- 18 -
Ghost
As Carter had said he would, he missed the whole week of school. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Classes dragged for ages. Even Art. Mary thought often about Carter. Actually, she thought about him all the time.
On Monday before Art class, Mary sat next to Sienna. David was on an overnight trip with his hockey team, so it was just the two of them at their table.
"Hey," Sienna said as she doodled in her sketchbook.
"Hey," Mary said. She watched Sienna for a moment. "I'm sorry I called you a moron."
Sienna stopped drawing and looked at her. "What?"
"It was a while back," Mary said. "I don't think that at all, and I shouldn't have said it. I'm sorry."
Sienna stared at her. Then she shrugged. "It's okay. I forgive you."
Carter was right. Being forgiven really does feel good. "Can I ask you something?" Mary said.
"Sure," Sienna said.
"Am I…intimidating?" Mary asked. "Do I, you know, scare people?"
Sienna said nothing for a moment. Then she put her pencil down. "A little, I guess. But not like freaky scary. You just…you don't take crap from anyone. But not in the fake, rebellious way that most kids do it, like they got something to prove. You're real, and people respect you a lot for that."
Mary wrinkled her brow. "Really?"
Sienna nodded. "I do. I know I'm such a gossip freak. I can't help it sometimes. But I don't want to be. I'm working on it. You kinda inspired me. And David helps keep me accountable."
Mary stared at her for a moment. She was starting to see that Sienna was actually a pretty cool person.
"I need accountability, too," Mary said. "If I start being scary, will you let me know? I don't want to be."
Sienna smiled. "Sure."
After school one day, Mary changed into regular clothes again and took the bus to the university. But rather than go back to the jack ugly Sci-Tech building, Drew had emailed her to meet him at a coffee shop near campus. He sat at a table in the corner, wearing a t-shirt this time that said, "I'm an Astronomer. Not an Astrologer. Learn the Difference."
He looked up when he saw her coming. "Hey."
"Hey," she said as she sat across from him. "You got those blood test results back quick. I wasn't expecting to hear from you for a couple weeks."
"I have a friend who works at a lab, and she owed me a favor." He pulled out a stack of papers from his backpack. "Well, your friend's really healthy. I don't think he's gonna die of heart disease any time soon."
"What else? Did you find anything unusual?" She lowered her voice. "Anything alien?"
"Not from just the blood test. Which is why I also asked my friend to do a DNA test," he said as he flipped to the middle of the paper stack. "He sorta has an extra pair of chromosomes."
"What do you mean sorta?" Mary asked.
"I mean just that." He turned the papers around and showed her what looked like an X-ray of a bunch of little bones. "Humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. Twenty-two autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. So, forty-six in all."
Mary stared at him blankly.
"Just hang with me for a moment," he said. "Forty-six for humans. That's the magic number, got it?"
"Got it," she said.
"Your friend sorta has two more," he continued. "Here, the analysis picked up something, but it's not conclusive. They're like shadows or ghosts of chromosomes."
"Okay," she said. "What's wrong with having more chromosomes?"
"Remember the magic number?" he asked. "Humans have forty-six. Not forty-four. Not forty-eight. People with one extra chromosome, depending on where it is, have things like Down Syndrome. But this is a full pair. Having more or fewer chromosome pairs means you're not human. You're wheat. Or an earthworm. Or a goldfish. Got it? But these are only sorta there. And here's the really weird part. All the other chromosomes seem to be responding to these ghosts at some subatomic frequency."
Blank stares from Mary again. She actually made good grades in science, but this was a little over her head.
Drew tapped his hand on the papers, obviously thinking of how to dumb down the explanation for her. "It's like…it's like music. You hear bad music, you get irritated. You hear good music, you listen in. These ghosts are giving out music that the other chromosomes like. Whatever mutations or genetic anomalies that he has are getting in line. He's like an optimal human being."
"They're healing him," she said to herself.
Drew continued, "Granted, this is just one test. And there wasn't a lot of blood to work with. I wish I could get more samples from him. Hair. Urine. Skin. Hell, I'd love to put him through an MRI and see what his brain is like."
Mary frowned. "I'm not going to ask him to pee into a cup."
Drew shrugged and arranged the paper stack. "Anyway, this is what I found with what you gave me. Nothing conclusive. But wow. Anyway, now we need to figure out a way to get rid of this thing."
Mary said nothing.
Drew raised an eyebrow. "You still wanna help your friend, don't you?"
"Yeah," she said hesitantly. "But…I don't know now."
"What do you mean you don't know now?" he asked.
"Well…it's kinda…complicated," she said.
Drew stared at her. "You're not, like, in love with it. Are you?"
"No!" she said quickly. "I mean—"
"Mary," he said. "This thing isn't human. It needs to be studied in a lab, not out and about possessing human hosts. How would you like it if some kind of alien parasite or something attached itself to your brain and made you do whatever it wanted?"
"I wouldn't like that," she said.
"Then, there you go," he said. "I've got to get to work. But I'll look into some stuff and let you know if I come across anything. And you'll let me know of anything, right?"
She nodded. "All right. Thanks, Drew."
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