Chapter 2
JULY 2027
It took half an hour to do the litter boxes, and another hour to feed and medicate the kittens in the isolation room. They would be kept away from the rest of the cats until their blood tests came back negative for any infections or parasites; then they would be integrated into the rest of the shelter’s population, to await their “forever homes.” The irony of an organization where every human was a proud parasite-carrier working diligently to cure animals of parasites was not lost on me. Nathan liked to say that SymboGen wouldn’t rest until they’d perfected the Intestinal Bodyguard for use in every animal in America. Then he’d laugh like he was joking, even though we both knew he wasn’t.
I didn’t get the chance to check my phone until I was done with the last cage. There were two messages waiting for me. The first was from my sister, demanding—in her usual, strident Joyce way—to know how therapy had gone, and whether she got to keep treating me like the crazy one. There was a note of genuine concern under her nagging. She knew how much I hated seeing Dr. Morrison.
Nathan had left the second message only a few minutes before. It was substantially shorter than Joyce’s had been:
“Look outside.”
I lowered the phone as I crossed to the window. Nathan’s car was parked across the street. He was sitting on the hood in an easy cross-legged position, elbows resting on his knees as he smiled at the shelter, like he was waiting for me to appear.
I swiped my thumb across his name on my contact list before raising my phone to my ear. He dug out his own phone a few seconds later. “Hello?” he said.
“This is stalker behavior, you know,” I said sweetly. “Only stalkers park outside women’s places of employment and sit there waiting to see if they’re going to come out.”
“I prefer to think of it as being a compassionate, concerned boyfriend who didn’t want to make you take the bus,” said Nathan. “Stalker behavior would have me hiding in the supply closet.”
“What if I was looking forward to riding that bus?” I asked. “What if I’m playing a game of guess-that-smell with the driver, and I don’t want to let him pull ahead of me as we approach the championship round?”
“I suppose I’d just have to slink sadly back to my empty apartment, no girlfriend in my car, no one to go out to dinner with me,” said Nathan, and sighed theatrically. “I’ll just sit there in the dark, all alone…”
I laughed. “You’re a ham. You’re an absolute ham.”
“Probably true, and good use of the word ‘ham,’” Nathan replied, the faux mournfulness gone in an instant. “Come down, Sal. I’ll give you a ride home, and you can tell me how your appointment with Dr. Morrison went.”
“Do I have to?”
“Come down? Sure, unless you want to live at the shelter—a valid lifestyle choice, I admit, but probably boring in the long run.” Nathan paused before adding, “We don’t have to talk about Dr. Morrison if you don’t want to. I just thought you might.”
As soon as he said it, I realized that he was right: I did want to talk about it. I didn’t want to go home and try to sleep with all that rattling around my brain. “I’ll be right down,” I said, and hung up.
Tasha was gone when I emerged from the back. Will was still there, sitting at the front desk. The cat from before was sitting next to the computer, nonchalantly washing a paw. It looked up when I entered the room, flicking its tail once. The tail landed across the keyboard, and Will looked up.
“Taking off?” he asked.
“Yeah. Nathan’s here to get me.” I retrieved my bag from the hook by the door. “The kittens in the isolation room are fed, and all the boxes are scooped in all five rooms. You going to be okay without me for the rest of tonight?”
“Yes, and for the rest of the week. See you Saturday.” Will smiled, making a waving gesture toward the door. “Go on, Sal. You need to spend some time with your boyfriend. Do normal things before your review. I worry when you let yourself get this stressed out.”
“You, Tasha, and everybody else,” I said. “Goodnight, Will.”
“Goodnight, Sal.”
It was a warm night, and the streetlights cast just enough light to make walking down the steps feel like something out of a movie: darkness that wasn’t really dark, more… cosmetic. Nathan slid off the hood of the car when he saw me coming.
He was in the driver’s seat by the time I reached the passenger side door—which was, naturally, locked. I tugged the handle and glared at him through the glass. He smiled without showing his teeth. I made a downward gesture with my free hand, and he hit a button on the steering wheel, causing the window to drop.
“Yes, miss?”
“You’re a dork,” I informed him. “A giant dork.”
“That’s a new word.” He pressed another button. The door unlocked. “Where’d you learn that one?”
“Eric—the kid next door. He said it was less offensive than calling someone a dick, but that it came from the same family of words.” I slid into the seat, glancing toward Nathan and quirking an eyebrow. “Why? Did I use it wrong?”
“No, you seem to have grasped my essential dorky nature.” Nathan leaned over to kiss me slowly. “Missed you today.”
“I missed you, too.” I returned his kiss before sinking deeper into the seat, trying to let my shoulders relax. Nathan adjusted the environmental controls. My seat warmed up and began rubbing my back in slow, rhythmic motions. “Mmm. Thanks.”
“You’re more fun when you’re not so tense that I can see the whites all the way around your eyes,” he said, and started the car. I tensed again, and relaxed as Nathan pulled smoothly onto the mostly empty street. Cars make me nervous. But Nathan was a good, safe driver who let me read his insurance statements when I asked him to confirm that he’d never been in an accident. He also kept both hands on the wheel when he had me in the car with him. “How did it go with Morrison?”
“He thinks I’m crazy.”
“Yes, he does.”
Nathan’s honesty was usually one of the things I appreciated most about him. At the moment, I wasn’t feeling much like embracing my inner truth. I glared at him. “You could be a little slower to agree there, you know.”
“I didn’t say I thought you were crazy, I said that he thinks you’re crazy. Or at least he’s convinced himself to think that you’re crazy.”
I frowned. “Support your thesis.”
“Normal people don’t say ‘support your thesis’ in casual conversation, honey.”
“Right.” I sighed. English is not an easy language to learn, and it was no better the second time. Basic sentence structure was mostly okay, but I had trouble with colloquialisms—the slang, the shading of the words, the reason that some things were more appropriate than others. English is a language full of words and syntax and phrases. It was a good reason for not talking much around strangers. “Can you explain?”
“Look, to Morrison, you’re a unique case that needs to be studied, and he figures that he might as well be the one doing the studying. Most people don’t come back from what you experienced.”
“I know that,” I said peevishly. “Why does that give him the right to act like I’m insane?”
“It doesn’t. It just gives him the motivation he needs to convince himself that you need his help more than you need anything else in the world, and so he keeps looking for excuses.” Nathan glanced at me, then back at the road. “He thinks I’m doing the same thing, you know.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Morrison. He thinks I’m dating you because it’s the best way to keep track of what’s going on with your metabolism.”
“That’s… wow. If you were doing that, you’d be an idiot. I’m peeing in so many cups and giving so many
