Ride and Die (Ridgemore #1)

22 The Death Event

22

The Death Event

M y friends and our parents sat around the fancy fire pit my mom had installed on one side of the backyard years ago, which we’d hardly used since. She’d promised we’d spend most evenings out here, enjoying nights as a family. Now that I realized how busy she and my dad had kept spying on us, I wasn’t surprised family time had fallen through so spectacularly.

There was no fire burning now, though twilight was rapidly settling around us, and all it would have taken was a click of a couple of buttons to bring the gas fire to life. But this wasn’t some fun social gathering. It had been a feeble power play on the part of my crew, but the only one we’d had to make.

Once we’d realized our parents still had lots more to say and had no intention of vacating our treehouse, our priority had been to get them out. The treehouse was supposed to be sacred, our one retreat where the adults wouldn’t bother us. That ceased the moment we realized they listened to everything we said within its apparent privacy. Even so, it was still ours—not theirs to encroach on.

We suggested we resume our chat over pizza, and here we were. The adults sat stiffly on one side of the long bench seat that surrounded the fire pit and we occupied the other, as if we were opposing sports teams. We each even had our own box of pizza.

My dad and Orson had handed out chilled beers and wine for my mom and Alexis. Regardless, I doubted alcohol was going to dull the edge for any of us. That would probably take an entire keg, considering the tension we were doing nothing to hide.

I sat on the far end of the bench so I could stretch out my leg. Bobo once more lay beside me, alert now that pizza scraps were a real possibility. I sipped from my beer, eyeing the six people we were supposed to be able to trust without question. When I bit into my slice, which I should have enjoyed since it was topped with some of my favorites—olive, red onion, and jalape?os—I barely tasted it.

Mom cleared her throat and leaned forward, tossing her napkin on the full plate balanced across her lap. “Are you all finished with this ridiculous standoff?”

I didn’t have to so much as glance at my friends to feel them bristle along with me.

“No? Well, too freaking bad. No, you know what? I’m over censoring myself for you kids. You want us to treat you like adults, I’m not holding back the f-bombs.”

“By all means, go ahead,” I said. “Like I ever needed you to hold back around me.”

My mom scowled, the expression gouging deep in the shadows. The only lighting was dim, lining the base of the empty pit. “Of course you needed me to censor myself. I’m your mother. We don’t get to just do what we want once we have kids. You become our priorities. It’s our responsibility as parents to mold you into the people you’re becoming.”

Alexis studied us over the rim of her wineglass. “Of course, that becomes a little trickier than usual when you have paranormal qualities.”

“Exactly,” my mom said. “Cut us a break here. We did things the best way we knew how.”

“We’ll cut you a break,” I said, “when we think you’ve earned it.”

My mom’s scowl deepened further. I smiled tightly back at her. Take it or leave it , my smile said. It wasn’t negotiable.

She sighed loudly, handing her plate to my dad, but not her wineglass, which he’d already refilled for her once. “At some point, you’re going to realize that you need us. So let’s cut the shit and take the shortcut. We’re your only hope at understanding what’s going on and staying safe.”

I wished for a handy retort to that but didn’t have one. She was right. We might as well be swimming out to sea with no stronger stroke than a doggy paddle.

“Tell us everything you know, then,” Griffin said. “If you want us to trust you, give us reasons to.”

Griffin, like the rest of us, was slow to trust, and even slower to extend it once it’d been broken.

“You know we’re playing catch-up here,” he added. “Get us up to speed, and for real this time. You’re still holding back.”

Beside my mom, my dad fidgeted before rising to bus the plates to a side table, a sign, I thought, that Griffin was right. They were majorly holding back on us.

My mom glanced at Alexis, Celia and Porter, then Orson, before nodding. “Since you and Brady were in the hospital, and we needed to keep the blood they drew away from their techs, we finally got some more recent samples to work with.” My mom glanced at me. “You too, Joss. Though at least they only drew blood from you the once. That made it easier on Alexis here, who was running herself ragged intercepting.”

“How would you even do that?” Hunt asked his mom. “Didn’t the staff find it suspicious when you kept showing up where you didn’t belong?”

