Subject Seven

Chapter Thirty-five
Gene Rothstein

Every muscle in Gene’s body ached. He felt like he’d been dragged through a taffy puller and then roughly mashed back into his normal shape and size. His eyelids were closed, but his eyes still burned. His mouth tasted, well, it tasted wrong. He knew what cigarettes smelled like and if he had to guess, his mouth tasted like he’d been licking the inside of an ashtray. His head was making the most amazing protests. Every time his heart thudded in his chest, the noise was echoed and amplified in between his temples. He opened his eyes and quickly squeezed them shut against the explosive light coming through the hotel windows.

Daylight. That was good. Maybe. He didn’t know if it was light from the same day.

The memories came back, watching the people around him go into fits, their bodies twitching, the muscles under their skin contorting, moving and rearranging themselves.

That happened to me, he thought. I changed too. I became something else.

The thought didn’t want to fit inside of his skull. It was too big, like a tractor trailer trying to squeeze into a one-car garage. His stomach tilted to the left inside of him and his mouth watered with sour spit.

Half afraid of showering the bed with his vomit, Gene rolled over and stood up, compensating for the way the room wanted to sway even when he was standing still. He was wearing nothing but underwear but didn’t have the time to worry about finding anything to cover himself with. A quick look told him the same was true of the two boys and two girls currently sharing the room with him. He spotted them as he moved toward the bathroom and the sweet salvation of the toilet. He felt like he was going to puke, and he knew he’d piss himself if he didn’t take a leak soon.

He navigated past the sleeping forms, stepped over the discarded clothing on the floor and made it to the bathroom with what seemed like seconds to spare.

And as he was relieving himself, the thoughts that refused to fit inside his skull pressed down again until he gritted his teeth and groaned softly. This was wrong. All of it. He should be at home in his bed, waiting to hear how Uncle Rob was doing and dealing with the whole adoption thing. He’d come all this way, to Boston for God’s sake, and he still didn’t know much. Just that he was A freak! A sad joke, a loser -

– just that he wasn’t the only one whose life was all screwed up.

Someone in the other room let out a small moan and Gene flushed the toilet. He wanted to brush his teeth, but there was only one brush and it wasn’t his. Instead he washed his hands, then used his finger to smear toothpaste around and over his teeth. The taste was the same at least, and anything was better than the dead cigarette and stale beer breath that had been haunting his taste buds since he woke up.

He’d been raised in the Jewish faith and now he was uncertain about so much. Did he have a soul? How could he if he didn’t have parents? He wasn’t born of man and woman, he was brewed in a vat or put together from spare parts or grown in a test tube. The thought was horrifying, the possible complications even worse.

Kyrie opened the door to the bathroom and started in before she realized he was there. He’d have been hard pressed to know which one of them was more embarrassed, but he was sure he blushed a little harder. Like him, she was dressed in only her underwear and a tank top. He forced himself not to stare, but it wasn’t easy. Half naked or not, hungover or not, she had a great body.

“’Scuse me.” He muttered the words and tried to sneak through the doorway without rubbing against her. He was only partially successful.

She mumbled something that sounded like an apology, and as he was moving into the main room, she called his name. “Gene?”

He looked toward her. “Yeah?”

Her eyes were wide and she chewed lightly at her lower lip. “Did we really change?” He thought for a moment before answering. He’d seen her transformation, had watched her grow taller, more muscular; her hair had even looked completely different, wild and thick and curlier.

“Yeah. We did.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“This is crazy.”

“Yeah, Kyrie. It is. It’s very crazy.” Gene took a deep breath and forced the sting away from his eyes. He wanted to scream, wanted to cry and throw fits, but he’d been raised by parents who believed in self-control almost above all else and of course, the idea of acting like a baby in front of a girl as hot as Kyrie went against his nature.

“I hate this.” Her voice cracked a bit and he looked at her again, focusing on her face. He felt like crying. She was actually doing it. Her eyes were wet and her lower lip was freed from her teeth now and trembling as she lost control.

He didn’t have to think very hard. He had a little sister and a little brother and even though they were sometimes a pain in the ass, they were his family. He did what he had always done for them when the world knocked them senseless, and moved over, offering a hug as comfort.

Kyrie took the invitation and clutched him fiercely, her face pressing against his neck, her breaths washing over his shoulder and chest as she started crying quietly against him. Her hands clawed at his arms as if she was afraid that if she lost her grip, she’d fall to her death. “What did we do? Why is this happening to us?”

His face flushed red and he patted her back softly. She smelled good. Even after a night of who knows what, she had a sweet, pleasant scent. He had to wonder if his deodorant was still holding up, but that wasn’t much of a concern, not really. He was smart enough to know that the way she was holding on to him had nothing to do with passion or desire. She was a wreck. It meant nothing more. And in truth, he needed comforting just as much as she did.

“I don’t know, Kyrie. I don’t. But maybe we can find a way to fix everything.”

“I just wanna go home… I want to go back to my stupid life and my stupid family, you know?”

He nodded and held her tighter as the sting came back to his eyes. “Yeah. I do. I want my dumb life back too.” Uncle Robbie’s drunken rants, his mom’s distant way of dealing with everything. His dad’s stupid jokes at dinner. Trish’s bratty ways and Kevin’s endless whining. He missed them all, more than he would have ever thought possible.

“I just want to go home.” She sighed the words into his shoulder, and while he should have been either dying of embarrassment or worrying about how his body was reacting to the half-naked cheerleader hugging on him, Gene just hugged her back, taking comfort from a girl who was almost a stranger and who had more in common with him than most of the people in the world.