, although her fingers clench around my wrist.

Christopher is there, not with a towel but a pillowcase. He stretches it out on the floor and I lay this squirming thing in my arms down. There's a little gob of blood on her cheek that I can't resist wiping away, it smears over her skin.

"Dear God," Christopher breathes. We're clutching at each other. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I had this stomach ache, and then I went to the bathroom and I guess she must have...."

"Popped out?"

I giggle hysterically. The baby--dare I call it Gwen?--stretches, and I'm able to see each perfect detail.

"Twelve fingers," Christopher says.

"What?"

"Two thumbs. She has two thumbs on each hand, like the Kru. Two big toes."

He reaches out and touches her hesitantly, running his fingers lightly over her stomach. "No belly button."

"We have to wipe her off."

"Yeah."

He bundles up some toilet paper and runs warm water over it, and together we clean the baby off. She's very small, smaller somehow than I expected, utterly miniture. She watches us, even lifts her arms for us, she smiles.

"I don't think normal babies can smile when they're born," Christopher says.

"No, probably not." I swallow. I don't want to look at her for a moment. I don't want to see the extra thumbs or the huge green eyes. I don't want to find any signature of her half alien heritage.

I close my eyes and lean my face against Christopher's shoulder. "God, she's not normal, is she?"

One of his arms is wrapped around me, cherishing a presence he must not have felt in so long. "No," he agrees. "She's not normal. She's ours."

I lift my face and he kisses the tears, and then we're both crying again, and the baby watches us with concern for a few minutes before beginning to cry herself.

"Do you want to pick her up, or should I?"

"I'll do it."

In my arms, she's easier to accept. Her toes and fingers mean less, she's still a baby. I find a clean sheet and swaddle her up like baby Jesus, and still she cries, as if just now realizing that she's been born and things have changed drastically.

"Karen?" Jeremy calls from the end of the hall. He pokes his head out the door, and I watch him waver between a smile and a sob.

"She just came out," Christopher says, still stunned.

Jeremy walks slowly toward us. "Yeah, that's the way they are. I....I didn't think she'd be born for a while yet, maybe coming out of stasis triggered it or something." He stops standing beside me, peering into the heart of the blankets. "She's awfully small, Karen."

"She cried, her lungs must be okay."

"What about her tail?"

"Her tail?" Christopher and I both cry.

Jeremy smiles. "You didn't check. Never mind about the tail, this complicates things."

"Will we still be able to get out?"

"I think so. Small adjustments, that's all." He rubs his eyes, which are puffy and sore. "We need to leave here in ten hours, the three of you should get some rest. I'm going back to bed." He kisses my cheek turns away. "Congradulations," he calls as he wanders back down the hall, but I can see the flash of utter joy in his face as he leaves. He has worked almost as hard for this as I have.

Christopher and I return to his bedroom and sit on the mattress to stare at the baby. The house feels too quiet to me, people should be screaming and yelling, champaign bottles should be fizzing onto the floor. But circumstances are different. It's just us, and as we lay down on either side of her to marvle, that seems not just special but sacred. This time the three of us have, in moments still so new, are a strange blessing.

The baby falls asleep as if she can't help it, but not before wetting the sheet. Christopher laughs and rolls her into a new one. I find my own eyes slipping shut, and a hollow feeling fills me, a sort of pain as if everything is returning to normal size. A contracting pain. I'm dizzy and suddenly exhausted, and Christopher lays beside me and holds my hand, the baby dozing on his chest, as I drift into sleep.

When I wake up, I feel a little weary. Not that, I-just-ran-up-the-stairs breathlessness, but a deeper, colder exhaustion that makes me want to lay down again. It's just my body, I'll try to push it away, because my heart is beating quick and I feel I'm ready for anything.

Christopher is sitting on a crate near the door, just watching me. He smiles and there are tears in his eyes still.

"Where is she?" I ask.

"Downstairs with Aunt Amanda." He climbs off the crate and sits beside me on the mattress, brushing the hair off my face with one hand. "I can't quite believe all this."

"Why not?"

"Because I really did give up on you." He opens his mouth to go on and closes it; he doesn't have the words.

"I want you to kiss me now, okay?" I tell him.

"Okay."

He seems unsure, I remind myself how long it must be he's waited for this. He loweres his face to mine, his long, beautiful hair falls all around us, and reach up to touch his face. Our mouths meet flush together, it's the simplest kiss, the warmest. I don't which one of us pushes it further, but in a moment we're holding onto each other, and I can feel his reassuring weight against me the way I used to, and he's whispering between my lips that he loves me.

We let it last a few minutes, we wallow and relax in each other. "I feel like I have all my strength back," he tells me. "You were strong without me."