Alexis shrugged. “Yes, of course. But I have my ways.” When she coyly flicked her hair over her shoulder, I only then realized she meant ways of seduction. Holy Batman and Robin. “You know what they say: use it or lose it. Hunt is everything to me. All of you are. I’ll do what I have to.”

“Um, Mom,” Hunt started. “Please don’t tell me you had sex with some techs.”

Alexis arched her brow at him. “Seduction is an art, my son. There are many ways to seduce a man, or woman, that don’t end in a tangle in the sheets.”

As one, my friends and I studied Alexis Fletcher in a new light. She wasn’t stereotypically beautiful, but she was striking with an indefinable appeal. Add in her stalwart confidence, and I could see her seduction being effective, especially on perhaps harried, overworked, or bored lab techs.

“Damn, Mom,” Hunt said. “That’s some Mata Hari shit right there.”

Again, she shrugged. “We aren’t kidding when we tell you we’ll do anything for you. We already have.”

“We most certainly have,” Celia said, eyeing both her children wistfully. “Anything at all for them.”

After another sip of her Malbec, my mom said, “Since we haven’t wanted to draw attention to your differences, not until we thought you were ready to know—”

“Which was apparently once we hit forty,” Layla muttered under her breath.

“We haven’t wanted to take too many blood samples over the years.”

From beside me, Griffin sucked in a sharp inhale. “Which is why we never went to doctors.”

“Yes.”

“So our checkups were really about us being guinea pigs,” Layla said.

Celia tsk ed. “No, Layla. We couldn’t take you to regular doctors. It was too dangerous. Besides, we’re all qualified to perform the examinations. We might not have MDs, but we know the body’s functioning inside and out, especially where you’re concerned. We can study you on a level no MD out there would even think to.”

“So how exactly weren’t we your guinea pigs?” Layla followed up. “You took our blood and studied it.”

Celia frowned. “To monitor your progress. To make sure you were okay.”

Eyes hard, Layla stared at her mother. “Potato, poe-tah-toh.”

Celia threw her hands into the air, then knocked into her plate when they came back down. “And how else were we supposed to take care of you, huh? We already knew you weren’t normal. What were we supposed to do, just go through life blindly without knowing what was going on with you? Lay, we’re experts in this area. Top of our fields. You can’t reasonably expect us not to make sure our own kids are well and healthy along the way, knowing you might have paranormal abilities. For fuck’s sake, be reasonable here.”

I gasped, mostly because I’d never imagined Celia Porter cussing under any circumstances. I’d figured her for using her pleases and thank yous even in an apocalyptic emergency.

Stunned, Layla blinked at her mom, who finally sighed.

“Look, whether you want to or not, you’re going to have to eventually cut us a break. We did the best we could under extreme circumstances, and you’re just gonna have to live with how we handled things. We really don’t have time to waste here, and all we’ve been doing lately is waiting for you kids to wrap your heads around the situation. But that’s over. No more waiting. There is at least one person out there who knows what’s going on with you, and that’s one too many.”

Porter slid forward on his seat, locking eyes with each of us across the quiet pit. “So, are you ready to get your heads in the game or not? Because time’s up.”

I tensed with my annoyance. At least in this, they were right, though I refused to concede the point to them aloud. “What did you find from our recent blood tests?”

Orson answered. “Proof of your paranormal abilities.”

His statement hung in the darkening night for several moments, before he added, “For the first time ever, we have real proof.” Another pause. “Too bad we can’t publish in any scientific journals.”

“Such a loss,” Alexis added. “We’d win the Nobel, guaranteed.”

“Yeah, such a pity your experiments on your children haven’t panned out,” Layla said with all the snark I was feeling.

My mom rolled her eyes just a bit, and I had to keep myself from lashing out at her.

“Which is why we aren’t sharing our life’s work with anyone,” she said. “Because you’re more important to us. Like we keep telling you.”

“Define these paranormal abilities,” Griffin steered.

As a group, the parents shared excited looks.

Orson actually bounced in his seat. “Your blood has changed on a cellular level.”

“How so?” Hunt asked.

