Tiernan, Cate - Birthright 01 - Darkest Fear by Tiernan Cate

Author:Tiernan, Cate [Tiernan, Cate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AFTER THE CATACLYSMIC, SCREECHING HALT of my life in May, I had entered a stasis where I had spent weeks wandering numbly around my parents’ house. Then I’d found the picture of Donella, and my life had jolted forward again.

Now, as a sweltering New Orleans September went on, I felt my life stabilize, in a way. Matéo and Aly offered several more times to teach me how to change at will, and though I knew I needed to learn, I chickened out each time. Instead, to ensure that I wouldn’t accidentally change, I tried to avoid any upsetting situation, which wasn’t that hard. My days acquired a pattern, and it was becoming almost as familiar as the get up, go to school, go home, eat dinner, do homework pattern of my former life. Now it was sleep in, eat breakfast, hang out, go to work, come home, hang out some more, go to bed around two. Repeat. I was getting to know all my roommates more, including my cousin. More important, I felt . . . accepted. Even though I never changed with them. No one ever teased me about that, and I wondered if Matéo or Aly had told them to lay off me. Although there was so much I apparently didn’t know, because of my heritage and the little I had absorbed from my parents, I was still one of them.

And it felt really good. After refusing to belong to my own family, not really fitting in at school, not having a boyfriend—now I was one of a group. When they made inside jokes, I got them. When Coco and Aly spoke in Spanish, I understood most of it. Matéo and I found that our families had used a lot of the same idioms—one day he’d planned to make dinner and had food out, pots ready, and then decided he didn’t want to bother. Without thinking, I’d said, “Ajoelhou, tem que rezar,” like my dad had always said to me. Basically it meant, “You’re kneeling, so you’re going to pray.” Kind of like “Finish what you started.” Matéo had laughed because his mom had said the same thing to him. He was my family.

About a week after the river picnic, Mrs. Peachtree called me. Back in August we had talked about things, because it looked like I wouldn’t be back for a while. We had agreed that she would take any houseplant still alive from the house, and that once a week she would take any mail, drop it into a big manila envelope, and mail it to me. I kept the water and electricity turned on, but canceled the Internet and cable TV service. It would be easy enough to get it back once I returned home.

In return for all this, plus Mr. Peachtree cutting the lawn and making the house look lived in, I sent them a check every week. At first she hadn’t wanted to accept it, but I’d pointed out that she and her husband were essentially acting as management agents.

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