"No. I used to think I was, but when you left, I couldn't handle it."

"Did you survive? Yes, you were strong enough to wait for me to come back. That's what matters."

He kisses me again. It's nice, although my body where he touches me feels so misshapen and unfamiliar. When we've satisified ourselves as much as we can in the minutes we have, he helps me to my feet and leads me downstairs.

Amanda is sitting on the couch again, and in the split second before she sees me, she looks shockingly beautiful. The anger has left her face. It is soft and fond as she cuddles the baby lay on her lap.

Then she looks up, and the hurt returns; her moment of repreive has ended. She doesn't scowl, but the unconscious smile she wore slips away. "Hi," she says distantly.

"How's the baby?" I ask.

"Very small. I measured her. She's only fifteen inches long."

"Does she seems okay?"

I sit down beside Amanda and rub the back of a chubby hand.

"I think she's hungry. Have you tried feeding her yet?"

"No."

"We'll be leaving in an hour, you should do it now."

I lift the baby carefully and hold onto her. She's light and flexible, like a furless kitten. She has eyebrows that look like hesitant red pencil strokes.

Amanda starts to get up, and I grab her hand. "Wait a second."

"Yeah?"

She doesn't want to brush me off, but I can tell she's also uncomfortable. Christopher's heart is too big, he can't help welcoming me with open arms. Amanda, in her cynical mind, knows better.

"You'll be her godmother, won't you?"

She seems surprised. "Me?"

"Who else would we ask?" Christopher says. "She's named after you."

"Will there be a church where we're going? Will there even be a baptism?"

"We'll baptise her," I say. "We could do it in the kitchen sink now if we had time. But it doesn't matter too much about the religiousness, as long as she knows you love her."

Amanda stares at me, and I sense again this wrongness in her. A dangerous rage. "Of course I will," she says simply, and turns away.

After she's gone upstairs, I say to Christopher, "Is she all right?"

He sighs and curls up next to me. "We both delt with it in our own ways. Amanda's been through a lot, more than I have probably. Give her some time."

"The guy she married, she called him abusive last night."

"Yeah, he used to smack her around."

"Was he really an alien?"

Christopher averts his eyes. "They executed him as a planetary traitor."

"Because Amanda said he was Kru. But was he?"

It takes him a long time to answer. "I don't know."

"Oh."

In a voice that doesn't want to push me away but still has an edge, he goes on, "Sometimes good people do bad things to survive. You should know that better than anyone."

He's talking about my parents, bless his heart. He did know, he probably always knew. "I do."

He leans close to run a finger down Gwen's cheek. She promptly opens her rosebud lips and bites it. "Karen?" he says.

"Yeah?"

"Don't ever lie to me again, okay?"

I close my eyes against his wine-smelling hair. "Okay."

"All right," Jeremy says, "here's the plan."

We're gathered around on the kitchen floor, a bare bulb hanging above us and rocking like in a bad horror movie. Jeremy has floor and electrical layout maps for the bunker, and he's circling things with blue and red china markers. Amanda has the giant dog--whose name, she has told me, is Lowell--almost in her lap, and Christopher has a hand laid unconsciously on my bare ankle. His skin is wonderfully warm.

I'm having trouble concentrating because Gwen is being brestfed for the first time. I've heard that babies usually require a couple of tries to understand what they're supposed to do, but she got it right away, and now I'm dealing with the strange sensation of peeing out one breast. At least, that's what it feels like.

"When the bunker was first built," Jeremy says, "it was just the landing port, the hallway, and these six rooms. Later on, the outer hallway and about fifteen more rooms were added, but the old wiring system was too fragile to support that kind of power. Instead of riping the old one out, the builders just added a second system. Here's the switch box for the inner system, including the landing port. It's in a closet here, between these two rooms, and there's also a generator inside that will turn on automatically once the power has been out."

"You're going to blow the power?" Christopher asks. "What about the outer system? Won't is still be running?"

"I'm getting there. We'll come in this entrace, all four--er, five, of us, and walk down this hall. There will be two guards here," he points to the front door, "and two more here," he indicates the entrance to the outer hallway. "There are more in the hallway, but we're just going to pass through it into the inner hallway. Along the way, I'm going to stun all four guards with my stun gun."

"You have a stun gun?" I can't help asking.

"Yes, but only six bullets. We'll need four for the guards, so I can't afford mistakes. Christopher and Amanda will grab the guard on the right at the exact moment I shoot the one on the left, and then I'll shoot the one they're holding."

"Wait a minute," I inturrpt. "Where will I be?"

"I want you at least fifteen feet behind us at all times."

"Why?"

"Because you'll be carrying Gwen, and you can't carry a baby and fight at the same time."

"Couldn't Amanda hold Gwen?"

