Part 5 (2/2)

Then we were alone together. There was a moment of awkward silence in which we all sized each other up, wondering how you were supposed to start a conversation in a situation like this. Finally Devon broke the ice. ”So, my father's a doctor, you know that already. He found out about a genetic condition that ran in my mother's family and wanted to screen me for it. Turned out I didn't have that condition . . . or anything else that runs in the family. So then he checked my birth records, looking for a breach of protocol, but everything was clean. There's no explanation for why I'm not who I'm supposed to be. Right now we're all pretending nothing's wrong, while he tries to think of some new angle to test.” He shook his head and added in a sober tone, ”Creepy thing is I look just like him. Dead ringer.”

He looked at Rita. She had one foot on the seat and her knee was drawn up to her chest. ”Paternity case,” she said quietly. ”I was just a little kid when the test was done, and they never told me any more than I had to know, so I don't have any details. I do know I was a home birth, so there was never any question about who my mother was. Until that test.” She shrugged stiffly. ”I don't think anyone cared enough to follow up on it.”

Devon said gently, ”Rita wound up in foster care.”

”No great loss.” Rita snorted. ”My birth family was nothing to write home about.”

It was my turn. I drew in a deep breath and said, ”My dad left us years ago. He's a bit crazy, and when he started raging about how I wasn't really his daughter, Mom offered a paternity test to shut him up.” I was aware of an echo of pain in my voice. ”So . . . the test said I wasn't his kid, or Mom's. But the hospital has told me that I can't be anyone else's kid, so right now I'm in limbo. They're redoing the DNA test just in case there was some kind of mistake, and we should get the results on Monday. But I expect they'll be the same as the first time.”

”Sheesh,” Devon said, shaking his head. ”How's your mother taking it?”

I sighed. ”As well as can be expected. She's not going to disown me or anything.” I thought I saw Rita flinch. ”Beyond that . . . I don't know.”

So there we were. Three genetic anomalies. Teenagers who should not exist. It made for a surreal sense of connection, like I hadn't just met these guys ten minutes ago. Somehow, in a way I didn't totally understand, I felt as if we'd been connected for years.

”How many of us do you think there are?” I asked. ”I mean all together, not just the ones who joined that page?”

Devon shook his head. ”No way to know. My father works with an Indian doctor, who says that babies get switched pretty often in his country. State hospitals there are large, overcrowded, and understaffed. Mistakes happen. But when one of those mistakes is discovered, doctors a.s.sume the real parents are out there somewhere, waiting to be tracked down. No one is looking for . . .” He floundered for the proper word.

”Chimeras?” I offered.

”Changelings,” Rita counteroffered.

The waitress brought over our food. We were silent until she left.

”I've seen some other groups on the internet,” Rita said. She pulled a nacho from the cheese-covered heap in the middle of the table with practiced dexterity. ”Mostly young people. I'm not sure if adults don't get tested as often, or if their lives are just so settled that when they find out about something like this they figure it's best to just pretend it never happened.”

”They may not spend as much time online as we do,” I offered. But I knew that was a lame explanation. Tommy knew adults who spent more time playing World of Warcraft than he did.

”I've talked to folks from all over the world,” Devon said. ”US, Canada, Europe, Australia, Russia . . . it's amazing how similar all the stories are. Whatever is going on appears to be global.”

”Tell her about the Chinese guy,” Rita said.

”Taiwanese,” he corrected her, then he said to me, ”Chen's father was a geneticist. Supposedly he a.s.signed a whole government lab to his kid's case. Found all sorts of anomalies, Chen said. Stuff that should have been in any human DNA, but wasn't in his. He wasn't allowed to give us details, but he did tell us that, thus far, they'd found no good explanation for it.”

”I'm kind of surprised that didn't make the news,” I said. ”The tabloids would have loved it.”

”You may not see anything about it in the popular press, but my dad has the right connections, and he told me there's a network of scientists who are pooling their resources to determine just how widespread the problem is. They want to get some solid data before they reveal anything to the public.”

”Can you imagine the panic there'll be when that happens?” Rita whistled softly. ”The alien abduction crowd will have a field day.”

I stirred the ice in my lemonade without responding. I'm sure we were all thinking the same thing, but no one wanted to say it out loud. What if the nutjobs were right? What if we really weren't human?

That was just too crazy to think about. There had to be a simpler-and more reasonable-explanation. ”So what happened to the Taiwanese guy?” I asked.

”Out of touch now.” A shadow pa.s.sed fleetingly across Devon's face. ”Chen warned us that might happen. He said that if his dad's people started asking too many questions, he would cut off contact with us so that we wouldn't get dragged into things. A little while after he said that, he cancelled his Gmail account; no one's heard from him since.”

His voice trailed off into silence. The kind of silence where you know that important things are not being said.

”Tell her,” Rita said softly.

”Tell me what?” I asked.

For a moment Devon said nothing. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out an iPhone. I could see the logo flash as he brought up the Changelings page, then he scrolled down to one of the more recent posts and handed the phone to me. ”Here,” he said. His expression was solemn. ”Read for yourself.”

To all Sarah's friends: I'm sorry to have to tell you that my daughter died in a car accident yesterday. They think she lost control of the car while trying to avoid something in the road. I'm told she died on impact. If any of you were close enough to her that you'd like to attend the funeral, message me through this account and I'll send you directions. We are located in upstate New York. -Sarah's mom.

”I saw that earlier,” I said, handing him back the phone.

He shook his head. ”No, you didn't.”

”Yes,” I insisted. ”When I first joined the page. I remember thinking, 'Wow, that's one h.e.l.l of a welcome message.'”

”Check the timestamp,” he said quietly.

I took the phone from him again and did so.

The message he'd just shown me had been posted while I was driving to the restaurant.

Perplexed, I scrolled down the page, looking for another post I remembered reading. I didn't have to go far.

This is Di's father. I regret to inform you that we lost our daughter today. She was struck by a hit-and-run driver and died before she could make it to the hospital. She once asked me to let her friends know if anything bad ever happened to her, so I'm doing that. She said to send her love, and to tell you all to stay safe.

Slowly I put the phone down. For a moment I just stared at it, not saying anything. For as long as I didn't ask questions I could pretend this didn't mean what it seemed to.

”There've been other deaths in the group,” Rita said quietly.

I finally found my voice. ”How many?”

”Eight so far.” Devon said. ”There are probably more we don't know about. Not everyone's family thinks to post notices to their friends.”

He took the phone back and put it in his pocket. Then he waited. They both waited. Respectfully silent, mercifully silent, while I struggled to digest the terrible implications of what they had just told me.

”Do the police know?” I finally asked.

Rita shrugged stiffly. ”What are the cops going to do? Every death has a different cause, and they're spread out all across the world. No one's going to believe they're connected.”

”These two were both car accidents,” I pointed out.

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