“You—as in Brady and Griffin—have an extra chromosome, one we’ve never seen before, that no one’s ever seen before. It’s a massive scientific breakthrough. It’s what we’ve been searching for in our research for years.”

“We think Brady and Griffin dying and then reviving somehow activated the chromosomal expansion,” my dad said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s the one thing we’d never been able to try with any of you before.”

Though I didn’t think my dad meant to sound so calculating when discussing my friends’ deaths, it still stung. Almost losing Brady and then Griffin had been paralyzing for me and my friends in a manner we still hadn’t completely recovered from. Reminders of just how close we’d come to losing each other snuck up on us several times a day.

Oblivious to our reactions, my dad kept going. “It was the missing piece that eluded us for years. With all our patients, and by that, I mean you guys,” he added hurriedly, “there were no signs of healing significantly more advanced than that which could possibly be attributed to youth and a strong immune system, something we’ve also focused on maintaining with you all. But death … it was the catalyst for the mutation.”

“Once this process has taken place,” my mom cautioned, “no one can ever get a hold of your blood.”

“Not everyone will be doing a DNA analysis when they draw our blood,” Hunt said, reasonable in a way I definitely wasn’t feeling right then.

“‘Once this process has taken place?’” I repeated. “You say it like it’s no big deal, but you’re talking about us dying .”

“No, not dying,” my dad interjected quickly. “Coming back to life.”

“And if you should be wrong about any one of us? If any of us should have an ‘accident’ and die, what if you’re wrong and we don’t come back?”

“We’re not wrong,” my dad said. “All six of us agree with this conclusion.”

“Well then. I feel completely at ease now.” In case they missed my sarcasm, I scowled at them too.

“Wait.” Layla jumped to her feet, plate in hand. “Did you … did you guys set us up? Did you cut Griff’s brakes?”

Celia’s hand flew to her chest. “You can’t be serious right now.”

“Oh, I am. Deathly serious, pun fucking intended.”

Porter shook his head, sadness tugging on his face. “Layla, honey, in your heart you must know that can’t be true.”

Layla glared at both her parents for several seconds. “I don’t know what’s true anymore. Other than you’ve been hiding shit from us our entire lives, and major shit too. The biggest ever.”

Celia took in her daughter. “We’ve already been over this.”

“Yeah, we have. But excuse the fuck out of me if I don’t feel good about it. About any of it.”

In solidarity, I rubbed her arm.

“So what’s Joss’s blood like, then?” Hunt asked. “Normal?”

“No, not normal,” Orson responded.

“I thought you said death was the event that triggered the extra chromosome?”

“Yes, but none of you had normal blood to begin with. Your levels are way off the standard. Your iron is off the charts.”

“As in you should be dead from the iron alone,” my dad added.

“And that’s before we consider the levels of radiation in your blood. They’re”—Orson paused to shake his head in disbelief—“insane.”

“Picture this,” Dad said, “the five of you in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant when it exploded. Or you guys in Hiroshima or Nagasaki when the atomic bombs were dropped. Your radiation levels are that high. The kind no one survives. It’s why we had to sub out Joss’s x-ray at the hospital for a phony. Even using a CT scan, we were barely able to see what was going on with her leg.”

“What kind of radioactive substance is it showing we were exposed to?” Brady asked as his sister plopped back down in her seat, seemingly in shock.

“That’s a little less exact,” Porter said. “You’re showing some exposure to radium.”

I sucked in a breath and opened my mouth, but Griffin beat me to the question.

“Like the radium used to make nuclear bombs?”

“Yes,” my mom said. “But that’s not all.”

Layla chuckled bitterly. “‘That’s not all,’ she says. What the hell more could there be?”

“That’s where we aren’t entirely certain. And we should be.”

“We’re the experts who’d be consulted when confronted with a human cellular anomaly like this one,” Celia said.

“Your radiation levels indicate you’ve been exposed to something more than polonium, but we can’t tell what. There’s no sign of this exposure remaining in your blood. Just the reactions to radiation exposure.”

“Only they aren’t the regular reactions,” Celia inserted.