He looks at me. "Karen, you gave birth like six hours ago. If the world were normal you'd still be in the hospital under anstetic right now. No way I'm letting you help knock people out."

"I agree," Christopher puts in.

I sigh. They're right of course. I am tired, I'm not looking forward to this, and my maternal warning has kicked in unexpectedly; I don't want to put Gwen down until we're on that planet.

"Go on," Amanda says. She still sounds cold, but at least she's speaking to Jeremy again.

"After we knock the guards out, we move into the inner hallway. Alby will be in one of these rooms, and first we'll have to find her. I'll need to be there with her, so either Christopher or Amanda will have to find the generator closet on your own."

"I'll do it," Amanda says.

"Mandy-" Christopher begins.

"Your baby was just born," she snaps. "I'm not letting you do the hard stuff."

Jeremy glances at them, making sure an agreement has been reached, and continues. "While Amanda heads for the generator closet, Karen will go to the launch pad. I'll give you a code to get the door unlocked, the guards all met you earlier, so it shouldn't be a problem. But make sure you get the door open quickly, and don't close it behind you because it's stuck once the power goes out. Amanda, here's a diagram of the fuse box. When you get in there, turn on the switch that says, 'Launch Pad Emergency Generator,' to ON. Once you hear it humming, then tear out all the fuses you can. There are two doors out of the closet, and you want the one to the right of the fuse box. Go into that room, follow the wall left, and you'll reach another door that Karen will have opened from inside for you.

"Christopher and I will find Alby and stall until the lights go out. From there we have less than two minutes to grab Alby, meet in the launch pad, and get the ship going."

"Less than two minutes?" Christoper says. "We'll never make it."

"Sure we will. We just have to work fast and keep our heads."

"Can you tell me how to get the shuttle started?" I ask. "That way I can get it...warm up, I guess, and ready to go when you guys get there."

"Good idea, especially since we're taking the good ship this time, instead of my old cruiser. I'll write out instructions on the drive over. Speaking of which, we need to leave in fifteen minutes. Does everybody have everything?"

"I want to bring Lowell," Amanda tells him.

Jeremy looks at her. "You...I don't think...."

"I'm bringing him," she says again.

"I'd kind of like to, too," Christopher puts in. "He's been like a security blanket this last year, and I'd feel terrible if I left him here."

Jeremy shakes his head and then shrugs. "Okay, whatever. The dog comes. Karen, you take him with you directly to the lauch pad and get him into the ship. Maybe we can find an extension chord to use as a leash or something."

When we've gone over the plan twice more, and all know our parts, we split up to finish packing and carrying things out to the van. Gwen has fallen asleep in my arms, so Christopher does most of the hauling. We gathered together as many towels as we could find earlier, and hopefully there will be something on Martic-Skol resembling diapers.

Gwen's tail is very small, and very cute. She keeps it rolled up in a tiny knot at the base of her spine, so I can't tell how long it is, but it makes me think of a baby monkey. It's not nearly as horrifying as I was expecting.

When everything is packed, and we're all buckled up in the van, and the house is locked, Jeremy gets behind the wheel. He puts the key in the ignition and begins to turn it, then stops. His hand falls to his knee.

"Jeremy?" Christopher says, from up front beside him. I'm in the middle bench with Gwen, Amanda, and Lowell.

"I just...." Jeremy says weakly. "I'm not sure I can keep doing this. I mean, if we don't make it this round, I don't know if I even want to bother trying again."

I can't help looking at Amanda. She turns her head pointedly and stares out the window.

"We'll make it," Christopher reassures Jeremy in front of us. "Come on, don't give in now. One more day, and then we'll be off the hook. Just one more day."

Christopher rubs his arm, and Jeremy nods slowly. "One more day," he echoes, and starts the car.

As I noticed the first time I entered the bunker, all the stairways lead downward, into the earth. I walk ten feet behind the others, moving more slowly because it's hard to keep my balace while holding Gwen and tottering with the huge suitcase on my back. From here I have a panoramic view of the other three, the dirt walls, the guards up ahead.

Gwen wakes up when I stumble over the bottom step and blinks rapidly. "It's okay," I tell her. "We're all right."

I know.

I freeze. I swear, I heard a little voice in my mind say that. Not in words really, but a rush of understanding. A simple, instaneous message.

Gwen's cool with the escape plan.

I stare down into her green eyes, so big and round and bright, and she gives me a baby smile and laughs. Jeremy asked me before we left the house if she was talking yet, and I told him no. He said that during gestation, Kru babies link with their mothers' central nervous systems and absorb knowledge directly from the brain. Most Kru are born with a vocabulary of at least three thousand words.

From up ahead is a sudden movement, and my head shoots up.

Jory San-Corinth