“Of course.” My mom smiled tightly before letting it drop abruptly. “Or you all would’ve been dead ages ago.”

“Yippee,” I said. “More death talk.”

“If we’re this radioactive, can we infect others?” Hunt asked. “I assume not, given that you’ve socialized us.”

“It was one of the first things we tested before bringing you home,” Orson said, earning a reprimanding glare from my mom. He caught her eye, then added, “No, your radiation levels don’t seem to affect anyone or anything around you. The radiation within you seems to be innocuous.”

“Well, that’s something to wrap our minds around,” Griffin said.

Hunt brought his fingertips to either side of his temples. “For sure. That’s fucking nuts.”

“That about sums it up,” Dad said. “So now you see why we’ve had to keep you in the dark about this.”

But neither my friends nor I conceded the point. We were nearly eighteen and only just learning about the most important parts of ourselves.

“So my leg,” I said. “I’m healing at normal levels, then? You know, since I didn’t die .”

My mom smirked at me, but that was the only acknowledgment I received for my barb. “Your healing is fast, but not paranormally fast,” she said. “Nothing to draw unwanted attention, at least not unless someone decides to look more closely.”

“Which they might,” Celia said. “That damn Kitty Blanche is a nightmare.”

Griffin and Brady stiffened. The redhead-from-a-bottle reporter had called the two of them “Miracle Besties.” I wasn’t sure who hated the term more, Griffin or Brady.

“She knows too much,” Porter said. “Sniffing around all over the place. And that drone, that was crossing the line.”

They’d gotten a restraining order against her after that, but she was still allowed to investigate—just not within five hundred feet of us.

“Kitty might be working for our mystery person,” Alexis said.

“Mystery person?” Brady asked.

“Someone still tampered with Griffin’s car.”

Porter cracked his knuckles. “We’ll find out who and deal with them.”

Layla chuckled darkly. “Oh, okay there, mob boss.”

Porter snapped his stare to her. “We’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.”

Now it was Porter’s turn to look murderous. A fresh surge of shock welled inside me. Had everything about our seemingly docile parents been a charade?

“You all need to stay away from Kitty Blanche,” my mom told us.

“Yeah, we know,” Brady said. “You think we like being accosted every freaking place we go?”

“Okay, good. Then you guys just focus on acting like everything’s normal while we figure things out. It’s time for Joss and Griffin to get back to school. Two weeks is enough time.”

In truth, Griffin could have gone back to school a day after the accident—that was how well he’d recovered. He remained home mostly because his dad insisted he keep up appearances, and who didn’t want a ready excuse to skip school? He’d kept me and Bobo company, though nearly always under the watchful eye of one of our parents, who pretended to just coincidentally be around. I’d wanted to talk to him about the big I love you , but there was never a chance that felt right, or a mood that didn’t get interrupted at precisely the wrong moment.

Brady grabbed another slice of pizza. “First you don’t want us to go to school. You practically beg us to homeschool.” He took a bite of pepperoni and cheese. “Now, you want us to go. You guys’ve gotta make up your damn minds.”

“We want you to go now,” Porter said. “We’d hoped to shield you from discovery. But that ship has sailed. Whoever tampered with your car did it to test you, to figure out the range of your powers. To see if you can come back from death.”

I swallowed thickly. “This person knows all that?”

Dad shrugged. “We hope not.” But we think so , was left unspoken. “We’re being cautious. Now it’s even more important not to draw suspicion to any of you. It’s bad enough this Kitty bitch”—I gasped, but he kept going; I’d never heard him talk this way—“is going around calling you miracle kids. We can’t do anything to cause anyone to take a closer look at you.”

“Which means you go to school,” my mom said, “and act like everything is normal.”

“Yeah, fat chance of that,” I said on a huff, but then added, “Why would anyone even be looking our way, anyway? It’s like Kitty was just waiting for the story to hit.”

“And how would this mystery person know where to find us?” Layla asked.

My dad said, “We’d hoped no one realized you’d been exposed to the course of our experiments during our previous employment. We covered our tracks well, but it’s possible someone found out.”

“Were we exposed to radiation in your previous lab?” Hunt asked.

“Something like that,” Alexis replied.

“‘Something like that’ or ‘that’?” Hunt pressed.

“There’s a lot we’re still unsure of, but we’re the best suited to the task of figuring it out.”

“That’s right,” Celia said. “Now that we know the death event triggers your paranormal super healing abilities, we have a lot more to go on. We’re on the precipice of amazing conclusions, I have no doubt.” Her eyes glittered at the promise of scientific advancement. Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop thinking about how her son died without her knowing for sure he’d come back.

“You may even be immortal,” Celia whispered, words clunky with awe.

Immortal . The one word ricocheted off the walls of my mind without proper absorption.

There was no way. Life wasn’t actually this bananas. That was just books and TV, wasn’t it?

“You all just hang tight,” my mom said. “Enjoy being teenagers. Be good, excel at your studies, just in case—”

“Just in case what?” I asked.

“Well, in case you can still go to university. Things have obviously changed since the new chromosome situation, but it might still be possible, once we get things under control of course.”

“Of course,” I mimicked. Mom was straight-up batty. Like any of us were considering college after the news they dropped on us like an atomic bomb—you know, the one we were kind of a little bit like.

“We’ll handle everything,” she went on. “We’re experts and we’ve got the tech we need to back us up.”

“Yeah, don’t remind us,” Layla grumped.

Brady pointed a finger at his parents. “There will be no more spying on us. Absolutely none.”

“Sure, of course, honey,” Celia said in the flippant manner of one giving lip service to what the other party wanted to hear.

“I mean it.” Brady palmed the radio frequency detector at his hip. “I will make sure you guys are keeping in line.”

“We wouldn’t have it any other way.” But Celia’s smile was fake.

“Another important thing,” Orson said, looking at Griffin. “When kids at school ask you about the accident, just say it was a miracle. That everyone was praying for a miracle, and then we got one.”

Griffin’s brow rose. “Twice in a row?”

“Hey, crazier things have happened. Just play it down.”

“We know what to do,” Griffin assured them, which I was glad for, because I wasn’t sure I did. Tonight’s revelation elevated teenage angst to a whole new level.

Orson slid to the edge of the bench seat to better stare at Griffin. “I mean it, son. Don’t tell anyone anything. Play dumb, and I say play because we know none of you are.”

“In fact,” Alexis added, “we’re testing a hypothesis that this latent additional chromosome might be responsible for your advanced intelligence.”

Celia nodded. “You’re all far smarter than your peers. It could also be wrapped up in your paranormal abilities, but we’ll know more soon.”

“So just go to school, stay out of trouble, and keep your heads down,” Mom said. “I’d also tell you to stick together, but there doesn’t seem to be a need. It’s like you’re joined at the hip.”

I imagined my friends didn’t appreciate being referred to that way any more than I did, but none of us responded, probably as ready to be finished with this talk as I was. I’d reached my information overload point.

“At least that makes it easier for us,” my mom continued. “We’ll take care of everything. But if you experience or see anything odd, you let us know right away. I want your phones on you at all times.”

After what happened with Griffin and how helpful it would have been to have our phones then, I gritted my teeth at her. “We only didn’t have our phones that night because you were spying on us. I still don’t think you get how serious of a violation that was.”

“I don’t care. We need to keep you safe and off the radar. Phones on, at all times.”

I didn’t answer, and neither did the others.

“Now, anything else before we adjourn for the night?”

Thoughts of how I’d confided in Sheriff Jones, how that had gotten him to defibrillate Griffin, bubbled up. I’d been right, and Brady and Hunt had done the same. We hadn’t told our parents. It was possible we should have, but I wasn’t going to say a word until we got a better handle on the situation. They said they had the police situation dealt with anyhow.

“No, nothing else,” Brady said.

“Then hurry up and get to bed. Tomorrow’s a school day.”

Never fond of taking orders, my friends and I stayed until every last one of them had either disappeared into the house or left for their own.

When silence finally settled around us, we stared off into the night, each lost to our own heavy thoughts.

After a good ten minutes, Hunt spoke. “What if we really are immortal?”

He didn’t get an answer to his question. I, for one, had no fucking idea.